Only a Liberal…

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), whose Obama-appointed Secretary is Janet Napolitano, released a report titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Environment Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” This report has pissed a lot of people off, and rightly so, due to the fact that it identifies people as right-wing, potentially dangerous extremists if they support state and local authority over federal or oppose abortion or immigration. That’s right… if you oppose abortion, you’re a right-wing extremist that the Department of Homeland Security needs to keep its eye on. Here is the exact wording…

“…those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.  It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

The basic gist is that because the economy is in the crapper, and because a half-black man has been elected President, perhaps, maybe right-wingers could possibly at some point become angry enough to become terrorists. Mind you, DHS has “no specific information” to think this, just a… hunch. We’ll call it “liberal intuition.”

“The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.”

So non-violent right-wing groups are recruiting more people, and Napolitano sees this as dangerous. This is a right afforded to all American citizens in the first Amendment (right to Assembly).This is the same Janet Napolitano, who refuses to use the word terrorism when addressing Congress. Napolitano’s explanation of that?

“In my speech, although I did not use the word “terrorism,” I referred to “man-caused” disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.” (americaswatchtower.com)

No Janet, it is not “nuance”… it is nonsense. She is putting terrorist attacks in the same category as tornados, floods, and oil spills.

So to clarify how insanse this is, Janet Napolitano says calling a terrorist a terrorist is just the “politics of fear” so we should avoid it at all costs, but identifying pro-lifers as potentially violent is necessary for national security. We don’t want to scare Americans by referring to 9/11 as a “terrorist” attack, but we must warn Americans of the potential threat of federalists.

A CNN story actually highlighted the report on right-wing extremism and put a picture of skinheads with Nazi flags in the article. The “contributor” for the vicious article is Jeanne Meserve, whom you can email here. This is illustrative of the celebrated ignorance of the left. They consider Nazis to be “right-wing.” I did a search for the argument that Hitler was a “right-winger.” Here’s one argument…

“Hitler’s other political beliefs place him almost always on the far right. He advocated racism over racial tolerance, eugenics over freedom of reproduction, merit over equality, competition over cooperation, power politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy, capitalism over Marxism, realism over idealism, nationalism over internationalism, exclusiveness over inclusiveness, common sense over theory or science, pragmatism over principle, and even held friendly relations with the Church, even though he was an atheist.” (huppi.com)

1. Racism over racial tolerance - Author assumes with zero evidence that right-wing = racist. Simply wanting all right-wingers to be racist does not make it so. On this, Hitler was NEUTRAL.
2. Eugenics over freedom of reproduction - The left supports abortion, which is certainly closer to eugenics than being pro-life. In fact the founder of Planned Parenthood, which assists women in abortion and birth control, believed in Eugenics. (read here) LEFT
3. Merit over equality - Conservatives do believe merit should be rewarded, where many liberals believe everyone should receive an equal outcome. RIGHT
4. Competition over Cooperation - The two are not mutually exclusive. Right-wing capitalists who strongly believe in competition constantly cooperate with other. NEUTRAL
5. Power politics and militarism over pacifism - I suppose the left is more pacifist than the right. RIGHT
6. Dictatorship over democracy - This is ludicrous nonsense. Right-wingers don’t support dictatorship. In fact the only Americans I ever see supporting dictators are left-wing liberals. Who likes Castro? Left-wingers. Who likes Hugo Chavez? Left-wingers, namely Sean Penn. To be fair though, many left-wingers support democracy, so we’ll call this a draw. NEUTRAL
7. Capitalism over Marxism - Yup, right-wing. On this, I agree with Adolf. Stopped clock is right twice a day. RIGHT
8. Realism over idealism - Yup, right-wingers lean more towards what DOES happen than what COULD happen. RIGHT
9. Nationalism over internationalism - Yup. RIGHT
10. Exclusiveness over inclusiveness - This doesn’t even make sense. What do right-wingers exclude people from? The Congressional black caucus is dominantly left-wing, and it is the most exclusive group I can think of. LEFT
11. Common sense over theory and science - Yet again, these are not mutually exclusive, and this is based upon zero evidence. NEUTRAL
12. Pragmatism over principal - Excuse me? Is he implying that right-wingers ignore principals? Religious people choose pragmatism over principals? NEUTRAL
13. Atheist - The author wants us to believe that being atheist makes someone a right-winger. Being religious makes someone a right-winger. Can you say flawed logic? LEFT

I would point out that Hitler was a huge environmentalist, but I digress. So the author points out 13 characteristics that “obviously” prove that Hitler was a right-winger. I found through a fairly simple analysis that 5 of the items were arguably right-wing, 3 of the items were arguably left-wing, and the other 5 were neutral. I guess that means he leans to the right, but lets analyze the 5 things he was right-wing on.

