Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work

By David Willman,
Los Angeles TimesNovember 13,
2011

Reporting from Washington—

Over the last year,
the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an
experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or
will work.

Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the
contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling
shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men
and a longtime Democratic
Party donor.

When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the
Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company’s financial
demands, senior officials replaced the government’s lead negotiator for the
deal, interviews and documents show.

When Siga was in danger of losing
its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from
competing.

Siga was awarded the final contract in May through a
“sole-source” procurement in which it was the only company asked to submit a
proposal. The contract calls for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug
for the nation’s biodefense stockpile. The price of approximately $255 per dose
is well above what the government’s specialists had earlier said was reasonable,
according to internal documents and interviews.

Once feared for its
grotesque pustules and 30% death rate, smallpox was eradicated worldwide as of
1978 and is known to exist only in the locked freezers of a Russian scientific
institute and the U.S. government. There is no credible evidence that any other
country or a terrorist group possesses smallpox.

If there were an attack,
the government could draw on $1 billion worth of smallpox vaccine it already owns to
inoculate the entire U.S. population and quickly treat people exposed to the virus.
The vaccine, which costs the government $3 per dose, can reliably prevent death
when given within four days of exposure.

Blame Our Failing Schools for Occupy Wall Street

Blame Our Failing Schools for Occupy Wall Street

Posted By Bruce Thornton On November 2, 2011 @ 12:20 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 143 Comments

Having taught in a state university for thirty years, I’m not surprised by the ignorance on display among the Occupy Wall Street protestors. From kindergarten to university, for decades our schools have abandoned the teaching of basic facts and foundational thinking skills, and replaced both with leftish received wisdom and stale mythologies, all the while they have anxiously monitored and puffed up students’ self-esteem.

This lack of critical understanding and ignorance of simple fact characterize the main theme of the protests, that the wealthy “1%” of Americans have gamed the system to enrich themselves at the expense of everybody else, an analysis redolent of Scrooge McDuck cartoons or Frank Capra’s portrait of Old Man Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. But these caricatures are woefully uninformed about how a global, free market economy works. For example, the protestors rail about growing “income inequality,” but they forget that this expansion of the wealth of top earners has been accompanied by that same cohort’s paying more and more of the total federal tax bill, so that today nearly half of tax-filers pay nothing. Nor do they consider the issue of income mobility: from 1999-2007, about half of households in the bottom quintile had moved up the income ladder, while nearly half of households in the top quintile had moved down.

As for those greedy “millionaires” who refuse to pay their “fair share,” in this same period, half were millionaires only once, and only 6% were millionaires for the whole nine years. Indeed, as the Treasury Department reports, among the top 1/100 of 1 percent in 1996––the group Mother Jonesdemonized for obscenely increasing their wealth over the last 30 years–– only 25% remained in this group in 2005, and the median real income of these taxpayers declined over this period. Finally, according to the Treasury Department, “Median incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation. The real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period [1996-2005]. In addition, the median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those initially in the higher income groups.” No doubt things have gotten worse for many because of the recession, but there are plenty of people to blame beyond the “1%” and Wall Street villains, from the federal appointees running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to the home buyers lying on mortgage applications.

This obsession with income inequality, moreover, reflects profound ignorance of capitalism’s revolutionary genius. To the protestors, the fact that top earners increased their income more than others did is prima facie evidence of capitalist skullduggery. They seem to think that a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates has a zillion dollars because they somehow purloined money that in a just world other people would have had. Of course, in reality Microsoft and Apple have created hundreds of thousands of jobs and enriched others at the same time the corporations enriched themselves. That’s how capitalism works: it creates wealth that indeed spectacularly benefits the few, but that also raises the living standards of the many by creating jobs. More important, it is a dynamic, open system, one that creates opportunities for the clever and hardworking. And it has been wildly successful, so much so that today, young people who in the past would have started work at 16, can now spend several years of extended adolescence in colleges and universities, where they can earn impecunious degrees in subjects like Medieval French Poetry or Postcolonial Literature, and then loaf about lower Manhattan protesting the evil system that has rescued them from the drudgery of farm labor or factory work, and given them nutritious cheap food, healthy bodies, straight white teeth, and gadgets like X-Boxes and I-Pads.
But to the therapeutic sensibility and the entitlement mentality cultivated by the schools, this success in spreading wealth to historically unprecedented numbers of people is not as important as the system’s failure to measure up to utopian standards and equally enrich everybody no matter how lacking in virtue or talent. The “creative destruction” of capitalism––which promises not wealth and success for everybody, but the opportunity for everybody to strive for success and wealth through their talents and virtues––is an intolerable injustice, one that must be remedied by the coercive power of the state. Hence according to a survey conducted by Democrat pollster Douglas Schoen, 65% of the Manhattan protestors believe that “government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost.” Of course, that attitude is exactly what has created the looming economic crisis fueled by runaway entitlement costs that if not reined in, will double by 2050 and consume every dollar of federal tax revenues. The protestors are also ignoring the federal government’s role in creating the housing crisis by coercing and enabling banks to issue sketchy mortgages. And let’s not forget the fed’s role in inflating via federal subsidies the higher education bubble that has doubled tuition every nine years, and saddled so many of the protestors with the “injustice” of student loan debt, which since 1999 has increased 511%, and now totals $1 trillion.

