Judge Napolitano warns: Mobile Prison Guard Towers Coming to a Walmart near You! Unbelievable

These things are purchased with Obama Stimulus funds. Stimulate the economy by turning it into a prison yard? Like I said in the comment to Cashu the other day…we’re going to be sorry one day we allowed  DHS and the TSA to be created.

Bailed-Out GM Gives $10 Million for MLK Monument

As you read this you might also be interested in: General Motors Refuses To Honor Pre-Bankruptcy Warranties In Court Case: Argues Old GM Versus New GM Precludes Responsibility

 

General Motors has been very benevolent since receiving $50 billion of taxpayer funds less than two years ago. GM, the GM Foundation and Chevrolet are donating more than $10 million towards the building of a Martin Luther King, Jr. monument in Washington, DC. Following is a list of just some of GM and GM Foundation recent giveaways.

 

• $40 million for “clean energy projects.”
• $4.5 million for college scholarship programs to benefit students; criteria list includes being female, being a minority or being a military member.
• $27.1 million to United Way for restructuring of Detroit schools.
• $1 million to Haiti earthquake relief.
• $70,000 to the United Negro College Fund
• $2 million to Detroit for community recreation centers near Chevy Volt manufacturing plant.
• $41,000 to groups associated with lawmakers with a $36,000 majority going to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

The GM Foundation is legally separate from the company, but is fully funded by GM. If the GM Foundation has to make philanthropic distributions, there may be better causes, such as assistance to GM bondholders suffering hardship after having their rights sacrificed for the benefit of the United Auto Workers.

Perhaps most controversial is GM’s return to political contributions. There has been much debate on whether or not a corporation that is partly owned by the US Government should be allowed to contribute to political campaigns. In GM’s case, money was donated to both Republicans and Democrats with the majority going to Democratic candidates in last year’s elections.

National Legal and Political Center

General Motors Refuses To Honor Pre-Bankruptcy Warranties In Court Case: Argues Old GM Versus New GM Precludes Responsibility

Unbelievable !!!

General Motors Co (GM.N) is seeking to dismiss a lawsuit over a suspension problem on more than 400,000 Chevrolet Impalas from the 2007 and 2008 model years, saying it should not be responsible for repairs because the flaw predated its bankruptcy.

The lawsuit, filed on June 29 by Donna Trusky of Blakely, Pennsylvania, contended that her Impala suffered from faulty rear spindle rods, causing her

rear tires to wear out after just 6,000 miles. [ID:nN1E7650CT]

Seeking class-action status and alleging breach of warranty, the lawsuit demands that GM fix the rods, saying that it had done so on Impala police vehicles.

But in a recent filing with the U.S. District Court in Detroit, GM noted that the cars were made by its predecessor General Motors Corp, now called Motors Liquidation Co or “Old GM,” before its 2009 bankruptcy and federal bailout.

The current company, called “New GM,” said it did not assume responsibility under the reorganization to fix the Impala problem, but only to make repairs “subject to conditions and limitations” in express written warranties. In essence, the automaker said, Trusky sued the wrong entity.

“New GM’s warranty obligations for vehicles sold by Old GM are limited to the express terms and conditions in the Old GM written warranties on a going-forward basis,” wrote Benjamin Jeffers, a lawyer for GM. “New GM did not assume responsibility for Old GM’s design choices, conduct, or alleged breaches of liability under the warranty.”

David Fink, Trusky’s lawyer, declined to comment.

John Penn, a former president of the American Bankruptcy Institute who is not involved in the case, said the question of “successor liability” is common for manufacturing companies that go through bankruptcy.

International Business Times

Food Prices Hit New All Time Record In February

As we all have to visit the grocery store regularly this is really not a surprise to most of us. I bought $50 worth of groceries at Wal-Mart the other day and it was in two small sacks.

When two months ago, in the first week of January, we observed that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Food Price Index had hit a record we said: “The last time food prices hit ridiculous levels, the immediate outcome was global food riots in places such as Haiti and Bangladesh. Which is why distributors of riot equipment in the world’s poorest countries may be in for a bumper crop as the Food and Agriculture Organization has just announced that world food prices have just surpassed the previous record last seen in 2007-2008.” Little did we know just how prophetic this statement would turn out to be. Well, the FAO has just released its latest food price update and as expected, it is a new all time high. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Food Price Index hit its second straight record last month, further passing peaks seen in 2008 when prices sparked riots in several countries, driven by rising grain costs and tighter supply.” And with oil now joining food, which means that the inflationary vicious spiral is now on, it is only a matter of time before ever more hungry countries join the wave of revolutions, now that Tunisia and Egypt have shown it can be done. On the other hand, our expectation is that the IMF will promptly seek to put out any fires before they become infernos, with the US taxpayer reeling from the double whammy of Bernanke’s inflationary policy consequences: once at home, and once by subsidizing foreigners.

Reuters with an interactive chart of food prices.

