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Every failed election brings about hand wringing but all too often it results in thinking that throws the baby out with the water.
Conservatives need not renounce their views on right to life but neither do they need idiots like Akin advocating for them.
As the article points out, Hispanics are quite conservative but they also do not need to be told they are unwanted. There are rational solutions to illegal immigration and conservatives would be advised to embrace them. (See 1 below.)
As for the black vote, I do not believe conservatives should make the same effort to attract their allegiance because , in my humble opinion, for the time being, the black vote is beyond the grasp of reason.
As for those conservatives who sat on their hands and did not vote they too need to mend their ways. There never will be a perfect candidate to suit them so they have to get reasonable and rational or conservatives will continue to lose . (See 1a below.)
The BBC chimes in as well! (See 1b below.)
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This is just one more reason why my booklet on raising children is relevant. I would add that the actions of Gen. Petraeus also flies in the face of what I have advocated in my book. To thine own self be true!
If America is to remain an exceptional nation, we must not allow our education system to be determined by foreign entities. The Wilkie 'One Worlders' remain a threat. (See 2 below.)
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Obama won so now it is time for him to grasp the reins of government and move 'forward' and truly lead.
Is he capable of doing do? Time will tell but I continue to have grave doubts.(See 3 below.)
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For conspiratorialists there is much meat on the Petraeus bone.
President Kennedy had an affair with a woman who was a Soviet Agent and had to be apprised of same by his brother who was informed by J Edgar.
The Libyan assassinations will keep the political pot boiling for quite a while. Stay tuned as the tug of war for evidence and administration obfuscation heats up. (See 4 and 4a below.)
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Galganov ready to throw in the towel. (See 5 below.)
And you own it. (See 5a below.)
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The three legs of the coming boom! (See 6 below.)
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Galganov ready to throw in the towel. (See 5 below.)
And you own it. (See 5a below.)
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The three legs of the coming boom! (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)Can Marco Rubio save the GOP on immigration?
By SCOTT WONG and LOIS ROMANO
Barely an hour after Mitt Romney conceded the presidential election Wednesday morning, Marco Rubio laid down his marker for 2016: No, he wouldn’t be the candidate of the tired old white guy.
“The conservative movement should have particular appeal to people in minority and immigrant communities who are trying to make it,” the GOP Florida senator posted on his Facebook page at 2:16 a.m. “And Republicans need to work harder than ever to communicate our beliefs to them.”
This is indisputably Rubio’s moment, and how the 41-year-old senator and the most prominent Latino in national politics today carries his party’s demographic burden will define not only his own future — but the future of the Republican Party. He was the biggest Republican winner Tuesday, Republicans will tell you, as it became painfully clear that Romney would carry only 27 percent of the nation’s fastest-growing demographic.
Now, as fingers are pointed and blame is assigned, all eyes are on Rubio to help lead his party out of the political abyss with Hispanic voters. As Rubio positions himself for a 2016 run, his advisers are adamant that he not become merely the Latino candidate but a conservative leader with a compelling voice who can articulate to Hispanics that the Republican Party’s values are their values — family, social conservatism, free-market entrepreneurialism.
“He is without question a world-class political talent with the ability to lead the party into the 21st century … a party that has become synonymous with intolerance and loons to too many swing voters,” said Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who ran Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign
“You know the media and the party — everyone is looking at this lifeboat with Marco written on the side of it and everyone wants to jump in,” said GOP political strategist Alex Castellanos. “We better be careful or we’re gonna sink it. We’re going to take one of our greatest assets and pigeonhole and typecast him. We need to move the conversation to the next generation, and he’s one of the people who understand that we have to be the party of hope.”
Rubio and his advisers are well aware of the risks: He must thread a needle as he tries to portray an open, tolerant party while not incensing the ultraconservative base who want tall fences, closed borders and nothing that looks like amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Rubio is already testing the national waters — he’s heading to an Iowa fundraiser next week — so he’s well aware of the complexity of moving the party to the left on immigration while appealing to the conservatives who rule the Republican primary process.
Rubio seems likely to approach potential immigration talks from a biographical standpoint. The son of working-class, Cuban-born parents, the bilingual senator often speaks of how his mom and dad toiled for decades as a hotel maid and bartender after moving to America, longing for a better future for their children.
“He is well-positioned to be a leader on this issue — but it will take courage and he can’t do it alone,” said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles.
“This is a very, very dangerous area for Rubio if he has national aspirations,” said Roy Beck, head of the anti-immigration group Numbers USA. “You’ve had Republicans trying to do this in the past that really lost their status in the party once they did it.”
Rubio also has a potential problem inside the Senate. Two of the top Senate Republicans — Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas — are up for reelection in 2014 and have to be worried about a tea party primary challenge if they fire up the base on immigration
In an interview with POLITICO last summer, Rubio made clear that he would like to move past immigration reform so that he can relay a broader message to the Latino community about his party. “If we could just get past that gateway issue of immigration policy and what it means about us as Republicans, I think we have a very compelling story to tell about how our economic policies are better for the Hispanic community than the Democrats’ economic policies,” he said.
“I think it’s a gateway issue, [which] in many ways, sends a signal about how a political movement, a candidate or a group of individuals feels about another group of people.”
The numbers behind the 2012 election tell the story of the party’s demographic challenge.
President George W. Bush, who was a strong voice for comprehensive immigration reform, won 44 percent of the Latino vote in 2004 and 35 percent in 2000. Romney took only 27 percent Tuesday.
“What I urge my Republican colleagues to do is to understand we have a demographic problem, the rhetoric around immigration has led to our reduction in Hispanic votes,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told POLITICO.
While Rubio will most likely be the GOP’s point man on immigration on the Hill, Bush’s brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, also is expected to help bridge the gap with Hispanics.
“They both have the stature and the credibility, and they both have the messaging talents to deal with an issue that has been a difficult issue for our party to drive consensus,” said Al Cardenas, chairman of the grass-roots American Conservative Union and a close friend of both men.
“A bipartisan version of the DREAM Act is not at this time the appropriate remedy,” he added. “We need to get this whole wedge issue off the table in order to be true competitors for that vote.”
Rubio declined to be interviewed. But spokesman Alex Conant said his boss had spent most of the year developing an alternative to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s DREAM Act and would try to pass it in the new Congress “if the Democrats are serious about permanently addressing the status of undocumented young people.”
Rubio never introduced legislation this year, but his ideas would give “non-immigrant” visas to undocumented children brought to the United States at an early age provided they have no criminal record and have completed high school. It would allow them to stay in the country and access the existing immigration system through which they could eventually become green-card holders or naturalized citizens.
