At a recent press conference Sen. John Kerry was upset as he snarled as only an angry liberal can, "Oil companies in America are reporting record profits. Record profits."
When did profit become a dirty word? When did it become bad to be successful? Probably somewhere around the time it became good to be a teenage mom and go on welfare.
I wish the oil executives would face the media. They could say something like:
"What are you complaining about? What do you think we do with our profits? Buy fancy cars and homes? Well, we do, actually, but nearly all the money goes to looking for more oil and following environmental rules that you want us to follow. You should want us to make more profit. Anyway, we make less profit per gallon than your beloved government takes in taxes."
Gas prices may be setting a record, but on this issue Congress has set a record for inanity. What else are we to say about an anti-"gouging" bill passed last year by the House that would make it a crime to charge "unconscionably excessive" prices, "tak[e] unfair advantage of unusual market conditions," and "increase prices unreasonably" during an emergency?
Please. Lawyers will get rich debating vague words like those. Laws are supposed to be clear so we'll know in advance what's legal and what's not. But there's nothing clear about those "crimes."
That's not legislation. It's legislative posturing by the liberal fools in our Congress. Considering the perverse incentives of electoral politics, I'm amazed this bill got only 284 votes.
And Congress should know better. After Hurricane Katrina, Congress had the Federal Trade Commission investigate price gouging, and so the FTC studied price spikes going back years. But it found "no instances of illegal manipulation."
If the politicians do enforce anti-"gouging" rules, it will be akin to capping prices, and we tried that before. It was a disaster. Drivers had to wait in long lines, and some couldn't get any gasoline. Only when price controls were lifted did supplies rush in, and only then did prices go back down.
Why did prices spike recently? It's just supply and demand. Demand is up 3 percent, while supply is up just 1 percent.
And gasoline is still a bargain. Think about what it takes to bring it to us: Drills must bend and dig sideways through as many as seven miles of earth. What they find has to be delivered through long pipelines or transported in monstrously expensive ships, then converted into three different formulas of gasoline, moved in trucks that cost more than $100,000 each, and shipped to gas stations that have to have lots of expensive equipment to make sure we don't blow ourselves up filling the tank. Even after all that, gasoline is still cheaper per ounce than the bottled water gas stations sell.
There's no dirtier word in English than "gouging." But we've had enough unpleasant experience with price controls to know that all they do is create shortages.
Who, but the politician, benefits from that?
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Let's Play the Numbers Game (I Don't Mean the Lottery.)
Presidential politics, like football, chess and other rule-bound competitions, is simple in objective but complex in execution. The objective is 270 electoral votes. This year the execution will turn on numbers such as:
48.3: In 2004, John Kerry won that percentage of the popular vote, the strongest showing ever by someone losing to a re-elected president. The lesson of this is that Democrats start from a position of strength.
251: That was John Kerry's electoral vote total. Barack Obama stands a better chance of holding Kerry's 19 states and the District of Columbia, and finding 19 more votes, than John McCain does of holding all 31 of Bush's states.
Obama might capture the 2004 red states New Mexico (5 electoral votes), Nevada (5) and Colorado (9) - George W. Bush won them by a combined 127,011 votes - giving him 270. McCain, who in his 10-year campaign for the presidency has lingered in New Hampshire long enough to vote as a resident, might turn it red, gaining 4 votes.
Obama, however, has reasonable hopes of winning Iowa (7), which Al Gore won by 4,144 votes out of 1,315,563 cast in 2000. Bush won it in 2004 by 10,059 out of 1,506,908 cast. And Obama's estimated 90,000 caucus votes this year almost equaled combined 118,167 won by Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, McCain, Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani.
Furthermore, Obama might carry Virginia (13). Bush won it with 54 percent in 2004, but rapid demographic changes favor Democrats and Obama won this year's primary with 623,141 votes while McCain was beating Mike Huckabee with 244,135.
Should former Sen. Sammy Nunn (a name only found below the Mason-Dixon line) be his running mate, Obama might win Georgia. Obama's 700,366 primary votes were more than Huckabee's 326,069 and McCain's 303,639, combined.
41 and 21: Obama lost by 41 points the primary in West Virginia, which is contiguous to Pennsylvania (21 electoral votes), where he lost the primary by 10 points, partly because, as in West Virginia, he was unappealing to blue-collar whites. McCain might hope to win Pennsylvania - assuming that Obama's running mate is not the state's popular Gov. Ed Rendell.
7.2 percent and negative 1.2 percent: Michigan's first-quarter unemployment rate of 7.2 was the nation's worst and Michigan was one of just three states, and the only Midwest state, whose economies contracted (Michigan's by 1.2 percent) in 2007.
Democrats misgovern Michigan, so McCain, especially if running with native son Mitt Romney, might hope to turn Michigan, with its 17 electoral votes, red for the first time since 1988.
55: California has that many electoral votes, more than one-fifth of 270. McCain, who likely will be relying on $84.1 million taxpayer dollars, cannot afford to compete in California.
15: Obama, probably relying on voluntary contributions, will have enough to spend speculative millions on, say, North Carolina (15). In 2004, Bush won it with 1,961,166 votes (56 percent) but in this year's primary, where turnout was below what it'll be in November, Obama (875,683) and Clinton (652,824) got 1,528,507, slightly more than Kerry received in the 2004 general election.
56: That is the number of jurisdictions that will be deciding the allocation of the 270.
There are 50 states and the District of Columbia. Maine and Nebraska, however, award two electoral votes to the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote, and one to whichever candidate carries each congressional district. Maine has two districts, Nebraska three.
Since the two states decided to abandon winner-take-all allocation of their electoral votes (Maine in 1969, Nebraska in 1991), each state's congressional districts have not differed in their presidential preferences. But Nebraska's Second District is, essentially, Omaha. Obama might sense an opportunity.