And some more from Reuters:

Oil prices recently hit 2-1/2 year highs, nearing records set in 2008, with markets spooked on concern that North African and Middle East unrest would choke key supplies.

Farmers depend on fuel to run agricultural machinery, while dry bulk shippers are heavy oil users, costs which are passed on to food buyers.

Spiraling shipping costs for commodities threaten to drive food inflation even higher as nations from Asia to the Middle East and Africa scramble for supplies, analysts say.

Stockpiling by some major grain importers “beyond country’s normal needs” seeking to head off political unrest and secure supplies on domestic markets, has been adding uncertainty and volatility to the markets, Abbassian said.

“Political instability in the regions and countries affects the markets by adding uncertainty: will a country buy or not buy, why it had bought so much now … those things are disruptive to the normal trade,” he said.

The FAO, which measures monthly price changes for a food basket composed of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, averaged 236 points in February, the record in real and nominal terms, up 2.2 percent from January’s record and rising for the eighth month in a row.

Zero Hedge

James Carville pollster shows Democrats stumbling even further with electorate

Well even some of the Democratic pollsters are seeing the light!

James Carville’s Democracy Corps commissioned a poll at the end of July to test the mood of the electorate, and Brian Faughnan of Liberty Central gleefully discovers that voters are furious at Democrats. Despite the “Recovery Summer” sales pitch by the White House, voters are growing increasingly pessimistic about the economy, and increasingly inclined to deliver a protest vote in November. Brian points to a few of the charts included in the analysis from Citizen Opinion, Carville’s pollster, and this one seems most relevant:

Until Joe Biden started pitching “Recovery Summer,” voters seemed reasonably split on whether to cast votes in protest of the administration’s policies, and may have even closed the gap a bit since the beginning of the year. In June, however, the drop in economic indicators began to be too big to ignore or jolly over with a sales pitch. The extension of bad news on employment also became so obvious that the media mainly stopped pretending to be surprised by it. The poll shows a wide margin of people planning protest votes.

This also goes along with a collapse in support for Democratic leadership on economics:

The most interesting part of this chart is that it shows little bounce for Democrats in March and April, when at least a few of the indicators looked more positive. Also note that Democrats have traditionally outpolled Republicans on the economy over the last couple of decades, and often on deficits as well. This is a big shift in American politics if this trend holds up; a -13 on economics is huge in these midterms especially. It could mean that the GOP has the opportunity to discredit Democrats for a long time to come, assuming that a win in the midterms means muscling the White House into a course correction.

It’s not just Democrats that voters have begun to reject, either. A majority have lost faith in President Hopeandchange, too:

The argument that Obama somehow rescued us from something worse than what we see now has worn very thin indeed. Only 41% buy that argument after eighteen months of Obama’s term of office. A majority in Carville’s poll sees the exploding deficit and the moribund economy as Obama’s fault, and a key cause of our current economic malaise.

These numbers are a disaster for Democrats, and an opportunity for Republicans to show real leadership on deficits, government spending, and economic development. This time around, it’s the GOP taking Carville’s mantra of “It’s the economy, stupid,” and hopefully putting it to good use.

Hot Air

Where Are the Jobs ?

With all the stimulus money we were promised 3.5 million new jobs and instead we’re down 3 million jobs.

more about “Where Are the Jobs ?“, posted with vodpod

 

Cars.gov allows government to takeover dealer’s computer

Cars.gov allows government to takeover dealer’s computer and copy it all.

Have you cut enough for them?

Please feel free to cut and paste this into a letter or email to the white house.  I did, and I think we all should. 

