SavvySugar

The end of the road for Barack Obama?

samantha999 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:14:59 -0800

Barack Obama seems unable to face up to America's problems, writes Simon Heffer in New York.

By Simon Heffer Published: 8:16AM GMT 08 Mar 2010

t is a universal political truth that administrations do not begin to fragment when things are going well: it only happens when they go badly, and those who think they know better begin to attack those who manifestly do not. The descent of Barack Obama's regime, characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate. It was just 16 months ago that weeping men and women celebrated his victory over John McCain in the American presidential election. If they weep now, a year and six weeks into his rule, it is for different reasons.

Despite the efforts of some sections of opinion to talk the place up, America is mired in unhappiness, all the worse for the height from which Obamania has fallen. The economy remains troublesome. There is growth – a good last quarter suggested an annual rate of as high as six per cent, but that figure is probably not reliable – and the latest unemployment figures, last Friday, showed a levelling off. Yet 15 million Americans, or 9.7 per cent of the workforce, have no job. Many millions more are reduced to working part-time. Whole areas of the country, notably in the north and on the eastern seaboard, are industrial wastelands. The once mighty motor city of Detroit appears slowly to be being abandoned, becoming a Jurassic Park of the mid-20th century; unemployment among black people in Mr Obama's own city of Chicago is estimated at between 20 and 25 per cent. One senior black politician – a Democrat and a supporter of the President – told me of the wrath in his community that a black president appeared to be unable to solve the economic problem among his own people. Cities in the east such as Newark and Baltimore now have drug-dealing as their principal commercial activity: The Wire is only just fictional.

Last Thursday the House of Representatives passed a jobs Bill, costing $15 billion, which would give tax breaks to firms hiring new staff and, through state sponsorship of construction projects, create thousands of jobs too. The Senate is trying to approve a Bill that would provide a further $150 billion of tax incentives to employers. Yet there is a sense of desperation in the Administration, a sense that nothing can be as efficacious at the moment as a sticking plaster. Edward B Montgomery, deputy labour secretary in the Clinton administration, now spends his time on day trips to decaying towns that used to have a car industry, not so much advising them on how to do something else as facilitating those communities' access to federal funds. For a land without a welfare state, America starts to do an effective impersonation of a country with one. This massive state spending gives rise to accusations by Republicans, and people too angry even to be Republicans, that America is now controlled by "Leftists" and being turned into a socialist state.

"Obama's big problem," a senior Democrat told me, "is that four times as many people watch Fox News as watch CNN." The Fox network is a remarkable cultural phenomenon which almost shocks those of us from a country where a technical rule of impartiality is applied in the broadcast media. With little rest, it pours out rage 24 hours a day: its message is of the construction of the socialist state, the hijacking of America by "progressives" who now dominate institutions, the indoctrination of children, the undermining of religion and the expropriation of public money for these nefarious projects. The public loves it, and it is manifestly stirring up political activism against Mr Obama, and also against those in the Republican Party who are not deemed conservatives. However, it is arguable whether the now-reorganising Right is half as effective in its assault on the President as some of Mr Obama's own party are.

Mr Obama benefited in his campaign from an idiotic level of idolatry, in which most of the media participated with an astonishing suspension of cynicism. The sound of the squealing of brakes is now audible all over the American press; but the attack is being directed not at the leader himself, but at those around him. There was much unconditional love a year or so ago of Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama's Chief of Staff; oleaginous profiles of this Chicago political hack, a veteran of that unlovely team that polluted the Clinton White House, appeared in otherwise respectable journals, praising the combination of his religious devotion, his family-man image, his ruthless operating technique and his command of the vocabulary of profanity. Now, supporters of the President are blaming Mr Emanuel for the failure of the Obama project, not least for his inability to construct a deal on health care.

This went down badly with friends of Mr Emanuel, notably with Mr Emanuel himself. His partisans, apparently taking dictation from him, have filled newspaper columns and blogs with uplifting accounts of the Wonder of Rahm: as one of them put it, "Emanuel is the only person preventing Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter". They attack other Obama "sycophants", such as David Axelrod, his campaign guru, and Valerie Jarret, a long-time friend of Mrs Obama and a fixer from the office of Mayor Daley of Chicago who now manages – or tries to manage – the President's image. These "sycophants" have, they argue, tried to keep the President above politics, letting Congress run away with the agenda, and gainsaying Mr Emanuel's advice to Mr Obama to get tough with his internal opponents. This naïve act of manipulation has brought its own counter-counterattack, with an anti-Emanuel pundit drawing a comparison with our own Prime Minister and ridiculing the idea that Mr Obama should start bullying people too.

The root of the problem seems to be the management of expectations. The magnificent campaign created the notion that Mr Obama could walk on water. Oddly enough, he can't. That was more Mr Axelrod's fault than Mr Emanuel's. And, to be fair to Mr Emanuel, any advice he has been giving the President to impose his will on Congress is probably well founded. The $783 billion stimulus package of a year ago was used to further the re-election prospects of many congressmen, not to do good for the country. America's politics remain corrupt, populated by nonentities whose main concern once elected is to stay elected; it seems to be the same the whole world over. Even this self-interested use of the stimulus package appears to have failed, however. Every day, it seems, another Democrat congressman announces that he will not be fighting the mid-term elections scheduled for November 2. The health care Bill, apparently so humane in intent, is being "scrubbed" (to use the terminology of one Republican) by its opponents, to the joy of millions of middle Americans who see it as a means to waste more public money and entrench socialism. For the moment, this is a country vibrant with anger.

A thrashing of the Democrats in the mid-terms would not necessarily be the beginning of the end for Mr Obama: Bill Clinton was re-elected two years after the Republicans swept the House and the Senate in November 1994. But Mr Clinton was an operator in a way Mr Obama patently is not. His lack of experience, his dependence on rhetoric rather than action, his disconnection from the lives of many millions of Americans all handicap him heavily. It is not about whose advice he is taking: it is about him grasping what is wrong with America, and finding the will to put it right. That wasted first year, however, is another boulder hanging from his neck: what is wrong needs time to put right. The country's multi-trillion dollar debt is barely being addressed; and a country engaged in costly foreign wars has a President who seems obsessed with anything but foreign policy – as a disregarded Britain is beginning to realise.

There are lessons from the stumbling of Mr Obama for our own country as we approach a general election. Vacuous promises of change are hostages to fortune if they cannot be delivered upon to improve the living conditions of a people. The slickness of campaigning that comes from a combination of heavy funding and public relations expertise does not inevitably translate into an ability to govern. There is no point a nation's having the audacity of hope unless it also has the sophistication and the will to turn it into action. As things stand, Barack Obama and America under his leadership do not.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7...

