Hillary: Let's Force Changes in 'Cultural and Religious Beliefs'

First, you learn about a "progressive" or liberal darling who makes a controversial, over-the-top statement which would get him or her in serious trouble with the general public if widely known. About 24 hours later, you visit establishment press coverage of the event and find not a hint that anything controversial occurred. Such is the case with Hillary Clinton's comments yesterday at the annual Women in the World summit in Washington.

Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.

See more at NewsBusters Read More......

After two years of Obama, here's your change

Not one positive number in this list of vital economic statistics. Every American, whether Democrat or Republican, should be looking at this list and asking, "How can we change these trends?" The answer is in November 2012. LIST BELOW

	Jan 2009	Jan 2011	% chg	src
Avg. Retail price/gallon gas in U.S.	$1.83	$3.44	84%	1
Crude oil, European Brent (barrel)	$43.48	$99.02	127.7%	2
Crude oil, West TX Inter. (barrel)	$38.74	$91.38	135.9%	2
Gold: London (per troy oz.)	$853.25	$1,369.50	60.5%	2
Corn, No.2 yellow, Central IL	$3.56	$6.33	78.1%	2
Soybeans, No. 1 yellow, IL	$9.66	$13.75	42.3%	2
Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb. Fob	$13.37	$35.39	164.7%	2
Unemployment rate, non-farm, overall	7.6%	9.4%	23.7%	3
Unemployment rate, blacks	12.6%	15.8%	25.4%	3
Number of unemployed	11,616,000	14,485,000	24.7%	3
Number of fed. Employees	2,779,000	2,840,000	2.2%	3
Real median household income	$50,112	$49,777	-0.7%	4
Number of food stamp recipients	31,983,716	43,200,878	35.1%	5
Number of unemployment benefit recipients	7,526,598	9,193,838	22.2%	6
Number of long-term unemployed	2,600,000	6,400,000	146.2%	3
Poverty rate, individuals	13.2%	14.3%	8.3%	4
People in poverty in U.S.	39,800,000	43,600,000	9.5%	4
U.S.. Rank in Economic Freedom World Rankings	5	9	n/a	10
Present Situation Index	29.9	23.5	-21.4%	11
Failed banks	140	164	17.1%	12
U.S.. Dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate	89.76	82.03	-8.6%	2
U.S.. Money supply, M1, in billions	1,575.1	1,865.7	18.4%	13
U.S.. Money supply, M2, in billions	8,310.9	8,852.3	6.5%	13
National debt, in trillions	$10.627	$14.052	32.2%	14

Just take this last item: In the last two years, we have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation's history. That's over 27 times as fast! Metaphorically speaking, if you are driving in the right lane doing 65 MPH, and a car rockets past you in the left lane 27 times faster, it would be doing 1,755 MPH!

Sources:
(1) U.S. Energy Information Administration;
(2) Wall Street Journal;
(3) Bureau of Labor Statistics;
(4) Census Bureau;
(5) USDA;
(6) U.S. Dept. Of Labor;
(7) FHFA;
(8) Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller;
(9) RealtyTrac;
(10) Heritage Foundation and WSJ;
(11) The Conference Board;
(12) FDIC;
(13) Federal Reserve;
(14) U.S. Treasury

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Coming Changes, Ready or Not!

Author Unknown - Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them. But, ready or not, here they come [items 1-9]. (Hat tip: Carolyn Webb)

1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, FedEx, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.

2. The Check. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.

3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.

4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages? I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.

5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they're always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes

6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates simply self-destruction. Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalogue items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."

7. Television. Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're playing games and doing all lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.

8. The "Things" That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.

9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7 "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again. All we have that can't be changed are Memories.

See "19 Facts About the Deindustrialization of America" in next post. Read More......

Is Obama Breaking the Law?

