TELLING IT LIKE IT IS !

Truth is the beginning of wisdom…

Archive for October, 2009

IT’S OKAY UNTIL IT COSTS YOU !

Posted by straight shooter on October 27, 2009 under Economy, General, Political

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and would be a great equalizer … that no one would be poor and no one would be rich.

The professor then said, “Okay, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan.”

The plan called for all grades to be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and then the professor told them that socialism will do the same thing economically … because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.


It couldn’t be any simpler than that … could it?

BIG GOVERNMENT AND HOW BIG GOVERNMENT WORKS !

Posted by straight shooter on October 25, 2009 under General, Political

Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, Someone may steal from it at night.” So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job.

Then Congress said, “How does the watchman do his job without instruction?” So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies.

Then Congress said, “How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?” So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people … one to do the studies and one to write the reports.

Then Congress said, “How are these people going to get paid?” So they created the following positions, a time keeper, and a payroll officer, then hired two people.

Then Congress said, “Who will be accountable for all of these people?” So they created an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.

Then Congress said, “We have had this command in operation for one year and we are $18,000 over budget, we must cutback overall cost.”

So they laid off the night watchman.

NOW slowly, let it sink in.

Quietly, we go like sheep to slaughter.

Does anybody remember the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY…. during the Carter Administration?

Anybody?

Anything?

Didn’t think so!

Bottom line: We’ve spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency… the reason for which not one person who reads this can remember!

Ready?? It was very simple … and at the time, everybody thought it very appropriate.

The Department of Energy was instituted on August 4, 1977 TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.

Hey, pretty efficient, huh???

NOW IT’S 2009 – 32 YEARS LATER – AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS “NECESSARY” DEPARTMENT IS AT $24.2 BILLION A YEAR … THEY HAVE 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES; AND LOOK AT THE JOB THEY HAVE DONE!

Ah, yes – good ole bureaucracy.

AND NOW, WE ARE GOING TO TURN THE BANKING SYSTEM, HEALTH CARE, AND THE AUTO INDUSTRY OVER TO THE SAME GOVERNMENT?

HELLOOO! Anybody Home?

THIS IS A GOVERNMENT FOR DRUGS !

Posted by straight shooter on October 22, 2009 under Drugs, General, Political, Social Concerns

Employees at the Justice Department must have a lot of time on their hands now that the Obama administration has stopped prosecuting obscenity and marijuana use. Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder said that enforcing federal drug laws isn’t a “priority” for this President. The debate is over 14 states, which, in contradiction to U.S. law, allow patients to use marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Under the Bush administration, the DOJ didn’t target the sick, but it did clamp down on “larger operations that were selling marijuana for recreational use.” Obama has abandoned that approach and made it easier for criminals to sell to anyone – so long as they claim to produce medical marijuana. In states that do allow it, medical marijuana has opened the door to “pot clinics” that prescribe weed for everything from sleeplessness to stress … an any excuse will do to smoke pot mentality. But despite its so-called benefits, medical marijuana is even opposed by the American Medical Association. After all, what kind of doctor would prescribe smoking as a legitimate treatment for anything?Government Marijuana

RUSSIANS SEE THE REALITY OF AMERICA’S DEMISE

Posted by straight shooter on October 21, 2009 under Economy, General, Political, Social Concerns

Pravda Logo

The American Self Immolation, Truly A Sight To See

19.10.2009

Source: Pravda.Ru

URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/109977-self_immolation-0

As my readers know, I am a fan of economics and of history, as well as politics, a combination that forms some very interesting cycles to research, discuss and argue on. None is so interesting than the death of great nations, for here there is always the self destruction that comes before the final breakups and invasions. As they say: Rome did not fall to the barbarians, all they did was kick in the rotting gates.

It can be safely said, that the last time a great nation destroyed itself through its own hubris and economic folly was the early Soviet Union (though in the end the late Soviet Union still died by the economic hand). Now we get the opportunity to watch the Americans do the exact same thing to themselves. The most amazing thing of course, is that they are just repeating the failed mistakes of the past. One would expect their fellow travelers in suicide, the British, to have spoken up by now, but unfortunately for the British, their education system is now even more of a joke than that of the Americans.

