Most people believe that this commandment represents sound morality, even if they are not Christians.  Nonetheless, it seems that this moral precept is forgotten once we start talking politics.  And no wonder:  Americans have been making up ‘right and wrong’ for themselves for quite a while.   Obviously it was only a matter of time before it seeped into our national mindset.

A good example of this in action is the current attempt by the Democrats to extend the payroll tax cut, ‘paying for it’ by having the ‘rich’ pay their ‘fair share.’

That we are talking about theft becomes clearer when one considers exactly what the ‘payroll tax’ is.  We are talking about the portion of one’s income that goes directly into Social Security.  Your contributions, in turn, ensure that when you retire, you will be able to draw a steady check.

Now, the liberals tend to target the rich to fund a variety of their favorite programs, and many of those times there ostensibly is some ‘public’ benefit of them.  For example, we might put public infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, in this category.  Usually, though, the program favors smaller, special interest, populations.  The appearance of a socialistic transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor becomes more profound the more targeted the program.

But the funding of the payroll tax cut by the rich really takes the cake.  It is one of those few instances of a government service where the individual directly benefiting from the service is also the one funding it.  Heck, it might be the only example of such a thing.

To have the rich pay for the payroll tax cut is to ask them to directly fund the retirements of the rest of the population, in a direct and transparent manner.  The ‘99%’ are demanding that the ‘1%’ pay for a service that only the ‘99%’ will benefit from, without themselves contributing a dime.  There is no ‘public’ benefit; the ‘special interest’ group just turns out to be exceptionally large.

This is stealing.

Stealing is wrong.

Therefore, this is wrong.

The real kick in the pants here is that while the ‘poor’ and ‘middle class’ are getting behind the highway robbery of their ‘richer’ countrymen, they are actually robbing their future selves.  Since the amount of your contribution is correlated with how much you receive in your retirement account, by continuing to not pay the payroll tax, you are decreasing the amount you will ultimately receive.

Our Democrat Robin Hoods want us to steal from the rich to give to the poor, and in doing so are actually stealing from both!  It’s almost funny.

This hilarious, but sad, situation could be avoided by making the contributions by the rich go directly to the ‘accounts’ of individual Americans.  Then, the retirement distributions of future retirees would continue to grow, since ‘their’ contributions would be continuing in the meantime.

That, of course, would be an even more blatant example of outright theft than the current scheme. To my knowledge, though, it has not been suggested.

But it should raise this question:  if the rich are not being asked to subsidize individual contributions, what is it exactly that they are being asked to pay for?  In a sane universe, reducing contributions would reduce distributions, and that would be the end of it.   That would go over like a lead balloon, however, so clearly the idea is to reduce the amount of contributions Americans make while maintaining the same distributions.

But shouldn’t the current level of distributions already be readily payable from the Social Security ‘trust fund’?  And if that is the case, there isn’t a need to pay for the payroll tax cut at all, right?  Right?  That money is there, right?

This whole notion of having to pay for the ‘payroll tax cut’ represents a tacit acknowledgement that Social Security is nothing more than the largest Ponzi scheme… ever.

Many people feel that they are entitled to their Social Security payments because ‘they’ve paid in all these years!’  In reality, their ‘contributions’ were fundamentally never any different than any other tax.  You ‘paid’ into your Social Security ‘account’ like you ‘paid’ into public roads, the Department of Education, and the National Endowment of the Arts.

When the money is gone, ‘services’ must be cut, and it was gone fifteen trillion dollars ago.  ‘Social Security’ turns out to be no exception.  The money we are assured is ‘there’ is not there, or else there would be no need to ‘pay for’ this ‘cut.’  Are we perhaps closer to complete insolvency in the Social Security program than anyone has let on?

The Democrats are turning once again to the ‘rich’ to try to postpone the inevitable collapse of this program, but in doing so, have been forced to come perhaps the nearest ever to advocating for direct, unambiguous theft.

Stealing is wrong, but the truth is that the theft has been going on for decades.  The Federal government has been stealing all along, extracting most of the cash, ironically, from the very people the money was supposed to help.  To get away with it, they had to tell people what they wanted to hear.  That is, they’ve been lying… something else that the general populace tends to view as wrong, for governments and for people.

Lying is necessary, because despite the moral carte blanche that pervades our society, we still aren’t comfortable calling something we’re doing what it really is; in this case, stealing.

