Monday, June 29, 2009

Obama Wants HIS Government To Help You Sell ... Your House

Cap and Trade C-Span Debate -- Representative John Boehner - Ohio, reading Representative Waxman's 300+ page amendment (Ctrl-Click to launch video). Image Credit: C-SPAN

Obama Wants HIS Government To Help You Sell ... Your House

The man who worries about being able to address, and make more efficient, the 7% of all electricity usage here in this country with the push to change the efficiency standards in the manufacturing of CFL and Neon light bulbs, now wants to be able to have a say in how one is able to sell their largest personal asset, their home.

The level of control that was passed by Congress early Friday morning of this last week (June 26, 2009) in the form of an energy efficiency bill (CAP & TRADE) had a 300+ page amendment be attached to it at the last minute, just before the vote ... allowing NO time for the congressmen to read what they were actually voting on, sound familiar?

The House Minority Leader, Republican John Boehner wasn't happy with the way the people's representatives were being railroaded and he decided to use the only power he had to get some of the word out about the destructive nature to personal freedoms of the CAP & TRADE bill as it was written.

"I hate to do this to all of you, I do, but when you file a 309 page amendment at 3:00 in the morning, someone needs to work on it," Boehner told his colleagues. "I want to make sure everyone understands what's in this 300 page amendment."

A press statement put out by Boehner's office confirmed he was launching the House equivalent of a Senate filibuster.

"We expect it may take a while, but Members of Congress, and - more importantly - the American people have a right know what the House is voting on," the statement said.

What John Boehner was able to do in sixty short minutes is to highlight many of the most damning aspects of this bill designed to aid in the reduction of CO2 and/or help the environment.


This excerpted and edited from Newsvine "Comments" -

Boehner protests last-minute climate amendment

Comment by, Lisa Schneider - Posted #1.2 - Fri Jun 26, 2009 10:22 PM EDT


I watched Rep. John Boehner for the entire thing.

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This "amendment", if not the whole CAP & TRADE Bill, will ruin our country ... I am an independent, having voted for Obama, and unless you watched his entire hour going through this amendment, then you have no clue how bad it is ... it is bad.

Just to give you a taste:

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Carbon credits will be commodities and traded as such on the open market (not too unlike bundled sub-prime mortgages to unsuspecting investors).


Every single licensed contractor in this country will have to go through an additional licensing process so they know how to meet the new green codes, and all building materials used by the contractor will need to meet those green codes too.

Imports will be regulated forcing other countries to either not import or meet our guidelines ... hello trade warfare ... amendments try to force other countries to abide by our regulations.


No citizen in the United States (or anyone else) will be able to sell their home to another citizen of the United States (or anyone else) until they pay to bring the older home up to new green code standards ... complete overhaul of appraisal industry will be needed to properly evaluate home values within strict Government guidelines for valuation/regulations.


The list goes on and on ... extends from home lending to well, everything.
Think of it like this ... if you emit methane as a natural digestive process, the Government will be watching and there will be a price to pay.

If you value your freedom, thank Representative John Boehner for reading this amendment and making sure we knew as much as possible about it ... then call your Senators and literally beg them to vote no.
Reference Here>>


Thursday, June 25, 2009

Free-Lunch Faith Vs The Reality Of Economics

Did you play Monopoly when you were a kid? Did you play it alot? Do you remember how you felt initially about buying Boardwalk (Mayfair) and Park Place (Park Lane)? They were too expensive, right? What happens to the game when a new player enters who can set and change the rules in the middle of the game, play as many game pieces as they want, and print and issue money for any purpose in the game to their own whim? It is not good. Image Credit: allthings.tv

Free-Lunch Faith Vs The Reality Of Economics

On what is beginning to feel like a daily basis, the Obama Administration, with the unprecedented aid of the mainstream media (last night, ABC spent most of their broadcast time broadcasting directly from ... The White House), is attempting to sell the faith of a free-lunch to a hungry hoard of faithless people.

What is being sold to the American public is a cure to all process ills and an improvement in ones life if one would just let the Government take over and run everything from our Free Enterprise Manufacturing, Healthcare, and Energy systems (and this is just a start). The Obama Administration loves to cleave to the argument that with the Government becoming a "PLAYER" in an enterprise they are promoting competition by delivering an alternative approach to a marketplace but this logic is grossly flawed.