While taking a small breather from mouthing the never ending propaganda of recovery, never mind that every real indicator is pointing to death and destruction, the American Marxists have noticed that the French and Germans are out of recession and that Russia and Italy are heading out at a good clip themselves. Of course these facts have been wrapped up into their mind boggling non stop chant of “recovery” and hope-change-zombification. What is ignored, of course, is that we and the other three great nations all cut our taxes, cut our spending, made life easy for small business…in other words: the exact opposite of the Anglo-Sphere.

That brings us to Cap and Trade. Never in the history of humanity has a more idiotic plan been put forward and sold with bigger lies. Energy is the key stone to any and every economy, be it man power, animal power, wood or coal or nuclear. How else does one power industry that makes human life better (unless of course its making the bombs that end that human life, but that’s a different topic). Never in history, with the exception of the Japanese self imposed isolation in the 1600s, did a government actively force its people away from economic activity and industry.

Even the Soviets never created such idiocy. The great famine of the late 1920s was caused by quite the opposite, as the Soviets collectivized farms to force peasants off of their land and into the big new factories. Of course this had disastrous results. So one must ask, are the powers that be in Washington and London degenerates or satanically evil? Where is the opposition? Where are the Republicans in America and Tories in England?

The unfortunate truth here is: the Republicans and Tories are the Mensheviks to the Democrat and Labour Bolsheviks. In other words, they are the slightly less radical fellow travellers who are to stupid to realize that once their usefulness is done, they will go the very camps they will help send the true opposition to. A more deserving lot was rarely born. Of course half of the useful idiots in the Bolshevik groupings will go to those very same camps.

One express idiocy of Cap and Trade in America will be the approximately additional $.19 per liter of gasoline, which is a rather very large increase in taxation, however indirectly. Of course this will not only hit the American working serfs in the pocket at fuel up, but will hit them in everything they buy and do, as America has almost no real rail to even partially off set the cost of transporting goods.

But how will this work itself out? Very simple and the chain of events has been worked out often enough.

First, the serfs will start to scream at the cost of fueling up and the cost of all their goods. The government, ever anxious not to take responsibility, will single out the petroleum factories and oil companies for gauging the people. They will make demands for them to cut prices, which of course means working for a loss. When plants start to close down or move overseas, they will be called racketeers and saboteurs. Their facilities will be nationalized so that the government can show them how to do things properly. Shortages will follow as will show trials and that’s as long as the USD holds up and foreign nations are still willing to sell oil and gasoline for other than gold, silver and other hard resources.

When food goes up, and it surely will, as the diesel the farmer uses goes up as well as his fertilizers, the government will scream that the farmers are hording, thus undermining the efforts of the enlightened. There will be confiscations of all feed crops while the farmers will get production quotas to meet or have their land nationalized again. Do not believe me? Look at the people running your governments and ask yourself: would they rather take some one’s land or admit that they screwed up and ruined everything? After a point, only the corporate farms will remain, food by oligarch, just a like the factory farms. There will be plenty of dissidents to work them.

This will of course spread from industry to industry and within a rather short order, you will be living the new fractional dream, that is a fraction of what you have now. But on the bright side, for once, your children, working for government/oligarch run joint ventures, will be able to compete adequately with the Chinese, to feed the demands of Europe and Latin America. But that will take at least a generation or two first along with a cultural revolution or two.

Stanislav Mishin

The article has been reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina

© 1999-2009. «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru’s editors.

Gardasil: Oversold, Over-Hyped, and Risky?

Life-or-death questions are being raised about Gardasil, a vaccine touted to prevent infections of human papilloma virus (HPV), which can cause cervical cancer. Merck & Co., Inc., the maker of Gardasil, staunchly defends its multi-billion dollar goldmine, stating on their website, “We are confident in the safety profile of GARDASIL.”

But Dr. Diane Harper, an obstetrician and gynecologist who helped Merck perform Gardasil’s clinical trials and who served on Merck’s advisory board for the vaccine, told CNN in an interview, “Gardasil is not without risks. It’s not a freebie.”