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s elections, many Republicans believe they need to recalibrate and listen to Rubio. But while Rubio may be able to sway his Senate colleagues, his influence among House members is less certain.
“My gut is there are not too many Republicans who have been against comprehensive reform who will change positions,” said longtime pro-immigration activist Rick Swartz, who founded the National Immigration Forum. Reform “is easy to talk about but harder to get it done.”
Rubio, who early on had been mentioned as a possible Romney running mate, played the role of surrogate and loyal foot soldier during this year’s presidential campaign. From April to November, Rubio stumped for Romney at nearly 60 events — in virtually all the battleground states, including states with big Latino populations such as Florida, Nevada and Colorado. He also provided star power for another 40 fundraisers and campaign events for Senate Republican candidates in states from Massachusetts to Nebraska.
The rigorous schedule kept his name in the news, raised his profile in key states and gave him a taste of a presidential campaign. As the GOP searches for a new standard-bearer for 2016, Rubio is continuing to make moves toward a possible run, wooing party leaders and voters in the all-important primary state of Iowa.
On Nov. 17, Rubio will headline the annual birthday fundraiser for Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad at the Palace Theater in Altoona. He stumped for Romney in the Des Moines area back in July. And at the invitation of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Rubio addressed nearly 200 members of a Des Moines business group in May during their annual visit to Washington.
Manu Raju contributed to this report
1a)Winning the Future: The Fiscal-Conservative Fantasy
By Selwyn Duke
With the loss of the 2012 election, there is much talk of how the Republican Party must do some soul-searching. How will the GOP wage successful campaigns when demographic and cultural changes favor the opposition? Increasingly, the answer is that the party's party is over, that it must move into the future or be relegated to the past. "Dispense with the social issues!" we're counseled. "Don't trouble over abortion or faux marriage and instead just focus on fiscal matters."
Yet this appeal is the result of critics expressing what makes them uncomfortable, as opposed to actually observing the facts on the ground. How do I know? It's simple: the minority voters everyone is so desperate to woo are more socially conservative than are whites. Where are they more liberal?
Fiscal matters!
Hispanics are well-known to be pro-life; in fact, one poll showed that only 25 percent of them support legal abortion. And remember the 2008 Proposition 8 vote in California banning faux marriage? While a slim majority of whites voted against it, 53 percent of Hispanics and 70 percent of blacks voted yes and won its passage (prompting all those nice leftists to have hissy fits and hurl racial epithets).
In fact, if you want to know how to capture Hispanic voters, just learn from people who've done it for 100 years: Mexican politicians. It's rumored that Mexico has more Mexicans than even Mexifornia, yet while it has long embraced socialist parties, abortion is illegal nationwide.
So the fiscal-conservative prescription is spot-on -- if you're diagnosing New Zealand. Otherwise, it's a proposal to give minorities what they don't want in a platform and deny them what they do want in the hope that they'll abandon a party that at least offers half a loaf. Can you say hasta la vista, Republicanos?
Of course, some assume that traditionalist social positions are the problem because the GOP's touting them hasn't won over minorities. After all, such matters involve deeply held principle, right?
But this gets at the problem: the people in question find fiscal liberalism -- otherwise known as getting free stuff -- even more compelling (a few different kinds of prejudice factor into their preferences as well).
So you want to keep the GOP relevant? Here's a proposition. Let's woo that sought-after Hispanic voting block by offering the whole loaf: social conservatism and quasi-socialist policies. I'm sure the churches will help out by preaching social justice in Spanish.
Of course, I'm not serious. But the point has been made.
Yet there is an irony here. Should the republic hold together as it toddles into tomorrow with a motley mix of polyglot peoples, the Mexican model is exactly what will be applied. After all, like water, politicians take the shape of the vessel in which they find themselves -- a jarra de agua in this case.
A delicious irony it is, too -- in a bittersweet way. You American liberals now bask in victory's glow, and you've been winning the culture war for a century. You fancy that you'll build your brave nude world, your utopia of faux marriage, free abortion, and whatever other social evolution your inner simian conjures up, unimpeded by conservatives who once, to paraphrase Bill Buckley, would stand athwart history yelling "Stop!" And, true, should the American republic survive long enough (doubtful), you won't have to worry about old white guys running things or mobs of "angry white males" running their mouths. Yet the future won't be what you expect. You naively think leftism will march forward the next hundred years like it did the last, but civilizations cycle. And while you know how to tear down the edifice via your cultural 9/11, you've no idea how to build a new one up. And the reality is that you will not be the builders.
This America would be browner and bluer, but also likely less accepting of homosexuality and abortion. It would be too poor to finance the big social programs you want; however, while Big Brother might have to recede, he could be replaced by Big Daddy: society may well be more patriarchal. And if there's a huge influx of Muslims? Ha!
Oh, you feminists will wail and gnash your teeth -- insofar as you're still around. But few of you will remain, given your bottoming-out birthrate, and your new overlords won't care about the caterwauling of a coven of wizened old white women. Your only saving grace is that if this society really is more pro-life, you may be spared an ObamaCare-prescribed euthanizing and instead enjoy a lonely dotage in a quite Spartan, Cuba-like old-age home.
A tad dystopian, you say? Then you'd better get busy now and hope you have more success convincing America's "emerging majority" to accept social liberalism than your opponents have had cajoling them into fiscal conservatism. Good luck with all that.
There's a kicker here, too. The above vision of tomorrow is the best-case scenario for you liberals. The worst one is ending up Winston Smith(ez) living in a totalitarian super-state, with the cage of hungry rats on your head when you think bad thoughts.
Yet I don't think either scenario most probable. I've long believed that the U.S. will go the way of the Roman Empire -- not just insofar as collapsing, but also in dissolution. After all, we're so divided -- nay, fractured -- along racial, ethnic, and ideological lines that, ultimately, only the iron fist of tyranny could hold us together. This break-up could be precipitated by severe economic turmoil coupled with a series of disasters.
Sound crazy? Well, history teaches otherwise. We could still say in 1939 that the sun never sets on the British Empire; now it hardly shines on her. And how many in 1985 foresaw the dissolution of the all-powerful Soviet Union?
To suffer the same fate would certainly make for interesting times. If they come, however, perhaps we can forge one of the resulting nations into a leaner, cleaner land, where fiscal frugality and social sanity both reign. And if I have anything to say about it, there'll be a big sign on the border reading, "Liberals need not apply."