The reality of economics that derails this logic is the it is difficult for anyone to compete on a level playing field when one of the players is also the referee, and the body that makes the rules ... and prints the money upon which the game is played.

Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free "Chance" card. Image Credit: Ebay

Would anyone play a game on the board game, MONOPOLY (our cultural introduction to economics), with a person who had the ability to create game board pieces without a cost or penalty, print and issue money to himself without really having to tell anyone when he expects to use it during the game to purchase pieces and/or set up hotels and set the rules beyond what had been printed and distributed at the beginning of the game (example: this player has an unlimited supply of "Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free" cards)? The answer is NO!

In every human endeavor there is really NO Free Lunch, and the reality of economics always shows that when a corrupt and over influential force enters into the mix of a free enterprise system, the system becomes corrupted and tilted to the influence that has the ability to change the common sense rules that govern the system.

Homeschool Real World Math - Here is another fun addition of real world math. Firstly, we use and adore Math-U-See consistently throughout the year in our homeschool. There are days however, that I like to mix it up and do something a little playful to get them thinking about math in the real world. /// This morning we played a game of monopoly. We received the newest version of Monopoly: Here and Now the real World Edition for Christmas. It is a fun version that incorporates geography, world facts on the chance and community chest cards, and interesting games pieces that take the kids literally around the world in every game. /// Our youngest got to work on basic counting by moving the pieces and rolling the dice. Our middle worked on basic addition by adding everyone’s dice together and telling them how far they had to move the pieces and our oldest had to read out all of the chance and community chest cards for each player. We had a ton of fun. This particular edition, does not have money, but cards and a banker machine that you add and subtract money for each transaction made. By the end of the first game, they were working through place values in the millions, Large number addition and subtraction and how to work the key pad which is similar to a calculator and a keypad on the computer. I wont even get into the idea of money management and budgeting as more abstract ideas they begin to absorb through this game. /// All in all, I think I hid a little real world math by way of a game today. Give it a try it is easy and fun to do. /// Tomorrow, we will do a little more real world math, when they get to spend a few real dollars at the zoo to purchase a drink and choose a few animals they would like to feed. I will hand them each a zip lock bag of coins and they will have to count their way out of it. That should be a barrel full of monkeys…excuse the pun. Grace and Peace to all budding mathematicians in the real world! Caption & Image Credit: homeschool-diva.com

This excerpted and edited from Townhall.com

Tilting at Green Windmills

by George Will - Townhall.com - Thursday, June 25, 2009

The Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the U.S. president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating "green jobs" in "alternative energy" even though Spain's unemployment rate is 18.1 percent -- more than double the European Union average -- partly because of spending on such jobs?

Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report which, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration's green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it.

Calzada says Spain's torrential spending -- no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources -- on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada's report concludes that they often are temporary and have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies -- wind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation -- sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency -- of capital. (European media regularly report "eco-corruption" leaving a "footprint of sleaze" -- gaming the subsidy systems, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc.) Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs from elsewhere in Spain's economy.
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What matters most, however, is not that reports such as Calzada's and the Republicans' are right in every particular. It is, however, hardly counterintuitive that politically driven investments are economically counterproductive. Indeed, environmentalists with the courage of their convictions should argue that the point of such investments is to subordinate market rationality to the higher agenda of planetary salvation.

Still, one can be agnostic about both reports while being dismayed by the frequency with which such findings are ignored simply because they question policies that are so invested with righteousness that methodical economic reasoning about their costs and benefits seems unimportant. When the president speaks of "new green energy economies" creating "countless well-paying jobs," perhaps they really are countless, meaning incapable of being counted.

For fervent believers in governments' abilities to control the climate and in the urgent need for them to do so, believing is seeing: They see, through their ideological lenses, governments' green spending as always paying for itself. This is a free-lunch faith comparable to that of those few conservatives who believe that tax cuts always completely pay for themselves by stimulating compensating revenues from economic growth.