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Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs

Roarman — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:42:41 -0800

Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.

Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.

Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives - potentially for years to come.

Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.

Here in Southern California, Jean Eisen has been without work since she lost her job selling beauty salon equipment more than two years ago. In the several months she has endured with neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, she has relied on local food banks for her groceries.

She has learned to live without the prescription medications she is supposed to take for high blood pressure and cholesterol. She has become effusively religious - an unexpected turn for this onetime standup comic with X-rated material - finding in Christianity her only form of health insurance.

“I pray for healing,” says Ms. Eisen, 57. “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got to go with what you know.”

Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

Men have suffered the largest numbers of job losses in this recession. But Ms. Eisen has the unfortunate distinction of being among a group - women from 45 to 64 years of age - whose long-term unemployment rate has grown rapidly.

In 1983, after a deep recession, women in that range made up only 7 percent of those who had been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. Last year, they made up 14 percent.

Twice, Ms. Eisen exhausted her unemployment benefits before her check was restored by a federal extension. Last week, her check ran out again. She and her husband now settle their bills with only his $1,595 monthly disability check. The rent on their apartment is $1,380.

“We’re looking at the very real possibility of being homeless,” she said.

Every downturn pushes some people out of the middle class before the economy resumes expanding. Most recover. Many prosper. But some economists worry that this time could be different. An unusual constellation of forces - some embedded in the modern-day economy, others unique to this wrenching recession - might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives.

Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.

Some labor experts note that severe economic downturns are generally followed by powerful expansions, suggesting that aggressive hiring will soon resume. But doubts remain about whether such hiring can last long enough to absorb anywhere close to the millions of unemployed.

A New Scarcity of Jobs

Some labor experts say the basic functioning of the American economy has changed in ways that make jobs scarce - particularly for older, less-educated people like Ms. Eisen, who has only a high school diploma.

Large companies are increasingly owned by institutional investors who crave swift profits, a feat often achieved by cutting payroll. The declining influence of unions has made it easier for employers to shift work to part-time and temporary employees. Factory work and even white-collar jobs have moved in recent years to low-cost countries in Asia and Latin America. Automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000 - the sort of jobs that once provided lower-skilled workers with middle-class paychecks.

“American business is about maximizing shareholder value,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.”

During periods of American economic expansion in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the number of private-sector jobs increased about 3.5 percent a year, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, a research firm. During expansions in the 1980s and ’90s, jobs grew just 2.4 percent annually. And during the last decade, job growth fell to 0.9 percent annually.

“The pace of job growth has been getting weaker in each expansion,” Mr. Achuthan said. “There is no indication that this pattern is about to change.”

Before 1990, it took an average of 21 months for the economy to regain the jobs shed during a recession, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the National Employment Law Project and the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research group in Washington.

After the recessions in 1990 and in 2001, 31 and 46 months passed before employment returned to its previous peaks. The economy was growing, but companies remained conservative in their hiring.

Some 34 million people were hired into new and existing private-sector jobs in 2000, at the tail end of an expansion, according to Labor Department data. A year later, in the midst of recession, hiring had fallen off to 31.6 million. And as late as 2003, with the economy again growing, hiring in the private sector continued to slip, to 29.8 million.

It was a jobless recovery: Business was picking up, but it simply did not translate into more work. This time, hiring may be especially subdued, labor economists say.

Traditionally, three sectors have led the way out of recession: automobiles, home building and banking. But auto companies have been shrinking because strapped households have less buying power. Home building is limited by fears about a glut of foreclosed properties. Banking is expanding, but this seems largely a function of government support that is being withdrawn.

At the same time, the continued bite of the financial crisis has crimped the flow of money to small businesses and new ventures, which tend to be major sources of new jobs.

All of which helps explain why Ms. Eisen - who has never before struggled to find work - feels a familiar pain each time she scans job listings on her computer: There are positions in health care, most requiring experience she lacks. Office jobs demand familiarity with software she has never used. Jobs at fast food restaurants are mostly secured by young people and immigrants.

If, as Mr. Sinai expects, the economy again expands without adding many jobs, millions of people like Ms. Eisen will be dependent on an unemployment insurance already being severely tested.

“The system was ill prepared for the reality of long-term unemployment,” said Maurice Emsellem, a policy director for the National Employment Law Project. “Now, you add a severe recession, and you have created a crisis of historic proportions.”

Fewer Protections

Some poverty experts say the broader social safety net is not up to cushioning the impact of the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Social services are less extensive than during the last period of double-digit unemployment, in the early 1980s.

On average, only two-thirds of unemployed people received state-provided unemployment checks last year, according to the Labor Department. The rest either exhausted their benefits, fell short of requirements or did not apply.

“You have very large sets of people who have no social protections,” said Randy Albelda, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. “They are landing in this netherworld.”

When Ms. Eisen and her husband, Jeff, applied for food stamps, they were turned away for having too much monthly income. The cutoff was $1,570 a month - $25 less than her husband’s disability check.

Reforms in the mid-1990s imposed time limits on cash assistance for poor single mothers, a change predicated on the assumption that women would trade welfare checks for paychecks.

Yet as jobs have become harder to get, so has welfare: as of 2006, 44 states cut off anyone with a household income totaling 75 percent of the poverty level - then limited to $1,383 a month for a family of three - according to an analysis by Ms. Albelda.

“We have a work-based safety net without any work,” said Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “People with more education and skills will probably figure something out once the economy picks up. It’s the ones with less education and skills: that’s the new poor.”

Here in Orange County, the expanse of suburbia stretching south from Los Angeles, long-term unemployment reaches even those who once had six-figure salaries. A center of the national mortgage industry, the area prospered in the real estate boom and suffered with the bust.

Until she was laid off two years ago, Janine Booth, 41, brought home roughly $10,000 a month in commissions from her job selling electronics to retailers. A single mother of three, she has been living lately on $2,000 a month in child support and about $450 a week in unemployment insurance - a stream of checks that ran out last week.

For Ms. Booth, work has been a constant since her teenage years, when she cleaned houses under pressure from her mother to earn pocket money. Today, Ms. Booth pays her $1,500 monthly mortgage with help from her mother, who is herself living off savings after being laid off.

“I don’t want to take money from her,” Ms. Booth said. “I just want to find a job.”