4: That is the number of commas in the number of possible combinations of jurisdictions that can give a candidate 270 or more electoral votes. The votes disposed by the jurisdictions range from one (the Maine and Nebraska congressional districts) to three (7 states and DC) to California's 55, with 17 different numbers between three and 55.
2016: Assuming, that Obama wins, 2016 is the next time Hillary Clinton, who will then be 68, can seek the Democratic nomination. By then, the median age of the electorate will be 47, so for many millions of voters, Bill Clinton's tenure will seem only slightly less distant than Grover Cleveland's, the last Democratic presidency that did not make sensible citizens wince.
48.3: In 2004, John Kerry won that percentage of the popular vote, the strongest showing ever by someone losing to a re-elected president. The lesson of this is that Democrats start from a position of strength.
251: That was John Kerry's electoral vote total. Barack Obama stands a better chance of holding Kerry's 19 states and the District of Columbia, and finding 19 more votes, than John McCain does of holding all 31 of Bush's states.
Obama might capture the 2004 red states New Mexico (5 electoral votes), Nevada (5) and Colorado (9) - George W. Bush won them by a combined 127,011 votes - giving him 270. McCain, who in his 10-year campaign for the presidency has lingered in New Hampshire long enough to vote as a resident, might turn it red, gaining 4 votes.
Obama, however, has reasonable hopes of winning Iowa (7), which Al Gore won by 4,144 votes out of 1,315,563 cast in 2000. Bush won it in 2004 by 10,059 out of 1,506,908 cast. And Obama's estimated 90,000 caucus votes this year almost equaled combined 118,167 won by Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, McCain, Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani.
Furthermore, Obama might carry Virginia (13). Bush won it with 54 percent in 2004, but rapid demographic changes favor Democrats and Obama won this year's primary with 623,141 votes while McCain was beating Mike Huckabee with 244,135.
Should former Sen. Sammy Nunn (a name only found below the Mason-Dixon line) be his running mate, Obama might win Georgia. Obama's 700,366 primary votes were more than Huckabee's 326,069 and McCain's 303,639, combined.
41 and 21: Obama lost by 41 points the primary in West Virginia, which is contiguous to Pennsylvania (21 electoral votes), where he lost the primary by 10 points, partly because, as in West Virginia, he was unappealing to blue-collar whites. McCain might hope to win Pennsylvania - assuming that Obama's running mate is not the state's popular Gov. Ed Rendell.
7.2 percent and negative 1.2 percent: Michigan's first-quarter unemployment rate of 7.2 was the nation's worst and Michigan was one of just three states, and the only Midwest state, whose economies contracted (Michigan's by 1.2 percent) in 2007.
Democrats misgovern Michigan, so McCain, especially if running with native son Mitt Romney, might hope to turn Michigan, with its 17 electoral votes, red for the first time since 1988.
55: California has that many electoral votes, more than one-fifth of 270. McCain, who likely will be relying on $84.1 million taxpayer dollars, cannot afford to compete in California.
15: Obama, probably relying on voluntary contributions, will have enough to spend speculative millions on, say, North Carolina (15). In 2004, Bush won it with 1,961,166 votes (56 percent) but in this year's primary, where turnout was below what it'll be in November, Obama (875,683) and Clinton (652,824) got 1,528,507, slightly more than Kerry received in the 2004 general election.
56: That is the number of jurisdictions that will be deciding the allocation of the 270.
There are 50 states and the District of Columbia. Maine and Nebraska, however, award two electoral votes to the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote, and one to whichever candidate carries each congressional district. Maine has two districts, Nebraska three.
Since the two states decided to abandon winner-take-all allocation of their electoral votes (Maine in 1969, Nebraska in 1991), each state's congressional districts have not differed in their presidential preferences. But Nebraska's Second District is, essentially, Omaha. Obama might sense an opportunity.
4: That is the number of commas in the number of possible combinations of jurisdictions that can give a candidate 270 or more electoral votes. The votes disposed by the jurisdictions range from one (the Maine and Nebraska congressional districts) to three (7 states and DC) to California's 55, with 17 different numbers between three and 55.
2016: Assuming, that Obama wins, 2016 is the next time Hillary Clinton, who will then be 68, can seek the Democratic nomination. By then, the median age of the electorate will be 47, so for many millions of voters, Bill Clinton's tenure will seem only slightly less distant than Grover Cleveland's, the last Democratic presidency that did not make sensible citizens wince.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Flip-Flop and Overtalk
Democratic presidential wannabe Barack Obama seems to be flip-flopping on his "unconditional" willingness to sit down to tea and crumpets with the dictatorial leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.
Obama's vow to meet with such leaders during his first year in office, without preconditions, drew widespread and well-deserved criticism. Over the past few polling cycles, however, he's tempered that to something the focus groups say America wants to hear.
"Without preconditions," he now says, doesn't necessarily mean without "preparations" - that is, without lower-level, informal contacts that would set an agenda for any meeting between leaders.
In the case of Iran, that's surely a welcome move. Just this week, the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that Tehran continues to hide the truth about its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
"There's no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad," Obama said Monday. "He's not the most powerful person in Iran."
And the Illinois senator's top foreign-policy adviser, Susan Rice, said over the weekend that Cuba must make "concrete progress" toward free elections, allow a free press and free political prisoners as a requirement to "initiate a process through engagement."
Of course, he hasn't fully ruled out sitting down with Tehran's tyrant, who has vowed to "annihilate" Israel and denies the Holocaust occurred and stones people to death for crimes such as adultery and immodesty in public.
