.png)
.png)
Dagny's mother is a black belt and her father is getting his. In their back yard they have karate statutes and they are teaching Dagny to do a left kick.
---
Why Obama will survive. (See 1 below.)
--
Obama and brainwashing and the same is used against Israel in California ads.
It is always easy to impact the uninformed. (See 2 and 2a below.)
---
Good Ole Boy, Jeff Foxworthy, an irreverent hero. (See 3 below.)
---
Now how is this for il-liberalism among students, on the campus of an extremely liberal college ,who tolerate about anything except the civil rights of those who are not of their mind or persuasion? Maybe this school should merge with Swarthmore.? (See 4 below.)
---
I attended a meeting yesterday and the speaker was a lobbyist with BankAmerica.
He ended his talk by reminding the audience that James Carvell may be insane but he is also brilliant. To support this comment he mentioned Carvell's remark that: 'Republicans were crazy to believe they would get the votes of people who believe hate them.'
True Conservatives do not hate others for their views but they are perplexed when adversaries maintain views that have been proven empirically wrong and continue to do so. Such would suggest stubbornness and or, worse, an inability to change which is far more dangerous.
The same applies to those in the Republican Party. They must learn to adopt to new circumstances and do so without giving up their principles. It can be done and they would gain the respect they deserve and need if they did.
I am reminded of a basic problem Conservatives also have. I will site my own situation involving the great Hillsdale College to illustrate.
I was a consistent contributor to Hillsdale until such time as their president had an affair with his son's wife.
All too often Conservative precepts vault the beholder into a position that is beyond their ability to maintain. Being mortals they fall from grace and do things contrary to their virtuous stance. This is hypocritical behaviour which knows both sides of the aisle but it is particularly unctuous when it catche and crunches s those who profess higher standards.
Furthermore, conservatives have a right to be dismayed when they see adversarial beliefs result in policies which are taking our nation, irreversibly into debt and farther afield from the concepts and dictum expressed in our Constitution. - as currently is the case.
Obama is not stupid. Managerially incompetent but he knows what he is doing. He is changing our nation so it will conform to "his father's wishes.'
His abuse of power is a pattern of behaviour which is in keeping with his intent and should come as no surprise.
The fact that he is effective is because far too large a segment of Americans no longer either care or are capable of reasoning. Obama also has the protection of the media and press. Ignorance, power and its support, either actively or through indifference, is a very dangerous combination.
America is more likely to fall from within and be changed so radically it will no longer be the Republic envisioned by The Founders than from external forces though it can be severely weakened
That is what Obama means when he talks about change. He phrases his radical thinking in honey sounding words, bakes it into fluff made of fairness, equality, justice, fair share and all those dreamy buzz words but take a bite and you will cut your tongue from the embedded radical razor blades.
His is the method of a demoniacal ruler who cannot and will not tell the truth.
I Might also add that Carvell is not going to die - he will just ugly away.
---
There is one last thing I would like to get off my chest before I leave for a Memorial Day weekend..
The IRS mess was also furthered by Liberal Senators such as Levin, Schumer et al who urged the IRS to investigate those whose views were contrary to theirs and , worst of all, were threatening. Now they play the pious protectors of the civil rights of the abused they previously accused. What hypocrisy.
Yesterday, other Liberal Senators were at it again , attacking one of their own - Apple - for not paying tax dollars into government's coffers. What was Apple guilty of? Nothing, other than following, scrupulously, the Rube Goldberg maze of laws these same legislators voted for in order to favor their campaign contributors.
It is all wink and nod crap. Play high and mighty for the public and then in the back rooms solicit the corporations for money.These legislator hypocrites know they can have it both ways because of, again, citizen indifference and ignorance.
Our tax laws are designed to raise money for the government which can be spent by legislators in order to get re-elected.
It is high time the tax laws were revised to favor taxpayers which would result in more revenue , a stronger economy, higher employment and be simpler enough whereby we could virtually eliminate the IRS.
I rest my case.(See 5 below.)
---
Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Why Obama's Scandals Won't Erode His Base
President Obama's three-ring scandal circus—with dangerous acts by the CIA and State Department; the Justice Department; and the Internal Revenue Service—threatens to overwhelm his agenda for the next 18 months, a laundry list that includes immigration reform, a grand deficit deal and corporate tax reform. A larger and more important question is whether or not the scandals will derail the Democratic Party's effort to win back the House and keep control of the Senate in the November 2014 mid-term election.