Since the approval of the vaccine by the FDA in 2006, health-care groups have shouted out warnings of danger, and have also said that Merck has energetically mass-marketed Gardasil with disregard both for known current side effects as well as for possible long-term side effects.

Here are some of the established risks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

1. Death. According to the CDC, more than 25 million doses of Gardasil have been distributed in the United States as of June 1, 2009, resulting in 43 deaths. Gardasil is the confirmed cause in 26 of those deaths, while 9 are still being investigated, and 8 remain unconfirmed.

2. Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS). Cases of GBS, a peripheral neuropathy that can result in paralysis and death, have been reported to the CDC as a result of Gardasil vaccination.

3. Blood Clots. Clots occurring in the heart, lungs and legs have reportedly been triggered by Gardasil.

About 40% of adverse effects occur on the day of vaccination. Approximately 14,000 reports have been made, with 93% considered by the CDC to be “non-serious,” and 7% to be “serious.”

What does the reporting of 14,000 incidents of side effects really mean? In an interview with Newsmax, Dr. Russell Blaylock, a nationally recognized neurosurgeon, health practitioner, and editor of The Blaylock Wellness Report, said, “Multiply the number of incidents actually reported by ten and you’ll get an accurate number.”

As to the effectiveness of Gardasil in the first place, Dr. Blaylock said, “The vaccine has never been proven to be effective, and by the time the vaccine would be needed to prevent cancer would be years later and the vaccine would be long gone from the system. If you have the organism already in your cervix, the vaccine actually increases the cervical cancer rate.”

In the light of such serious side effects, the cost/benefit ratio in terms of both lives and money must be weighed. And some frightening facts are emerging about Gardasil. In an ABC interview, Dr. Harper said, “Although the number of serious adverse events is small and rare, they are real and cannot be overlooked or dismissed without disclosing the possibility to all other possible vaccine recipients.” Dr. Harper then dropped what some consider to be a bombshell: “The rate of serious adverse events is greater than the incidence rate of cervical cancer.”

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration is currently pondering whether to approve the use of Gardasil on boys in order to protect their partners from cervical cancer. Last week, the FDA granted approval to allow GlaxoSmithKline’s new HPV vaccine called Cervarix to be sold in the United States.

HPV Vaccine Fact: “First, there are more than 100 different types of HPV and at least 15 of them are oncogenic [tending to cause tumors]. The current vaccines target only 2 oncogenic strains: HPV-16 and HPV-18. Second, the relationship between infection at a young age and development of cancer 20 to 40 years later is not known.”– Dr. Charlotte Haug in an editorial appearing in the August 19, 2009 Journal of the American Medical Association.

THE SENATE WILL VOTE TO SILENCE YOU !

Posted by straight shooter on October 21, 2009 under General, Homosexuality, Political, Religion, Social Concerns

The enactment of so-called “hate crimes” legislation is a long stated objective of the homosexual agenda. It is one step closer to being law and may be voted on this week.


Senate leaders attached the hate crimes legislation to a military funding bill, knowing it would put those who oppose this dangerous bill in a precarious position, vote for giving special protections to homosexuals or vote against funding for the troops. Democratic leaders believe passing their liberal agenda takes precedence over keeping our armed services safe.


Nothing should have been allowed to be attached to such an important bill because it blackmails those who would never vote for the added bills on their own merit to vote affirmatively due to the safety of the troops.


The House already voted 281 to 146 in favor of extending special federal protection to homosexuals as part of the $680 billion Defense Authorization bill and it is now going to come up for a vote in the Senate-likely this week!


What “hate crimes” legislation does is lay the legal foundation and framework for investigating, prosecuting and persecuting pastors, business owners, and anyone else whose actions reflect their faith.


The religious liberty protections in the bill are flimsy but when Republicans attempted to strengthen them, they were voted down by Democrats.


This act would establish a new FEDERAL offense for so-called “hate crimes” and add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes. It will mandate a separate federal criminal prosecution for state offenses.


The American principles already call for equal justice under the law, not equal justice unless you happen to be homosexual or even a pedophile … then it turns into special treatment.

ALL people deserve to be protected from crime, not just certain groups, and they are with existing laws and legislation already enacted.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill authorizing curriculum that teaches children embryonic stem-cell research heals – when in fact it doesn’t!

