86M Full-Time Private-Sector Workers Sustain 148M Benefit Takers

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Buried deep on the website of the U.S. Census Bureau is a number every American citizen, and especially those entrusted with public office, should know. It is 86,429,000.

That is the number of Americans who in 2012 got up every morning and went to work — in the private sector — and did it week after week after week.

These are the people who built America, and these are the people who can sustain it as a free country. The liberal media have not made them famous like the polar bear, but they are truly a threatened species.

It is not a rancher with a few hundred head of cattle that is attacking their habitat, nor an energy company developing a fossil fuel. It is big government and its primary weapon — an ever-expanding welfare state.

Read the full story here:
86M Full-Time Private-Sector Workers Sustain 148M Benefit Takers | CNS News

The Real Truth About Sarah Palin -- Ouch!

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By Dewie Whetsell, Alaskan Fisherman

The last 45 of my 66 years I’ve spent in a commercial fishing town in Alaska . I understand Alaska politics but never understood national politics well until this last year. Here’s the breaking point: Neither side of the Palin controversy gets it. It’s not about persona, style, rhetoric, it’s about doing things. Even Palin supporters never mention the things that I’m about to mention here.

1. Democrats forget when Palin was the Darling of the Democrats, because as soon as Palin took the Governor’s office away from a fellow Republican and tough SOB, Frank Murkowski, she tore into the Republican’s “Corrupt Bastards Club” (CBC) and sent them packing. Many of them are now residing in State housing and wearing orange jump suits The Democrats reacted by skipping around the yard, throwing confetti and singing, “la la la la” (well, you know how they are). Name another governor in this country that has ever done anything similar.

2. Now with the CBC gone, there were fewer Alaskan politicians to protect the huge, giant oil companies here. So she constructed and enacted a new system of splitting the oil profits called “ACES.” Exxon (the biggest corporation in the world) protested and Sarah told them, “don’t let the door hit you in the stern on your way out.” They stayed, and Alaska residents went from being merely wealthy to being filthy rich. Of course, the other huge international oil companies meekly fell in line. Again, give me the name of any other governor in the country that has done anything similar.

3. The other thing she did when she walked into the governor’s office is she got the list of State requests for federal funding for projects, known as “pork.” She went through the list, took 85% of them and placed them in the “when-hell-freezes-over” stack. She let locals know that if we need something built, we’ll pay for it ourselves. Maybe she figured she could use the money she got from selling the previous governor’s jet because it was extravagant. Maybe she could use the money she saved by dismissing the governor’s cook (remarking that she could cook for her own family), giving back the State vehicle issued to her, maintaining that she already had a car, and dismissing her State provided security force (never mentioning – I imagine – that she’s packing heat herself). I’m still waiting to hear the names of those other governors.

4. Now, even with her much-ridiculed “gosh and golly” mannerism, she also managed to put together a totally new approach to getting a natural gas pipeline built which will be the biggest private construction project in the history of North America. No one else could do it although they tried. If that doesn’t impress you, then you’re trying too hard to be unimpressed while watching her do things like this while baking up a batch of brownies with her other hand.

5. For 30 years, Exxon held a lease to do exploratory drilling at a place called Point Thompson. They made excuses the entire time why they couldn’t start drilling. In truth they were holding it like an investment. No governor for 30 years could make them get started. Then, she told them she was revoking their lease and kicking them out. They protested and threatened court action. She shrugged and reminded them that she knew the way to the court house. Alaska won again.

6. President Obama wants the nation to be on 25% renewable resources for electricity by 2025. Sarah went to the legislature and submitted her plan for Alaska to be at 50% renewable by 2025. We are already at 25%. I can give you more specifics about things done, as opposed to style and persona. Everybody wants to be cool, sound cool, look cool. But that’s just a cover-up. I’m still waiting to hear from liberals the names of other governors who can match what mine has done in two and a half years. I won’t be holding my breath.

By the way, she was content to return to Alaska after the national election and go to work, but the haters wouldn’t let her. Now these adolescent screechers are obviously not scuba divers. And no one ever told them what happens when you continually jab and pester a barracuda. Without warning, it will spin around and tear your face off. Shoulda known better.

You have just read the truth about Sarah Palin that sends the media, along with the Democrat party, into a wild uncontrolled frenzy to discredit her. I guess they are only interested in skirt chasers, dishonesty, immoral people, liars, womanizers, murderers, and bitter ex-presidents’ wives.

So “You go, Girl.” I only wish the men in Washington had your guts, determination, honesty, and morals.