Margaret Thatcher said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

The fact that the ‘payroll tax cuts’ needs to be paid for is proof positive that they’ve run out of the money given to them by the ‘poor’ and ‘middle class.’  It is now necessary to take it from the ‘rich.’  After that, who is left?  It would appear that we’ve picked the bone clean, and that can only mean boiled-bone soup for everyone!

By stealing from the rich, we’re stealing from our future selves by decreasing our distribution amount, but the mere fact that we are in this situation at all reveals that we’ve been stealing from our past selves, too.  And we’re running out of folks to steal from…

That’s the sort of thing that happens when you dispense with right and wrong.  Stealing was wrong, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  Do not be deceived, God cannot be mocked.  A man reaps what he sows, and so does a society.

Always.

Anthony Horvath is the executive director of Athanatos Christian Ministries.  He blogs on apologetics, politics, and pro-life issues at http://www.sntjohnny.com.

by Don Hank

Pat Condell has a unique way with language, as a recent video shows.

Look at this delightful phrase: ” [the EU]…will collapse under the weight of its own illegitimacy.”

It occurs to me that, due to their opposition to tyranny, atheists like Pat are actually in the same boat as biblical Christians, though seemingly at opposite poles, and our plight –  as well as our tragic inability to grasp it – is as described by Martin Niemöller in that famous quote

“In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist…[etc]“

A sincere and questioning mind will, absent bias and external obstructions, come round to the truth. Atheism can be a painful first step in questioning received wisdom, but it may never be the last.

National unity means joining in common cause with everyone who opposes the common enemy, at least in the opposition to that enemy and until he is vanquished. There are no superiors or inferiors in that struggle, just people yearning for their share of the rights and voice that are rightfully theirs. Their God-given rights as we say. The term “God-given” may offend some people with claims to “higher enlightenment,” but consider that it was precisely the notion that man can create rights out of thin air that gave birth to the despotic EU – just as the corollary notion that central banks – part of that same entity — can create money out of thin air contributed mightily to our current financial malaise. Those perverse ideas are twins.

I doubt it has ever occurred to Pat that his militant atheism is part of the cultural Marxism that has been foisted on Europe for generations by the very elites he rails against. After all, the Fabian Society was founded (in London) for a twofold purpose:

1. to spread socialism, and

2. to eliminate Judeo-Christian culture.

Today’s elites are the spiritual and ideological heirs to that agenda, and yet, many of their putative opponents are unwittingly assisting them in their quest to destroy our Western culture and heritage by assailing Judeo-Christianity.

Pat is part of our landscape, his words are too powerful to ignore, and he is absolutely right that the EU has stolen from Europeans. But he needs to understand that opposing only the political agenda of the Imperial Powers he rails against is an incomplete task — even a futile one — unless we oppose their social agenda as well. Opposition to the enemy’s destructiveness is a vital first step. Railing against constructive faith that ultimately can replace what that agenda has torn asunder negates that opposition.

This is because a vital second step is restoring what the enemy has destroyed, and the will to restore it comes in no small measure from our inner spiritual resources invested in a common vision of national health and prosperity.

The myth that atheism was a vital component of the Enlightenment is false. There were in fact two Enlightenments, one that sought to reconcile the thought of Aristotle, for example, with Christianity, as Lawrence de Medici had done in Florence, and the other Enlightenment – embodied, for example, by Voltaire, which taught that religion itself had held back progress and needed to be abolished. Devotees of the latter branch cite, by way of support, the difficulties that some scientists like Copernicus and Galileo, have encountered with the Vatican. Yet they seem unaware that Roger Bacon’s pioneering work on the scientific method was in fact sponsored by Pope Clement IV.

Those spiritual resources we will need to rebuild our civilization once the enemy is overcome are, to paraphrase Pat, like the air we breathe and the water we drink.

We can’t afford to throw this baby out with the bath water.

http://kleinverzet.blogspot.com/2011/11/dose-of-cold-hard-truth.html

In fact, these politicians are some of the few who realize that the US Left actually triggered the world economic crash and therefore, in a sense, owes Europe and everyone else an apology at the very least.

It is interesting that even the most conservative authors, writing on the economy, rightfully blame the banks, the Fed and the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall for the economic crash, but most of them fail to look back at the prime cause, the bleeding heart giveaway policies of the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act). True, these other factors were absolutely key and no one is denying that. But without the CRA, it would not have happened, at least not in the same way.

“Most people do not realize this, but derivatives were at the center of the financial crisis of 2008,” states an article at theeconomiccollapseblog.com.

