Republicans for Cap and Trade

Let's remember these eight cowards when we vote in 2010!

Worth reading...

On the issue of health care cost and the efficiency of Medicare v. private insurance companies, it pays to read this article from Real Clear Politics. An interesting analysis of manipulation of statistics. Thanks J.H. for the tip.

Read Article

Mary Anastasia O'Grady in The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on the events in Honduras. She really nails the reasons for the coup. This is the first time in my life that I am siding with the military in Latin America. By the way, Obama is upset about those events. How come he didn't refer to the events in Honduras as "a robust debate" among the Honduran people?

Read article in The Wall Street Journal

Good news from the Supreme Court for users of cable TV. The court allowed remote DVR storage which can lead to easier ways of watching recorded programs without commercials.

Read article

Elect me, and I promise never to relinquish the office of President

It never ceases to amaze me how the most undemocratic characters are always crying "democracy" while doing their utmost to undermine the basic tenets of a democratic society. This came to mind while reading about the the ousting of Manuel Zelaya, President of Honduras by the military of this nation.

Zelaya, an ally of Hugo "el payaso" Chavez, attempted to circumvent the one term limit on the presidency with an illegal vote that would have extended his term beyond 2010. Where did we see this before? Ah, yes, in the Democratic Republic of Venezuela.

The same is happening in Brazil, where president Lula wants to circumvent the terms limit imposed by this damn document and impediment to the title of "president for life" known as the constitution.

In Argentina Ernesto Kirschner was not able to extend his presidency so he had his wife run for president, and now she is continuing his agenda designed to move Argentina from her position of developing nation to underdeveloped one. This nation that was the sixth largest economy in the world 100 years ago, has assumed third position in the economies of Latin America, behind Brazil and Chile. Thank God for the Banana Republics that prevent Argentina from being at the bottom of the pit.

What is it about these characters who believe that only they can lead their nations and transform them into workers paradise? Who do they think they are, the Messiah?

We know very well that there can be only one Messiah, and he is leading already the United States. How long before he decides that two terms are not enough?

Taxing Internet Comerce

In another example of the law of unintended consequences, a new bill in North Carolina, demanding that out-of-state Internet retailers start taxing their customers, has led to results that are not going to endear legislators to their North Carolinian constituents.

In the 1992 Quill v. North Dakota decision, the Supreme Court determined that states could not force tax collection obligations on out of state merchants. However, North Carolina has a pending bill that will demand that Amazon start taxing their clients despite the fact that it has not a physical presence in the state. The legislators got around it by claiming that Amazon has affiliates in the state that link their site to Amazon.

For those of you not familiar with Internet commerce, many businesses link to Amazon to sell their products, especially used books stores.

As the Wall Street Journal writes:

To its credit, Amazon yesterday refused to accept the expected new
compliance burden and announced the cancellation of its North Carolina affiliate
relationships. Said the company, "This is a direct result of the
unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the
North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the
governor." So now the state won't get the revenue, even as in-state Web
retailers lose their ties to Amazon thanks to the legislature's revenue grab.
Brilliant.

Omri Casspi: From Maccabi Tel Aviv to the Sacramento Kings

6ft 9in tall Omri Casspi from Israel was selected in the first round of the NBA draft and will be playing for the Sacramemto Kings. He is 21 years old.

I can see many New York Knicks fans beginning to cheer the Californian team.

For Casspi's statistics click here:

Statistics from DraftExpress

GILAD SHALIT: Three Years in Captivity

June 25, 2009 was the third anniversary of Gilad Shalit's captivity by Hamas. On that date his father said:

"My wish, today, on the 25th of June, 2009, from every person in the state,
man and woman, from children to the elderly, is to close your eyes for three
minutes," he told Army Radio Thursday. "For just three minutes close your eyes
and wait until those minutes pass, and during that time, try to think about what
my son, Gilad, has gone through, a young man who is waiting with bated breath --
not just three minutes, and not just three hours, and not even just three days,
but is waiting in darkness and despair, mentally and physically tortured, to
regain his freedom which was taken from him three years ago."