1b)Fwd: BBC Article on the Election
| Ok, y'all are gonna yell at me BUT -- I am getting sick of the outsiders telling Republicans they have to look at themselves. (espec the BBC pedophile aiders and abettors of Saville) The commie is in the WH and WE have to look at OURSELVES? The fraudster who will not produce ANY BIRTH CERTIFICATE, COLLEGE TRANSCRIPTS, TAXES, PASSPORT, ETC., and WE have to look at OURSELVES. Excuse me, but since when did having moral character and decency become criminal and offensive? Maybe since we opened up our borders to the crooks and thieves long enough for them to steal our White House. The Republican party has ONE problem: its afraid of its own shadow. Its afraid to talk turkey. Its afraid to call the Libya attack what it was, they are afraid to tell the president HE is the LIAR not ROMNEY -- we played softball -- we played it safe because we were used to a different ballgame -- we were waiting for the bus to pick us up? We are afraid of being called Racists so we risk not being called anything at all. They -- Republicans -- are CHICKENS. McCain did the same damn thing: to this day, all my mother remembers of that idiot is "My frieeeeeeeennnnnnnnnd . . . !" That's all he kept saying "My friend this, my friend that." Republican candidates need to understand no opposing party is their FRIEND, they are the ENEMY. We need to run our campaign like a military opposition! instead of a high school prom. That jerk in the WH, that usurper of our Constitution had BETTER intelligence than WE did?????????? If Romney had bad advisors (which I believe he had, out of tune with reality) ROMNEY would have been better off just having his campaign follow the Obama campaign stops, right behind his bus, then at least maybe he would have stood a chance. |
Early Education or Early Indoctrination?
By Jamie A. HopeWhen your children or grandchildren venture off to school in America, someday soon, most likely, their education curricula will be developed not by a state education association, or even by the National Education Association (NEA). Rather, they will be developed by the United Nations -- specifically, their education arm, United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This is an educational organization that could not only threaten the sovereignty of America, but indoctrinate our unsuspecting children with a dangerous progressive ideology -- an ideology in which children are no longer taught that America is the land of the free and home of the brave or the right to freedom of worship. Their agenda is to teach every child in the world a universal education curriculum compromising Common Core Standards. Common Core Standards "provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy."
While many in the education community view these new global standards as an answer to our educational woes, some do not.
Many are concerned that the Common Core Standards, once successfully implemented, will provide unfettered access of our educational system by the United Nations. Some textbooks and curricula for our public schools have already been written by UNESCO and the International Baccalaureate program that is currently in many school districts across the United States. Grabbing additional access is a natural next step. Once they write the curricula, they must have authority to develop all testing tools. They will decide who becomes a teacher and what preparation will be provided for that teacher. The International Baccalaureate curriculum upsets parents and teachers because the focus includes sustainable development, abortion rights, gay marriage, universal disarmament and social justice curricula.
The problem with the Common Core Standards is not that they promote reading, writing, and arithmetic; it is the added dangerous ideologies they would like to teach our children -- their agenda of teaching social justice, abortion rights, population control, environmentalism, and gay marriage. The easiest way to implant their ideologies into the unsuspecting minds of our youngest is not only to educate America's children in grades K-12, but to mandate compulsory education for children ages 0-5 in a program known as early education. According to UNESCO's website, "UNESCO advocates for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programmes that attend to health, nutrition, security and learning and which provide for children's holistic development. It organized the first World Conference on ECCE in September 2010, which culminated in the adoption of a global action agenda for ECCE called Moscow Framework for Action and Cooperation: Harnessing the Wealth of Nations. The United Nations believes we should have a uniform global educational system and that children even from birth should have 'rights' to an early education."
The United Nations is creeping into our educational system and not only changing the way our youngest learn academic basics, but challenging family beliefs on American sovereignty, parental rights, and freedom of religion. According to a White House press release dated March 10, 2009, "President Obama is committed to helping states develop seamless, comprehensive, and coordinated 'Zero to Five' systems to improve developmental outcomes and early learning for all children." It also stated, "In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity, it is a pre-requisite. That is why it will be the goal of this Administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education -- from the day they are born to the day they begin a career."
Educational elites support the president. "These new partnerships must also inspire students to take a bigger and deeper view of their civic obligations -- not only to their countries of origin but to the betterment of the global community."
While the educational community touts minimal studies showing how effective early education is, and how important in implementing their agenda, they are perhaps purposely ignoring studies that suggest otherwise.
We studied a wide range of measures of child well-being, from anxiety and hyperactivity to social and motor skills. For almost every measure, we find that the increased use of childcare was associated with a decrease in their well-being relative to other children. For example, reported fighting and other measures of aggressive behaviour increased substantially. Our results are consistent with evidence from the National Institute of Child Health and Development Early Childcare Research Network (2003), showing that the amount of time through the first 4.5 years of life that a child spends away from his or her mother is a predictor of assertiveness, disobedience, and aggression.
The second enduring link between early child care and child development detected in this inquiry indicated that children with more experience in center settings continued to manifest somewhat more problem behaviors through sixth grade[.] ... One possible reason why relations between center care and problem behavior may remain is that primary school teachers lack the training as well as the time to address behavior problems, given their primary focus on academics (Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta,2001).
Not only are their studies suggesting detrimental emotional effects on children being raised in these early education programs, but there are studies that show lack of long-term advantages from these programs. According to the Council of State Governments, "[p]re-kindergarten programs achieve their goal of increasing reading and mathematics skill levels. On average, disadvantaged children who did not attend an early education program scored in the 33rd percentile, while those who did attend scored in the 44th percentiles. However, that achievement boost seems to largely dissipate before the child begins second grade."
Since there are credible conflicting studies on early education programs and a possible detriment to the emotional well-being of children in these programs, why are the federal and state governments continuing to pour billions into these possibly ineffective United Nations-created Common Core agendas and pushing for children to be required to go to school at birth?
This is not the first time early education and a call to hand over babies to the government has been attempted. The First Congress of Bolshevik Workers said in 1918 that "we must remove children from the crude influence of their families. We must take them over, and to speak frankly, nationalize them. From the first days of their lives they will be under the healthy influence of children's nurseries and schools."
The Bolsheviks understood that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
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It's Your Move, Mr. President
By David Garth
The American people voted to retain Barack Obama. Fine. It has been settled -- time to move on. Let's consider this fun fact first, from CNN:
Barring serious efforts to curb the growth in the country's debt, by 2020 Washington could be spending 92 cents of every tax dollar on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and interest alone. That would leave just 8 cents to pay for everything else.