Nothing wrong with that statement. (This blog is in fact one of the best sources available on the progress of the West’s current economic suicide attempt.)

Indeed, neither party noticed the enormous destructive power of these instruments back when the market was bearish.

But let’s be more specific. In the case of the current crisis, it was not just any old derivatives that caused the initial tremor in the markets. It was mostly a derivative known as MBSs, or mortgage backed securities, that got the avalanche rolling. And the repeal of Glass-Steagall (which had denied banks the right to act as both investment houses and banks) was the enabler.

However, we need to look back further to find the root cause. To recap for those who have forgotten: Back in the 70s Carter, always the bleeding heart and skeptic of the free market, decided banks were deliberately refusing to service blacks, Hispanics, etc, on the basis of race. That assumption was in itself unproven at best and maliciously phony at worst. Nonetheless, the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) became the law of the land in 1977. No one tried to seriously enforce this law until Clinton became president because Republicans used to know that forcing banks to lend to the insolvent would inevitably lead to ruin. Ironically, by the founding of the Clinton Dynasty, businesses were even more conscientious than before about eliminating racial considerations from their lending practices. A well-off black men could secure a loan just as easily — if not more easily (thanks to affirmative discrimination) — than a white man.

But Clinton had declared himself the “first black president” and he had to live up to his absurd title. So his HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, with equal absurdity, started to put teeth into the law that had, mercifully, lay fallow in the intervening years:

Here is what the CATO Institute says:

In 1992, HUD was given regulatory authority over these government-sponsored enterprises, and it began pushing the two firms into the subprime lending business.

The ensuing horrors we see all around us could perhaps have been mitigated, or even averted, had GW Bush not tried so hard to be a “compassionate conservative” (code for socialist in sheep’s clothing). In fairness, Bush had initially warned against these policies, but by January 2004, his HUD web site was trumpeting:

“Offering FHA mortgages with no down payment will unlock the door to homeownership for hundreds of thousands of American families, particularly minorities,” said HUD’s Acting Secretary Alphonso Jackson. “President Bush has pledged to create 5.5 million new minority homeowners this decade, and this historic initiative will help meet this goal.”

It was the serious enforcement of a less-than-serious law, coupled with the repeal of another law that would have prevented the securitization and sale of mortgages that indirectly led to a debacle that has engulfed the entire world and has led to a situation in which derivatives with an estimated notional value of $1.4 quadrillion have flooded the world market – a value of about 23 times world GDP. Not only the issuance of MBSs, but the practice of creating and selling these potentially lethal instruments, is what threatens every inhabitant of our globe.

So keep this in mind: without the repeal of Glass-Steagall and without the “compassionate conservatism” and outright socialism of our past governments, you and your friends would have reasonable job security and/or a job.

Good reasons to avoid voting for a RINO or a Democrat next year.

by Don Hank

My mom used to give me haircuts, but she was always a little nervous and often nicked me in the ear with the scissors. That really hurt.

This haircut on the Greek bonds will hurt a LOT MORE.

Quote (see link below):

In essence, the haircut on Greek debt [haircut: partial default, in this case, decreed by law. DH] is a signal to investors that they should require a much higher rate of return on the debt of all of the PIIGS.  This is going to make the financial collapse of all of the PIIGS much more likely.

Absolutely. Not only that, the Greek government officials and Greeks benefitting from government largesse have lived high on the hog for years, and for them, that is an unalienable entitlement. Many of them get nasty when someone touches their entitlements. They burn tires, wreck vehicles, throw stones through windows, etc, breaking things they can’t afford to replace.

Now that Europe has given a 50% haircut on their sovereign debt, many will figure they can continue to live like kings and the next time around, good old Germany and the ECB and EFSF will just bail them out again, with more “haircuts” for their bonds and more leverage. Dream on. The German people are already PO’d! And with good reason.

As this author points out, the party can’t go on forever. They are tightening the noose around Europe’s neck.

“Leverage” in this context means that the banks will be able to lend 4-5 times more than before simply by issuing more credit — NOT MONEY, because they have no money at the bottom line of the balance sheets, only debt. Now even before this re-leveraging, they were leveraged to the max and already issuing loans against nothing but hot air. That’s the same as printing money, as they did in the failed Weimar Republic. Weimar failed BECAUSE they did this, but the money printing was sold as a “solution” to their problem. Now they’re trying a little — no a LOT — of hair of the dog that bit them in the butt before, except not just Germany but most of Europe. How short their memories are.