These talks would have little (or no) effect on the government of Iran. A fundamentalist government which believes they are doing the will of Allah by fighting the infidel Americans who dare to let women go out in public wearing something that is pleasant to look at.
As GOP presidential contender John McCain said yesterday, "Many believe all we need to do to end the nuclear programs of hostile governments is to have our president talk with leaders in Pyongyang and Tehran - as if we haven't tried talking to these governments repeatedly."
Let's face it: Tehran, in particular, seems bent on building nukes - and continues to sponsor terror. Sitting down for a few photo ops isn't going to change that, and only someone as out of touch as Barack Obama would think it could!
Obama's vow to meet with such leaders during his first year in office, without preconditions, drew widespread and well-deserved criticism. Over the past few polling cycles, however, he's tempered that to something the focus groups say America wants to hear.
"Without preconditions," he now says, doesn't necessarily mean without "preparations" - that is, without lower-level, informal contacts that would set an agenda for any meeting between leaders.
In the case of Iran, that's surely a welcome move. Just this week, the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that Tehran continues to hide the truth about its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
"There's no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad," Obama said Monday. "He's not the most powerful person in Iran."
And the Illinois senator's top foreign-policy adviser, Susan Rice, said over the weekend that Cuba must make "concrete progress" toward free elections, allow a free press and free political prisoners as a requirement to "initiate a process through engagement."
Of course, he hasn't fully ruled out sitting down with Tehran's tyrant, who has vowed to "annihilate" Israel and denies the Holocaust occurred and stones people to death for crimes such as adultery and immodesty in public.
These talks would have little (or no) effect on the government of Iran. A fundamentalist government which believes they are doing the will of Allah by fighting the infidel Americans who dare to let women go out in public wearing something that is pleasant to look at.
As GOP presidential contender John McCain said yesterday, "Many believe all we need to do to end the nuclear programs of hostile governments is to have our president talk with leaders in Pyongyang and Tehran - as if we haven't tried talking to these governments repeatedly."
Let's face it: Tehran, in particular, seems bent on building nukes - and continues to sponsor terror. Sitting down for a few photo ops isn't going to change that, and only someone as out of touch as Barack Obama would think it could!
Monday, May 19, 2008
Barack Obama: The Commie's Trojan Horse
As this long primary season drags on, the presumed Democratic nominee for president still won't bring his vision for "change" into focus. He continues to speak in glittering generalities, providing few details.
The reticence, combined with Obama's radical ties, begs the question: Is he hiding an un-American agenda?
We know his longtime mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, detests America and its capitalist system, viewing it as unjust, oppressive and enslaving to minorities. He and his fellow travelers think they have in Obama the perfect candidate to remake America into a self-loathing dispenser of apologetic largesse to victim groups at home and Marxist regimes abroad.
Key among these is reverend-turned-professor James Cone, who believes merging Marxism with the Gospel will liberate African-Americans from the supposed economic slavery of "white" capitalism. "Together," he says, "black religion and Marxist philosophy may show us the way to build a completely new society."
Cone is the mentor of Obama's mentor, Wright. Wright adopted Cone's "black liberation theology" as his church's core doctrine. According to Cone, the reverend "is really the one who took it from my books and brought it to the church."
Cone's books are required reading at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama has worshiped for the past 20 years. Trinity instituted the theology and its attendant "black value system" a full decade before Obama formally pledged membership in 1991.
Cone describes black liberation theology as "a faith that does justice," a concept embraced by Obama, who's even argued that "racial justice" cannot be achieved without "economic justice."
According to the theology, divine justice will come when black Jesus (Obama's church believes Christ was black) grants African-Americans the power to permanently destroy "white greed" and white institutions and replace them with their own "black value system."
Cone writes that "black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy" and all its institutions.
Trinity demands its members pledge allegiance instead to "black institutions" and "black leadership," and patronize black-only businesses. Obama himself has said America's institutions are "broken" and need to be "fixed."
Obama has recently tried to distance himself from his crackpot pastor, but he hasn't disavowed any part of the Marxist pseudo faith that embodies everything Wright has preached. He refuses to respond to even written questions about Cone and black liberation theology.
His campaign last year confirmed the doctrine is included in new-member packets provided by the church, and is taught in new-member classes. Both Obama and his wife have attended these classes, so it stands to reason they have been indoctrinated into the radical theology.
And Obama in his first book defended black liberation theology as sensible, and has even called his tutelage under Wright "the best education I ever had."
Nowadays, Obama has another, prettier sounding term for his Afrocentric, black-first theology: the "social gospel." "Rev. Wright's sermons spoke directly to the social gospel," he has said, "and I found that very attractive." Apparently the social gospel Obama believes in is one where the CIA created AIDS and is secretly working with the U.S. government to exterminate black people so drug companies can test new drugs on them.
Wright says his sermons are inspired by Cone's books, the contents of which should repulse every patriotic American, white or black. "To be black is to be committed to destroying everything this country loves and adores," Cone writes.
That Marxist commitment to revolution doesn't stop at the water's edge. Obama's church in the 1980s rallied to the cause of communist regimes in America's backyard — from Cuba to Grenada to Nicaragua — while downplaying the threat posed by the Soviet Union.
From his pulpit, Wright whitewashed the brutality of the Sandinista junta and condemned the U.S. for backing the contra freedom fighters.
"Our congregation stood in solidarity with the peasants in El Salvador and Nicaragua while our government was supporting the contras, who were killing peasants in those two countries," Wright recently thundered.
The black liberation theology adopted by his church is "very similar," Wright says, to the "liberation theology" espoused by the Marxist revolutionaries whom the contras fought in Nicaragua.
Wright also condemned as "terrorism" the U.S. invasion of Grenada to oust a budding militant Marxist regime. "We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies," Wright claimed.