Ms. Booth, with a résumé full of well-paid sales jobs, seems the sort of person who would have little difficulty getting work. Yet two years of looking have yielded little but anxiety.

She sends out dozens of résumés a week and rarely hears back. She responds to online ads, only to learn they are seeking operators for telephone sex lines or people willing to send mysterious packages from their homes.

She spends weekdays in a classroom in Anaheim, in a state-financed training program that is supposed to land her a job in medical administration. Even if she does find a job, she will be lucky if it pays $15 an hour.

“What is going to happen?” she asked plaintively. “I worry about my kids. I just don’t want them to think I’m a failure.”

On a recent weekend, she was running errands with her 18-year-old son when they stopped at an A.T.M. and he saw her checking account balance: $50.

“He says, ‘Is that all you have?’ ” she recalled. “ ‘Are we going to be O.K.?’ ”

Yes, she replied - and not only for his benefit.

“I have to keep telling myself it’s going to be O.K.,” she said. “Otherwise, I’d go into a deep depression.”

Last week, she made up fliers advertising her eagerness to clean houses - the same activity that provided her with spending money in high school, and now the only way she sees fit to provide for her kids. She plans to place the fliers on porches in some other neighborhood.

“I don’t want to clean my neighbors’ houses,” she said. “I know I’m going to come out of this. There’s no way I’m going to be homeless and poverty-stricken. But I am scared. I have a lot of sleepless nights.”

For the Eisens, poverty is already here. In the two years Ms. Eisen has been without work, they have exhausted their savings of about $24,000. Their credit card balances have grown to $15,000.

“I don’t know how we’re still indoors,” she said.

Her 1994 Dodge Caravan broke down in January, leaving her to ask for rides to an employment center.

She does not have the money to move to a cheaper apartment.

“You have to have money for first and last month’s rent, and to open utility accounts,” she said.

What she has is personality and presence - two traits that used to seem enough. She narrates her life in a stream of self-deprecating wisecracks, her punch lines tinged with desperation.

“See that,” she said, spotting a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Standing on a sidewalk, he waved at passing cars with a sign advertising a tax preparation business. “That will be me next week. Do you think this guy ever thought he’d be doing this?”

And yet, she would gladly do this. She would do nearly anything.

“There are no bad jobs now,” she says. “Any job is a good job.”

She has applied everywhere she can think of - at offices, at gas stations. Nothing.

“I’m being seen as a person who is no longer viable,” she said. “I’m chalking it up to my age and my weight. Blame it on your most prominent insecurity.”

Two Incomes, Then None

Ms. Eisen grew up poor, in Flatbush in Brooklyn. Her father was in maintenance. Her mother worked part time at a company that made window blinds.

She married Jeff when she was 19, and they soon moved to California, where he had grown up. He worked in sales for a chemical company. They rented an apartment in Buena Park, a growing spread of houses filling out former orange groves. She stayed home and took care of their daughter.

“I never asked him how much he earned,” Ms. Eisen said. “I was of the mentality that the husband took care of everything. But we never wanted.”

By the early 1980s, gas and rent strained their finances. So she took a job as a quality assurance clerk at a factory that made aircraft parts. It paid $13.50 an hour and had health insurance.

When the company moved to Mexico in the early 1990s, Ms. Eisen quickly found a job at a travel agency. When online booking killed that business, she got the job at the beauty salon equipment company. It paid $13.25 an hour, with an annual bonus - enough for presents under the Christmas tree.

But six years ago, her husband took a fall at work and then succumbed to various ailments - diabetes, liver disease, high blood pressure - leaving him confined to the couch. Not until 2008 did he secure his disability check.

And now they find themselves in this desert of joblessness, her paycheck replaced by a $702 unemployment check every other week. She received 14 weeks of benefits after she lost her job, and then a seven-week extension.

For most of October through December 2008, she received nothing, as she waited for another extension. The checks came again, then ran out in September 2009. They were restored by an extension right before Christmas.

Their daughter has back problems and is living on disability checks, making the church their ultimate safety net.

“I never thought I’d be in the position where I had to go to a food bank,” Ms. Eisen said. But there she is, standing in the parking lot of the Calvary Chapel church, chatting with a half-dozen women, all waiting to enter the Bread of Life Food Pantry.

When her name is called, she steps into a windowless alcove, where a smiling woman hands her three bags of groceries: carrots, potatoes, bread, cheese and a hunk of frozen meat.

“Haven’t we got a lot to be thankful for?” Ms. Eisen asks.

For one thing, no pinto beans.

“I’ve got 10 bags of pinto beans,” she says. “And I have no clue how to cook a pinto bean.”

Local job listings are just as mysterious. On a bulletin board at the county-financed ProPath Business and Career Services Center, many are written in jargon hinting of accounting or computers.

“Nothing I’m qualified for,” Ms. Eisen says. “When you can’t define what it is, that’s a pretty good indication.”

Her counselor has a couple of possibilities - a cashier at a supermarket and a night desk job at a motel.

“I’ll e-mail them,” Ms. Eisen promises. “I’ll tell them what a shining example of humanity I am.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/economy/21unemployed.html?sq=... New Poor&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all

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Michelle Obama's anti-obesity initiative generates a childish pushback

liliblu — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:35:06 -0800

By Kevin Huffman
Saturday, February 20, 2010

Watching Shaun White drop into the halfpipe at the Vancouver Games, it's easy to forget that America is the most sedentary nation on Earth. The Daily Beast this week released the results of the Couch Potato Olympics, analyzing statistics for 24 industrialized nations in calories consumed, television watched, aversion to playing sports (yes, there's data on that) and Internet use. Congratulations, compatriots: We took home the gold!

