TELLING IT LIKE IT IS !

As usual The New York Times passed on the opportunity to publish a great op-ed letter to President Barack Obama from Lou Pritchett, a former vice president of Procter & Gamble. Pritchett worked for that company for 36 years, until his retirement in 1989.

Confirmed by the Internet watchdog Snopes, here’s a sample of what Pritchett wrote:

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me. …

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll. …

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the ‘blame America’ crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer ‘wind mills’ to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves. …

You scare me because you have begun to use ‘extortion’ tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals. …

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O’Reillys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett

Thank you, Mr. Pritchett, for your love for America, honesty and willingness to risk your reputation by speaking up to this administration.

Here are some more . . .

President Obama:

You scare me because so many amazing corporate and American leaders, such as Lou Pritchett, are saying you scare them.

You scare me because after you initiate more government borrowing and bailouts than all presidents combined, you then require Congress to follow a system that is “pay-as-you-go.”

You scare me because you really do believe that going into massive amounts of debt can remedy our economy in the long run.

You scare me because your actions don’t reflect the federal governmental constraints and fiscally prudent principles of our Founding Fathers and Constitution.

You scare me because you buy and run the banking, automobile and (soon) health industries with taxpayers’ money but refuse to call it socialism.

You scare me because you claim to be a fighter for minorities and the promises of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness yet do not defend the unborn. What greater minority is there than those in the womb, against whom you already have enacted more pro-abortion laws than anyone since the Roe v. Wade decision?

You scare me because you promise to defend the U.S. against all potential enemies yet pacify those harboring terrorists, fight for the rights of combative detainees, and enable the enemies of Israel.

You scare me because your media team (including the mainstream media) seeks to label as radical or in some way penalize any opposing conservative voices … such as conservative talk show hosts, news agencies, columnists and actors.

You scare me because your media team does not address or diminish in any way your deification before the world, epitomized by the editor of Newsweek who stated on Chris Matthews’ MSNBC show: “In a way, Obama’s standing above the country, above the world. He’s sort of God.” (How much scarier can it get than representative statements like that in a republic that once stood for a balance among political powers and a government “by the people, for the people”?)

You scare me . . . period!

Could the rise in government spending – from economic stimulus to health care reform to education spending – endanger the vitality of religion in America? That’s a question University of Virginia Professor W. Bradford Wilcox discussed recently in the Wall Street Journal.

Wilcox zeroed in on a intriguing study entitled “State Welfare Spending and Religiosity.” The study’s authors, Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde, found an “inverse relationship between religious observance and welfare spending.” Put more simply, the more a government spends on welfare, the fewer people go to church. This is why it is that church attendance is so low in welfare states such as Denmark and Sweden compared to countries like the U.S. and the Philippines – where government doesn’t provide cradle-to-grave assistance.

Anthony Gill hits the nail on the head. “For many centuries,” he writes, “average citizens and local communities have often relied upon the support of religious organizations to meet their various social needs, including assistance for the poor, counseling in times of crisis, and education for the young.” So as the government grows, it elbows out the church and other voluntary associations. Gill continues, “Many people have found that they can get the same services from the government without having to give a time commitment to the local church.”

Now, we would like to think that most people don’t stay in church just because they get can get help in times of trouble. But the truth is that many people first encounter the Church when they are in need: at a crisis pregnancy center, a soup kitchen, or in counseling for drug abuse or alcoholism. So as Wilcox writes in the Wall Street Journal, “Many of those who initially turn to religious organizations for mutual aid end up developing a faith that is as supernatural as it is material.”

Yes there are other factors behind declining church attendance in America but the recent turning of the people toward government as the answer to all our problems is also detrimental to themselves and the Church. It is also destructive to the future of American democracy.

In his book, Democracy in America, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at how Americans could accomplish almost anything through voluntary associations – especially churches. They built schools, hospitals, sent missionaries all over the world. He wrote, “I frequently admired the boundless skill of Americans in setting large numbers of people a common goal and inducing them to strive toward that goal voluntarily.”

De Tocqueville doubted that government could ever accomplish all that American citizens could do through their associations. But he also warned that if government should supplant the good work of these associations, the American people would ultimately end up dependent upon government. And this, he said, would imperil not only American democracy, but “civilization itself.”

In times of trouble, it’s natural to echo the question of the Psalmist from Psalm 121: “Where does my help come from?” Sadly, it seems that more and more Americans these days would answer, “It comes from Uncle Sam.”

It is interesting to see how the Russians see what is currently happening in America. The following article was published in the online Russian Pravda.

American capitalism gone with a whimper

27.04.2009

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more than ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more than a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama’s command that GM’s (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of “pure” free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise that the American president has followed this up with a “bold” move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less than two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our “wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper…but a “freeman” whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set “fair” maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Stanislav Mishin
Source: Pravda.Ru
URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-american_capitalism-0

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.

