Massive Tax Hikes & New Taxes On The Way, America!

Massive Tax Hikes & New Taxes On The Way, America!

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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Oh, please tell me you did not buy the lies out of Washington that the government is going to tax the rich to pay for Socialized Medicine otherwise known as ObamaCare? Surely you didn't fall for that!

Heck, I seriously doubt there are enough rich people in the US to make a dent in what that Communist program called ObamaCare is going to cost the citizens of the US.

If I were among the rich of this country, I'd be staying up nights transferring my assets off shore and getting myself, my family, my business, and, anything the government could tax, out of their reach. What the current government of the US is doing to the wealthy Americans is flat out wrong. It is thievery by another name... taxes.

Americans are so ignorant of their history that it is inexcusable -- no worse! It is embarrassing! . Americans have forgotten this country fought a war for independence over, what else, TAXES! This country was founded as a result of a TAX REVOLT! What the current federal government is doing to the citizens of the US makes King George look like a shirker!

I hope those of you who voted for Obama are happy. You wanted change. Well, you got it. From a democracy to a socialist nation in less than a year. Hope? What hope? We are screwed for at least three more years. The bunch of clowns and fruitcakes running the Congress are pathetic socialists/communists/democrats lusting after power and nothing else.

Guess what they are about to do? No I don't mean Amnesty for the Illegal Aliens living among us... although that is certainly coming. I mean the load of taxes they are about to slap on the middle class of this country.

Do you know what a VAT tax is? Huh? It is a Value added Tax. Sometimes referred to as a "sales tax".

In an Article entitled: "Damn the Deficit: Full Speed Ahead on Health Care", Michael Barone said the following:

"The instrument they may have in mind is the value added tax, which operates as an invisible sales tax on goods and services. Back in May, Budget Director Peter Orszag's spokesman mentioned the VAT as a "credible idea" that he did not want to rule out. In June, House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel suggested a VAT as "a point of discussion."

In September, John Podesta, head of the Obama transition team, spoke of how a VAT would "create a balance" with other economies, and White House adviser Paul Volcker cited a carbon tax and a VAT as ways to raise lots of revenue. In October, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "Somewhere along the way, a value-added tax plays into this." " You may read the entire article at:
SOURCE

A Value Added Tax is a tax on the estimated market value added to a product or material at each stage of its manufacture or distribution, ultimately passed on to the consumer. Please read that last phrase again. "Passed on to the consumer." Socialists/communists/progressives/democrats do no understand that businesses do not pay taxes. The government actually THINKS THEY DO! Those of us who have actually run businesses understand that a business passes the cost of taxes along to his customers in higher prices for the goods and/or services his business produces or offers.

The attraction of a VAT tax to our government is twofold. One: It will raise a lot of money for them to squander. Two: it is a hidden tax -- hidden from you, the consumer, the sucker. Prices on goods and services will sky rocket while, at the same time, sales of those products will fall through the floor. Soon afterwards business will begin shuttering plants and offices and the unemployment figures will spike upwards even more than then the real figures, I am convinced the government is not releasing. (10.2%? Come on, now. Figure closer to 13% maybe even higher.)

Taxes, taxes, and even more taxes are coming to the American middle class. If the ObamaCare bill passes, you are not going to believe how much that "free" healthcare is going to cost you! Some of us, like myself, with chronic diseases will pay for it with our lives.

We can stop some of the coming taxes by stopping ObamaCare in the Senate in the next few days.

Contact your Senators and your Representative, ASAP, and tell them, in no uncertain terms, that you want them to vote against ObamaCare and any, and all, new taxes. We have to cut off the money and starve this government into submission.

And be prepared, America. Our economic situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. When inflation sets in, sometime around mid-year 2010, your money and mine with be worth a whole lot less than it is today.

But, hey! America wanted "CHANGE!" Well, what do you think of the change now???

J. D. Longstreet

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The Gross National Debt:

Let the Great Global Warming Cover-Up Begin! ... by Alan Caruba

Let the Great Global Warming Cover-Up Begin!
By Alan Caruba
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Now that some enterprising and possibly conscience-stricken soul has served up the emails and other data of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, revealing the deliberate efforts to hide the corrupted research that justifies the “global warming” fraud, all the various journalists and alleged climate scientists who have been a party to it are trying desperately to cover up or minimize the scandal.

Others like the U.S. “Climate Czar” Carol Browner have announced their faith in the disputed data, but Browner, who served as EPA Director in the Clinton administration has never shown any interest in honest science and is not likely to have left a paper trail in her present position. No word yet from Obama’s loony “Science Czar”, John Holdren.

The truth is, those closely allied with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been suppressing the real science, substituting their own corrupted data, and trying to avoid the process of “peer review” by which other scientists, the real ones, can test the data for accuracy and validity.

Thousands of real scientists have signed petitions over the years demanding that global warming claims be submitted to rigorous examination.

The Heartland Institute, a non-profit, free market think tank, spent—-for them-—an enormous amount of money to put on international conferences that brought together top scientists who demonstrated how utterly false the IPCC, CRU and other data was, but the mainstream media simply mocked their effort.

Initially, the culprits at the CRU claimed that their computers had been “hacked”, but many others believe that the data and emails had already been culled by CRU insides for the purpose of removing it from any impending investigation.

In England, its Freedom of Information Act, similar to that in the U.S., had been used to demand the data supporting the global warming theory which, at one point, Phil Jones, the CRU director, claimed had been “lost.” Reportedly, Jones has attracted more than $22 million in grants to the CRU for climate research!

His colleague, Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, became famous for concocting a “hockey stick” graph that depicted a sudden rise in the Earth’s temperature that was later revealed to have been falsified, but these concoctions have been used for decades by the IPCC to claim that global warming is real and on-going.

The prevailing belief now is that the emails and data were already on a disk that a conscience-stricken CRU staffer decided to make available on the Internet for all to see and examine before it too became “lost.”

You can be sure, however, that the global warming journalists whose careers have been based on furthering the fraud will continue to emphasize the “hacking” theory to suggest this “stolen” data lacks merit and those using it, the so-called “skeptics” and “deniers” are still not to be trusted.

In the U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) who has been the lone voice in the Senate debunking “global warming” has called for an investigation. Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, has already filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies that, for three years, has refused to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

In the United States, James E. Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute, got the “global warming” hysteria going in the 1980s when he testified before Congress that his research revealed an incipient catastrophe if the U.S. did not significantly reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that he said were causing “global warming.” The result was that NASA has averaged more than $1 billion each year since 1995 for climate research.

Estimates of the amount of money the U.S. has spent on all manner of “research” and related programs peg the figure at $50 billion or more. That’s a lot of money for something that was NOT happening and in 1998 the Earth entered a natural cooling cycle; one in which we’re likely be for two decades more or longer.

All of this is exacerbated by the fact that the President of the United States will briefly attend the forthcoming December UN Conference of the Parties on Climate Change being held in Copenhagen. He has made it clear that he believes the false data put forth by the IPCC and wants the U.S. to sign a treaty that would yield U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations.

President Obama has repeatedly said the United States has to reduce its CO2 emissions, the mantra of the global warming liars. It would destroy what's left of our battered, debt-ridden economy.

So a major cover-up will be the objective of the U.S. news media that has pushed “global warming” for years with one scare story after another aimed at energy producers and users.

The battle now is to force the mainstream media to tell the truth about “global warming” and to find out just how many billions of taxpayers dollars have been squandered on junk climate science and policies detrimental to the nation.

As for President Obama, he should just pick up his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, give another florid speech, get on Air Force One, and come home.