In the protestors’ desire to empower the federal government even more, we see how the ignorance of history enables such delusional utopianism. For underlying these demands is the necessity for redistributing income in order to advance the idea of radical egalitarianism, and that is a notion whose resultant tyranny and bloody failure is documented on every page of history, from the French Revolution to the Soviet gulags. But how would the protestors know that history? What passes for history in most schools today is a melodrama of Western wickedness against the oppressed “other,” accompanied by feel-good romances about the achievements of marginalized minorities. It reminds me of Jane Austen’s satiric History of England, in which she says her purpose is to “vent my spleen against & shew my hatred to all those people whose parties and principles do not suit with mine, & not to give information.” The result is the sensibility we see among many of those camping out in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park: a penchant for decrepit ideas that are seductive to immature and undeveloped minds steeped in a sense of entitlement and an arrogant assurance of their own righteousness.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle. Click here.

Obama’s food-stamp dole at record levels

David
Paulin

 

Nearly 15 percent of the population — 45.8 million people
–  were on the food-stamp dole in August, the Wall Street Journal
reported. How come?

According to the paper, it’s all because of the horrible
economy, with the number of people on food stamps having risen 8.1 percent in
the past year.

What the WSJ doesn’t mention is that the exploding use of
food stamps has much to do with changing attitudes over the years about what
food-stamp recipients are entitled to — and that now includes junk food and
sugary drinks. In addition, soaring levels of fraud have helped to drive soaring
food-stamp use, according to a recent Op-Ed in The Journal, “The Food-Stamp Crime Wave.” (Do WSJ
reporters read their paper’s Op-Ed page?)

Interestingly, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried some
months ago to stop the use of food stamps for sugary beverages like soda pop in
an effort to curb exploding levels of diabetes and obesity among New Yorkers. However, the
Obama administration rejected Bloomberg’s proposal for eliminating soda. Among other
things, administration bureaucrats claimed Bloomberg’s plan lacked “a clear and
practical means to determine product eligibility, which is essential to avoid
retailer confusion at point-of-sale and stigma (emphasis added) for
affected clients.”

Stigma? Now that’s an interesting word, because there is no
stigma left anymore for those using food stamps, which incidentally are no
longer actually “stamps” but debit cards that you swipe like a credit card. And
food-stamp cards can buy just about anything your stomach
desires. Nationwide, 6 percent of
food stamp benefits are spent on sugary beverages, according to the United
States Department of Agriculture, which administers the food stamp program and
that was the source of the WSJ’s statistics about soaring levels of food-stamp
use.

As to fraud, that WSJ Op-Ed by James Bovard noted that “The
number of food-stamp recipients has soared to 44 million from 26 million in
2007. Not surprisingly, fraud and abuse are rampant.”

Among other things, he explained:

Millionaires are now legally entitled to collect food
stamps as long as they have little or no monthly income. Thirty-five states have
abolished asset tests for most food-stamp recipients. These and similar
“paperwork reduction” reforms advocated by the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) are turning the food-stamp program into a magnet for abuses
and absurdities.

Ultimately, soaring food-stamp use is not just another
anti-poverty program for the Obama administration. It’s all about “spreading the
wealth around.”

Unfortunately, poor people who really need food stamps must
now endure the “stigma” of being lumped together with the many deadbeats now on
the food-stamp dole.

Debunking Obama’s Latest Jobs Myth

Debunking Obama’s Latest Jobs Myth

Mike Brownfield

November 3, 2011 at 9:37 am

 

Imagine a high-speed train zooming down hundreds of miles of glistening train track stretching across sunny California, connecting Anaheim to San Francisco. It’s a bullet train dream, and it’s a prime example of President Barack Obama’s latest plan to create jobs in America. The trouble is that this dream is far from reality.

