How many children have to die in gang related shootings before people get their fill of the violence?

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc...

Silence the idiot box

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
September 27, 2009

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6...

YOU'RE A PRUDENT PARENT, and you protect your children from behavior that is needlessly risky or harmful. You don't let them ride a bicycle without first putting on a helmet. You wait with them for the school bus, or drive them to school yourself. You wouldn't dream of letting them drink alcohol, and if you caught them with cigarettes, you'd go through the roof.

So why do you let them watch so much TV?

For turning brains into mush, you can't do better than television. The "vast wasteland" Newton Minow deplored in 1961 is infinitely vaster now -- a largely unrelieved wilderness of mindless, stupefying entertainment, where dysfunction vies for predominance with vulgarity, and where the insatiable hunger for ratings eventually overpowers every consideration of taste, morality, and intellect.

TV isn't called the idiot box for nothing. Even at its best it replaces engaged and active thought with passive and sedentary spectating, while at its worst it destroys children's innocence, inuring them to violence, mockery, and crude sexualization. Television is by definition a visual medium; it appeals not to the brain but to the eye. You don't have to study hypnosis to understand how easily the eye can be exploited to undermine alertness, focus, and good judgment. Just look at the dazed and vacant expression on the face of a youngster watching TV. Most parents would be calling 911 if their child drank something that caused such a reaction. Why doesn't the zoned-out oblivion induced by TV cause parents to panic? Is it because they're hooked on it too?

"Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor," reported Scientific American a few years back, and the identity of the world's foremost TV junkies is no mystery. It's us. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, American households in 2007 watched an average of 8.2 hours of television per day, roughly twice as much as viewers anywhere else. And we are awash in television outside the home as well: in gyms, bars, and airport terminals, of course, but increasingly even in public elevators, taxicabs, and gas stations. Many airlines now provide live satellite TV on individual seatback television screens.

It's bad enough that American adults watch so much TV. That so many kids wallow in it veers on child abuse. Some parents speak confidently of "educational" television, an oxymoron on the order of "diet ice cream" and "congressional wisdom." Children don't become educated from watching TV, and the more TV they watch, the less educated they usually end up.

Countless studies have documented the inverse link between devotion to the boob tube and achievement in school. Researchers at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons concluded in 2007, for example, that 14-year-olds who watched one or more hours of television daily "were at elevated risk for poor homework completion, negative attitudes toward school, poor grades, and long-term academic failure." Those who watched three or more hours a day were at even greater risk for "subsequent attention and learning difficulties," and were the least likely to go to college.

In 2005, a study published in the American Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that the harm caused by TV watching shows up even after correcting the data to account for students' intelligence, family conditions, and prior behavioral problems. The bottom line: "Increased time spent watching television during childhood and adolescence was associated with a lower level of educational attainment by early adulthood."

The baleful effects of TV aren't limited to education. The University of Michigan Health System notes at its extensive website that kids who watch TV are more likely to smoke, to be overweight, to suffer from sleep difficulties, to have high cholesterol. If television came in a bottle, it would be illegal to sell it to children. Yet on any given day, 81 percent of 8- to 18-year-olds watch TV, and they watch it, on average, for more than three hours. Even the very youngest Americans are steeped in TV. According to their parents, 43 percent of children younger than 2 -- babies and toddlers! -- watch television every day. More than 1 in 4 have a TV set in their bedroom.

Tell the truth: Would more TV-watching have made your life better? It won't improve your kids' lives either. So why don't you do them a favor? Turn the idiot box off.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

Related Topics:  Education, Media

He's lived in France all these years and now arrested by the Swiss police on the rape charge.  Isn't there a statute of limitations?  France is distressed.  Will our president involve himself in THIS dispute?  It's international, can't have France mad at us now can we?

http://www.usatoday.com/new...

Personally I think it's a waste of money since he did a plea bargain, did 45 days and paid the girls family off in a suit.

It wasn't nearly enough time but it was 32 years ago.  Ah well, he's still a creep

I just read this article by Ralph Bailey and imagine some of you have read it too.  If not, you should.

http://www.bakersfield.com/...