Merit over equality
Militarism over pacifism
Capitalism over Marxism
Realism over idealism
Nationalism over internationalism

The most successful countries in the world, not only by wealth, but also low level of poverty, are capitalist. So the fact that Hitler believed in Capitalism is about as relevant as the fact that he believed in breathing oxygen. Many left wingers also believe in capitalism, so I believe this becomes more neutral. This also cover the “Merit over equality” part, so I have established Hitler as neither right- or left-wing. I won’t analyze the others at the time.
Now if you’re liberal friend at work points out that the DHS also released a report on left-wing extremists, they are being disingenous. As Fox News reports, that report is titled “Left-wing Extremists Likely to Increase Use of Cyberattacks Over the Coming Decade. It concentrates largely on the technical savvy of left-wing extremists and not bloodshed.”

Janet Napolitano has issued a government report identifying individuals who have certain beliefs as potential threats to the United States. It is the epitome of un-American totalitarianism, and is probably illegal. If that ain’t profiling, I don’t know what is. She should be fired immediately, if not prosecuted for civil rights violations.

I can’t stand it when people get “excited” about a political candidate, whether it be for congress or President. Forget Republicans, forget Democrats; they’re almost universally unqualified to do the job and lie on a daily basis. To become the VP or CEO of a major company, you have to have tons and tons of experience and success, yet we elect government officials like we elect our 8th grade student-body president.
With Bill Richardson being added to the list of Obama associates being investigated or indicted, Americans of all political persuasions need to be reminded. With the evolving world wide web news cycle, scrutiny of political candidates just gets better and better (or worse and worse depending how you look at it). As a result, no normal human being will ever run for high political office. The genius businessmen that have learned for decades how to run a company and manage profit margin and be accountable for their success or failure will never be the guy balancing the federal budget. He will never run for office, because whichever party is running a candidate against him will spend millions of dollars to destroy him and his family.

Lets walk through this step by step. Almost by definition, any large political contribution given by a company is a payoff. Think about it… how could Exxon justify sending $500,000 to fund someone’s political campaign unless it resulted in more than $500,000 back into their pocket at a later date? Large companies engage in philanthropy all the time, donating large sums of money in return for positive public opinion, but they donate it to children’s hospitals, not politicians. There are rich people that do it for ideological reasons… David Geffen loves Barack Obama and has a shitpot full of money from his career in Hollywood, so he can afford to give it away without worrying about quid pro quo. Corporations do not have this luxury. They have to answer to a board of directors and shareholders. You can’t just send a couple hundred grand off to a politician without it paying dividends soon after. Therefore, any political contribution from a company is by definition a payoff.
If you think that’s cynical, you’re living in a dream world. You die-hard McCain and die-hard Obama supporters are nuts. Elections are always and probably always will be a determination between the lesser of two evils.

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Even in the internet age, the Associated Press has a 36+ day delay on news.

The Associated Press has discovered that Barack Obama has somewhat questionable associations with bad people.

WHAT?!?!?! SAY IT AINT SO!!!

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How is it that the Associated Press just found out about Barack Obama’s “questionable” associations? Surely I wasn’t hallucinating when Sean Hannity was screaming about them for months. Or the other hundreds of bloggers and pundits and anchors who occasionally recognized one association after another, but never linked any of them together as perhaps relevant connections when considering whom to elect President of the United States.

This Barry Bunch has only recently added a new family member, corrupt Governor Rod Blagojevich, but the other have been there all along. Tony Rezko helped Obama buy his current home in Chicago and helped him fundraise before being convicted. Bill Ayers helped Obama get his political career started and hired him, after his terrorist organization bombed the Pentagon. Jeremiah Wright married Barack and his wife and baptized his children, before, during, and after yelling racist, anti-American nonsense at the church Obama chose. Then there’s Michael Pfleger, Rashid Khalidi, Emil Jones, and perhaps the worst of all, the “semi-admitted”* pedophile, childhood mentor of Obama, Frank Marshall Davis (click here to learn about Davis in a report I wrote on Obama connections).

Each of these associations alone could be explained, but not all of them combined. America has no idea what they did on November 4.