Our Representatives: "Don't expect me to read the bills I am voing for..."

So yesterday the House of Representatives passed the "Global Warming" legislation by a margin of 219 in favor to 212 against. This razor margin shows the cowardice of our representatives. Dozens waited till they had enough votes to pass this bill so that they could vote against it.

Regardless of your position on global warming; the fact that a bill 1500 pages long can be rammed through a legislative body without the legislators reading it, and with Waxman, the sponsor, admitting to not reading a bill that was written by environmental lobbyists should make us very worried about the future of our nation. The impact of this legislation will be felt for decades to come, and not because of cleaner air, but because of the transformative impact it will have on our economy.

Here we are in the midst of an economic crisis and we pass legislation that will make us even less competitive. Billions of dollars will be transferred to developing countries not to cut trees that they were not going to cut anyway. Imagine the business that despots in South America, Africa and Asia will do confiscating forests so that the US will pay them not to cut them down.

On carbon Cap and Trade, all you have to do now is build phony coal burning plants in the Third World and then cash the billions that American businessmen will send to those plants so that they don't pollute by operating them, thus allowing Americans to burn coal in the good old USA.

Lenin said "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." He was wrong. American legislators have sold them the legislation with which to hung us.

While this was happening we were glued to the TV watching round the clock reporting on the death of a drug addicted pedophile. It was quite a thriller.

If you have any doubt that democracy under the Obama administration and a Democrat controlled Congress is in trouble read this attachment from the Washington Examiner:

On The House Floor.

Obama, the African Colonial By L.E. Ikenga

June 25, 2009

Obama, the African Colonial By L.E. Ikenga

Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa.

Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign "isms", instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas.

The tropes of America's racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial.

Before I continue, I need to say this: I am a first generation born West African-American woman whose parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970's from the country now called Nigeria. I travel to Nigeria frequently. I see myself as both a proud American and as a proud Igbo (the tribe that we come from -- also sometimes spelled Ibo). Politically, I have always been conservative (though it took this past election for me to commit to this once and for all!); my conservative values come from my Igbo heritage and my place of birth. Of course, none of this qualifies me to say what I am about to -- but at the same time it does.

My friends, despite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African Colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel. Many conservative (East, West, South, North) African-Americans like myself -- those of us who know our history -- have seen this movie before. Here are two main reasons why many Americans allowed Obama to slip through the cracks despite all of his glaring inconsistencies:

First, Obama has been living on American soil for most of his adult life. Therefore, he has been able to masquerade as one who understands and believes in American democratic ideals. But he does not. Barack Obama is intrinsically undemocratic and as his presidency plays out, this will become more obvious.

Second, and most importantly, too many Americans know very little about Africa. The one-size-fits-all understanding that many Americans (both black and white) continue to have of Africa might end up bringing dire consequences for this country.

Contrary to the way it continues to be portrayed in mainstream Western culture, Africa is not a continent that can be solely defined by AIDS, ethnic rivalries, poverty and safaris. Africa, like any other continent, has an immense history defined by much diversity and complexity. Africa's long-standing relationship with Europe speaks especially to some of these complexities -- particularly the relationship that has existed between the two continents over the past two centuries. Europe's complete colonization of Africa during the nineteenth century, also known as the Scramble for Africa, produced many unfortunate consequences, the African colonial being one of them.

The African colonial (AC) is a person who by means of their birth or lineage has a direct connection with Africa. However, unlike Africans like me, their worldviews have been largely shaped not by the indigenous beliefs of a specific African tribe but by the ideals of the European imperialism that overwhelmed and dominated Africa during the colonial period. AC's have no real regard for their specific African traditions or histories. AC's use aspects of their African culture as one would use pieces of costume jewelry: things of little or no value that can be thoughtlessly discarded when they become a negative distraction, or used on a whim to decorate oneself in order to seem exotic. (Hint: Obama's Muslim heritage).