This just so much goes along with what some of us have been saying..there are rules for us and then there are rules for them.  The sad thing is, our men are paying the price for such lopsided thinking.

 
THE COUNTRY of TEXOARKLA 
 
      
      In case things get a little tougher during the next few months, we In LOUISIANA, TEXAS , OKLAHOMA   & ARKANSAS have a plan. 
      
      Maybe you don't know it, but LOUISIANA , TEXAS , OKLAHOMA , & ARKANSAS have a legal right to secede from the Union . (Reference the Texas/Louisiana-American Annexation Treaty of 1848.) 
      
      Us TEXOARKLANS love y'all Americans, but we'll probably have to take action since Barack Obama won the election and is now the President of the U.S.A.  We'll miss ya'll though. 
    
  
      Here is what can happen: 
      
      1. Barack Hussein Obama, after becoming the President of the United States , begins to try and create a socialist country, then TEXAS , LOUISIANA , ARKANSAS  and OKLAHOMA announces that they are going to secede from the Union .. 
      
      2. George W. Bush becomes the President of the Republic of TEXOARKLA . You might think that he doesn't talk too pretty, but we haven't had another terrorist attack and the economy was fine until the effects of Barney Frank and the Democrats lowering the qualifications for home loans came home to roost.. 
      
      So what does TEXOARKLA hav 
e to do to survive as a Republic? 
      
      1. NASA is just south of Houston , Texas .  We will control the space industry. 
      
  
    2. We refine over 90% of the gasoline in the United States .. 
      
      3. Defense Industry--we have over 65% of it. The term "Don't mess with TEXAS ," will take on a whole new meaning. 
      
      4. Oil - we can supply all the oil that the Republic of TEXOARKLA will need for the next 300 years. What will the other states do? Gee, we don't know.  Why not ask Obama? 
      
      5. Natural Gas - again, we have all we need and it's too bad about those Northern States. John Kerry and AlGore will just have to figure out a way to keep them warm... 
      
      6. Computer Industry - we lead the nation in producing computer chips and communications equipment - small companies like Texas Instruments, Dell Computer, EDS, Raytheon, National Semiconductor, Motorola, 
Intel, AMD,  Nortel, Alcatel, etc..20 The list goes on and on. 
      
      7. Medical Care - We have the research centers for cancer research, the best burn centers and the top trauma units in the world, as well as other large health centers. 
      
      8. We=2 
0have enough colleges to keep educating and making smarter citizens:   University of Texas , Texas A&M, Texas Tech, University of Oklahoma , Oklahoma State University, UL-Lafayette, UL-Monroe, LSU, Louisiana Tech University, University of Arkansas, Arkansas State University , Baylor, Rice, TCU, SMU and MANY more. 
      
      9. We have an intelligent and energetic work force and it isn't restricted by a bunch of unions. Here in TEXOARKLA, we are a Right-to-Work State 
 and, therefore, it's every man and woman for themselves.. We just go out and get the job done.. And if we don't like the way one company operates, we get a job somewhere else. 
      
      10. We have essential control of the paper, plastics, and insurance industries, etc. 
      
      11. In case of a foreign invasion, we have the TEXOARKLA National Guard, the TEXOARKLA Air National Guard, and several military bases. We don't have an Army, but since everybody down here has at least six guns and a pile of ammo, we can raise an Army in 24 hours if we need one. If th e situation really gets bad, we can always call the Department of Public Safety and ask them to send over the Texas Rangers. 
      
      12. We are totally self-sufficient in beef, poultry, hogs, and several types of grain, fruit and vegetables and let's not forget se 
afood from the Gulf. 
  Also, everybody down here knows how to cook them so that they taste good.  We don't need any food from somewhere else. 
      
      13. FIVE of the ten largest cities in the United States   and THIRTY TWO of the 100 largest cities in the United States are located in TEXOARKLA.  And TEXOARKLA also has more land than California , New York , New Jersey , Connecticut , Delaware , Hawaii , Massachusetts ,  Maryland , Rhode Island   and Vermont combined. 
      