Does Obama intend to carry on that tradition of appeasing socialist despots in our hemisphere, starting with Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez? Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega will no doubt also find support. The Marxist thug has already endorsed Obama's campaign as "revolutionary."
While Obama has refused to wear a flag pin or stand with respect during the national anthem, he certainly doesn't look or speak the part of an angry anti-American race revolutionist. But appearances may be deceiving. His positions often align with black liberation theology.
"I don't see anything in (Obama's) books or in the (Philadelphia race) speech that contradicts black liberation theology," Cone recently remarked. Obama has just sanded over the "radical edge to it," he said.
Does Obama speak in a code recognizable to fellow travelers but not to most voters, who would be frightened off by a radical agenda? "If you're black, it's hard to say what you truly think and not upset white people," Cone said.
Obama has learned a trick, however, to put the evil white America at ease: "smile" and act "well mannered." And don't "seem angry" or make any "sudden moves," as he shared in his first book, "Dreams From My Father."
Also, talk about "hope" without saying what exactly it is you're hoping for. That way, everybody will bring their own miasma of sugarplum delusions and just assume that is what you're talking about. Tellingly, Cone writes a good deal about "hope theology" — which "places the Marxist emphasis on action and change in the Christian context (and) is compatible with black theology's concerns."
Likewise, Obama has suggested he'd use his faith as "an active, palpable agent in the world," and a source of "hope" in overcoming "economic injustice."
"I still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change," Obama said in a 2006 speech to the Washington-based socialist group, Call to
Renewal.
Speaking of black revolution, Cone in his memoir said, "Hope is the expectation of that which is not. It is the belief that the impossible is possible, the 'not yet' is coming in history."
Here's Obama in his 2004 DNC convention speech: "Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope! In the end, a belief in things not seen, a belief that
there are better days ahead."
In his 1969 book, "Black Theology and Black Power," which Trinity uses as a second bible, Cone said: "When we look at what whiteness has done to the minds of men in this country, we can see clearly what the New Testament meant when it spoke of the principalities and powers."
Here's Obama, in his 2006 "Call to Renewal" speech: "The black church understands in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and challenge powers and principalities."
Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, says Obama has been "very careful" to avoid the path of failed presidential hopefuls Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who openly militated for black causes. "He has been groomed, wisely so, to be seen as a unifier, rather than one who speaks only for the hurt of black people," Farrakhan said.
When Obama marched on Washington with Farrakhan last decade, he said blacks turn to "black nationalism whenever we have a sense, as we do now, that white Americans couldn't care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing."
He added they have to be smart about how they protest and go about reforming the system. "Cursing out white folks is not going to get the job done," he said. "We've got some hard nuts-and-bolts organizing and planning to do."
His mild-mannered style has thrown off even some angry black radicals, who want him to speak out more forcefully about the legacy of U.S. racism and economic inequality.
One is Princeton professor Cornel West, a militant black and self-described socialist. Reportedly, West was reluctant to join the refined Obama's presidential campaign until Obama took him aside and explained to him that he had to walk a rhetorical tightrope to reassure whites. West is now solidly on board his campaign as an adviser.
West, along with Wright and Cone, has argued for reparations for blacks. Obama seemed to sow the grounds for such a case in his Philadelphia speech.
"So many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow," he said. "We still haven't fixed them."
He added, "That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white."
Trinity's mission statement calls for "economic parity." Such anti-capitalist views are reflected in Obama's rhetoric and proposals.
Rated by The University of Maryland as the most liberal member in the Senate, Obama wants to soak the most productive members of society and subsidize those who are not. He wants to hit small businesses and big corporations alike with major tax hikes — singling out for special rebuke oil producers and "Wall Street predators" who have "tricked" blacks out of their homes. At the same time, he plans to expand the welfare state with massive increases in domestic spending.
"We have more work to do," he told black graduates at Howard University last September. "It's time to seek a new dawn of justice in America. . . . We can right wrongs we see in America."
Cone says he wants to see a "new system" in America "in which people have the distribution of wealth." He adds, "I don't know how quite to do that institutionally."
Enter a Harvard-educated lawyer and Southside Chicago-trained community organizer who has a real shot at institutional power. As Obama promised black graduates at Hampton University last June, "We're going to usher in a new America."
Sounds like an attempt to backdoor traditional, pinko socialism.
The reticence, combined with Obama's radical ties, begs the question: Is he hiding an un-American agenda?
We know his longtime mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, detests America and its capitalist system, viewing it as unjust, oppressive and enslaving to minorities. He and his fellow travelers think they have in Obama the perfect candidate to remake America into a self-loathing dispenser of apologetic largesse to victim groups at home and Marxist regimes abroad.
Key among these is reverend-turned-professor James Cone, who believes merging Marxism with the Gospel will liberate African-Americans from the supposed economic slavery of "white" capitalism. "Together," he says, "black religion and Marxist philosophy may show us the way to build a completely new society."
Cone is the mentor of Obama's mentor, Wright. Wright adopted Cone's "black liberation theology" as his church's core doctrine. According to Cone, the reverend "is really the one who took it from my books and brought it to the church."
Cone's books are required reading at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama has worshiped for the past 20 years. Trinity instituted the theology and its attendant "black value system" a full decade before Obama formally pledged membership in 1991.
Cone describes black liberation theology as "a faith that does justice," a concept embraced by Obama, who's even argued that "racial justice" cannot be achieved without "economic justice."
According to the theology, divine justice will come when black Jesus (Obama's church believes Christ was black) grants African-Americans the power to permanently destroy "white greed" and white institutions and replace them with their own "black value system."
Cone writes that "black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy" and all its institutions.
