Whether she retired or was fired really doesn’t matter. Her take on Israel is not new and everyone she works with knows it. Still calling Israel Palestine, she may as well be the spokesperson for Hamas or correspondent for Al Jazeera.
Hello there my pretty! One thing about Helen that always amazed me. She’s the only famous person I know that could play the wicked witch of the west without much makeup.
This is not a new subject, just an example of what happens when governments fail to learn from their mistakes. It’s what happens when foodstuffs are used in biofuel production.
Families from Pakistan to Argentina to Congo are being battered by surging food prices that are dragging more people into poverty, fueling political tensions and forcing some to give up eating meat, fruit and even tomatoes.
With food costing up to 70 percent of family income in the poorest countries, rising prices are squeezing household budgets and threatening to worsen malnutrition, while inflation stays moderate in the United States and Europe. Compounding the problem in many countries: prices hardly fell from their peaks in 2008, when global food prices jumped in part due to a smaller U.S. wheat harvest and demand for crops to use in biofuels.
But it goes even further than that. In terms of the carbon footprint created in producing biofuels compared to that of fossil fuels, fossil fuels out-green biofuels. So how smart is it to do unnecessary harm to the environment while increasing food prices and hurting the poorer nations around the world?
More of history repeating itself happens when governments refuse to learn how markets operate and what happens to them when the government steps in with taxes and price controls.
Argentina’s government has responded with higher taxes, export limits, controls on supermarket prices of meat, wheat and corn, subsidies to food producers and pay hikes of 30 percent for union workers. The moves have temporarily eased the pain but beef producers have thinned their herds in response to government intervention and the price of meat has doubled in the last year.
“Before, we would eat meat three times a week. Now it’s once, with luck,” said Marta Esposito, a 45-year-old mother of two in Buenos Aires. “Tomatoes, don’t even talk about it. We eat whatever is the cheapest.”
The environmental movement really has to come clean on what their goal is. Is it to help the environment, or is it to handicap the United States?
Link: Surging costs hit food security in poorer nations | Fossil Fuels Out-Green Biofuels | United Nations Warns Of Food Fight
Border divides Obama, Arizona Governor. That was the headline of a front page story in the dead tree version of today’s Pensacola News Journal. After having hosted Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon in Washington, where both presidents gave the collective ‘bird’ to the American people at a special joint session of congress over Arizona’s illegal immigration enforcement law, it is apparent that my president, in his heart, is on the wrong side of the border.
There is an obvious symbiosis on the issue of illegal immigration where these two are concerned.
For Calderon, the billions of dollars in remittances that Mexicans (not Americans, Mexicans) send back to Mexico helps to keep his sorry country from total collapse. Calderon refuses to utter the word ‘illegal’ when it comes to his citizens crashing the border. He uses a word associated with animals, migration. He says his people are migrating into this country. Some would describe it as invading. You know, to go with the lower life form reference of Calderon, kind of like termites or locusts invade. With similar results. Destroying all State economies in its path.
For Obama, illegals are a political tool. Otherwise known as undocumented Democrats. This commander in chief is more concerned with protecting and defending political power than the sovereignty, safety, and security of the United States of America. In his world, Gov. Brewer should just sit down and shut up. And from what I’ve seen of Gov. Brewer, that’s not going to happen.
The media and the Left have a political angle on it all as well. They try to intimidate republicans by suggesting that trying to enforce the law regarding illegal immigration will lose the Hispanic vote forever. In other words, looking at demographics, they believe that would make the Republican party a minority party forever. When your political opponent, and that’s what these parties are nowadays, is digging himself into a hole, you stand back and let them. Or give them a bigger shovel. When it comes to America remaining American, who is it that is digging themselves into a hole? Democrats or Republicans?
Ann Coulter has opined on the notion that enforcing the law is tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot. Making the point as only Ann can . . .
The media have been crowing that Republicans will lose the Hispanic vote forever if they support enforcing laws against illegal immigration, such as the Arizona law. To great fanfare, a poll was released last week showing that 67 percent of Hispanics oppose the Arizona law.
The headline on that poll should have been: “One-Third of Hispanics Support Arizona Immigration Law Despite Frantic Media Campaign to Convince Them It’s a Racist Plot Against Hispanics.”