And while Americans are most likely to celebrate White's Double McTwist 1260 with a double quarter-pounder with cheese, we're also excellent candidates for the Olympic committee's promotion: "Follow us on Twitter and you might win a cool video game!"
In this context, you'd think it would be hard to complain about Michelle Obama's childhood obesity campaign. The "Let's Move" initiative aims to improve access to healthful food and to encourage exercise. It's a good project for the first lady. She has the bully pulpit to make a difference, and it allows her to show off her guns on a regular basis -- kapow!
But if there is anything that upsets right-wingers more than Michelle Obama, it's people messing with our right to live the fat life. Combine the two, and it's on.
Michelle Malkin accused the first lady of "playing the national security card" by pointing out that one-third of our military's potential recruits are too fat and out of shape to qualify. (You can imagine how appalled Malkin must have been, since Republicans are so cautious with the national security card.)
Glenn Beck weighed in, too: "This is torn from the pages of the progressive playbook. You're too stupid. You need the government to fix your life . . . They're coming and they are slowly but surely taking away your freedom under the guise of helping you."
Sorry, guys, but someone needs to spell it out: Our kids don't eat well, they don't exercise and, just like their parents, they're getting fat.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a deeply troubling digital map showing the fattening of America over the past 25 years. You can watch the country chunk up state by state as the map flashes annually from 1985 to the present. Looking at the map, I felt the same foreboding sense I had watching tech stocks 10 years ago and housing prices five years ago. This is a human bubble. It can't be sustained. And when it pops, it's going to be ugly. We're quite literally whistling past the graveyard.
The first lady's initiative isn't going to wash away past excesses, but she's shining a spotlight on a critical issue and taking some important steps. As a parent of school-age children, I can join the amen chorus when Obama calls for more nutritious school meals, comprehensible food labels, helpful tips from pediatricians and changing the 1950s-era presidential physical fitness standards. (As long as they don't give up the rope climb. How many times in life have we all been grateful for the hard-earned lessons of the rope climb?)
Still, it's worth pausing to feel just a little sad that this is where we are as a country. This is least-common-denominator stuff, and we should all be disturbed that we need a White House initiative for basic health habits, that our aspiration is to do the obvious. Put down the Doritos. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Get off the couch. America may not be able to create "green" jobs or provide health insurance to poor people, but doggone it, we can make sure we don't have to roll our kids to school.
Beck's response typifies the childlike populist pushback to any effort to tell an unfortunate truth, particularly if resolving the problem involves a modicum of discomfort. We don't want to hear about global warming, especially if we have to give up the super-sized SUV. We don't want to hear about health-care costs -- we should be able to gorge on the diminishing returns of endless medical tests. And if the first lady wants us to eat more healthful food and hit the gym, she should mind her own beeswax. We pass on the costs and the girth to our kids, and hope it will somehow all just work out.
We're a week into the Olympics and the United States is hanging tough at the top of the medal standings. Our best athletes are clutch, and a little global butt-kicking is good for the national soul. Even better, though, would be a sustained commitment to building a healthier country, a nation with a little less watching and a little more doing.
The writer won The Post's "America's Next Great Pundit" contest.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021902169.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

U.S. Obesity Trends

Trends by State 1985–2008

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html
First lady Michelle Obama: 'Let's move' and work on childhood obesity problem
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/09/AR2010020900791.html

Michelle Obama plays the “national security” card

By Michelle Malkin http://michellemalkin.com/2010/02/10/michelle-obama-plays-the-national-security-card/

Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" Speech

Yogaforlife — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:40:46 -0800

Good evening.

This is a special night for me. Exactly 3 years ago, on July 15, 1976, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for President of the United States. I promised you a President who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain, and who shares your dreams and who draws his strength and his wisdom from you.

During the past 3 years I've spoken to you on many occasions about national concerns, the energy crisis, reorganizing the Government, our Nation's economy, and issues of war and especially peace. But over those years the subjects of the speeches, the talks, and the press conferences have become increasingly narrow, focused more and more on what the isolated world of Washington thinks is important. Gradually, you've heard more and more about what the Government thinks or what the Government should be doing and less and less about our Nation's hopes, our dreams, and our vision of the future.

Ten days ago I had planned to speak to you again about a very important subject -- energy. For the fifth time I would have described the urgency of the problem and laid out a series of legislative recommendations to the Congress. But as I was preparing to speak, I began to ask myself the same question that I now know has been troubling many of you. Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?

It's clear that the true problems of our Nation are much deeper -- deeper than gasoline lines of energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession. And I realize more than ever that as President I need your help. So, I decided to reach out and listen to the voices of America.

I invited to Camp David people from almost every segment of our society business and labor, teachers and preachers, Governors, mayors, and private citizens. And then I left Camp David to listen to other Americans, men and women like you. It has been an extraordinary 10 days, and I want to share with you what I've heard. First of all, I got a lot of personal advice. Let me quote a few of the typical comments that I wrote down.

This from a southern Governor: "Mr. President, you are not leading this Nation -- you're just managing the Government."

"You don't see the people enough any more."

"Some of your Cabinet members don't seem loyal. There is not enough discipline among your disciples."

"Don't talk to us about politics or the mechanics of government, but about an understanding of our common good."

"Mr. President, we're in trouble. Talk to us about blood and sweat and tears."

"If you lead, Mr. President, we will follow."

Many people talked about themselves and about the condition of our Nation. This from a young woman in Pennsylvania: "I feel so far from government. I feel like ordinary people are excluded from political power."

And this from a young Chicano: "Some of us have suffered from recession all our lives."

"Some people have wasted energy, but others haven't had anything to waste."

And this from a religious leader: "No material shortage can touch the important things like God's love for us or our love for one another."

And I like this one particularly from a black woman who happens to be the mayor of a small Mississippi town: "The big-shots are not the only ones who are important. Remember, you can't sell anything on Wall Street unless someone digs it up somewhere else first."

This kind of summarized a lot of other statements: "Mr. President, we are confronted with a moral and a spiritual crisis."

Several of our discussions were on energy, and I have a notebook full of comments and advice. I'll read just a few.

"We can't go on consuming 40 percent more energy than we produce. When we import oil we are also importing inflation plus unemployment."

"We've got to use what we have. The Middle East has only 5 percent of the world's energy, but the United States has 24 percent."

And this is one of the most vivid statements: "Our neck is stretched over the fence and OPEC has a knife."

"There will be other cartels and other shortages. American wisdom and courage right now can set a path to follow in the future."

This was a good one: "Be bold, Mr. President. We may make mistakes, but we are ready to experiment."

And this one from a labor leader got to the heart of it: "The real issue is freedom. We must deal with the energy problem on a war footing."

And the last that I'll read: "When we enter the moral equivalent of war, Mr. President, don't issue us BB guns."

These 10 days confirmed my belief in the decency and the strength and the wisdom of the American people, but it also bore out some of my longstanding concerns about our Nation's underlying problems.

I know, of course, being President, that government actions and legislation can be very important. That's why I've worked hard to put my campaign promises into law -- and I have to admit, with just mixed success. But after listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our Nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.

Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next 5 years will be worse than the past 5 years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Water gate.

We remember when the phrase "sound as a dollar" was an expression of absolute dependability, until 10 years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our Nation's resources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.

These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed.

Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal Government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our Nation's life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our Government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don't like, and neither do I. What can we do?

First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this Nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.

