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.

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/obama-373976-new-people.html

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.

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?

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

The formation of the United Nations.

The United Nations began with the London Declaration of June 12, 1941, when various nationalities had a sense of purpose struggling against a common enemy: Hitler's Germany. They declared that "the only true basis of enduring peace is the willing cooperation of free peoples in a world in which, relieved of the menace of aggression, all may enjoy economic and social security." Signing the London Declaration on June 12, 1941 were Britain, Canada, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa and the exiled governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Yugoslavia. Charles deGaulle, in exile from France, also signed.

The United States was not yet in the war. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union and after the U.S. entered World War II, the above powers were joined by the U.S. and the Soviet Union in what was called the "Declaration by United Nations," signed in Washington on January 1, 1942. Each government pledged "to employ its full resources, military or economic" to defeat Germany, Japan and Italy. They agreed not to make a separate peace with the enemy. A number of Latin American nations joined the group, as did Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and some smaller African states.

At their Teheran conference in late 1943, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt discussed the possibility of a United Nations trusteeship for France's colony of Indochina (including Vietnam).  The Indochinese were to be included among the "free peoples" spoken of in the London declaration but after a wait of twenty or thirty years. In deference to Churchill a UN trusteeship for India was not discussed.  

In his campaign for re-election in 1944, Roosevelt argued that the United Nations had to be able to commit people to military action, "to keep the peace by force, if necessary" rather than wait for consultations, discussions and debates. He likened the latter to a local police force calling a town meeting before stopping a burglary. "It is clear," he said, "that if the world organization is to have any reality at all, our American representative must be endowed in advance by the people themselves, by constitutional means through their representatives in the Congress, with authority to act."

Beginning in September 1944, at the Dumbarton Oaks mansion in Washington D.C., representatives of the Soviet Union, Britain, the U.S. and China agreed on the structure of the UN. The purpose of the United Nations, it was declared, would be:

1. To maintain international peace and security; and to that end to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means adjustment or settlement of international disputes which may lead to a breach of the peace;

2. To develop friendly relations among nations and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

3. To achieve international cooperation in the solution of international economic, social and other humanitarian problems; and

4. To afford a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the achievement of these common ends.

The principles by which this was to be realized were:

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states.

2. All members of the Organization undertake, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership in the Organization, to fulfill the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the Charter.

3. All members of the Organization shall settle their disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security are not endangered.

At the Yalta conference in February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin -- the Big Three -- declared their resolve to establish the UN, with Roosevelt and Churchill both agreeing that the Ukraine and Byelorussia (republics within the Soviet Union) would be separate member states with their own vote. The Big Three agreed to the time and place of a founding meeting of the United Nations and that the UN would be led or dominated by the five major allied powers as permanent members of a Security Council -- the U.S., Soviet Union, Britain, China, and France. The question arose about some Latin American nations joining. Stalin asked how the Soviet Union could build world security with nations that had been hostile to the Soviet Union. Churchill commented about nations that had been waiting "to see who would win," and Roosevelt apologized to Stalin for having prematurely promised these nations UN membership. He added that he was doing what he could to encourage them to declare war on Germany and that they could help write the UN Charter and become initial members when they signed the UN declaration. Stalin agreed. The question arose of a conference to discuss "territorial trusteeship and dependent areas" -- in other words colonialism. Churchill became enraged, stating that as long as he was Prime Minister he would "not yield one scrap" of Britain's heritage. He was placated when the U.S. Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius, showed him a report stating that the United States opposed putting any colony into an arrangement without the consent of the colonial power involved.

The conference for founding the U.N. began in April, 1945, at San Francisco. President Roosevelt died in April, and in May tensions arose between the Soviet Union and Roosevelt's successor, Harry Truman. Truman had lived through some failed idealisms and had his doubts about the United Nations, but he wanted to adhere to Roosevelt's legacy. He did not want a return to the isolationism that had followed World War I, and he was committed to maintaining the U.S. as a player in the new internationalism. Another founding conference for the United Nations was scheduled to meet in San Francisco, and Truman said the U.S. would proceed with that conference and that if his criticism of the Soviet Union regarding Poland upset the Russians then they "could go to hell." On May 12, 1945, Truman stopped the aid called Lend Lease to the Soviet Union, but he wanted to continue working with the Soviet Union within the United Nations for the sake of peace and order.