Alan Caruba

The Gross National Debt:

An Alarmist Modeler’s History of Climate Change ... by Paul Driessen

An Alarmist Modeler’s History of Climate Change

Climate changes and their causes through the ages, as explained by Gore and modelers
By Paul Driessen
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Behind the persistent global warming scare is the hypothesis and assertion that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are causing Earth to warm dangerously. The thesis is espoused most prominently by Al Gore, James Hansen, modelers and other alarmists. It is the fundamental assumption behind the computer models that consistently conjure up headline-grabbing climate change disaster scenarios.
A basic principle of geology and other sciences is that the same natural processes we observe today – erosion, plant growth, species evolution and so on – occurred in a similar manner throughout Earth’s history. Therefore, if carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing global warming today, they must have done so in the past, and certainly in the recent historic past.

The challenge, then, is to discover the sources of that CO2 climate villain throughout history. This brief summary of key events is intended to aid in that quest, and explain how the Gore-Hansen thesis worked through the ages.

Sea levels have risen 400 feet since the last Ice Age ended, melting mile-thick Pleistocene glaciers, drowning land bridges and creating new coral reefs. The repeated glacial and interglacial epochs were caused by rising and falling levels of mammoth flatulence and emissions from cave man fires, the only sources of substantial greenhouse gases (GHG) at the time.

In northern Africa, green river valleys were once home to contented hippopotami and happy human villagers. Then, 4,000 years ago, the region metamorphosed into the Sahara Desert, as Egyptian slaves cooked over open fires and breathed heavily, while building pyramids for pharaohs.

Earth warmed further during the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, as fires from constant warfare and sacked cities dramatically increased GHG. The burning of English and Irish villages by Viking raiders raised global temperatures even further, enabling Eric the Red to colonize Greenland. As the Vikings swapped raiding for farming, however, atmospheric CO2 levels declined, and the Little Ice Age set in.

For centuries, peaceable Anasazi Indians built cliff dwellings and farmed the land in Arizona and New Mexico. But then other tribes began setting forest fires to create farmland, and lightning started prairie fires. GHG levels rose, causing a prolonged drought that finally made life unbearable for the Anasazi, who abandoned their magnificent stone villages on the Colorado Plateau.

In more recent times, American families tamed and farmed the Great Plains. But then the automobile, airplane and World War I drove CO2 and GHG previously unheard of levels. The resultant Dust Bowl devastated the region, forcing millions to leave their homesteads.

Fortunately, World War II intervened, and even higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, dust, and particulates from burning oil and cities ended the warming and droughts, and ushered in a new era of global cooling. It was marked by snows and freezing cold at Stalingrad and the Battle of the Bulge, and later by the “new Little Ice Age” scare headlined by Newsweek in 1975.

As GHG levels continued to “soar,” all the way from 0.0280% of Earth’s atmosphere to 0.0350% (250-350 ppm), global cooling gave way to a new bout with global warming. Finally, as CO2 and GHG climbed even higher (all the way to 0.0380% of the atmosphere, equivalent to 38 cents out of $1000), planetary temperatures mysteriously stabilized around 1998 and then began to decline slightly. The world entered the age of “climate change,” or more accurately “manmade catastrophic climate change,” in which every weather anomaly is blamed on emissions from human use of hydrocarbons.

This brief recounting of human history is admittedly incomplete, and fails to address events in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. However, historians can certainly fill in those gaps.

Alternatively, scientists, journalists, academics, modelers and politicians could begin to examine the climate change issue from a more scientific, less ideological perspective. They could worry less about perpetuating or expanding the one-track $89-billion (1989-2009) gravy train of federal government grants for breathless studies of how “manmade climate change” causes frightening increases in everything from house cats and hurricanes to malaria, rainfall, droughts and suicides. (An online search under “everything is caused by global warming,” will locate a complete list.)

Gore, Hansen, Stephen Schneider, and Senators Boxer and Kerry could actually engage in a few debates about global warming/catastrophic climate change science and economics.

They might be surprised to learn that climate change has actually brought benefits to mankind and planet Earth, including a greening of the Sahara Desert over the last twenty years, due to increased rainfall and CO2 levels. Even trees and animals are coming back (four millennia after Egyptian slaves turned a once-verdant region into Earth’s largest desert).

They might be stunned to find that ice core and other data demonstrate that temperatures warmed first during past climate changes, and then atmospheric CO2 levels increased, as warming ocean waters released some of the carbon dioxide that they sequestered during colder periods.

They might be amazed to discover that our ancestors, who were even more dependent on agriculture than we are – and even less technologically advanced – somehow managed to cope with climate change. They adapted! As James Burke, Brian Fagan and other historians have noted, they responded to the Little Ice Age by modifying their houses, heating systems, clothing and farming practices. (Optimists might suppose that our far more advanced technologies will make us even better able to adapt to whatever climate changes nature, or man, might visit upon us in the future.)

Alarmists might be shocked to think the causes of past climate changes were the same natural forces and influences that drive changes in Earth’s complex, chaotic, unpredictable weather and climate today: continental movements and volcanoes, and periodic shifts in water vapor and cloud cover, evaporation and precipitation, ocean currents and jet streams, planetary alignments and the shape of the Earth’s orbit, the tilt and wobble of Earth’s axis, solar energy output, and cosmic rays hitting the planet.

Meanwhile, hard-pressed consumers and taxpayers might finally figure out that the fear-mongering over global warming has little to do with scientific “evidence” to back up the speculation, assumptions and assertions that mankind faces a climate cataclysm. (Models are not evidence.) It has everything to do with money, prestige, careers, power and control over energy use and economic opportunity – and an abiding distaste for hydrocarbons, personal freedom, modern living standards, and real environmental justice.

But don’t hold your breath for a debate. Climate alarmists are scared to death to debate. They prefer to dismiss and intimidate climate realists, assert “consensus,” and assiduously ignore both Earth’s history of natural climate change and the 31,000 “Oregon Petition” natural scientists who vigorously contest their claims of manmade Climate Armageddon.
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Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which is sponsoring the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype. He also is a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death.

The Gross National Debt:

My "Interview" with Al Gore ... by Alan Caruba

My "Interview" with Al Gore

By Alan Caruba

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The mainstream media have been trying to find Al Gore in order to interview him about the revelations that the research data supporting “global warming” was cooked—pardon the pun.

Here is my exclusive "interview" with him. You will find the source of his quotes at the end of this Q & A.

Q: Is it true that you lost your bid to become president because of the media?

A: I don’t want to leave the impression that the media’s unwillingness to focus on the global environment was the only reason why the issue failed to ignite serious debate during the campaign.

Q: A lot of people thought you have made too much about an environmental crisis. What do you say to them?

A: For me, the environmental crisis is the critical case in point: now, every time I pause to consider whether I have gone too far out on a limb, I look at the new facts that continue to pour in from around the world and conclude that I have not gone nearly far enough.

Q: Do you still maintain that human beings are causing global warming by burning fossil fuels, driving automobiles, and such?

A: One doesn’t have to travel around the world to witness humankind’s assault on the earth. Human civilization is now the dominant cause of change in the global environment. Humankind is now changing the climate of the entire globe to a degree far greater—and faster—than anything that has occurred in human history.

Q: So, despite the fact that it’s been revealed that scientists in England, America and elsewhere; those affiliated with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, were falsifying their data, do you still believe in global warming?

A: The theory of global warming will not be disproved, and the skeptics are vastly outnumbered by former skeptics who now accept the overwhelming weight of accumulated evidence.

Q: So you’re still convinced, eh?