One of the visitors to Camp David last week put it this way: "We've got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from the White House, but from every house in America."

We know the strength of America. We are strong. We can regain our unity. We can regain our confidence. We are the heirs of generations who survived threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now. Our fathers and mothers were strong men and women who shaped a new society during the Great Depression, who fought world wars, and who carved out a new charter of peace for the world.

We ourselves and the same Americans who just 10 years ago put a man on the Moon. We are the generation that dedicated our society to the pursuit of human rights and equality. And we are the generation that will win the war on the energy problem and in that process rebuild the unity and confidence of America.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our Nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.

Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this Nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our Nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.

In little more than two decades we've gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous tool on our economy and our people. This is the direct cause of the long lines which have made millions of you spend aggravating hours waiting for gasoline. It's a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our Nation.

The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our Nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.

What I have to say to you now about energy is simple and vitally important.

Point one: I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this Nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980's, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade -- a saving of over 4 1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day.

Point two: To ensure that we meet these targets, I will use my Presidential authority to set import quotas. I'm announcing tonight that for 1979 and 1980, I will forbid the entry into this country of one drop of foreign oil more than these goals allow. These quotas will ensure a reduction in imports even below the ambitious levels we set at the recent Tokyo summit.

Point three: To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our Nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the Sun.

I propose the creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace 2 1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation will issue up to $5 billion in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so that average Americans can invest directly in America's energy security.

Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II, so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this Nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.

These efforts will cost money, a lot of money, and that is why Congress must enact the windfall profits tax without delay. It will be money well spent. Unlike the billions of dollars that we ship to foreign countries to pay for foreign oil, these funds will be paid by Americans to Americans. These funds will go to fight, not to increase, inflation and unemployment.

Point four: I'm asking Congress to mandate, to require as a matter of law, that our Nation's utility companies cut their massive use of oil by 50 percent within the next decade and switch to other fuels, especially coal, our most abundant energy source.

Point five: To make absolutely certain that nothing stands in the way of achieving these goals, I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the redtape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects.

We will protect our environment. But when this Nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

Point six: I'm proposing a bold conservation program to involve every State, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle. This effort will permit you to build conservation into your homes and your lives at a cost you can afford.

I ask Congress to give me authority for mandatory conservation and for standby gasoline rationing. To further conserve energy, I'm proposing tonight an extra $10 billion over the next decade to strengthen our public transportation systems. And I'm asking you for your good and for your Nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense -- I tell you it is an act of patriotism.

Our Nation must be fair to the poorest among us, so we will increase aid to needy Americans to cope with rising energy prices. We often think of conservation only in terms of sacrifice. In fact, it is the most painless and immediate way of rebuilding our Nation's strength. Every gallon of oil each one of us saves is a new form of production. It gives us more freedom, more confidence, that much more control over our own lives.

So, the solution of our energy crisis can also help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country. It can rekindle our sense of unity, our confidence in the future, and give our Nation and all of us individually a new sense of purpose.

You know we can do it. We have the natural resources. We have more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias. We have more coal than any nation on Earth. We have the world's highest level of technology. We have the most skilled work force, with innovative genius, and I firmly believe that we have the national will to win this war.

I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our Nation's problems, when the truth is that the only way out is an all-out effort. What I do promise you is that I will lead our fight, and I will enforce fairness in our struggle, and I will ensure honesty. And above all, I will act.

We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no short-term solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.

Twelve hours from now I will speak again in Kansas City, to expand and to explain further our energy program. Just as the search for solutions to our energy shortages has now led us to a new awareness of our Nation's deeper problems, so our willingness to work for those solutions in energy can strengthen us to attack those deeper problems.

I will continue to travel this country, to hear the people of America. You can help me to develop a national agenda for the 1980's. I will listen and I will act. We will act together. These were the promises I made 3 years ago, and I intend to keep them.

Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science. But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources -- America's people, America's values, and America's confidence.

I have seen the strength of America in the inexhaustible resources of our people. In the days to come, let us renew that strength in the struggle for an energy-secure nation.

In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country. With God's help and for the sake of our Nation, it is time for us to join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.

Thank you and good night.

Source:

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Jimmy_Carter%27s_%22malaise_speech%22

More Miranda Idiocy

Grandpa — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:33:07 -0800

More Miranda Idiocy

Rationalizations by Eric Holder about the Miranda rights of suspected terrorists lack seriousness.

by Stuart Taylor Jr.
Saturday, Feb. 13, 2010

Suppose that your child is being held in a secret location by kidnappers who threaten to kill her within two hours unless they're paid a ransom of $100,000 that you can't raise. Suppose further that the FBI has just captured one of the kidnappers.
Would you want the agents to say this? "You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you desire an attorney and cannot afford one, an attorney will be obtained for you before police questioning."
And would you want them to stop asking questions the second the suspect asks for a lawyer?

Neither the Fifth Amendment nor Miranda forbids aggressive interrogation to protect public safety.