CNSNews.com, 9/30 by Ben Shapiro - [Excerpt] While most presidents enter the White House and begin to engage in the business of executing the laws faithfully, President Obama has seized the massive power of the Oval Office to launch an unceasing, relentless campaign for his own re-election. He has used taxpayer money to pay off his friends and allies, ensuring that they remain in his camp. He has used the weight of the federal government to quash his private sector foes. And he has used the might of his office illegally, encouraging federal agencies to coordinate with “community organizations” in working with private actors to push the Obama agenda. Read more at CNS News... Read More......

A Warning to All Americans

From Naval Aviator, Commander Jerry Wilson
This had better scare us to our knees!!
Via email, 9/22/2009 (Hat tip: Stella Guenther)

We lived in California during the winters of 2007 and 2008. We became addicted to Fox News and watched O’Reilly and Hannity and Colmes every night. When we got back home, we upgraded our cable to get Fox. I watched the Presidential campaign very closely. Initially because I thought the Democrats would nominate Hillary Clinton and then in astonishment when they chose an even more hard-left candidate. All of last year I told everyone I could that Obama was not a Democrat, he was a Marxist. He is far to the left of any European leader and even our far left party, the NDP. gt;

I read Saul Alinsky when I was in University. I studied him and his writing carefully. When Bill Ayers and his idiot wife were bombing and killing people at random in the Weather Underground. Weather Underground and the Black Panthers were closely allied. I read David Horowitz’s account of changing from a Marxist to a conservative after seeing that the government was afraid to prosecute members of the Panthers for murdering his personal assistant. He suddenly understood the evil that Marxism really was.

After the student radicals failed in creating a Marxist revolution in the United States by violent means, they embraced Alinsky. You would be wise to read “Rules for Radicals” because it outlines how Hillary and Obama planned to get into power, and what they intended to do when they got it.

Socialism is not the correct descriptor for what Obama and the Democrats are doing. They are going to be much more far reaching than anything Sweden has ever been able to do. Obama is following Alinsky’s plans, those set out in “Rules for Radicals” and his other writing. The Democrats are attempting to create one party rule in the U.S. and in achieving that, will create crisis after crisis by their own actions and use those crisis to nationalize the means of production in the U.S. You are in the middle of a communist revolution and few in the U.S. can actually see it for what it truly is.

The U.S. . is now on the path of financial destruction. The Constitution has been shredded and individual human rights are being trampled. In less than 8 months. Obama has used a recession to take over the two largest industries in the U.S. He will debase the Dollar and is on the road to creating an incredible energy shortage that will allow him and Congress to take over the energy industry.

But by and large I think that by the 2010 elections, the Democrats will have gerrymandered electoral districts to the point that it will be impossible for them to lose control of both houses of Congress. The incredible increase in the money supply is going to create Zimbabwe and Venezuela style inflation, and with it, controls on the currency and the amount of money that can be taken out of the country.

I love America , I cannot believe how the ignorance of the American public has created a situation whereby they are going to lose their Republic and slip into an age of repression and tyranny.

I may be nuts, but so far I have been 100% in my predictions of what Obama was going to do, because I merely had to look at “Rules for Radicals” to see what was coming next.

I read Glenn Beck’s book, “Common Sense” and in it re-read Thomas Paines pamphlet with the same name. I recommend the book.

When the storm finally hits (and it will), those of you who supported the Obama administration will be affected as well. It won’t just be us gun owners or Flat-Taxers, or Pro-Lifers that get hit. You’ll be right there next to us.

You all thought the Conservatives were nut cases. You know, all of us who believe in God, small government, the Second Amendment, etc. You thought you could just go back to sleep after the election was over. In your world, America will continue as before. You’ll still have the same rights, the same nice house, the same big screen television. After all, your high school football team won and the other team lost – go team! Even if you have bothered to look up from the daily grind since Nov 4th, you dismissed everything that has occurred as “politics as usual–the same old stuff”.

In the end, it’ll all be OK won’t it? Not this time.