A: Siberia is one of the regions of the world that seems to be warming most rapidly.Q: It’s that bad, eh? What role does capitalism play in all this?

A: The partial blindness of our current economic system is the single most powerful force behind what seem to be irrational decisions about the global environment. Modern industrial civilization, as presently organized, is colliding violently with our planet’s ecological system.

Q: That sounds serious, Al. What can we do?

A: The United Nations might consider the idea of establishing a Stewardship Council to deal with matters relating to the global environment.

Q: But, Al, aren’t the Kyoto Protocols based on the data provided by the United Nations Environmental Program and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? If the IPCC has been using phony scientific data all these years, maybe it isn’t a good idea to turn the environment of the Earth over to the UN. Well, let me finish up by asking how you feel about automobiles?

A: We now know that their cumulative impact on the global environment is posing a mortal threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than that of any military enemy we are ever again likely to confront.

Q: Really? What do you propose we do about automobiles?

A: It ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five year period.

Q: So capitalism is bad. Automobiles are bad. And human civilization is bad. No disrespect Al, but you sound loonier than a spotted owl.

All the quotes attributed to Al Gore were taken directly from his book, “Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit”, published in 1992. The Earth is in a new, natural cooling cycle that began in 1998.

So far, Al Gore, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for his documentary, has not been available for interviews.

Alan Caruba

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The Gross National Debt:

Copenhagen Treaty/Global Warming/Global Governance

Due to the critical nature of the topic -- Global Warming/Global Governance -- we have elected to publish this article again less than two weeks before the President flies to Copenhagen where he is expected to sign the Copenhagen Treaty. In our opinion, the Copenhagen Treaty will set the world on the path to a One World Government subjugating the US Constitution -- and -- US Law to a Global Government. These are extremely dangerous times and we Americans must be vigilante to safeguard our freedom, for nothing less is at stake in Copenhagen. ...

J. D. Longstreet

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Copenhagen Treaty to Create a One-World Government?

Will US Cede its Sovereignty to a Global Government?
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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Lord Christopher Monckton, the former science adviser to Margaret Thatcher, warned Americans "in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever."Lord Monckton was speaking about the Copenhagen Treaty on Climate Change.While speaking at the Minnesota Freemarket Institute Conference recently, Lord Monckton said the following:

“At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.

I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.

How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.” You may read the entire article here: SOURCE.

Watch Lord Monckton’s Speech on Video

We live in exceedingly dangerous times for freedom and democracy. As our socialist President prepares to fly off to Copenhagen and sign the Copenhagen Treaty, we freedom loving Americans need to be lobbying the US Senate insisting they not ratify the Copenhagen Treaty. Remember, if they do, it will supercede US law. The 2nd clause of Article VI of the US Constitution reads thusly:

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

In Reid v. Covert the Supreme Court in 1957 said: “There is nothing new or unique about what we say here. This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty.” But THAT was in 1957! Do you REALLY want to risk the US Constitution before the current Supreme Court?? Do you, as a freedom loving American, want to be ruled by a non-elected Global Government?

This is serious stuff.

There is no doubt Obama will sign that treaty.

Now, here is what is so frightening about all this: Obama could choose to approach the treaty as an executive agreement type of treaty in which case ratification by the Senate would not be required. The instant Obama places his signature on the document it is a done deal. On the other hand, he could ask for the advice and consent of the Senate. He will be asking the Senate to ratify it by a two-thirds vote. Somehow, I do not see Obama asking for advice and consent from the US Senate on a treaty he surely knows has little chance of obtaining the two-thirds approval of that body. If Obama DOES ask for ratification by the Senate we have a chance to save our country. If he doesn’t – The United States of America could become the serf of some nameless, faceless, non-elected Global Government. It is as simple – and -- as deadly as THAT!

J. D. Longstreet
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Obama+Copenhagen-Treaty+GlobaGovernment+Socialist+Communist

The Gross National Debt:

Giving Thanks ... by J. D. Longstreet

Giving Thanks.

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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The "War on Thanksgiving" never seems to end.

In the spirit of full disclosure allow me to set the record straight: I am part Native American -- as are so many, many, Americans. BOTH my grandmothers were, at the very least, half American Indian... either Eastern Cherokee or Catawba. I suspect Catawba. As a youngster it was not uncommon to have the chief of the local tribe visiting at my grandparent's home. The reservation was just a short distance from my childhood home. A 15 minute drive would put one on reservation soil.

The point is, I did not grow up in an atmosphere in which the American Indian was seen as having been robbed of his land or his country. They were our neighbors and many were our relatives, making them family.

Now that you know the above, you will understand why I do not buy into the bovine scatology the lefties have been selling our kids for the past, oh, nearly two generations.

Yes, the American Indian has been screwed by the US government. That cannot be denied. On the other hand, so have you and I! Promises were made and never kept. Treaties were made -- and broken -- seemingly before the ink was dry on the paper. So, yes, the American Indian got a raw deal from the US government.

Nothing much has changed. Today as the Democrats in Congress ram through a National Healthcare bill they are making copious promises that will never be kept -- and --what is worse, they KNOW they won't be kept because they have no intention of keeping them. It is an attempt to fool just enough people, just long enough, to get the bill passed through Congress and signed into law by the President. So, if you think you have been screwed by the US government please take a number and/or get in line.

Thanksgiving is a time for solemn reflection on the blessings we DID receive. Yes, Obama is probably the worst president in the history of the United States, but it could have been worse. Mrs. Clinton could have easily won and we'd have Bill back in the White House again along with all the embarrassment(s) that follows along after him. So, I will not thank God that Obama won, I will, however, thank God that Mrs. Clinton did not!

Even in the midst of the recession America has so much for which to be thankful. The President's Afghanistan policy, unfortunately, is NOT one of them. Obama is to announce his plans for our military in Afghanistan early next week. Already reports are (I believe some are "trial balloons.") slipping out that the President's Afghanistan plan is a "minefield" for the administration. (As if the Administration even knows what a "minefield" is!) Until you have had your nose 18 inches, or so, from a mine while you delicately dig it from the soil with your bayonet, while trying, unsuccessfully, to keep the trembling in your hands to a minimum, you really are not qualified to refer to a piece of presidential policy as a "minefield." Whatever the President decides, I expect it will lead to a lot of things in Afghanistan, but victory will not be among them. Face it, America. We have won our last war. However, I WILL thank God, this Thanksgiving, that our troops have not been over run, by Taliban forces, while the President dithers around trying to formulate an Afghanistan policy that will make him look good in the eyes of the world.

I will thank God that His people, in Israel, are still standing tall against those nations that would wipe them off the map. I will pray, as well, that the Israelis know that our President's policy toward Israel does not reflect the feelings of the American people toward our only true friend in the Middle East.

And, finally, I will give thanks that we STILL retain the freedom to assemble and petition the government for redress. And -- I will, most earnestly, pray that the American people find their spine and begin to speak out against the godless socialist/communist leanings of our current government and commit themselves to the effort to return this nation to the constitutional representative republic intended by the Founding Fathers.

And allow me to close with this: I don't CARE who attended the first Thanksgiving and I care even less about who brought what to that first Thanksgiving table. I am just happy that representatives of both the races represented in my DNA were seated there in peace.

Happy Thanksgiving!

J. D. Longstreet

The Gross National Debt:

The BIG Lie! by J. D. Longstreet

The BIG Lie!

The Lie That May Save America!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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Yes, I DO feel vindicated today. As one of the "deniers" of Global Warming or the other name they call it "Climate Change", the events of the past few days have proven what we deniers have known all along -- and that is -- that Global Warming is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind.