The Los Angeles Times reported this week that the California high-speed train–which is funded in part by $3 billion in federal grants from President Obama’s stimulus–is now expected to cost $98 billion, twice what was expected, and will take an additional 13 years to complete, extending the project to 2033. Questions remain about where the funding will come from, whether the project is viable, and whether the projected ridership will even materialize.

But projects like these are central to President Obama’s plan to put Americans back to work. Speaking yesterday from Georgetown Waterfront Park in Washington, D.C., Obama declared that his plan will “put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back on the job rebuilding our roads, our airports, our bridges and our transit systems.” And that is, of course, all at the expense of the American taxpayers.

The President once called these projects “shovel ready,” meaning that as soon as money arrived from the federal government, workers could be on the job. He made it sound as easy as flipping a switch, but unfortunately it didn’t work as planned. Despite a $787 billion stimulus package, America’s economy continues to languish with 14 million out of work and a 9.1 percent unemployment rate. The President joked, “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” Though he didn’t use the phrase “shovel-ready” in his remarks yesterday, the implication was still there. If Congress approves his jobs plan, he argued, all the construction workers sitting on the sidelines will be put back to work overnight.

But that’s not the way things work in the real world. Associated Press and Congressional Research Service reports show that infrastructure spending does not create jobs and, in fact, can even have a negative effect. Heritage’s Patrick Knudsen explains:

Building and repairing roads and bridges neither creates net job growth nor boosts the economy in the near term.

First, increasing government spending on these projects simply moves resources from one place to another — it may employ construction workers, but only by reducing jobs in other sectors. Further, the money never gets out the door soon enough to promote near-term job growth.

And then there’s the President’s flawed argument that since others are doing it, the United States should be, too. “How do we sit back and watch China and Europe build the best bridges and high-speed railroads and gleaming new airports, and we’re doing nothing?” he asks. It’s not a new line of argument from the President, and it leaves out some very important facts.

Dating all the way back to the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama spoke of the need to “invest” in infrastructure in order to be competitive with the likes of China. At the time, Jim Geraghty reported at National Review Online that while Obama puts China on a pedestal, he entirely overlooks some serious problems with transportation in China–namely, stories of severe power shortages affecting the country’s exports, an episode where 500,000 train passengers were left stranded for days, and outbreaks of violence where airplane travelers were left grounded without accommodation. And that’s not to mention the working conditions under which China builds its infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Europe, which heavily subsidizes its passenger rail systems, receives a poor return on its investment. Heritage’s Ron Utt explains that despite massive spending, passengers are opting for more efficient transportation in the air:

In Europe as a whole (EU-27), rail accounted for only 6.1 percent of passenger travel in 2007, including travel by air and sea. Buses accounted for 8.3 percent of the market, and air travel accounted for 8.8 percent. Despite Europe’s huge investment in passenger rail, its market share declined from 6.6 percent in 1995 to 6.1 percent in 2007. Over that same period, commercial air increased its share from 6.3 percent to 8.8 percent. By providing faster service and competitive prices, it took passengers away from rail, buses, and autos.

But to hear President Obama tell the story, building a European- or Chinese-style infrastructure is the key to the future–and to creating new jobs. Workers are ready to go, and all they need is your money to get started. But this is something we tried once already with the last stimulus, it didn’t work, and it’s not going to work this time, either. Obama’s infrastructure plan is a train that shouldn’t leave the station, headed for a bridge to nowhere, and jobs are the last thing that it will deliver.

Morning Bell: Debunking Obama’s Latest Jobs Myth

Morning Bell: Debunking Obama’s Latest Jobs Myth

Posted By Mike Brownfield On November 3, 2011 @ 9:37 am In Enterprise and Free Markets | No Comments

Imagine a high-speed train zooming down hundreds of miles of glistening train track stretching across sunny California, connecting Anaheim to San Francisco. It’s a bullet train dream, and it’s a prime example of President Barack Obama’s latest plan to create jobs in America. The trouble is that this dream is far from reality.

The Los Angeles Times reported this week ^[1] that the California high-speed train–which is funded in part by $3 billion in federal grants from President Obama’s stimulus–is now expected to cost $98 billion, twice what was expected, and will take an additional 13 years to complete, extending the project to 2033. Questions remain about where the funding will come from, whether the project is viable, and whether the projected ridership will even materialize.

