Only in America

Only in America……can a pizza get to your house faster than an
Ambulance.

Only in America……do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

Only in America……do people order double cheeseburgers, large
Fries, and a diet coke.

Only in America……do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.

Only in America……do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won’t miss a call from someone we didn’t want to talk to in the first place.

Only in America……do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.

Only in America……do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.

Obama and McCain

Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina and grew up in Harlem . As with many others in his neighborhood, he left home early and did not finish high school. The next few years were difficult ones, but eventually he joined the Marine Corps and became a photographer in the Korean War. After leaving the service, Sowell entered Harvard University , worked a part-time job as a photographer and studied the science that would become his passion and profession: economics.
After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University (1958), hewent on to receive his master’s in economics from Columbia University (1959) and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago (1968).
In the early ’60s, Sowell held jobs as an economist with the Department of Labor and AT&T. But his real interest was in teaching and scholarship. In 1965, at Cornell University , he began the first of many professorships. His other teaching assignments include Rutgers University , Amherst University , Brandeis University and the University of California at Los Angeles , where he taught in the early ’70s and also from 1984 to 1989.
Sowell has published a large volume of writing. His dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays, cover a wide range of topics, from classic economic theory to judicial activism, from civil rights to choosing the right college. Moreover, much of his writing is considered ground-breaking — work that will outlive the great majority of scholarship done today.
Though Sowell had been a regular contributor to newspapers in the late ’70s and early ’80s, he did not begin his career as a newspaper columnist until 1984. George F. Will’s writing, says Sowell, proved to him that someone could say something of substance in so short a space (750 words). And besides, writing for the general public enables him to address the heart of issues without the smoke and mirrors that so often accompany academic writing.
In 1990, he won the prestigious Francis Boyer Award, presented by The American Enterprise Institute.
Currently Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute in Stanford , Calif.

Obama and McCain
Thomas Sowell
Thursday, June 05, 2008

Now that the two parties have finally selected their presidential candidates, it is time for a sober– if not grim– assessment of where we are. Not since 1972 have we been presented with two such painfully inadequate candidates. When election day came that year, I could not bring myself to vote for either George McGovern or Richard Nixon. I stayed home.
This year, none of us has that luxury. While all sorts of gushing is going on in the media, and posturing is going on in politics, the biggest national sponsor of terrorism in the world– Iran– is moving step by step toward building a nuclear bomb.
The point when they get that bomb will be the point of no return. Iran ’s nuclear bomb will be the terrorists’ nuclear bomb– and they can make 9/11 look like child’s play.
All the options that are on the table right now will be swept off the table forever. Our choices will be to give in to whatever the terrorists demand– however outrageous those demands might be– or to risk seeing American cities start disappearing in radioactive mushroom clouds.
All the things we are preoccupied with today, from the price of gasoline to health care to global warming, will suddenly no longer matter.
Just as the Nazis did not find it enough to simply kill people in their concentration camps, but had to humiliate and dehumanize them first, so we can expect terrorists with nuclear weapons to both humiliate us and force us to humiliate ourselves, before they finally start killing us.
They have already telegraphed their punches with their sadistic beheadings of innocent civilians, and with the popularity of videotapes of those beheadings in the Middle East .
They have already telegraphed their intention to dictate to us with such things as Osama bin Laden’s threats to target those places in America that did not vote the way he prescribed in the 2004 elections. He could not back up those threats then but he may be able to in a very few years.
The terrorists have given us as clear a picture of what they are all about as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did during the 1930s– and our ‘leaders’ and intelligentsia have ignored the warning signs as resolutely as the ‘leaders’ and intelligentsia of the 1930s downplayed the dangers of Hitler.
We are much like people drifting down the Niagara River , oblivious to the waterfalls up ahead. Once we go over those falls, we cannot come back up again.
What does this have to do with today’s presidential candidates? It has everything to do with them.
One of these candidates will determine what we are going to do to stop Iran from going nuclear– or whether we are going to do anything other than talk, as Western leaders talked in the 1930s.
There is one big difference between now and the 1930s. Although the West’s lack of military preparedness and its political irresolution led to three solid years of devastating losses to Nazi Germany and imperial Japan , nevertheless when all the West’s industrial and military forces were finally mobilized, the democracies were able to turn the tide and win decisively.
But you cannot lose a nuclear war for three years and then come back. You cannot even sustain the will to resist for three years when you are first broken down morally by threats and then devastated by nuclear bombs.
Our one window of opportunity to prevent this will occur within the term of whoever becomes President of the United States next January.
At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure– at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.
Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America .
On the contrary, he has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.