Political intelligence experts like Greg Valliere of Potomac Research were declaring the Obama agenda dead by Wednesday of last week, two days after the scandals erupted in full force. Congress had already shaped itself into a circus midway, promising weeks if not months of hearings. The president and his men will be selected and dissected.
Said Valliere, "Obama's agenda doesn't have a chance in this climate."
The climate deteriorated since then. Attorney General Eric Holder, under fire for the unprecedented seizure of phone records from the Associated Press in an effort to smoke out a reporter's source in the intelligence community, lost his cool during a grilling at a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week, led by California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, snapping that Issa's conduct as a congressman was "unacceptable" and "shameful." That hardly improved relations with the House GOP and probably negated any goodwill built in March when Obama broke bread with Senate Republican leaders.
Then there's the press corps, which had given Obama a five-year honeymoon. Suddenly, the Justice Department's massive foray into the AP's phone records has them circling him like angry hornets, eager to sting. Even the New York Times, which has not been shy about Obama boosterism, wrote an angry editorial about the attack on press freedom. This may be the age of digital social media, but, as the old saw says, it's still impossible to win a fight against the fellow who buys his ink by the barrel.
Obama hopes to take back the House from the GOP in 2014 so he can push the rest of his agenda through Congress, as he did with Obamacare. To do this, he needs to keep in place his the get-out-the-vote machinery that helped him obliterate GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney last year. That includes major efforts to keep voters aged 18-32 interested and involved in politics. This so-called millennial generation, which includes whites, blacks, and Latinos, gave Obama the winning edge in 2008 and 2012.
Typically in a mid-term, the out-of-power party picks up seats because its members are angry and motivated, while the majority party is complacent. Obama in recent weeks has been asking wealthy fundraisers to pony up as they did in 2008 and 2012 to help him reverse this trend.
Will the young voters tune out because of the scandals? Michael Hais and Morley Winograd, who have written three well-received books on the millennials and their impact on the Democratic Party, believe the scandals will have almost no effect on this generation. For one thing, the millennials do not share their parents' suspicions of big, intrusive government. Hais and Winograd say that the millennials see a role for the federal government to set down rules of behavior, like parents, for them to follow.
WHAT ABOUT THE JUSTICE Department's seizure of AP's phone records? Millennials don't appreciate the concept of a "fourth estate." They don't read newspapers. They glean their information from social media. A book about millennials published last year by Paula Poindexter, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said that millennials describe the news as "garbage, one-sided, propaganda, repetitive and boring." Furthermore, she said, they don't feel that being informed is important.
Benghazi? They don't watch any television news, let alone Fox, which has been highlighting the topic. The IRS/Tea party story? They are pro taxes—that's why they voted for Obama. They are anti-GOP because the party stands in the way of the Obama agenda, which they supported. If Obama cleans up the bureaucracy, as he started to do last week when he tossed out the IRS commissioner, then that's good enough for them.
One thing that may keep them at home in November 2014 is the economy. Though the economy is recovering, young voters feel something more akin to a depression. The unemployment rate for people ages 18-19 in April was 22.6%. For ages 20-24, it was 13.1%.
Hais thinks the millennials have given Obama "an enormous grace period" because they are so turned off by the GOP intransigence on issues like immigration reform, gun control, taxes, gay marriage, and marijuana legalization. Says Winograd, "Values are driving their politics, not economics."
Hais and Winograd are two very smart men. Even so, I believe Clinton strategist James Carville's famous observation still holds true: "It's the economy, stupid."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)Undoing the Brainwashing
By Thomas Sowell
This time of year, as college students return home for the summer, many parents may notice how many politically correct ideas they have acquired on campus. Some of those parents may wonder how they can undo some of the brainwashing that has become so common in what are supposed to be institutions of higher learning.
The strategy used by General Douglas MacArthur so successfully in the Pacific during World War II can be useful in this very different kind of battle. General MacArthur won his victories while minimizing his casualties -- something that is also desirable in clashes of ideas within the family.
