Quantitative Easing Explained

What the Federal Reserve is up to, and how we got here.
Video posted by malekanoms

Quantitative Easing Explained, posted with vodpod

Former Iraqi MP Jamal Al-Din: Negotiate with Iran to End Its Occupation of Iraq

Iran's the problem and our "leadership" is allowing it to happen!!! See who the real power in Iran is. (Hint: It's NOT Ahmadinejad!)
http://www.memri.org
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2675.htm
http://www.memritv.org

Former Iraqi MP Jamal Al-Din: Negotiate with Ir..., posted with vodpod

Wafa Sultan Offers More Criticism of Islam

Wafa Sultan speaks in an interview broadcast from Cyprus-based al-Hayat TV. She criticizes accentuations of the negative in Islamic culture in the Arab world and what she perceives to be their roots. She offers a few words for Yusuf al-Qaradhawi, the cleric who lambasted her for her March debate appearance on al-Jazeera. Wafa further criticizes other aspects of Islam that she believes to be wrong.

Wafa Sultan Offers More Criticism of Islam, posted with vodpod

Attack the Deficit: The Fierce Urgency of Now

By Ken Blackwell

Appearing Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-KY.) told host Christiane Amanpour he would push for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

This is an idea whose time has come. In 1994, Republicans campaigned -- and won -- on a balanced budget amendment (as part of the Contract with America). Back then, the deficit was just $203 billion. Today, the national deficit is at $1.4 trillion (that's roughly $3,500 for each American, and some $14,000 for each family of four in deficit spending just this year alone).

Most states require their elected officials to balance their budget each year, but no such requirement impedes the reckless spending of the United States federal government. A constitutional amendment would bar the federal government from spending more money than it brings in each year -- and require a supermajority in order to raise taxes. This is not a radical idea, but the consequences of failing to enact such a measure cannot be overstated.

Fortunately, as evidenced by the Tea Party movement, there appears to finally be the political will required to get this done. Newly elected Republicans simply must realize they weren't elected to merely "trim" spending or "slow down" the rate of government growth, but rather, to cut, de-authorize and balance the budget. (If they fail to grasp this fact, it will be a short and depressing two years).

It is also worth noting that the conservative movement is united behind this cause.

That Senator-Elect Paul was the one to reignite this debate after the GOP's historic victory on Tuesday is not terribly surprising -- he campaigned on this. And though he represents the libertarian wing of the conservative movement (his father ran for president as a Libertarian), his vocal support is indicative of the broad-based support for this amendment.

The financial crisis has galvanized the disparate elements of the conservative movement, just as the threat of Communism united the "three legs" of the conservative movement during the Reagan years (like Communism, the deficit has become an existential threat to our freedom).

As a Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment at the Family Research Council (FRC), I've seen first hand that social conservatives view the economic crisis -- and, more specifically, a balanced budget -- as a moral issue. Similarly, national security conservatives realize it's a security issue (America's debt is being lent by foreign interests, with China being the largest single holder). This is an issue that transcends the normal dividing lines, and unites us.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a solid full-spectrum conservative who is just as at home at a Club for Growth Meeting as he is at a Christian Coalition dinner, and others, are expected to lead the charge on a balanced budget amendment. The additional Tea Party conservatives who were elected on Tuesday will aid them. But they will need reinforcements.

That's why I have agreed to serve as chairman for a new group, 'Balanced Budget Amendment Now.'

Our organization will launch an aggressive campaign to pass a balanced budget amendment. This will include building an infrastructure needed to enlist a minimum of 5,000 supporters in each Congressional district to urge their Members of Congress to vote for an amendment.

Our goal is to accomplish a vote on a balanced budget amendment by October 1, 2011. (Senator-Elect Mike Lee (R-UT) has graciously agreed to draft the balanced budget amendment language for us -- and to enlist the support of his colleagues).

There are many issues vital to our future, but I can think of none more worthy than this effort.

In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of the "fierce urgency of now." I would urge all Americans to consider the urgency of passing a balanced budget amendment.

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post

Voters Speak: No To Soak-The-Rich Schemes

By Michelle Malkin

Do Americans share President Obama’s desire to impose redistributive social justice on the well off? In liberal Washington State, of all places, voters gave a definitive answer this Tuesday: No! The resounding rejection of a punitive “Robin Hood” initiative shows that it’s not just red-state Republicans who oppose extreme tax hikes on the nation’s wealth generators.

