Good Explanation

Got this in my email the other day.  Think it says it well.  Enjoy

LETTER FROM THE BOSS:

As the CEO of this organization, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barrack Obama is our President and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way. To compensate for these increases, our prices would have to increase by about 10%.

But since we cannot increase our prices right now due to the dismal state of the economy, we will have to lay off sixty of our employees instead.  This has really been bothering me, since I believe we are family here and I didn’t know how to choose who would have to go.   So, this is what I did. 

I walked through our parking lots and found sixty  ‘Obama’ bumper stickers on our employees’ cars and have decided these folks will be the ones to let go. I can’t think of a more fair way to approach this problem. They voted for change, I gave it to them. I will see the rest of you at the annual company picnic.

Excuse me, are we at it again.

Can we make an argument for supply and demand, or just plain ol gouging?  Our friends at the NYMEX are at it again…it’s vacation driving season.  There’s your demand.  Here’s a story from Bloomberg, and please note the increase in gas supplies.  It seems someone didn’t slide all the marbles to the left on the calculator again.

Crude Oil Rises as U.S. Supply Declines, Fuel Demand Increases
By Mark Shenk

June 17 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil rose for the first time in four days after a government report showed a bigger-than- forecast inventory decline and an increase in fuel demand.

Crude oil stockpiles fell 3.87 million barrels to 357.7 million, the Energy Department said today. The drop was more than twice the size forecast by analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. Fuel consumption climbed 1.3 percent to 19 million barrels a day last week, the highest since March. Refineries increased operating rates and gasoline output, the report showed.

“There have been several multimillion-barrel inventory declines recently,” said Rick Mueller, a director of oil markets at Energy Security Analysis Inc. in Wakefield, Massachusetts. “Imports have been in the 8-to-9 million-barrel- a-day area, which is just not enough to maintain stockpiles during this period of high refinery runs.”

Crude oil for July delivery rose 56 cents, or 0.8 percent, to settle at $71.03 a barrel at 2:43 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures earlier touched $69, the lowest since June 9. Prices are up 59 percent this year.

Oil dropped earlier today after the Energy Department report showed that fuel stockpiles increased. Gasoline inventories climbed 3.39 million barrels to 205 million last week, the biggest gain since January. Supplies of distillate fuel, a category that includes heating oil and diesel, rose 308,000 barrels to 150 million.

“The initial move lower was fueled by the gasoline supply increase,” said Gene McGillian, an analyst and broker at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut. “Overall the report was mixed. The crude-oil drop was greater than people expected and gasoline demand was up a bit.”

Apologizing for Something You haven’t done…

Oh please, not again.  I ain’t apologizing, I never have owned a slave, and I don’t know anyone who has.   My comments in red.

Senate Backs Apology for Slavery
Resolution Specifies That It Cannot Be Used in Reparations Cases
 

By Krissah Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 19, 2009

The Senate unanimously passed a resolution yesterday apologizing for slavery, making way for a joint congressional resolution and the latest attempt by the federal government to take responsibility for 2 1/2 centuries of slavery. Wonder how many of them are slave owners?

“You wonder why we didn’t do it 100 years ago,”  Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), lead sponsor of the resolution, said after the unanimous-consent vote. “It is important to have a collective response to a collective injustice.” Probably because he wasn’t around 100 years ago to meet smarter legislators than he is.

The Senate’s apology follows a similar apology passed last year by the House. One key difference is that the Senate version explicitly deals with the long-simmering issue of whether slavery descendants are entitled to reparations, saying that the resolution cannot be used in support of claims for restitution. The House is expected to revisit the issue next week to conform its resolution to the Senate version.  Ahh, apologize, but we ain’t paying anything…

Harkin, who called the Senate’s vote an “important and significant milestone,” said he wanted the resolution passed yesterday to closely coincide with Juneteenth, a holiday first celebrated by former slaves to mark their emancipation.

This recent willingness to deal with the nation’s difficult racial history has come about in part because of President Obama’s election, said Rep. Stephen I. Cohen (D-Tenn.), who began pushing for an apology more than a decade ago when he was a state senator and pronounced himself “pleased” with the Senate vote. I’m sure he is, he’s looking to be re-elected over and over in a black home base.  Puleese, obviously this country is already over it if Obama was elected.

Still, Cohen said, “there are going to be African Americans who think that [the apology] is not reparations, and it’s not action, and there are going to be Caucasians who say, ‘Get over it.’ . . . I look at it as something that makes people think.” What people should be thinking is how to get rid of this idiot who comes up with this stuff instead of something that will actually help his constituents.