      14. Trade:  FIVE of the ten largest ports in the United States are located in TEXOARKLA. 
      
      15. We also manufacture cars down here, but we don't need to. You see, nothing rusts in TEXOARKLA so our vehicles 
stay beautiful and run well for decades. 
      
      This just names a few of the items that will keep the Republic of TEXOARKLA in good shape. There isn't a thing out there that we need and don't have. 
      
      Now to the rest of you folks in the United States under President Obama: 
      
      Since you won't have the refineries to get gas for your cars, only President Obama will be able to drive around in his big 9 mpg SUV.  The rest of the United States will have to walk or ride bikes. 
0     
      You won't have any TV as the Space Center in Houston will cut off satellite communications. 
      
      You won't have any natural gas to heat your homes, but since AlGore has predicted global warming, you will not need the gas as long 
 as you survive the 2000 years it will take to get enough heat from Global Warming. 
      
      In other words, the rest of ya'll in the USA can enjoy change! 
 
      
      Signed, The People of TEXOARKLA 
 
      P.S. This is not a threatening letter - just a note to give you something to think about! 
      
      Sleep well tonight 'cause the eyes of TEXOARKLA are on YOU!! 
  
 
 

Here are some crazy recalls and a link to a site about federal regs on selling recalls at a yard sale.  The inner fed link was broken for me but maybe it will work for you.

http://www.foxnews.com/slid...

A Little good news.

http://www.tehachapinews.co...

One of the bloggers mentioned that his daughters are taking him to the Crystal Palace for his birthday and it reminded me of what my sister just told me

She and her hubby ust celebrated their 50th wedding anniversay and the kids had no clue what to get them   They finally settled on a fistful of gift cards a a whole bunch of different restaurants.  I thought that was the coolest thing.  She said they had been going all over the place trying them all out...she was tickled.  They live north of Nashville so they have lots of places to try.

Anyone else get any kind of unusual gift?

Gentle Thoughts for Today--


Birds of a feather flock together and poop on your car.   

Bin Laden Calls Obama 'Powerless' in New Tape

Sunday, September 13, 2009
 

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 AP

Usama bin Laden

WASHINGTON —  In a tape released Sunday by Al Qaeda's media wing, terrorist leader Usama bin Laden said President Barack Obama is "powerless" to stop the war in Afghanistan.

SITE Intelligence Group, a terrorist-monitoring firm that translated the address, said bin Laden, whose Al Qaeda organization was behind the Sept. 11 attacks, blamed the war on the "pro-Israel lobby" and corporate interests.

IntelCenter, another company that monitors terrorist propaganda, said the 11-minute video shows a still picture of bin Laden while audio of the address plays.

Bin Laden's address to the American people comes two days after the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. He typically addresses the United States in a message around the Sept. 11 anniversary.

The purpose of his address Sunday, bin Laden said in the SITE translation, is "to remind you of the causes" of Sept. 11, chiefly "your support to your Israeli allies who occupy our land of Palestine."

Bin Laden argued against the claims that the war is necessary for U.S. security, saying current White House officials are merely following the strategy of former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney to "promote the previous policies of fear to market the interests of big companies."

When Obama became president and retained many of the Bush administration's military leaders, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, "reasonable people knew that Obama is a powerless man who will not be able to end the war as he promised," bin Laden said.

"If you end the war, so to it," bin Laden said. "But if it is otherwise, all we will do is continue the war of attrition against you on all possible axes."

• See Next Story in World

overdose," a law enforcement source told the Chicago Sun-Times.   

Christopher Kelly, 51, was Blagojevich's former chief fundraiser, and was described by the newspaper as "go-to" guy in the ex-governor's administration.  

His family found him early Saturday morning and was pronounced dead several hours later at Cook County's Stroger hospital, where he had arrived by ambulance, said spokesman Marcel Bright.  

An autopsy was to be performed.