Trinity demands its members pledge allegiance instead to "black institutions" and "black leadership," and patronize black-only businesses. Obama himself has said America's institutions are "broken" and need to be "fixed."
Obama has recently tried to distance himself from his crackpot pastor, but he hasn't disavowed any part of the Marxist pseudo faith that embodies everything Wright has preached. He refuses to respond to even written questions about Cone and black liberation theology.
His campaign last year confirmed the doctrine is included in new-member packets provided by the church, and is taught in new-member classes. Both Obama and his wife have attended these classes, so it stands to reason they have been indoctrinated into the radical theology.
And Obama in his first book defended black liberation theology as sensible, and has even called his tutelage under Wright "the best education I ever had."
Nowadays, Obama has another, prettier sounding term for his Afrocentric, black-first theology: the "social gospel." "Rev. Wright's sermons spoke directly to the social gospel," he has said, "and I found that very attractive." Apparently the social gospel Obama believes in is one where the CIA created AIDS and is secretly working with the U.S. government to exterminate black people so drug companies can test new drugs on them.
Wright says his sermons are inspired by Cone's books, the contents of which should repulse every patriotic American, white or black. "To be black is to be committed to destroying everything this country loves and adores," Cone writes.
That Marxist commitment to revolution doesn't stop at the water's edge. Obama's church in the 1980s rallied to the cause of communist regimes in America's backyard — from Cuba to Grenada to Nicaragua — while downplaying the threat posed by the Soviet Union.
From his pulpit, Wright whitewashed the brutality of the Sandinista junta and condemned the U.S. for backing the contra freedom fighters.
"Our congregation stood in solidarity with the peasants in El Salvador and Nicaragua while our government was supporting the contras, who were killing peasants in those two countries," Wright recently thundered.
The black liberation theology adopted by his church is "very similar," Wright says, to the "liberation theology" espoused by the Marxist revolutionaries whom the contras fought in Nicaragua.
Wright also condemned as "terrorism" the U.S. invasion of Grenada to oust a budding militant Marxist regime. "We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies," Wright claimed.
Does Obama intend to carry on that tradition of appeasing socialist despots in our hemisphere, starting with Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez? Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega will no doubt also find support. The Marxist thug has already endorsed Obama's campaign as "revolutionary."
While Obama has refused to wear a flag pin or stand with respect during the national anthem, he certainly doesn't look or speak the part of an angry anti-American race revolutionist. But appearances may be deceiving. His positions often align with black liberation theology.
"I don't see anything in (Obama's) books or in the (Philadelphia race) speech that contradicts black liberation theology," Cone recently remarked. Obama has just sanded over the "radical edge to it," he said.
Does Obama speak in a code recognizable to fellow travelers but not to most voters, who would be frightened off by a radical agenda? "If you're black, it's hard to say what you truly think and not upset white people," Cone said.
Obama has learned a trick, however, to put the evil white America at ease: "smile" and act "well mannered." And don't "seem angry" or make any "sudden moves," as he shared in his first book, "Dreams From My Father."
Also, talk about "hope" without saying what exactly it is you're hoping for. That way, everybody will bring their own miasma of sugarplum delusions and just assume that is what you're talking about. Tellingly, Cone writes a good deal about "hope theology" — which "places the Marxist emphasis on action and change in the Christian context (and) is compatible with black theology's concerns."
Likewise, Obama has suggested he'd use his faith as "an active, palpable agent in the world," and a source of "hope" in overcoming "economic injustice."
"I still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change," Obama said in a 2006 speech to the Washington-based socialist group, Call to
Renewal.
Speaking of black revolution, Cone in his memoir said, "Hope is the expectation of that which is not. It is the belief that the impossible is possible, the 'not yet' is coming in history."
Here's Obama in his 2004 DNC convention speech: "Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope! In the end, a belief in things not seen, a belief that
there are better days ahead."
In his 1969 book, "Black Theology and Black Power," which Trinity uses as a second bible, Cone said: "When we look at what whiteness has done to the minds of men in this country, we can see clearly what the New Testament meant when it spoke of the principalities and powers."
Here's Obama, in his 2006 "Call to Renewal" speech: "The black church understands in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and challenge powers and principalities."
Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, says Obama has been "very careful" to avoid the path of failed presidential hopefuls Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who openly militated for black causes. "He has been groomed, wisely so, to be seen as a unifier, rather than one who speaks only for the hurt of black people," Farrakhan said.
When Obama marched on Washington with Farrakhan last decade, he said blacks turn to "black nationalism whenever we have a sense, as we do now, that white Americans couldn't care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing."
He added they have to be smart about how they protest and go about reforming the system. "Cursing out white folks is not going to get the job done," he said. "We've got some hard nuts-and-bolts organizing and planning to do."
His mild-mannered style has thrown off even some angry black radicals, who want him to speak out more forcefully about the legacy of U.S. racism and economic inequality.
One is Princeton professor Cornel West, a militant black and self-described socialist. Reportedly, West was reluctant to join the refined Obama's presidential campaign until Obama took him aside and explained to him that he had to walk a rhetorical tightrope to reassure whites. West is now solidly on board his campaign as an adviser.
West, along with Wright and Cone, has argued for reparations for blacks. Obama seemed to sow the grounds for such a case in his Philadelphia speech.
"So many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow," he said. "We still haven't fixed them."
He added, "That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white."
Trinity's mission statement calls for "economic parity." Such anti-capitalist views are reflected in Obama's rhetoric and proposals.
Rated by The University of Maryland as the most liberal member in the Senate, Obama wants to soak the most productive members of society and subsidize those who are not. He wants to hit small businesses and big corporations alike with major tax hikes — singling out for special rebuke oil producers and "Wall Street predators" who have "tricked" blacks out of their homes. At the same time, he plans to expand the welfare state with massive increases in domestic spending.