We warned all who would listen that the global warming movement was not about saving the earth. It is about power and about one world governance. It is about drawing all nations together to be ruled by a single government, the UN. (No matter that trying to rule all of mankind under a single government is a pipe dream, the megalomaniacs at the top of the global warming triangle or paradigm were/are set on grasping all the power over you and me, the people of earth, as they possibly can.)

Now, I don't know how the press in your neck of the American woods is treating this story -- but the regional paper in my neck of the Tar Heel woods is totally ignoring the story. They have egg splattered all over their face and they are trying to find some way, anyway, to save what little of the aforementioned face they can. It is utterly ridiculous! But there you have it. This is what happens when the "lefties" get caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

I'm no "seer" or clairvoyant, or anything like that, but, I would bet, if I were a betting man, that they are going to try to salvage this thing -- somehow. They have to. The US government (now under the management of socialists) along with the office of the President (also under socialist management) plus the entire west wing of the Executive Office Building, absolutely must do something to salvage whatever they can.

The socialists in the American government today are totalitarians. They believe they, and they alone, must have total power over you. And they do not think you are very smart, at all. They think they are they brightest of the bright and they have something akin to a "Divine Right" to rule over you. That is, if they actually believed in a divinity! They call themselves "Progressives" For those of you who have not lived as long as I have, back in my youth "Progressive" was the label used to denote members of the Communist Party. I declare to you now, nothing, much, has actually changed. If you compare the actions of the members of our current government to the actions called for by the communist world's leaders, you will quickly see that "OUR PROGRESSIVES" may still call themselves Progressives but in reality, they are communists. We have tried to be charitable here by using the less harsh term of "socialist." Maybe we should consider just letting it all hang out and begin the use of the "C" word to describe the folks now in charge of the US Government and be done with it.

I did not mean to get too far afield of our commentary about the hoax that is global warming. But I think you can see how important it is to understand how they all fit together.

The US President is flying to Copenhagen to, most likely, sign the Copenhagen Treaty on, or about, December 7th. It is a fraud. And THAT is being kind. When one inspects the document one will see that it's terms create yet another government for the purpose of subjugating all nations on earth. THAT is the One World Government we have warned about for so long on this site -- and -- which many other conservatives have warned about, as well. THIS is serious stuff! We Americans can only hope and pray that if the US Senate gets a chance to Advise and Consent on the Copenhagen Treaty for Obama, they will refuse to ratify it and toss it into the trash bin where it belongs.

What of the Cap and Trade bill set to be passed by the US Senate anytime now. It, too, is based on a fraud and all the bovine scatology included within it makes it a lie. It is not only a fraud, it will be one of the largest taxes levied on the people of the US in the history of the country! It, too, is all about power.

May we be so bold as to suggest that you write your Senator and remind him/her of the now open hoax that is Global Warming and that the Cap and Trade Bill is based on that fraudulent information and must be killed right where it is and never allowed to see the light of day. Then remind them, often, with repeated phone calls, and e-mails, and faxes, and yes, even telegrams. This is our freedom we are fighting for! It is our country we are fighting for! This is no time to be "weak kneed."

My friend, Alan Caruba, has more thoughts on this subject and we'd like to point you in his direction. Please read his article entitled: "Global Warming Fraud: Somebody Needs to Go to Jail." You will find it at his site "Facts not Fantasy" HERE.

Or, just scroll down to the very next post below this one.

America is in deep trouble, dear reader. Our very survival, as a single nation of 50 states, is at stake. We must neutralize the socialists who currently have a strangle hold on our government.

Reports of a possible second recession making this a "double-dip recession" are becoming more prominent now. Rumors of yet another stimulus package, being prepared by the congress for early next year, are floating around the Internet. We know that inflation is about to strike around mid-year. The ObamaCare healthcare bill will institutionalize healthcare rationing and, of necessity, will raise our taxes beyond anything we have ever had nightmares about. A National Sales Tax is looming just below the horizon along with another bill granting Amnesty For Illegal Aliens already within our borders. The socialists need the votes of those illegal aliens to retain their grip on power in the US. They intend to ride rough-shod over legal Americans in order to get them.

"These are the times that try men's souls..." wrote Thomas Paine in "The Crisis". Paine was one of our early pamphleteers. Today, I have no doubt he would be a blogger. Paine's words, meant to describe America's struggle with the Mother Country, Great Britain, for our freedom and independence, are equally adept at describing our situation today with our own government... you know, the one that took the place of the totalitarian government of King George.

John Donne penned the famous "For Whom The Bell Tolls." It is sometimes referred to as "No Man is an Island." Both titles are incorrect. The original title given the poem, or devotion, is: "Meditation 17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions." It reads thusly:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."

... And that is where we find ourselves, today, my fellow Americans. The bell of freedom is tolling for each one of us. If we are to save this great country we must be about it with all haste. We are less than a year from the next congressional elections. After that the Presidential election will be looming.

Our immediate goal should be to bottle up the socialist government, in charge, in Washington until we can oust as many of them as we can, next November, and replace them with freedom loving conservative Americans. And we must do it again in November of 2012. We must also replace the President with a conservative in 2012, as well. This not something we'd LIKE to do. This is something we MUST do -- if we are to survive as a free nation.

It is time to save America -- and only Americans can do it.

J. D. Longstreet

The Gross National Debt:

Somebody Needs to Go To Jail ... by Alan Caruba

Somebody Needs to Go to Jail
By Alan Caruba

The revelations that scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) doctored the data supporting the global warming claims of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) means that EVERYTHING attributed to or based upon “global warming” is invalid.

It means the Kyoto Climate Protocols that nations agreed to on December 11, 1997 and which entered into force on February 16 2005, and all subsequent agreements based on “global warming” have no validity, scientifically or as the basis for public action by any nation, state, province, city or town.

It means that Al Gore’s pusillanimous “documentary” is a fraud along with just about every other statement uttered by any scientist, academician, or politician claiming that something, anything, should be done to avoid “global warming.”

There is no “global warming”, if by that discredited term, you mean a dramatic increase in the Earth’s temperature, the vast rising of ocean levels, the melting of the polar ice caps, and the thousands of other things attributed to a massive fraud orchestrated by the IPCC and a vast network of scientists and environmental groups that benefited from the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars they received in grants and other payments for their “research.”

Global warming, allegedly the result of rising levels of “greenhouse gas emissions”, primarily carbon dioxide (C02), underwrites the sale of “carbon credits” that industries, utilities, and other entities purchased for the “right” to use energy and as further revelations about the doctoring and virtual invention of false scientific data become known, it means those sales were a complete fraud.

It was never really a secret. You could have read about in “Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know” and a dozen other books I can put my hand on this very moment. The only thing missing was the proverbial “smoking gun” and the revelations about the CRU now confirms what the “deniers” and “skeptics” kept saying.

It’s worth keeping in mind that in several Northeastern States, utilities were required by law to purchase these worthless carbon credits and spend millions, not on improvements to the electric grid, not on building more capacity to serve their customers, but on what is worthless paper.

Someone needs to go to jail.

The release of thousands of emails and other data, now believed to be the work of a conscious-stricken CRU insider, will as they are examined in detail reveal what has long been known to those actively opposing the “global warming” fraud. As Christopher Horner, the author of “Red Hot Lies”, recently noted, the CRU and its lead scientists refused for years to release the data which they alleged proved that “global warming” was happening.