A survey in May indicated that 40 percent of the American people doubted the conference in San Francisco would succeed. Those believing that the UN could prevent war within the coming fifty years had dropped from 49 to 32 percent. And those who believed the U.S. should join the UN was at 85 percent.
At San Francisco, delegates from fifty nations hammered out an agreement, creating the UN Charter. The Charter declared against wars of aggression and against wars that violated international agreements. The Charter declared against war crimes and crimes against humanity: genocide, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts. Articles 42 and 43 authorized the use of armed force to maintain international peace and security. Article 51 acknowledged the right of members to join together for self-defense -- an issue in support of regionalism that had been advocated by Latin American countries that feared the spread of communism. Articles 55 and 56 required that "all members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action" to promote "universal respect for, and observance and protection of, all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all."
The charter envisaged the regular military force available to the Security Council that had been advocated by Roosevelt. The Charter could be amended by a two-thirds majority vote in the UN's General Assembly. The General Assembly was to be a place for discussion and the making of "recommendations"  regarding the maintenance of international peace and security. Responsibility to implementation was to be with the Security Council. And members of the United Nations were required to pay dues.
The United Nations sought collective agreement, but on the Security Council national sovereignty was reinforced by a requirement of unanimity -- first agreed to at the Yalta Conference. Any one Security Council member could veto a decision made by other members of council. This was a provision insisted upon by the Soviet Union, which wanted protection from the capitalist powers ganging up against it. The other Security Council members were concerned about their own sovereignty and accepted it as a worthy idea. That it weakened United Nations was also accepted. Sovereignty was most important to them.
The UN was to be administered by a Secretary General, appointed by the General Assembly on recommendation of the Security Council, for a term of five years. He was to sit in on sessions of the General Assembly and to be able to bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion threatened international peace and security.
Ceremonies for the signing of the UN Charter took place at San Francisco on June 26. President Truman flew in and spoke to the gathering, saying that he would use the United Nations as a central instrument in foreign policy. He renounced great-power dominations. Strong nations, he said, should lead the way to international justice "by their own example." Let us not fail to grasp "this supreme chance," he said, "to establish a worldwide rule of reason." Ratification of the Charter by member nations was completed on October 24, 1945, and October 24 was designated as United Nations Day.
In November, a UN General Conference in London created the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Its constitution claimed that "...since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed." It described World War II as having been "made possible by the denial of the democratic principles of the dignity, equality and mutual respect of men, and by the propagation, in their place, through ignorance and prejudice, of the doctrine of the inequality of men and races." The solution, according to the document was education.
Members of the Security Council failed to agree concerning the creation of a regular armed force for the UN, and no such force was created. The sense of urgency and common purpose that had existed in 1941 in Europe had slackened during the peace that followed the war in Europe.

Beyond Obamacare [former Obama official says we NEED death panels]

Beyond Obamacare [former Obama official says we NEED death panels]
The New York Times ^ | September 16, 2012 | Steven Rattner
Posted on Wednesday, September 26, 2012 9:16:09 AM by ConjunctionJunction
WE need death panels. Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget. But in the pantheon of toxic issues — the famous “third rails” of American politics — none stands taller than overtly acknowledging that elderly Americans are not entitled to every conceivable medical procedure or pharmaceutical. Most notably, President Obama’s estimable Affordable Care Act regrettably includes severe restrictions on any reduction in Medicare services or increase in fees to beneficiaries. In 2009, Sarah Palin’s rant about death panels even forced elimination from the bill of a provision to offer end-of-life consultations. Now, three years on, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Paul D. Ryan, has offered his latest ambitious plan for addressing the Medicare problem. But like Mr. Obama’s, it holds limited promise for containing the program’s escalating costs within sensible boundaries. The Obama and Ryan plans are not without common ground; both propose an identical formula for capping the growth in Medicare spending per beneficiary. And both dip into the same toolbox (particularly lower payments to providers) to achieve a reduction of nearly $1 trillion in Medicare expenditures over the next decade from projected levels. That’s where the agreement ends. Mr. Ryan believes that meeting the goal over the long term requires introducing more competition into Medicare through vouchers to purchase private insurance.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...

The depth of knowledge of Obama supporters‏

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeJbOU4nmHQ

Howard Stern contributors Sal and Richard travel to Harlem to interview Obama supporters and ask them why they are voting for Obama. They did this back in 2008, now let's see what happens when they do it again in 2012!