Windmills are iconic in the land of Don Quixote, whose tilting at them became emblematic of comic futility. Spain's new windmills are neither amusing nor emblematic of policies America should emulate. The cheerful and evidently unshakable confidence in such magical solutions to postulated problems is yet another manifestation -- Republicans are not immune: No Child Left Behind decrees that by 2014 all American students will be proficient in math and reading -- of what the late Sen. Pat Moynihan called "the leakage of reality from American life."

Reference Here>>

Welcome to the free-lunch faith and evangelism due to the leakage of reality from American life delivered to us from the Obama Administration, here in Carter's Second Term!

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Of Rosie O'Donnell, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and James von Brunn ...

Rosie O'Donnell, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and James von Brunn have a lot more in common than not. All have a problem with "Neocons" and two of the three are clear that they have a fear of the power of Jews ... and believe that 9/11/2001 was not the result of jetliners being hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center in New York City. Imagine that! Image Credit: Combined by Edmund Jenks (2009)

Of Rosie O'Donnell, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and James von Brunn ...

An odd observation and investigation shows intersections of thought and philosophy shared by these three people and it begins to suggest that they all were reading from the same prayer book.

The issues in common are quite startling in their common themes and the fact that few mainstream media outlets have gone out of their way to show this linkage.

Let us build out from the 88 year old center of this observation - as they say ... age before beauty.

James von Brunn (who Alumni relations at Washington University in St. Louis has confirmed they have record of a James Von Brunn who entered school there in 1938 and graduated in 1943 with a journalism degree) has as his MSM profile - is a hater of Jews, denies that the Holocaust ever happened, feels that the Neocon movement (neoconservative movement that gained strength after 9/11/2001) is nothing more than Jews trying to hijack our political system, and is a 9/11 "Truther" (the concept that passenger jetliners filled with passengers never happened and was a conspiracy by the Bush Administration to lead us into war in the Middle east).

This excerpted and edited from CBS News -

Von Brunn Charged In Holocaust Museum Slay
88-Year-Old White Supremacist Faces Murder Charges After Allegedly Shooting Security Guard
CBS News - WASHINGTON, D.C., June 11, 2009


Joseph Persichini, assistant director in charge of the Washington FBI field office, said authorities found a notebook in von Brunn's vehicle with names on it. Earlier, it was reported that he was found in possession of a list of Capitol Hill lawmakers.

In the notebook, von Brunn said that President Obama was "created by Jews" and "does what his Jew owners tell him to do," according the the criminal complaint filed Thursday.
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The Homeland Security Department called the shooting a criminal incident and said it does not appear to have a connection to terrorism, according to a joint Homeland Security and FBI assessment issued Wednesday. The assessment, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, said von Brunn is associated with right-wing extremism.
Reference Here>>

This excerpted and edited from Associated Content -

James Von Brunn Rampage Causes Media Firestorm
Crazed Conspiracy Nut Hated Blacks, Jews, Chistians, Bush, McCain, and "Neocons"
June 11, 2009 by Mark Whittington - Associated Content


The big problem is that the list of James Von Brunn's hatreds went somewhat beyond the stereotypical blacks and Jews that such people usually think are out to take over the world. Apparently James Von Brunn hated George W. Bush. John McCain, and "Neocons" according to a report in the Washington Examiner. James Von Brunn was a 9/11 "truther" (i.e., someone who thought 9/11 was the result on an inside conspiracy and not the act of 19 crazed Muslims.) James Von Brunn even hated Christians, according to Francis Beckwith, and blamed them for the fall of the Roman Empire and the decline of the "Aryan Race."

What emerges about James Von Brunn is a portrait of a disturbed old man with a variety of peeves that don't fit very neatly into the left/right spectrum.
Reference Here>>

It is widely known that Rosie O'Donnell believed as James von Brunn - i.e., someone who thought 9/11 was the result on an inside conspiracy and not the act of 19 crazed Muslims.

In March 2007, she said, "I do believe that it is the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Tower 7 … which collapsed in on itself. It is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved. … World Trade 1 and 2 got hit by planes; seven, miraculously, the first time in history, steel was melted by fire."

Also, Rosie has been known to rant on The View about the effect of Neocons (liberal speak for a pro-Israel foreign policy) on the Bush Administration years.