This data and the periodic reports of the IPCC are the basis for the existence of the IPCC, the Kyoto Protocol, and the “cap-and-trade” legislation awaiting a vote in the U.S. Congress. Horner observed “After running out of excuses, in September CRU’s Phil Jones simply claimed that he had lost the data so, sorry, no one can check it.” Horner called it “implausible beyond comprehension.”

And yet the United States and the representatives of many other nations will gather in Copenhagen in December for yet another UN conference on climate change, the now preferred synonym for “global warming.” Basing any international treaty on climate change or global warming is an utterly deceitful act.

The IPCC conference is based on the original Kyoto Protocol and, since there is no global warming, and since the science supporting it has been revealed to be false and misleading, no action should be taken other to disband the IPCC entirely.

All U.S. laws and regulations based on the so-called “global warming” should be reexamined and exorcised from the Congressional Register and from all state bodies of law. Most certainly, “cap-and-trade” should be withdrawn from further consideration.

Beyond that, school books about the environment must now be reviewed to determine how much of their content is invalid as well.

The undoing of this fraud must begin and begin NOW!

Alan Caruba is the founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information on “scare campaigns” designed to influence public opinion and policy. He blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

The Gross National Debt:

Global Warming Meltdown: Climategate ... by Alan Caruba

Global Warming Meltdown: Climategate

By Alan Caruba
**************************

For those of us “skeptics” and “deniers” who have been jumping up and down, pointing at the Sun, and saying, “See, it’s the Sun that determines how warm or cool the Earth is. See it? Up there in the sky?” The truth about some of the scientists behind the global warming hoax has finally arrived.

The hoax has its roots in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an instrument of the United Nations Environmental Program, for whom global warming was the open sesame to achieving a one-world-government by scaring nations into signing a treaty that would control their use of energy, the means of producing it, and require vast billions to be sent to less developed nations in exchange for “emitting” greenhouse gases.

Energy is called “the master resource” because, if you have lots of it, you can call your own shots. If you don’t, you are condemned to live in the dark and keeping people in the dark about the global warming hoax was essential.

For years the IPCC has been controlled by a handful of the worst liars in the world, utterly devoted to taking actual climate data and twisting it to confirm the assertion that the Earth was not only warming dramatically, but that humanity was in peril of rising oceans, melting glaciers and polar ice caps, more hurricanes, the die-off of countless animal species, and every other calamity that could possibly be attributed to “global warming”, including acne.

So, around November 20, when some enterprising individual hacked into the computers of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), making off with thousands of emails and documents that demonstrate the level of collusion and deception being practiced by its scientists.

It’s a climate hoax expose that some are calling the revelations a “little blue dress” while others are comparing it to the Pentagon Papers. It has also been dubbed “climategate.”

As James Delingpole wrote in the Telegraph, one of England’s leading newspapers, “Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organized resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more” was revealed in the 61 megabites of confidential files released on the Internet for anyone to read.

The conspirators had a visceral hatred for scientists who challenged their phony statistics and climate data, but they also agonized over the difficulties of hiding a long established climate cycle such as the Medieval Warm Period. At one point it was left out of a graph that famously became known as “the hockey stick” because it depicted a ludicrous sudden rise in warming, ignoring the previous natural cycle.

At the heart of the revelations were the intense efforts to ensure that no legitimate scientist, particularly those dissenting from the various IPCC reports, would be allowed to participate in the peer review process. Peer review is an essential element in science as it permits other scientists to examine and test the data being put forth to substantiate a new interpretation or discovery.

The IPCC reports were the basis by which popular media such as National Geographic, Time and Newsweek magazines could spread the lies about a dramatic “global warming”, passing them off to an unsuspecting and scientifically illiterate general public. At the same time, the lies were integrated them into school curriculums and maintained by Hollywood celebrities, politicians and others, duped or deliberately ignorant.

To this day, otherwise legitimate news media outlets continue to trumpet and repeat absolute nonsense about “global warming” like brain-dead parrots.

Now that Hadley CRU and its conspirators have been exposed, there truly is no need to hold a December UN climate change conference in Copenhagen; one in which nations would be required to put limits on “greenhouse gas emissions” even though such gases, primarily carbon dioxide, have nothing to do with altering the Earth’s climate.

And that is why you are going to hear more about “climate change” and far less about “global warming.” Hidden in such discussions, intended to justify legislation and regulation, is that the Earth’s climate has always and will always change.

It is, for example, shameful and deceitful for the EPA to claim carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” that should be regulated. The same applies to “cap-and-trade” legislation with the same purpose.

Billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted on studies of global warming and poured into agencies such as NASA that have lent credence to the global warming hoax.

“The U.S. taxpayer has much exposure here in the joint projects and collaborations which operated in reliance upon what the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit was doing,” says Christopher C. Horner, a longtime global warming skeptic. “There are U.S. taxpayer-funded offices and individuals involved in the machinations addressed in the emails, and in the emails themselves.”

Horner, the author of “Red Hot Lies”, said that the initial revelations “give the appearance of a conspiracy to defraud, by parties working in taxpayer funded agencies collaborating on ways to misrepresent material on which an awful lot of taxpayer money rides.”

The climate, defined as long term trends, and the weather has nothing whatever to do with human activity and suggesting it does reveals the depth of contempt that people like Al Gore and his ilk have for humanity and those fleeced by purchasing “carbon credits” or paying more for electricity when their utility does.

The East Anglia CRU charlatans have been exposed. Most certainly, the United Nations IPCC should be disbanded in disgrace. It belongs in a museum of hoaxes right beside the Piltdown Man and the Lock Ness Monster.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Sources of data for this commentary
www.climatedepot.com
www.climatechangefraud.com
www.icecap.us
www.iceagenow.com

The Gross National Debt:

Racing Toward Revolution?

Racing Toward Revolution?
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
*******************************
There is a strong undercurrent of anger just beneath the surface of American society these days. It is a "teeth-grinding" anger. It is hot and wrathful while, at the same time, cold and calculating. In short -- it is in a state of "becoming". Becoming what? It is becoming, I am very afraid, a spirit of revolution.

To anyone looking objectively at the USA today, it is clear -- this country cannot survive as she is today. That is the reality.

The population is very nearly equally divided on practically everything. We are constantly at each other's throats. We are fast becoming a bitter, unhappy, people. The famous American optimism is gone.

What happened? Socialism happened.

Socialism is a terminal disease to any country unfortunate enough to contract it. The FDR Administration first exposed America to the disease of socialism. With The Obama Regime America has advanced to stage four, or terminal, condition. In short: America is dying.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines socialism as:

1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property . b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state

3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.

Winston Churchill once said: "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."

Now that America's government has chosen socialism it has separated itself from "The People." It is no longer representative of the wants and desires and, yes, even the needs of those it governs. Many Americans are aware of this widening gulf, which has developed in the past two years, or so, between the American people and their government. It is a gulf they feel cannot be bridged -- ever -- again.

Until the congressional elections of 2006 the American people had a connection, tenuous though it was, to their government. After the election, and the socialist tendencies of the new congress became apparent, many Americans recoiled in horror at what they and their fellow Americans had created. But the dye was cast. The Rubicon had been crossed. America had stepped over the demarcation line that defines where democracy stops and socialism begins. With the election of Obama, in 2008, America took a giant leap into socialism and, in doing so , in my opinion, sealed her fate. The representative republic of America doomed herself. We are just beginning to feel the effects of the death throws of the greatest nation ever to have graced this globe.

The near collapse of the American economy did not "just happen." I am convinced our near economic collapse was planned and the near crash was executed according to that plan. America had to be broken to prepare the way for the socialism the Obama Regime was bringing into the American government. It worked -- and, as a result, America is infected and rotting at her core and death is imminent.