Wonderful. Eight cents. I want the liberals to explain how this is going to work. And please, in the name of all things sacred, don't give me Barack Obama bull about the wealthy folks "paying a little more." You can double the tax rate of the top ten percent of wage earners, and it doesn't even begin to address the problem. Are the liberals going to bite the bullet and start cutting from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security? Perhaps, but it doesn't seem likely.
Keep in mind that I haven't even spoken about ObamaCare. We have no idea how much that program is going to cost. Some people say that the program will actually save us money in the long run. Yes, and magical fairies may appear and turn all our weeds into rosebushes. How many federal governmental programs can you speak of that save money? Anyone? Hello? McFly?
During the campaign, President Obama said that he wanted to create 100,000 jobs for math and science teachers. One can make the rational argument that the federal government has no role in the creation or hiring of teachers, but let's ignore that for a second. If my math is correct, and if you get each teacher at a bargain-basement price of $30,000 a year, the cost is 3 billion dollars. Just where is that money going to come from? And what happens in the second year? Does the federal government continue picking up the tab, or does it transfer the obligations to the states and school districts? Can they afford that? Can the federal government afford that?
The federal government is expected to add approximately one trillion dollars to the federal deficit in the next year. That will put us at over 17 trillion dollars of debt. How are we going to deal with that? Does the president have any idea? Do people of the liberal persuasion have any intention of addressing the problem? You know, and I know, and everyone knows that liberals owe a great deal of their electoral success to the concept of "spreading the wealth around." Well, we are at a point where Sugar Daddy is almost dead. What are you going to do? Buehler? Buehler?
Just suppose, and I know this is a crazy thought, that other countries begin to get a little worried about buying our debt. I mean, you could hardly blame them -- we are giving every indication that we have little resolve in solving our debt problem. So what do you do then? Do you raise the interest rate on our bonds to attract buyers, creating an even larger interest payment that we are obligated to pay? Or do you just create more false money with a few keystrokes on your computer, thereby running a huge risk of runaway inflation? Liberals, does the Weimar Republic ring a bell with you at all? Even if inflation doesn't rise to catastrophic levels, which is a big if, you still are imposing a hidden tax on the American people that is going to hurt the economy. Sounds like trouble. Mr. President, are you going to do anything that seriously addresses this problem? You might really make your base very angry. Are you willing to make some tough choices?
I know that military spending isn't a terribly big priority in liberal circles, but there are questions I have to ask. Are you going to gut our military to pay for your social programs? It is a very simple question that deserves an answer. Either liberals are serious about the debt problem or they are not. So, where do you propose that the majority of cuts come from? The entitlement programs, which will put your re-election chances at risk, or the military? I know it's a tough choice. I'll give you a second or two.
While you think, consider this: the United States has been the defender of the free world for a long, long time. Perhaps you think it is time for that role to end. Okay, you are the boss. Cut military spending to the bone; I'm sure that will make you a hero at your next cocktail party with the intelligentsia. The problem is that the world will not exist in a vacuum. If the United States retreats from the world stage, someone else is going to fill that void. Who might that be? The Chinese? Radical Islamists? An unknown threat?
Liberals always speak loudly about rights. The rights of women. The rights of gays. Please tell me, if the United States is no longer around, do you think the next power is going to be extremely receptive to either women or gays? That is something to ponder, now, isn't it? Any answers? Wow, I hear crickets!
Perhaps you think I am being unfair. In a way, I suppose I am. To my shame, people of my own party have been adding to the debt for far too long, and I hold them accountable as well. But no one has spent money like Barack Obama; it is unprecedented in American history. Now the country turns its gaze directly on the president of the United States. What are you going to do? You won a second term; now lead us. Make some decisions. Try to fix the problem. You have a responsibility to do this.
I, for one, will be watching very, very carefully to see what you do. If you do anything meaningful at all
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)Was an affair just a pretext for Petraeus’ resignation as CIA chief
Paula Broadwell, author of Petraeus bio All I.The affair is said to have come out after the FBI placed his extramarital partner, author of his biography “All In,” under investigation for “improperly trying to access his email and possibly gaining access to classified information.”
Petraeus stepped down as Central Intelligence Director Thursday, Nov. 8, after serving less than a year. In his letter of resignation he wrote, “Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours.” The President accepted his resignation Friday.
The point is that during his 2010-2011 stint as commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus and his biographer Broadwell were often seen together and tongues already wagged then. Before that, he served as head of the US Central Command and commander of US forces in Iraq, where his “surge” doctrine brought the US war to a successful end.
For a public figure of his stature and heroic repute, an extramarital affair would not normally these days be considered reason enough to quit his job. Bill Clinton’s presidency survived his affair with Monica Lewinsky, although the US president, who officiates as Commander in Chief of US forces and responsible for the CIA, lied to Congress.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said the president should not have accepted his resignation. “A personal mistake should not have led to his departure.”
Informed sources in Washington believe there was something more than an extramarital affair behind the Petraeus resignation and the FBI’s probe of Paula Broadwell.
The FBI denied the director himself was under investigation.
The chronology is also problematical. President Obama is said by some Washington sources to have had the letter on his desk no earlier than Nov. 8 and only discovered it was coming on Nov. 7 while he was celebrating his election victory over Republican Mitt Romney. Yet the FBI probe must have started much earlier and its chief, Robert Mueller, would not have launched an inquiry touching on the CIA director without consulting with the president and so Obama must have known it was coming well before the election.
Nursing the wounds of their election defeat, Republican party leaders, are trying to connect the Petraeus affair with the still murky circumstances surrounding the murder of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans at the Benghazi consulate in Libya on Sept. 10 at the hands of terrorists.
This affair has still not been cleared up three months later and the labored explanations coming from the State Department and CIA have only deepened the mystery.
Republicans and many US media have called loudly for an inquiry into allegations of a cover-up hatched by the administration to keep a major security debacle dark before it damaged Obama’s campaign for reelection and marred the kudos he won as a valiant crusader by finishing off Osama bin Laden.
Next Thursday, Nov. 15, the Senate Intelligence Committee begins its hearings on the Benghazi affair. Heads of US security organizations and senior White House advisers on terror will be summoned to testify. Petraeus was bound to be on the list in his capacity as CIA director.
However, some hours after his resignation was made public, it was announced that he would not be called to testify. This was confirmed by the committee chair, Sen. Feinstein. The announcement followed speculation that he may have quit for the sake of protecting the president from embarrassing disclosures he was bound to make on the Libyan incident.