Randy Thomasson of SaveCalifornia.com tells of the $3 billion approved in 2004 for the research has produced no effective treatments for diseases and other medical conditions. “All the trials have shown that human embryonic stem cells cause tumors and cancer in patients and tissue rejection,” he says, quickly asking: “Where’s the real success? It’s in adult and cord blood stem cells. Over 73 effective treatments, and that’s the direction to go.”

According to Thomasson, the bill signed by the governor perpetuates another falsehood that is being pumped into young minds. Schwarzenegger has signed a bill that is teaching school children the lie that embryonic stem-cell research heals people, when it doesn’t. That it doesn’t harm people and it doesn’t kill, when it does … it destroys human embryos.

Thomasson urges parents to take decisive action on behalf of their children, especially in light of the governor’s recent signing of another bill that calls for schools to honor radical homosexual activist Harvey Milk annually.

Appropriate parental action here includes taking youngsters out of public school, homeschooling them, or placing them in private institutions of learning. Get them out of the public schools of indoctrination if these things are happening in your public schools!

DISASTER AHEAD FOR AMERICAN WORKERS !

Posted by straight shooter on October 21, 2009 under General, Political, Political Terrorism

At Big Labor’s demand, the Senate Labor Committee is preparing to vote on radical union lawyer Craig Becker’s nomination to the National Labor Relations Board without even holding a hearing. Aside from the Wall Street Journal, the media is turning a blind eye to this forced unionism extremist’s record.

“[Secret ballot] elections are profoundly undemocratic.” Those are the words of Big Labor lawyer Craig Becker, Barack Obama’s latest nominee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) … and the man your U.S. Senators could be asked to confirm any day now.

That’s why it’s vital you call your U.S. Senators TODAY and demand that they vote against the nomination of Craig Becker to the NLRB. You see, Craig Becker’s record proves that he is a radical – even by Big Labor’s standards. In fact, as ACORN founder Wade Rathke stated, the appointment of Big Labor’s “secret weapon” Craig Becker would be a “big win no matter how you shake and bake it.”

As the quasi-judicial agency that administers federal labor law, just one of the functions of the NLRB is to oversee secret ballot elections and resolve unfair labor practices committed by union organizers. That’s why the union bosses see a militant NLRB as one of Big Labor’s most treacherous accomplices in increasing its radical forced-dues power.

Under a union-label NLRB, workers who try to dismiss unwanted union monopoly bargaining agents – or even try to stop their forced dues from being used to elect handpicked Big Labor candidates – would be denied even the most basic protections. And, considering Craig Becker’s record, it’s not a stretch to believe that – should he be confirmed by the U.S. Senate – Mr. Becker wouldn’t think twice about rubber stamping even the most abusive forced-unionism schemes cooked up by union militants.

You see, as a former AFL-CIO and SEIU union lawyer, Becker is solely responsible for forcing tens of thousands of workers under union boss control. In one case, reports from a Los Angeles SEIU Local union revealed that almost 63,000 people rejected membership in the union in 2007, but thanks to Becker, were still forced to pay dues. And Becker’s own words explain why. He was even so bold as to say unions were “formed to escape the evils of individualism and individual competition … their actions necessarily involve coercion.”

So, it should come as no surprise that Becker supports “home visits,” in which union militants repeatedly harass workers at home until they sign union authorization cards. The fact is, Craig Becker is so extreme he actually believes the only choice workers should have is WHICH union they should be FORCED to pay dues to. And should one refuse, he and the rest of Big Labor’s lackeys on the NLRB will choose for them.

Nothing would be more disastrous for American workers!

With the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) due to take up the nomination next week, right now is the most crucial time to expose Becker’s forced unionism record. To stop Becker’s appointment, the full Senate must reject him, but if the HELP Committee doesn’t do its job by probing his radical views, it’s safe to say that won’t happen.

That’s why it’s vital you call your U.S. Senators today urging them to vote against the confirmation of union militant Craig Becker’s nomination to the NLRB.

EVERYONE STOP BREATHING !

Posted by straight shooter on October 21, 2009 under Economy, Environmentally Speaking, General, Political, Political Terrorism

Global Warming and CO2?  Where’s the real evidence?