On Tuesday, Kelly admitted he paid $450,000 in kickbacks to an unnamed consultant who allegedly inflated cost estimates for repairs to hangars operated by American Airlines and United Air Lines at O'Hare International Airport. He was sentenced to nearly 5 years in prison.

He admitted that bids on the projects were rigged to make certain that his BCI Commercial Roofing Inc. would land the contracts. In all, the contracts paid Kelly $8.5 million. His profit was $2.5 million, according to the plea agreement.

Kelly was expected to report to federal prision Sept. 18, according to MyFOXChicago. 

Days after his guilty plea, he said he was being pressured by the federal prosecutors to cooperate in their Blagojevich corruption investigation, the Sun-Times reported. 

Kelly was indicted on three separate federal cases, including the one that alleges Blagojevich sought to sell or trade President Obama's former seat in the U.S. Senate.

Kelly had pleaded not guilty in that case to charges that he plotted with Blagojevich even before his 2002 election to use the muscle of the governor's office as a moneymaking machine to squeeze payments out of those seeking state business.

Blagojevich was in New York when he learned of Kelly's death.

"I am deeply saddened to hear that Chris has died. My heart goes out to his wife Carmen, his three daughters Grace, Jacqueline and Claire and his entire family. They are in our prayers," Blagojevich said in a statement.

Click here to read more on this story from the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

http://www.foxnews.com/poli...

How strange...aspirin?

What 'right' to health care?

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
September 13, 2009

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6...

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DURING SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY'S FUNERAL in Boston's Mission Church last month, his 12-year-old grandson offered an intercessory prayer:

"For what my grandpa called the cause of his life," Max Allen said, "that every American will have decent quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege, we pray to the Lord."

Opinions differed on whether a funeral was the right place to importune the Almighty for universal health care. But that He is the source of fundamental rights is in fact a core American belief. The Declaration of Independence pronounces it a self-evident truth that human beings "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" – rights that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Health care isn't on that list. Should it be?

A great deal depends on the answer, for the Declaration's very next sentence affirms that the purpose of government is to "secure" those rights against infringement. If access to health care is deemed a fundamental right, then the government must be obliged to guarantee that access to every citizen. Medical treatment would have to be available on an equal basis to anyone seeking it, regardless of age or physical condition or ability to pay. Washington could no more entrust the provision of health care to private markets than it does freedom of religion: Your religious liberty, after all, is not a commodity you must purchase – it is yours by right, no matter where you live or how much you are worth. Should the same be true of health care?

Ted Kennedy was hardly alone in saying so.

When Barack Obama was asked during one of the 2008 presidential debates whether health care is a right, a privilege, or a responsibility, he answered promptly: "I think it should be a right for every American." The 2008 Democratic National Platform avows in its opening paragraph that "affordable health care is a basic right." When the Harvard Community Health Plan commissioned a survey on the subject some years back, 90 percent of respondents said that everyone had the right to "the best possible health care -- as good as a millionaire."

It is not hard to understand the urgent passion with which so many people approach the issue of health care. And it would take a remarkably cold heart to be indifferent to the desperation of those who need medical help but cannot afford it. But rights do not spring from passion or need. Wanting something does not entitle you to it -- not if someone else must provide or produce that something. The rights delineated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are negative rights only -- they protect our autonomy, allowing us to peacefully live life and pursue happiness, neither coercing others nor being coerced by them.

Not in a free society, it isn't.

It may sound noble to declare that health care is a fundamental human right and not a mere commodity to be left to the vagaries of the market. Of course, the same thing could be said about food or clothing -- also essential to human welfare -- yet not even Ted Kennedy would have suggested that Washington nationalize US food production or overhaul the clothing industry. It is precisely because food and clothing are seen as commodities, because we do leave their availability to the market, that they can be had in such abundance and diversity.

To be sure, some people will always need help. No decent person or society ignores the cries of the sick or hungry or poor. Happily, there is no better system for achieving the widest possible access to health care -- or any other good or service -- than the one that requires the least degree of political interference: the normal interplay of supply, demand, and competition. Health care is too important to be left to the marketplace? No, it is too important not to be.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

Related Topics:  Health, Health Care, and Medical Insurance, Liberty and Government Power

What 'right' to health care?