On the other hand, AC's strive to be the best at the culture that they inherited from Europe. Throughout the West, they are tops in their professions as lawyers, doctors, engineers, Ivy League professors and business moguls; this is all well and good. It's when they decide to engage us as politicians that things become messy and convoluted.

The African colonial politician (ACP) feigns repulsion towards the hegemonic paradigms of Western civilization. But at the same time, he is completely enamored of the trappings of its aristocracy or elite culture. The ACP blames and caricatures whitey to no end for all that has gone wrong in the world. He convinces the masses that various forms of African socialism are the best way for redressing the problems that European colonialism motivated in Africa. However, as opposed to really being a hard-core African Leftist who actually believes in something, the ACP uses socialist themes as a way to disguise his true ambitions: a complete power grab whereby the "will of the people" becomes completely irrelevant.

Barack Obama is all of the above. The only difference is that he is here playing (colonial) African politics as usual.

In his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father -- an eloquent piece of political propaganda -- Obama styles himself as a misunderstood intellectual who is deeply affected by the sufferings of black people, especially in America and Africa. In the book, Obama clearly sees himself as an African, not as a black American. And to prove this, he goes on a quest to understand his Kenyan roots. He is extremely thoughtful of his deceased father's legacy; this provides the main clue for understanding Barack Obama.

Barack Obama Sr. was an African colonial to the core; in his case, the apple did not fall far from the tree. All of the telltale signs of Obama's African colonialist attitudes are on full display in the book -- from his feigned antipathy towards Europeans to his view of African tribal associations as distracting elements that get in the way of "progress". (On p. 308 of Dreams From My Father, Obama says that African tribes should be viewed as an "ancient loyalties".)
Like imperialists of Old World Europe, the ACP sees their constituents not as free thinking individuals who best know how to go about achieving and creating their own means for success. Instead, the ACP sees his constituents as a flock of ignorant sheep that need to be led -- oftentimes to their own slaughter.

Like the European imperialist who spawned him, the ACP is a destroyer of all forms of democracy.

Here are a few examples of what the British did in order to create (in 1914) what is now called Nigeria and what Obama is doing to you:

--Convince the people that "clinging" to any aspect of their cultural
(tribal) identity or history is bad and regresses the process of "unity".
British Imperialists deeply feared people who were loyal to anything other than
the state. "Tribalism" made the imperialists have to work harder to get people
to just fall in line. Imperialists pitted tribes against each other in order to
create chaos that they then blamed on ethnic rivalry. Today many "educated"
Nigerians, having believed that their traditions were irrelevant, remain
completely ignorant of their ancestry and the history of their own tribes.
--Confiscate the wealth and resources of the area that you govern by any
means necessary in order to redistribute wealth. The British used this tactic to
present themselves as empathetic and benevolent leaders who wanted everyone to
have a "fair shake". Imperialists are not interested in equality for all. They
are interested in controlling all.
--Convince the masses that your upper-crust university education naturally
puts you on an intellectual plane from which to understand everything even when
you understand nothing. Imperialists were able to convince the people that their
elite university educations allowed them to understand what Africa needed. Many
of today's Nigerians-having followed that lead-hold all sorts of degrees and
certificates-but what good are they if you can't find a job?
--Lie to the people and tell them that progress is being made even though things are clearly becoming worse. One thing that the British forgot to mention to their Nigerian constituents was that one day, the resources that were being used to engineer
"progress" (which the British had confiscated from the Africans to begin with!)
would eventually run out. After WWII, Western Europe could no longer afford to
hold on to their African colonies. So all of the counterfeit countries that the
Europeans created were then left high-and-dry to fend for themselves. This was
the main reason behind the African independence movements of the1950 and 60's.
What will a post-Obama America look like?
--Use every available media outlet to perpetuate the belief that you and
your followers are the enlightened ones-and that those who refuse to support you
are just barbaric, uncivilized, ignorant curmudgeons. This speaks for
itself.