Incidentally, 67 percent of Hispanics also vote Democrat. The exact same percentage of Hispanics who oppose the Arizona law voted for Obama over John McCain — who was championing amnesty for illegals.
Suck up to Hispanics with insane amnesty proposals; get one out of three Hispanic voters. Do the right thing and defend the country’s borders; get one out of three Hispanic voters. … Promise to make every Tuesday “Ladies’ Night”; get one out of three Hispanic voters. Offer them a choice between “Extra Crispy” and “Original Recipe”; get one out of three Hispanic voters.
Now maybe we can concentrate on securing not only Mexico’s border, but more importantly, our border.
Links: Facing off over illegal immigration, Arizona Gov | Did you plug the hole with a blue dress yet, Daddy?
Every year about this time, big-government liberals stand up in front of college commencement crowds across the country and urge the graduates to do the noblest thing possible— become big-government liberals.
That isn’t how they phrase it, of course. Commencement speakers express great reverence for “public service,” as distinguished from narrow private “greed.” There is usually not the slightest sign of embarrassment at this self-serving celebration of the kinds of careers they have chosen— over and above the careers of others who merely provide us with the food we eat, the homes we live in, the clothes we wear and the medical care that saves our health and our lives.
What I would like to see is someone with the guts to tell those students: Do you want to be of some use and service to your fellow human beings? Then let your fellow human beings tell you what they want— not with words, but by putting their money where their mouth is.
You want to see more people have better housing? Build it! Become a builder or developer— if you can stand the sneers and disdain of your classmates and professors who regard the very words as repulsive.
Would you like to see more things become more affordable to more people? Then figure out more efficient ways of producing things or more efficient ways of getting those things from the producers to the consumers at a lower cost.
That’s what a man named Sam Walton did when he created Wal-Mart, a boon to people with modest incomes and a bane to the elite intelligentsia. In the process, Sam Walton became rich. Was that the “greed” that you have heard your classmates and professors denounce so smugly? If so, it has been such “greed” that has repeatedly brought prices down and thereby brought the American standard of living up.
Back at the beginning of the 20th century, only 15 percent of American families had a flush toilet. Not quite one-fourth had running water.
Only three percent had electricity and one percent had central heating. Only one American family in a hundred owned an automobile.
By 1970, the vast majority of those American families who were living in poverty had flush toilets, running water and electricity. By the end of the twentieth century, more Americans were connected to the Internet than were connected to a water pipe or a sewage line at the beginning of the century.
More families have air-conditioning today than had electricity then. Today, more than half of all families with incomes below the official poverty line own a car or truck and have a microwave.
This didn’t come about because of the politicians, bureaucrats, activists or others in “public service” that you are supposed to admire. No nation ever protested its way from poverty to prosperity or got there through rhetoric or bureaucracies.
It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration. It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader.
Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing “compassion” for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about.
The wonderful places where you are supposed to go to do “public service” are as sheltered from the brutal test of reality as you have been on this campus for the last four— or is it six?— years. In these little cocoons, all that matters is how well you talk the talk. People who go into the marketplace have to walk the walk.
Colleges can teach many valuable skills, but they can also nourish many dangerous illusions. If you really want to be of service to others, then let them decide what is a service by whether they choose to spend their hard-earned money for it.
The above was lifted from Thomas Sowell’s site at Creators.com, and is entitled The Real Public Service.
To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
Link: The Real Public Service
The ‘rush to judgment’ that the United Nations has made, portraying Israel as the bad guy by enforcing the blockade is stunning. Equally as stunning is the lack of support for Israel from Washington over this incident. Or the sinking of a S. Korean Navy vessel, or Iran’s nuclear bomb ambitions, or . . .
For those in the media whose memory seems to be as short as the combined length of the beards of binLaden’s wives, Hamas is at war with Israel. Hamas has been found to re-arm itself in shipments of humanitarian aid. The reason for the blockade is to insure that only humanitarian aid goes to Gaza. Israel is all for them getting the humanitarian aid they need and seeing to it that they get it. Especially since they know, as does the administration and the UN, that Hamas controls and runs Gaza and use aid as a weapon against their own people.