Undeniable facts

 

George Bush has been in office for 7 1/2 years.  The first six the economy was fine.
A little over one year ago:
            1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high;
            2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon;
            3) the unemployment rate was 4.5%.
            4) the DOW JONES hit a record high–14,000 +
            5) American’s were buying new cars, taking cruises, vacations overseas, living large!…

But American’s wanted ‘CHANGE’!   So, in 2006 they voted in a Democratic Congress & yep–we got ‘CHANGE’ all right!…..
            1) Consumer confidence has plummeted ;
            2) Gasoline is now over $4 a gallon & climbing!;
            3) Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase);
            4) Americans have seen their home equity drop by
               $12 TRILLION DOLLARS & prices still
               dropping;
            5) 1% of American homes are in foreclosure.
            6) as I write, THE DOW is probing another
                low~~11,300–$2.5
                TRILLION DOLLARS HAS EVAPORATED
                FROM THEIR STOCKS, BONDS &  MUTUAL
                FUNDS INVESTMENT PORTFOLIOS!

YEP , IN 2006 AMERICA VOTED FOR CHANGE!…AND WE SURE AS HELL GOT IT!!!….

NOW  ‘BO’, the DEM’S CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT–AND THE  POLLS SAY HE’S GONNA BE ‘THE MAN’–CLAIMS HE’S GONNA REALLY GIVE US CHANGE!!….

JUST HOW MUCH MORE ‘CHANGE’ DO YA THINK YOU CAN STAND???…..

People are beginning to ask questions

Gives you something to think about.

Dear Editor, Times-Dispatch:
‘Each year I get to celebrate Independence Day twice.  On June 30 I celebrate my independence day, and on July 4  I celebrate America ’s. This year is special, because it marks the 40th anniversary of my independence.
‘On June 30, 1968, I escaped Communist Cuba, and a few months later, I was in the United States to stay.  That I happened to arrive in Richmond on Thanksgiving Day is just part of the story, but I digress.
‘I’ve thought a lot about the anniversary this year.  The election-year rhetoric has made me think a lot about Cuba and what transpired there.  In the late 1950s, most Cubans thought Cuba needed a change, and they were right.  So when a young leader came along, every Cuban was at least receptive.
‘When the young leader spoke eloquently and passionately and denounced the old system, the press fell in love with him.  They never questioned who his friends were or what he really believed in.  When he said he would help the farmers and the poor and bring free medical care and education to all, everyone followed.  When he said he would bring justice and equality to all, everyone said, ‘Praise the Lord.’ And when the young leader said, ‘I will be for change and I’ll bring you change,’ everyone yelled, ‘Viva Fidel !’
‘But nobody asked about the change, so by the time the executioner’s guns went silent, the people’s guns had been taken away.  By the time everyone was equal, they were equally poor, hungry, and oppressed.&nbs p; By the time everyone received their free education, it was worth nothing. By the time the press noticed, it was too late, because they were now working for him.  By the time the change was finally implemented, Cuba had been knocked down a couple of notches to Third-World status.  By the time the change was over, more than a million people had taken to boats, rafts, and inner tubes.  You can call those who made it ashore anywhere else in the world the most fortunate Cubans.  And now I’m back to the beginning of my story.
‘Luckily, we would never fall in America for a young leader who promised change without asking, what change?  How will you carry it out?  What will it cost America ?
‘Would we?’
Manuel Alvarez, Jr.

1850

Do you know what happened this week back in 1850, 158 years ago?

California became a state.
The State had no electricity.
The State had no money.
Almost everyone spoke Spanish.
There were gunfights in the streets.