As Capitol Hill resumes debate on whether to extend the so-called “Bush tax cuts,” the White House should pay special heed to the fate of little-noticed Initiative 1098. Its defeat by a whopping 65-35 margin doesn’t bode well for Team Obama’s class warriors still clinging bitterly to their soak-the-rich schemes. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner insisted this summer that saddling higher earners with higher taxes was “the responsible thing to do.” Given the chance to weigh in at the ballot box, a diverse majority of voters in the other Washington determined otherwise.

The Evergreen State is just one of seven states in the nation without a personal income tax. The ballot measure, which would have enacted a state income tax on the wealthiest 1 percent of Washington residents to raise $2 billion for bankrupt public schools, was sponsored by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his left-wing corporate lawyer father. Top donors? The Service Employees International Union, whose state and national chapters threw in a combined $2.5 million of its members’ hard-earned dues money, and the National Education Association, which pitched in nearly $760,000.

Hiding behind kiddie human shields, the I-1098 campaign assailed the wealthy for “not paying their fair share” and plastered their campaign literature with sad-faced students and toddlers. Big Labor has been pushing a punish-the-wealthy movement for months. According to Forbes magazine, “six of the 10 states with the highest income tax rates — Oregon, California, Hawaii, New York, New Jersey and North Carolina — raised their levies on high earners, at least temporarily” last year.

But business owners large and small, representing companies from Bartell Drugs to Amazon.com, successfully fought back against the job-killing measure in Washington State. Disavowing the Gateses, Microsoft honcho Steve Ballmer also joined the opposition. The software company’s senior executives expressed grave concern “about the impact I-1098 will have on the state’s ability to attract top tech talent in the future.” Liberal newspaper editorial boards including the Seattle Times and Tacoma News Tribune added their objections, citing I-1098′s reckless targeting of wealth-creation in the middle of a recession and the inevitable extension and increase of income taxes to the middle class. And economists at the independent, nonpartisan Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University found that I-1098′s tax burdens would lengthen and deepen the current economic downturn by destroying private sector jobs, reducing residents’ disposable income and prolonging the state’s high unemployment rate.

Amber Gunn of the free-market Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Wash., gave the bottom line on I-1098′s unreality-based advocates: “Initiative proponents like to operate in a Keynesian world where higher tax rates and their effects on human behavior and competitiveness among states don’t matter. But those effects are present in the real world and must be accounted for.”

I-1098′s promoters tried to disguise their wealth-suppression vehicle as tax “relief” by tossing in a few stray targeted cuts. But they were called out by a judge and slapped with a court order to make the income tax burden explicit in the ballot title.

If only the taxmen in Washington, D.C., were required to do the same. Obama’s budget proposal is a soak-the-rich scheme adorned with a few business tax breaks that would — for starters — impose nearly $1 trillion in higher taxes on couples making more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,000. Some “relief.”

On Thursday afternoon, still smarting from the nationwide “shellacking” the Democrats received on Election Day, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs signaled that Obama would be willing to “entertain” temporary — not permanent — tax relief for the nation’s highest earners. But a time-limited reprieve in prolonged economic hard times is expedient politics and bad policy. Tax relief should be all or none. The new House majority should force the Democrats to choose.

Republicans must stop allowing the White House to demonize America’s entrepreneurs and producers. By continuing to refer to them as beneficiaries of the “Bush tax cuts” instead of as the besieged victims of Obama tax increases, the GOP cedes the moral high ground. It’s time to make the White House own its noxious war on wealth.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2009).

Read more excellent articles from Family Security Matters

American Muslim Organization Applauds Oklahoma Anti-Shariah Law

AIFD PRESS RELEASE: AIFD  American Islamic Forum for Democracy

SQ755 protects the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution's Establishment Clause and the rule of One Law

PHOENIX (November 5, 2010) - Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and the president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) issued the following statement regarding the passage of Oklahoma's State Question 755.

"As Muslims dedicated to modernity, reform and our one law system in the west and in the United States, AIFD applauds the people of Oklahoma for passing State Question 755 and making "the legal precepts of other nations or cultures" off-limits to Oklahoma courts and specifically denying the use of Sharia Law.