This money the banks are lending is money they don’t have. It is debt, the opposite of money. They are dealing in red numbers, paying off red numbers with more red numbers. That is like climbing higher up the mountain to reach the bottom. GUARANTEED it won’t work and when the crash comes it will be dramatic, people will get hurt and Greeks will be back burning tires again.

Maybe someone will hire them to do that. They’re getting pretty proficient at it.

by Don Hank

The site linked to below (The Economic Collapse) had predicted just a day or two ago that the “haircut” on Greek debt would increase the chances of recovery of the PIIGS. It didn’t take long for that prophecy to be realized, as they report today.

Here are my 2 cents, incl a prediction of my own. I hope it turns out to be wrong:

According to the Greek language online newspaper “Express,” the European “leaders” met with the bankers before this “haircut” edict was handed down. They had originally spoken of a 21% hiarcut, but they were faking. They knew it would be 50% but they had to soften up the bankers.

It is my humble opinion that they made these bankers a deal they couldn’t refuse. First they TOLD them the haircut would be 50%, at variance with what they had said (they had lied, to put it nicely).

According to this Greek article, the rip-off to the European banks amounted to 67.5 billion euros, or 20$ less that the Greek government would have to pay.

My prediction (I truly hope I am wrong):

The European powers (remember, this is the group that exported “democracy” the the Arabs, but they won’t give their own people democracy. THEY make all the decisions) will eventually get around to utilizing one of their many financial tentacles — e.g., the ECB, the EFSF (European Financial Stability Facility) or other, perhaps one to be created — either to BUY PIIGS bonds outright or to financially assist private buyers to buy them (using both European and US public funds — see last link below!), in order to circumvent the market. This is because no private person or entity will eventually touch a Greek bond, for ex, with a 3 meter pole, unless enticed with promises of public money.

I say this because I know:

1–the past behavior of the European elites

2–their Marxist philosophy underlying that behavior.

The real raîson d’être of the European Empire (European union) and its tentacle agencies has always been to redistribute wealth. Unlike the Soviet Union, they no longer can do that — for political reasons — openly, from one group to another. But by pretending to “stabilize” Europe, they can distribute the wealth from northern countries with a sound work ethic to southern countries with no palpable work ethic at all. [Footnote: this is analogous to the way the US government orchestrated our current financial crisis by first forcing the banks to lend to the insolvent under the infamous CRA, another wealth redistribution scheme].

By allowing the fiscally irresponsible Greece to join the Euro Zone, they knew they would ultimately be able to transfer billions of euros of wealth to that country under the pretext of “stabilization.” They won’t quit even now that they have literally destabilized the whole continent by their so-called “stabilization measures.”

They have all the power and they will continue to rob the citizens of each member country until they — and we — are dirt poor or until the people rise up and throw off their yoke.

It will be a true European Spring and the elites will not be in charge this time.

Don Hank

How the US will pay for the scam:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPMFMxuhHAM

Don Hank

When the banks crashed in 2008, people on the Right figured out that the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act, which forced banks to lend more money to the “underserviced communities”) had something to do with it.

A lot was said and written about the CRA and the case against it looked pretty airtight.

But then leftwing analysts issued damage control statements supposedly showing that the CRA played only a minuscule role. They argued, among other things, that the CRA was enforced only on certain large banks while others did not have to comply.

Conservative observers bought into this story without further examination, and all of a sudden, everyone was looking elsewhere for a culprit: And they found blood on the hands of the Fed, the corporations, the lobbyists, etc, all of whom certainly had played a role.

I must agree, of course, with the libertarians and even the OWS crowd that corporations and banks contributed in no small way to the crash.

And I agree with Ron Paul, Alex Jones, Steph Jasky, Karl Denninger, Bill Stills and others that the Fed, with its inflationary policies and cheap credit in the midst of a housing bubble, had a huge hand in the crash. There is a lot of political hay to be made off the anger of many in the Occupy Wall Street crowd who can see only corporate greed as the culprit. Conservatives who spell out the entire narrative, including the role of leftist government, risk losing their constituency and their followers.

So with all these individuals and groups jumping on the anti-corporate and anti-Fed bandwagon, should the CRA get off Scott free?

Amidst the lynch crowd fervor, should we really let the government off the hook?

I go on the theory that the truth is always best, even if it is bad for one’s popularity at times.