I rest my case. Only FOOLS listen to the biased media.

Friday Funnies

Chickens come home to roost for Obama | New York Post

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Today’s quiz: What do Vladimir Putin’s aggression and ObamaCare’s troubles have in common? OK, that was too easy.

It is impossible to dismiss as mere coincidence the Russian Bear’s invasion of Ukraine and the continuing mayhem of the Affordable Care Act. In their own ways, each reflects the full flowering of the policies of Barack Obama.

His chickens are coming home to roost, and what a mess they are making.

Obama’s sixth year in the White House is shaping up as his worst, and that’s saying something. He’s been in the Oval Office so long that it is obscene to blame his problems on George W. Bush, the weather or racism. Obama owns the world he made, or more accurately, the world he tried to remake.
Nothing important has worked as promised, and there is every reason to believe the worst is yet to come. The president’s casual remark the other day that he worries about “a nuclear weapon ­going off in Manhattan” inadvertently reflected the fear millions of Americans have about his leadership. Not necessarily about a bomb, but about where he is taking the country.

We are racing downhill and he is stepping on the gas. Will he stop before the nation crashes?

Read the full story:
Chickens come home to roost for Obama | New York Post

Hump Day Hunnies

Trail Of Lost IRS Emails Might Lead To White House

Scandal: One of the seven people, including Lois Lerner who lost emails from the period of Tea
Party targeting by the IRS, served as chief of staff to former IRS head Steven Miller. She also made 35 visits to the White House.

The funny thing about emails is that they are never orphans. When you send one, there's always a recipient who has his or her own copy. The "lost" Lois Lerner emails had recipients. How about subpoenas to all of them during the Tea Party targeting period? That should help find what we need to know — or maybe not.

It seems six more IRS officials have lost critical emails from that period, a seeming statistical impossibility that shouts out a conspiracy to obstruct justice, and more violations of the Federal Records Act, which requires paper copies of these emails to be printed and stored just in case of computer problems.

One of those officials who received Lerner emails and also lost them was Nikole Flax, chief of staff to former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller. Miller, who was fired in the wake of the targeting scandal, visited the White House more than most Cabinet members.

Flax, as the Daily Caller reports, "made 31 visits to the White House between July 12, 2010, and May 8, 2013, according to White House visitor logs."

While not quite as numerous as another former IRS Commissioner, Douglas Shulman, who made some 118 visits — including one he testified was for the Easter egg roll on the White House lawn — Flax's visits dovetail nicely with key points in the IRS scandal.

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/062014-705686-six-more-irs-officials-lost-emails.htm#ixzz35Su3rO85
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Let's Hear It for The Low Information Voter

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During the 1956 presidential campaign, an enthusiastic supporter called out to the Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson: "Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person. Stevenson wistfully called back: "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!" 

Once known as the "silent majority," now as the nation's "low-information voters," these citizens perform their civic duty on election day. But they have no real clue for whom or what they are voting. Yes, when it comes to their occupational callings, investment, or sport picks, they may be highly rational. It's just politics and public affairs that hold no interest for them. It has long been hoped that the silent majority would one day wake and grow politically engaged. In 2010, the Tea Party Movement did just that. But it yet speaks as no more than a marginal voice. The majority remains politically asleep. And this silence understandably draws the ire of those who can see the fiscal calamities to come and care deeply about the country's future. But perhaps the community of the concerned should reconsider its position. The "know-nothings" may yet hold the key to "taking our country back."

For one thing, low-information voters are not committed liberals or progressives. They are more given to common sense than some "higher" utopian vision. And it's easy to respect the mood that drives apathy. First, there is cynicism. Americans have little use for their elected leaders and disdain for the political process, as such. Politicians plead for their votes but rarely keep their word. Any position or solemn campaign "promise" can be "recalibrated" two weeks or two campaign miles down the road. "They are all only in it for themselves." Sadly, that's all true. But apathy is also fueled by skepticism. If the cynic believes there's nothing we can do about the hopelessly corrupt system, the skeptic believes that there's no way of knowing what to do. He easily sees that the so-called "experts" all sound persuasive one at a time, but sharply disagree when pitted together. Both the cynic and the skeptic withdraw, feeling helpless to put things right.