This theory ties in with Sen. Feinstein’s first response to Gen. Petraeus’ decision to step down, which was to criticize her fellow Democrat in the White House. “I wish President Obama had not accepted this resignation,” she said. “I wanted him to continue. He was good, he loved the work, and he had a command of intelligence issues second to none.”
If the speculation is true, Petraeus may not be the only high Obama administration official to pay the price for Benghazi. Washington sources predict the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Elizabeth Rice, may lose the State Department she was promised after Hillary Clinton’s departure, in case she faced questions about the Libyan attack at the congressional hearings for her endorsement as secretary of state.
The Senate Intelligence Committee still has the authority to summon both Petraeus and Rice to answer questions on this troublesome incident. That would be up to Chairperson Feinstein.
Does all this mean that Al Qaeda scored a double coup in Benghazi? Knocking over the American chief of intelligence and stalling the career of a brilliant US diplomat? Or is there quite a different story behind the abrupt Petraeus exit? Watch out for more revelations.
4a)IS THIS WHY CIA CHIEF REALLY RESIGNED?
Gun running to jihadists could dwarf 'Fast and Furious' scandal
By AARON KLEIN
The speculation surrounding the sudden resignation of CIA Chief General David Petraeus is focusing in large part on his role in an alleged cover-up of the attacks against the U.S. mission in Benghazi this past September.
Perhaps overlooked is the CIA’s role in purportedly using the Benghazi mission to coordinate U.S. aid to Syrian opposition groups and information those same insurgents include jihadists openly acting under the al-Qaida umbrella.
One week before he was slated to testify before Congress on the Benghazi debacle, Petraeus on Friday night announced his resignation, citing an extramarital affair, and it was reported he will no longer testify.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the House Homeland Security Committee chairman, charged in an interview with CNN that Petraeus is “at the center of this, and there are answers that only he has.” King was referring to the Benghazi attacks.
Asked if he will still call for Petraeus to testify despite his resignation, Rep. King replied, “Absolutely, to me, he’s an absolutely necessary witness.”
Patraeus resigned at a time when the U.S. intelligence community is facing criticism over both its response to the assault in Benghazi and whether it had early warnings of al-Qaida plans to attack the U.S. mission in that country.
The White House and multiple State Department officials had immediately blamed a crude film about the Islamic figure Mohammad for what they claimed were popular protests that preceded the attacks on the U.S. mission.
According to new, vivid accounts provided by the State Department and intelligence officials, no such popular demonstration took place the night of the attack. Instead, video footage from Benghazi reportedly shows an organized group of armed men attacking the compound, the officials said.
That Benghazi compound is repeatedly referred by the news media to as a “consulate.”
However, as WND reported, the building was not a consulate and at no point functioned as one, according to informed Middle East security officials.
Instead, the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi served as a meeting place to coordinate aid for the rebel-led insurgencies in the Middle East, the security officials said.
Among the tasks performed inside the building was collaborating with Arab countries on the recruitment of fighters – including jihadists – to target Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
The distinction may help explain why there was no major public security presence at what has been described as a “consulate.” Such a presence would draw attention to the shabby, nondescript building that was allegedly used for such sensitive purposes.
U.S. officials have since been more careful in their rhetoric, while not contradicting the media narrative that a consulate was attacked.
In his remarks on the attack, Obama has referred to the Benghazi post as a “U.S. mission.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has similarly called the post a “mission.”
A “consulate” typically refers to the building that officially houses a consul, who is the official representative of the government of one state in the territory of another. The U.S. consul in Libya, Jenny Cordell, works out of the embassy in Tripoli.
Consulates at times function as junior embassies, providing services related to visas, passports and citizen information.
On Aug. 26, about two weeks before he was killed, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens attended a ceremony marking the opening of consular services at the Tripoli embassy.
“I’m happy to announce that starting on Monday, Aug. 27, we are ready to offer a full range of consular services to Libyans,” stated Stevens at the ceremony in Tripoli. “This means non-immigrant visas, as well as assistance to Americans residing in, or visiting, Libya.”
The main role of a consulate is to foster trade with the host and care for its own citizens who are traveling or living in the host nation.
Diplomatic missions, on the other hand, maintain a more generalized role. A diplomatic mission is simply a group of people from one state or an international inter-governmental organization present in another state to represent matters of the sending state or organization in the receiving state.
Last month, the State Department gave a vivid account of Stevens’ final day during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee meeting. It was disclosed that about an hour before the attack began, Stevens concluded his final meeting of the day with a Turkish diplomat. Turkey has been leading the insurgency against Assad’s regime.
In September, WND broke the story that Stevens played a central role in recruiting jihadists to fight Assad’s regime in Syria, according to Egyptian security officials.
Stevens served as a key contact with the Saudis to coordinate the recruitment by Saudi Arabia of Islamic fighters from North Africa and Libya. The jihadists were sent to Syria via Turkey to attack Assad’s forces, said the security officials.
The officials said Stevens also worked with the Saudis to send names of potential jihadi recruits to U.S. security organizations for review. Names found to be directly involved in previous attacks against the U.S., including in Iraq and Afghanistan, were ultimately not recruited by the Saudis to fight in Syria, said the officials.
Stevens and three other American diplomats were killed on Sept. 11 in an attack blamed on Islamists.
One witness to the mob scene in Libya said some of the gunmen attacking the U.S. installation had identified themselves as members of Ansar al-Shariah, which represents al-Qaida in Yemen and Libya.
The al-Qaida offshoot released a statement denying its members were behind the deadly attack, but a man identified as a leader of the Ansar brigade told Al Jazeera the group indeed took part in the Benghazi attack.
Al-Qaida among U.S.-supported rebels
As KleinOnline reported, questions remain about the nature of U.S. support for the revolutions in Egypt and Libya, including reports the U.S.-aided rebels that toppled Muammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya consisted of al-Qaida and jihad groups. The U.S. provided direct assistance, including weapons and finances, to the Libyan rebels.
Similarly, the Obama administration is currently aiding the rebels fighting Assad’s regime in Syria amid widespread reports that al-Qaida jihadists are included in the ranks of the Free Syrian Army. Earlier this month, Obama announced $50 million more in aid to the Syrian rebels.
During the revolution against Gadhafi’s regime, the U.S. admitted to directly arming the rebel groups.
At the time, rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi admitted in an interview that a significant number of the Libyan rebels were al-Qaida fighters, many of whom had fought U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He insisted his fighters “are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists,” but he added that the “members of al-Qaida are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader.”