Thus, one side of the rather complex discussion has been muted, and yet, that is the message we all need to focus on right now, if for no other reason than that it is a blind spot that could cause many to think the private corporations are solely to blame, when the government was the culprit that got the ball rolling toward the housing crash and subsequent subprime crisis by enforcing horrendous wealth redistribution law that was doomed to fail from the start. After all, exonerating a truly guilty party can only induce devious characters to do more mischief.

Case in point: taking advantage of the blackout regarding the seminal causes of the crash, Barney Frank, one of the most heinous offenders in the run-up, hypocritically teamed up with Chris Dodd after the crash to write tighter banking regulations, slyly dissimulating that his own support for the CRA had contributed to the economic/financial downturn in a way that some are now calling criminal.

So let’s be honest and let the chips fall where they may. The government played a seminal role in the crash with its CRA enforcement, as aided and abetted by ACORN, even though a superficial analysis may suggest it was not that big a role. So how did this devastating law do its dirty work in the shadows?

It pulled off this feat because it was not the government forcing banks to make loans to the insolvent, which was just an initiator or catalyst. It was rather the less visible effect of the CRA’s policy allowing (force was soon no longer needed) the banks to make bad loans with the tacit guarantee that the loans would be guaranteed by government.

See, if a law forces some people to use unsound banking policies, i.e., deliberately lending to the insolvent, then it can hardly prosecute banks that do this, even if they were not the ones originally targeted by the legislation. Thus the CRA opened the flood gates for horrendous banking practices never seen before on this scale by providing a huge incentive for banks to make money hand over fist at taxpayer expense.

All of this is further compounded by the fact that neither banks nor most (if any) American corporations can be thought of as representing true free market capitalism. So for the OWS activists or anyone else to blame the crash on capitalism is like blaming saber tooth tigers for making the outdoors unsafe.

But we aren’t talking about any of this now. Somehow, the narrative of the CRA as an insignificant contributor to our woes has assumed the status of settled science.  We’ve been led down a rabbit trail by both the far left and the well-meaning right that got lost and started seeing only the role of the banks.

But you know what? This topic of government culpability is much too young to die. Let’s drag it back onto the table again and take a longer look this time.

I understand that Cain’s 9-9-9 plan is just phase one in a more powerful overhaul, but I am leery about any plan that cannot be attained within a single term of the presidency.  Moreover, we cannot count on the legislators to get behind it, or sustain it once it gets going.

So that’s a pickle, right?  There pretty much isn’t a plan out there that can be rolled out within a single term with the assurance that the legislative branch will implement it as proposed (and not load it with 2,000 pages of caveats).

So what to do?

And consider a different plan that actually tackles these issues head on and effectively ensures that the plan comes to fruition.

The plan is simply this:  deny the Federal government the right to collect individual and corporate taxes, period.  Instead, the Federal government would collect funds from the states.  The states in turn would be in charge of collecting the taxes that would then be sent along to the Federal government.  How the states collect that revenue would be entirely up to each individual state.  Each state would be assigned an ‘amount due’ based on some kind of objective and reasonable criteria, like for example, on a per capita basis and a calculation of that state’s particular burden on the Federal budget.

Read the whole proposal

Not even close – despite what the “conservative” media and politicians are telling you

Don Hank

There is a certain resistance among the public to admit that it is not you and I but the corporations and their lawyers, partnering with the Federal Reserve, that run America. Many conservatives hate to hear anyone “malign” corporations because to them, corporations, including banks, bear the torch of sacred capitalism. The GOP bosses are content with this situation.

On the other hand, since most big corporations donate mostly to the Democrat party, Democrats — especially those in the media and politics – are also loathe to broach the subject of corporate control over government.

Besides, the same corporations lobbying for open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens are also helping build Democrat power. Everyone knows how Latinos tend to vote.

And when it comes to “green” boondoggles, all the fat cats want in on them. They will of course mean a net loss of jobs and enormous subsidies for the most inefficient technologies known to mankind, but “green” subsidies flow freely from government coffers, as anyone following the Solyndra story knows.

Now, many of these corporate lobbyists are pushing very hard for open borders. They donated big bucks to pliable candidates and expect some bang, like more illegal alien labor, for example, and better legal conditions for sending your job overseas. Big corporations and Big Politics want precisely what you dread.

So what about us little people down here?

I wonder what people would say if they knew that the power of their vote is negligible compared to the pressures brought to bear by Big Business lobbies, which effectively dictate policy to your elected officials. I wonder how many have ever figured out that it was your senator’s and congressmen’s utter subservience to corporate lobbyists that made them vote for the TARP bailouts even after receiving phone calls begging them not to vote for it at the rate of 300 calls against the bailouts per 1 call in favor.