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
September 13, 2009

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6...

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DURING SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY'S FUNERAL in Boston's Mission Church last month, his 12-year-old grandson offered an intercessory prayer:

"For what my grandpa called the cause of his life," Max Allen said, "that every American will have decent quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege, we pray to the Lord."

Opinions differed on whether a funeral was the right place to importune the Almighty for universal health care. But that He is the source of fundamental rights is in fact a core American belief. The Declaration of Independence pronounces it a self-evident truth that human beings "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" – rights that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Health care isn't on that list. Should it be?

A great deal depends on the answer, for the Declaration's very next sentence affirms that the purpose of government is to "secure" those rights against infringement. If access to health care is deemed a fundamental right, then the government must be obliged to guarantee that access to every citizen. Medical treatment would have to be available on an equal basis to anyone seeking it, regardless of age or physical condition or ability to pay. Washington could no more entrust the provision of health care to private markets than it does freedom of religion: Your religious liberty, after all, is not a commodity you must purchase – it is yours by right, no matter where you live or how much you are worth. Should the same be true of health care?

Ted Kennedy was hardly alone in saying so.

When Barack Obama was asked during one of the 2008 presidential debates whether health care is a right, a privilege, or a responsibility, he answered promptly: "I think it should be a right for every American." The 2008 Democratic National Platform avows in its opening paragraph that "affordable health care is a basic right." When the Harvard Community Health Plan commissioned a survey on the subject some years back, 90 percent of respondents said that everyone had the right to "the best possible health care -- as good as a millionaire."

It is not hard to understand the urgent passion with which so many people approach the issue of health care. And it would take a remarkably cold heart to be indifferent to the desperation of those who need medical help but cannot afford it. But rights do not spring from passion or need. Wanting something does not entitle you to it -- not if someone else must provide or produce that something. The rights delineated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are negative rights only -- they protect our autonomy, allowing us to peacefully live life and pursue happiness, neither coercing others nor being coerced by them.

Not in a free society, it isn't.

It may sound noble to declare that health care is a fundamental human right and not a mere commodity to be left to the vagaries of the market. Of course, the same thing could be said about food or clothing -- also essential to human welfare -- yet not even Ted Kennedy would have suggested that Washington nationalize US food production or overhaul the clothing industry. It is precisely because food and clothing are seen as commodities, because we do leave their availability to the market, that they can be had in such abundance and diversity.

To be sure, some people will always need help. No decent person or society ignores the cries of the sick or hungry or poor. Happily, there is no better system for achieving the widest possible access to health care -- or any other good or service -- than the one that requires the least degree of political interference: the normal interplay of supply, demand, and competition. Health care is too important to be left to the marketplace? No, it is too important not to be.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

Related Topics:  Health, Health Care, and Medical Insurance, Liberty and Government Power

 
[Note: The worst terrorist atrocities in US history were committed on this date in 2001. The column below appeared two days later.]

Our enemies meant what they said

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
September 13, 2001

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6...

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NOW THAT IT HAS HAPPENED TO US, the White House is not calling for "restraint." The State Department is not concerned about "escalating the cycle of violence." There are no editorials imploring the parties to conduct a "peace process" and "sit down at the negotiating table."

Now that it has happened to us, the TV anchors are calling them terrorists, not "militants" or "activists." Washington is not being warned to avoid a "provocative" response, or cautioned against retaliation that is "excessive and disproportionate."

Now that it has happened to us, our eyes have finally opened. Now at last we understand that there is a war underway -- and we are in it. For years we have acted as if the front line were elsewhere, and as if our job was to watch from the sidelines and make sure our friends didn't defend themselves too aggressively. Now, after the worst massacre in US history, only the willfully blind can fail to see that the front line is here. The war between freedom and slavery, between hope and hopelessness, between the decent and the indecent, will be won or lost in America. For it is America that stands for everything our enemies hate.

