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Monday, October 15, 2012

It's time! again for the annual 'Stella Awards'!

For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Lie beck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald's in New Mexico, where she purchased coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right? That's right; these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S. You know the kind of cases that make you scratch your head. So keep your head scratcher handy


Here are the Stellas for this past year -- 2011

*SEVENTH PLACE*
Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son. Start scratching!
* SIXTH PLACE *
Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps. Scratch some more...

* FIFTH PLACE *
Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, who was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to sit for eight, count 'em, EIGHT days and survive on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner's insurance company claiming undue mental Anguish. Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish Keep scratching. There are more... Double hand scratching after this one..
*FOURTH PLACE*
Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the Stella's when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor's beagle - even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun. Pick a new spot to scratch, you're getting a bald spot..
* THIRD PLACE *
Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions? Only two more so ease up on the scratching...

*SECOND PLACE*
Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000....oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. Go figure.
Ok. Here we go!! Drum roll ...
* FIRST PLACE *

This year's runaway First Place Stella Award winner was: Mrs. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owners manual that she couldn't actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down? $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

If you think the court system is out of control and America has lost ALL common sense, be sure to pass this one on!!!

Friday, October 12, 2012

JFK promoting tax cuts across the board

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEdXrfIMdiU

American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper

The irony of this article appearing in the English edition of Pravda (Russian on-line newspaper) defies description. Why can a Russian newspaper print the following yet the American media can't/won't see it?

Description: cid:1.678835749@web59707.mail.ac4.yahoo.com
American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper
Description:
 cid:2.678835749@web59707.mail.ac4.yahoo.com
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed, against the backdrop 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 than the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a Burger King 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 then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Weimar 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, losses, and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then 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 Motors) 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 then 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, and 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 "free man" 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 Frank, 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
© 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.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

By many measures, U.S. economy still stinks


Slip slidin’ away ...
Why does America seem to be slouching? Multiple measures have found this country going down, down, down since President Barack Obama’s inauguration.
The Geneva-based World Economic Forum ranks nations on competitiveness. When Obama came to power, America had dominated this contest for at least three years. The United States quickly stumbled from first place in 2008 to second in 2009, fourth in 2010, fifth in 2011 and seventh today.
After examining 144 countries, the forum said on Sept. 4 about America’s economic performance:
“The United States continues the decline that began a few years ago, falling two more positions to take seventh place this year. Although many structural features continue to make its economy extremely productive, a number of escalating and unaddressed weaknesses have lowered the U.S. ranking in recent years. ... The business community continues to be critical toward public and private institutions (41st).
In particular, its trust in politicians is not strong (54th). ... Business leaders also remain concerned about the government’s ability to maintain arms-length relationships with the private sector (59th), and consider that the government spends its resources relatively wastefully (76th). A lack of macroeconomic stability continues to be the country’s greatest area of weakness (111th, down from 90th last year).”
After Standard & Poor’s humiliating downgrade of U.S. sovereign debt on Aug. 5, 2011, America has suffered two more demotions. Egan-Jones, one of nine rating agencies “nationally recognized” by the Securities and Exchange Commission, lowered America’s debt from AA-plus to AA in April, and from AA to AA-minus on Sept. 14.
Egan-Jones previously had chopped America’s longtime AAA debt status to AA-plus on July 16, 2011, foreshadowing by more than a fortnight Standard & Poor’s higher-profile downgrade.
Egan-Jones said the Federal Reserve’s Argentine-style money printing — most recently via its $40 billion-per-month exchange of mortgage-backed securities for freshly minted cash — threatens to pound the dollar as thin as phyllo dough.
“The Fed’s QE3 will stoke the stock market and commodity prices but, in our opinion, will hurt the U.S. economy and, by extension, credit quality,” observed Egan-Jones’ statement on the Fed’s “Quantitative Easing” policy. “The increased cost of commodities will pressure profitability of businesses, and increase the costs of consumers, thereby reducing consumer purchasing power.” America has deteriorated from a debt/GDP ratio of 76 percent when Obama took office to 104 percent today.
This ties directly to Obama’s 52 percent expansion of America’s national debt, from $10.63 trillion at his inauguration to $16.17 trillion today. (The GDP simultaneously grew just 11 percent, from $13.97 trillion to $15.58 trillion.) This burgeoning indebtedness reflects Obama’s shattered promise to “cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office.”
The Bureau of Economic Analysis on Sept. 27 revised second-quarter GDP growth downward, from 1.7 to 1.3 percent. America now trails growth in Cuba, which advanced by 2.1 percent between April and June.
While the U.S. economy supposedly is in recovery, inflation-adjusted median household income is shrinking. As the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, that figure stood at $53,718.
By last August, such a typical household saw its income shrivel to $50,678, a 5.7 percent reduction totaling $3,040 in lost buying power.
Some of these trends predate Obama. The Big Government Bush-Rove Administration cravenly ballooned the state.
In an unprincipled and quixotic effort to create Rove’s “durable Republican majority,” he and Bush deployed new entitlements, boondoggles, pork projects, and other “compassionate conservative” outlays. These fools’ errands beggared the nation while costing the GOP control of Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008. Nice work, George and Karl.
Obama correctly blames Bush-Rove for this fine mess. Alas, he exacerbates it. He is like a firefighter who finds a house ablaze and denounces the arsonists who ignited the inferno. But then Obama shovels coal onto the flames.
After four years of inhaling Obama’s smoke, Americans finally may be ready to breathe normally again under Mitt Romney.