But projects like these are central to President Obama’s plan to put Americans back to work. Speaking yesterday from Georgetown Waterfront Park in Washington, D.C., Obama declared ^[2] that his plan will “put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back on the job rebuilding our roads, our airports, our bridges and our transit systems.” And that is, of course, all at the expense of the American taxpayers.

The President once called these projects “shovel ready,” meaning that as soon as money arrived from the federal government, workers could be on the job. He made it sound as easy as flipping a switch, but unfortunately it didn’t work as planned. Despite a $787 billion stimulus package, America’s economy continues to languish with 14 million out of work and a 9.1 percent unemployment rate. The President joked ^[3], “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” Though he didn’t use the phrase “shovel-ready” in his remarks yesterday, the implication was still there. If Congress approves his jobs plan, he argued, all the construction workers sitting on the sidelines will be put back to work overnight.

But that’s not the way things work in the real world. Associated Press and Congressional Research Service reports ^[4] show that infrastructure spending does not create jobs and, in fact, can even have a negative effect. Heritage’s Patrick Knudsen explains ^[5]:

Building and repairing roads and bridges neither creates net job growth nor boosts the economy in the near term.

First, increasing government spending on these projects simply moves resources from one place to another — it may employ construction workers, but only by reducing jobs in other sectors. Further, the money never gets out the door soon enough to promote near-term job growth.

And then there’s the President’s flawed argument that since others are doing it, the United States should be, too. “How do we sit back and watch China and Europe build the best bridges and high-speed railroads and gleaming new airports, and we’re doing nothing?” he asks. It’s not a new line of argument from the President, and it leaves out some very important facts.

Dating all the way back to the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama spoke of the need to “invest” in infrastructure in order to be competitive with the likes of China. At the time, Jim Geraghty reported at National Review Online ^[6] that while Obama puts China on a pedestal, he entirely overlooks some serious problems with transportation in China–namely, stories of severe power shortages affecting the country’s exports, an episode where 500,000 train passengers were left stranded for days, and outbreaks of violence where airplane travelers were left grounded without accommodation. And that’s not to mention the working conditions under which China builds its infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Europe, which heavily subsidizes its passenger rail systems, receives a poor return on its investment. Heritage’s Ron Utt explains ^[7] that despite massive spending, passengers are opting for more efficient transportation in the air:

In Europe as a whole (EU-27), rail accounted for only 6.1 percent of passenger travel in 2007, including travel by air and sea. Buses accounted for 8.3 percent of the market, and air travel accounted for 8.8 percent. Despite Europe’s huge investment in passenger rail, its market share declined from 6.6 percent in 1995 to 6.1 percent in 2007. Over that same period, commercial air increased its share from 6.3 percent to 8.8 percent. By providing faster service and competitive prices, it took passengers away from rail, buses, and autos.

But to hear President Obama tell the story, building a European- or Chinese-style infrastructure is the key to the future–and to creating new jobs. Workers are ready to go, and all they need is your money to get started. But this is something we tried once already with the last stimulus, it didn’t work, and it’s not going to work this time, either. Obama’s infrastructure plan is a train that shouldn’t leave the station, headed for a bridge to nowhere, and jobs are the last thing that it will deliver.

Quick Hits:

• Thousands of Occupy Wall Street protesters rioted in Oakland yesterday evening — shutting down a busy port, taking over abandoned buildings, setting fires, burning American flags, and destroying ATMs ^[8].
• Europe’s leaders threatened to halt aid to Greece ^[9] until after it votes on a referendum to meet its commitments to the Eurozone. Meanwhile, Greece’s government is reportedly ^[9] “on the brink of collapse.”
• The Obama Administration considered bailing out solar company Solyndra ^[10] just before it went bankrupt. The Energy Department would have taken on some of its debt in return for a partial stake in the company.
• Amazon.com is offering to process sales-tax collection ^[11] for merchants who sell products through its site all for a fee equal to 2.9 percent of the taxes collected. Previously, Amazon lobbied against the imposition of sales taxes on online transactions.
• The State Department has purchased more than $70,000 worth ^[12] of President Barack Obama’s two books for Christmas “gratuities” and stocking of “key libraries” abroad.

Obama takes risky stance against the rich

 

By Richard McGregor in Washington

Getty

With the US economy suffering through its deepest slump since the Great  Depression, the Obama administration has designed a political strategy to match,  with echoes of the campaign rhetoric deployed by Franklin Roosevelt in the  1930s.

Throwing out the standard presidential playbook dictating an aspirational  pitch to centrist voters, the White House is cementing a high-risk message that  strikes firmly at wealth and privilege.