Even among proponents of a congressional apology, reaction to yesterday’s vote was mixed. Carol M. Swain, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University who had pushed for the Bush administration to issue an apology, called the Democratic-controlled Senate’s resolution “meaningless” since the party and federal government are led by a black president and black voters are closely aligned with the Democratic party.

“The Republican Party needed to do it,” Swain said. “It would have shed that racist scab on the party.” Oh yeah, that would have helped.  I think what would have helped both is that they were actually concentrating on something that helped this country rather than reminding everyone how they think that we’re all bad people who need to apologize over everything.  How about term limits, and then we don’t have to listen to this crap?

Republicans, however, were supportive of the resolution. “It doesn’t fix everything, but it does go a long way toward acknowledgment and moving us on to the next steps to building a more perfect union, doing the things that Martin Luther King would talk about, like building a colorblind society,” said  Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.).

As with all congressional apologies — but especially this one — concerns about liability for restitution were part of the political calculations, in this case because of the long-running debate about whether the descendants of slaves should be compensated.

Charles Ogletree, the Harvard law professor who has championed restitution, was consulted on the Senate’s resolution and supports it, but he said it is not a substitute for reparations. “That battle will be prolonged,” he said.

Randall Robinson, author of “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks,” said he sees the Senate’s apology as a “confession” that should lead to a next step of reparations. “Much is owed, and it is very quantifiable,” he said. “It is owed as one would owe for any labor that one has not paid for, and until steps are taken in that direction we haven’t accomplished anything.” A confession huh?  I call it a plea for a free dime.

Cohen said he and Harkin worked closely with the NAACP and other civil rights groups on language that would not endorse or preclude any future claims to reparations. “It will not harm reparations but won’t give any standing to it,” Cohen said.

 

Taxes for Insurance…and especially if you already have it

Just so you know what they’re up to on the new insurance thing…here’s some ideas on how their coming up with the money.  Didn’t you count on new taxes, or were you waiting on the free gas from Barack?

House eyes new taxes as senators pare health bill
 

By ERICA WERNER

 

WASHINGTON (AP) – Early work on the ambitious health care overhaul the Obama administration is seeking has exposed the kinds of in-house fights that typify just how hard it will be to get meaningful legislation this year. Case in point: A proposal to help bankroll universal health coverage with a dime-a-can increase in the price of soft drinks.

House Democrats have lots of potential targets for higher taxes as they aim to expand health care coverage to reach the roughly 50 million that experts say are uninsured.

Also under consideration are higher alcohol taxes, increases to the Medicare payroll tax and a value-added tax, a sort of national sales tax, of up to 1.5 percent or more.

The list of options being weighed by the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, and obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, aims to raise some $600 billion over 10 years to partially pay for President Barack Obama’s goal of overhauling the nation’s health care system to tame costs and cover the 50 million uninsured.

The final price tag for that effort could top $1 trillion, with cuts to Medicare and Medicaid covering the rest of the cost.

The tax options include:

- Increasing the price of soda and other sugary drinks by 10 cents a can.

- Applying a potential 2 percent income tax increase to single taxpayers earning more than $200,000 a year and households earning more than $250,000.

- A new employer payroll tax could target 3 percent of employers’ health care expenditures.

- Taxing employer-provided health insurance benefits above certain levels – a less likely option but one that still is in the running.

House Democrats planned to unveil a draft of their sweeping health care bill Friday. It would require all individuals to obtain health insurance and force employers to offer health care to their workers, with exemptions for small businesses. A new public health insurance plan, strongly opposed by Republicans, would compete with private companies within a new health care purchasing “exchange” where Americans could shop for coverage. Government subsidies would help the poor buy care.

The draft, being released at a news conference of the chairmen of the three committees with jurisdiction – Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Education and Labor – was not expected to mention the potentially unpopular tax options.

On the other side of the Capitol, two Senate committees were going in separate directions on their health care bills. The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee spent a second full day working on an expansive bill reflecting Democratic priorities, while members of the Finance Committee were laboring to produce legislation that could attract Republican support.

To that end Finance Committee senators were looking at leaving a new public insurance plan out of their bill, instead creating nonprofit co-ops to offer insurance in competition with private companies, according to an outline obtained by The Associated Press. The co-ops could accept federal loans for startup operations, but would have to repay the money.