But let us be honest. Those enemies have not been shy about declaring their enmity. Time and again they have announced that they despise us; time and again they have called for our destruction.

They have announced it from the mosques of Gaza, as broadcast live by the Palestinian Authority: "Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them -- and those who stand by them. They are all in one trench, against the Arabs and the Muslims."

They have proclaimed it a religious duty, as in the fatwa of Osama bin Laden, publicized worldwide in February 1998: "To kill the Americans and their allies, civilians, and military is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it."

They have made it a national crusade, as when Hashemi Rafsanjani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, exhorted Islamic militants in 1994 to "hijack planes," "blow up factories in Western countries," and "declare open war on American interests throughout the world."

How often have we seen them burning American flags? How often have we been demonized as "the Great Satan?" How often have they attacked US citizens, US embassies, US assets? For at least a decade it has been apparent that the most intense hatred of the United States and its values could be found in the world of Islamist fundamentalism. But too many Americans -- and too many of their leaders -- preferred not to notice.

"The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of ... the Lebanese suicide bombers, who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson in [Beirut]" exulted Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Yasser Arafat's newspaper, on Tuesday. "These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history.... They are the most honorable among us." Over and over and over, our enemies have talked this way. Did we think they didn't mean it?

Upon releasing its annual report on global terrorism last year, the State Department observed that "the primary terrorist threats to the United States emanate from two regions, South Asia and the Middle East." That is, from the regions where Islamist fanaticism is concentrated. But the US government, it would seem, couldn't be bothered to listen to its own warning.

Or to the warnings of the enemy. In some ways, the worst thing about this week's slaughter is not that it occurred, not even that such obvious terrorist targets as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- the Pentagon! -- could be so easily attacked from the air. The worst thing is that we were so unprepared for it even after the attack on USS Cole last fall (17 murdered). Even after the bombing of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (224 murdered). Even after the blowing up of the Khobar Towers barracks in 1996 (19 murdered). Even after the car bomb at the US military center in Riyadh (5 murdered). Even after the first World Trade Center bombing (6 murdered).

There were those who saw what lay ahead and tried to sound the alarm. In an interview with Daniel Pipes's Middle East Quarterly in 1997, Steven Emerson, the nation's leading expert on Islamist terror, was explicit: "If anything, the threat is greater now than before.... The infrastructure now exists to carry off 20 simultaneous World Trade Center-type bombings across the United States."

As recently as this May, Pipes and Emerson wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terror network, was "planning new attacks on the US," and that Iranian officials "helped arrange advanced weapons and explosives training for Al-Qaeda personnel in Lebanon where they learned, for example, how to destroy large buildings."

War always seems to find Americans unprepared. We didn't see Pearl Harbor coming, or the sinking of the Lusitania, or Stalin's Iron Curtain, or Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. But we fought and won the world wars, the Cold War, the Gulf War. Now we must fight and win again.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

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Related Topics:  Islam and Islamism, Terrorism

Latest Featured Articles from the Pundicity Network

Darn  that Fox News with it's stories anyway.  They're at it again.....picking on acorn.

http://www.foxnews.com/stor...

http://www.foxnews.com/poli...

edit..I forgot to put the header on giving credit for the above.

Excerpt.....

But the antiwar liberals who adored Obama the candidate when he vowed to pull the plug on the war in Iraq are not nearly as enamored of Obama the president when he calls for enlarging the war in Afghanistan.

Last month, speaking once again to a VFW convention, Obama reiterated his commitment to a withdrawal from Iraq. The troops will be out by the end of 2011, he said, "and for America, the Iraq war will end." But he made clear that the war in Afghanistan, where American troops have been dying in record numbers, will go on.

"This is a war of necessity," the president insisted -- "not only a war worth fighting," but one "fundamental to the defense of our people." He warned that "those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again," and that "if left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans." Earlier this year Obama ordered 21,000 additional US personnel to Afghanistan. By year's end, troop levels there will be at 68,000 -- the most ever -- and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the theater commander, is widely thought to be on the point of asking for more.