The issue is simple. As Americans we believe in the Constitution, the Establishment Clause, and our one law system. SQ755 reaffirms the First amendment to the Constitution and prevents the Establishment or empowerment of a foreign legal system like the specific shariah legal systems implemented in many Muslim majority nations and in western shariah courts seen in places like Britain.

By filing a lawsuit, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has wasted no time in proving once again that they are unable to stand behind public declarations that the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and our one law system supersede and are preferable to a sharia law system. They are using the American cover of religious freedom to try and knock down a simple law that prohibits the domination of one religion over others.

SQ755 is not about religious freedom or minority rights. It is about the inviolable sanctity of the U.S. constitution and our country's foundational belief in a legal system based in one law that is based in reason and individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The law has no impact on the personal practice of Islam or the personal interpretation of "shariah" (God's law to a Muslim), but rather SQ755 focuses on shariah as a total legal system that the people of Oklahoma wanted to make clear shall not be used or respected systemically in deciding law in Oklahoma. CAIR's assertion that it is akin to France's ban of the hijab or personal head covering for women is absurd. There is no evidence that this law prevents any of the personal manifestation of the practice of Islam or the use of personal religious principles in arguing law based in reason in state or federal court. Shariah as a legal system can just not be used as prima facie evidence in court.

SQ755 also thus prevents the establishment of separate shariah or Islamic courts in Oklahoma. As we have seen in Britain, Islamists have transformed the British arbitration system to the point that they are operating upwards of 85 shariah courts now. These courts are mostly operated out of mosques in Britain. While they claim that the courts are voluntary, as Canadians voiced loudly in their rejection of shariah courts, these groups exploit tribal pressures and coercion within Muslim communities in order to circumvent the one law and one legal system of Britain and western nations. It is naïve and ignorant to believe that such courts are purely "voluntary". Just ask many of the women who get pressured through them and pressured to stay "out of western un-Islamic courts."

CAIR's lawsuit proves that they are part of an Islamist establishment in America that do not and will not believe in the separation of mosque and state and that they promote the ideology of political Islam. This ideology is based in a belief in the supremacy of Islamic legal systems and is often a conveyer belt toward radicalization. CAIR shows once again that they are part of the problem not the solution.

To those who say "Why Oklahoma?", we say "Why not Oklahoma?" The Oklahoma precedent and example is important. It has already showed CAIR's hand and where they place shariah law in relation to the Constitution. CAIR flippantly states that the law is not necessary. By implying that Islam and shariah are inseparable they demonstrate a willful denial of the internationally pervasive draconian shariah law systems around the world in places like Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia to name a few, and how academically clear the legal system of shariah law is. Note should be made of how CAIR's response to SQ755 does not address any of the harms instituted against Muslims and non-Muslims around the world in the name of shariah law.

AIFD and most reformist Muslims believe a ban on shariah courts is necessary to protect the rights of the individual and in particular the rights of women."

About the American Islamic Forum for Democracy

The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. AIFD's mission advocates for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. For more information on AIFD, please visit our website at http://www.aifdemocracy.org/

Media contact:

office: 602-254-1840
email: info@aifdemocracy.org

India Prepares for Epic Obama Entourage

FoxNewsChannel

President under fire for trip to India, including the cost to taxpayers.

News Alert: WA Senate race final.

India Prepares for Epic Obama Entourage, posted with vodpod

The Great Tom Friedman and Israel's 10,000th Illegal Alien

Hope you have a good laugh.
Tom Friedman
LatmaTV

The Great Tom Friedman and Israel's 10,000th Il..., posted with vodpod

Best 2010 Election Clip: "The Hypnotizing Tingle"

DailyRushbo
http://www.DailyRushbo.com

Chris Mathews vs Michele Bachmann Tingle Or Trance

Best 2010 Election Clip: "The Hypnotizing Tingle", posted with vodpod

2010 Mid-Term Election: Voter And Media Montage

BankruptingAmerica

Our new video mash-up captures what this election was about - the state of the economy, jobs, and government overspending -- not party devotion.

Voters are anxiously searching for elected officials - regardless of political affiliation - who understand the consequences of government overspending and will respond to economic uncertainty by governing and budgeting responsibly.

Americans are looking for leaders who will restore economic certainty and fiscal sanity.

Will the leaders elected Tuesday respond to the call?
------
Stay informed, take action. Sign up at http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

2010 Mid-Term Election: Voter And Media Montage , posted with vodpod

Election Update Special on CBN.com

Watch this special evening edition for unique political analysis of Tuesday's midterm election outcomes... The Christian Broadcasting Network CBN http://www.cbn.com

Election Update Special on CBN.com , posted with vodpod

Palin Reacts to Election Outcomes

FoxBusinessNetwork ---

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin discusses what the president must do in the aftermath of the midterm elections.

Palin Reacts to Election Outcomes, posted with vodpod

2010 Elections - WMCap299 - Video

Posted by breitbart

2010 Elections - WMCap299 - Video, posted with vodpod

Last Week, Juan Williams; This Week, Andrew Breitbart

Project 21 / The National Center for Public Policy Research – Press Release

For Immediate Release
Contact: David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or (703) 568-4727 or dalmasi@nationalcenter.org
Judy Kent at (703) 759-7476 or jkent@nationalcenter.org

Free Speech "Schizophrenia": Left Claims to Support Freedom and Openness, Yet Up in Arms that Andrew Breitbart Might Express an Opinion on ABC News

The Censorship Continues: Last Week, Juan Williams; This Week, Andrew Breitbart - Who's Next?

Washington, D.C. - Members of the Project 21 black leadership network are expressing disgust over the left's lack of real respect for the First Amendment in light of the uproar among professional liberals that ABC News invited conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart to contribute opinions on election night.

"Silencing speech is the consistent theme used by progressives," said Project 21 full-time Fellow Deneen Borelli. "Not too long ago, NPR threw Juan Williams under the bus because he expressed his feelings, and now ABC News is experiencing the wrath of the left for inviting Andrew Breitbart to appear as a commentator on election night. Progressives will conveniently play the race card or launch smear campaigns in their desperate attempt to control conservative thought."

Breitbart is scheduled to take part in an online election night town hall meeting at Arizona State University to be moderated by ABC News anchor David Muir and Randi Zuckerberg of Facebook. The far-left Media Matters for America, a long-time Breitbart critic, claims the network "puts its credibility on the line" by associating with Breitbart.

Media Matters also published the opinion of Rose Sanders, the attorney for Shirley Sherrod, the former U.S. Department of Agriculture official fired by the Obama White House after a video of part of a speech she gave to a local NAACP event was posted online by Breitbart, and sought, but failed to obtain, the opinion of Sherrod herself. Sanders recklessly compared inviting Breitbart to participate in a media event was like "giving a Klansman an award for burning a cross on Shirley Sherrod's house."

"Shirley Sherrod's lawyer personifies the liberal schizophrenia on the subject of free speech," noted Project 21 member Jerome Hudson. "The Left cannot on one hand be champions of decency and openness and then attempt to suppress Andrew Breitbart's views on the other."

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives since 1992, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research (http://www.nationalcenter.org

Read more informative articles at The National Center for Public Policy Research

1984 - Big Brother - Video

Posted by RightChange

Based on Apple's 1984 MAC commercial that marked a new era in computers, and based on the George Orwell book 1984, RightChange introduces our closing argument on the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress for the 2010 Midterm Cycle. This is also the Kick-off for the 2012 Presidential Cycle for RightChange. The New Politizoid "1984 - Big Brother" may be our best yet! "Vote Different."

Cast: Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, George Soros, Maxine Waters, Moveon.org and Louis Farrakhan in their own words. Yes. These are their actual words.

1984 - Big Brother - Video, posted with vodpod

This Year's Voting Scam

By Tim Potts

This Year's Voting Scam

We received word today of a new  voting scam -- Internet  voting. If anyone contacts you and suggests that you avoid long lines by voting online, don't do it. PA does not have online voting.

Click here  for an article about this from the Nashua, New Hampshire Telegraph.

We know we're preaching to the choir, but please be sure to vote on Election Day. Voting is our muscle as citizens. And like a muscle, it will atrophy if we don't use it. And while you're at it, help a friend get to the polls.