“There is surging sentiment out there among voters that the economy is  weighted towards the wealthy,” said a senior White House official. “Public  opinion has changed dramatically.”

The White House strategy will make the 2012  election a generational test of the Republican push of the past three  decades for cutting taxes, in ways their critics say have been constantly skewed  towards the highest earners.

The after-tax income of the wealthiest 1 per cent of US households increased  by 275 per cent over the past three decades, compared to an average of 62  per cent for all Americans, the independent Congressional Budget Office reported  this week. For the poorest 20 per cent, the growth was only 18 per cent.

The “Occupy  Wall Street” protests that are spreading raggedly across the US and the  world have thrown a spotlight on mounting popular anger at economic stagnation  and income inequality.

But the factors driving the White House go further, to their inability to  strike any substantive deals on their terms with congressional Republicans  emboldened by their smashing victory in last November’s mid-term elections.

The failure of the economic recovery to yield many jobs during its mild  upswing of the past two years has also transformed the political calculus for a  president facing a perilous re-election battle.

“In normal circumstances, this pitch might be suicidal. But these are not  normal circumstances,” said William Galston of the Brookings Institute.

Mr Galston has been reading the speeches of Franklin Roosevelt’s winning  campaign for the 1936 presidential election and finds striking comparisons to  the emerging line from Mr Obama.

“Roosevelt wasn’t just saying: ‘I am fighting for you.’ It was: ‘I am  fighting against them,’” he said.

All sides of politics have been regrouping since the fraught negotiations in  August over the country’s  borrowing limits that bought the US to the edge of sovereign default.

While Mr Obama was widely depicted as weak in his dealings with Congress, the  clash damaged the Republican majority in the House of Representatives even more.  Congressional approval ratings are now in single digits.

Although they have offered little fresh on policy, Republicans are tweaking  their public message, with the hardline house majority leader, Eric Cantor,  recently acknowledging the need to address the rich-poor gap.

Mitt Romney, the frontrunner in the Republican race to challenge Barack Obama  in 2012, has taken to saying that he is standing up for the “middle class” because the rich “can look after themselves”.

For the White House, this is just the terrain that it wants to fight on. “The  Republicans want to give the average millionaire a $200,000 tax cut, while the  middle class is struggling,” said the White House official.

The majority of Republican voters polled by the White House agree with the  president, the official added, meaning “they hold a different opinion from their  lawmakers and their candidates”.

Mr Obama has been barnstorming the country for the past month, highlighting a  jobs package which his aides acknowledge little of which has any chance of  passing.

The aim is put Mr Obama back at the centre of the debate after a period in  which he seemed marginalised and ineffective, the worst position a sitting  president can be in.

“Let’s re-emphasise what powers we have! What we can do on our own! Push the  envelope!” William Daley, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview  with Politico, the Washington publication.

Despite Mr Obama’s battered standing, senior Republicans remain wary of a  rejuvenated president.

“What the president wants to turn this into is the proposition that you may  hate us, but you will hate these people more,” said a senior Republican  congressional official. “We need to make sure we do not allow him to turn this  election into an anti-incumbent election.”

Besides the inherent risk in making wealth the central issue in a country  which has prided itself on the ability of anyone to get rich, Mr Obama must also  surmount a credibility gap in taking on Wall Street.

“He has blown hot and cold on the finance sector, so he is widely regarded as  having fallen between two stools,” said Mr Galston.

In the White House, there is no doubt that it is entering the election year  with its back against the wall.

“You can just feel this electorate is very volatile,” Mr Daley told Politico. “So strap yourself in.”

Obama’s ‘tide of war’ idiocy

Jerry
Philipson

When President Obama announced the withdrawal of all
American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011 Friday, he said, “The tide of war
is receding,” and used this statement as justification for the decision to
leave.

The statement is one of the most idiotic, misleading
and just plain false statements Obama has made about the Middle East since he
took office. There have been many others but this one stands out for its
ignorance and duplicity.

The tide of war in the Middle East is most certainly
not receding. It is exactly the opposite and this is in large part because of
Obama’s feckless foreign policy and refusal to stand up for American interests
in the region and support American allies there.  Because of American weakness
and intransigence, a large-scale conflagration involving many players is
inevitable and this has to be placed on Obama’s shoulders.