I wonder what will happen once the cat is out of the bag.

Maybe We the People will assume our rightful place in this great nation again.

Maybe.

But not unless we put our thinking caps on and realize what is really happening. Try asking yourself honestly: would corporations spend billions of dollars lobbying if they weren’t getting a financial “kickback” in some form or other? And are these kickbacks free or do they cost you money? 

It’s not that long between now and election time. Will your candidate discuss this with you in town meetings or will he mutter something snide, look around and say “next question”? If he isn’t leveling with you on the economy, fire him. You’re his boss and can’t afford another sluggard on your staff.

Where does your presidential candidate stand? I don’t recall the Fox moderators asking about the power of the corporate lobbies. And yet, business as usual in Washington brought down the world economy and cost millions of American jobs.

It’s time to wake up and make the economy and your job the front-burner issue this time around.

DEMAND:

CONGRESSIONAL CONTROL OF THE MONEY (NO MORE FEDERAL RESERVE)

STRICT CONTROLS ON LOBBYING, ESP CORPORATE LOBBYING

Now recall that the mainstream “conservative” media keep reminding you that the Occupy people are all a bunch of Marxists. So what about Alex Jones and Ron Paul’s followers? They aren’t Marxists and they have attended the Occupy rallies in significant numbers all over the country, teaching independents about the issues, making converts. So have people like Steph Jasky and Karl Denninger, who played a key role in founding the Tea Party, as well as a ton of other top-notch people. All while you stayed home, paralyzed with fear by what you read in the “conservative” press and blogosphere about being tainted by the lefties supposedly in charge. Like that photo of a young anarchist backed up against a police car, pants at half-mast, in an act of defiant defecation. Think anyone follows him? All in all, whatever Marxists may be participating in the rallies out in the cities and towns across the country are clueless non-contenders and will have almost no power in this movement if we play our cards right for a change. As I have said before, the movement is ours for the taking. Why do you think the Republican leaders and their minions in Big Talk Radio are all bad mouthing the movement?

Clue: Many of these people on the street are on to the lobbying games that the corporations – as well as the Fed — are playing, and threaten to spoil things for Big Politics by returning the power to you.

That is the main factor in all the negative press on the right. So why do leftwing politicians high five these young protesters? That’s easy. So far, they’ve been smarter than us. They know they can control the movement and its narrative if they act like they are behind it all. But they’re bluffing.  Yes, ACORN, Soros, Van Jones and other shadowy types with Obama links have in fact dreamed up schemes like this and undoubtedly had a hand in it, just as they no doubt had a hand in the Egyptian riots. But this isn’t Egypt now. It’s our turf, and no one can control it unless we let them. So far, the Left is spinning its wheels as its power slips away. Protesters interviewed on camera, for example, have ripped Obama mercilessly for his failures. The End the Fed movement is all over these rallies and for whatever faults they may have, they are vehemently anti-Obama and pro free market.

So if people like you can start thinking – and acting – outside the box, the whole football can be stripped from the hands of the corporatist elites and, with God’s grace, you can have your country back.

Sure, it will be hard work. And the propaganda aimed at making you think you are in bad company among the protesters will be non-stop. That’s a given.

Some of my Christian brethren are saying that to join the protests would mean being unequally yoked.

But consider this: If a bunch of atheists lobbied to make churches accountable for the actions of pedophile church workers, you wouldn’t side with the pedophiles, would you?

Voting against the pedophiles would not make you an atheist and it would not make you look like one. It would be doing God’s work because pedophiles not only harmd children, they are a stumbling block to the unsaved and give the churches a bad name. Let’s be real: For every candidate you have ever voted for, some unsavory characters also voted for him. So what?

Don’t be afraid to join forces with new people who are starting to get it and are just as mad as you, but maybe don’t have as clear a grasp of the issues. You may be the person who reaches a wishy-washy fence rider.

After all, I can’t think of a single election cycle when people on both sides of the political spectrum have been so mad for the same reasons – irrespective of their ideologies.

What a gorgeous opportunity!

If you let the political elites who stole your country steal the election this time around, don’t blame it on me.

Some statistics to consider:

http://allthingsd.com/20101223/what-tech-companies-are-spending-in-washington/

Verizon spent $3.83 million lobbying on several issues, including taxes and texting while driving, at numerous branches of the federal government, including the White House, Congress, the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Trade Commission. It spent $2.96 million in the same period a year ago.

