U.S. Poverty Climbed to 17-Year High in 2010
Number of U.S. poor hit record 46 million in 2010
We may not be able to address our current debt ceiling woes, but we can at least put them to a good beat.
Visit the links below for more Reason coverage on the debt, deficit and government spending:
Five Facts About the Debt
http://reason.com/archives/2011/07/25/five-facts-about-the-debt
The Facts About the Debt Ceiling
http://reason.com/archives/2011/07/18/the-facts-about-the-debt-ceili
Reason.com Topics: Government Spending
http://reason.com/topics/goverment-spending
"Raise the Debt Ceiling" is the third of a series of collaborations between Remy and Reason.tv. To watch Remy's other videos, go to http:youtube.com/goremy
Music by Remy. Video shot and produced by Meredith Bragg.
Download the mp3 and HD versions at http://reason.tv, the video channel for Reason magazine and http://reason.com
LYRICS:
Raise da debt ceiling!
Raise da debt ceiling!
Raise da debt ceiling!
Raise da debt ceiling!
14 trillion in debt
but yo we ain't got no qualms
droppin $100 bills
and million dollar bombs
spending money we don't have
that's the name of the game
they call me cumulo nimbus
because you KNOW I make it rain
bail out all kind of cars
got all kind of whips
ladies ask me how I get em
I tell em STIMULUS
Social Security surplus?
Oh, guess what? it's gone
I got my hands on everything
like Dominique Strauss Kahn
ain't got no Medicare trust fund
son, that's just absurd
spending every single penny that
we see, son, have you heard?
ain't got no moral objections
ain't got kind of complaints
ain't got no quantitative
statutory budget restraints
so...
[CHORUS]
Yo, we up in the Fed
and we living in style
Spending lots of money
while we sipping crystal
still making it rain
and yeah it be so pleasing
wait, not making it rain--
we be "Quantitative Easing!"
QE1, QE2
QE4, QE3
Dropping IOU's
in every fund that I see
printing the cash
inflating the monies
callin up China
"a-yo we straight out of 20's!"
in the club
we be louding out
while to the market, yeah
we be crowding out
on the beach getting tan
and sipping Corona
we got a monetary plan--
and it involves a lot of toner...
[CHORUS]
So if you look at the chart
and examine the trend
we borrow 40 cents of every
single dollar we spend
and non-discretionary spending
increases every day
do you have a comment for Committee?
I MAKE IT RAIN
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker
would you beam me up?
A Congressperson cutting spending?
Couldn't dream me up
We're gonna default
if we follow this road!
I should have thought of this
14 trillion dollars ago!
I'm the king of the links
I'm a menace at tennis
I'm sticking spinnaz on my rims
picking winnaz in business
if you're looking for some cash
it's about to get heavy
I got some big ol' piles of money
and guess what--they shovel ready
[CHORUS]
Ten Years Following 9/11 Debate in America Rages Over Radical Islam
The critically acclaimed documentary The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision for America, will be available for free online viewing the week of September 11, 2011 to mark ten years since the horrific 9/11 attacks. The film highlights the ongoing debate on the dangers posed to America by Radical Islam.
"While Americans have expressed a genuine willingness to embrace members of all faiths to practice religion freely without discrimination, there are radicals that are taking advantage of American sensitivities," said Raphael Shore, Executive Producer of The Third Jihad.
"Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, radical groups have launched a persistent campaign to exploit American freedoms and our democratic system. This campaign takes place daily in our courtrooms, our press, our banks, our prisons and even in our schools. Plus, there have been over thirty foiled terror plots and successful attacks on our homeland in the past ten years, including the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood," Shore added.
The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision for America, explores the growth of Radical Islam in America and the risk it poses to national security and the American way of life. The film centers on the FBI discovery of a Grand Jihad Manifesto calling for a 'cultural jihad' to undermine the U.S. from within.
The film features 19 interviews with leading experts including Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senator Joseph Lieberman, Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, Former Director of Central Intelligence Jim Woolsey, and Former CIA Officer Clare Lopez.
The Third Jihad follows American Muslim physician and activist M. Zuhdi Jasser on his campaign to fight militant political Islam in America.
Dr. Jasser is the founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and is a nationally recognized expert on political Islam and American Islamist organizations. He has testified before Congress on radicalization in the American Muslim community and has been featured prominently on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, BBC, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal.
The Third Jihad was produced by the Clarion Fund, makers of the award-winning documentaries Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West (2006) and Iranium (2011).
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser and Clare Lopez
Last week, Oskar Freysinger, a member of the Swiss Parliament delivered a rousing speech in Germany, warning the German people and all of Europe about Islam’s slow-motion takeover. Freysinger’s political party, the SVP, seems to parallel the values espoused by America’s Tea Party. The Party has been described thusly:
The SVP adheres to national conservatism, aiming at the preservation of Switzerland’s political sovereignty and a conservative society. Furthermore, the party promotes the principle of individual responsibility and is skeptical toward any expansion of governmental services. This stance is most evident in the rejection of an accession of Switzerland to the European Union, the rejection of military involvement abroad, and the rejection of increases in government spending on social welfare and education.