This and other exceptional posts from Mat Rodina . . .

Just Add Hyperinflation: Its Armageddon
The American Solution is to Further Rob the People
American Capitalism Gone With a Whimper

We keep hearing that the global temperature dramatically increased in the last century. But what does “global temperature” mean, and how reliable are the readings?

Global temperature is measured through thousands of stations located throughout the world. The continental United States itself has 1,221 such measuring points, and supposedly they are among the most reliable in the world. But how reliable are they? Anthony Watts, blogger of Watts Up With That, took it upon himself (and a group of more than 650 volunteers) to find out the reliability. They examined 70% of the stations and the results are nothing short of stunning.

They found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. They found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.

In fact, they found that 89% of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own location requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source. In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.

It gets worse. They observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time, also has caused them to report a false warming trend. There were major gaps found in the data records that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors. They also found that adjustments to the data by both NOAA and NASA caused recent temperatures to look even higher. Why measure if you are going to change the results? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of measuring? And these are supposed to be among the more reliable temperature readings in the world! Here is a file of the entire report. Read it and decide for yourself if you can trust that temperature data.

The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable.

So with ground temperature data now revealed as unreliable, what do we know? Satellite Data indicates that the earth warmed from the period of 1979 to around 1998, and that it has cooled since 2002. That is 19 years of warming, and at least 7 years of cooling … and very little else that we know for certain. On the basis of this, countries around the world have instituted disastrous and business-damaging programs like carbon taxes or cap-and-trade programs. Very soon the United States will consider the Waxman-Markey bill, which would enact a cap and trade program to tax us on what we exhale after ever breath we take in. They tell us the science is settled … on what? … flawed data!

And finally, Richard Henry Lee at the American Thinker Blog asks perhaps the most important question to arise from this discovery: “But the real question is why it took a dedicated group of volunteers to find the numerous faults in our temperature record rather than the heavily funded governmental and educational institutions which are continually warning us about global warming.”

That one isn’t hard to answer … those institutions, seeing their coffers fill up with each doomsday prediction, simply didn’t care to look.

Big Labor’s Investment In Obama Pays Off !

Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, boasted to the Las Vegas Sun this week “We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama – $60.7 million to be exact – and we’re proud of it.” This labor organization’s leadership is getting its money’s worth too. Whether rank-and-file workers and ordinary taxpayers are profiting from this ultimate campaign pay-for-play scheme is another matter entirely.

The two-million-member union, which represents both government and private service employees, proudly claimed that its workers “knocked on 1.87 million doors, made 4.4 million phone calls … and sent more than 2.5 million pieces of mail in support of Obama.” It dispatched SEIU leaders to 7 states in the final weekend before the election to get out the vote for Obama and other Democrats.

Through a series of local chapter takeovers and bully campaigns to destroy the reputation of executives who refuse to submit to their will, Stern and his scandal-plagued lieutenants have consolidated low-skill service workers to create a 21st century labor empire. The ubiquitous Stern now enjoys a prominent seat at the table of every major policy discussion at the White House, including economic recovery and healthcare radicalization.

Obama champions the SEIU’s top legislative priorities: expansive government healthcare (paid for with regressive sin taxes) and the “Employee Free Choice Act” to do away with private-ballot union elections in the workplace. He has SEIU-blessed bureaucrats installed in every corner of his administration to carry out the agenda.

The SEIU scored not one but two Cabinet appointees: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. The SEIU pitched in with maximum donations to Solis’ first congressional campaign and lent her nearly 300 canvassers and ground troops. “I wouldn’t be here, were it not for my friends in the labor movement,” she gushed. Indeed, over four terms in Congress, Solis has pocketed more than $900,000 in union campaign contributions.

Former SEIU chief lobbyist Patrick Gaspard served as the Obama campaign’s national political director and transition deputy director of personnel. During the 2004 election cycle, he led the George Soros-funded group America Coming Together (ACT) as national field director. SEIU poured $23 million of workers’ dues money into ACT in its failed attempt to put Democratic Sen. John Kerry in the White House. Under Gaspard’s tenure at ACT, the get-out-the-vote group employed convicted felons as canvassers and committed campaign finance violations that led to a $775,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission. Gaspard was appointed White House political director shortly after Election Day 2008.

SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger was appointed to the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide advice on “boosting the sagging U.S. economy” (translation: imposing new employment regulations on companies and expanding union membership rolls).

Within two weeks of moving into the White House, Obama signed a series of executive orders championed by union bosses. The new rules authorized sweeping powers for the labor secretary that essentially blackball non-union contractors targeted by labor organizers and blacklist non-union employees in the private sector from working on taxpayer-funded projects. Such regulatory favoritism limits freedom in the workplace and raises the cost of doing business.