But most of all, public apathy is the simple desire to live and be left alone. It is a penchant to care most about the things that matter most: making a living, managing expenses, handling emergencies, and raising the kids. Leisure hours are given to rooting for favorite sports teams, escaping into entertaining fictions, and spending quality time with family and friends. Americans place a premium on the sphere of privacy. They go about their business and, to evade government's interfering ways, will do business "under the table" or "off the books." They'll fudge on their tax returns and trade in the "black market." "[N]ot since the days of Al Capone," a top tax official told NY Post columnist John Crudele, "has the underground economy been so pervasive." It was a story about "zappers," cash registers rigged to make transactions "disappear" and enabling store owners to avoid paying sales taxes. America's legendary spirit of independence is alive and well and living all over. Long accustomed to doing as they please, citizens aren't likely to put up with backbreaking taxes and onerous mandates forever, much less goose-step to any would-be-tyrant's tune. As Jefferson wrote, "Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing [or just reforming] the Forms to which they are accustomed." Most families do not yet feel the heavy yoke of government on their backs. Those that do, "vote with their feet."

Read the full article here:
Let's Hear It for The Low Information Voter

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Friday Funnies

True Causes of the Uncivil War: Understanding the Morrill Tariff

 Morrill, Hon. Justin Smith of Vt. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most Americans believe the U. S. “Civil War” was over slavery. They have to an enormous degree been miseducated. The means and timing of handling the slavery question were at issue, although not in the overly simplified moral sense that lives in postwar and modern propaganda. But had there been no Morrill Tariff there might never have been a war. The conflict that cost of the lives of 650,000 Union and Confederate soldiers and perhaps as many as 50,000 Southern civilians and impoverished many millions for generations might never have been.

A smoldering issue of unjust taxation that enriched Northern manufacturing states and exploited the agricultural South was fanned to a furious blaze in 1860. It was the Morrill Tariff that stirred the smoldering embers of regional mistrust and ignited the fires of Secession in the South. This precipitated a Northern reaction and call to arms that would engulf the nation in the flames of war for four years.

Prior to the U. S. “Civil War” there was no U. S. income tax. In 1860, approximately 95% of U. S. government revenue was raised by a tariff on imported goods. A tariff is a tax on selected imports, most commonly finished or manufactured products. A high tariff is usually legislated not only to raise revenue, but also to protect domestic industry form foreign competition. By placing such a high, protective tariff on imported goods it makes them more expensive to buy than the same domestic goods. This allows domestic industries to charge higher prices and make more money on sales that might otherwise be lost to foreign competition because of cheaper prices (without the tariff) or better quality. This, of course, causes domestic consumers to pay higher prices and have a lower standard of living. Tariffs on some industrial products also hurt other domestic industries that must pay higher prices for goods they need to make their products. Because the nature and products of regional economies can vary widely, high tariffs are sometimes good for one section of the country, but damaging to another section of the country. High tariffs are particularly hard on exporters since they must cope with higher domestic costs and retaliatory foreign tariffs that put them at a pricing disadvantage. This has a depressing effect on both export volume and profit margins. High tariffs have been a frequent cause of economic disruption, strife and war.

Prior to 1824 the average tariff level in the U. S. had been in the 15 to 20 % range. This was thought sufficient to meet federal revenue needs and not excessively burdensome to any section of the country. The increase of the tariff to a 20% average in 1816 was ostensibly to help pay for the War of 1812. It also represented a 26% net profit increase to Northern manufacturers.

In 1824 Northern manufacturing states and the Whig Party under the leadership of Henry Clay began to push for high, protective tariffs. These were strongly opposed by the South. The Southern economy was largely agricultural and geared to exporting a large portion of its cotton and tobacco crops to Europe. In the 1850’s the South accounted for anywhere from 72 to 82% of U. S. exports. They were largely dependent, however, on Europe or the North for the manufactured goods needed for both agricultural production and consumer needs. Northern states received about 20% of the South’s agricultural production. The vast majority of export volume went to Europe. A protective tariff was then a substantial benefit to Northern manufacturing states, but meant considerable economic hardship for the agricultural South.

Read the rest of this story:
True causes of the Uncivil War: Understanding the Morrill Tariff | The Tribune Papers

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Hump Day Hunnies

Maggie Thatcher Addresses Income Inequality

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The Day Obama’s Presidency Died

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Almost nobody in Japan heard about the Battle of Midway until after the war. The Emperor Hirohito, upon hearing of the debacle, ordered a comprehensive cover-up. The wounded were isolated on hospital ships. All mail was censored. Surviving enlisted men and officers were held incommunicado until they could be shipped off to distant battlefields from where it was hoped they would never return. The sunken ships themselves were gradually written off over the course of the war until their loss blended in with the general demise of the imperial fleet. In order to coordinate this effort, Hirohito created a special office of cabinet rank.