Finally, tune in to the Pennsylvania Cable Network on election night for coverage from around the state. DR's Tim Potts will be providing commentary from 11:00 p.m. to midnight. Click here  to find PCN on your cable system.

 

If you value news about the problems of corruption and the solutions
of integrity, please support our work with a contribution.

Just click here  to make an online donation, or send a donation to:

Democracy Rising PA, P.O. Box 618, Carlisle, PA 17013.

Thank you!

Democracy Rising Pennsylvania  P.O. Box 618, Carlisle, PA 17013

Tea Partiers Won’t Go When Fun Ends

By Ed Feulner and Sen. Jim DeMint

In only 21 months, the tea party has exploded from a handful of scattered, spontaneous rallies into a full-fledged national movement capable of throwing out incumbents. Challenging entrenched Washington habits, it is a force both parties must reckon with.

Skeptics and opponents, however, continue to ask two basic questions. First, does the tea party have any real philosophical depth, a historical pedigree? Second, will its force dissipate after the elections?

In short, critics accept that the tea party has a present — but they question whether it has a past and a future.

Yes and yes. Yes, the tea party has a pedigree as old as our nation, and yes, we think it is likely to continue to play a significant role in politics after Nov. 2. People in both parties who hope to wish it away and continue business as usual had better think twice.

Americans have been disappointed by leaders in both parties who campaigned to right past wrongs and then, after getting to Washington, cared more about power than promises. Tea party supporters care more about principle than party labels or politics.

Tea party members voice the kinds of concerns that even some of President Barack Obama’s former supporters are beginning to raise. As one Obama voter asked the president at a recent town hall, “Is the American dream dead for me?”

These are the questions Americans are asking nationwide — in their kitchens, church halls and ballparks. These are the concerns expressed at tea party rallies everywhere.

The tea party seeks answers to such questions not in the dictates of Washington today but in our country’s founding principles. There, it finds a prescription for constitutional, limited government based on God-given rights — not a Utopian blueprint for bureaucratic-managed change.

The tea party, in other words, is that inner voice that speaks to us when things go wrong — the conscience of the nation at a crucial point in our history.

What has gone wrong is clear. The “stimulus” package has failed to get this country back on its feet. The latest unemployment figures show that we still have anemic growth and nearly 10 percent unemployment. As Americans suffered, Washington wasted its time on a gargantuan, unmanageable and unaffordable health care package. No wonder many Americans feel frustrated.

But underneath the frustration, the tea party has roots that are deeper and aim higher. Deeper because it is within the best tradition of popular movements in our history — from the Great Awakening that gave rise to the American Revolution to the conservative revival that helped elect Ronald Reagan. Higher because it aims to recover our moral compass, bequeathed by our Founders and preserved ever since.

The tea party also symbolizes Americans’ indomitable desire for a better life. It reminds us that we’re a country of free people who understand that liberty is fragile and must be vigilantly defended.

Some past grass-roots movements have succeeded, and others have failed. Success comes because the energy of the moment is translated into a lasting, governing philosophy consistent with the settled opinions of the American people.

On this score, prospects look good. The tea party isn’t about to go away after the November elections. Its powerful message of limited government is likely to remain a sharp thorn in the side of those in both parties who want to continue politics as usual.

Take Obama’s health care package, which tea partiers have labeled “Obamacare.” Obama and Democrats rammed this through Congress, against the wishes of a majority of the American people.

But the repealing legislation should not itself contain some new massive health care plan. Even if the legislation offers good policy, the tea party is here to remind Republicans that pushing large, unexamined bills through Congress is wrong. We need to repeal Obamacare immediately, then openly debate and pass conservative-drawn, sensible and broadly supported health care reform.

It’s no surprise that pollsters Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen found that more than “half of the electorate now say they favor the tea party movement, around 35 percent say they support the movement, 20 [percent] to 25 percent self-identify as members of the movement and 2 [percent] to 7 percent say they are activists.”

This means that all those protesters with their Constitutions at tea party rallies nationwide represent millions of fellow Americans. The answers they seek won’t be found in the thousands of pages of new legislation coming out of Washington.

They are in those documents that first defined this nation and provide the most just framework for a free people to work hard, play by the rules and succeed.

Ed Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation. Sen. Jim DeMint is a Republican from South Carolina.

Read more informative articles at The Patriot Post