So basically, it was just like California today, except the women had real breasts and the men didn’t hold hands.

Honest Abe’s Wisdom

During this political season, these are wise words to remember:

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative 

and independence.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and 

should do for themselves.

—  Abraham Lincoln

Bush’s fault

Or is it CONGRESS????????????????????????????
.
A Wake-up call!
Part 1
Remember the election in 2006? When the Democrats regained control in both
Houses of Congress?
Thought you might like to read the following:
About 18 months ago:
1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2-1/2 year high;
2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon;
3) The unemployment rate was 4.5%.
Since voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006 we have seen:
1) Consumer confidence plummet from 95.3 points in January, 2007 (just
before the first session of the new Dem-controlled Congress)
to a record low of 56.3 points by January, 2008 (
www.diamonds.net/News/NewsItem.aspx?ArticleID=20265)
2) The cost of regular gasoline soar to over $4.00 a gallon;
3) Unemployment rise to 5.5%…an increase of more than 20% (as of May,
2008: http://www.bls.gov/);
4) American households suffer $2.5 trillion in net worth evaporation
(savings depletions, stock and mutual fund losses, etc.);
5) Americans’ home equity drop by about $1.5 trillion dollars;
6) 2.5% of American home loans (over 1 million homes) in foreclosure (as of
1st quarter 2008 –
http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/05/news/economy/foreclosure/)
Barack Obama says he is the candidate of “Change.”  America already  voted
for change in 2006… and we sure got it!
Remember it’s Congress that makes laws, not the President. The President
can suggest policy, but it never comes to
his desk unless it passes both Houses of Congress.  Otherwise, he has to
work with what’s handed to him.
Quote of t he Day……..
“My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history
of the world. I hope you’ll join with me as we try to
change it.”  — Barack Obama
Part 2 — Taxes:
Whether Democrat or a Republican, you will find these statistics
enlightening and amazing.
(www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html)
Taxes: 1999 vs. 2007
Under Clinton (1999): Single making 30K = $8,400 in taxes; Under Bush in
2007: Single making 30K = $4,500 in taxes
Under Clinton: Single making 50K = $14,000; Under Bush: Single making 50K =
$12,500
Under Clinton: Single making 75K = $23,250;  Single making 75K = $18,750
Under Clinton: Married making 60K = $16,800;  Under Bush: Married making
60K = $9,000
Under Clinton: Married making 75K = $21,000; Under Bush: Married making 75K
= $18,750
Under Clinton: Married making 125K = $38,750; Under Bush: Married making
125K = $31,250
Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress both say they will repeal the
Bush tax cuts in 2009, sending us back to 1999 levels.
It is amazing how many people that fall in to the categories above think
Bush is screwing them, while Bill Clinton was the greatest President ever.
This is like the movie The Sting with Paul Newman; where they scam somebody
out of money and they don’t even know it happened.
Part  3 — The Cost of Illegal Immigration:
You think the War in Iraq is costing us too much?  Perhaps.
At a total cost of about $500 billion since it began, the war has cost an
average of $100 billion per year. But consider the facts below.
(I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until
they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them. I
have included the URL’s for verification of all facts.)
EVERY YEAR…..
1. $11 billion to $22 billion is spent by state governments on welfare to
illegal aliens.
(Verify at: http://tinyurl.com/zob77 )
2. $2.2 billion is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps,
WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
(Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html)
3. $2.5 billion is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
(Verify at: http://www.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html)
4. $12 billion is spent on primary and secondary school education for
children here illegally, many who cannot speak a word of English!
(Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html)
5. $17 billion is spent for educating the American-born children of illegal
aliens, known as “anchor babies.”
Verify at (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html)
6. $1.1 billion is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
(Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html)
7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
(Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html)
8. $90 billion is spent for social services to illegal aliens.
(Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html)
9. $200 billion in suppressed American wages are caused by illegal aliens.
These are also earnings  that are never taxed. (Verify at:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html)
10. Illegal aliens  have a crime rate that’s 2.5 times higher than white
non-illegal aliens.
(Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html)
11. 4 to 10 million illegal aliens cross our Southern border, and as many
as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries enter the U.S.
Millions of pounds of illegal drugs cross into the U.S. at the Southern
border (Verify at: Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht)
12. An estimated cost of mass deportation would be between $41 billion and
$46 billion annually over a five year
period. Verify at:
http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf
13. Illegal aliens send $45  billion back to their countries of origin,
meaning a lot of the money they make illegally doesn’t go into the U.S.
economy.
(Verify at: http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm)
14. “The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes
Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States.”
(Verify at: http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml)
The total cost approaches a whopping $350 BILLION  A YEAR!
And I was under the impression that it’s only the War in Iraq that is
bankrupting this country.  Are we THAT stupid?