But this next news item about Reverend Jeremiah Wright is stunning in it's similarity to the statements of James von Brunn.

This excerpted and edited from the Daily Press -

Rev. Jeremiah Wright says "Jews" are keeping him from President Obama
By DAVID SQUIRES - 6:19 PM EDT, June 10, 2009

In an exclusive interview at the 95th annual Hampton University Ministers' Conference, Wright told the Daily Press that he has not spoken to his former church member since Obama became president, and he implied that the White House won't allow Obama to talk to him.

"Them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me," Wright said. "I told my baby daughter that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office. ...

"They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. ... I said from the beginning: He's a politician; I'm a pastor. He's got to do what politicians do."

"Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing (by) the Zionist is a sin and a crime against humanity, and they don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel," Wright said.

Reactions to Wright's comments regarding Jews and Israel lit up Internet message boards and political blogs around the nation on Wednesday, and sparked national TV requests for an audio recording of the interview.
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In the interview after a nighttime sermon Tuesday at the ministers conference, Wright offered that he has no regrets over the controversy that resulted in a severed relationship with Obama, a former member of the Chicago church of which Wright was the longtime pastor.

"Regret for what ... that the media went back five, seven, 10 years and spent $4,000 buying 20 years worth of sermons to hear what I've been preaching for 20 years?

"Regret for preaching like I've been preaching for 50 years? Absolutely none."

Wright said that when he went to the polls, he did not hold any grudge against Obama.

"Of course I voted for him — he's my son. I'm proud of him," Wright said. "I've got five biological kids. They all make mistakes and bad choices. I haven't stopped loving any of them.

"He made mistakes. He made bad choices. I've got kids who listen to their friends. He listened to those around him. I did not disown him."
Reference Here>>

Now we have to ask ... are the views stated by Reverend Jeremiah Wright above and the beliefs stated by Rosie O'Donnell those of any person associated with right-wing extremism?

Fear and hate has many faces here during Carter's Second Term.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Bond Vigilantes In The Age Of Obamanomics

"The Vigilante", a masked government agent, is assigned to investigate the case of the "100 Tears of Blood", a cursed string of rare blood red pearls sought by a gang led by the unknown "X-1" that may have been smuggled into the country. Image Credit: Columbia Pictures

Bond Vigilantes In The Age Of Obamanomics

In a free and open market society, many forces come forward to protect against bad decision making and the folly of idealism.

Bond Vigilantes are an economic force that are beginning to rise up and bring economic reality to the Obama Administration's Government expansion through spending policies and the printing of money.

If the public feels powerless to reel-in this one-party Big Government push to socialism ... free market Bond Vigilante forces just may step in and allow this process to take a breath here in Carter' Second Term.

"The Vigilante - Fighting Hero Of The West" Image Credit: Columbia Pictures

This excerpted and edited from LaissezFaireLounge.com -

A Giant Economic Boycott
Pia Varma, LaissezFaireLounge.com - Friday, May 29, 2009

In these turbulent times when the government is going on an unprecedented spending spree, raising money and increasing its involvement in the economy, many of us have been wondering...who is going to save the day? Enter bond vigilantes. The bond vigilantes are a group of international investors who demanded higher Treasury bond yields from the late 1970’s through the 1990’s whenever there were fears about inflation and hyperinflation. During the credit expansion, the bond vigilantes disappeared but now that the government has been printing, spending and borrowing money like crazy and flooding the economy with dollars to beat the recession, the vigilantes are back with a vengeance.

What essentially happens is the bond vigilantes will short or sell US Treasury Bonds, which will cause the US government to pay higher rates to borrow money, forcing it to rein in spending. This is what happened when Clinton first got into office with idealistic government plans and huge spending initiatives. The bond vigilantes staged an economic boycott or protest against these initiatives by shorting Treasuries.

But who are these bond vigilantes? They seem like a group of pirates scouring the coast looking for trouble. Or a band of cowboys keeping a watchful eye on the world. In reality, they are just a bunch of savvy investors who understand that unbridled spending leads to massive borrowing, which causes interest rates to increase.
Reference Here>>