* It was pointed out to me that Davis’s writing were “semi-autobiographical” as opposed to autobiographical. So the technical term will be “semi-admitted pedophile” or perhaps “semi-pedophile.”

From sayanythingblog.com…
“According to STATSIndiana, in 2007, Indianapolis/Marion County had an estimated population of 876,804. Of that number 232,607 were below 18 years of age, for a total of 644,197 people in Marion County/Indianapolis 18 or over and thus eligible to vote. (Indiana allows felons to vote as long as they are not incarcerated).

So we have 644,197 people eligible to be registered in Marion County/Indianapolis, and 677,401 people registered. Congratulations go to Indianapolis for having 105% of its residents registered!”

Im sure Obama’s former employer ACORN has nothing to do with this. Search for Obama ACORN, youll see they are connected, and just know that ACORN is famous for registering people named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, and Jive Turkey. Who knows… maybe they registered you in Atlanta, or Chicago. Power to the people!

Both sides in the Presidential race have resorted to the liberal tactic of class warfare. Blame Wall Street for its corruption and greed, because blaming fellow senators unavoidably reflects badly on all senators.

The problem with all this class envy/warfare nonsense is that money and wealth are great things. Liberals would have you believe money is something rich people collect from poor people so they can roll around in it, making “dough” angels, and occasionally buying yachts. The reality is money is what pays for electricity, water, healthcare, and allows employers to employ employees. The more rich people there are, the more jobs there will be. The fact that the potential of making money may have greed as a byproduct does not mean we should be taking the high compensation of CEOs.

GREED HAS EXISTED SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME, AND WILL ALWAYS EXIST!

Complaining about greed on Wall Street is like building a house with no roof and then complaining when it rains. You have to build the roof, and you have to have laws that prevent greed from taking advantage of the financial layman. Punishing the rich by taking their windfall profits is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. The more profits those companies make, the more jobs they can create in the future. Those profits allow for more research and development, which will allow the company to make their processes more efficient, lowering prices.

You can’t punish the rich. You can’t tax a corporation. When you punish the rich, all you do is tighten their wallets, which hurts anyone that has rich patrons. When you tax a corporation, all they do is pass the taxes onto the consumer, so you are actually taxing the consumer. So stop trying in this fruitless effort of redistributing wealth through taxes and windfall profit confiscation.

Politicians want you to ignore their perpetual greed for tax dollars by distracting you with the downsides of a free market that isn’t policed properly by the policies of those very politicians.

Congressmen screamed bloody murder when Exxon reported their income rose 14% in the 4^th quarter of 2007. As a result of this “crime,” Congress even brought in the top executives of the five largest U.S. oil companies to reprimand and lecture them.

“Where is the corporate conscience? Is there anybody here that has any concerns about what you’re doing to this country with the prices that you’re charging and the profits that you’re taking?” Sen. Dick Durbin

So what are the profits? Exxon earned $11.6 billion, which is a record for U.S. companies. In 2004, they had profits that freaked out the masses as well. Their gross margin that quarter was 9.8 cents per dollar of revenue. But financial institutions such as commercial banks, are routinely more profitable than Exxon. 9.8 cents is laughable in comparison to Citigroup’s 15.7 cents per dollar in 2004. The makers of Marlboro made 22 cents for every dollar. Merck made 25 cents.

If your company grosses 6 billion, and your expenses are only 1 billion, you just made 5 billion. If you gross 150 billion, and your expenses are 140 billion, you made 10 billion. Ask yourself which company is more “evil”: the one whose income was twice as much, or the one who’s ROI was 600%? Profit margin is the more relevant statistic.

Looking at Moneycentral.msn.com, Exxon’s gross margin is 21.6%. Check out the gross margin of these other companies that haven’t been scolded by congress:

• MoSys: 81.1%
• Microsoft: 79.3%
• Google: 59.8%
• Yahoo: 59.5%
• Apple: 34.4%
• Safeway: 28.6%
• Walmart: 23.5%
• Amazon: 22.5%
• Exxon: 21.6%
• Disney: 20.3%

Walmart is also attacked with its gross margin of 23.5%. Walmart and Exxon aren’t being attacked because of their profits. That’s just the excuse. If profits were the real crime, Bill Gates and Larry Page might as well live in Washington to make their daily scoldings more convenient. Why don’t we stop bothering Exxon and start demanding Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo decrease their obscene profits? Google didn’t exist 10 years ago, and we were doing just fine.