"We have more work to do," he told black graduates at Howard University last September. "It's time to seek a new dawn of justice in America. . . . We can right wrongs we see in America."
Cone says he wants to see a "new system" in America "in which people have the distribution of wealth." He adds, "I don't know how quite to do that institutionally."
Enter a Harvard-educated lawyer and Southside Chicago-trained community organizer who has a real shot at institutional power. As Obama promised black graduates at Hampton University last June, "We're going to usher in a new America."
Sounds like an attempt to backdoor traditional, pinko socialism.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
New York Leftys Embrace Psuedoscience: Seek to end mandatory vaccination.
Measles which once killed countless American children a year, is making a comeback - and some left-wing nutjob lawmakers in New York are eager to help the disease prosper.
The Centers for Disease Control reports a surge in measles outbreaks; almost all the cases are in children who never received the routine shots for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). Measles and other diseases are rebounding thanks to growing - but groundless - fears over the safety of traditional vaccines that are continually esposed by airhead talk show hosts (Oprah I'm looking at you.)
Driven by those fears, ever more parents are finding a way to forgo shots for their children - even though shots are required in most of the nation.
And some politicians are encouraging them. A proposed New York law, sponsored by far left Assemblyman Marc Alessi, would establish a "philosophical" exemption to mandatory childhood vaccinations.
Like many other states, New York has long allowed religious or medical exemptions, but this "philosophical" pass would let parents skip mandatory vaccines for their kids for almost any reason, just by filling out some paperwork.
The political hysteria comes from speculation tying thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative in vaccines, to autism. In fact, the substance has been largely phased out of most shots, and exhaustive research has debunked the idea that it's linked to neurological problems.
The consequences of autism can be devastating, and the rise in the condition's incidence is of great concern. Yet too many people still cling to a few flawed ideas about its origin - none more prominent than the purported link to thimerosal.
Data on the issue has been reviewed in high-profile, public forums, including: the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, two recent meetings of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the CDC and the Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review Committee.
Through its Vaccine Safety tracking system, the CDC has examined the incidence of autism as a function of the amount of thimerosal a child received from vaccines. The results of these and other reviews conclusively show that there's absolutely no link between autism rates and the amount of thimerosal children received.
In July 1999, the Public Health Service agencies, the American Academy of Pediatrics and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be reduced or eliminated in vaccines as a precautionary measure and to help ensure public confidence. And, since 2001, thimerosal has been removed from or reduced to trace amounts in all vaccines routinely recommended for children 6 and younger (with the exception of inactivated influenza vaccine).
A recent study of more than 30,000 Japanese children in Yokohama provides still more evidence nixing the thimerosol connection. Use of the MMR vaccine was briefly suspended there after reports that a manufacturing problem led the anti-mumps component of the vaccine to cause meningitis - yet the number of children with autism continued to rise. Before withdrawal of the vaccine, there were up to 86 cases of autism reported per 10,000 Japanese children; after the kids stopped getting the MMR shots, there were as many as 161 cases per 10,000.
As a culture, we have a troubling propensity to allow science to validate populist theories, but not to exclude them.
When it comes to vaccines, safety concerns have always been paramount - for these products are given to millions of otherwise healthy children. Any safety problems could have devastating consequences. For these reasons, and many others, vaccines are among the most closely scrutinized and carefully regulated health-care products on the market. But that reality, and reams of the scientific evidence, isn't enough to quell fears.
The result is 64 new cases of measles since January, according to the CDC - more than in all of 2006 and the highest number since 2001. The largest outbreak, 22 cases so far, is under way in New York, mostly in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. (Source: New York Post)
Before 1963, when the vaccine became available, America saw 3 million to 5 million cases of measles a year, killing as many as 500 children a year and putting 48,000 in the hospital. The vaccine wiped out transmission by 2000, but measles can still be imported from countries where its incidence is wide spread.
Worldwide, measles kills about 242,000 children a year.
The recent outbreaks should be a warning to politicians here in New York, as well as those in 18 other states that have already passed loose vaccine exemptions. There's nothing "philosophical" about stoking a modern outbreak for the sake of some careless political pandering.
I am all for personal freedom. However, at some point that freedom is overriden by the public interest. Mandatory vaccinations are that point!
The Centers for Disease Control reports a surge in measles outbreaks; almost all the cases are in children who never received the routine shots for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). Measles and other diseases are rebounding thanks to growing - but groundless - fears over the safety of traditional vaccines that are continually esposed by airhead talk show hosts (Oprah I'm looking at you.)
Driven by those fears, ever more parents are finding a way to forgo shots for their children - even though shots are required in most of the nation.
And some politicians are encouraging them. A proposed New York law, sponsored by far left Assemblyman Marc Alessi, would establish a "philosophical" exemption to mandatory childhood vaccinations.
Like many other states, New York has long allowed religious or medical exemptions, but this "philosophical" pass would let parents skip mandatory vaccines for their kids for almost any reason, just by filling out some paperwork.
The political hysteria comes from speculation tying thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative in vaccines, to autism. In fact, the substance has been largely phased out of most shots, and exhaustive research has debunked the idea that it's linked to neurological problems.
The consequences of autism can be devastating, and the rise in the condition's incidence is of great concern. Yet too many people still cling to a few flawed ideas about its origin - none more prominent than the purported link to thimerosal.
Data on the issue has been reviewed in high-profile, public forums, including: the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, two recent meetings of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the CDC and the Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review Committee.