What of the revolution? It will not be likened to the original revolution, which bought us our freedom. THIS revolution will be different for Americans.

Americans, mostly of the conservative persuasion, have begun to coalesce around an idea that one of two things must happen. America must be healed by a complete take-over of the dying government by conservatives in 2010 and 2012, or, Americans must agree to split the states into two separate countries -- one conservative and the other socialist. To remain as a single country means the death of all 50 states. That is not acceptable. Conservatives agree that you amputate that portion of the body with national gangrene... socialism... in order to save that portion of the country that is healthy.

It is my contention that the break-up of America will follow, to some degree, the break-up of the 1860's. The southern tier of states will, for the most part, remain as a single entity. -- with the notable exception of Louisiana. Louisiana has become so used to being a ward of the federal government they are unable to fend for themselves. Should the southern states accept her into their "country" she will, most likely, be broken up and the several parts given to the states that now surround her. No single state can afford to be the single "care-giver" for Louisiana. Some states, such as Texas, may decide to become a Republic, or in Texas' case simply revert back to being a republic, a country unto herself.

The states on the left (west) coast and the states on the northeastern coast will, of course, be the die-hard socialist states and will have to figure out their own survival. As their money dries up, the northeastern states may well apply to Canada for acceptance into Canada. The states on the western coast will probably do the same, but, I expect they will apply to China to sponsor them as client states.

What about all those states in the middle of the former USA. My guess would be lots of small republics will be formed through-out what was the heartland.

Of course, I am guessing about the alignment of states after the collapse of America. But think for just a moment. A goodly number of conservative writers are speculating about the same thing. SOMETHING is about to happen. To think that America can survive in her current state of apathy and ignorance is to chase after an ethereal dream.

Just a few questions remain. Are we being set up for "Global Governance" -- for a "One World Government?" Was America's death premeditated? Was it murder? I am convinced there is a one word answer to all those questions... YES! For those who would rule the earth and all upon it, America was an obstacle. That obstacle will soon be gone. What then?

J. D. Longstreet

The Gross National Debt:

Al Gore: Junk Science Huckster ... by Paul Driessen

Al Gore: Junk Science Huckster
How double standards mislead Congress with absurd proclamations of Climate Armageddon

By Paul Driessen
***********************************
House Global Warming Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-MA) was outraged that a renegade freelance lobbyist had sent a dozen phony letters to members of Congress, urging them to vote against cap-and-trade legislation.

Congress will not tolerate “forgery and identity theft” in attempting to influence the passage of legislation, members solemnly intoned. The letters misled Congress and imperiled its integrity and deliberative process.

Few Americans would disagree. But after their usual pontificating, the Democrats once again proved that, if they didn’t have double standards, they would have no standards.

Mr. Markey and his big-D colleagues excoriated the guilty parties they had summoned to their Star Chamber. They then refused to allow testimony by the Republicans’ proposed witness. Competitive Enterprise Institute lawyer Chris Horner had intended to discuss a recent hoax by environmentalists, who had impersonated U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials, forged Chamber documents and staged a phony news conference to announce that the Chamber had reversed its position on global warming legislation.

That and Horner’s other examples of green fraud would only “confuse people” and diffuse the anti-industry venom of Democrats, who didn’t even mention the bogus Chamber event.
Worst, all this fakery pales next to what the full Energy and Commerce Committee had blessed as proof of imminent Climate Armageddon in April 2009. The Democrats’ superstar witness was renowned climatologist Al Gore, who had earned a C and a D in the only science courses he took in college.

Once again, Democrats refused to permit the Republicans’ intended witness to testify. They knew Lord Christopher Monckton, former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, would rubbish Gore’s Doomsday scenarios. So Gore was allowed to mislead Congress and promote his unfounded assertion that humanity faces “an irreparably damaged planet,” if we don’t immediately slash fossil fuel use. He didn’t face a single tough question over any of his false or misleading claims.

Gore: The Arctic is warming at an unprecedented rate. Truth: The Arctic region warms and cools dramatically every few decades, due to shifting currents and winds. Arctic ice also melted significantly during the 1930s; it is now back to seasonally normal levels.

Gore: If the Greenland and Western Antarctic Peninsula ice sheets were to melt and collapse into the ocean, seal levels would rise 40 feet. Truth: Snow and ice are increasing in interior Greenland and Antarctica. The peninsula ice is mostly unstable sea ice, and interior Antarctica temperatures would have to rise 85 degrees (from an average annual minus-50) to cause Gore’s fanciful cataclysm.

Gore: The US West and the Southeast are experiencing prolonged severe droughts. Truth: America also endured the Dust Bowl and a 25-year drought that forced Anasazi Indians to abandon their villages.

Gore: Carbon dioxide “pollution” is acidifying our oceans. Truth: Higher CO2 levels fertilize ocean algae and improve seashell growth. In some areas upwelling can acidify surface waters with carbon-rich water from deep ocean zones.

Gore: Global warming is increasing the number of wildfires in US forests. Truth: Fires continue to threaten habitats, wildlife and homes because insects are killing trees and environmentalist legal actions prevent foresters from managing dense stands of brush and thin, diseased and dead trees.

Gore: Climate change is increasing the intensity of hurricanes. Truth: Hurricane numbers and intensity are on par with historic records and trends. Katrina was a large Category 3 hurricane when it hit a poorly prepared New Orleans.

It’s a good thing the committee didn’t put Gore under oath. He’d be sanctioned for wanton and reckless disregard for the truth – if not perjury – in both his testimony and the movie he produced to terrify young children, so that they pressure their parents into demanding passage of cap-tax-and-trade legislation.

A British High Court judge ruled that “An Inconvenient Truth” promotes “partisan political views,” was riddled with errors and falsehoods, and could not be shown any more in schools, unless accompanied by a teacher’s guide correcting information that Gore had misrepresented.

Two of the most egregious distortions are especially likely to scare kids.

* Polar bears are drowning because a warming planet is melting the Arctic. Fact: Four bears drowned during a particularly violent storm, and polar bear populations are actually increasing in Alaska and Canada.

* Warming temperatures have brought malaria to Nairobi, Kenya, killing little children. Fact: Nairobi has always had malaria, and anti-insecticide policies promoted by Gore have helped perpetuate the problem.

Indeed, contrary to Gore’s false assertions, there has been no global warming for a decade – and Earth has actually cooled slightly since 2002 – even as atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise. Climate alarmists habitually magnify the alleged risks of warmer temperatures, ignore the potential economic and health benefits of a warmer world, and obfuscate the clear dangers to agriculture and life from planetary cooling.

But Al Gore passionately wants Congress to enact punitive cap-and-trade legislation, because he detests the hydrocarbon fuels that provide 85% of the energy that powers America – and because he stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars via carbon trading deals and subsidized renewable energy technologies.

Gore refuses to give up his private jets, limousines and carbon-intensive lifestyle. He refuses to correct any of the errors in his movie, lectures or testimony. He just wants us to give up our living standards.

The former VP’s media, Hollywood and congressional friends always protect him and his junk science. He will not debate anyone. When he gives six-figure talks on college campuses, the only questions allowed are those he has preapproved. On the extremely rare occasions when someone does ask an inconvenient question, as during a recent convention of friendly journalists, Gore dodges the question until the uppity interrogator’s microphone can be switched off.

It’s time for America to have its long overdue debate over global warming science and the painful economic impacts of anti-hydrocarbon cap-and-trade policies. A little honesty, transparency and robust debate would do wonders for the integrity of the legislative process and Americans’ trust in Congress.