America, don't be fooled. The Igbos were once made up of a confederacy of clans that ascribed to various forms of democratic government. They took their eyes off the ball and before they knew it, the British were upon them. Also, understand this: the African colonial who is given too much political power can only become one thing: a despot.

L.E. Ikenga can be reached at leikenga@gmail.com.Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/obama_the_african_colonial.html at June 26, 2009 - 12:57:18 PM EDT_uacct = "UA-31527-12";urchinTracker();

Brigette Gabrielle's open letter to President Obama

This open letter to President Obama was written by Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian woman thrown out of her home by Palestinians.






Dear Mr. President,

You face difficult challenges in matters such as achieving peace in the Middle East and protecting America from the threat of radical Islam and terrorism. These are challenges that have vexed past presidents, going as far back as our second president, John Adams. I have no doubt you appreciate both the gravity of these challenges and the enormous obstacles that exist to solving them.

I also have no doubt that you and your staff understood that, no matter what you said in your speech last Thursday in Cairo, there would be those who would take issue with you. That is always the case when attempting to solve problems that are as deep and emotionally-laden as these challenges are.

I am assuming it is your sincere hope that the approach you have chosen to take, as evidenced by what I'm sure was a carefully crafted speech, will ultimately prove successful. However, it pains me to say this sir, but, while you said in your speech that you are a "student of history," it is abundantly clear that, in these matters, you do not know history and thus, as Santayana noted, you are doomed to repeat it. In doing so your efforts,however well-intentioned they may be, will not produce what you profess to hope they will produce.

A wise man once said that if you start with the wrong assumptions, no matter how logical your reasoning is, you will end up with the wrong conclusion.With all due respect Mr. President, you are starting with certain assumptions that are unsupported by history and an objective study of the ideology of political Islam.

You began in your speech by asserting that "tensions" exist between the United States and Muslims around the world, which, of course, is correct. Unfortunately, you then proceeded, incorrectly, to lay virtually all the blame for these tensions at the feet of America and the West. You blamed western colonialism, the Cold War, and even modernity and globalism.

A student of American history, who is not trying to reconstruct it to fit a modern politically correct narrative, would state that tensions between America and Muslims began with the unprovoked, four-decades long assault by the Muslim Barbary pirates against American shipping in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I find it telling that you mentioned the Treaty of Tripoli in your speech but ignored the circumstances that led to it. That treaty was but one of numerous attempts by the United States to achieve peace with the jihadists of the Barbary Coast who were attacking our shipping and killing and enslaving our citizens and our soldiers and who by their own admission were doing so to fulfill the call to jihad.

These jihadists were not acting to protest American foreign policy, which was decidedly isolationist, and there was no state of Israel to scapegoat. They were doing what countless Islamic jihadists have done throughout history, acting upon the hundreds of passages in the Qur'an and the Hadith that call upon faithful Muslims to kill, conquer or subjugate the infidel.

A student of world history would know that, for all the acknowledged evils of Western colonialism, these evils pale in comparison to the nearly 14 centuries of Islamic colonialism that began in Arabia under the leadership of Mohammed. The student of history would know that Islamic forces eradicated all Jewish and Christian presence from Arabia after Mohammed's death, and then succeeded in conquering all of North Africa, most of the Middle East, much of Asia Minor, and significant portions of Europe and India, eventually creating an empire larger than Rome's was at its peak.

The number of dead and enslaved during these many centuries of Islamic imperial conquest and colonialism have been estimated to total more than 300million. What's more, the wealth of many of the conquered nations and cultures was plundered by the Islamic conquerors, and millions of non-Muslims who did survive were forced to pay onerous taxes, such as the"jizya," a humiliation tax to the Islamic caliphs. Indeed, in some areas Christians and Jews were made to wear a receipt for the jizya around their neck as a mark of their dishonor.

These facts have not been invented by Christian or Jewish historical revisionists, but were chronicled by Muslim eyewitnesses throughout the past 14 centuries and are available to be researched by any person seeking an objective understanding of how Islam spread throughout the world.

