Stimulus Cost vs Iraq War: Stimulus Cost More than Iraq War

Mark Tapscott at the Washington Examiner quotes an American Thinker article by Randall Hoven. Obama's failed Stimulus spending cost more than the Iraq war. I was amazed at this for a couple of reasons - one being that I thought the Iraq war was the biggest expenditure known in the history of the modern world, but apparently not.

Stimulus Costs More than Iraq War

Hoven quotes elitists saying the Iraq War cost $3 trillion. The CBO tells Hoven the entire cost is $709 billion. I don't about you, but I feel much better now. I can think of several who are near and dear to me whom I will assault with these figures - gleefully, and often.

Here's a handy stat: the stimulus bill passed in Obama's first month in office costs 15% more than the entire Iraq War. Repeating, 15% MORE THAN THE ENTIRE IRAQ WAR.

* Obama's stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War -- more than $100 billion (15%) more.

* Just the first two years of Obama's stimulus cost more than the entire cost of the Iraq War under President Bush, or six years of that war.

* Iraq War spending accounted for just 3.2% of all federal spending while it lasted.

* Iraq War spending was not even one quarter of what we spent on Medicare in the same time frame.

* Iraq War spending was not even 15% of the total deficit spending in that time frame. The cumulative deficit, 2003-2010, would have been four-point-something trillion dollars with or without the Iraq War.

* The Iraq War accounts for less than 8% of the federal debt held by the public at the end of 2010 ($9.031 trillion).

* During Bush's Iraq years, 2003-2008, the federal government spent more on education that it did on the Iraq War. (State and local governments spent about ten times more.)

How many times can we repeat this between now and midnight November 1st? Read Randall Hoven's Iraq: The War That Bros Us -- Not, it's a handy piece to bookmark.

Others Talking about the Iraq War Democrat Lie:
Reaganite Republican - with a classic pic of the Edsel

posted by Maggie @ Maggie's Notebook

California Faculty Association Political Activism: Union Oppression on College Campus

Blogger Gary Fouse is an adjunct teacher at UC-Irvine. If you have visited his blog at fousesquawk you know that he regularly keeps us informed on the unbelievably astounding antics of academia. Gary is known for ringing the bell on the Muslim influence on the campus of UC-Irvine, and keeps a keen eye on Islam around the world. In this article, he highlights the forcing of faculty and staff to contribute to political causes they find "highly objectional."

"Whaddaya mean youse don't support the Palestinians?"

One of Gary's latest articles is on the political activism of the California Faculty Association. He has granted permission to reprint it. Friends, these are things we need to know.

Gary Fouse
Fousesquawk

I am posting an article on American Thinker by my colleague, Leila Beckwith, Professor Emeritus at UCLA, on the political abuses being carried out by the California Faculty Association, which includes compulsory dues by non-union teachers and the use of funds to promote political causes-like the Palestinian cause and the anti-Israel cause. I have had the pleasure of meeting Professor Beckwith. She is one of the saner voices to be found at UCLA. I have also passed on this article to the Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation for their information.  Read Prof. Beckwith's American Thinker article here.

State employee unions are one of the main causes that have brought California to the point of bankruptcy. This article is also well-timed when you consider that the Democrats in Congress are presently attempting to pass "Card-Check" legislation that would make it increasingly difficult for workers to avoid union coercion and union membership. Never mind. Our present government is doing every thing in its power to increase the numbers and power of unions.

In this case, I first think it is outrageous that if a worker chooses not to join a union, they still have to have wages deducted to go to said union. It is even more outrageous that unions involve themselves in political and international affairs, using members dues to promote political causes that members may not agree with.

In addition, would someone please explain to me why a teachers union in California needs something called a Peace and Justice committee? What's that all about? And what does the Israel/Palestinian conflict have to do with California teachers?

As professor Beckwith explains, the CFA simply creates such a committee and appoints people with the appropriate (leftist) point of view. So they appoint this professor of Latin American history (Liberation Theology, no less)as its head, one Manzar Faroohar, who is, naturally, an activist against the Israeli state.

So there you are all you teachers in the California State University system who are members of the CFA or have to pay dues anyway. This is where your money goes. If you are Jewish and/or support the Israeli state's right to exist and defend itself from terrorists, you are paying to support the other side. What does all that have to do with improving education-in a state where education is a national disgrace at the secondary level and is vastly overrated at the university level because of the dominance of left-wing loons in the professorships? Nothing.

Fortunately for me, as an adjunct teacher at UC-Irvine, I don't have to join any union or pay them one dime. The day that changes, I am gone. I have never belonged to a union in my life, and I intend to keep that record intact to the end. I just hope that those employees who are impacted by this disgrace read Professor Beckwith's article, know their rights, and act upon them.

Peace and Justice my....backside.

