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Photo of a picketing Chicago *high school* teacher holding up sign announcing to the world that his Chicago Teachers Union --

"BELIEVES IN NEIBORHOOD"

Sweet.

Meh, a couple of minor adjustments and everything will be just fine:

After WWII, the US debt to GDP ratio was 124%. At the end of WWII, we slashed government spending by 50%, and eliminated the most onerous and confiscatory wartime taxes, and, though marginal rates were still high, offered a myriad of exemptions that essentially ensured that no one paid the marginal rates. We also scrapped the entire wartime system of industrial production regulation and eliminated rationing. And, of course, we had the only fully industrialized economy left in the world, as everyone else’s had been bombed, if not back into the Stone Age, at least into the Age of Reason, and we became the world’s chief industrial power, exporter, and global business leader.

To do something similar today, we’d have to completely eliminate the entirety of the Federal government, with the exception of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Interior, and Treasury, and cut Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare spending by at least 50%….I believe the current Republican plan to attack the debt and balance the budget won’t even eliminate the budget deficit until sometime around 2040.

(emph. mine)

You can read the entire column by Dale Frank of Qando.net here.

For the "reluctantly giving credit where credit is due" files: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon unequivocally and publicly denounced Iran for its Holocaust denial and for its threats against Israel. This while Ahmadinejad was sitting right beside him onstage...in Iran.

Privately, I think of it as the "Harper Effect".

Obama is bowing to the Islamists again.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/09/11/Obama-Backed-UN-Free-Speech-Restrictions--With-Egypt--in-2009

State department official killed in attack against the US embassy.

http://www.foxnews.com/

Didn't one of our frequent guest trolls mention Libya was just fine and democracy was established?

So, how is it that Obama, with his absolutely abysmal first term, appears to have a good chance of being elected?

Andrew C. McCarthy:

"Here is the blunt explanation: We have lost a third of the country and, as if that weren’t bad enough, Republicans act as if it were two-thirds.

The lost third cannot be recovered overnight. For now, it is gone. You cannot cede the campus and the culture to the progressive, post-American Left for two generations and expect a different outcome…

(emph. mine)

Read McCarthy's "Double-Minded Republicans" here.

Love This Drudge Headline:

White House declines Netanyahu request to meet with Obama...
'Schedule Full'...
Announces 'Letterman' Appearance...

http://www.drudgereport.com/

Yeah, Sooke (10:48), Barry clearly loves the Jews. You can just tell.

'Schedule Full'

Does Bibi golf?

It is now eleven years since the 9/11 attack and the US declaration of war on terror. We have established the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security. We sent armies to Iraq and Afghanistan.

We did not start a massive campaign to achieve energy independence for the United States. That, we were told, would have cost too much. We were told that the invasion of the Middle East would cost $300 billion, although it might run higher than that. At the time I pointed out that $500 Billion would have been enough to build one hundred 1,000 megawatt nuclear power plants and begin a massive space program for construction of space solar power plants; and there would still be enough left over to cover the administrative costs for a great expansion of US oil wells and refineries (which would mostly be paid for by private capital). I was told that these programs would cost more than $500 Billion; I agreed, but it was pretty clear that the wars would cost a great deal more.

Money invested in energy production facilities has the prospect for some return on investment. Money invested in military operations in Iraq had the possibility of a return on investment in oil production but apparently that was not a goal of the invasion; I can think of no possible return on investment from a long term engagement in Afghanistan, which manufactures nothing we want and grows what we don’t want. Once we demonstrated to the Taliban that it was not a good idea to harbor the enemies of the United States, there was little to be gained in staying in Afghanistan.

Both major political parties assert than we are safer now than we were in September, 2001.

I was no great fan of the policies of Mr. Bush, but I will state that we were safer on 9-11-2008 than we are on 9-11-2012.
---Jerry Pournelle

Re: Oklahoma Wranglers

Thanks! Never been to Oklahoma. I hear it gets so dry sometimes, fish are four years old by the time they learn how to swim!!

Under the heading: Where to start?

Alan Gregg says Harper not reasonable, Gore is.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/09/10/allan-gregg-speech-assault-on-reason_n_1871658.html?utm_hp_ref=canada

It's time, in light of today's events, to bring up this "Juxtapose" again...
http://jerseynut.blogspot.ca/2011/05/young-obama-vs-young-bibi-still-no.html

In light of the anniversary of 9/11

"Al-Qaeda now a US ally in Syria"

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/alqaeda-now-a-us-ally-in-syria-20120910-25oby.html

Oh how the mind wobbles.