AT&T spent $3.47 million, up from $3.18 million a year ago. Its agenda items included legislation on calling cards, broadband buildouts and distracted driving.

Hewlett-Packard spent $1.6 million–nearly double the $970,000 it spent in the third quarter of last year–chatting with members of Congress and officials at the Department of Justice and the Commerce Department about taxes, immigration and how government agencies use technology in the areas of health care and law enforcement.

Microsoft spent $1.63 million, an increase from $1.49 million a year ago. It visited Congress, the Pentagon and the Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security to talk about computer security, how the government buys software and the competitive state of online advertising. It also lobbied the Federal Communications Commission on net neutrality.

Oracle spent $1.6 million, up from $1.3 million, lobbying Congress, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security on patent litigation and the government’s technology spending plans.

Google spent $1.2 million in the third quarter (which TechCrunch noted in October following a press release by Consumer Watchdog), an increase from $1.08 million in the same period a year ago.

IBM spent $1 million, up from $850,000 a year ago, talking about transportation, the power grid, funding for research and the military, on visits to Congress and the Departments of Transportation, Defense, and Health and Human Services.

Intel spent $830,000, which is notable because the amount decreased from $1.1 million a year ago. Intel was the target of both a private antitrust lawsuit from rival Advanced Micro Devices and a government antitrust investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, both of which were intensifying in the fall. Both cases have since been settled. Its efforts were in immigration, government research funding and issues related to trademarks and education.

Yahoo spent $540,000, up from $510,000 a year ago.

Apple, easily the most influential company in consumer technology today, spent relatively little on lobbying efforts: Only $340,000 [BUT they had Al Gore on their board of directors. How cozy. 90% of their political donations went to the Democrats. Did you know that Steve Jobs “invented” mostly cosmetic changes in devices? Can you name an inventor who actually devised the really high-tech stuff like the iPod itself or the Apple computer and monitor electronics? Didn’t think so. They didn’t have dinner with Al Gore—Don Hank].

Facebook spent $120,000.

For a little more on what companies spend on lobbying efforts in Washington, it’s always enlightening to peruse the database maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks not only lobbying expenditures but campaign contributions.

As you can see, the CRP shows that, among computer and Internet companies, Microsoft was the leading lobbying spender for the first nine months of the year. The wireless industry’s trade association, the CTIA, led the pack in the telephone equipment and services category, spending more than $6 million. Meanwhile, Verizon and AT&T each spent more than $12 million.

http://www.alternet.org/story/146643/hightower:_washington_overrun_by_11,000_corporate_lobbyists_and_$500_million_in_corrupting_donations

• 11,195. That’s the number of corporate lobbyists who are presently plying their nefarious trade day and night in Washington’s hallways and back rooms.
• $2.95 billion. That’s the amount that corporations spent on lobbyists last year alone (a sum more than six times greater than the total spent by all consumer,environmental, worker, and other non-corporate groups combined).
• $473 million. That’s the sum of money that corporate executives and lobbyists have slipped into Washington’s many political pockets–so far–for the 2010 election cycle, including donations to candidates, leadership PACS, and party committees. We are still seven months from the 2010 elections, and already corporate spending has reached the record-breaking total of $475 million shelled out for the entire 2008 cycle.

Answer: only if you let them

I received an email from a friend, incl several warnings about the Occupy [somewhere] movement, written by well-known conservative authors and exhorting conservatives to shun the Occupy Wall St. [or wherever] movement because it is linked to Obama groups and pals like ACORN and Van Jones and is a false flag movement.

Now I agree that we must be careful whom we stand with, because we may be suggesting to people that we agree with the Left – unless we are perfectly clear where we stand!

Consider this: The Left has been pretending to stand with good people ever since day one, while in fact standing with Satan. Stealth is their middle name.

I believe it may be time to turn the tables on them.

Yesterday, I got an email from a TX friend with an attachment showing a pamphlet on the “Occupy Houston” movement.

His point seemed to be that their literature was not well written and that it wasn’t clear what their goals were, so maybe they are bad guys to be avoided.

Ya know what? To me, that is a perfect opportunity for us to go to work. Because they can’t control the sidewalks and there’s no way they can control me.

If I lived in that part of the country and had a few extra hours, I’d make up a large poster reading “BRING BACK THE FREE MARKET” or “NO MORE SOCIALISM, MR. PRESIDENT,” or “SOLYNDRA, THE FRUITS OF ‘STIMULUS’ ” or the like, and I would unabashedly bring it along to the rally and hold it high. Look, if this is a false flag movement and they are just pretending to be on our side, then who would dare to stop me?