Steve

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Mr. Obama:
I have had it with you and your administration, sir.  Your conduct on your recent trip overseas has convinced me that you are not an adequate representative of the United States of America collectively or of me personally.
You are so obsessed with appeasing the Europeans and the Muslim world that you have abdicated the responsibilities of the President of the United States of America.  You are responsible to the citizens of the United States.  You are not responsible to the peoples of any other country on earth.
I personally resent that you go around the world apologizing for the United States telling Europeans that we are arrogant and do not care about their status in the world.  Sir, what do you think the First World War and the Second World War were all about if not the consideration of the peoples of Europe?  Are you brain dead?  What do you think the Marshall Plan was all about?  Do you not understand or know the history of the 20^thcentury?
Where do you get off telling a Muslim country that the United States does not consider itself a Christian country?  Have you not read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States?  This country was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and the principles governing this country, at least until you came along, come directly from this heritage.  Do you not understand this?
Your bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia is an affront to all Americans.  Our President does not bow down to anyone, let alone the king of Saudi Arabia.  You don’t show Great Britain, our best and one of our oldest allies, the respect they deserve yet you bow down to the king of Saudi Arabia.  How dare you, sir!  How dare you!
You can’t find the time to visit the graves of our greatest generation because you don’t want to offend the Germans but make time to visit a mosque in Turkey.  You offended our dead and every veteran when you give the Germans more respect than the people who saved the German people from themselves.  What’s the matter with you?
I am convinced that you and the members of your administration have the historical and intellectual depth of a mud puddle and should be ashamed of yourselves, all of you.
You are so self-righteously offended by the big bankers and the American automobile manufacturers yet do nothing about the real thieves in this situation, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Frank, Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelic, the Fannie Mae bonuses, and the Freddie Mac bonuses.  What do you intend to do about them?  Anything?  I seriously doubt it. 
What about the U.S. House members passing out $9.1 million in bonuses to their staff members – on top of the $2.5 million in automatic pay raises that lawmakers gave themselves?  I understand the average House aide got a 17% bonus.  I took a 5% cut in my pay to save jobs with my employer.  You haven’t said anything about that.  Who authorized that?  I surely didn’t!
Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be receiving $210 million in bonuses over an eighteen-month period, that’s $45 million more than the AIG bonuses.  In fact, Fannie and Freddie executives have already been awarded $51 million – not a bad take.   Who authorized that and why haven’t you expressed your outrage at this group who are largely responsible for the economic mess we have right now.
I resent that you take me and my fellow citizens as brain-dead and not caring about what you idiots do.  We are watching what you are doing and we are getting increasingly fed up with all of you.  I also want you to know that I personally find just about everything you do and say to be offensive to every one of my sensibilities.  I promise you that I will work tirelessly to see that you do not get a chance to spend two terms destroying my beautiful country. 
Sincerely,
Every real American

9 Facts on the Failure of America

What a great article, I share it proudly with you!

Steve

U.S. GOVERNMENT NOT TOO BIG TO FAILECONOMICS 101 —  (U.S.A. CAN’T SAVE THE WORLD)
The Tampa Tribune Letter to Editor    Published: March 30, 2009

 

   When (oh when!) will the people and government of the United States
learn the basic facts of personal and national economic life?

   Fact One, not everybody in a society, a nation, can be rich.  If there
were no people who needed to work to earn money, no one would make any
products or perform any services.  If we were all rich, we would all be
poor.  Would you want your garbage man or your auto mechanic to be so
wealthy he didn’t need to work?

   Fact Two, pyramid schemes always collapse, and the frantic investing in
real estate and “flipping your way to wealth” of the recent past is simply a
pyramid scheme.

   Fact Three, you can’t painlessly and magically “spend” your way out of a
recession/depression.  You have to work, scrimp, save and earn your way out
of it.

   Fact Four, the current “stimulus” packages are simply the creation of
fake, bogus money unbacked by any real worth or value.  All they will do is
create massive debt and massive inflation that will bankrupt people who live
on fixed incomes, as most retirees do.  Welcome to the economic ghetto, all
you golden-agers who voted for “change”, you’re going to get it!

   Fact Five, the United States has only about four percent of the world’s
population and about four percent of its livable land area.  We cannot
support the rest of the world with foreign aid.  We can’t afford it.  We
can’t save the world singlehandedly; we’re too small.

   Fact Six, not everyone on this planet who is unhappy in their home
country automatically has the right to come live in the U.S. and be
supported by American taxpayers.  We are not being mean-spirited if we
refuse to be guilt-tripped into giving away our country.  If we don’t
control our borders, we are doomed.

   Fact Seven, we cannot be the world’s military policeman.  Again, we just
aren’t big enough.

   Fact Eight, illegal drugs are destroying our nation economically as well
as physically and morally.  We need to find the courage to impose strong,
draconian — even capital — punishment on anyone who passes illegal
substances to another person.

   Fact Nine, we can’t let an ever-growing percentage of our population
live on welfare, live on the work of others.  Except in the case of people
who are totally incapacitated, we have to have the “tough love” to say
“those who don’t work, don’t eat,” and it’s their problem, not “society’s”.

   All of this is simply “Economics 101″ for today’s world.  If we don’t
wake up and learn it quickly, we won’t have a country much longer.  And we
won’t deserve to.

–HUGH WILLIAMSON, Apollo Beach, Florida

It’s called “Common Sense”!  How do you make it more simple?  Read on:

 

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.

 

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little.. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.

 

The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed.

 

Could not be any simpler than that….

 

Scary stuff, that Change thing.

My friend Bill Foster sends this one…enlightening and scary!

Steve

 

Prophesy or deja vu?

By Pat Dollard

I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.

Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten – fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two. We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?

We learn just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money.. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “we the people,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders.   Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago? We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups likeACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government, our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about) – the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x ten. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary
(Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.)

Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again. And that is only the beginning.

And I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory. Conservative “losers” read it right now.

And promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully them into submission. And then, he was duly elected to office, a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe, and across the world.

He did it with a compliant media – did you know that?  And he did this all in the name of justice and .. . . change. And the people surely got what they voted for.   (Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.) Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.

Don’t forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities.. And in less than six years ~ a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency – it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me.

Some people scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe ~ and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am.