Isn't this inspiring:

https://twitter.com/USEmbassyCairo/status/245
493644478521344

Knight 99 and Black Mamba, what a sad state the US has become.

ron in kelowna @ 12:01 a.m.:

I read the Allan Gregg speech. He is thoroughly confused.

He would like us to believe that government based on "reason" consists of finding out how many toilets Canadian homes have!!

An excerpt: "Again, as someone who had used the census – both as a commercial researcher and when I worked on Parliament Hill – I knew how important these data were in identifying not just toilet counts, but shifting population trends and the changes in the quality and quantity of life of Canadians. How could you determine how many units of affordable housing were needed unless you knew the change in the number of people who qualified for affordable housing? How could you assess the appropriate costs of affordable housing unless you knew the change in the amount of disposal income available to eligible recipients?"

As I've said before, the ONLY people who "need" data from the long form census are social engineers -- parasites who think their genius selves can improve on the free market if only the country's full resources were turned over to them (as Ayn Rand put it). They'll claim that the "evidence" proves there is "toilet inequality", then propose a brand new government program to rectify it.

Most investigations of government housing show that it costs more than it would in the free market, i.e., it is not affordable for taxpayers. The only reasons we have a shortage of housing are the usual suspects: taxes, a fair percentage of which are wasted by the state, and regulations, particularly municipal and provincial ones.

The single thing that improves the quality of life for Canadians and for everyone else is economic productivity. That depends on the free market, in which producers are rewarded for their efforts. And that requires every individual to have the freedom to trade based on his value-judgments about goods and services that have been produced.

Here's Gregg's objection to an item in the 2012 budget:

"CBC was told that it could live with a 10% reduction in their budgetary allocation."

In a society based on reason, no one would have to pay taxes for a media institution that he didn't want. The CBC should be sold off to private enterprise, as a whole or by parts.

I will agree that, since the environment cannot look after itself, perhaps the Tories could go a little slower with regards to chopping bodies like the Environmental Lakes Area. But this is actual science. Counting toilets is social engineering. And state-run media is propaganda.

Gregg objects to the names of some of the government legislation:

"Bill C-18 is called the 'Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act'. It dismantled the Canadian Wheat Board."

Actually, it made dealing with the Board voluntary. That sounds like marketing freedom to me.

Gregg: "The thing that is disconcerting and unsettling about all this is not just the substance of these Bills, but why a government would want to disguise that substance. Maybe dismantling the Wheat Board; or pre-emptively squashing collective bargaining; or sending more potheads to jail is a good thing. But before we make those decisions, let’s look at all the facts; have a fulsome and rational debate; and make a reasoned decision of what is in the best interests of all the parties involved. For voters to determine whether these are measures they support or oppose requires that they know what is at stake and what the government is actually doing."

In the case of Bill C-18, naming it accurately is exactly what the government did.

There shouldn't be much need for debate about freedom. Do we need to debate, for example, whether Allan Gregg would or would not like to be pickpocketed on his way home some night? Of course not. So it is for farmers: you don't ask the group whether or not it should have control over the total production. You let the individual decide for himself, with regard to his own production. Because he has the right to decide for himself.

I will concede another point: some of the legislative titles are a little strange, and sound self-serving. I believe this trend began under Mike Harris in Ontario, although the province's McGuinty Liberals seem to have continued it.

Finally, there is the standard analysis of the current economy compared to a few decades ago, without a clue as to the reasons for our problems today:

"For decades following the Second World War, a progress ethos dominated North American thought. The next car was going to be faster, the next paycheque fatter and the next house bigger. This notion that progress was both normal and limitless, generated a series of beliefs that were universally embraced."

"Today – in sharp contrast – we seem to be living in a zero sum society, where the prevailing wisdom is that the rich are getting richer while the poor or getting poorer; that whatever prosperity might be available is being unequally shared; and for many, opportunity is actually shrinking. In the same way that feelings of well -being can generate good will, feelings of threat spawn envy and recrimination. This not only explains the anger of the Occupy Movement or the students protesting in the streets of Montreal but also the disdain that the middle class has for 'pampered' public sector employees or the excessive obsession the rich seem to have about the poor 'ripping off the system'."

Today the state is much larger than it was a few decades ago, it wastes far more tax money and it intervenes in the economy in many more ways -- all to the detriment of our lives. This is the true "war on reason": coercive Big Government.