American respect and influence in the Middle East has
been almost totally diminished since Obama took office.  All over the Middle
East America’s enemies are taking advantage of the vacuum that has been created
and are busily preparing for war on a grand scale, against the United States,
against Israel and against each other.  When Obama says “The tide of war is
receding” and using that as justification to pull American troops out of Iraq
he’s really saying that he doesn’t know what to do about the Middle East, that
he’s washing his hands of the place and that he’s abandoning America’s remaining
friends and allies there, like Israel and Saudi Arabia.  He’s also telling the
world that he’s willing to accept the rise of Islamism and Islamists throughout
the region even though this threatens the national security of the United States
itself because he doesn’t know what to do about that either.

So the tide of war is receding is
it?

Not in Iraq it isn’t. The country is embroiled in
sectarian and religious warfare which is only going to get worse once America
leaves, and the government there could easily collapse as a
result.

Not in Libya it isn’t.  The country is about to be
plunged into a bloody civil war now that there is no central authority holding
it together.

Not in Egypt it isn’t.  Ever since President Mubarak
was driven from office Egypt has become more antagonistic to the United States
and Israel, and that antagonism could easily lead to bloodshed and war in the
foreseeable future.

Not in Syria it isn’t.  Syrians are already fighting a
brutal civil war, with the regime showing no signs of backing down and ending
its vicious, pitiless repression.

Not in Iran it isn’t.  Iran is close to becoming a
nuclear power and is becoming more and more militaristic every day, especially
towards Israel and the US but really towards everyone else in the region too,
with results that are entirely predictable.

Not in Turkey it isn’t. The Turks are turning away
from the West and becoming more hostile and threatening as we
speak.

Noin Gaza and the West Bank it isn’t.  Palestinians
are becoming bolder by the minute and another intifada is virtually a foregone
conclusion.

Not in Israel it isn’t.  Israelis are feeling very
isolated and alone and may launch preemptive attacks as a matter of national
survival, especially against Iran.

Not in Saudi Arabia it isn’t.  The Saudis have been
begging the Americans for years to rid the Middle East of the Iranian threat to
them and everyone else.  They have come to the conclusion that America will do
no such thing and have decided to defend themselves if necessary, even if that
means nuclear war.

Not in Afghanistan it isn’t.  The war there is ongoing
and there can be no doubt that the country will implode once the United States
leaves.

Not anywhere that Islamists and Islamism are rising to
the fore it isn’t, which is to say everywhere in the Middle East except Israel.
Islamists and Islamism are mortal enemies of the United States and their rise
guarantees internecine warfare in the region and eventual war against the
US.

For a President of the United States to say that “The
tide of war is receding.” is beyond idiotic, misleading, false, ignorant and
blind. It is also very, very dangerous and severely compromises America’s
national security and way of life.  Obama is clearly unfit for office and the
sooner he’s drummed out of office the better.  Our survival depends on
it.

Michelle Obama: Molding America’s Children One Menu at a Time —– bureaucratic control and socialism.

Michelle Obama: Molding America’s Children One Menu at a Time

Jeannie DeAngelis

Michelle Obama, a woman who has certainly been
‘shaped’ by what the government has provided her in the way of free meals, is
now touting the benefit of having America’s children’s bodies and minds be
manipulated by people like her husband, whose ideological bent is toward
bureaucratic control and socialism.

Mouthing words of concern over the health and well
being of school children, the First Lady said “That’s why we start with kids,
right? We can affect who they will be forever.”  These are words that should
send shivers up the spine of every concerned parent in
America.

Think of it:
Michelle Obama’s goal is to infiltrate not only the bodies but also the minds of
children who are not hers so she and her ilk can “affect who they will be
forever!”

On the South Lawn, a mere stone’s throw from where the
100 x 100 ongoing construction of a secret project
that looks like an underground bunker/possible swimming pool is taking place,
Mrs. Obama recently made her ‘nudge‘-style opinions known.  The event was a reception to
honor schools that have met the goals of the US Department of Agriculture’s
Healthier US School Challenge (HUSSC), now a subsidiary of the “Let’s Move” (our
children towards the welfare rolls) initiative.

Mrs. Obama, whose daughters attend private school,
bubbled over with exuberance about the fact that the majority of American
children are in publicly-funded incubators called public schools, where liberal
teachers and policies are standing ready to restructure “habits and preferences”
in hopes of raising up a generation of proselytes.

With a concerned smile and dressed in a sleeveless
designer top, Mom Michelle disguised government control as a child-friendly
plate of crudités and hummus.

Mrs. Obama told the rapt group, “When many kids spend
half of their waking hours and get up to half their daily calories at school,
you know that with the food you serve and, more importantly, the lessons you
teach that you’re not just shaping their habits and preferences today, you’re
affecting the choices they’re going to make for the rest of their
lives.”

