From: "Daily Motivations"
If there's any concept that's synonymous with "leadership" it's got to be responsibility. -- Steve Ventura
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others. -- Winston Churchill
From: "Simple Truths"
“Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the handcuffs of hate.” - William Ward
From: "The Patriot Post"
"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -- James Madison
"[T]he policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people." --George Washington
"Investigators (of ACORN's voter fraud) discovered that the entire offensive line of the Dallas Cowboys had signed up to vote in Las Vegas, unless it turns out that someone forged their signatures to make a quota. The rules for this game were written in Chicago." -- Wesley Pruden
Vote Obamessiah: "You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn't care anything about. That's a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking." -- Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (YouTube has the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OowxMcVTjTE))
From: "The Web"
"There are three kinds of people: Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who ask, 'What happened?'" -- Casey Stengel
"Press on: nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." -- Calvin Coolidge
From: “Economics” - A simplified look at taxes in an open market free society, for those who don't get it otherwise! - oyh
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59. So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
'Since you are all such good customers, he said, I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay!
And so: The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing-- (100%savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 ----- (33%savings). The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 ----- (28%savings). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12
----- (25%savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 -----(22%savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 ----- (16%savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
'I only got a dollar out of the $20, 'declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, 'but he got $10!'
'Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!'
'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!' 'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, University of Georgia Is there a lesson here that might apply to the upcoming US Presidential election? For those who get it, no explanation is needed. For those who still do not understand, no explanation is possible!
From: "Wall Street Journal"
Obama's 'Redistribution' Constitution
The courts are poised for a takeover by the judicial left.
By STEVEN G. CALABRESI
One of the great unappreciated stories of the past eight years is how thoroughly Senate Democrats thwarted efforts by President Bush to appoint judges to the lower federal courts.
Chad Crowe
Consider the most important lower federal court in the country: the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In his two terms as president, Ronald Reagan appointed eight judges, an average of one a year, to this court. They included Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, Kenneth Starr, Larry Silberman, Stephen Williams, James Buckley, Douglas Ginsburg and David Sentelle. In his two terms, George W. Bush was able to name only four: John Roberts, Janice Rogers Brown, Thomas Griffith and Brett Kavanaugh.
Although two seats on this court are vacant, Bush nominee Peter Keisler has been denied even a committee vote for two years. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, he will almost certainly fill those two vacant seats, the seats of two older Clinton appointees who will retire, and most likely the seats of four older Reagan and George H.W. Bush appointees who may retire as well.
The net result is that the legal left will once again have a majority on the nation's most important regulatory court of appeals.
The balance will shift as well on almost all of the 12 other federal appeals courts. Nine of the 13 will probably swing to the left if Mr. Obama is elected (not counting the Ninth Circuit, which the left solidly controls today). Circuit majorities are likely at stake in this presidential election for the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeal. That includes the federal appeals courts for New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and virtually every other major center of finance in the country.
On the Supreme Court, six of the current nine justices will be 70 years old or older on January 20, 2009. There is a widespread expectation that the next president could make four appointments in just his first term, with maybe two more in a second term. Here too we are poised for heavy change.
These numbers ought to raise serious concern because of Mr. Obama's extreme left-wing views about the role of judges. He believes -- and he is quite open about this -- that judges ought to decide cases in light of the empathy they ought to feel for the little guy in any lawsuit.
Speaking in July 2007 at a conference of Planned Parenthood, he said: "[W]e need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."
On this view, plaintiffs should usually win against defendants in civil cases; criminals in cases against the police; consumers, employees and stockholders in suits brought against corporations; and citizens in suits brought against the government. Empathy, not justice, ought to be the mission of the federal courts, and the redistribution of wealth should be their mantra.
In a Sept. 6, 2001, interview with Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ-FM, Mr. Obama noted that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren "never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society," and "to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical."
He also noted that the Court "didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted." That is to say, he noted that the U.S. Constitution as written is only a guarantee of negative liberties from government -- and not an entitlement to a right to welfare or economic justice.
This raises the question of whether Mr. Obama can in good faith take the presidential oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution" as he must do if he is to take office. Does Mr. Obama support the Constitution as it is written, or does he support amendments to guarantee welfare? Is his provision of a "tax cut" to millions of Americans who currently pay no taxes merely a foreshadowing of constitutional rights to welfare, health care, Social Security, vacation time and the redistribution of wealth? Perhaps the candidate ought to be asked to answer these questions before the election rather than after.