Adm. James Stavridis, NATO supreme commander for Europe, admitted Libya’s rebel force may include al-Qaida: “We have seen flickers in the intelligence of potential al-Qaida, Hezbollah.”
Former CIA officer Bruce Riedel went even further, telling the Hindustan Times: “There is no question that al-Qaida’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition. It has always been Gadhafi’s biggest enemy, and its stronghold is Benghazi. What is unclear is how much of the opposition is al-Qaida/Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – 2 percent or 80 percent.”
In Syria, meanwhile, the U.S. may be currently supporting al-Qaida and other jihadists fighting with the rebels targeting Assad’s regime.
In August, KleinOnline quoted a senior Syrian source claiming at least 500 hardcore mujahedeen from Afghanistan, many of whom were spearheading efforts to fight the U.S. there, were killed in clashes with Syrian forces last month.
Also last month, KleinOnline reported Jihadiya Salafia in the Gaza Strip, a group that represents al-Qaida in the coastal territory, had declared three days of mourning for its own jihadists who died in Syria in recent weeks.
There have been widespread reports of al-Qaida among the Syrian rebels, including in reports by Reuters and the New York Times.
KleinOnline reported in May there was growing collaboration between the Syrian opposition and al-Qaida as well as evidence the opposition is sending weapons to jihadists in Iraq, according to an Egyptian security official.
The military official told KleinOnline that Egypt has reports of collaboration between the Syrian opposition and three al-Qaida arms, including one the operates in Libya:
Jund al-Sham, which is made up of al-Qaida militants who are Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese;
Jund al-Islam, which in recent years merged with Ansar al-Islam, an extremist group of Sunni Iraqis operating under the al-Qaida banner and operating in Yemen and Libya;
Jund Ansar al-Allah, an al-Qaida group based in Gaza linked to Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Syria.
U.S. officials have stated the White House is providing nonlethal aid to the Syrian rebels, while widespread reports have claimed the U.S. has been working with Arab countries to ensure the opposition in Syria is well armed
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5)Subject: Galganov speaks...after the election
Galganov speaks...after the election
Somehow, I feel as if I should be apologizing for all of my positive editorials pointing to a Romney victory. But, how can I be expected to apologize for half of the American population who celebrated a GREAT victory of the TAKERS over the MAKERS?
The finger pointing has already begun with pundits analyzing what Romney should have done, and what he shouldn’t have done.
So let me give it to you straight . . . ROMNEY IS BLAMELESS. He ran a great campaign.
It is the people who blindly reelected an already FAILED American Idol who bare the blame.
From everything I’ve read, seen and heard, Mitt Romney is a very decent person who ran on a REAL platform. He spelled out what his plan was for America. And he stood firm on genuine policies that offered the American people a roadmap out of the impending disaster - towards instead . . . to American prosperity.
On the other hand, Obama promised FREE birth control pills. He promised to punish the MAKERS with higher taxes and more regulations. And he promised to give the Something-For-Nothing Bunch their FREE RIDE.
Obama won the Black vote because he’s Black. There is no question about it. NONE WHATSOEVER . . . America is a RACIST country where the Blacks vote on the basis of color.
Obama won the Hispanic vote because he promised the Hispanics the RIGHT to violate American Immigration Laws, and to give them rights and privileges unavailable to other communities.
And he won the general vote because of the lack of intelligence of the American people, a level of intelligence, which after yesterday’s election results is beyond understanding.
I’ve been hearing this morning from some Republicans on television, how the Republicans have to change their philosophy and strategy to attract more women, Blacks, and Hispanics. But, none of these people with this stupid idea have said how.
THEY SHOULD JUST SHUT-UP . . . AMERICA HAS SUFFERED ENOUGH WITH THE RINOS.
If the republicans should decide to abandon their principles to BUY Female, Black, Hispanic and WELFARE votes, how would that make them any different from the Democrats?
HERE IS WHAT BEAT THE REPUBLICANS that would have made Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels proud.
YELLOW JOURNALISM AT ITS WORST:
It would not have made any difference WHATSOEVER who the Republicans would have chosen to be their candidate, since the media would have found or created any way they could to demean him or her, to the point of OUTRIGHT Character Assassination.
It’s one thing for the media to be in the so-called tank for Obama. It’s not right, but just about everyone has a bias. But . . . having the media doing the work of lying and covering for Obama is another thing entirely.
CORRUPTION OF THE MEDIA:
The mainstream media withheld vital information from the voters. They highlighted NON-EXISTENT Obama successes, while keeping serious Obama failures from the headlines, such as how the President contributed to the murder of FOUR Americans in Benghazi . . . AND THEN LIED ABOUT IT.
The media . . . for all intent and purposes NEVER covered how Obama’s Arab Spring has become the World’s NIGHTMARE. And how Europe is already falling over the edge of the financial cliff without so much as a whisper from Obama.
Or how Iran is laughing at Obama’s America, while they work away at building their BOMB that can “WIPE ISRAEL OFF THE MAP”, while holding the rest of the world HOSTAGE.
The media NEVER even discussed the abhorrent cost of gasoline at the pumps, the rising cost of food and essentials, laying the blame at the feet of Obama, as they surely would have, had the President been named George W Bush.
That said . . . While the media LIED outright for Obama, they also participated as willing accomplices in the never-ending series of outright lies and distortions against Romney.
THERE ARE NO POLITICAL CENTRIST OR INDEPENDENT MINDED VOTERS:
Like most people, I was expecting those Centrist and Independent minded voters to come in huge numbers to Romney’s side. But that never happened. And it didn’t happen because there really are no Centrist or Independent-minded voters.
There are people who like to define themselves as Centrist and Independent because it makes them feel special, where in reality, they are on the LEFT pretending to be something they are not.
THEN THERE’S POLITICAL LEADERS LIKE CHRIS CHRISTIE:
Chris Christie HELPED Romney lose this election by telling all of America’s population how proud he was of PRESIDENT Barack Obama, for being such a great President and UNIFIER during the hurricane crisis.
Just for giving Obama this ENDORSEMENT during such a critical time . . . Christie should never be forgiven.
HERE’S THE BOTTOM LINE:
The following are KEY issues at the top of Obama’s agenda from the first day he won office in 2008, that he will now push for with every fiber of his being.
1 – Obamacare will destroy the world’s best healthcare system, while spending Americans into the poorhouse, as he moves to fully eliminate private insurance options.
2 – There will be CARD-CHECK, giving the Unions unfettered power over the MAKERS.
3 – The Media Fairness Doctrine will become a part of FCC regulations that will go a long way to muting Conservative voices.
4 – Fewer manufacturers will set-up shop in America.