There are a growing number of citizens in the US that are ready to fight to shut down the government’s grab of personal freedom, it’s blatant abuse of the constitution, and it’s attempt to replace the American way of life with socialism. You have to listen carefully to hear them, but they are there. I won’t start that fight, but when it goes down I will join it.

As for you, why, you’ll be shocked because you didn’t see it coming. And eventually you’ll be saddened when you see that we have truly lost the way of life with which you grew up. You’ll be saddened that your children and grandchildren live in a socialist, government-controlled gulag where their every movement from cradle to grave is tracked by the government. But most of all, you’ll be saddened by the death of friends and relatives who are brave enough to fight and die for something they believe in.

You know, McCain wasn’t much of a candidate. I’ll give you that. He was the lesser of two evils for most of us. I don’t blame you for not voting for him since, at the time, you didn’t know what we all know now. But at least John McCain was an American. He was a supporter of the American way of life and he understood that you can’t negotiate with terrorists. He understood and appreciated the sacrifice made by my father and other members of the Greatest Generation.

Mark my words friends. All across America groups are forming. They are forming out of anger and out of desperation at the thought of losing America . They’re not militia groups, terrorists as the Department of Homeland security would have you believe; they are Americans, loyal to the constitution. They are mothers and fathers and grandparents. They belong to groups like the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, the Peaceful Resistance, the Constitution Party, the Young Conservatives, the 9/12 Project, and Grassfire. Right now they are fragmented, each focused on their own cause. But sometime in the next two years, our government is going to do something really stupid and these groups will come together. Watch for it, wait for it–get ready. It will happen.

When that event happens, whatever “it” is, our great country is going to plunge into chaos for a while. I pray to God that we make it through that time and emerge a stronger, smarter country.

Naval Aviator, Commander Jerry Wilson jerrywilson@centurytel.net Read More......

Gore Unhinged

PERSPECTIVE, 7/14/2009 by Dr. Paul Kengor, Guest Columnist - "How can ANYONE take this man seriously?" writes Marilyn, a frequent reader of our Center for Vision & Values articles. ∴ Attached to Marilyn's email was this headline, "Gore compares climate change fight to war against Nazis." As the accompanying article noted, Al Gore, speaking at the World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, warned his audience — mostly British — of the imperative to confront climate change, as Britain and the Allies once battled Hitler. Read more at Perspective... Read More......

Waiting for the water to boil

If you're going to fight to preserve America's free enterprise system, Fight Fiercely! -- Tea Party Warrior

TEAPARTYWARRIOR.COM (via email), 7/5/2009 by John Eidson - For the last four decades, most Americans have been like the proverbial frog sitting in a pot of water that is slowly rising in temperature -- by the time the water finally boils, it’s too late to get out alive. While most of the nation has been politically asleep, Trojan horse socialists have been busy at work chipping away at one cherished freedom after another as part of their unstated agenda to dismantle the American free enterprise system in favor of an economy controlled by government. In the last election, these social utopians hit the Mother lode, and have boldly emerged from hiding.

The “change” we’re witnessing has been tried many times before
The federal government is seizing control of private sector industries. Compensation ceilings are being mandated, the first step toward a tightly regulated labor force where government decides how much workers are allowed to make. And, in the name of “fairness,” massive wealth redistribution is well underway. These changes have all been tried many times before. Where? In places like the Soviet Union, East Germany, Communist China, and Cuba. In every case, the utopian promises of a charismatic leader who rose to power during a time of national crisis failed to materialize, and individual freedoms were taken away at the point of a gun as frog-in-the=water societies belatedly awakened to the harsh realities of being ruled by an authoritarian government.

TIME IS SHORT
As you sin in your comfortable home in a pot of warming water, time is running out to stop the radical changes that threaten your way of life. If you oppose the intentional destruction of the American free enterprise system, you are not alone. Find out how you can become a political activist in the Tea Party Movement by clicking HERE

To subscribe to John Eidson’s email newsletter, send request to: info@teapartywarrior.com Read More......