Another measure immediately adopted by Obama requires that when a government service contract runs out and there’s a new contract to perform the same services at the same location, the new contractor must retain the old workers. Mickey Kaus of the left-leaning Slate magazine dubbed the move the “Labor Payoff of the Day.”

The payoffs keep coming. Last week Obama slashed the Labor Department’s funding to investigate union corruption – a welcome move for Stern, who has seen three of his handpicked deputies resign in 2008-2009 over financial scandals involving cronyism, nepotism, and embezzlement.

California officials also reported last week that the Obama White House gave the SEIU an unprecedented role in negotiations over federal stimulus funds. According to the Los Angeles Times, the union lobbied the feds to withhold nearly $7 billion in stimulus money from California unless it revoked a wage cut for unionized healthcare workers – which had already been approved by Democratic lawmakers as part of a budget deal forged in February. Top SEIU officials participated in a conference call last month on the issue; the Obama White House backs the union demands.

SEIU’s enforcers have set aside $10 million to un-elect any of its political beneficiaries who abandon their pledges to do the union’s legislative bidding. The campaign money was raised by slapping an extra $6-per-member fee on top of regular dues payments – and funneled straight to the union’s political action committee. Meanwhile, after spending a fortune to put Obama in office, the union laid off a third of its DC field staff (in violation of its own employment protections, according to the workers) due to … budget troubles.

These laid-off workers are collateral damage in Big Labor’s pursuit of power. The only jobs guaranteed by SEIU’s merger with Hope and Change, Inc. belong to their management.

If Republicans don’t know what the conservatives want it is because they are left of center, just not quite as far as the Democrats … how far tuned-out they are from the people.  We want human life to be protected, smaller government, honest government, accountable government, government for the people, no pork earmarks, less taxes, energy reform utilizing our own resources, health reform without nationalized health care, immigration reform, educational choice, strong military defense, secure borders, business to return, private companies and banks not to be bailed out with taxpayer dollars (if they mismanage they go bankrupt with no special privileges), a judiciary that represents the constitution not interprets it, a judiciary that does not make its own laws … do you get the picture?

Check out what Huckabee wrote:

Leaders Shouldn’t Have to Form a Listening Tour

Monday , May 11, 2009

By Mike Huckabee

A new group was recently formed that is calling itself a group of experts for the purpose of making the Republican Party attractive to voters again. The strategy is supposedly to go on a listening tour so they can talk to the American people and hear what people are concerned about.

It’s hard to keep from laughing out loud when people living in the bubble of the Beltway suddenly wake up one day and think they ought to have a listening tour; even funnier when their first earful expedition takes them all the way to the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

If some of these leaders had been listening already, they wouldn’t need to form a group to start listening now. Some of the ones who have decided to start listening sure weren’t listening last fall when they were supporting the TARP bailout bill that pretty much discredited any semblance of conservative conviction.

It’s also sad when Jeb Bush suggested that we need to “get past Reagan” and the group indicated that it doesn’t plan to listen much to the Republicans who became Republicans because they believe in the sanctity of life, traditional marriage and express support for the Second Amendment. Most of us thought the party was pretty strong under Reagan and appreciated that he wasn’t ashamed of God and didn’t seem embarrassed of his respect for human life at all stages.

In my book, “Do the Right Thing,” I dedicate an entire chapter called “Politically Homeless” to the unfortunate attitude between some in the party who treat values voters as if they were embarrassing distant cousins who are allowed to come to the family gatherings a couple of times a year, but aren’t expected to be seen beyond that. Values voters are conservative on social issues, and economic ones as well.

For those on the listening tour, listen to this: If the party elite want to abandon principled leadership to protect life, support traditional marriage while going along with deficit exploding spending, interference and micro-managing of private business and failing to police corruption and govern competently, then hearing aids or a panel of experts won’t help.

Here’s a better idea: Go to a little diner somewhere, but not in an announced listening tour. Just order the cheeseburger and talk to the person who serves your order. Have a conversation with the guy who lifts your bag at the airport or checks you in at the hotel. If you see a guy working on a construction project, wait until his break and ask him a few questions. You’ll have plenty to listen to and won’t even have to take a tour.

That’s my bowl of hot soup for the day, tell me what’s in your bowl. E-mail your comments to: huckmail@foxnews.com

All of us will be forced to pay for President Obama’s record-setting budget increases-as will our children and grandchildren.

• A 50-year old with a college degree will pay approximately $81,000 over their working life just to pay the interest on the debt in the Obama budget.
• A 40-year-old will pay $132,000 in debt interest only payments.
• A 20-year-old just starting out after college will pay a whopping $114,000 just to service the interest on the debt created by the Obama budget.