It worked perfectly. If the U.S. had not won World War 2, Midway would never have existed in Japanese history. The average man of course read nothing in the papers, heard nothing on the radio, saw nothing in the newsreel. But perceptive Japanese “felt” something momentous had happened though they could not identify its cause. It’s impact, though denied in the press, shuddered through the whole imperial fabric. From that day forward events seemed to take a downward trajectory. Only after the war did the Japanese know the root of their misfortunes.

Midway.

But the loss was worse than four carriers sunk. Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully, in their classic account of Midway, The Shattered Sword, argued that the battle broke the Japanese empire in a fundamental way. It was the consequences of denial that really finished the Japanese military:

Cohen and Gooch propose that all military failures fall into three basic categories: failure to learn from the past, failure to anticipate what the future may bring, and failure to adapt to the immediate circumstances on the battlefield. They further note that when one of these three basic failures occurs in isolation (known as a simple failure), the results, while unpleasant, can often also be overcome. Aggregate failures occur when two of the basic failure types, usually learning and anticipation, take place simultaneously, and these are more difficult to surmount. Finally, at the apex of failure stand those rare events when all three basic failures occur simultaneously-an event known as catastrophic failure. In such an occurrence, the result is usually a disaster of such scope that recovery is impossible.

The Japanese did not want to accept what Midway meant about their strategic assumptions and therefore they suppressed it. That was more damaging than the naval losses themselves. It was that failure to adjust to reality which doomed the empire.

The curious thing about September 11, 2012 — the day of the Benghazhi attack — is that for some reason it marks the decline of the Obama presidency as clearly as a milepost. We are told by the papers that nothing much happened on that day. A riot in a far-away country. A few people killed. And yet … it may be coincidental, but from that day the administration’s foreign policy seemed inexplicably hexed. The Arab Spring ground to a halt. The secretary of State “resigned.” The CIA director was cast out in disgrace. Not long after, Obama had to withdraw his red line in Syria. Al-Qaeda, whose eulogy he had pronounced, appeared with disturbing force throughout Africa, South Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. Almost as if on cue, Russia made an unexpected return to the world stage, first in Syria, then in the Iranian nuclear negotiations.

Worse was to follow. America’s premier intelligence organization, the National Security Agency, was taken apart in public and the man who took its secrets, Edward Snowden, decamped to Moscow with a laptop full of secrets. But it was all just a curtain raiser to the dismemberment of Ukraine and the disaster in Eastern Europe:

Ninety percent of voters in a key industrial region in eastern Ukraine came out in favor of sovereignty Sunday, pro-Russian insurgents said in announcing preliminary results of a twin referendum that is certain to deepen the turmoil in the country.
Roman Lyagin, election chief of the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic, said around 75 percent of the Donetsk region’s 3 million or so eligible voters cast ballots, and the vast majority backed self-rule.

The Ukraine has now been effectively partitioned. The Obama administration talk about inflicting “consequences” and “costs” on Russia turned out to be empty. Almost as if to add insult to injury, Iran has declared victory in Syria over Obama. “‘We have won in Syria,’ said Alaeddin Borujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee and an influential government insider. ‘The regime will stay. The Americans have lost it.’”

And still there’s no acknowledgement of anything being fundamentally wrong.

Read the rest of this article:
Belmont Club » The Day Obama’s Presidency Died

Flashback: Democrats Argue VA's Success is Proof Obamacare Will Work

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In a number of our VA scandal posts (the number of facilities under investigation has swelled to 26, by the way), we've advanced a perfectly obvious political point: The bureaucratic corruption and abuses now coming to light ought to serve as stark warnings against expanding single-payer healthcare in America. If government apparatchiks can fail our combat veterans this badly -- in a limited-scope, government-run program that virtually all Americans support -- what possible justification is there for foisting this failing model onto the entire country? Care is being rationed and withheld. Backlogs have grown much worse, despite big budget increases. And manipulation and neglect are being deliberately and systematically hidden, with evidence allegedly being destroyed now that the fraudulent practices are being investigated. This is not the future any American should want; nor is this. But in the thick of the Obamacare debate, Democrats and liberals in the media dismissed Republican arguments about the risks of government-administered health programs, arguing that conservative "fear mongering" was contradicted by the glowing success of...the VA. Phil Kerpen has been on an absolute tear, exploiting the internet wayback machine to remind the country of the justifications they entered into evidence circa 2009 and 2010.

Read more:
Flashback: Democrats Argue VA's Success is Proof Obamacare Will Work - Guy Benson

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The Federal Reserve Explained In 7 Minutes

Friday Funnies