Struggling to pare their bill from an earlier $1.6 trillion cost estimate to about $1 trillion over 10 years, Finance Committee members also were looking at making federal subsidies available to help families with incomes of up to 300 percent of poverty, or $66,000, purchase insurance. An earlier proposal set the level at 400 percent of poverty, or $88,000.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., reviewed the plans behind closed doors Thursday with a group of senators he deemed “the coalition of the willing.” Republicans present were top committee Republican Charles Grassley of Iowa, Orrin Hatch of Utah and Olympia Snowe of Maine.

“We’re getting closer and closer,” Baucus said during a break in the meeting. “There’s no doubt in my mind we’re going to have a bipartisan bill.”

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who’s presiding over the Health Committee work session, dismissed bipartisanship as an end in itself.

“My goal here is to write a good bill. My goal is not bipartisanship,” said Dodd, who has taken the committee reins in the absence of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who’s being treated for brain cancer.

It ain’t as if we weren’t warned

From the Southern National Congress as written by Clyde Wilson.  He says our Southern Fathers told us what to expect.  Another great article Carl, who say’s “Makes you proud to be a Southerner, don’t it?”

Steve

“ . . . and bank-notes will become as plentiful as oak leaves”

—Thomas Jefferson

“ They [the people], and not the rich are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labours and our amusements . . . our people . . .must come to labour sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses . . . .”

—Thomas Jefferson

“But an opinion that it is possible for the present generation to seize and use the property of future generations has produced to both parties concerned, effects of the same complexion with the usual fruits of national errour. The present age is cajoled to tax and enslave itself, by the errour of believing that it taxes and enslaves future ages to enrich itself.”

—John Taylor of Caroline

“A crocodile has been worshipped, and its priesthood have asserted that morality required the people to suffer themselves to be eaten by the crocodile.”

—John Taylor of Caroline

“We are now making an experiment, which has never yet succeeded in any region or quarter of the earth, at any time, from the deluge to this day. With regard to the antediluvian times, history is not very full; but there is no proof that it has ever succeeded, even before the flood.”

—John Randolph of Roanoke

“I said that this Government, if put to the test—a test that it is by no means calculated to endure—as a government for the management of the internal concerns of this country, is one of the worst that can be conceived . . . .”

—John Randolph of Roanoke

“Why should the government pay the expenses of one class of men rather than another?”

—John C. Calhoun

“A habit of profusion and extravagance has grown up utterly inconsistent with republican simplicity and virtue, and which was rapidly sapping the foundation of our government.”

—John C. Calhoun

“It was impossible to force the minds of the public officers to the importance of attendance to the public money, because we had too much of it.”

—John C. Calhoun

“It has been justly stated by a British writer that the power to make a small piece of paper, not worth one cent, by the inscribing of a few names, to be worth a thousand dollars, was a power too high to be trusted to the hands of mortal man.”

—John C. Calhoun

“We must curb the Banking system, or it will certainly ruin the country.”

—John C. Calhoun

“The government is the executive committee of great wealth.”

—Frank L. Owsley, Southern Agrarian, 1936

From the beginning of the U.S. Government, Southerners saw it as a locus of liberty, honour, and American mutuality. From its beginning, the predominant class in the North regarded the government as a source of profits. To Southerners, the Constitution was the means of the people’s control over government power. To Northerners, it was an instrument to be manipulated for their advantage. This difference came to a head in the struggle between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson and his friends, notable Virginians of the time like John Randolph and John Taylor, called Hamilton, John Adams, and their friends “monarchists.” By this was meant not only that they favoured kingship, which they did, but also that they wanted a strong central government built on patronage to the wealthy (at the expense of the ordinary hard-working producers). This patronage was to be financed through national debt, manipulation of the currency, and various types of business subsidy, which they falsely claimed were necessary and beneficial to all Americans.

Jefferson and his friends (which, to be fair, included a valiant minority of Northerners) managed to hold Hamilton’s schemes in abeyance for two generations, although the Hamiltonians never ceased to put them forward aggressively. Lincoln’s conquest and near-destruction of the South established the Northern program without any effective check. Yet Jeffersonian ideals continued to wield a certain power long afterward, right up to World War II. The regime of the Republican George W. Bush and the Democrat Barack Obama (there is no real difference) have now delivered the final death blow to the system of government and to the ideals of freedom established by our forefathers. The Constitution no longer exists except as a collection of minor procedural rules. The distinction between government spending for public purposes and for private profits has been abolished, as has the distinction between federal spending for national purposes and for merely local purposes. The government is now making sure the economy is frozen so that those who are presently wealthy will remain wealthy and so that your and my children and grandchildren will pay the price in diminished life.

Only among the Southern people is there still enough allegiance to the genuine American founding principles to offer a viable alternative, but these principles can never be made real under the present evil empire.