“At the reception, Mrs. Obama praised the 1,273
schools that have doubled the number of students eating federally subsidized
meals that fit the program’s criteria.”  The first lady seemed thrilled about
the increased additions to the entitlement rolls because, as she said, “That’s
why we start with kids, right?”

Mrs. Obama praised the Burlington Elementary School of
North Dakota, where she said the “teachers eat two USDA-approved meals a day
with the students.”

Praising those teachers who voluntarily eat “breakfast
and lunch with students every single day,” Mrs. Obama applauded the hovering
menu monitors by saying, “Now, that’s a sacrifice. You know it. That’s
love.”

According to Mrs. Obama, “the beauty is, is that
you’re not just making this generation of kids healthier, but the next
generation as well. And that is truly, truly powerful stuff.”

The First Lady reassured the teachers who’ve dedicated
themselves to supplementing indoctrination during feeding time by saying,
“You’re affecting not just how these kids feed themselves, but how they’re going
to feed their own children,” which, if all goes according to plan, the
government can also one day mold into government-controlled mechanical
drones.

The First Lady expressed joy that children “trained”
in these schools are having a beneficial effect on their families, saying,
“They’re changing the way they think about their health and they’re trickling
that information down to their families.”  Mom and Dad beware — God forbid one
of you should indulge in an unwholesome treat under the watchful eye of Junior.
Who knows, the next day, these trickle-down kids may be asked to
report aberrant
behavior to Michelle’s brigade of meal monitors.

Granted, helping kids and their families make
healthier food choices is an admirable goal on the part of the first lady.
However, a problem arises when liberals are in charge and make broad, vague
statements that seem to connect lunch and life choices.

Choices like: not worrying about birth control because
just like free lunch, free condoms are also government-funded and available at
school. How about the “right to privacy” and the choice to disregard the moral
direction of parents?  Or the message to relax because if that complimentary
condom should happen to fail, someone in the guidance office will gladly drive
any girl over the age of 11 to the nearest available abortion clinic, just as
soon as she downs that government-approved carton of low-fat milk.
Michelle
reiterated that “we” (whoever that is) “can affect who they (we know who “they”
are) will be forever.”

The whole emphasis on the government guiding food
choices is troubling, because discussion over healthy food has the potential to
be the perfect entree for liberals to commission public schools to prod,
persuade and hold sway over other areas such as faith, political affiliation,
and morality. With that in mind, Michelle Obama’s insistence on depositing
government-funded “free” food into the stomachs of America’s children, perhaps
in hopes of transporting liberal philosophy into their hearts, should alarm any
American whose child eats breakfast and lunch in a public
school.

Author’s content:
www.jeannie-ology.com

Terror Link Downplayed in Courthouse Break-In

‘Pictures of courthouses, water systems’ from around the US found in the van used by five men believed to be Moroccan Muslims.

Jim Forsyth

Five men in their twenties, described as French-Moroccan Muslims, are being questioned by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and by officials of the Department of Homeland Security after they were arrested inside the 120 year old Bexar County Courthouse in downtown San Antonio shortly before 2 this morning, 1200 WOAI news reports.

Officials say three of the men crawled through a window to get into the 120 year old Courthouse, which is a landmark in downtown San Antonio, and theother two were found in a van parked in front of the building.

Inside the van, officials say they found “photographs of infrastructure” including photos of shopping malls, water systems, courthouses and other public buildings which they say were taken in cities nationwide.

“They got travel documents, parking passes, they have been all over the country,” one law enforcement officials who asked not to be identified told 1200 WOAI’s Michael Board on the scene.  “A lot of photographic equipment, a lot of documentation equipment inside their vehicle.”

Officials say the five men entered the country legally on visas from Heathrow Airport in London.  They didn’t immediately know how long the men have been in the U.S., or what places they may have visited.

CLICK HERE for Photo Gallery from the Scene

Officials immediately blocked off a two square block area of downtown San Antonio around the Courthouse, and bomb sniffing dogs fanned out throughout the building.  About two hours later, the streets were reopened, indicating nothing dangerous was found in the building.

“They are going to be held for interrogation by the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the joint terrorism task force,” the law enforcement source said.

The men are described as in their early twenties.  One law enforcement official said the men told him they climbed to the fourth floor of the courthouse at 2AM “to get a better view of the city.”

There is a military intelligence convention underway at the city’s Convention Center several blocks away, with top intelligence officials including White House officials set to speak, but investigators didn’t say whether there was any connection.