This morning I was listening to NHK News from Japan, and they had an international segment featuring the Occupy Wall St. movement in the US.

Unsurprisingly, the people they interviewed said nothing remotely suggesting they were socialist sympathizers, quite the opposite.

I almost fell off my chair when one lady said:

“When Barrack Obama was elected, we assumed that because he was a black man, he would do all he could to help the poor and underprivileged. He has done none of that.”

Yes, yes, I understand Van Jones and ACORN may have ties to the movement.

So what?

When I was in Lancaster, I attended a Tea Party rally and there were some people there who obviously were trying to infiltrate. I suspect they were from ACORN.

Here is what I don’t get: The LEFT infiltrates us all the time and we can see it happening and take it for granted.

Yet if a conservative wants to do the same back to them, all of a sudden, that “taints” us. Funny thing. The Left isn’t “taintable,” but conservatives are? Are we really that weak minded that getting too close to a lefty will rub off on us?

Well, look, if being around a bunch of lefties taints you — that is, influences you — then you are not well enough grounded in your conservatism and your Christian faith to leave your home.

As for me, I say with Paul: I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto Him against that day.

I mean that with regard to both my Christian faith and my political views. They are intertwined. Jesus’ view on socialism is clearly enunciated in John 6: http://laiglesforum.com/the-religious-left-in-bible-times-part-1/57.htm.

But if you are so timid in your faith and politics, and afraid of being misled by some half-baked Marxists who don’t know even a tenth of what the average conservative knows about history and economics, here is what you need to do:

Don’t ever have anything to do with a leftist. He’ll rub off on you.

Don’t go to town hall meetings and express your views. These meetings are full of lefties. It might rub off.

And don’t take part in surveys, online or off. The other respondents may be leftists. Ooooh, creepy!

Don’t write letters to the editor. The publication in which they are published is probably left of center and you might be thought of as a lefty. What would your conservative friends think of you?

Don’t go to the polls to vote. The polls are full of lefties and might persuade you to pull the wrong lever.

On the other hand, if you know what you believe and why, then go right ahead and attend any meeting or rally you darned well please and let people know how you think. Go ahead and listen to their misguided statements but be prepared to counter them – without fear, without anger, with love. You are dealing with the lost – with the weak, the ignorant. They’re in a much more precarious position than you will ever be. You can be their lighthouse. Why would you want to miss that opporunity? So, assuming you are educated on the issues (don’t try until you are), don’t be afraid to speak your mind and don’t be afraid to hold a poster advertising your view of why America is in a mess. These misguided lefties are the very ones you need to minister to, lovingly, compassionately and in God-given faith and wisdom. The chances are, many, maybe even most, will agree with you by the time you have told them what you think and why.

Consider that one of the main reasons they are in the dark is that conservatives have left them there.

We are the ones who have failed America. It’s time to grow a spine and do our job.

by Don Hank

Sodahead wants us to think of Steve Jobs as an example of American exceptionalism and their readers seem convinced that he was, as their poll shows:

http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/steve-jobs-has-died-was-he-an-icon-for-american-exceptionalism/question-2202383/?link=1969583&uuid=0da4ddf2760946d8971a06b44c9becf1

But in fact, he is one of the best examples of a corporatist. 91% of his donations were to the democrats, as we see here: http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations/Steve_Jobs.php

and he strongly supported gay marriage to stay on the good side of the radical Left. Look, if Steve had come out strongly in support of the traditional definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman back when “gay” marriage became the rage, his business would have come to a screeching halt immediately. I know how this works better than most. My brother in Christ Julio Severo lost his ability to receive donations through PayPal because he supported this now-obsolescent definition that was unquestioned for millennia in every region and every culture of the entire world.

Why would Steve support the Democrats, who clearly hate free market economics and strongly favor Keynesianism? Because no major corporation can succeed on its own any more, and Steve knew that he would not get to first base in business without Democrat support. If he had succeeded without government acquiescence and support, that would be real free market capitalism. But there is no longer a free market. Corporations depend on government to pave the way to riches for them. Those who don’t go the way of Gibson Guitar Corporation.

One hand washes the other. Corrupt government supports corrupt business.

There is nothing exceptional about Steve Jobs. He was just another rich oligarch who knew how to stay on the good side of the corrupt power base.

Please take the Sodahead poll and leave a comment as you are led to.