Every new federal judge has been required by federal law to take an oath of office in which he swears that he will "administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich." Mr. Obama's emphasis on empathy in essence requires the appointment of judges committed in advance to violating this oath. To the traditional view of justice as a blindfolded person weighing legal claims fairly on a scale, he wants to tear the blindfold off, so the judge can rule for the party he empathizes with most.
The legal left wants Americans to imagine that the federal courts are very right-wing now, and that Mr. Obama will merely stem some great right-wing federal judicial tide. The reality is completely different. The federal courts hang in the balance, and it is the left which is poised to capture them.
A whole generation of Americans has come of age since the nation experienced the bad judicial appointments and foolish economic and regulatory policy of the Johnson and Carter administrations. If Mr. Obama wins we could possibly see any or all of the following: a federal constitutional right to welfare; a federal constitutional mandate of affirmative action wherever there are racial disparities, without regard to proof of discriminatory intent; a right for government-financed abortions through the third trimester of pregnancy; the abolition of capital punishment and the mass freeing of criminal defendants; ruinous shareholder suits against corporate officers and directors; and approval of huge punitive damage awards, like those imposed against tobacco companies, against many legitimate businesses such as those selling fattening food.
Nothing less than the very idea of liberty and the rule of law are at stake in this election. We should not let Mr. Obama replace justice with empathy in our nation's courtrooms.
Mr. Calabresi is a co-founder of the Federalist Society and a professor of law at Northwestern University.
From: "The Heritage Foundation"
THE MORNING BELL
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 29, 2008
They Left Out the Socialized Medicine Part
The Washington Post has a lengthy front-page story today on Barack Obama’s health care plan, which the newspaper admits contains “profound — and controversial — changes.” The Post tries to compare the Obama plan to Massachusetts’ 2006 health care legislation, asserting the only difference between the two is the individual mandate in the Massachusetts plan. This is indeed a big difference between the two plans, but it is nowhere near the most important. For all of its other problems , the Massachusetts plan did not create a new government-run health care plan that would compete side by side with private insurance plan. Obama’s plan does.
Why is this important? Because not only would the federal government be an active competitor in the health care market, but it would also set the rules for competition. Heritage’s Center for Health Policy Studies Director Robert Moffit explains what would happen next:
Recent Entries
· Heritage Calls on Obama to Pull False Ads
· Tankosphere Today: Oct 28, 2008
· Will Unions, Again, Kill Our Economic Recovery?
· Is Google Really Committed to ‘Universally Accessible’ Information?
· Fairness Doctrine Is Just the Beginning
The likely incentives for government officials would be to set rules to advantage the government’s own health plan and to disadvantage the private health plans, including setting the government’s health plan premiums artificially low, reducing or eliminating cost-sharing requirements, or more heavily subsidizing certain benefits to make the government health plan more attractive than the private health plans.. These plans would operate without incurring any of the normal financial risks that private health plans must bear.
One could easily imagine a massive crowd out of private coverage, as employers dropped private coverage and paid the requisite tax. Likewise, lobbyists for businesses or private insurance industry executives may see the government health program as a convenient “dumping ground” for high-risk individuals or families, which would reduce business and insurance industry costs but would amount to massive adverse selection against the taxpayers. … In such a political environment, the value of personal choice and anything at all resembling free market competition would mostly likely be rendered meaningless.
Obama’s preference for socialized medicine is no secret. He openly admitted earlier this year, “If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system.” The question for Obama and the left is not whether socialized medicine is desirable. They want socialized medicine. The problem Obama is trying to solve is how best to trick the American people into a policy they do not want. Obama’s health plan is the answer to that problem. Just ask New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: “The Demoplans offer choice — so that people won’t feel that they’re being forced into a government plan. Over time, I suspect, many people will choose the government plan or plans — but they’ll have the option of staying with those wonderful people from the private insurance industry.”
Krugman is undoubtedly right. But not for the reason he states. The government plan will not win because people love socialized medicine (as Krugman recently learned), but because Congress will strangle the private market to death so the American people have no choice. These are the policy options the American people are about to face. It’s high time papers like The Washington Post begin accurately reporting on them.
QUICK HITS
· The Heritage Foundation asked Obama to immediately pull two ads that misrepresent the views of policy analyst Rea Hederman.
· According to The Washington Post, Obama is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade legal limits.