Thomas Sowell: Obama's world-class chutzpah


When President Barack Obama and others on the Left are not busy admonishing the rest of us to be "civil" in our discussions of political issues, they are busy letting loose insults, accusations and smears against those who dare to disagree with them.
Like so many people who have been beaten in a verbal encounter, and who can think of clever things to say the next day, after it is all over, President Obama, after his clear loss in his debate with Mitt Romney, called Governor Romney a "phony."
Innumerable facts, however, show that it is our commander in chief who is phony in chief. A classic example was his speech to a predominantly black audience at Hampton University on June 5, 2007. That date is important, as we shall see.
In his speech – delivered in a ghetto-style accent that Obama doesn't use anywhere except when he is addressing a black audience – he charged the federal government with not showing the same concern for the people of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina hit as they had shown for the people of New York after the 9/11 attacks, or the people of Florida after hurricane Andrew hit.
Departing from his prepared remarks, he mentioned the Stafford Act, which requires communities receiving federal disaster relief to contribute 10 percent as much as the federal government does.
Senator Obama, as he was then, pointed out that this requirement was waived in the case of New York and Florida because the people there were considered to be "part of the American family." But the people in New Orleans – predominantly black – "they don't care about as much," according to Barack Obama. If you want to know what community organizers do, this is it – rub people's emotions raw to hype their resentments. And this was Barack Obama in his old community organizer role, a role that should have warned those who thought that he was someone who would bring us together, when he was all too well practiced in the art of polarizing us apart.
Why is the date of this speech important? Because, less than two weeks earlier, on May 24, 2007, the United States Senate had in fact voted 80-14 to waive the Stafford Act requirement for New Orleans, as it had waived that requirement for New York and Florida. More federal money was spent rebuilding New Orleans than was spent in New York after 9/11 and in Florida after hurricane Andrew, combined.
Truth is not a job requirement for a community organizer. Nor can Barack Obama claim that he wasn't present the day of that Senate vote, as he claimed he wasn't there when Jeremiah Wright unleashed his obscene attacks on America from the pulpit of the church that Obama attended for 20 years.
Unlike Jeremiah Wright's church, the U.S. Senate keeps a record of who was there on a given day. The Congressional Record for May 24, 2007 shows Senator Barack Obama present that day and voting on the bill that waived the Stafford Act requirement. Moreover, he was one of just 14 senators who voted against – repeat, against – the legislation which included the waiver. When he gave that demagogic speech, in a feigned accent and style, it was world-class chutzpah and a rhetorical triumph. He truly deserves the title phony in chief.
If you know any true believers in Obama, show them the transcript of his June 5, 2007 speech at Hampton University (available from the Federal News Service) and then show them Page S6823 of the Congressional Record for May 24, 2007, which lists which senators voted which way on the waiver of the Stafford Act requirement for New Orleans.
Some people in the media have tried to dismiss this and other revelations of Barack Obama's real character that have belatedly come to light as "old news." But the truth is one thing that never wears out. The Pythagorean Theorem is 2,000 years old, but it can still tell you the distance from home plate to second base (127 ft.) without measuring it. And what happened five years ago can tell a lot about Barack Obama's character – or lack of character.
Obama's true believers may not want to know the truth. But there are millions of other people who have simply projected their own desires for a post-racial America onto Barack Obama. These are the ones who need to be confronted with the truth, before they repeat the mistake they made when they voted four years ago.



Friday, October 5, 2012

Why does Israel exist?