5 – Businesses of all sizes will focus almost entirely on reducing the size of staff to avoid the astronomical costs of providing employment.
6 – Unemployment will rise significantly.
AND THEN THERE ARE THE REGULATING CZARS AND EXECUTIVE ORDERS.
THE OBAMA SUPREME COURT . . . Perhaps one of the MOST damaging long-term results of this election victory for the LEFT, will be the NEW Supreme Court that will be appointed by Obama, that will push the Court FURTHER to the LEFT than anyone can imagine.
In essence . . . what we witnessed last night . . . is nothing short of the irreversible step towards the end of the American DREAM and that Shining City On That Hill.
SO WHAT DO FREEDOM LOVING CONSERVATIVES DO?
As a result of this election – a whole new strategy by Conservatives WORLDWIDE must be developed, where people who believe in INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS opposed to Socialist COLLECTIVIST RIGHTS, must come together to separate ourselves from the masses.
THE REVOLUTION STARTED YESTERDAY:
Like just about EVERY Conservative, I was sickened watching the returns, thinking to myself . . . What the HELL?
Why should I even bother to write and fight to the point of personal sacrifice, when more than half of the people are so ignorant of consequences in search of COLLECTIVISM and intrusive government, that they WILLINGLY threw their country under Obama’s Bus?
When that New York SCREWBALL Mayor (Bloomberg) legislated the size of soft drinks FREE PEOPLE could NOT buy, who accepted HIS decision to take away THEIR Freedom, it said all that needed to be said about how unimportant FREEDOM means to most people.
THIS ISN’T JUST AN AMERICAN PROBLEM . . . this is a GLOBAL disease that must be defeated.
In my next editorial, I will write about what we can do to win back our FREEDOMS and punish those who are taking our FREEDOMS away.
Today is indeed a very new day.
The finger pointing has already begun with pundits analyzing what Romney should have done, and what he shouldn’t have done.
So let me give it to you straight . . . ROMNEY IS BLAMELESS. He ran a great campaign.
It is the people who blindly reelected an already FAILED American Idol who bare the blame.
From everything I’ve read, seen and heard, Mitt Romney is a very decent person who ran on a REAL platform. He spelled out what his plan was for America. And he stood firm on genuine policies that offered the American people a roadmap out of the impending disaster - towards instead . . . to American prosperity.
On the other hand, Obama promised FREE birth control pills. He promised to punish the MAKERS with higher taxes and more regulations. And he promised to give the Something-For-Nothing Bunch their FREE RIDE.
Obama won the Black vote because he’s Black. There is no question about it. NONE WHATSOEVER . . . America is a RACIST country where the Blacks vote on the basis of color.
Obama won the Hispanic vote because he promised the Hispanics the RIGHT to violate American Immigration Laws, and to give them rights and privileges unavailable to other communities.
And he won the general vote because of the lack of intelligence of the American people, a level of intelligence, which after yesterday’s election results is beyond understanding.
I’ve been hearing this morning from some Republicans on television, how the Republicans have to change their philosophy and strategy to attract more women, Blacks, and Hispanics. But, none of these people with this stupid idea have said how.
THEY SHOULD JUST SHUT-UP . . . AMERICA HAS SUFFERED ENOUGH WITH THE RINOS.
If the republicans should decide to abandon their principles to BUY Female, Black, Hispanic and WELFARE votes, how would that make them any different from the Democrats?
HERE IS WHAT BEAT THE REPUBLICANS that would have made Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels proud.
YELLOW JOURNALISM AT ITS WORST:
It would not have made any difference WHATSOEVER who the Republicans would have chosen to be their candidate, since the media would have found or created any way they could to demean him or her, to the point of OUTRIGHT Character Assassination.
It’s one thing for the media to be in the so-called tank for Obama. It’s not right, but just about everyone has a bias. But . . . having the media doing the work of lying and covering for Obama is another thing entirely.
CORRUPTION OF THE MEDIA:
The mainstream media withheld vital information from the voters. They highlighted NON-EXISTENT Obama successes, while keeping serious Obama failures from the headlines, such as how the President contributed to the murder of FOUR Americans in Benghazi . . . AND THEN LIED ABOUT IT.
The media . . . for all intent and purposes NEVER covered how Obama’s Arab Spring has become the World’s NIGHTMARE. And how Europe is already falling over the edge of the financial cliff without so much as a whisper from Obama.
Or how Iran is laughing at Obama’s America, while they work away at building their BOMB that can “WIPE ISRAEL OFF THE MAP”, while holding the rest of the world HOSTAGE.
The media NEVER even discussed the abhorrent cost of gasoline at the pumps, the rising cost of food and essentials, laying the blame at the feet of Obama, as they surely would have, had the President been named George W Bush.
That said . . . While the media LIED outright for Obama, they also participated as willing accomplices in the never-ending series of outright lies and distortions against Romney.
THERE ARE NO POLITICAL CENTRIST OR INDEPENDENT MINDED VOTERS:
Like most people, I was expecting those Centrist and Independent minded voters to come in huge numbers to Romney’s side. But that never happened. And it didn’t happen because there really are no Centrist or Independent-minded voters.
There are people who like to define themselves as Centrist and Independent because it makes them feel special, where in reality, they are on the LEFT pretending to be something they are not.
THEN THERE’S POLITICAL LEADERS LIKE CHRIS CHRISTIE:
Chris Christie HELPED Romney lose this election by telling all of America’s population how proud he was of PRESIDENT Barack Obama, for being such a great President and UNIFIER during the hurricane crisis.
Just for giving Obama this ENDORSEMENT during such a critical time . . . Christie should never be forgiven.
HERE’S THE BOTTOM LINE:
The following are KEY issues at the top of Obama’s agenda from the first day he won office in 2008, that he will now push for with every fiber of his being.
1 – Obamacare will destroy the world’s best healthcare system, while spending Americans into the poorhouse, as he moves to fully eliminate private insurance options.
2 – There will be CARD-CHECK, giving the Unions unfettered power over the MAKERS.
3 – The Media Fairness Doctrine will become a part of FCC regulations that will go a long way to muting Conservative voices.
4 – Fewer manufacturers will set-up shop in America.
5 – Businesses of all sizes will focus almost entirely on reducing the size of staff to avoid the astronomical costs of providing employment.
6 – Unemployment will rise significantly.
AND THEN THERE ARE THE REGULATING CZARS AND EXECUTIVE ORDERS.