Instead of fighting the Japanese for every island stronghold as the Americans advanced toward Japan, MacArthur sent his troops into battle for only those islands that were strategically crucial. In the same spirit, parents who want to bring their brainwashed offspring back to reality need not try to combat every crazy idea they picked up from their politically correct professors. Just demolishing a few crucial beliefs, and exposing what nonsense they are, can deal a blow to the general credibility of the professorial pied pipers.
For example, if the student has been led to join the crusade for more gun control, and thinks that the reason the British have lower murder rates than Americans have is because the Brits have tighter gun control laws, just give him or her a copy of the book "Guns and Violence" by Joyce Lee Malcolm.
As the facts in that book demolish the gun control propaganda fed to students by their professors, that can create a healthy skepticism about other professorial propaganda.
There are other books that can likewise demolish other politically correct beliefs that prevail on campuses. My own recent book, "Intellectuals and Race," has innumerable documented facts that expose the fallacies in most of what is said about racial issues in most college classrooms.
For those students who have bought the campus party line on Third World nations, the classic study of that subject is "Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion" by the late P.T. Bauer of the London School of Economics. He made a veritable demolition derby of most of what has been said in politically correct circles about the relationship between rich and poor countries.
For those students who have been conditioned to regard the welfare state as the solution to social problems, there is no book that exposes the actual human consequences of the welfare state more poignantly than "Life at the Bottom" by British physician Theodore Dalrymple. He has worked in both low-income neighborhoods and in prisons, so he has seen it all.
Although Britain is the setting for "Life at the Bottom," Americans will recognize very similar patterns here. Problems found in low-income black ghettoes in the United States are found in low-income white neighborhoods in Britain, where none of the usual excuses about racism, slavery, etc., apply. The only thing that is the same in both countries is the welfare state and its poisonous ideology.
If your student has been led to believe that "comprehensive immigration reform" -- amnesty, in plain English -- is the only way to go, a devastating book titled "Mexifornia," by Victor Davis Hanson, introduces some cold, factual reality into a subject usually discussed in sweeping and lofty rhetoric.
A book that offers a choice between the island-hopping strategy that General MacArthur used in the Pacific and the all-out assault across a broad front that was used by the Allied armies in Europe is titled "The New Leviathan."
It has thirteen penetrating articles by leading authorities on such subjects as national security, ObamaCare, environmentalism, election frauds and more.
Those parents who want to follow the MacArthur strategy can recommend reading one, or a few, of these articles, while those who want to follow the strategy of attacking all across a broad front can recommend that their student read the whole book.
However the battle is fought, what is most important is that the battle be fought, since the young are the future, and the propaganda of today can become the government policies of tomorrow.
2a)Pro-Palestinian ads misrepresent apartheid
By:
On my recent trip to San Francisco, I was deeply disturbed to learn about the posters in The City accusing Israel of apartheid. As a black South African who lived under apartheid, this system was implemented in South Africa to subjugate people of color and deny them a variety of their rights. In my view, Israel cannot be compared to apartheid in South Africa. Those who make the accusation expose their ignorance of what apartheid really is.
Apartheid was a legal system of segregation and oppression based on skin color, with a very small white minority dominating over the vast majority of people of color.
As a black South African under apartheid, I, among other things, could not vote, nor could I freely travel the landscape of South Africa. No person of color could hold high government office. The races were strictly segregated at sports arenas, public restrooms, schools and on public transportation. People of color had inferior hospitals, medical care and education. If a white doctor was willing to take a black patient, he had to examine him or her in a back room or some other hidden place.
In my numerous visits to Israel, I did not see any of the above. My understanding of the Israeli legal system is that equal rights are enshrined in law. Black, brown and white Jews and the Arab minority mingle freely in all public places, universities, restaurants, voting stations and public transportation. All people have the right to vote. The Arab minority has political parties, serves in the Israeli parliament (Knesset) and holds positions in government ministries, the police force and the security services. In hospitals, Palestinian patients lie in beds next to Israeli Jews, and doctors and nurses are as likely to be Israeli Arabs as Jews. I also understand that an Israeli Arab judge presided over the trial of former Israeli President Moshe Katsav, who was convicted of misconduct. An Ethiopian Jew recently won the title of Miss Israel. None of the above was legally permissible in apartheid South Africa!