Shotgun preteen vs. illegal alien home invaders

 

Butte,
Montana November 5, 2007

Two illegal aliens, Ralphel Resindez, 23, and Enrico Garza, 26, probably believed they would easily overpower home-alone 11 year old Patricia Harrington after her father had left their two-story home.

It seems the two crooks never learned two things: they were in Montana and Patricia had been a clay shooting champion since she was nine.

 
Patricia was in her upstairs room when the two men broke through the front door of the house. She quickly ran to her father’s room and grabbed his 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun.

Resindez was the first to get up to the second floor only to be the first to catch a near point blank blast of buckshot from the 11-year-old’s knee crouch aim. He suffered fatal wounds to his abdomen and genitals.
When Garza ran to the foot of the stairs, he took a blast to the left shoulder and staggered out into the street where he bled to death before medical help could arrive.

It was found out later that Resindez was armed with a stolen 45 caliber handgun he took from another home invasion robbery. That victim, 50-year-old David Burien, was not so lucky. He died from stab wounds to the chest.

Ever wonder why good stuff never makes NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, or ABC news……..an 11 year old girl, properly trained, defended her home, and herself……against two murderous, illegal immigrants ……and she wins, she is still alive.

Now that is Gun Control !

********************
Thought for the day:
Calling an illegal alien an ‘undocumented immigrant’ is like calling a drug dealer an ‘unlicensed pharmacist’

The Lawyers Party

I got this in an e-mail the other day and found it interesting and true.

 

The Democrat Party has become the Lawyers’ Party. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lawyers. Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are lawyers. John Edwards, the other former Democrat candidate for president, is a lawyer, and so is his wife, Elizabeth. Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate). Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school. Look at the Democrat Party in Congress: The Majority Leader in each house is a lawyer.
The Republican Party is different. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were not lawyers, but businessmen. The leaders of the Republican Revolution were not lawyers.  Newt Gingrich was a history professor; Tom Delay was an exterminator; and, Dick Armey was an economist. House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer, not a lawyer. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.

Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer?  Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976. The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work. The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich.
The Lawyers’ Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America. And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers’ Party, grow.

Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.

This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.
Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation. When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming.

Some Americans become ‘adverse parties’ of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit. We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.

Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big. When lawyers use criminal prosecution as a continuation of politics by other means, as happened in the lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, then the power of lawyers in America is too great.  When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.
We cannot expect the Lawyers’ Party to provide real change, real reform, or real hope in America. Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789. Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.

Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.

How Enron Worked the President

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE PRESIDENT

How Enron Worked the President

Are You Ready?

How Enron Worked the President!
(This is an interesting bit of information that you don’t hear much about.)

1. Enron’s chairman did meet with the president and the vice president in the Oval Office.
2. Enron gave $420,000 to the president’s party over three years.
3. It donated $100,000 to the president’s inauguration festivities.
4. The Enron chairman stayed at the White House 11 times.
5. The corporation had access to the administration at its highest level and even enlisted the Commerce and State Departments to grease deals for it.
6. The taxpayer-supported Export-Import Bank subsidized Enron for more than $600 million in just one transaction.
Scandalous!!

BUT…the president under whom all this happened WASN’T George W. Bush.

SURPRISE!

It was President Bill Clinton!
No surprise! And do you think Hillary didn’t know?

ARE WE REALLY READY FOR MRS. CLINTON?