* I don’t really believe we should go after Google’s profits. They earned it fair and square, just like the oil companies. There is no difference. Just be aware of the hypocrisy.

What goes into the price of a gallon of gas? There’s a nice explanation here. At the pump, only about 4% of the price represents oil company profits. So if you wiped out all oil company profits, the price of a $4 gallon of gas would become $3.84. That doesn’t explain the dollars of increase in recent years. Did you know that while Exxon gets 16 cents from that gallon, 60 cents goes to taxes? “A thief is more moral than a congressman; when a thief steals your money, he doesn’t demand you thank him.” Walter Williams

You can’t tax a corporation

“You can’t tax a corporation. It’s a lie. There’s no such taxpayer. Tax the corporation and you tax the people that work there, or buy its products, or own its stock. If you can’t have dinner with it, you can’t tax it.” - Kelly J. Maguire

Senators like Dick Durbin and Charles Schumer would solve this “problem” of high oil company profits by instituting a windfall profits tax. Maxine Waters actually admitted what Washington really wants to do. When Exxon makes a boatload of money, that boatload will be taxed more than their usual profit. But what does a company do when its expenses increase? It increases the price.

A windfall profits tax actually taxes gas users. This is just basic economics. If you add a tax to a corporation for high profits, their bottom line will decrease, which decreases their stock price and dividends. This is completely unacceptable to shareholders, so to prevent that, the corporation must increase its prices or decrease its expenses by the exact amount of the tax. BASIC ECONOMICS. So either prices will go up or some people will get fired.

This article at lossofsanity.com puts it best:

An increase in corporate taxes increases the cost of producing goods and services and leads to a higher price for the consumer.

Politicians know the secret and fear that the public will learn it too one day. Thus politicians continually demonize business with words like greedy, anti-consumer, socially irresponsible in order to keep people’s anger focused on business instead of the true practitioners of greed… politicians.

BIG Farm

I mentioned earlier that people were hopping mad about Exxon’s 14% increase in profits. What if I told you there was another company whose profits rose by 86%? Would you be 6 times as mad? Cargill Inc.’s profits went from $553 million to $1.03 billion. How did an agriculture business increase profits by that much?

They didn’t. Congress passed the Energy Policy Act in 2005 which required use of ethanol in U.S. gasoline. As a result the price of corn nearly doubled, which increased their profits. The increased profits gave incentive to stop growing other crops to make room for corn, which lowered the supply of those other crops and therefore raised the prices. The price increase in crops like corn has caused “Tortilla riots” in Mexico, and violent protests have occurred in 33 countries. Artificially messing with energy has literally made people hungrier. Perhaps everyone should stop worrying about Big Oil, and start worrying about Big Farm and Big Government.

When I visited Europe, it made me proud to be American. There was nothing there I liked better than here (the sites are beautiful of course) EXCEPT the Coca-Cola. A couple months later, my brother handed me a Mexican coke, and it too tasted better than American coke.

Why does the greatest country in the world have lower-quality Coca-Cola than Mexico?

Answer: Greedy politicians in collusion with an American sugar company.

Meet the Fanjuls

The Fanjul family owns Flo-Sun Inc. In the ‘95/’96 campaign cycle, their family and their companies contributed $774,500. In the 2000 election cycle, they spent nearly $1 million. As a result, Congress has put tariffs in place against foreign-produced sugar that raises the price of sugar in America substantially. World-wide the average price of sugar is 7 cents per pound; in America, it is 21 cents. This puts Coca-Cola, and other companies in a pickle. Do they pay the additional 14 cents for real sugar, or find a substitute, like corn syrup, which is similar, but not as delicious? They chose corn syrup.

So for less than $1 million per year, the Fanjuls enjoy an estimated $65 million annually due to a manufactured price for sugar. Keeping a 14 cent difference between the two costs consumers about $2 billion annually. It is in their best interests to grease our politicians in order to keep their scam going. You can actually buy them in America, but they cost twice as much.

ENOUGH

Coke with sugar tastes better than coke with corn syrup in my opinion. I have yet to encounter a testimonial where that is not the case. The American people need to know that congressmen have no interest in helping or representing the people, and routinely put tariffs in place if it helps them politically. Restricting free trade to increase prices is the semi-legal way for congressmen and lobbyists to steal money. It should piss you off.
Some references…

America’s Sugar Daddies
Wikipedia
Sugar subsidies destroying Florida everglades