Investigators were tight lipped about the incident this morning.

“All that, coupled with the fact why they can’t explain why they are in the building at 1:22 in the morning raises questions,” the law enforcement officer said.

Obama: 1, Informed Public: 0

By Randall
Hoven

“The Statistical Abstract of the
United States, published since 1878, is the authoritative and
comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic
organization of the United States.” That is how the Abstract describes
itself. Click on this New York Post infographic to
get a feel some of the data in the Abstract.

I first encountered the Abstract in 1979
while killing time in the college library. I was blown away. I had no idea such
a thing existed: an entire book, a thick one, full of nothing but tables of data
– relevant data. Instead of a little snippet or partial fact, the
Abstract provided the whole context. You could find, for example, what
the federal government actually spent, over history and in each category, in
current dollars, inflation-adjusted dollars and as fractions of Gross Domestic
Product.

Your knowledge of the world no longer had to rely on
what 20 seconds CBS decided to quote from Senator X.

Ben
Wattenberg
explained one of his books this way:

“What I did in the book, as I’ve done in some earlier
books, is say, ‘Look, these arguments that we get into, be it about poverty, or
race, or education, or infant mortality, or housing or whatever, people are
ignoring the central numbers on these things.’ You get the rhetoric of activists
on either side and they are flailing around with this number or that number, but
the reader, the observer, the participant rarely gets census reports, he doesn’t
get the reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, he doesn’t sit down for a
week with the statistical abstract of the United States, he doesn’t get
business indicators. So I designed 125 little, sort of, pocket-size charts. I
made them lean and mean and just run them in a simple column so people –because
people can get a little turned off by too many
numbers.”

I happen to be a person who is not turned off by too
many numbers. In fact, I like looking things up myself, rather than relying on a
middleman to interpret for me. I would spend hours at the library looking things
up in the Abstract, since it could not be checked out. I spent
countless nickels and dimes copying pages from it to take home for further
analysis. One year I bought my own copy of the Abstract. They came out
every year.

Then came the internet. The Abstract was
right at my fingertips! I could even download the tables directly in Excel and
calculate to my heart’s content: averages, trends, comparing time periods,
etc.

Here is what I encountered on the web site of the
Abstract this morning:

“The U.S. Census Bureau is terminating the collection
of data for the Statistical Compendia program effective October 1, 2011. The
Statistical Compendium program is comprised of the Statistical Abstract of the
United States and its supplemental products – – the State and Metropolitan Area
Data Book and the County and City Data Book. In preparation for the Fiscal Year
2012 (FY 2012) budget, the Census Bureau did a comprehensive review of a number
of programs and had to make difficult proposals to terminate and reduce a number
of existing programs in order to acquire funds for higher priority programs. The
decision to propose the elimination of this program was not made lightly. To
access the most current data, please refer to the organizations cited in the
source notes for each table of the Statistical
Abstract.”

Out of the $3.6 trillion the government spends, the
Census Bureau thought the relative pennies it spends on collecting and
disseminating data about the government itself and the country at large were
among the most expendable.

Almost no one wants to cut government spending as much
as I do. Ron Paul made a good start. But if we live in a world where our federal
government spends one of every four dollars, and regulates virtually every
aspect of our lives and businesses, it is a matter of democracy that we
have that data. If government ever gets out of the business of trying to
engineer the economy and society, I can relax about the Abstract. But
that is not the world we live in now.

At the very moment our government is trying to do more
than ever, it is informing us less than ever.

When our President is intent on spreading the wealth,
it is imperative that we have an idea of how that wealth is actually spread, how
much the government already takes, etc. If someone says the rich pay lower tax
rates than their secretaries, how will we be able to check
that?

I’ve been worried about this for some time: the
government would start either manipulating the data or hiding it altogether.
Eliminating the Abstract is not just a matter of crimping the mirth of
data hobbyists like me; it is ominous. It is hiding the truth. It is
Soviet-like. It is a short step from airbrushing people out of photos. The
Abstract has been around for 133 years, or about a century longer than
the Department of Education has.

It is not often (I would say never) that you will find
me agreeing with Paul
Krugman and Ezra
Klein. But on this, saving the Abstract, I’m with
them. You can also read what Robert Samuelson had to say about it
here.

I read their warnings, but did not take them
seriously. I thought the Abstract would be saved, when push came to
shove. But it is now October 18. The Census Bureau terminated data collection
October 1. It has already happened. This is not good.