Now imagine a more realistic scenario, along the lines of Al Qaeda's aborted 1995 "Bojinka" plot: After learning that Qaeda terrorists with virtually undetectable bombs are planning to blow up 12 airliners carrying almost 4,000 passengers very soon, the FBI captures one of them. Would you want him Mirandized?
The questions answer themselves.
Reasonable people disagree about how much coercion interrogators should use to extract potentially lifesaving information from terrorists. (None at all, President Obama unwisely ordered soon after taking office.)
But no reasonable person could doubt that starting out with "you have the right to remain silent" is not the way to save lives.
Yet this is essentially the policy into which the Obama administration has locked itself by insisting that it did the right thing when it read Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas Day bomber, his Miranda rights after only 50 minutes of questioning and a hospital visit.
I return to this subject because the rationalizations by Attorney General Eric Holder and other administration apologists have been so breathtakingly bereft of seriousness about the need for aggressive interrogation to protect our country.
Abdulmutallab might have been the first of a dozen Christmas Day bombers seeking to perfect the Bojinka plot, for all Holder and his colleagues knew at the time. It was sheer luck that this was not the case.
And the decision to read Abdulmutallab his rights, bring him a lawyer, and stop asking questions may yet get Americans murdered by his co-conspirators in Yemen -- who might have been located and captured or killed but for his five weeks of post-Miranda silence.
In any event, the important question for policy makers now is not how Mirandizing Abdulmutallab worked out; it is what the cost of Mirandizing such terrorist suspects in the future might be.
This is not to suggest that it is certain or even probable that aggressive interrogation in the hours and days after Abdulmutallab's attempt would have extracted valuable intelligence. He might well have been defiant or silent in any event. So deciding whether to read Miranda warnings to such suspects might be a close call if either the law or "the fundamental principles on which our nation was founded," in Holder's words, argued for doing so.
But that's not the case. The fundamental principle underlying Miranda is the Fifth Amendment right of every person not to be "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." And "all the Fifth Amendment forbids is the introduction of coerced statements at trial," as the late, liberal Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote in a 1984 opinion, joined by Justices William Brennan and John Paul Stevens.
In other words, neither the Fifth Amendment nor Miranda forbids aggressive interrogation to protect public safety without Miranda warnings.
The Holder-Obama policy of promptly reading terrorist suspects their Miranda rights comes close to guaranteeing that no timely intelligence will ever be extracted from any of them. Abdulmutallab's supposed disclosures starting five weeks after his Miranda warnings were far from timely.
Let's review some of the official rationalizations for this policy.
• Especially rich was the account to reporters by an anonymous White House background briefer of a January 6 National Security Council meeting at which Obama, Holder, and other top officials reaffirmed that Abdulmutallab should not be interrogated as an enemy combatant. The discussion included an undisclosed participant's comment that "putting him in front of somebody with a military uniform would have made him even more opposed to any type of cooperation."
Wow. Did it not occur to any of our protectors that you don't need a military uniform to interrogate a suspect without first Mirandizing him? That military interrogators don't have to wear uniforms? That holding a suspect as an enemy combatant would neither require military custody nor preclude subsequent prosecution in a civilian court?
• The most plausible defense of the handling of Abdulmutallab is that the Bush administration had done the same with would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid in December 2001, and it had no clear plan to handle the next Reid any differently.
That mitigates the Obama team's mishandling of Abdulmutallab -- but not its decision to mishandle future cases in the same way. It's also pretty strange to hear the Obama administration saying, in effect, "We're OK because we're doing what the Bushies did."
What would the Bushies have done had Abdulmutallab appeared on their watch? Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey told me in an interview that the CIA and national intelligence directors "and ultimately the president would have been in on the decision in addition to me"; and that "I like to think the default setting would have been toward gathering intelligence rather than worrying about whether a man who did his crime in front of 285 witnesses could be convicted without using his confession."
• Holder claimed in a February 3 letter to Senate Republicans that it is "far from clear" that the government has the legal authority to hold a suspected enemy combatant captured in the United States without access to an attorney. He said that Mukasey, in his previous role as a U.S. District judge, had ruled that a detainee named Jose Padilla "must be allowed to meet with his lawyer," and that a federal Appeals Court in New York had later found the military detention of Padilla to be unlawful.
Holder misleadingly omitted critical facts. First, Padilla was a U.S. citizen. Second, Mukasey's ruling did not involve Padilla's initial interrogation but rather his right -- after more than eight months in military detention -- to have a lawyer's help in petitioning for release. Third, the Supreme Court reversed the Appeals Court ruling for Padilla on jurisdictional grounds in 2004. Fourth, the justices held the same day, in the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, that a U.S. citizen captured abroad and linked to "forces hostile to the United States" can be held in this country without charges as an enemy combatant. Fifth, another federal Appeals Court, in Richmond, Va., later upheld the military detention of Padilla in the U.S. and also (as Holder noted in passing) of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a suspected Qaeda agent from Qatar who was arrested in Peoria, Ill.
The votes in these cases were close, and it's fair to say that the law on long-term military detention of suspected enemy combatants captured in the United States is not settled. But the weight of legal precedent is that the Obama administration had ample authority to subject Abdulmutallab to days or even weeks of incommunicado interrogation. It chose to Mirandize him instead.
• Holder argued in the same letter that promptly giving a terrorist suspect a lawyer would not "compromise our ability to obtain information needed to detect and prevent future attacks." It is difficult to reconcile that opinion with his statement in a 2002 CNN interview that it would be "hard to interrogate" John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, "now that he has a lawyer and now that he is here in the United States."
Holder's 2002 statement also resonates with a subsequent boast by Michael Ratner, a lawyer active in coordinating representation of Guantanamo detainees, that the government "can't run an interrogation ... with [defense] attorneys present."
• The Holder Justice Department made a powerful argument for prolonged incommunicado interrogation in a December 18 brief filed by Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. Ahmed Ghailani, charged in Al Qaeda's 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, had claimed that his detention at a secret CIA interrogation site had violated his speedy-trial rights. Responded Bharara: "The interest in national security plainly justified holding [him] as an enemy combatant [and] interrogating him" without Miranda warnings or lawyers.
Ghailani's disclosures "would have been substantially less useful to the United States," Bharara added, had the government made it obvious that he was cooperating.
What does that say of the administration's public boasts last week that Abdulmutallab was cooperating?
This is not to deny that bypassing Miranda would leave unresolved how much evidence about a suspect should be required to justify incommunicado detention and interrogation; how harshly he should be interrogated; and for how long.
Those are hard questions. The easy one is whether Obama's policy of Mirandizing terrorist suspects can be squared with Obama's exhortation in his State of the Union address: "Let's try common sense." It cannot be.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/or_20100213_5175.php

50 Cheap Date Ideas

PinkNC — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:17:05 -0800

Discount Dating

A lighter wallet is no excuse to turn date night into a luxury. Get out of your sweatpants, put down the cold pizza, and check out these 51 budget-friendly date ideas that will get you off the couch and into each other's pants.

Get on thin ice. Depending on the weather, head to an indoor or outdoor ice-skating rink - it's the perfect excuse to hold hands, "accidentally" fall on top of each other, and grab a cup of hot chocolate and cozy up to each other to keep warm.

Skip the pricey wine bar and grab a few beers at your local dive bar. Make sure you pick a place with a pool table or dartboard set up, and challenge him to a few games. Loser owes the winner a song on the jukebox.

He may hate to shop, but he'll end up thanking you if you drag him to a flea market. There's something for everyone and plenty of things you never knew existed - you might even discover he has a hobby or weird collection you didn't know about!

Settle in for a night of pampering: No pricey spa required. Use your empty wallets as an excuse to stay in - and up - all night. Run a bubble bath and then treat each other to full-body massages. Sleep in the next day.

Get an adrenaline rush at the roller-skating rink. As long as you don't mind being the oldest people there who aren't chaperoning their children, it's a great way to have fun and let loose with each other. Top it off with a bowl of ice cream when you get home.

Play house: Dress up in your most serious grownup outfit and leave your tiny apartment to visit some open houses. Spend the day arguing over where you would put the love seat, discussing the difference between eggshell and ecru paint, and giggling over strangers' hideous decorating choices.

Does he drive you up a wall sometimes? He probably feels the same way about you, so put on your sneakers and head to an indoor rock-climbing gym. Challenge him to a race to the top and relieve sore muscles with a hot shower together afterward. Just try not to gloat too much about beating him.

Celebrate the first snow of winter with a day of sledding. Pick a hilly spot in your town and use garbage can lids as makeshift sleds. Wear a bike helmet to up the dorky fun factor, and celebrate living through the experience with a cup of hot cocoa.

Spend the day picking fruit at a local farm, either one-on-one or with a few couples you know - the more the merrier. Once you've picked all the apples you can carry back to the car, get creative in the kitchen and think up some recipes with the fruit you picked. Judge each other's creations, Top Chef style.

Plan a trip. You might need to save up for awhile, but that doesn't mean you can't daydream. Plan your dream vacation with each other - it might be the incentive you need to start putting your loose change in the piggy bank.

Challenge your guy to a little friendly competition and surprise him by taking him to a rifle range. After each round, compare your targets - loser buys the next round of bullets; winner gets gloating privileges.

Spice up your movie-night routine by finding a drive-in movie theater. Stop at the supermarket on your way to load up on your favorite snacks, and bring blankets and pillows to make the car extra cozy. Let him pick the movie - you'll get points for being easygoing, even though you know you'll probably miss most of the movie.

The easiest way to booze it up on the cheap? Take a tour of a winery or brewery, and pick up some wine facts for your next dinner party while getting tipsy.

Dying to see a musical or play but can't afford the tickets? Call around to see if you can buy tickets to the dress rehearsal instead - you'll pay a fraction of the price for the same experience.

Wherever you live, chances are there are local bands dying for an audience. Check out MySpace for bands in your area and go to a show. Alternate with your guy on who gets to pick the band so that you both get a chance to enjoy your favorite music genres, and save cash on booze by bringing a flask.

Head to the bookstore and walk through the aisles together, showing each other your favorite books, bonding over the books you both hated, and flipping through a Kama Sutra book for ideas for later.

Bowl him over at the bowling alley. Psych him out by reminding him of how many gross people wore his shoes before him, and don't forget to program his sugary-sweet nickname ("Muffin Face") onto the computerized scoreboard instead of his real name.

Show him your rugged side and build something together. Ask him to help you build something like a coffee table or dresser for your place - he'll be psyched that you asked him, just as long as you can bite your tongue when the table he puts together falls apart the moment you set your cup of coffee down.

Appeal to his inner child (it shouldn't be too hard to tap into) and buy tickets for a carnival. Embrace the cheesiness - share cotton candy, let him try to win you a prize, and ride the Ferris wheel until you get nauseous. It's a great way to get to know each other if you've just started dating and will serve as a reminder of how much fun you can have together if you've been dating for awhile.

Keep up on the specials. For a break on your dinner bill, check out sites like Restaurant.com for the restaurant deals in your area. And check out the websites of your favorite bars - they might have drink specials on certain nights, like a free pizza with every drink.

Ask him about his fantasy cars and he'll probably talk your ear off. Head over to a local car dealership and test-drive the most expensive car they'll let you take out of the parking lot. Take turns at the wheel but resist the urge to nitpick each other's driving skills.

Indulge your sweet tooth with your sweetie - visit a chocolate or cookie factory. Do a quick Google search to see if there are any in your area and give one a call to see if it does tours. If it only does group tours, make it a group date and invite a few other couples.

Get spooked at a haunted house. Check out Hauntedhouse.com for listings in your state. Start off the night by watching a scary movie before you go, and then try not to laugh when he launches a foot into the air at every corner.

Get out those matching aprons and fire up the skillet for a night of cooking - for both of you. Learn how to cook each other's favorite meal and then do it together. Whether you end up with a delicious steak and tuna casserole for two or speed-dialing for Chinese takeout, you're guaranteed to enjoy the process.

Forget eating dinner parked in front of a Mad Men marathon until you and your boyfriend are tired of looking at each other. Invite another couple over that you don't know well for a potluck dinner. Ask them to bring the appetizer and dessert, and work on the main course with your guy. At least one of the dishes should come out edible, and you can bond with your new friends over your shared culinary failure.

Tap into your animal instincts by visiting a petting zoo. Bring some bread to feed the animals and spend a few hours debating him on why getting a pet monkey is a bad idea. When you get home, jump in the shower with him to scrub off the zoo smell.

Play 20 Questions. Whether you've been together for three weeks or three years, there are probably things you don't know about each other. Each of you should write down 20 questions about the other - make sure they're open-ended so you don't get boring one-word answers - and fire away. Take turns answering the questions and get to know each other a little better than you already do.

Take a pottery class together and decorate your apartment in misshapen vases and funky-looking coffee mugs. Resist the urge to make your guy recreate the scene from Ghost every time you walk into class.

Have pretentious conversations about art at a local show. You'll find them going on all year at community centers, schools, and libraries - you might even find a great piece of art to add to your home.

Take a hike. Spend the day hiking and taking pictures together. When you're ready to recover, add some extra romance to the evening - lie across the hood of the car and look at the stars.

If you're tired of a quiet dinner at home disintegrating into chips and dip on the couch with no conversation between the two of you except for requests to change the channel, grab a blanket and some food and have an indoor picnic. The best part of staying inside? No ants in your food - plus, you're free to get busy right then and there.

Take a class together. Sign up to learn something neither of you knows how to do. Community schools generally offer a lot of options for classes you can take in eight-week sessions, from cooking to karate.

Put on your walking shoes and head to the museum. Almost all museums have one day a week where you can get in for free or for a small suggested donation. Pick the exhibits you each want to see beforehand, and spend some time at each of them together.

Celebrate something special with a trip to a bed and breakfast. A one-night stay in the colder months won't break the bank, so you can put that extra cash toward a room with a hot tub or breakfast in bed. If you're in for a long car ride, grab a book on tape from the local library.

Look into the future: Go together for a psychic reading. Practice your poker faces and spend the rest of the night talking about how funny - or eerily accurate - the reading was.

Score major points and head to a baseball game with your guy. Tickets can be as cheap as $5 a person, but bring extra cash for some beer, hot dogs, and a giant foam finger.

Check the theater offerings at local colleges and high schools. Schools usually have a spring and a fall show, and it's a great way to see a version of your favorite plays and musicals for a fraction of the cost.

One man's junk is another couple's treasure. Grab your guy and see what you can dig up at local garage sales. Up your chances of scoring something great by going to the ritziest neighborhood in your area.

Rent bikes - a tandem one, if you're adventurous - and go for a long ride through the park. Pack a few sandwiches and plenty of water for a picnic, or just grab hot dogs from a stand when you're ready for a break.

See the stars without braving the cold by getting tickets to the planetarium. Sneak in a thin blanket and cozy up. For extra privacy, go during off-peak times - call ahead to see when those are.

Bummed that you can't afford a weeklong vacation with your man? Put things in perspective and volunteer together for a cause you both care about. TiVo Gossip Girl and sign up to work at a soup kitchen once a week, or cuddle up with lovable cats and dogs at your local animal shelter.

Want some quiet time? Exercise your creative talents by drawing each other. All you need are two pieces of paper, some art supplies, and a bottle of wine for a quiet, romantic night in. Go as artistic or as fun as you wish.

Get physical. Get free day passes to a gym whose membership you could never afford and have him spot you. Challenge him to a fitness competition, bribe him into taking a spin class with you, and take advantage of the gym's sauna or pool, if it has one.

You can knit holiday sweaters like nobody's business. Your man is a Guitar Hero rock star. It's great to have separate hobbies, but it's also fun to share. Pick a weekend to teach each other your hobbies, and serenade him with a guitar solo while he knits you a pair of mittens.

While you're waiting for your Netflix delivery, stop at your local library and rent a few old movies. Toss a coin to see whose pick you'll watch first, and promise not to interrupt with bored sighs, eye-rolling, or snoring sound effects during each other's choices.

Travel back in time and reminisce. If you or your guy still live close to where you grew up, give each other a tour of your childhoods. Grab a camera and take pictures of your all-grown-up selves as you visit each landmark.

Can't get away for a vacation? Sightsee in your own city. If you've lived in your area for a long time, chances are you never got around to seeing a lot of the tourist attractions. So grab your guy and pretend to be tourists for a weekend. Stop at a used bookstore or look online for travel guides for your city, put together an itinerary, and don't forget to take pictures!

Grab a cup of coffee and check out a local coffee shop's open mic night. You might luck out with a great show, or you may find a mixed bag of angsty guitar solos and bad poetry - either way, you'll have something to talk (or laugh) about on the way home.

You probably live within driving distance of a college or university. Log on to the school's website and check out the scheduled events - often, schools will open large events, like lectures and panels, to the public. Check back often - your guy's favorite movie director might be appearing at a screening at the school's drama department, or you might find a panel of your favorite authors speaking to the English majors.

Share a few laughs at a comedy club amateur night. Admission usually costs two drinks per person, and you're in for a hilarious night - whether you're laughing with the comedian or at him.
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The Islam Tax

Eleuthera — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:14:13 -0800

Bill Warner, Director, Center for the Study of Political IslamJanuary 25, 2010

Look at your next airline ticket and you will find a "Security Fee". What is the Security Fee that was passed after September 11, 2001? It is an Islam tax. It is more money out of an American's pocket to pay for the privilege of living with Muslims amongst us.
It turns out that we pay an enormous amount of money for our life with Islam. Let's look at a list of expenses that we bear because of Islamic ideology. If there were no Islam we would not have the Transportation Security Administration, Homeland Security, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, all that so-called terrorist work by the FBI, rebuilding the World Trade Center and who knows what else. The Iraq war has cost about $700 billion, the Afghan war has cost about $250 billion and all of the government agencies cost in the neighborhood of tens of billions per year. We are up to at least a TRILLION dollars of our Islam tax. That little $10 Security Fee may seem small, but that is for every round trip ticket sold in the US. What will the trial in NYC for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed cost? Millions of dollars. And the hits just keep coming.
Another part of the Islam tax is the jizyah (the dhimmi tax) that we call foreign aide. We pay various Islamic governments, including Egypt, Pakistan, the so-called Palestinians and others. Why do we pay the jizyah? We want to be friends (Never mind the 12 verses in the Koran that say that Muslims are never the friends of kafirs, unbelievers).
We are bringing Muslim refugees into America where they receive more benefits than American citizens, another Islam tax.
Why did Islam attack the World Trade Towers? Because they were the World TRADE Towers, an economic target. What was the purpose? To destroy the economy of America.
The Islam tax is a trillion dollars and counting. If we did not have this tax, it would certainly ease the economic crunch we have today.
This economic squeeze is 1400 years old. Mohammed created jihad, civilizational war. His concept of war was very sophisticated and included all forms of force against kafirs. He used threats, spies, secret agents, slavery, sex, propaganda, assassinations, deception, religious attacks, and the destruction of kafir economies.
As soon as Mohammed started his jihad, he warred against the economy of the kafirs. He kept up a running attack on the trade caravans of Mecca. When he attacked one tribe of Jews in Medina, he destroyed their economic base-their date palm plantations. This act was against the Arab customs of war, but Allah said it was a good thing. When he attacked Taif, he destroyed their plantations as well. Economic war.
One of his last acts was to attack the Christians north of Medina. Once he had crushed them, he made them pay the jizyah tax (the dhimmi tax). He did the same to the Jews of Khaybar. The jizyah tax was 50% of their income.
All Islam has to do is to keep up the attack. It does not matter whether they win or lose a particular battle. The more Islam practices jihad, the more we deny it and create some governmental nightmare that avoids the ideological war with Islam, but costs a fortune. Our self-deception is bankrupting us.
Islam produces poverty. Without oil, the income to all of the Arabic nations is less than that of Spain. This is not an accident. Mohammed was a businessman, but after he became a prophet, all of the money he made came from the loot from his victims, not a great business model. Mohammed knew how to bleed his enemies dry. We are bleeding today as a result of the Islamic war against the kafirs.
But Islam does not just tax kafirs for money. Kafirs have to submit to Sharia law and this means the loss of freedoms. Only Muslims are allowed to dictate what is taught about Islam in our schools. Islam gains the benefits of a deceitful history lesson, and we lose our freedom of speech. This is a tax on our Constitutional freedoms.
Everyday we submit a little more to Sharia law when we allow Muslims to take time off to pray at work and school. Article 6 of our Constitution says that our Constitution is the law of the land, but we are submitting to the demands of Sharia law when we declare that the sports facilities must be divided in use so that Muslim women can obey Sharia laws about mixing sexes. Our sovereignty decreases and Sharia law gains. This is a tax against our laws.
So now in America, kafirs are poorer and Muslims are richer because of Islam.

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