I believe that it is slanderous and deceptive for Israel’s self-defense measures against the terrorists’ campaign of suicide bombing, rocket attacks and other acts of terrorism that have occurred, and continue to occur, to be labeled as apartheid. I am shocked by the claim that the free, diverse, democratic state of Israel practices apartheid. This ridiculous accusation trivializes the word apartheid, minimizing and belittling the magnitude of the racism and suffering endured by South Africans of color.
I urge all people, young people in particular, to visit Israel and learn the facts for themselves so that they can confidently refute these false allegations against Israel. The misapplication of the term apartheid makes a mockery of a grievous injustice and threatens to undermine the true meaning of the term.
In my view, Israel is a model of democracy, inclusion and pluralism that can be emulated by many nations, particularly in the Middle East.
The Rev. Dr. Kenneth Meshoe is a member of the South African Parliament, the president of the African Christian Democratic Party and the chairman of the South African Israel Allies Caucus
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3) Funny, its ok to make jokes about Catholics, the Pope, Jews, Christians, the Irish, the Italians, the Polish etc etc, but its insensitive to make jokes about Muslims.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The sooner we are all on same level playing field the better.
Jeff Foxworthy on Muslims:
1. If you refine heroin for a living,
but you have a moral objection to liquor,
You may be a Muslim.
2. If you own a £3,000 machine gun and a £5,000 rocket launcher,
but you can't afford shoes,
You may be a Muslim.
3. If you have more wives than teeth,
You may be a Muslim.
4. If you wipe your bum with your bare hand
but consider bacon to be unclean,
You may be a Muslim.
5. If you think vests come in two styles:
Bullet-proof and suicide.
You may be a Muslim
6. If you can't think of anyone
you haven't declared jihad against,
You may be a Muslim.
7. If you consider television dangerous
but routinely carry explosives in your clothing,
You may be a Muslim.
8. If you were amazed to discover that cell phones
have uses other than setting off roadside bombs,
You may be a Muslim.
9. If you have nothing against women
and think every man should own at least four,
You may be a Muslim.
4)Northwestern student govt nominee's confirmation blocked because he is a ‘heterosexual white male’
A student’s bid to become associate vice president of diversity and inclusion at Northwestern University was derailed last Wednesday over accusations that his status as a white heterosexual male would make it impossible for him to perform the position’s duties.
The Wednesday hearing began with student senator Jesse Seitz reportedly asking the nominee, Stephen Piotrkowski, how he could possibly interact and serve a minority community as a white male.
Piotrkowski reportedly attempted to appeal to the Student Senate on the grounds that he identifies as a religious minority and has a lesbian sister, but it was to no avail.
After about thirty more minutes of questioning, the Senate voted to block Piotrkowski’s appointment.
Ian Coley, a student on the Associate Student Government Diversity and Inclusion Committee, later said white heterosexual males are not qualified to hold the position of associate vice president of diversity and inclusion.
“This university is not ready, in any capacity, for a heterosexual white male to be in charge in any way of diversity and inclusion,” said Coley, according to the Daily Northwestern.
“I don’t know if any university is,” he reportedly added.
However, Hayley Stevens, the outgoing associate vice president of diversity and inclusion told theDaily Northwestern she supported Piotrkowski’s nomination, adding, “he was our best candidate.”
An online post also indicates that Piotrkowski previously served as a member of the Northwestern Inclusion Task Force, a body created in 2012 to help advocate for diversity on campus.
Alan Cubbage, Vice President for University Relations, told Campus Reform on Wednesday the administration does not directly comment on decisions made by the SGA.
Northwestern University administrators involved in the student government process and incoming student government President Ani Ajith also did not respond to requests for comment.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)Apple CEO Cook to Senate: 'We Pay All the Taxes We Owe — Every Single Dollar'
Tim Cook testified at a hearing Tuesday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which released a report Monday attacking Apple's tax practices.
"We pay all the taxes we owe — every single dollar," Cook said. "We don't depend on tax gimmicks."
Cook, who is more accustomed to commanding a stage in front of investors and techies than facing a congressional committee, took a defensive tone with his opening statement. He punched out words when stressing the 600,000 jobs that the company supports while adding that Apple is the nation's largest corporate taxpayer. Cook advocated an overhaul of the U.S. tax code.
At the same time, Cook said he was happy to appear in the spotlight of a congressional hearing to be able to give Apple's side of the story.