No more excuses, Mr. Gore. Have the guts to defend your views. Show some cojones.
____________
Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which is sponsoring the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype. He also is a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death. This article first appeared on World Net Daily: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=115253

The Gross National Debt:

The Healthcare Reform Travesty ... by Alan Caruba

The Healthcare Reform Travesty

By Alan Caruba

****************

Other than the complete destruction of the U.S. economy, one sixth of which is generated by the healthcare profession, I cannot see any reason for the bill that Harry Reid is pushing for a Saturday evening vote in the Senate.

It has taken less than a year for the Democrats, led by Barack Obama, to saddle Americans with such enormous debt that your grandchildren will be paying it off. The so-called “bail-outs” have proven to be a bonanza for Wall Street firms on good terms with the Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, whose mantra is “It’s all Bush’s fault.” The “stimulus” bill has not stimulated anything except lies about “jobs created and saved.”

Rush Limbaugh calls Congress a “Kamakazi Congress” and the “Suicide Bomber Congress” because it is obvious that any Democrat Congressman or woman and any Senator who votes for this atrocious bill, probably without having read it, will be thrown out of office. And should be!

Ignoring all the town hall protests, the tea parties across the nation, and the massive September 12 rally in Washington, D.C. has to come with a penalty, but by then it will be too late for most Americans.

The November 23 edition of Business Week had a cover story by Catherine Arnst titled “Why Wait for Health Reform: Ten Ways to Cut Costs Right Now.” It makes clear that all the so-called reforms contained in the 2,000-plus page bill could be achieved in ways that do not require a monster piece of legislation intended to impose socialized medicine on America.

In brief, heres how to achieve an improved, and more affordable healthcare system:

1. Crack down on fraud and abuse. The amount of fraud in the Medicare system is estimated to cost $125-175 billion every year. Since the system operates as a kind of honor code, the government has been unsuccessful in detecting fraud and abuse. Meanwhile, private insurers such as the Blue Cross & Blue Shield Association report its anti-fraud efforts resulted in a savings of $350 million last year, a 43% increase from 2007.

2. Develop a healthy workforce. Wellness programs pay real dividends for the companies that sponsor them.

3. Coordinate care through family doctors. A patient suffering from one or more chronic diseases may depend on several doctors and “rarely do they communicate with one another.” This results in waste, often due to duplication of treatments. By designating a primary care doctor to organize care with specialists, pharmacists, and physical therapists, sharing medical records electronically, it is estimated that $250 to $325 billion could be saved.

4. Make health a community effort. Campaigns to encourage people to eat better, get more exercise, and other options could greatly reduce health-related costs.

5. Stop infections in hospitals. Every year, 1.7 million patients develop infections while in hospital and 99,000 die as a result. They can be reduced if hospitals put more emphasis on solving the problem.

6. Get patients to take their medicine. Three out of four Americans do not take their medicine as directed. Noncompliance leads to more doctor visits, hospitalizations, and treatments that add an estimated $177 billion a year to the nation’s health-care bill.

7. Discuss options near the end of life. End of life care can be especially costly. When patients and the families are informed they can choose pain management, nursing care, and psychological support, all of which reduce costs.

8. Use insurance to manage chronic disease. In 2009, UnitedHealthcare introduced a Diabetes Health Plan that offers rewards to patients who manage their disease properly. The idea is to contain costs by giving patients financial incentives based on their particular health issues rather than a one-size-fits-all approach…something the proposed healthcare reform will impose on all Americans regardless of their particular health problems.

9. Let well-informed patients decide. Too many Americans think that drastic surgery and other procedures are the only way they can survive a healthcare crisis, but such procedures extend lives or prevent heart attacks in only a tiny minority of especially sick patients. Few really know this. Educating patients can reduce wasted health spending by up to 37%.

10. Apologize to the patient. When hospitals reveal mistakes to patients and their families, investigate the cause, and offer a settlement, it takes the lawyers out of the process. Honesty really is the best policy.

Instead, Congress is getting ready to impose a massive bureaucracy that will be put in charge of healthcare, increasing the nation’s deficit and debt as millions are added to the Medicare ranks and private insurance companies are driven out of business. The loss of freedom will be beyond calculation as Americans must deal with bureaucrats instead of their physicians and other healthcare professionals.

It is the worst possible “reform” imaginable. We’re running out of time to call our Senators, mostly Democrats, and demand they vote NO!

Alan Caruba

The Gross National Debt:

America Seen as Weak in Treatment of Terrorists

America Seen as Weak in Treatment of Terrorists

Civilian Trials Provide Soapboxes for Terrorists.
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

*************************************

So now we are going to try the terrorists in civilian federal trials in New York City, just blocks away from the site of the former World Trade Center Twin Towers, where 3,000 innocents were murdered. Can you possible see how this move by the Obama Regime makes the US appear weak, indecisive, and just plain DUMB to our enemies?

The terrorists had already been charged in military courts. Now the government is snatching them out of the hands of the one judicial system in America where justice for their heinous acts was certain. Instead they will be provided with a soapbox upon which to preach their hatred of America to their acolytes around the world.

As I listen to all the whining from the Left, and from the Right, about the terrible, terrible, way we are treating those poor terrorists who want to kill us, and our kids, it curdles my stomach!

What about the families of the 3,000 they murdered? What about the 5,000 more who have given their lives in combat against their like in the Iraq and Afghanistan where the battles rage on.

Now think about this for a moment: Has anyone considered the imminent danger to every member of the jury/juries in these terrorist trials? It is certainly within the realm of possibility that some Islamic religious authority, somewhere, will issue a “Fatwa” calling for the death of every member of those juries. (A fatwa is issued by a recognized religious authority in Islam. SOURCE). That Fatwa would stand, I suspect, for the lifetimes of those jurors. I have to wonder if the government has made arrangements to place every juror in the Federal Witness Program, along with their immediate families, for the remainder of their lives? (Fatwas involving violence are more likely to be well known than other fatwas, especially to non-Muslims. One possible reason is that non-Muslims regard most fatwas as not affecting them, but fatwas involving violence can potentially affect them. Fatwas do not only affect Non-muslims. From: Wikipedia)

Isn’t this question being considered? Think about it. Who the heck is going to want to serve on those juries? Surely they will be surrounded by armed guards 24 hours a day for months and possibly even years as these trials grind on. As we know, terrorist trials have a way of lasting not weeks, not months, but years.

I am now more convinced than ever that the longhaired clowns from the sixties who chanted: “peace, love, and pot,” are running the US government now. (I have long been convinced they are running the universities, colleges, and public schools in this country.)

I cannot, for the life of me, understand how they can be so stupid! So, utterly, hopelessly, stupid! I guess all that “funny weed” screwed-up their brains! That has to be the answer. Stupidity of that magnitude is not natural. It has to be self-induced.

When we finally get a group of those rabid killers caged up, the “limp-wristed,” and “jelly-spined,” among us begin to worry that we might treat them badly and they would, in turn, think badly of us -- like they loved us before we captured their sorry behinds and tossed them in the can!

I swear… if the Mainstream Media, and the Political Left, of today, had been around during the Second World War, all of us on the east coast would be speaking German and the folks on the west coast would be speaking Japanese.

We have given birth to a generation of wimps!

Look, when some group of “religious nuts” publicly vows to kill you and makes a rather emphatic attempt at it, and in the process manages to kill, oh, say, 3000 of our citizens, I have to believe they are serious… and we are duty bound, as Americans, to hunt them down… and liquidate them by any, and all, means necessary. Eradicate as many as it takes to remove the threat to my family and yours.