THE OBAMA SUPREME COURT . . . Perhaps one of the MOST damaging long-term results of this election victory for the LEFT, will be the NEW Supreme Court that will be appointed by Obama, that will push the Court FURTHER to the LEFT than anyone can imagine.
In essence . . . what we witnessed last night . . . is nothing short of the irreversible step towards the end of the American DREAM and that Shining City On That Hill.
SO WHAT DO FREEDOM LOVING CONSERVATIVES DO?
As a result of this election – a whole new strategy by Conservatives WORLDWIDE must be developed, where people who believe in INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS opposed to Socialist COLLECTIVIST RIGHTS, must come together to separate ourselves from the masses.
THE REVOLUTION STARTED YESTERDAY:
Like just about EVERY Conservative, I was sickened watching the returns, thinking to myself . . . What the HELL?
Why should I even bother to write and fight to the point of personal sacrifice, when more than half of the people are so ignorant of consequences in search of COLLECTIVISM and intrusive government, that they WILLINGLY threw their country under Obama’s Bus?
When that New York SCREWBALL Mayor (Bloomberg) legislated the size of soft drinks FREE PEOPLE could NOT buy, who accepted HIS decision to take away THEIR Freedom, it said all that needed to be said about how unimportant FREEDOM means to most people.
THIS ISN’T JUST AN AMERICAN PROBLEM . . . this is a GLOBAL disease that must be defeated.
In my next editorial, I will write about what we can do to win back our FREEDOMS and punish those who are taking our FREEDOMS away.
Today is indeed a very new day.
5a)Congratulations to the Democrats and Young People! You now own it. The next terrorist attack you own it. Can't get a job after graduation, you own it. Sky rocketing energy prices due to Obama's EPA shutting down the energy producing states, you own it. A nuclear Iran, you own it. Bowing to the Soviet Union, you own it. Another severe recession, you own it. A volatile border with Mexico, you own it. Trouble getting good health care, you own it. Higher health insurance costs and health care costs, you own it. No budget, you own it. Our allies mistrust, you own it. Another trillion of debt, you own it. More Benghazi situations, you own it. No one willing to join the military, you own it. Trouble getting to loan to buy a home, you own it. More dependency on food stamps, you own it. Trouble finding good employment, you own it. Several part time jobs instead of a good job, you own it. A World Government, you own it. The UN governing the United States instead of ourselves, you own it. A Senate that will not bring any legislation to the table rather it is "Dead on Arrival", you own it. China controlling our world trade trampling all over us, you own it. Loss of our freedoms as we have known it in the past, you own it. A dictatorship instead of a democracy that follows the Constitution, you own it. Less take home pay and higher living costs, you own it. Driving a car that looks like a toy, you own it. More government corruption and lies, you own it. More toleration of extreme and fanatical Islamists, you own it. Terrorist attacks called work place incidents, you own it. Your revenge instead of love of country, you own it. President George Bush is out of it now, and there is not another good man for you to vilify and lie about. In a way I am relieved that another good man will not be blamed when it was imposs
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6)The Coming Boom
Our collective record of predicting what the economy will do next is dreadful. Twelve years ago, few worried about terrorism, many worried about Y2K, and the thought of zero percent interest rates was preposterous. Not a single person knows what the future holds, and so what I'm about to write isn't so much a prediction, but an observation of potential.
After five years of collapse and stagnation, we could be on the cusp of a new economic boom. Not like the mid-1980s or late 1990s, mind you. But the odds that the next five years will be markedly better than the last five years are good, and growing better by the day.
The new boom will be driven by three things: A rebound in housing construction, the rise in domestic energy production, and the end of consumer debt deleveraging.
Start with housing. From 2002 to 2007, a net average of 1.3 million American households were created every year. During that time, almost 2 million new homes were built annually. Today, it's the other way around. In the last year, 1.1 million new households were formed; but, just 700,000 new homes were built.
Just as the overbuilding of homes during the housing bubble was unsustainable, today's level of home construction cannot last -- it's just far too low to meet demand. Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies estimates that household formation will average 1.5 million from 2010 to 2020. Factor in scrappage, and new home construction needs to more than double from current levels to meet those projections.
What happens then? The Center for Housing Policy estimates that every new home generates 2.1 new jobs -- both directly from construction workers and real estate agents, and indirectly, as those workers spend more money. The National Association of Home Builders puts it at 3.05 jobs per new home. Whatever the true figure is, it adds up fast when we're talking about a need to build a million homes per year above current levels.
Next is energy. Domestic oil production declined nearly every year from 1986 to 2008, falling by 41%. It has since risen consistently for the first time in three decades, now up more than 30% in the last four years. The U.S. produced more oil in July than in any other month since 1998. And growth in America's energy output since 2008 has surpassed any other country in the world, according to energy analyst Daniel Yergin.
The boom in natural gas production is even more impressive. Thanks to new fracking technologies, and a push to find new supplies after the 2008 energy shock, domestic natural gas production hit an all-time high in January, 35% above where it was five years before. Companies like Chesapeake (NYSE: CHK ) have discovered so much natural gas in the last few years that they are actually struggling as prices collapse to decade lows.
If this trend continues, which seems likely, it could be a transformational boost to the economy. The rise in domestic energy production has already shaved $175 billion off our annual import bill compared with five years ago, according to Yergin. Beyond the financial savings, the geopolitical dividends this yields are huge. Then there are jobs. Lowes (NYSE: L ) CEO James Tisch says that every billion cubic feet per day of natural production gas generates between 7,000 and 10,000 new jobs. Yergin's firm, IHS, estimates 1.3 million energy-related jobs will be created in the next seven years.
Finally, households have been buried in unaffordable debt for the last five years. But they've been shedding the burden, both by defaulting on debt, and paying it down -- a so-called "deleveraging." Their progress has been nothing short of remarkable: As a percentage of disposable income, household debt payments are now at the lowest level since 1993.
A McKinsey & Co. report from January estimated households deleveraging could be complete by the middle of next year. It may already be over. Total household debt has stopped declining, andis now roughly flat year over year.
When the deleveraging ends, households will have more flexibility to buy a new car, take a vacation, or repair a roof -- things they've probably been putting off for years. Most importantly, they'll be able to do it in a safe, sustainable way that doesn't involve piling on debt beyond their ability to repay. Household deleveraging has likely been the single biggest weight on the economy in recent years. The tailwind that comes from its completion shouldn't be underestimated.
Anything can happen going forward -- recessions, banking collapses, wars, you name it. But we are in a nearly opposite position compared with five years ago. Back then, the economic reality was much bleaker than perception. Today, I have a feeling it's the other way around.
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