· Following his conviction of seven felonies, both Sarah Palin and John McCain called on Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) to resign.
· A federal judge in Ohio has ruled counties must allow homeless voters to list park benches as their addresses.
According to Gallup, Americans are not eager for one-party control of government.
From: "Newsmax"
Arabs: Obama ‘One of Us,’ NYC Columnist Writes
Wednesday, October 29, 2008 11:05 AM
By: Jim Meyers Article Font Size
While Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama “has tried to push his origins into the background, his ‘Islamic roots’ have won him a place in many Arabs’ hearts.”
That’s the observation of Iranian-born commentator Amir Taheri, whose column in Tuesday’s New York Post notes that many Arabs and other Muslims see Obama as “one of them.”
They see that Obama has Arabic-Islamic first and middle names: Barack means “blessed” and Hussein means “beautiful.” His last name is Swahili, an East African language based on Arabic, Taheri writes. His sister is named Oumah, Arabic for “the community of the faithful;” his daughter Malia bears the name of a daughter of the noted Caliph Othman; and his father and stepfather were both Muslims.
Although Taheri did not note it, Obama was raised partially as a Muslim when he lived in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather. While there, he studied at two schools and was registered at both as a Muslim student.
As such he received Islamic religious instruction, studied the Koran, and prayed with other students. He did attend mosque, albeit infrequently, with his stepfather.
Obama’s religious upbringing after Indonesia is somewhat of a mystery until his late 20s. At that point, Obama says he converted to Christianity after meeting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in Chicago.
Still, Obama has maintained strong support from American Muslims, including Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam movement. Farrakhan has endorsed Obama and has called him the “messiah.”
These factors have made Obama a big hit in the Arab world, where he has received wide praise, including:
The Syrian regime has indicated its preference for Obama. Buthaina Shaaban, an adviser to President Bashar al-Assad, has written: “The change suggested by Obama is essential not only for the U.S. but for the entire human family.”
Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi called Obama “a Muslim” and said: “All the people in the Arab and Muslim world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcome him and prayed for his success,” although Qaddafi also expressed criticism of Obama’s comments on the future of Jerusalem.
Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef said this year: “We like Mr. Obama and we hope that he will win the election.”
Hezbollah’s second in command, Sheik Naim al-Kassim, urged Americans to vote for Obama as a step toward peace with Islam, and pro-Hezbollah columnist Amal Saad-Ghorayeb said there is “no doubt Arabs should welcome an Obama presidency,” according to Taheri.
In Saudi Arabia, commentator Hussein Shobokshi wrote that an Obama presidency “would mark an important moral transformation in the superpower and is a healthy indicator of the long-awaited improvement in the international arena.”
Some columnists also have noted Obama’s close ties to several Palestinian radicals, including Columbia University Prof. Rashid Khalidi — former communications director for the Palestinian Liberation Organization — and another Palestinian political activist, the late Edward Said.
The “Arab street” also favors Obama. Recent surveys found that he is the preferred candidate in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
You may think CNN is really the Barack Obama Network (BON).
From: "The email Bag"
By: Chuck Sproull, Springville IN, 10/29/2008
Over 200 years ago John Adams wrote, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
By "moral and religious people," I believe John Adams was not referring directly to a particular religion, but was thinking about the core values and moral character of people who are unselfish, honest, responsible, self-disciplined and ambitious enough to allow our Constitution, with laws based on the Ten Commandments, and limited Government, to govern their lives. Our Constitution limits Government power specifically for the purpose of giving maximum Rights (responsible freedoms) to the American citizens. This was a radical departure from the tyrannical British and European governments they came to America to get away from.
Adams also pointed out four character attributes of immoral non-religious people, who are not capable of being governed by our Constitution. Understanding the meanings of these words will help us understand Adams' warning.
Avarice is excessive greed for wealth.
Ambition is desire for power and fame.
Revenge is the desire to get even, damage, make things worse.
Gallantry is prideful showoff, recklessness.
Who does this remind you of?
Other core values of people who are not capable of being governed by our Constitution are selfish, dishonest, irresponsible, undisciplined and lazy.
I believe if John Adams were here today, he would look at the immoral liberals and socialists in our Government, and people like Obama (who ignorantly criticizes our Constitution for limiting Government power, which was the whole purpose of our Constitution - duh!!!), and say "Watch out! Here come the whales I warned you about.
No comments:
Post a Comment