By 2019, President Obama’s budget will have added over $9.4 trillion to the federal debt.

And like any form of debt, such as a home mortgage or car loan, this debt comes with a steep debt load. Just like paying off the interest on a credit card, every young American will be responsible for not only paying the principal on President Obama’s budget, but will also have to shoulder the interest payments. The above calculations are just debt interest.

Just click here, enter your age, your current salary, and get your Obama Debt Number.

This “energy tax” will be devastating to all Americans. Estimates have cap-and-trade adding more than $3,000 a year to every American’s bill for gasoline and energy.

In Pennsylvania, for instance, it would mean the doubling of monthly energy bills, whether it’s natural gas or electricity. In more than half of America that’s a huge deal, because in October there is no choice – you have to turn your heat on and that heat will stay on usually through the month of April.

It is also a reduction in the American standard of living due to the potential for job loss in our country. Businessmen are savvy and preemptive and they are looking at what President Obama wants to do with this new tax on energy. Because that’s what this is, a tax on the right to use and consume energy – as if energy didn’t cost enough already.

You might as well call this the ‘China and India Stimulus Plan’ because China and India have said, they were not going to have any part of a cap-and-trade system. So that means American jobs will leave and go overseas fleeing the United States for other countries..

The only way the cap-and-trade plan can be stopped is if the American people rise up and say “NO!”

Senator Harry Reid plans that by the end of August the cap-and-trade bill go through. That gives you, the American people, a little time. These are very real implications – not just for businessmen, not just for a few Americans, but 100% of Americans will be impacted by this new tax on energy.

If you procrastinate now it will cost you …

It’s the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, Stupid

In 1992, Bill Clinton defeated George Bush, by campaigning on political consultant Jim Carville’s theme: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Here we are again – up to our necks in economic quicksand. Again, politicians, pollsters and pundits think we have a problem with the “economy.” And, of course, we do, and we need to work on it … but are we only treating the symptoms? Are we just trying to stitch up the patient without removing the tumors?

The economy is the symptom, not the disease. Unless we remove the moral and spiritual “tumors” that affect many in the White House, Senate, House, judiciary and right down to the citizenry, that sent us to the Emergency Room in the first place, we can expect neither a quick nor a lasting recovery … if any at all.

If the economy is the symptom, what is the disease? In January of 1984, President Reagan spoke to the National Religious Broadcasters Association in Washington, D.C. Here’s a portion of his speech:

“Government bureaucracies spend billions for problems related to drugs alcohol and disease. How much of that money could we save, how much better off might American’s be if all of us tried a little harder to live by the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule? I have been told that since the beginning of civilization, millions and millions of laws have been written. I have even heard someone suggest, it was well over several billion laws. And yet, taken all together, all those millions and millions of laws have not improved on the Ten Commandments one bit.”

In a lot of ways, Ronald Reagan was right. By getting away from the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule we, as a nation, have been going into a downward spiral of selfishness and greed. Let’s accept responsibility for our quandary and repent so we can move on in the right direction. Right choices will bring back real freedom and stifle immorality, liberal philosophy, and socialistic endeavors.

I would like to hear more preaching on 2 Chronicles 7:14. I would like to hear more spiritual leaders speaking out against the underlying disease. I would like to see more Christians in the marketplace and the public square “out themselves” as believers and make a stand – even if it turns out to be a last stand. And I would like to see us get back to the moral and spiritual underpinnings that made this country so great.

God needs to be getting more glory. How? It’s the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, stupid 🙂

Carbon dioxide … which humans exhale … is now regarded as a public danger according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They are now planning for this exhaled gas from the air we breathe in to be regulated under the Clean Air Act, something the Act was not intended to do when it was enacted over 30 years ago.

Aggressive cap-and-trade measures are being debated on Capitol Hill and, if enacted, are rumored to rake in trillions of dollars for the federal government and raise the cost of living for Americans by thousands of dollars.

Dan Simmons, the director of state affairs at the Institute for Energy Research, calls cap-and-trade the largest backdoor tax in U.S. history. “In the budget it said $646 billion. They then are telling people on Capitol Hill that it is going to be $1.3 [trillion] to $1.9 trillion,” he points out. “That will make it the largest tax increase of all time of all American history and probably all world history.”

He says the problem with cap-and-trade is that it makes all people poorer today in order to tackle an alleged problem tomorrow. Ben Lieberman with The Heritage Foundation says cap-and-trade would usher in a permanent recession.

“We might never really have a full recovery if we have to live with these tremendous constraints on affordable energy use,” he adds, “so we would be talking about exactly the kind of thing that we are worried about now – job losses, high energy costs — these things being exacerbated and staying that way for years and years.”