Barack Obama - Another Failed Presidency: Obama Following the Dreams of his father

Geoffrey P. Hunt wrote the following article for American Thinker in August 2009. As bad as it looked to Hunt at that time, Obama's presidency has been diminished extraordinarily and astoundingly, but not surprisingly, since the date of publication.

Hunt refers to Obama as a "small president," and he points out that Obama has no American narrative that we can identify with, no "command of history" to "reveal" the "authenticity at the core" of his personality - nothing that "resonates in an "endearing way" with Americans. This is a different look at the Obama aura that rushed him into the White House, and unleashed his decidedly un-American dreams (and those of his father as well) onto the Nation.

The following are selected portions from Hunt's Another Failed Presidency: (American Thinker added this note to Hunt's article: [editor's note: The author is not the not the same person as Geoffrey P Hunt, who works at the Institute for Scientific Analysis as a senior research scientist.]

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.

In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon, indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China....

But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big.  Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in  the Wall Street Journal, put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard, says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.

But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?

No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us.  He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan.

But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task-- all contributory of course.  It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience. 

In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: "For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."

Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that. 

Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.

The authenticity at the core of Obama's personality is described in the President's own words in his book Dreams From My Father. It is no wonder we do not connect with a man who said he tried to shape himself into "the high blown ideals" of his hard-drinking, polygamist, womanizing, communist father. Obama admits that he had something to prove to his father, because the elder Obama was a political organizer - and so the story of Obama the Younger began. In the East African Journal, Barack the Elder attacked all economic proposals of all pro-Western interests in the area. He wanted the communal ownership of land, and he advocated for the forced confiscation of privately controlled land. He wanted the nationalization of European and Asian-owned properties, including hotels. He wanted these enterprises handed over to the Black population. 

It is no wonder the average American, whether Conservative or Liberal, feels no connection to this man who donated his time and money to support the ravings of Jeremiah Wright and shared an office with Weatherman Bill Ayers for three years, and wanted to be the image of his father.  

Mr. Hunt did a superb job of phrasing the repugnant aura that most of us see hovering around this man, who lives in our White House, courtesy of the American people, and dreams his dreams of the take over of our democracy. Another failed Presidency? No doubt.

Thank you to Lynne at TravelLight for the Hunt article.  

Obama's Global Poverty Tax Bill up for Vote after July 4th Recess

The American Thinker's Lee Cary says that according to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's office, Obama's Senate Bill 2433 will come to the floor for vote soon, with as little as week for Senators to prepare for it. This hushed bill will likely be "sprung" as you and I attempt to catch-up after celebrating this Nation's Independence Day. Investor's Business Daily put it this way:

By adopting the Millennium goals in 2000, the U.N. escalated its demands to impose international taxes. Specifically, the Millennium called for a "currency transfer tax," a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources," a "royalty on worldwide fossil energy projection — oil, natural gas, coal," "fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for airplane use of the skies, fees for use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels."

It doesn't bother U.N. sycophants that most U.S. handouts go into the hands of corrupt dictators who hate us and vote against us in the U.N., and that only 30% of our foreign aid ever reaches the poor. U.N. bureaucrats accuse the U.S. of being "stingy" in its handouts to underdeveloped countries. There is much more to the Millennium goals than merely extorting more money from U.S. taxpayers. The goals set forth a comprehensive plan to put the United States under U.N. global governance. Losing Sovereignty [meaning the United States of America] - These goals include a "standing peace force" (i.e. a U.N. standing army), a "U.N. Arms register" of all small arms and light weapons, "peace education" covering "all levels from preschool through university," and "political control of the global economy." The goals call for implementing all U.N. treaties that the United States has never ratified, all of which set up U.N. monitoring committees to compromise American sovereignty. To achieve this level of control over U.S. domestic law, the plan calls for "strengthening the United Nations for the 21st century" by "eliminating" the veto and permanent membership in the Security Council. The goal is to reduce U.S. influence to one out of 192 nations, so we would have merely the same vote as Cuba. The Global Poverty Act would be a giant step toward the Millennium goal of global governance and international taxes on Americans. Tell your senators to kill this un-American bill.

Read more from Lee Cary at American Thinker here and here. Related: Obama's Senate Bill S.233 - A U.N. Global Tax on the World Obama's U.N. Global Poverty Act - Supported by a Wicca Witch Linked by: Obama's Global Poverty Tax Bill up for Vote in Days from The Bird - Excerpt: The American Thinker's Lee Cary says that according to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's office, Obama's Senate Bill 2433 will come to the floor for vote soon, with as little as week for Senators to prepare for it. ...

Virtual “Global Poverty Act” Tea Party from Velvet Hammer - Excerpt: Taxation without representation. Didn’t Obama’s mama teach him you can’t buy love? Barack Obama one righteous dude when it comes to your hard earned money. It is diplomatic dontcha know. We can trust the UN to handle our funding. ...

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