You say in your speech that we must squarely face the tensions that exist between America and the Muslim world. That is a laudable notion with which I agree, but by casting Islam as the historical victim and the West (and by implication, America) as the aggressor, you do not face these tensions squarely, but alleviate the Muslim world from coming to grips with the jihadist ideology embedded in its holy books and acted upon for 1,400 years.

Even worse, you empower and embolden militant Islamists who regard your gestures as signs of weakness and capitulation.

The issue is not that all Muslims are terrorists or radicals or extremists. We all know that the majority of Muslims are not. We also know that many peace-loving Muslims are victims of Islamist violence.

The issue is this: what drives hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide to call for the death of Jews?

What drives millions of Muslims to riot, destroy property, and take innocent lives in reaction to the Danish cartoons?

What drives tens of thousands of Muslims to demand the execution of a British teacher whose only "crime" was allowing her students to name their teddy bears "Mohammed"?

What drives countless Muslims worldwide to actively participate in, or fund,or provide nurture to terrorist organizations?

What drives Muslims in mosques in America to proclaim and distribute materials that call for hatred of and the destruction of infidels?

What drives entire Islamic countries to prohibit the building of a church or synagogue?

To assume, as you apparently do, that what drives these actions is not an ideology embedded in the holy books of Islam, but rather other "root causes," most of which you lay at the feet of America and the West, is at best naïve and at worst dangerous.

Lastly, I must address your statement that "Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance." Unfortunately, the examples you gave are the exception rather than the rule.

Historically speaking, I seriously doubt the Egyptian Copts, the Lebanese Maronites, the Christians in Bethlehem, the Assyrians, the Hindus, the Jews,and many others who have been persecuted by Islamic violence and supremacism, would agree with your assertion.

For instance, Christians and Jews became "Dhimmis," a second class group under Islam. Dhimmis were forced to wear distinctive clothing; it was Baghdad's Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, in the ninth century, who designated a yellow badge for Jews under Islam, which Hitler copied and duplicated in Nazi Germany nearly a thousand years later.

I witnessed first-hand the "tolerance" of Islam when Islamists ravaged my country of birth, Lebanon, in the 1970's, leaving widespread death and destruction in their wake. I saw how they re-paid the tolerance that Lebanese Christians extended toward them. My experience is not an isolated one. When you make an unfounded assertion about the "proud tradition" of tolerance in Islam, you do a great disservice to the hundreds of millions of non-Muslims who have been killed, maimed, enslaved, conquered, subjugated or displaced in the cause of Islamic jihad.

Mr. President, those of us like me who are ringing the alarm in America about the threat of radical Islam would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world.

Most Americans would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. The obstacle to achieving this does not lie with us in America and the West. It lies with the hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide, including many of their spiritual leaders, who take seriously the repeated calls to jihad in the Qur'an and the Hadith. Who regard "infidels"as inferior and worthy of conquering, subjugating and forcibly converting. Who support "cultural jihad" as a means to subvert non-Muslim societies from within. Who take seriously the admonitions throughout the Qur'an and the Hadith to convert the world to Islam by force if necessary and bring it under the rule of Allah.

Unless you are willing to courageously and honestly accept this, your aspirations for worldwide comity and peace in the Middle East are doomed to fail.

Sincerely,

Brigitte Gabriel

Tim Geithner's Comedy Routine in China

The following is a report from Reuters. Read the last and highlighted paragraph:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday reassured the Chinese government that its huge holdings of dollar assets are safe and reaffirmed his faith in a strong U.S. currency.

A major goal of Geithner’s maiden visit to China as Treasury chief is to allay concerns that Washington’s bulging budget deficit and ultra-loose monetary policy will fan inflation, undermining both the dollar and U.S. bonds.

China is the biggest foreign owner of U.S. Treasury bonds. U.S. data shows that it held $768 billion in Treasuries as of March, but some analysts believe China’s total U.S. dollar-denominated investments could be twice as high.

“Chinese assets are very safe,” Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.

His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting scepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home.