A portion of Freysinger’s speech can be seen here, the full text of the prepared speech is also attached below (apparently there were some ad libs in the actual delivery):
Speech by Oskar Freysinger in Berlin
September 3, 2011
Berlin is worth a trip. Especially today. Especially here. Because here and now an important signal is being given to the peoples of Europe. The signal for a European Spring! To offset the autumn mood in the EU. So that, instead of the mood of doom, finally a mood of awakening will come. An awakening in the name of freedom!
Yes, yes, cherished FREIHEIT! That is also the name of the party here in Germany that offers an alternative to bureaucratism, centralism, loss of democracy, uncontrolled immigration and Islamization. An alternative to self-destruction.
My dear Berlin friends, I come to you today as a neighbor. And as a concerned friend.
Since I am a citizen of a small country which is put under greater and greater pressure by the EU, it is near to my heart to support the truly democratic forces in the EU conglomerate. Only if these forces prevail can I hope that the Great Power pretensions of the EU will be abandoned and its relationship to Switzerland will at last be shaped in the way it should be between civilized and respectful neighbors.
Freedom is one of the democratic forces I count on. But why does the EU exert this kind of massive pressure — economically, financially and politically — on my country? Is it arrogance? Greed? Envy? All of those may apply, but the true reason lies deeper.
The EUSSR will no longer tolerate the existence of a small country in the heart of the continent, whose people still want to decide their own fate. A prudent, little bit of a folk that has thus far withstood the over-indebtedness which is playing hell with the states reined in by globalization.
For that is the goal of all global financial institutions and international monetary funds: The weakening of nation-states in order to lead them to their dubious “good fortune.” The wealth of peoples is destroyed en masse, so that the weakened states can be reduced to willing agents of a global dogma.
We Swiss hate every form of paternalism! We want no patronizing, no foreign judges! Our citizens are independent and imaginative enough to take their fate into their own hands.
Just picture this: On the southern border of Germany is a country in which 53% of the people have voted for deportation of criminal aliens; a land in which every minor rise in the VAT must be approved by referendum. Who is surprised that the VAT is still at 8% in Switzerland while it has reached 20% in the EU?
A study by the French economic expert Yvan Blot demonstrates that where state
affairs are voted on directly and democratically, the rates of duties and taxes are on average 30% lower than where state affairs are decided exclusively on administrative and policy grounds.
We watch our own wallets more carefully than other people’s money. There lies the future of the continent. Not in further expansion of a bureaucratic and centralized monster that will one day swallow its own children.
In Switzerland, the power is still in the hands of the people. We Helvetians were able to vote on entry to the EU… and wisely looked the other way. In retrospect, this decision has proven to be a great good fortune.
How did that work in Germany? Elites distanced from the people decided for the people. The same elite who introduced the euro, which, at one blow, caused a 30% loss of purchasing power for the average German citizen.
In Switzerland, the possible introduction of the euro had to be approved by the people. You can just picture the result.
Of course, the strong Franc would then be no problem for our export economy, but we would be stuck in the euro trap like the others and would have to bleed financially for a completely broken-down statist system, just as the German taxpayer has been doing for years. Better to stay flexible and economically independent.
Direct democracy means that the optional or obligatory referendum underlies every law proposed by parliament, and nothing can be decided over the heads of the people. Direct democracy means that determined citizens can launch initiatives with 100,000 signatures, which must be put before the people. This gives political decisions much greater legitimacy than the usual parliamentary resolutions. No one in Switzerland would think of questioning a decision by referendum which was approved by 50-70%. What the people have decided is valid and everyone has to adhere to that, Period. Even the administration. Especially the administration.
That is how it was with the famous/notorious anti-minaret initiative in which I was the anti-muezzin. 58% of the Swiss population decided in November, 2009 to prevent the occupation of public space by the dominating symbols of a religious dogma.
This decision by the last free population in Europe had a signal effect. In its wake, decisions were made about the veiling of women in France and Belgium and the construction of a Saudi-financed giant mosque in Norway was prevented. The dhimmi attitude of Europeans sustained a wound which must not heal over, if the millennia-old European civilization is to survive.
For Europe is more than a plot of land, more than a continent, more than the sum of its countries. Europe is an idea, a cultural landscape, an intellectual space shaped by history. Europa is the cradle of the modern constitutional state, the treasure-house of human rights, of freedom of opinion and expression.
This is ever more strongly endangered by the possibility that our political elite will bend their necks before a religious dogma that is alien to our intellectual history, our values and our constitutional state.
This dogma is gnawing away at the pillars of our system of laws, wherever it is allowed some space. This dogma demands total obedience from its followers. They are in no case to integrate into our value system. That would be like treason and can even be punished with death. They are expected to conquer our intellectual home, make the Western world subject. Not with tanks, rockets or riflemen. Not through brutal revolution.
No, Islam is in no hurry. It has an eternity.