"I'm saying it's who we are as people. ... Wherever we are, we're an American company," Cook insisted when asked about Apple's use of affiliate companies in Ireland.
The $6 billion in taxes that Apple says it paid in fiscal 2012 works out to $16 million a day.
The subcommittee's report estimates that Apple avoided at least $3.5 billion in U.S. federal taxes in 2011 and $9 billion in 2012 by using its tax strategy, and described a complex setup involving Irish subsidiaries as being a key element of this strategy.
But Cook said the Irish subsidiaries don't reduce the company's U.S. taxes at all. Rather, they manage cash earned overseas. If that cash were to be repatriated to the U.S., it would be subject to U.S. taxes.
Like other multinationals, Apple chooses to keep cash overseas so as not to pay the 35 percent U.S. corporate tax rate. Apple is holding overseas $102 billion of its total $145 billion in cash.
Cook reaffirmed Apple's position that given current U.S. tax rates, it has no intention of repatriating its overseas profits to the U.S.
He appeared with Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer and Head of Tax Operations Phillip Bullock.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the panel's chairman, said Apple's use of loopholes in the U.S. tax code is unique among multinational corporations.
Apple uses five companies located in Ireland to carry out its tax strategy, according to the report. The companies are located at the same address in Cork, Ireland, and they share members of their boards of directors. While all five companies were incorporated in Ireland, only two of them also have tax residency in that country. That means the other three aren't legally required to pay taxes in Ireland because they aren't managed or controlled in that country, in Apple's view.
The report says Apple capitalizes on a difference between U.S. and Irish rules regarding tax residency. In Ireland, a company must be managed and controlled in the country to be a tax resident. Under U.S. law, a company is a tax resident of the country in which it was established. Therefore, the Apple companies aren't tax residents of Ireland or of the U.S., since they weren't incorporated in the U.S., in Apple's view.
"Apple is exploiting an absurdity," Levin said at the start of the hearing.
The spotlight on Apple's tax strategy comes at a time of fevered debate in Washington over whether and how to raise revenues to help reduce the federal deficit. Many Democrats complain that the government is missing out on billions of dollars because companies are stashing profits abroad and avoiding taxes. Republicans want to cut the corporate tax rate of 35 percent and ease the tax burden on money that U.S. companies make abroad. They say the move would encourage companies to invest at home.
The subcommittee also has examined the tax strategies of Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and other multinational companies, finding that they too have avoided billions in U.S. taxes by shifting profits offshore and exploiting weak, ambiguous sections of the tax code. Microsoft has used "aggressive" transactions to shift assets to subsidiaries in Puerto Rico, Ireland and Singapore, in part to avoid taxes. HP has used complex offshore loan transactions worth billions while using the money to run its U.S. operations, according to the panel.
Levin and McCain are proposing legislation to close loopholes in the tax code.
Thanks largely to the iPhone, Apple is one of the world's most profitable companies. It earned $41.7 billion in calendar year 2012. It's neck and neck with Exxon Mobil Corp. as the world's most valuable company.
However, Apple's Irish subsidiaries date back thirty years, to the time when the Macintosh computer was Apple's banner product, and its profits were a fraction of 1 percent of today's figure.
The tone of the hearing turned tense before the Apple executives appeared, as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., an anti-tax hawk who reflects tea party sentiment, insisted that the subcommittee apologize to Apple for unfair scapegoating.
"If anyone should be on trial here it should be Congress ... for creating a bizarre and byzantine tax code," said Paul. "If you want to assign blame, this committee needs to look in the mirror and see who created that mess."
Levin countered angrily that no such apology would be forthcoming. "Apple's a great company, but no company should be able to determine how much it's going to pay in taxes ..... by using gimmicks," he said.
And Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the subcommittee's senior Republican, condemned Paul's remarks as "offensive" for accusing Levin of bullying Apple executives.
Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny on Tuesday denied the assertion in the subcommittee's report that Apple had negotiated an Irish corporate tax rate of less than 2 percent. All companies pay the standard rate of 12.5 percent on profits from Irish operations, the prime minister said.
"Reports of lower effective tax rates appear to arrive at their figures by running together the profits earned by group companies in Ireland and in other jurisdictions," Kenny said.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment