RadioActive with Steve Mitton: March 2011

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Strategy to invade Israel posted on Facebook

Social-networking sites, specifically Facebook, are being used to promote a campaign that appears to target the very existence of Israel, with hundreds of thousands worldwide seeking to join in a plan to "return" to and take over the original homes of their families in "Palestine" on May 15.

According to an in-depth report by L. Barkan, a research fellow at the Middle East Media Research Institute, which monitors and analyzes media reports throughout the Middle East, the idea being circulated is "for millions of Palestinian refugees to march en masse in return to the original homes of their families in Israel."

The movement's plans call for this to be much more than just a visit, however.

See how radical Islam is threatening "The Third Jihad!"

"All the families of Jewish settlers in the Galilee area, including in the areas of Safed, Tiberias, and all the way down to Acre, must proceed to the port of Haifa and board ships back to their countries of origin in Europe," explained one posting that is part of the campaign.

It provided instructions for others to report to other ports – all by the middle of March, a deadline long past.

"The message also warned that anyone trying to take 'archeological artifacts [or anything belonging] to the Palestinian heritage, even a single ball of falafel, will be pursued and arrested by Interpol in his new place of residence,'" the report said.

(CBS News)

Walking on water isn't only the stuff of Bible texts these days. It's being done all around the world and here in the U.S., thanks to a special bubble. But the federal government is now warning consumers this latest fad could be fatal.

"Early Show" Consumer Correspondent Susan Koeppen reports the Consumer Product Safety Commission is now saying these balls can lead to suffocation or drowning.

Read the CPSC consumer warning

Introduced three years ago, manufacturers say there are now more than 1,000 water balls in the United States. From water parks to backyard pools, "water walking balls" are the latest amusement craze to sweep the nation.

After you climb in the transparent bubble, it's filled with air and you get zipped inside and then you can literally walk on water.

It looks fun, but is it safe?

President Barack Obama on Monday told a student who has received a deportation notice that he does not want to deport her -- he wants people like her to succeed.

The exchange happened during a town hall event sponsored by the Spanish-language television network Univision at a Washington, D.C., school.

A student, who appeared via Skype, asked: “My question for the president is, why [is the government] saying that deportations have stopped -- or the detention of many students like me, why is it that we are still receiving deportation letters like this one?”

Biden's Journalist-in-the-Closet Caper Is a Big Bleeping Deal

Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech last Wednesday in Florida. The occasion was a $500-per-head fundraiser for Democrat Senator Bill Nelson. The Orlando Sentinel was the press-pool-on-point to cover the event for the people of the United States of America.

The Sentinel sent one reporter. Said reporter was immediately confined by a Biden advance-team member to a storage closet, given a bottle of water and kept inside by a Biden thug at the closet door. Biden's prepared speech -- but nothing whatsoever else -- got "covered" for the people of the U.S.A. And the intrepid press-pool-on-point "reporter" limped back to the Sentinel with his little tail between his legs, happy to have had a little water to drink and a cell phone to keep him company during his confinement.

Wimp is too mild a word.

Anyone care to opine on what James O'Keefe might have done in such a circumstance? I would love to have seen that. But I digress into wishful thinking.

French vegans in dock over baby's death

Two vegans who fed their 11-month-old daughter only mother's milk went on trial in northern France on Tuesday charged with neglect after their baby died suffering from vitamin deficiency.

Sergine and Joel Le Moaligou, whose vegan diet forbids consuming any animal product including eggs and cow's milk, called the emergency services in March 2008 after becoming worried about their baby Louise's listlessness.

When the ambulance arrived at their home in Saint-Maulvis, a small village 150 kilometres (90 miles) north of Paris, the baby was already dead.

The ambulance workers called the police because the child was pale and thin, weighing 5.7 kilos (12.5 pounds) compared to an average eight kilos for her age.

The baby had only been fed on the milk of her mother, who was aged 37 at the time.

An autopsy showed that Louise was suffering from a vitamin A and B12 deficiency which experts say increases a child's sensitivity to infection and can be due to an unbalanced diet.

Japan's complex megadisaster offers scary glimpse of future

This map shows a comparison of RapidEye pre-disaster data acquired on Sept. 5, 2010 and post-disaster data acquired on March 12, 2011.

The crisis in Japan could be considered the first "complex megadisaster" the world has ever seen — a potent combination of natural and technological calamities that might become more common in the future.

A megadisaster is a catastrophe that threatens very quickly to overwhelm an area's capacity to get people to safety, treat casualties, protect vital infrastructure and control panic or chaos, said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

"A complex megadisaster, which is what I've been calling the crisis in Japan, is a natural catastrophe overlaid by a technological situation," Redlener told LiveScience. "You have four catastrophes in Japan: the earthquake, the tsunami, the continuing concerns about the instability of the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, and the humanitarian crisis of having hundreds of thousands of people displaced."

Could this be the biggest find since the Dead Sea Scrolls? Seventy metal books found in cave in Jordan could change our view of Biblical history

For scholars of faith and history, it is a treasure trove too precious for price. This ancient collection of 70 tiny books, their lead pages bound with wire, could unlock some of the secrets of the earliest days of Christianity. Academics are divided as to their authenticity but say that if verified, they could prove as pivotal as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.

Blaze Exclusive: Congressman Presses Holder to Investigate ‘Terrorist Plans’ in Bank Plot

The Blaze has obtained an exclusive letter sent from Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) to Attorney General Eric Holder regarding shocking video uncovered by The Blaze on Tuesday.

(Watch the original video.)

In the letter, Chaffetz references video, posted yesterday on this site, showing a one-time SEIU official, Stephen Lerner, outlining a plan to collapse the American economy — including crashing the stock market — so that unions can become more powerful. The sinister plan is set to take place in May and includes mass homeowner mortgage strikes.

(Read our report on Stephen Lerner.)

Chaffetz tells Holder “the escalation of Mr. Lerner’s threats would clearly constitute domestic terrorism and pose substantial harm to the American people and the economy.“ He goes on to request Holder investigate ”Mr. Lerner’s terrorist plans and notify me how the Department of Justice plans to respond to these threats.”

The letter, sent Wednesday, was also distributed to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House committee on Oversight & Government Reform, and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking minority member.

Lawmakers think the state of Idaho is getting a raw deal

To say that El Paso Western Pipeline Group President Jim Cleary was met with an unfriendly welcome at the Idaho Capitol Wednesday might be an understatement.

Cleary, whose entity is building the Ruby gas pipeline that will run underground from southwestern Wyoming to northwestern Nevada, stood before lawmakers Wednesday to discuss his company’s agreement with the Western Watersheds Project (WWP), an environmental group characterized as “domestic terrorists” by Rep. Judy Boyle, R-Midvale.

The agreement – a settlement of a lawsuit WWP filed over the construction project – forces El Paso to pay $15 million through a 10-year time span to the Sagebrush Habitat Conservation Fund. The fund is intended to be used solely conservation efforts, but several lawmakers on the House and Senate resource committees inferred that the money and the partnership are being used to force ranchers out of business by buying up federal grazing permits.

To say that El Paso Western Pipeline Group President Jim Cleary was met with an unfriendly welcome at the Idaho Capitol Wednesday might be an understatement.

Military indoctrinated on gays kissing, behavior

Four branches of the military have begun sending training material to 2.2 million active and reserve troops as a prelude to opening the ranks to gays, with instructions on, for example, what to do if an officer sees two male Marines kissing in a shopping mall.

Key themes are that sexual orientation will no longer be a bar to service, that all service members must respect each other, and that the partners of gay troops will not receive the benefits of heterosexual spouses.

“We are going to make [gay ban] repeal training expeditiously,” said Maj. Joel Harper, an Air Force spokesman at the Pentagon. “It’s great training.”

The briefings first target commanders, who will have to enforce the new law and deal with disputes, and then the entire force. The slides, vignettes and talking points by the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps are similar.

Japan Sees Quake Damage Bill of Up to $309 Billion, Almost Four Katrinas

Japan Forecasts Earthquake Damage May Swell to $309 Billion

Japan’s government estimated the damage from this month’s record earthquake and tsunami at as much as 25 trillion yen ($309 billion), an amount almost four times the hit imposed by Hurricane Katrina on the U.S.

The destruction will push down gross domestic product by as much as 2.75 trillion yen for the year starting April 1, today’s report showed. The figure, about 0.5 percent of the 530 trillion yen economy, reflects a decline in production from supply disruptions and damage to corporate facilities without taking into account the effects of possible power outages.

The figures are the first gauge of the scale of rebuilding Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s government will face after the quake killed more than 9,000 people. Japan may set up a reconstruction agency to oversee the rebuilding effort and the central bank has injected record cash to stabilize financial markets.

Damages will probably amount to between 16 trillion yen and 25 trillion yen, today’s report said. It covers destruction to infrastructure in seven prefectures affected by the disaster, including damages to nuclear power facilities north of Tokyo. Wider implications on the economy, including how radiation will affect food and water supply, are not included in the estimate.

19,000 Jobs Worth $1.1 Billion in Wages Lost Nationally Since Offshore Drilling Moratorium Imposed

At least 13,000 jobs have been lost since last summer’s moratorium on offshore oil production, surpassing projected job losses in a 2010 study by thousands, according to the Louisiana State University professor who authored the study.

Joseph Mason, author of “The Economic Cost of a Moratorium on Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration to the Gulf Region,” estimated that the new regional job losses due to the moratorium on offshore oil production in the Gulf region is now 13,000 – up from his original estimate of 8,000.

Mason also estimated the national job losses to have increased from 12,000 to 19,000; regional wage losses to be $800 million, up from $500 million; national wage losses to be $1.1 billion, up from $700 million; lost tax revenues on the state and local level to be $155 million, up from $100 million; and lost tax revenues on the national level to be $350 million, up from $200 million.

Another Three Mile Island

Fukushima will probably be mostly harmless, misunderstood by the media, and a rallying point for anti-nuclear activists.

‘Nobody at Three Mile Island was actually hurt or killed, or anything of that nature,” remembers John McGaha, formerly a senior executive of Entergy, a Mississippi company that runs and operates nuclear utilities. “Versus if you look at some of the oil and chemical explosions we’ve had over the years . . . ”

McGaha and other experts tell NRO that Americans are unduly afraid of nuclear energy — in part because of the media’s disproportionate, distorted reporting on rare nuclear accidents like Three Mile Island and the recent problems in Japan. McGaha says the most deadly consequence of Three Mile Island might have been how it delayed the advancement of nuclear technology in the U.S.

Another Three Mile Island

Fukushima will probably be mostly harmless, misunderstood by the media, and a rallying point for anti-nuclear activists.

Another Three Mile Island

Fukushima will probably be mostly harmless, misunderstood by the media, and a rallying point for anti-nuclear activists.

CAUGHT ON TAPE: Former SEIU Official Reveals Secret Plan To Destroy JP Morgan, Crash The Stock Market, And Redistribute Wealth In America

A former official of one of the country's most-powerful unions, SEIU, has a secret plan to "destabilize" the country.

The plan is designed to destroy JP Morgan, nuke the stock market, and weaken Wall Street's grip on power, thus creating the conditions necessary for a redistribution of wealth and a change in government.

The former SEIU official, Stephen Lerner, spoke in a closed session at a Pace University forum last weekend.

The Blaze procured what appears to be a tape of Lerner's remarks. Many Americans will undoubtely sympathize with and support them. Still, the "destabilization" plan is startling in its specificity, especially coming so close on the heels of the financial crisis.

Japan Proves Truly "A Friend Indeed" After Hurricane Katrina

Washington -- If the saying "a friend in need is a friend indeed" is true, Japan is one of the best friends the United States ever could have to provide support while so many Americans are suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Japanese private citizens and the government alike have sent a virtual tsunami of assistance to the victims of Katrina, which devastated 90,000 square miles along the U.S. Gulf Coast in August. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes and hundreds lost their lives.

Japan has pledged more than $1.5 million in private donations. The government of Japan has donated $200,000 in cash to the American Red Cross and some $800,000 in relief supplies -- from blankets to generators -- already are arriving to aid the most needy. Japanese firms with operations in the United States have donated some $12 million in total, including Honda Motor Corporation ($5 million), Hitachi ($1 million) and Nissan (more than $750,000).

The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo was overwhelmed by the generosity of one Japanese individual -- Takashi Endo -- who donated $1 million from his personal funds to Katrina relief efforts. Endo said he was moved when, during a business trip to London, he saw a televised report about a mother separated from her children in the chaos of the flooding in New Orleans. The story so disturbed him he could not sleep that night; the next morning he resolved to do something to help.

Yuji Takahashi, president and chief executive officer of the Japan Petroleum Exploration Company Ltd., which has operations off the coast of Louisiana, donated $100,000 to U.S. federal government hurricane relief efforts. Takahashi said that when he learned of the destruction caused by the hurricane, he felt as if his own family had been affected.

The crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi has already been dubbed the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, and the situation there continues to worsen.

But along with references to the "ch-word," as one nonproliferation expert put it, experts have been quick to provide reasons why the Daiichi crisis will not be "the next Chernobyl."

Experts have noted several key differences in the design of the reactors in question, as well as in the government's reaction to the crisis:

1. Chernobyl's reactor had no containment structure.

The RBMK reactor at Chernobyl "was regarded as the workhorse of Soviet atomic energy, thrifty and reliable -- and safe enough to be built without an expensive containment building that would prevent the release of radiation in the event of a serious accident," The Guardian's Adam Higginbotham noted.

As a result, when a reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, the radioactive material inside went straight into the atmosphere.

Fukushima's reactors are surrounded by steel-and-concrete containment structures. However, as the New York Times reported Tuesday, the General Electric Mark 1 reactors at Fukushima have "a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure" that has drawn criticism from American regulators. In a 1972 memo, a safety official suggested that the design presented serious risks and should be discontinued. One primary concern, the Times reported, was that in an incident of cooling failure -- the kind Fukushima's reactors are now undergoing -- the containment structures might burst, releasing the radioactive material they are supposed to keep in check.

At least one of Fukushima's reactors -- No. 2 -- seems to have cracked, and has been releasing radioactive stream. The seriousness of this breach is still unclear, with a Japanese government official maintaining on Wednesday that the damage to the containment structure may not be severe.

2. Chernobyl's reactors had several design flaws that made the crisis harder to control. Most crucially, their cooling system had a "positive void coefficient," which means that as coolant water is lost or turns into steam, the reaction speeds up and becomes more intense, creating a vicious feedback loop.

Bachmann Exposes $105 Billion Secret

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has again demonstrated her extraordinary leadership in the U.S. House. She discovered $105 billion of taxpayers' money that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi had hidden in ObamaCare.

Now Rep. Bachmann wants her colleagues to refuse to pass must-pass bills, such as the Continuing Resolution or raising the debt limit, unless they include recapturing that secret money. What a great idea!

After all, the new Congress was elected last November to cut spending and put the federal government back within the bounds of the Constitution. The new Members of Congress promised not only to cut overall spending but specifically to repeal and defund ObamaCare, so thank you, Michele, for showing the new Congress where to start.

When ObamaCare was passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve of 2009, Senators had less than 72 hours to compare a 383-page package of amendments to the 2,074-page bill. Public outrage over backroom deals (such as the Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase) led to the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

Democrats then cooked up a plan to link the now-2409-page Senate-passed ObamaCare bill to dozens of amendments contained in a separate 150-page Budget Reconciliation bill which could pass both houses by a simple majority. That's when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously told the then-Democratic majority, "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."

When President Obama signed ObamaCare into law, that set in motion a series of funding triggers and money transfers that add up to $105,464,000,000 in pre-authorized appropriations that are scheduled to be paid up through FY2019. In laymens's language, that means writing post-dated checks that are guaranteed to be paid out over the next eight years.

Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.

Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world.

They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year.

Some of the activities of the self-styled "kill team" are already public, with 12 men currently on trial in Seattle for their role in the killing of three civilians.

Liberty Dollar creator convicted in federal court

The leader of a group that marketed a fake currency called Liberty Dollars in the Asheville area and elsewhere has been found guilty by a federal jury of conspiracy against the government in a case of “domestic terrorism.”

Bernard von NotHaus was convicted Friday at the conclusion of an eight-day trial in U.S. District Court in Statesville. The jury deliberated less than two hours, according to the Department of Justice.

Charges remain pending against William Kevin Innes, an Asheville man who authorities said recruited merchants in Western North Carolina willing to accept the “barter” currency, according to court records. Innes was indicted along with von NotHaus in 2009.

Illustration by Josh McKible for Newsweek

What Don't You Know? Take the Quiz.

They’re the sort of scores that drive high-school history teachers to drink. When NEWSWEEK recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test, 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn’t even circle Independence Day on a calendar.

Don’t get us wrong: civic ignorance is nothing new. For as long as they’ve existed, Americans have been misunderstanding checks and balances and misidentifying their senators. And they’ve been lamenting the philistinism of their peers ever since pollsters started publishing these dispiriting surveys back in Harry Truman’s day. (He was a president, by the way.) According to a study by Michael X. Delli Carpini, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, the yearly shifts in civic knowledge since World War II have averaged out to “slightly under 1 percent.”

But the world has changed. And unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more inhospitable to incurious know-nothings—like us.

To appreciate the risks involved, it’s important to understand where American ignorance comes from. In March 2009, the European Journal of Communication asked citizens of Britain, Denmark, Finland, and the U.S. to answer questions on international affairs. The Europeans clobbered us. Sixty-eight percent of Danes, 75 percent of Brits, and 76 percent of Finns could, for example, identify the Taliban, but only 58 percent of Americans managed to do the same—even though we’ve led the charge in Afghanistan. It was only the latest in a series of polls that have shown us lagging behind our First World peers.

Most experts agree that the relative complexity of the U.S. political system makes it hard for Americans to keep up. In many European countries, parliaments have proportional representation, and the majority party rules without having to “share power with a lot of subnational governments,” notes Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker, coauthor of Winner-Take-All Politics. In contrast, we’re saddled with a nonproportional Senate; a tangle of state, local, and federal bureaucracies; and near-constant elections for every imaginable office (judge, sheriff, school-board member, and so on). “Nobody is competent to understand it all, which you realize every time you vote,” says Michael Schudson, author of The Good Citizen. “You know you’re going to come up short, and that discourages you from learning more.”

Silhouette of US soldier, marine, Helmand, Oct 2009

he US Army has apologised for graphic photographs of US soldiers grinning over the corpses of Afghan civilians they had allegedly killed.

The photos published by Germany's Der Spiegel magazine were said to be among many seized by US Army investigators.

An army statement said the photographs were "repugnant" but were already being used as evidence in a court martial.

Afghan civilian deaths at the hands of foreign forces is a highly sensitive issue in Afghanistan.

These photographs are purported to have been taken by a "rogue" US Army unit in Afghanistan in 2010.

Libya: Barack Obama says all civilian attacks must stop

So the West got it together in the end. By the time you read this, it may be clearer whether that happened at five minutes to midnight or five minutes past. If the latter – if it proves to be too late for the people of Libya – then the blame will lie almost entirely at the door of the Obama administration. After weeks of dithering and mixed signals (remember that jibe from the US Defence Secretary about David Cameron’s “loose talk”?) punctuated by periods of impenetrable silence, the White House had a sudden epiphany and declared itself in favour of a UN resolution allowing much more than a no-fly zone.

The word from Washington is that Hillary Clinton was behind this conversion: Barack Obama had joked publicly about the pressure that the Secretary of State was putting on him to overcome his reservations – which seemed to revolve primarily around his reluctance to bear any resemblance to his predecessor in the run-up to what is clearly going to be a difficult election. But the history of this ignominious chapter in American foreign policy is already being re-written in Washington with an enthusiastic chorus of support from Obama fans here: on Friday, Labour backbenchers and the BBC were already suggesting that all this apparent floundering was actually part of a superbly clever strategy. America had deliberately refrained from taking the lead on Libya, thus allowing “space” for the Arab nations and the UN to “take their proper place” as the authors of any intervention policy. Contrary to appearances then, Mr Obama is not out of his depth. Neither is he a cynic who secretly wants to keep Gaddafi in power for the sake of a quiet life (sometimes known as “stability in the region”) while he struggles with Congress over his tricky domestic programme. In other words, they were only pretending to be useless: it may have looked like a collapse of moral leadership to you but it really went completely according to plan.

The Japanese Could Teach Us a Thing or Two

When America is under stress, as is happening right now with debates about where to pare the budget, we sometimes trample the least powerful and most vulnerable among us.

So maybe we can learn something from Japan, where the earthquake, tsunami and radiation leaks haven’t caused society to come apart at the seams but to be knit together more tightly than ever. The selflessness, stoicism and discipline in Japan these days are epitomized by those workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, uncomplainingly and anonymously risking dangerous doses of radiation as they struggle to prevent a complete meltdown that would endanger their fellow citizens.

The most famous statue in Japan is arguably one of a dog, Hachiko, who exemplified loyalty, perseverance and duty. Hachiko met his owner at the train station when he returned from work each day, but the owner died at work one day in 1925 and never returned. Until he died about 10 years later, Hachiko faithfully went to the station each afternoon just in case his master returned.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, addresses Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, as he testifies before the committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 15, 2011. (AP)

Three Republican lawmakers are seeking to force Uncle Sam to sell about 3.3 million acres of land he no longer needs to help pay down the national debt.

Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah introduced legislation this week in their respective chambers that would order Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to dispose of the federal property that the Clinton administration identified in a 1997 report as suitable for sale.

The lands are located in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming and amounts to roughly 1 percent of all land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and less than one half of 1 percent of all federal land, the lawmakers said.

"The federal budget, much like the household budgets of millions of American families, is stretched alarmingly thin in today's fiscal climate. Congress must explore all possible avenues for reducing our $1.4 trillion deficit and all ballooning $14 trillion national debt," McCain said in a statement. "Our legislation aims to reduce the federal estate in a way that's mindful of how we currently manage our public lands and seeks to dispose land that the federal government simply does not want."

DOJ to white male bullying victims: Tough luck

The viral video sensation showing a bullying incident at an Australian school has brought the issue of bullying back into the spotlight. Here in the United States, the Obama administration has made school bullying a federal issue. Last week, President Barack Obama addressed an anti-bullying conference with First Lady Michelle Obama at his side. The administration's anti-bullying campaign has been ongoing since the beginning of Mr. Obama's term. The Department of Justice announced in December 2010 its intention to hold liable school districts that fail to protect students that are bullied.

DOJ’s website states:

The Civil Rights Division and the entire Justice Department are committed to ending bullying and harassment in schools, and the video highlights the Department’s authority to enforce federal laws that protect students from discrimination and harassment at school because of their race, national origin, disability, religion, and sex, including harassment based on nonconformity with gender stereotypes.

The statement later says:

The enforcement of the Equal Protection Clause, Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 in school districts is a top priority of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Additional information is available at the Civil Rights Division’s Educational Opportunities Section website at www.justice.gov/crt/edo/.

Japanese Earthquake Looters -- MIA

"Why no video of looters in Japan?"

Japan's prime minister calls the 9.0 earthquake and the following tsunami the greatest crisis in Japan since World War II. Ten thousand people are feared dead. Millions are without power, and millions sleep outdoors in cold weather. But we haven't seen looting. So I posted this question on Facebook and Twitter.

"Race is not an issue," Mike replied. "Third World countries like Haiti loot due to poverty. Japan is like America, an economic superpower. Plain and simple."

"Poverty equals crime" is the standard "plain and simple" explanation, especially to the left. The analysis contains holes big enough to drive a Hummer through.

In the "economic superpower" called America, we see widespread looting following natural disasters, as well as during power blackouts, "civil unrest" and basketball team victory celebrations. If we attribute this to American poverty, what about Japanese poverty?

"Japan Tries to Face Up to Growing Poverty Problem," read the headline of a 2010 New York Times article. Here are excerpts:

"After years of economic stagnation and widening income disparities, this once proudly egalitarian nation is belatedly waking up to the fact that it has a large and growing number of poor people. The Labor Ministry's disclosure in October that almost one in six Japanese, or 20 million people, lived in poverty in 2007 stunned the nation and ignited a debate over possible remedies that has raged ever since.

"Many Japanese, who cling to the popular myth that their nation is uniformly middle class, were further shocked to see that Japan's poverty rate, at 15.7 percent, was close to the ... 17.1 percent in the United States, whose glaring social inequalities have long been viewed with scorn and pity here. ...

Live news from Japan translated to English

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-world-tv

Here is a good link to get on the spot info from Japan, translated to English for your pleasure!

Monday, March 14, 2011

Confiscate Americans' Wealth to Pay Government Workers?

Michael Moore and his fellow-travelers in the American version of the Socialist/Marxist cabal have picked up the mantle of defending public unionism in their demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin and other state capitals. They are vocally calling for more confiscation of the wealth of the rich to pay for the bloated incomes of government workers and openly stating that all wealth belongs to the state while their true motives are deliberately obfuscated.

The age old premise and threadbare exhortation of class warfare has long found fertile ground among the lower classes but now they are being mouthed in support of one of the most advantaged groups in America today: public sector workers and their unions.

Even the most jaded of true-believers on the Left knows that confiscating the wealth and taxing what they consider to be unjust income would be self-defeating. What could be done one time can never be repeated and there would be no one to create jobs or a higher standard of living for the overall citizenry, particularly those on the left side of the ruling class. A cursory study of the experiences in the Soviet Union, Mao's Red China and Cuba among others reveals that government control of the means of production and wealth creation is a massive failure.

What would the United States gain if in fact the government did confiscate the wealth of the so-called rich and taxed at 100% all the income above $200,000.00 per household per year?

Handcuff-Wielding Michael Moore Declares ‘Class War’ on MSNBC: Oprah, George Soros and Others Should Be Jailed for Their Crimes

Following his weekend appearance at a rally of the protesters in the state capitol, the corpulent anti-capitalist popped over to The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, ranting about the breaking news in Madison while presenting his case for arresting Oprah Winfrey and the other 399 richest people in America.

According to Mr. Moore:

‘Wisconsin isn’t broke.’

‘America isn’t broke. The money‘s just not in the people’s hands’

‘We have trillions of dollars in our economy, the problem is, the money isn’t where it needs to be.’

, shockwave-flash@http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640#!flashvars#launch=41999558%5E430770%5E529114&width=420&height=245" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640#%21flashvars#launch=41999558%5E430770%5E529114&width=420&height=245" id="msnbc71f8d4">

And there you have it. Michael Moore, Socialist Statesman, calling the richest 400 Americans ‘criminals’ who robbed, cheated and stole from the rest of the country and should be locked up for their crimes. Here are a few names of these evil-doers from the list provided by Forbes Magazine of the 400 Wealthiest Americans:

‘YOU WILL DIE!!!!’: Read the Shocking E-Mail Sent to Wis. GOP Senators

The following is a shocking, scary e-mail sent to Wisconsin GOP senators last night at around 9:30 pm, shortly after the Senate passed an anti-union bill. Not only does the e-mail threaten the senators with death, but it also vows “your familes [sic] will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks.”

Local station WTMJ in Milwaukee obtained the e-mail, and has redacted the sender’s name pending an investigation by the police (emphasis added and spelling and grammar mistakes have not been corrected):

From: XXXX
Sent: Wed 3/9/2011 9:18 PM
To: Sen.Kapanke; Sen.Darling; Sen.Cowles; Sen.Ellis; Sen.Fitzgerald; Sen.Galloway; Sen.Grothman; Sen.Harsdorf; Sen.Hopper; Sen.Kedzie; Sen.Lasee; Sen.Lazich; Sen.Leibham; Sen.Moulton; Sen.Olsen
Subject: Atten: Death threat!!!! Bomb!!!!

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes
will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain
to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it
will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit
that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for
more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in
the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me
have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and the people that
support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing
with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand
for it any longer. So, this is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many
others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records.
We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a
nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn’t leave
it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the
message to you since you are so “high” on Koch and have decided that you are
now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a
demorcratic process.

Apparently, Soros is considering the possibility that people might some day want to be censored and live in a socialist society like China's.

He said yesterday at the Traveller’s Club in Paris, according to Dealbook:

“The world does need order, and that order needs maintenance. The idea that markets can correct their excesses turned out to be false.

“Perfect order and global governance are not realistic expectations. However, it is a sad fact that Western democracies provide less successful leadership than China.”

"[China’s model of state capitalism, in which the interests of the individual are subordinated to those of the government, pose a danger if its example becomes] “the envy of the world.”

He must think that things could get really bad in the Western world to think that anyone in a free-speech democracy is capable of envying life in China.

Partial graphic of a police officer stopping driver for speeding. (AP)

South Carolina is considering a bill that would allow police to slap $150 tickets on motorists caught driving less than 10 mph over the limit --10 times the current minimum -- but let them skip reporting the tickets to shield low-speed offenders from higher insurance premiums.

According to the bipartisan legislation, windfall revenues would be split between the state and the towns or cities that issue tickets.

A senior economist at the worldwide bank HSBC has warned of civil unrest in Britain if food prices continue to soar.

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Speaking on Jeff Randall Live, senior global economist Karen Ward cautioned that the UK could experience the kind of food riots seen in other countries.

"Even in the developed world I think we have very, very low wage growth, so people aren't getting more in their pay packet to compensate them for food and energy, and I think we could see social unrest certainly in parts of the developed world and the UK as well."

North Korea Nears Completion of Electromagnetic Pulse Bomb

North Korea appears to be protesting the joint U.S. and South Korean military maneuvers by jamming Global Positioning Devices in the south, which is a nuisance for cell phone and computers users -- but is a hint of the looming menace for the military.

Spreading: Idaho Lawmakers Approve Bill Restricting Teachers Union

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A bill that would phase out tenure for new teachers and restrict collective bargaining on their salaries and benefits is on its way to the Idaho governor.

The GOP-backed measure cleared its final hurdle Tuesday in the state Legislature, where it passed the Idaho House on a 48-22 vote. Nine Republicans crossed party lines to oppose the bill.

The state’s teachers union, the Idaho Education Association, says it would gut teacher rights. It plans to protest Wednesday.

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Supporters say the plan will give more power to Idaho’s locally elected school boards in labor relations issues. Opponents say it’s a slap in the face to teachers and a mean-spirited move to dismantle their union.

A registered sex offender has been charged in federal court with sending an e-mail in which he allegedly threatened to kill a U.S. senator if she didn't oppose legislation that would end environmental protections for wolves, court records show.

Tras Gustav Karlsson Berg, 35, sent an e-mail to the California senator on Feb. 24, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

Berg wrote, "I'm going to shoot you with a high-powered rifle and bomb your house with poison gas the way wolf hunters do if you don't do everything you can to oppose legislation that would eliminate Endangered Species Act protections for wolves across the country RIGHT F- NOW!," according to court records.

White House considers tapping oil reserves

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House Chief of Staff William Daley said on Sunday the Obama administration was considering tapping into the U.S. strategic oil reserve as a way to help ease soaring oil prices.

Speaking on NBC television's "Meet the Press," Daley said: "We are looking at the options. The issue of the reserves is one we are considering. It is something that only is done -- and has been done -- in very rare occasions. There's a bunch of factors that have to be looked at. And it is just not the price."

"All matters have to be on the table when you see the difficulty coming out of this economic crisis we're in and the fragility," Daley added.

Congress has pressured the Obama administration to look to the emergency oil supply to ease consumers' fears over rising gasoline prices, which are threatening again to top $4 per gallon at U.S. gas stations.

Higher oil prices could undermine the fragile U.S. economic recovery and politically damage President Barack Obama as he moves toward his 2012 re-election bid.

Road trip to the end of the world

From Jacksonville to Tampa, Florida (CNN) -- If you thought you had less than three perfectly healthy months to live, what would you do? Would you travel? Spend time with loved ones? Appreciate the joy life has given you?

Or would you ditch your kids and grandkids, join strangers in a caravan of RVs and travel the country warning people about the end of the world?

If you're Sheila Jonas, that's exactly what you'd do.

"This is so serious, I can't believe I'm here," says Jonas, who's been on the road since fall. Like her cohorts, she's "in it 'til the end," which she believes is coming in May.

Court won't hear challenge to 'In God We Trust'

The Supreme Court won't hear an atheist's latest challenge to the U.S. government's references to God.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Michael Newdow, who says government references to God are unconstitutional and infringe on his religious beliefs.

This appeal dealt with the inscription of the national motto "In God We Trust" on U.S. coins and currency. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco says the phrase is ceremonial and patriotic and "has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion."

The court refused to hear Newdow's appeal of that decision.

Obama’s Economy: Federal Workforce Up 11.7%, Private Work Force Down 6.6%

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that this trend is unsustainable. The private sector pays for the government. Without the private sector, and the tax revenues it pays, there can be no public sector. So when the public sector is growing and the private sector is shrinking that puts more tax burden on those still working in the private sector to support a larger government.

A trend exacerbated by the foolish notions that we can stimulate the private sector by expanding government spending.

Since the beginning of the last recession (December 2007) the private sector workforce has shrunk by 6.6% while shedding more than 7.5 million jobs. Over that same time period, the federal government workforce (excluding Census and Postal workers) has grown by 11.7% while adding 230,000 jobs.

This trend has continued throughout the Obama Administration. Since President Barack Obama was sworn into office, the private sector workforce has shrunk by 2.6% while shedding 2.9 million jobs while the federal workforce (excluding Census and Postal workers) has grown by 7% while adding more than 144,000 jobs.

The solution is to cut government, the only path to real economic recovery, is to downsize government and unburden the private sector.

Would Universal Health-Care Coverage Actually Improve Health?

There is a debate going on in the blogosphere between Ezra Klein, Arnold Kling, Karl Smith, Tim Carney, and others about, to put it crudely, whether health care really affects health that much. This is, in part, a proxy debate for whether it is worth it for the U.S. government to provide generous universal health-care financing for all of its citizens (or, I suppose, residents).

Either position can be caricatured. On one hand, no sane person would want to be without the advances of modern medicine. Recently, a little girl I know had scarlet fever. A century ago, this would very possibly have meant burying a small corpse; today, it implies a ten-day cycle of swallowing medicine at breakfast and dinner. There are few people on earth who have as much reason to be proud of how they spend their work week as pharmaceutical researchers.

On the other hand, the link from alternative methods of health-care finance, through the actual differences in provision of medical care these imply in the contemporary U.S., to the actual differences in health outcomes these treatment differences would cause, isn’t nearly so obvious. The net health effect of providing universal health-care coverage versus some alternative financing system is an empirical question, not a philosophy debate.

We, the Unhyphenated Americans: Meet My People

My fellow Americans, who are "your people"? I ask because U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who is black, used the phrase "my people" in congressional testimony this week. It was an unmistakably color-coded and exclusionary reference intended to deflect criticism of the Obama Justice Department's selective enforcement policies. It backfired.

In pandering to skin-deep identity politics and exacerbating race-consciousness, Holder has given the rest of us a golden opportunity to stand up, identify "our people" and show the liberal poseurs what post-racialism really looks like.

Herman Cain is my people. He's my brother-in-arms. I've never met him. But we are family. We are kin because we are unhyphenated Americans who are comfortable in the black, brown and yellow skin we are in. We are growing in numbers -- on college campuses, in elected office, on the Internet, on public airwaves, everywhere. And that drives liberals mouth-frothing crazy.

State Workers and N.Y.’s Fiscal Crisis

At a time when public school students are being forced into ever more crowded classrooms, and poor families will lose state medical benefits, New York State is paying 10 times more for state employees’ pensions than it did just a decade ago.

Editorial Series

State Deficits

That huge increase is largely because of Albany’s outsized generosity to the state’s powerful employees’ unions in the early years of the last decade, made worse when the recession pushed down pension fund earnings, forcing the state to make up the difference.

Although taxpayers are on the hook for the recession’s costs, most state employees pay only 3 percent of their salaries to their pensions, half the level of most state employees elsewhere. Their health insurance payments are about half those in the private sector.

In all, the salaries and benefits of state employees add up to $18.5 billion, or a fifth of New York’s operating budget. Unless those costs are reined in, New York will find itself unable to provide even essential services.

Barack Obama will demand the Lockerbie bomber as the price of supporting a new government in Libya.

The US President says the deportation of freed Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi is a condition of him backing the rebels if they win power.

Mr Obama wants Megrahi to be tried in the States for putting a bomb on the New York-bound jet that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, a crime for which he was convicted by a Scottish court

Cancer-stricken Megrahi has disappeared in Libya where he has been living after being released from jail because he supposedly had only months to live,

Blaze Exclusive: Socialist Mantra Hidden in Grade School Chants

The Promise Of America Is. . . Socialism? That’s exactly what is being taught in many American public schools.

Under the guise of teaching children to read, the seeds of Socialism are being planted within the minds of young children. Do you believe that the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States mandates the following?

The People’s basic needs must be met in a country. Needs for housing, education, transportation, and health care overseen by our government system.

Those are the words being chanted over and over and over by school children around the country. They are part of an educational program called Building Fluency Through Practice and Performance. This section is called ‘The Promise of America’ and it breaks down the fifty-two word single sentence that is the Preamble. Here is the original:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

April 1968: Sanitation workers strike in Memphis.

The manufactured Madison, Wis., mob is not the movement the White House was hoping for. Both may find themselves at the wrong end of the populist pitchfork. While I generally defend collective bargaining and private-sector unions (lots of airline pilots in my family), it is the abuse by public unions and their bosses that pushes centrists like me to the GOP. It is the right and duty of citizens to petition their government. The Tea Party and Republicans seek to limit government growth to protect their pocketbooks. Public-union bosses want to increase the cost of government to protect their racket.

1. Public unions are big money.
Public unions are big money. Paul Krugman is correct: we do need “some counterweight to the political power of big money.” But in the Alice in Wonderland world where what’s up is down and what’s down is up, Krugman believes public unions do not represent big money. Of the top 20 biggest givers in federal-level politics over the past 20 years, 10 are unions; just four are corporations. The three biggest public unions gave $171.5 million for the 2010 elections alone, according to The Wall Street Journal. That’s big money.

2. Public unions redistribute wealth.
Public employees contribute real value for the benefit of all citizens. Public-union bosses collect real money from all taxpayers for the benefit of a few. Unlike private-sector jobs, which are more than fully funded through revenues created in a voluntary exchange of money for goods or serv-ices, public-sector jobs are funded by taxpayer dollars, forcibly collected by the government (union dues are often deducted from public employees’ paychecks). In 28 states, state and local employees must pay full union dues or be fired. A sizable portion of those dues is then donated by the public unions almost exclusively to Democratic candidates. Michael Barone sums it up: “public-employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party.”

Why Koch Industries Is Speaking Out

Years of tremendous overspending by federal, state and local governments have brought us face-to-face with an economic crisis. Federal spending will total at least $3.8 trillion this year—double what it was 10 years ago. And unlike in 2001, when there was a small federal surplus, this year's projected budget deficit is more than $1.6 trillion.

Several trillions more in debt have been accumulated by state and local governments. States are looking at a combined total of more than $130 billion in budget shortfalls this year. Next year, they will be in even worse shape as most so-called stimulus payments end.

For many years, I, my family and our company have contributed to a variety of intellectual and political causes working to solve these problems. Because of our activism, we've been vilified by various groups. Despite this criticism, we're determined to keep contributing and standing up for those politicians, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who are taking these challenges seriously.

Both Democrats and Republicans have done a poor job of managing our finances. They've raised debt ceilings, floated bond issues, and delayed tough decisions.

Senior Economics Writer Stephen Moore critiques Washington's pending budget deal.

In spite of looming bankruptcy, President Obama and many in Congress have tiptoed around the issue of overspending by suggesting relatively minor cuts in mostly discretionary items. There have been few serious proposals for necessary cuts in military and entitlement programs, even though these account for about three-fourths of all federal spending.

Yes, some House leaders have suggested cutting spending to 2008 levels. But getting back to a balanced budget would mean a return to at least 2003 spending levels—and would still leave us with the problem of paying off our enormous debts.

Organized Labor vs. Public Opinion

‘Polls show that the vast majority of people think that [Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin] has overreached. . . . His popularity has gone down. So he’s losing.” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said it on Meet the Press, so it must be true, right?

Not necessarily. More than one poll suggests that public-sector unions have picked a bad time to stage massive temper tantrums to defend the status quo. Most Americans are in no mood to preserve government workers’ inflated salaries and benefits. Indeed, ordinary Americans are not sold on the proposition that public-sector employees should even be allowed to form unions and go out on strike.

In a recent poll on the situation in Wisconsin, Scott Rasmussen found that 48 percent of voters take Gov. Scott Walker’s side in the budget dispute while 38 percent support the public-sector unions. And by a similar margin (49 percent to 38 percent), voters question whether public-sector employees should enjoy the legal right to strike. In this, they agree with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who denounced such strikes as “unthinkable and intolerable” because they look “toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it.”

The poll reveals several sizable schisms in the electorate. Men support Governor Walker by a margin of 57 percent to 32 percent. Women side with the unions, though by a smaller margin (44 percent to 40 percent). Young voters are also pro-union, but their elders are decidedly not. Voters age 18–29 support the unions by 52 percent to 36 percent, while seniors side with Walker by a somewhat larger margin (54 percent to 32 percent). There are similar divisions by race and partisan affiliation.

The Elite, is almost a dubious term that few can define. Those who are Elites will never admit it, not even to themselves. In this article we will attempt to define the concept according to the writing of Orwell and the Socialist leaders of the mid-twentieth century and today.

Orwell wrote,

“There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.”

At first glance the reader is incredulous; what a bizarre sentence, it doesn’t make sense. However, like most deep thoughts, the sentence induces a secondary response that slowly sifts through the reader’s consciousness, producing memories of experiences with intelligent, but extremely impractical people.

A Union Education

The raucous Wisconsin debate over collective bargaining may be ugly at times, but it has been worth it for the splendid public education. For the first time in decades, Americans have been asked to look under the government hood at the causes of runaway spending. What they are discovering is the monopoly power of government unions that have long been on a collision course with taxpayers. Though it arrived in Madison first, this crack-up was inevitable.

We first started running the nearby chart on the trends in public and private union membership many years ago. It documents the great transformation in the American labor movement over the latter decades of the 20th century. A movement once led by workers in private trades and manufacturing evolved into one dominated by public workers at all levels of government but especially in the states and cities.

The trend is even starker if you go back a decade earlier. In 1960, 31.9% of the private work force belonged to a union, compared to only 10.8% of government workers. By 2010, the numbers had more than reversed, with 36.2% of public workers in unions but only 6.9% in the private economy.