A long process of softening up and leisurely occupation of our weakening, child-poor society is foreseen. The Islamic doctrine is expected to gradually creep into everyday life and Fortress Europe will crumble from within. Just think of how the Serbs lost Kosovo. Through demographic development and the help of NATO, which brought about the founding of the first Islamic state on European ground. What an ominous sign.
The Islamic dogma is succeeding everywhere. In Turkey, the Islamists are gradually occupying all judicial and army posts, in order to obliterate the heritage of Kemal Atatürk. Lebanon will become an Islamic state in the next decades, The Arab Spring is on the point of being taken over by the Islamists. In Iraq, in Egypt and in Pakistan, the last Christian communities are facing extinction,
And what are we doing? We are allowing this violent doctrine, unhindered in cultural ghettos, to strain at toppling the nation of laws. We just shrug our shoulders when girls are forced into marriage and Muslims willing to integrate are pressured and threatened. When women are beaten and whole city districts are taken over, we look the other way. We believe we can soften the power hunger of the holy warriors with welfare money.
We believe we can buy peace! What lunacy! No one fingers the Prophet’s beard. Fanatics cannot be bought. Germany should know that better than any other country in the world.
My dear friends in the audience, we are not fighting against people, we are fighting for people! We are fighting against a dogma that is anathema to every aspect of humanity and would like to lead us back into barbarism. We do not intend to give up the freedom we have fought so hard for over the centuries.
Dear Berliners, here I stand, and I cannot do otherwise, lest soon no human being in this Europe will be able to take the responsibility for what represents the pillar of our culture, of our system of law and of our humanity: transcendent, unconditional love of neighbor.
If we lose this battle, there will be no second chance, for Islam does not give back what it has conquered. So I summon all the humanists of this continent not to keep their heads in the sand and to resist the Islamic dogma’s drive to conquest. Let us stand together and uncompromisingly insist upon the primacy of our civil law over any religious dogma. Let us find our way back to our precious intellectual heritage.
Islam is only as strong as we are weak.
Let us oppose it with more than McDonald’s, soap operas, stupefying TV programs and brutal video games. Our culture has so much more to offer. Let us get back to depth and endurance, to organic growth. Let us stay alert and critical, so long as even a grain of Socrates lives on in us. Let us no longer subject our spirit to the dictates of the material. Only that way can we prevent brutal power politics being spread in the name of religion. Only that way do we have chance to leave our children a peaceful Europe, shaped by respect and dignity.
Long live die Freiheit! (Long live freedom!)
Let's Roll Dad Tells It Like It Is.
During a segment on Fox News Friday, Beamer said that while the recordings serve as a reminder of 9/11, Americans need to know who the enemy is. He added that the public cannot forget because it is reminded daily of the threats present, and by being on heightened alert at all times.
Beamer, who believes the nation is doing its best to ready itself to combat and prevent another terror event said he doesn’t think the public is doing a good job defending itself against the “tactic of infiltration” being used by our enemy — militant Islamists, and Muslims who sympathize with the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks. “They don’t want us to salute …the stars and stripes…they want us to salute the flag of Islam,” Beamer said.
He also singled out the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) for particular scorn stating the acronym instead stands for, “Constantly Advancing Islamic Regime.”
Beamer believes the American public is “in denial” about what “their tactic of infiltration will do to our republic.”
It appears that the group removed are from the EDL, a right-wing group which to be fair can be considered hooligan-like and previous clashes have occurred with local opposition and other opponents have led to street violence, anti-social behaviour, and arrests. However, from at least what appears on the tape in question, they were engaged in peaceful, simple, non-violent discourse and free speech. Yet, they were removed in light of the Muslims Against the Crusades protest against honoring the dead on 9/11. The group of English Defence League protesters were ordered to move on to accommodate the anti-American demonstration.
The 60-strong EDL group briefly scuffled with police as they were forced away from their original location to a different part of Grosvenor Square. Twenty people were arrested for breach of the peace as the group was dispersed towards Oxford Street. And at least four more arrests were made as police escorted the Muslim group back towards the Central London Mosque in Regents Park.
Viewers can decide for themselves about the rhetoric, tactics, and political value of the Islamists speech.
Groups of young men, EDL and the Muslims Against the Crusades, demonstrate on 11/09/2011, walking towards Hyde park.
100 protesters burn American flag outside U.S. embassy in London during minute's silence for 9/11.
EDL members get stabbed on Edgware Road - London.
Later in the evening two EDL members were stabbed by Muslim youths (according to police reports) outside the JD Wetherspoon pub. Police outside the JD Wetherspoon pub confirmed two EDL members were stabbed.
A summary and raw tape of protests included here.
The 60-strong group briefly scuffled with police as they were forced away from their original location to a different part of Grosvenor Square.
Twenty people were arrested for breach of the peace as the group was dispersed towards Oxford Street.
And at least four more arrests were made as police escorted the Muslim group back towards the Central London Mosque in Regents Park.
Another raw tape of the is here.
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A tax on toilet paper; I kid you not. According to the sponsor, "the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act will be financed broadly by small fees on such things as . . . products disposed of in waste water." Congress wants to tax what you do in the privacy of your bathroom.