This ‘Freedom Flotilla’ was not about delivering aid. It was about starting a PR campaign to make Israel the bad guy. Terrorists were on board. The ship was under the Turkish flag. The ship refused to stop to be inspected, thereby provoking what took place afterward. That was the plan and Turkey knew it. People delivering humanitarian aid don’t arm themselves with clubs, knives, and guns to use against the Israeli soldiers there to insure that only aide is delivered. And the don’t have camera crews from Al Jazeera on board.
The Free Gaza Movement announced its intention to breach Israel’s barricade of Gaza – requiring it to violate Israel’s territorial waters.
The rubber is hitting the road Mr. President. A leadership moment is needed. Recall our Ambassador to Turkey in protest. And get off the anti-Israel bandwagon in the useless United Nations. Use your bully pulpit to call a spade a spade.
It’s not that oil from the BP rig has snuck up on us or anything. It’s been out there growing for over a month.
Locals here (Pensacola, FL) are expecting the oil to reach our shores by the weekend.
Which brings up the question, when do we protect our shores? Before or after the oil gets here? Exactly what is the emergency action plan again?
He said many times over the last few weeks, that the buck stops with him regarding the mitigation of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak and protecting our shores and wetlands from oil contamination.
So while we hear the administration pumping its chest about fixing this problem and how responsible it is and how it was on top of this situation ‘from day 1,’ this news seems to put his whole case for their leadership and experience in oil industry regulation right in the toilet.
Three months before the massive BP oil spill erupted in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration proposed downsizing the Coast Guard national coordination center for oil spill responses, prompting its senior officers to warn that the agency’s readiness for catastrophic events would be weakened.
Have you heard that on pMSNBC? Apparently it snuck by editors at the Washington Post.
Accidents happen, “but what you’re seeing here is the government is not properly set up to deal with this kind of issue,” said Robbin Laird, a defense consultant who has worked on Coast Guard issues.
And this . . .
President Obama’s $10.1 billion spending plan for the Coast Guard would scale back funding and active-duty personnel by 3 percent. As part of a proposal to cut 1,100 military personnel, it would decommission the National Strike Force Coordination Center in Elizabeth City, N.C., and reorganize parts of it elsewhere.
The center serves as the national command for the Coast Guard activity responsible for sending technical experts and specialized equipment such as pumps and chemical dispersant monitors to support on-scene commanders.
Are we feeling confident that this administration knows how to protect us? Is Obama’s lack of executive experience beginning to show yet?
WaPo Link: Obama plans to cut Coast Guard personnel
A complete list with profiles of the 32 black Republicans who are running for office as of April 2010 was complied by the Frederick Douglas Foundation.
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
– Frederick Douglass –
From their website . . .
We have decided to be proactive and acknowledge the overwhelming number of Black Republicans running for office in 2010 and we need your help.
If you are or know of an individual running for public office in 2010 at the county, state or federal levels, we are asking you to complete the form below.
Once a week, we will update and post the latest listing of candidates and their contact information.
Let everyone in your district and the country know you are a candidate so they can support your efforts.
H/T to the National Black Republican Association.
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Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), who really did serve in Vietnam, demonstrates in just 9 seconds why he is unfit for anything remotely associated with our national defense and that of our allies.
President Obama said that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and subsequent leak is the greatest disaster this country has ever experienced. Well, aside from his being elected president of the United States.
And since he won’t be attending the Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetary, be sure to say a prayer for those who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve and protect us and our way of life. Regardless of how little the Commander in Chief thinks of us and it.
Presenting my favorite rock-n-blues guitarist Joe Bomamassa. Arguably the best in the business. Right up there with Jimmy Hendrix, Steve Ray Vaughn, and Eric Clapton.
Performing If Heartaches Were Nickles, written by Warren Haynes, guitar player, singer, songwriter. Warren Haynes tours with the Allman Brothers Band in place of the late Duane Allman. He also is the leader of his own band Government Mule. Enjoy!
Lyrics here.
In this day and age where things are happening that no one could have imagined happening just a few short years ago, do you think your IRA and 401(k) plan will always be yours? Do you believe that your children will be able to collect their Social Security?
Let me put it this way. The Department of Labor and the Treasury Department are exploring the idea of using your retirement accounts and to replace them with yet another version of a Social Security-like retirement program, or ‘revenue stream’ as it is referred to.
Some food for thought:
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it.”
Frederic Bastiat
Right now, they’re toying with the idea. But from here, it looks like the compass they’re following.
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