Through its Vaccine Safety tracking system, the CDC has examined the incidence of autism as a function of the amount of thimerosal a child received from vaccines. The results of these and other reviews conclusively show that there's absolutely no link between autism rates and the amount of thimerosal children received.
In July 1999, the Public Health Service agencies, the American Academy of Pediatrics and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be reduced or eliminated in vaccines as a precautionary measure and to help ensure public confidence. And, since 2001, thimerosal has been removed from or reduced to trace amounts in all vaccines routinely recommended for children 6 and younger (with the exception of inactivated influenza vaccine).
A recent study of more than 30,000 Japanese children in Yokohama provides still more evidence nixing the thimerosol connection. Use of the MMR vaccine was briefly suspended there after reports that a manufacturing problem led the anti-mumps component of the vaccine to cause meningitis - yet the number of children with autism continued to rise. Before withdrawal of the vaccine, there were up to 86 cases of autism reported per 10,000 Japanese children; after the kids stopped getting the MMR shots, there were as many as 161 cases per 10,000.
As a culture, we have a troubling propensity to allow science to validate populist theories, but not to exclude them.
When it comes to vaccines, safety concerns have always been paramount - for these products are given to millions of otherwise healthy children. Any safety problems could have devastating consequences. For these reasons, and many others, vaccines are among the most closely scrutinized and carefully regulated health-care products on the market. But that reality, and reams of the scientific evidence, isn't enough to quell fears.
The result is 64 new cases of measles since January, according to the CDC - more than in all of 2006 and the highest number since 2001. The largest outbreak, 22 cases so far, is under way in New York, mostly in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. (Source: New York Post)
Before 1963, when the vaccine became available, America saw 3 million to 5 million cases of measles a year, killing as many as 500 children a year and putting 48,000 in the hospital. The vaccine wiped out transmission by 2000, but measles can still be imported from countries where its incidence is wide spread.
Worldwide, measles kills about 242,000 children a year.
The recent outbreaks should be a warning to politicians here in New York, as well as those in 18 other states that have already passed loose vaccine exemptions. There's nothing "philosophical" about stoking a modern outbreak for the sake of some careless political pandering.
I am all for personal freedom. However, at some point that freedom is overriden by the public interest. Mandatory vaccinations are that point!
Friday, May 2, 2008
Friday Afternoon Stock Picks
If you had purchased one share of each of the stocks I had recommended in March, you would have made four dollars and twenty eight cents. That sounds much more impressive if you had purchased two hundred shares of each of the stocks I'd recommended, in which case you'd have made eight hundred and forty-six dollars from simply following the advise of an unqualifed person you don't know. So here we go again.
McDonalds-MCD-60.95
Why You Should Buy: Whether you believe the country is in a recession or not, it is a statistical fact that people are spending a lot less money on restaurants. What people are spending money on is fast food, when somebody is feeling the economic pinch, one dollar fries look pretty good. What better fast food chain to buy then McDonalds, which serves 54 million people a day?
Harley-Davidson-HOG-39.04
Why You Should Buy: A very stable stock, most Harley Davidson motor cycles weren’t bundled as a security and aren’t being leased. Sales might be stalling now, but I think the stock can rebound and this will be a good time to get in.
Parker Hannifin Corp-PH-81.98
Why You Should Buy- The tech stocks in general provide a good refuge from the shaky financial sector. PH is a cut above the rest of the group because rather than just marketing the “updated” version of a product everyone and their brother has, PH is actually an innovator in the field of motion control and electromagnets, something the tech stocks seem to be lacking in this world of cookie cutter companies.
99 Cents Only Store-NDN-9.65
Why You Should Buy- The reasons I pick MCD all apply to NDN as well. People are willing to buy the “Dupercell” battery over the “Duracell” because they want to save money. NDN is the epitome of the Wal-Mart idea, always low prices. Literally everything is 99 cents and that will make this a great and recession proof pick.
McDonalds-MCD-60.95
Why You Should Buy: Whether you believe the country is in a recession or not, it is a statistical fact that people are spending a lot less money on restaurants. What people are spending money on is fast food, when somebody is feeling the economic pinch, one dollar fries look pretty good. What better fast food chain to buy then McDonalds, which serves 54 million people a day?
Harley-Davidson-HOG-39.04
Why You Should Buy: A very stable stock, most Harley Davidson motor cycles weren’t bundled as a security and aren’t being leased. Sales might be stalling now, but I think the stock can rebound and this will be a good time to get in.
Parker Hannifin Corp-PH-81.98
Why You Should Buy- The tech stocks in general provide a good refuge from the shaky financial sector. PH is a cut above the rest of the group because rather than just marketing the “updated” version of a product everyone and their brother has, PH is actually an innovator in the field of motion control and electromagnets, something the tech stocks seem to be lacking in this world of cookie cutter companies.
99 Cents Only Store-NDN-9.65
Why You Should Buy- The reasons I pick MCD all apply to NDN as well. People are willing to buy the “Dupercell” battery over the “Duracell” because they want to save money. NDN is the epitome of the Wal-Mart idea, always low prices. Literally everything is 99 cents and that will make this a great and recession proof pick.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Talk About Blowing A Judgement Call
Barack Obama looked pale and wan at what he called his "big press conference" about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Tuesday afternoon. He looked numb with the shock of a problem he couldn't just "hope" into submission, or "change" with high-minded empty rhetoric.
Who knew that the greatest threat to his presidential campaign would come from the preacher who married him, baptized him and prayed with him? Obama should've known - that's who.
"Yes, we can"? Try: Yes, you should have.