But doubling down on the war -- in effect, committing himself to an Iraq-like "surge" -- will drive a wedge between Obama and the antiwar left that once acclaimed him.

More here... http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6...

This is the building I was saying nooooooooooooooooooooo to the other day.  Hart Park won't be the same with steel and chrome bathrooms and no adobe around.    Bah humbug.  Any voices out there to stop the rape of historical buildings?

http://www.bakersfield.com/...

There are quite a few teachers on the blog.  What are your thoughts on this issue?

http://www.bakersfield.com/...

Not televised this time.

On soaking the rich

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
September 2, 2009

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6...

IN APRIL, the British government decided to recoup revenues lost in the current recession by raising the country's top income tax rate from 40 percent to 50 percent. That decision turned out to be a body blow to England's Premier League, the professional soccer association that includes such storied teams as Manchester United and Arsenal.

As Jonathan V. Last recounts in The Weekly Standard, the hike in the tax rate has led top soccer stars to decline lucrative offers to join or remain with England's most celebrated teams. Christiano Ronaldo, Jermaine Pennant, Karim Benzema, and David Villa are among the illustrious players who have spurned the Premier League in order to play in Spain. Why Spain? Because under Spanish tax law, they qualify as "foreign executives," a status that caps their income tax rate at just 24 percent. The tax differential "has become an almost insurmountable advantage for Spanish soccer teams," Last writes, which is why Britain's domination of European soccer is coming to an end.

High taxes can have unwelcome, and unintended, consequences.

Governments delude themselves when they imagine they can easily raise all the money they want by soaking the rich. The rich always have other options. When taxes grow too onerous, high earners can adjust their economic behavior. Some move to Spain to play soccer for La Liga. Others, less glamorously, cut back on their investments, forgo new business opportunities, seek out tax havens, or work fewer hours. The impact is felt not only in lower-than-expected tax revenues, but in lower rates of growth, productivity, and -- since jobs are disproportionately created by those who have money -- job-creation. "You can't have employment and despise employers," Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas used to say. "No goose, no golden eggs."

But that isn't the prevailing attitude today in Washington, where the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are playing soak-the-rich with a vengeance.

President Obama, who said last year that he would use the presidency to "spread the wealth around," is seeking to raise the top marginal income tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, and to collect even more tax revenue by limiting the deductions high earners can take for mortgage interest and charitable contributions. The Democratic health-care bill taking shape on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, calls for even steeper taxes on the well-to-do. To help finance their trillion-dollar health-insurance overhaul, House Democrats are proposing an income surtax on US households earning more than $350,000 a year – a surtax that would boost the top federal rate to 45 percent, higher than it has been in more than 20 years.

The administration justifies such drastic tax increases with class-war rhetoric that is startling in its severity.

"While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not," charges Obama's 2010 budget. "Too many cut corners as they racked up record profits and paid themselves millions of dollars in compensation and bonuses. There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few." Accordingly it vows "to restore a basic sense of fairness to the tax code" and to ensure "that the wealthiest pay more."

The belief that the tax code is skewed to benefit the rich is one that many Americans share. When pollsters ask whether high-income people are paying too much, too little, or their fair share in federal taxes, 60 percent or more of respondents routinely answer: too little.

But the data tell a different story.

By any reasonable standard the rich pay far more than their fair share. According to the latest (2007) IRS data, the top 1 percent of US taxpayers earn 22.8 percent of adjusted gross income but pay 40.4 percent of all federal income taxes. By contrast, the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers, who earn 62.5 percent of the income, pay just 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. That bears repeating: The income tax burden of the top 1 percent, who comprise just 1.4 million taxpayers, now exceeds that of the bottom 134 million combined.

While envy and economic resentment make a potent political brew, the hangover it leaves can be fierce. Democrats should resist the clamor to soak the rich. Better instead to remember Paul Tsongas's admonition: "No goose, no golden eggs."

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe. To follow him on Twitter, click here.)

Related Topics:  Barack Obama, Taxes

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I'll try to do better in the future but will continue to voice my opinion about the topic.

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