The one question the Occupy Movement might legitimately ask is: What happened to our future? The answer is: government squandered it. It still isn't too late to turn things around. But the Occupiers call for even further doses of the poison that is killing us.

Gregg: "[Steven] Pinker makes a compelling case that the hallmark of modern history has been a progressive decline in violence, accompanied by a steady upward trajectory of civilized, humane and peaceful behaviour. More than anything else, it has been the embracing of reason and enlightened thinking that has moved civilization forward."

Broadly speaking, this is true. It is coercion that must be excised from human society in order to approach civilization. Stealing tax dollars to count toilets, amid a million other uses, many of them dubious and designed to do nothing more than spend tax dollars and to provide cushy, barely accountable government-funded jobs for marginally productive people, is the opposite of civilized. Reason and coercion: it's either-or.

Taxation is not going anywhere soon because it is so well-established, and Ayn Rand said voluntary state financing would be the last step in the process. But the time to start thinking about reducing the uncivilized coercive state is yesterday.

1. Assist in tax evasion.
2. Go to jail.
3. Rat on your co-conspirators.
4. Profit! (from IRS)

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/09/11/irs-pays-ubs-whistleblower-104-million/?test=latestnews

I'd gladly go to a Swiss prison for 2.5 years for $104 million.

U.S. Ambassador To Libya Killed In Benghazi Attack.

ok: do you suffer from keyboard dyslexia?

Our AGW-Neo Column.

Good news for a change.

...-

"Drastic Changes: First Snow of Season in Colorado Rockies"

"It's that time of the year already for rapidly changing weather conditions and the four letter word, snow, in the Rockies.

A fall storm swinging across the Southwest will trigger the first snowfall of the season in the Colorado Rockies into Wednesday evening. To the northeast, an area of high pressure will supply a chilly north-northeast flow to Colorado."

http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/first-snow-of-the-season-for-t/72607

OK: Go Home!!
Get out of my Country!

So a caller on Rush just made an excellent point. Obama seems intent on apologizing to terrorists and not offending them since that's clearly why they want to kill us. I don't subscribe to that view btw. Anyway so that being the case don't you think Obama bragging about killing Osama could be responsible for the latest attack using their own standard/worldview? Obama insulted them! They were chanting "we're all Osama Obama".

Socialism's natural end result: blood and guts.

...-

"South Africa army put on 'high alert' for Malema rally"

"Julius Malema told the soldiers that South Africa risks becoming a dictatorship"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19568940

Left-liberalism's mindset; shattered by reality.

...-

"Hillary Clinton –

“How could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate? In a city we helped save from destruction”

The smartest woman in America. Mystified. Shocked by the unforeseen turn of events."

"11. Cal"

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/09/12/two-elevens/2/

...-

Jackie Kennedy -

"He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights . . . . It's — it had to be some silly little Communist." — Jackie Kennedy, on hearing that a leftist had been arrested for her husband's murder."

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

I want every mussie scumbag OUT OF MY COUNTRY today!

I know I have had enough, how about the rest of you?

Gleeting flum Mao Stlong* Lepolt.

Too busy directing Ribya/Ilan Operations to post here. Solly.

...-

"China's next leader Xi Jinping 'suffered heart attack'"

"China's next leader has not been seen in public for 11 days because he suffered a heart attack, a source has told The Daily Telegraph."

"Willy Lam, the former editor of the South China Morning Post, believes China's president-in-waiting had a stroke and is currently unable to show his face in public."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9539184/Chinas-next-leader-Xi-Jinping-suffered-heart-attack.html

*Ditto Rae Bob.

Rouder, say Mao Stlong* Lepolt.

*H/T Mo Strong, c/o Red China.

"“Where is She?”"

...-

"In China, a chorus grows louder: Where is Mr. Xi?"

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/in-china-a-chorus-grows-louder-where-is-mr-xi/article4540989/

PMSH is on a roll.

Stephen Harper will go to New York this month to accept an award for statesmanship – but will snub the United Nations while he’s there.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-honoured-in-ny-as-statesman-of-the-year-aims-to-snub-un/article4536110/

Pat Martin, and a poll.

" Would you contribute to Pat Martin's legal fund?"

This poll does not need any help. "Not A chance" is at 91%.

It appears that Pat Martin's summer tour to raise money for his legal problems left him a little short of his goal.
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/09/11/mp-pat-martin-fundraising-for-robocalls-libel-suit