For the last 24 hours, Obama's campaign grappled with how to handle the aftermath of Wright's whirlwind tour of hatred this weekend - from Dallas, where he decried his "public crucifixion," to Detroit, where he entertained NAACP bigwigs with impersonations of white people, mockeries of classical music and "white" marching bands, and lectures on racial brain theories, to the National Press Club, where he preened, strutted and head-wagged his way through an hour of bitter black liberation theologizing where it became clear the CIA not only killed Martin Luther King, but was behind AIDS and was conducting secret supersoldier experiments on black people.
At first, Obama downplayed Wright's public appearances. Now he tells us he had to wait 24 hours to denounce Wright's National Press Club speech because he "hadn't seen it." After all this time on the campaign trail, we're back to the Obama-as-clueless-naif narrative again.
When he finally did view the Washington speech, Obama explained, he was "shocked" and "outraged" and "saddened" because "the person I saw was not the person that I'd come to know over 20 years."
Pure, unadulterated horse manure.
Anyone with eyes can see that Wright's performances are finely honed, time-tested acts. His "imperialist"-bashing, anti-American, anti-white shtick wasn't developed overnight or over the past few years.
He's been peddling AIDS conspiracies for decades. He's been grievance-mongering about slavery for decades. He's been flirting with the Nation of Islam, which provided security for his speeches, for decades. He's been a shouting left-wing radical for decades.
Obama's best-selling "Audacity of Hope" is named after the first sermon of Wright's that he heard - decades ago - in which the pastor of racial resentment inveighed against an environment "where white folks' greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere." Yet only now has Obama concluded that Wright's sermons are "a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in truth."
Welcome to the Jive Talk Express.
A clergyman e-mailed after Obama's press conference: "It is inconceivable that Obama had no knowledge of Wright's views after 20 years as a member of that church.
"As a pastor, my heart-held, deepest beliefs and passions cannot be silenced. It is what I am. If I were given a microphone at the National Press Club, I would not speak on something that I had guardedly kept secret for most of my life. No, I would go to my main point, the center of my ministry, the core of my passion, to speak truth as I know it to be.
"How can Obama actually claim that this is news from his pastor? His mailman, butcher or plumber? No problem. His pastor? No way!"
It's not Wright who has changed his loony tune.
Just last year, Obama told the Chicago Tribune that Wright was his sounding board for truth: "What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice. He's much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible and that I'm not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that's involved in national politics."
Just this March, in his racial-reconciliation speech, Obama urged us not to dismiss Wright as a "crank or a demagogue" and protested that he could "no more disown him than I can disown the black community."
Now, realizing how gravely his self-serving association with Wright has wounded his campaign, Obama himself has tried to do both those things - and expects us to believe his weak, belated claim that "when I say I find [Wright's] statements appalling, I mean it."
The only audacty is the arrogance Obama conducts himself with when he tries to fool the American public like that.
Who knew that the greatest threat to his presidential campaign would come from the preacher who married him, baptized him and prayed with him? Obama should've known - that's who.
"Yes, we can"? Try: Yes, you should have.
For the last 24 hours, Obama's campaign grappled with how to handle the aftermath of Wright's whirlwind tour of hatred this weekend - from Dallas, where he decried his "public crucifixion," to Detroit, where he entertained NAACP bigwigs with impersonations of white people, mockeries of classical music and "white" marching bands, and lectures on racial brain theories, to the National Press Club, where he preened, strutted and head-wagged his way through an hour of bitter black liberation theologizing where it became clear the CIA not only killed Martin Luther King, but was behind AIDS and was conducting secret supersoldier experiments on black people.
At first, Obama downplayed Wright's public appearances. Now he tells us he had to wait 24 hours to denounce Wright's National Press Club speech because he "hadn't seen it." After all this time on the campaign trail, we're back to the Obama-as-clueless-naif narrative again.
When he finally did view the Washington speech, Obama explained, he was "shocked" and "outraged" and "saddened" because "the person I saw was not the person that I'd come to know over 20 years."
Pure, unadulterated horse manure.
Anyone with eyes can see that Wright's performances are finely honed, time-tested acts. His "imperialist"-bashing, anti-American, anti-white shtick wasn't developed overnight or over the past few years.
He's been peddling AIDS conspiracies for decades. He's been grievance-mongering about slavery for decades. He's been flirting with the Nation of Islam, which provided security for his speeches, for decades. He's been a shouting left-wing radical for decades.
Obama's best-selling "Audacity of Hope" is named after the first sermon of Wright's that he heard - decades ago - in which the pastor of racial resentment inveighed against an environment "where white folks' greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere." Yet only now has Obama concluded that Wright's sermons are "a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in truth."
Welcome to the Jive Talk Express.
A clergyman e-mailed after Obama's press conference: "It is inconceivable that Obama had no knowledge of Wright's views after 20 years as a member of that church.
"As a pastor, my heart-held, deepest beliefs and passions cannot be silenced. It is what I am. If I were given a microphone at the National Press Club, I would not speak on something that I had guardedly kept secret for most of my life. No, I would go to my main point, the center of my ministry, the core of my passion, to speak truth as I know it to be.
"How can Obama actually claim that this is news from his pastor? His mailman, butcher or plumber? No problem. His pastor? No way!"
It's not Wright who has changed his loony tune.
Just last year, Obama told the Chicago Tribune that Wright was his sounding board for truth: "What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice. He's much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible and that I'm not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that's involved in national politics."
Just this March, in his racial-reconciliation speech, Obama urged us not to dismiss Wright as a "crank or a demagogue" and protested that he could "no more disown him than I can disown the black community."
Now, realizing how gravely his self-serving association with Wright has wounded his campaign, Obama himself has tried to do both those things - and expects us to believe his weak, belated claim that "when I say I find [Wright's] statements appalling, I mean it."
The only audacty is the arrogance Obama conducts himself with when he tries to fool the American public like that.
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