Clemens clamp down

Tuition grants will only be for second-generation students, certain schools
Covallis Gazette-Times, Archives, April 11, 2008 by Kyle Odegard

The Clemens Foundation — which since the 1960s has paid college tuition for thousands of high school graduates from Philomath, Eddyville and Alsea — has changed its grant criteria, severely limiting who it will help starting this fall.

To receive Clemens grants, students must now be a second-generation resident of one of these communities, and attend a conservative private college from an approved list or a trade, vocational or medical school. Students attending public colleges or universities are no longer eligible for the grants, with the exception of some students who enroll in trade or vocational courses. Veterinary or medical schools that are part of a public university may be considered on an individual basis.

“The world is changing,” said Clemens Foundation Board of Directors treasurer Fred Lowther, when asked for reasons behind the new rules. “There’s new criteria. It’s all in the paperwork the kids pick up. That’s all they need to know. We have the right to change it.” The Clemens Foundation awarded $1.75 million worth of college tuition grants in 2006, according to federal nonprofit mandatory paperwork. The foundation’s net value at that time was $30 million.

Philomath Schools Superintendent Pete Tuana said he was surprised by the change when he learned about it on Thursday, and said students have expressed their frustration to him. “I’m disappointed for kids,” he said.

“For some students, it will make a difference on whether they can immediately attend school. But it is their money,” said Philomath High School Principal Kent Sherwood.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Philomath High School senior Joe Gates, 17, who plans to go to Linn-Benton Community College in the fall. “They had this grant forever. I’ve been going here since I was 5. I’ve been looking forward to it for the last 12 years. Then they take it away.”

“I’ll just have to take out more loans,” said Adam Schreiner-McGraw, a senior who plans to attend the University of Oregon.

Other students said they think the intent of the grant program has been warped.
Now, instead of providing aid to a small town, it’s being used as leverage to guide the community’s politics and beliefs, said Kasra Azizian, 17, who will attend the University of Oregon in the fall. [Emphasis added]

Grant application paperwork says that a list of acceptable colleges can be found at yaf.org, the Web site of the conservative political organization the Young America’s Foundation.

The Clemens Foundation was created by the late Rex and Ethel Clemens, who owned a saw mill and timber land. They made a fortune in the logging industry, and donated land, athletic fields and millions of dollars worth of tuition grants to the community. Though they shunned the spotlight, the town’s football field, swimming pool and primary school are named after them.

The Clemenses didn’t have children of their own, and their nephews Fred, David and Steve Lowther now are in key leadership spots with the philanthropic foundation the couple created. They have made significant changes to its grant program in the last five years.

For years, the Clemens Foundation provided a grant equivalent to tuition at Oregon State University for any high school graduate from Philomath, Alsea, Eddyville or the Eastern Oregon town of Crane who wanted to attend college.

In 2003, the Clemens Foundation made national headlines when it issued an ultimatum to Philomath School District officials to make administrative changes, claiming the local schools had become too “politically correct.” The scholarship program’s eligibility requirements were altered to reflect the foundation’s values.

Favored status was given to students who were members of such groups as 4-H and Boy Scouts and a requirement was added that students have a family background in timber, ranching, farming, mining, manufacturing or occupations in support of those industries.

The foundation continued to provide scholarships to most who applied, but some were turned down.

In 2005, the Clemens Foundation suspended its grants for students attending Oregon State University, saying there was a decline in ethics at the school and its quality of education. About 150 recipients were enrolled at OSU at the time.

Kyle Odegard can be contacted at kyle.odegard@lee.net or 758-9523.

Additional articles:
Corvallis Gazette-Times, April 14, 2008 by Kyle Odegard Retired Educator: Clemens mission lost.
April 19, 2008 - GT Editorial and Comments: Foundation seems short-sighted, within rights Read More......