If some manage to be taken alive, cage them for the rest of their natural lives. Give them food and water, and little else, until their respective deity calls them home!

I am not interested in treating them with kindness. Not in the least. The fact that they still have a pulse is straining my “compassion limits” as it is.

The MSM, the Political Left, and even some on the Political Right, have managed to make the US the laughing stock of the Middle East! They think we’re a bunch of pansies… and who can blame them. We sure as heck act like it!

All the moaning, and whining, about those poor fruitcakes in Gitmo, is sickening. Some of those guys are living better IN PRISON than they ever did before we grabbed their sorry behinds and tossed them in those cages.

So, if you feel really, really, bad about our treatment of the terrorists, just keep it to yourself. I don’t want to hear it. Your cowering posture and your groveling is making us all look bad. And, in my opinion, it is bordering on giving aid and comfort to the enemy!

We have 3000 dead, from the attack in New York, and another 5,000, or so, dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the socialists running the US government these days want to play “patty-cake” with those bloodthirsty killers???

I know the scriptures say:” Vengeance is mine, sayth the Lord.” That’s fine by me… as long as He hurries it up -- and lets me watch!

J. D. Longstreet

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Conservative

The Gross National Debt:

All Pain, No Gain ... by Paul Driessen

All Pain, No Gain

Restricting and taxing energy use to prevent speculative climate disasters will be disastrous
By Paul Driessen
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“Electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under cap-and-trade,” President Obama has admitted. “Industry will have to retrofit its operations. That will cost money, and they will pass that cost on to consumers.” Cap-and-trade, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) eagerly observed, is “the most significant revenue-generating proposal of our time.”

Not one congressman even read the numbingly complex 1427-page Waxman-Markey global warming bill, before the House of Representatives voted on it. A new version of the Kerry-Boxer Senate bill provides no details about how carbon allowances would be allocated under a mandatory emissions reduction program.

The process recalls Churchill’s description of Russia: “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Here we are dealing with estimates wrapped in assumptions inside speculation – based on assertions that Earth faces a manmade climate disaster.

The only thing known with certainty is that cap-tax-and-trade will inflict intense pain for no environmental gain – on regions, states, communities, industries, companies and families. It is a complicated regulatory scheme that penalizes businesses and people who use electricity and other forms of energy derived from oil, gasoline, natural gas and coal.

Cap-tax-and-trade would place limits on how much carbon dioxide America would be allowed to generate, and the limits would decrease drastically over time. Companies and utilities would be issued permits, saying how much CO2 they can put into the air each year. If they cannot stay within that limit, they will have to switch to wind, solar, nuclear or geothermal energy (assuming those sources can be built, in the face of regulation and litigation); capture the CO2 and store it somewhere (via technologies that do not yet exist); or buy more permits from US or foreign companies that don’t need as much energy (through a new international financial, trading and carbon derivatives market).

Cap-and-trade restricts and taxes hydrocarbon energy use. Because 85% of America’s energy is hydrocarbons, prices will soar for everything we heat, cool, drive, make, grow, eat and do. The impacts will be especially painful in states that depend on coal for 50-98% of their electricity, refine petroleum for the nation’s vehicles, and manufacture products that improve, enhance and safeguard our lives.

The complex system will be administered by profit-seeking carbon management and trading firms, regulated and policed by thousands of government bureaucrats, and paid by every family, driver, business, school district, hospital, airline, traveler and farmer.

The ostensible goal is to stabilize planetary temperatures, climates and weather patterns that have never been stable, by slashing carbon dioxide emissions 83% below 2005 levels by 2050.

The last time America emitted that amount of CO2 was 1908! Once we account for the far lower population, manufacturing, transportation and electrification levels of a century ago, 2050 carbon dioxide emissions would have to equal what the United States emitted after the Civil War!

That would require monumental changes in lifestyles and living standards. It would mean politicians and unelected pressure groups, bureaucrats and judges will limit or dictate home building, heating, cooling and lighting decisions; transportation and vacation choices; how food can be grown and shipped; what kinds of products can be purchased and how they must be manufactured; and how much energy must come from subsidized, unreliable renewable sources.

Restrictions and taxes on fossil fuels will hit our manufacturing heartland especially hard, as it is heavily dependent on coal and natural gas. The American Council for Capital Formation calculated that Waxman-Markey would spike Indiana’s electricity prices nearly 60% by 2030 – increasing school and hospital energy costs 28-42% and causing numerous jobs to be exported to Asia, where there will be few restrictions on CO2 emissions. Numerous other states would be similarly hard hit, says ACCF.

Other experts have calculated that cap-and-trade would destroy millions of American jobs … raise energy costs for the average US family by $1,400 to $3,100 per year … and send overall food and living costs upward by $4,600 annually. Will you be able to afford that?

Poor families may get energy welfare. Wealthier families can absorb these costs. But cap-and-trade will severely affect middle class families. They would be forced to pay skyrocketing energy and food costs, by cutting their college, retirement and vacation budgets. Hospitals and school districts would have to raise fees and taxes, or cut services. Cities and states would have to cover rising welfare and unemployment costs, as tax revenues dwindle. Tourism-based businesses and economies would get hammered.

Switching to renewable energy does not merely increase costs and reduce reliability. It also affects the environment. Ethanol mandates would mean growing corn or switchgrass on farmland the size of Montana, and using vast amounts of water, fertilizer, diesel fuel, natural gas and insecticides.

Wind and solar power would mean covering millions of acres of scenic, habitat and farm land with huge turbines and solar panels. Hundreds of millions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and “rare earth” minerals would be needed to build them and thousands of miles of new transmission lines to get the expensive renewable electricity to distant cities. Because the turbines and panels only work 30% of the time, back up natural gas generators would also be needed, meaning still more raw materials.

Even worse, all this pain would bring no benefits. Using global warming alarmists’ own computer models, climatologist Chip Knappenberger calculated that even an 83% reduction in US carbon dioxide emissions would result in global temperatures rising just 0.1 degrees F less by 2050 than not cutting US carbon dioxide emissions at all.

That’s because CO2 emissions from China, India and other countries would quickly dwarf America’s job-killing reductions. These nations are building a new coal-fired power plant every week and putting millions of new cars on growing networks of highways – to modernize, reduce poverty, improve human health, and ensure that families, offices, schools and hospitals have electricity. Germany plans to build 27 new coal-fired power plants by 2020, and Italy expects to double its reliance on coal by 2015.

Moreover, the 0.1 degree temperature reduction assumes rising CO2 causes global warming – a belief that thousands of scientists vigorously challenge, because there is little actual evidence to support the thesis.

Of course, some will gain from penalizing, taxing and hyper-regulating our economy. Al Gore and others involved in emission trading stand to make billions, from trillions of dollars in cap-and-trade transactions. Coastal states and companies that don’t rely on coal will benefit, as will companies that get excess or low-cost emission permits and can sell these allowances for handsome profits. Well-paid bureaucrats will have “green jobs” – as will scientists, eco-activists and renewable energy companies, who will share $6-10 billion annually in taxpayer cash, as long as they continue to conduct climate research, issue dire warnings about global warming cataclysms, and build wind and solar projects.

Besides massive pain for no gain, cap-tax-and-trade will create an intrusive Green Nanny State that destroys jobs, reduces personal freedoms, and hobbles economic opportunities and civil rights.

Our Earth is cooling. Our economy is in the tank. Congress and the White House need to stop hyperventilating about global warming, and let the free market get our economy back on track.
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Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which is sponsoring the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype. He also is a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death. This article first appeared on World Net Daily: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=115253

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Conservative+Cap-and-Trade+Taxes

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