It was kind of a cool summer, wouldn’t you say?  And those folks enjoying the early snows out west this fall, well, they might actually be praying for a little global warming.

Taking care of the earth is important but global warming is not a scientific fact.  The new movie Not Evil Just Wrong makes that clear.  But that’s not stopping leaders in wealthy Western nations from pushing radical “solutions” to this dubious problem.

Not Evil Just Wrong does a great job of clearing the air over some contentious issues.  Take the hysteria over CO2 emissions, for example.  It’s an odorless gas that every living being gives off when he or she exhales.  As Patrick Moore, once a founder of Greenpeace, says in the film, “Anybody who knows anything about biology knows that carbon dioxide is the most important nutrient of all of life.  It is the currency of life.”

Therefore, as MIT’s Richard Lindzen says, we must distinguish between pollutants and CO2.  He says, “When you see smokestacks in this country, it is very rare that you see black soot.  We have tons of environmental regulations designed to control real pollutants.”  CO2 is not a pollutant and has been regulated as hazardous only for the governments agenda grab for taxes and power.

Notice that he says “in this country.”  Global warming activists would be happy to slap moratoriums on the building of coal burning plants here in the U.S.  Even better, they would like to see existing plants eliminated.  This would crush American industry – maybe 7 million American jobs are associated with coal alone.

And, ironically, it would boost industry and production in China and India, were there are virtually no environmental regulations, and where they use “dirtier” coal than we do in the United States!  The unintended consequence, of course, is that by shutting down coal and coal-based industries here, we end up increasing global air pollution, which comes from dirtier plants overseas.

The film also questions another global warming proposition – that is, that even slight rises in global temperatures would be catastrophic.  Well, it would be catastrophic if you consider increased global food production and human flourishing a bad thing.  Europe, for example, thrived during the Medieval warm period.  In the latter Middle Ages, when temperatures dropped dramatically, crops failed, malnutrition and disease was rampant – millions perished, and the human “herd” was culled, if you want to put it that way.

Which raises another issue addressed in the film.  The proposed “solutions” to global warming are, in many ways, profoundly anti-human.  The wealthy can afford expensive power.  The poor and working poor cannot.  Patrick Moore says, “The idea that Al Gore has proposed that we can stop using fossil fuels in 10 years is completely reckless … 85% of global energy is fossil fuel today, and we depend on it for our survival.”

Lord Lawson, a member of the economics committee of Britain’s House of Lords, puts it plainly: “The people who are calling for massive carbon dioxide reductions are the enemies of poverty reduction in the developing world.”

I urge you to see the film Not Evil Just Wrong, being distributed by the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.  You can get a copy for yourself, your friends – or maybe even for your congressman.

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS OR EARMARKS ?

Posted by straight shooter on October 21, 2009 under General, Political

Our troops will be interested to know that the Senate is focused on bringing home a victory in one particular campaign … their own! When the chamber marked-up the Defense Appropriations Bill, some Senators started siphoning away billions of dollars in military equipment for their own pet projects. At last count, there were over 778 earmarks attached to the bill, most of which are completely unnecessary or irrelevant – or both!

The Washington Times exposed a few of these “needs”. “Among the… pork packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.” Adding insult to what could be real injury liberals are trying to attach legislation to the Defense bill that would give the District of Columbia full voting rights.

This backdoor approach seems to be the strategy du jour for the leadership, who used this same maneuver to pass the “hate crimes” legislation in the House earlier in the month. Liberals know that D.C. voting rights (much like “hate crimes”) is contentious and unpopular – and very unlikely to pass as a stand-alone bill. But rather than work out the issue democratically, Senate leaders are using another Defense bill as a vehicle for their radical agenda. While our soldiers wait for new supplies, fuel, and training, leaders are either delaying the bill with constitutional questions or trying to funnel money away from soldiers to finance their own political interests.

Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA.) defended her pork – an extensive World War II museum in New Orleans – saying it would be a “constant reminder to future generations about the tremendous sacrifice of millions of Americans.” That may be true, but instead of building bigger memorials, we should concentrate on keeping our soldiers from becoming part of one … first!