________________________________

Clyde Wilson, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of the University of South Carolina, is the South’s leading historian, prolific author, and South Carolina Delegate to the Southern National Congress.

Dearborn, Mich. corrals Christians at weekend Arab fest

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FAITH UNDER FIRE

City corrals Christians at weekend Arab fest

Judge won’t let ministry deliver tracts on sidewalks

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By Bob Unruh

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

A federal judge has upheld a decision by festival organizers in  Dearborn, Mich., which is about 30 percent Muslim, to ban a Christian ministry from handing out religious information on public sidewalks.

The ruling came from U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmonds and affects this weekend’s celebration but will not affect the free speech lawsuit over the event, filed by the Thomas More Law Center and the Becker Law Firm.

The case is being brought on behalf of the Arabic Christian Perspective, a Christian group that ministers to Muslims. According to the Thomas More Law Center, Pastor George Saieg and scores of his volunteers have visited Dearborn for the city’s Arab International Festival to hand out religious information several times.

At estimated 30,000 of Dearborn’s nearly 100,000 residents are Muslim.

While there never has been a disruption of the public peace during the five years the ministry has been attending, this year Dearborn police warned Saieg he and his group would not be allowed to walk the public sidewalks to hand out information and instead would be confined to a specific spot, the lawsuit said.

After negotiations in Dearborn failed to restore the Christians’ rights, the lawsuit was filed.

“It’s ironic that while Americans are applauding the free speech exercised by hundreds of thousands of Muslims on the streets of Iran, the city of Dearborn is restricting free speech rights Christians are attempting to exercise on the city’s public sidewalks,” said Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center.

“This case involves an important constitutional question regarding the government’s ability to prohibit peaceful speech activities,” said Law Center attorney Robert Muise, who argued for the Christians’ rights before Edmonds.

“This preliminary ruling, while disappointing, will not affect the remainder of the case. We intend to pursue this as far as necessary,” he said.

Fay Beydoun of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce in Dearborn told the Detroit News there was “no problem” with the Christians being at the event, “but we do have to think about the safety of everyone.”

The complaint said public streets are properly considered a traditional public forum.

“The Supreme Court has emphasized that the streets are natural and proper places for the dissemination of information and opinion; and one is not to have the exercise of his liberty of expression inappropriately abridged on the plea that it may be exercised in some other place,” the complaint said.

The complaints cited a police statement that the Christians would be classified among “political parties and protesters,” and would be limited to a single location.

WorldnetDaily.com

Obama to Grab State Power in New US Office of Insurance

Well it just isn’t going to stop is it, until this man turns America into a complete government controlled country….as in Communist country and Congress is just standing by and letting him. In fact most seem to be working with him. Once these huge beauocracies are created they are never undone.

Obama’s Insurance Proposal May Grab Power From States

President Barack Obama’s plan to create a U.S. insurance office after the $182.5 billion bailout of American International Group Inc. may take powers from the states that have overseen the industry for more than 135 years.

Obama called for the creation of a federal Office of National Insurance within the Treasury Department to monitor the industry, represent U.S. interests in international insurance agreements, and look for gaps in state oversight. The proposal was announced this week as part of Obama’s planned overhaul of the U.S. financial regulatory system.

The administration endorsed broader federal oversight of firms posing a threat to the financial system, and said more regulation may be needed for parts of companies outside the reach of state supervision. AIG’s Financial Products unit, which brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy after it sold credit protection to firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., wasn’t under the states’ umbrella.

“AIG highlighted gaps in our insurance regulatory system,” said Leigh Ann Pusey, president of the American Insurance Association, which has pushed for federal oversight for a decade. “We had 20 different states with authority over 72 insurance subsidiaries of AIG just in this country.” The states didn’t work together “until the crisis hit,” she said.

The creation of a federal regulator is supported by some of the country’s largest insurers, including Allstate Corp. and Travelers Cos. Some smaller firms are opposed. The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, a trade group for policyholder-owned companies, said in a statement it had “concerns with some of the language in the draft paper” released by the Treasury to coincide with Obama’s announcement.

How Big a Risk?

“I cannot point to a single insurance company that I believe is systemically risky,” Vaughan said. “We do know that insurance companies can be part of larger institutions that may be systemically risky. So we have to find a way to fit into this structure, and I think it takes a very balanced approach.”

Representative Melissa Bean, an Illinois Democrat, said AIG’s collapse illustrated the problems of insurers with holding companies outside the reach of state overseers. Bean has proposed legislation to create a national regulator that is optional for most insurers and mandatory for companies judged to pose a risk to the broader system.