Some Christian Zionists believe that the "ingathering" of Jews in Israel is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus. The idea that Christians should actively support a Jewish return to the Land of Israel, along with the parallel idea that the Jews ought to be encouraged to become Christian, as a means fulfilling a Biblical prophecy has been common in Protestant circles since the Reformation.
Christian support for the restoration of the Jews was brought to America by the Puritans who fled England. In colonial times, Increase Mather and John Cotton,among others, favored restoration of the Jews, but it was not until the early 19th century that the idea gathered impetus. Ezra Stiles at Yale was a prominent supporter of restoration of the Jews. In 1808, Asa McFarland, a Presbyterian, voiced the opinion of many that the fall of the Ottoman Empire was imminent and would bring about the restoration of the Jews. One David Austin of New Haven spent his fortune building docks and inns from which the Jews could embark to the Holy Land. In 1825 Mordecai Manuel Noah, a Jew who wanted to found a national home for the Jews on Grand Island in New York as a way station on the way to the holy land, won widespread Christian backing for his project. Likewise, restorationist theology was the inspiration for the first American missionary activity in the Middle East. As the demise of the Ottoman Empire appeared to be approaching, the advocacy of restorationism increased.
It was not just in the USA that this idea occurred. Ideas favoring the restoration of the Jews in the Palestine or Land of Israel entered the British public discourse in the 1830s, though British reformationists had written about the restoration of the Jews as early as the 16th century, and the idea had strong support among Puritan. Not all such attitudes were favorable towards the Jews; they were shaped in part by a variety of Protestant beliefs, or by a streak of philo-Semitism among the classically educated British elite, or by hopes to extend the Empire.

The role of certain Christians in supporting the establishment of Israel following World War II is well known; and it is really, is simply an example of self-willed fulfillment of prophecy.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Barack Obama will raise Capital Gains Taxes...even if it means less tax revenue!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54jr3Ceu894

Capital gains vs. income

One of the many false talking points of the Obama administration is that a rich man like Warren Buffett should not be paying a lower tax rate than his secretary. But anyone whose earnings come from capital gains usually pays a lower tax rate.
How are capital gains different from ordinary income?
Article Tab: File: Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, at the introduction of the new Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Paperwhite personal devices, in Santa Monica, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012.
File: Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, at the introduction of the new Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Paperwhite personal devices, in Santa Monica, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012.
REED SAXON, ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Ordinary income is usually guaranteed. If you work a certain amount of time, you are legally entitled to the pay that you were offered when you took the job. Capital gains involve risk. They are not guaranteed. You can invest your money and lose it all. Moreover, the year when you receive capital gains may not be the same as the years when they were earned.
Suppose I spend 10 years writing a book, making not one cent from it in all that time. Then, in the 10th year, when the book is finished, I may sell it to a publisher who pays me $100,000 in advance royalties.
Am I the same as someone who has a salary of $100,000 that year? Or am I earning $10,000 a year for 10 years' work?
It so happens that the government will tax me the same as someone who earns $100,000 that year, because my decade of work on the book cannot be documented. But the point here is that it is really a capital gain, and it illustrates the difference between a capital gain and ordinary income.
Then there is the risk factor. There is no guarantee to me that a publisher will actually accept the book that I have worked on for 10 years – and there is no guarantee to the publisher that the public will buy enough copies of the book to repay whatever I might be paid when the contract is signed.
Even the $10,000 a year – which is less than anyone can earn on an entry level job – is not guaranteed. If my years of work produced an unpublished manuscript, I would not even have been among the first thousand writers who met this fate.
Very similar principles apply to businesses. We pay attention to businesses after they have succeeded. But most new businesses do not succeed. Even those businesses that eventually turn out to be enormously successful may go through years of losing money before they have their first year of earning a profit.
Amazon.com spent years losing money before turning a profit for the first time in 2001. McDonald's teetered on the edge of bankruptcy more than once in its early years. Desperate expedients were resorted to by the people who ran McDonald's, to just keep their noses above the water, while hoping for better days.
At one time, you could have bought half interest in McDonald's for $25,000 – and there were no takers. Anyone who would have risked $25,000 at that time would be a billionaire today. But there was no guarantee at the time that they wouldn't be just throwing 25 grand down a rat hole.
Where a capital gain can be documented – when a builder spends 10 years creating a housing development, for example – then whatever that builder earns in the 10th year is a capital gain, not ordinary income. There is no guarantee in advance that the builder will ever recover his expenses, much less make a profit.
There are whole industries where no one can expect to make a profit the first year – publishing a newspaper for example. Virtually every major American airline has lost money in some years, and some of the biggest and most famous airlines have ended up going bankrupt.
If a country wants investors to invest, it cannot tax their resulting capital gains the same as the incomes of people whose incomes were guaranteed in advance when they took the job.
It is not just a question of "fairness" to investors. Ultimately, it is investors who guarantee other people's incomes in a market economy, even though the investors' own incomes are by no means guaranteed. Reducing investors' incentives to take risks is reducing the jobs their investments are likely to create.
Business income is different from employees' income in another way. The profit that a business makes is first taxed as profit and the remainder is then taxed again as the incomes of people who receive dividends.
The biggest losers from politicians who jack up tax rates are likely to be people who are looking for jobs that will not be there, because investments will not be there to create the jobs.

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/capital-373352-years-year.html