AIG’s government rescue includes an investment of as much as $70 billion in preferred stock and warrants, $52.5 billion to buy mortgage-linked assets owned or backed by the insurer, and a $60 billion credit line.

Unprecedented, Uncomfortable

“This was an unprecedented level of federal commitment of taxpayer dollars without any oversight or authority, and that makes everyone uncomfortable,” Bean said in an interview. “Without the holding company data and the insights and expertise at a federal level, we can’t anticipate what those systemic risks might be in the industry.”

The insurance proposal is part of Obama’s larger plan to set up an agency that oversees consumer financial products, brings hedge funds and private equity firms under federal supervision for the first time and widens the U.S. Federal Reserve’s power to monitor large firms.

The president’s announcement of the proposal marked the beginning of a congressional process that may alter his plan, with some lawmakers opposing any expansion of the Fed’s power. Obama, who has called the “sweeping overhaul” of regulation one of his domestic priorities, said he wants to sign legislation by year-end.

Bloomberg.com

Pentagon pulls description of protesters as ‘terrorists’

There is something wrong when “protesters” excersising their Constitutional rights are called “low level terrorists”.

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HOMELAND INSECURITY

Pentagon pulls description of protesters as ‘terrorists’

But term apparently used by law enforcement ‘regularly’

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By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

The Department of Defense has withdrawn a training manual question that linked protesters across the United States to terrorism, but there’s evidence coming to light that describing Americans as terror suspects, or “low-level” terror suspects, is routine.

WND reported just days ago that the U.S. Department of Defense had included in a training course a question that defined protesters as terrorists.

According to the letter from the Northern California ACLU, the DoD’s “Annual Level 1 Antiterrorism (AT) Awareness Training for 2009″ tells department personnel “that certain First Amendment-protected activity may amount to ‘low-level terrorism.’”

Specifically the training “Knowledge Check 1″ asks,

“Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorism activity?”

1.   Attacking the Pentagon

2.   IEDs

3.   Hate crimes against racial groups and Protests.

The correct answer in the training course is……. “Protests.”

Now, according to a Fox News report, the Pentagon has withdrawn the question.

A spokesman told the network the question didn’t make it clear what the difference was between violent and illegal actions and peaceful protests, which are protected by the U.S. Constitution.

“They should have made it clearer,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Les Melnyk told Fox. He declined to specify when the line would be crossed from one into the other.

But he said all of the 1,546 people who took the exam and saw the question will be notified of the “error” and told that there is a difference between lawful objections and violent unrest.

The whole episode developed just weeks after a scandal erupted over a Department of Homeland Security report that described as “right-wing extremists” those who oppose abortion and support secure national borders.

The Department of Defense situation was revealed by blogger Dennis Loo at Salon.com.

He cited an ACLU complaint demanding that the DoD change its instructions and those who have been given the training be told of the modifications by “sending out corrective materials.”

Loo reported at the time that the use of the term apparently is routine.

“I have just learned of a scholarly conference paper presented earlier this year that underscores the fact that the DoD training’s use of ‘low-level terrorism’ is hardly an anomaly. ‘Low level terrorism’ is a term regularly being used by state security agencies,” he wrote.

Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, has told WND that as part of his organization’s research for its lawsuit over the DHS “extremism” report, it has discovered additional information that it is withholding now but will include in a pending amended complaint.

Thompson said one of the things that sparked the organization’s curiosity was a reference by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in the original report to not only government resources but also non-governmental resources.

Thompson said the information he has “creates even more concern that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is unconstitutionally targeting Americans merely because of their conservative beliefs.”

On the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based activist group that leans strongly left, there are boasts about the organization’s effort to “train” a number of “local, state and federal law enforcement officers” about terror suspects, “hate crimes” and similar topics.

“We focus on the history, background, leaders and activities of far-right extremists in the U.S.,” the website says. “Training sessions last from two to four hours and are tailored to fit the requesting agency’s requirements.”

The SPLC said it has worked within a “groundbreaking partnership with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) that culminated in new courses on hate and bias crimes. …

“Intelligence Project staff also offer in-person trainings on extremist activity to law enforcement and offer their expertise to educational and other groups,” the SPLC said.

The SPLC also writes of its “Hate Crime Training” work.

“Intelligence Project staff have been involved in the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s hate and bias crime ‘train-the-trainer’ program since its inception in 1992. FLETC trains personnel for more than 75 federal law enforcement agencies and provides services for local, state and international agencies.

WorldnetDaily.com