Colion Noir on Guns

The Debt Ceiling Is a Red Herring (American Thinker)

 

By Bernie Reeves

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announced last week the US central bank will continue its "quantitative easing" program, basically printing money like an African dictatorship to buy US debt. The harsh truth behind Bernanke's action makes the upcoming debate on raising the debt ceiling a red herring that diverts attention away from reality: the US ship of state has hit a giant financial iceberg.  Captain Bernanke's response is to continue to bail water.  

The Federal Reserve buys billions of dollars of US debt at near-zero interest to fund the ever-increasing deficit to keep up the charade that the good faith and credit of the nation is intact. In effect, Fed policy is a lie surrounding a bigger lie -- that Obama's economic recovery plan is on course. If the Fed does not step up and purchase US debt at ridiculously low interest, rates would have to float upwards dramatically to attract the usual buyers. Interest on the debt is already running at $26 billion per month; an increase caused by allowing rates to equate to investor requirements could easily double the staggering current monthly outlay. And what is the effect of squandering the US money supply on US debt that provides scant return?

The rate the US should have to pay in the real world to sell our debt would translate to rates charged to Fed member banks, who add vigorish for themselves and lend it out. But despite Fed rates artificially kept below one percent by Bernanke's sleight-of-hand, lending in the US to small businesses is at a 12-year low. If the Fed rate followed the appropriate level needed to attract buyers of our national debt, interest rates on bank lending will rise dramatically. The already suffering small business sector, which represents 90 percent of the economy and provides all new jobs, will be facing ruin.

This sorry state of affairs is due to Obama ignoring the small business sector and diverting stimulus money to save the banksters, fund pipe dreams to develop alternative sources of energy, launch unattainable transportation initiatives and hand gifts to friends and supporters. He saved Wall Street and left Main Street -- where small businesses reside -- holding the bag. That is the main reason his policies have failed -- and worse, permanently undermined the American economy. Yet, the Fed claims it is continuing its US debt purchases at near-zero interest   to prevent the inflation to come in the alleged recovery. The unpleasant truth is inflation is everywhere already, but there is no recovery -- despite wishful thinking by the administration, who spin the abysmal economic numbers to fit their hopeful belief that happy days are just around the corner -- and that Obama and his cohorts know what they are doing.

Even Obama devotees are seeing through this charade. The only piece of the Bernanke strategy that works is forcing capital into the equities and commodities markets (and their derivatives) which in turn makes the Dow go higher. This pleases investors and owners of 401-K plans, and fools voters that the Obama recovery is real. Underneath the increasing value of stocks is an economy that does not support their value. With the realization the economy is stagnating and real growth not happening, investors will cut back on equities. Since there is no return on cash in the Bernanke scenario, mattresses and coffee can sales will skyrocket. With scant lending available for the small businessman as things stand today, there will soon be none.

Will Bernanke print more money and buy more US debt to support Obama's new tomorrow? What happens then? We become a new Greece. The global economy sputters and nations with proper financial controls and procedures retreat inwardly as occurred during the Great Depression). The EU, already reeling from US crooks who sold member states mortgage backed securities, disintegrates ( an outcome several members desire) and the American-led post post-World War 2 global construct terminates.

The proof is here in America. Unemployment has not noticeably abated, except technically as more and more workers give up looking for jobs and don't show up in the figures. According to an economic statistician at MIT, two million new jobs would have to be created immediately to return the work force to pre-2008 levels. Long-term unemployment is approaching 37 weeks and bankruptcy figures are becoming like unemployment statistics: businesses, like the long-term jobless, are foregoing the process and simply fading away.

Stimulus financing under Obama is obviously not working, but has driven the federal debt to record highs. There is more bad news: According to the Pew Research Center, by 2030, 18% of the nation will be collecting Social Security and receiving Medicare, which means younger Americans will be called upon to pay the taxes to support their elders. But the millennial generation -- between 18 and 29 -- are severely negatively affected by the present economic climate with 13.1% unemployed (a two percent increase in the last year, a grim testimony to the alleged Obama recovery) and another three percent underemployed.  This ought not be Greek to Obama and Bernanke.

Obama's Affordable Care Act  is the coup de grace that will kill off the American Century. While most of us will suffer through the apocalypse, the politicians who created the backdrop for the mortgage crisis will enjoy a large pension. And the bankers and investment firm executives - who took advantage of government policy by creating fraudulent and impenetrable mortgage instruments - will slip off to Old Europe or their own private island with the money they stole from the American people. How fitting: federal socialistic policy mandating a house for everyone joins with corrupt capitalist bankers to turn the American Dream into a nightmare.

Bernie Reeves is Editor & Publisher, Raleigh Metro Magazine and founder of the Raleigh Spy Conference

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/09/the_debt_ceiling_is_a_red_herring.html at September 27, 2013 - 07:25:29 AM CDT

Global Warming: The Biggest Lie Exposed Written by Alan Caruba

 

 

I will never understand the kind of thinking behind a lie so big that it became an international fraud and swindle. I cannot understand why an international organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC) operating under the umbrella of the United Nations, was permitted to issue reports of an imminent threat to the Earth, to mankind, that a freshman student of meteorology would know were false.

At long last the Big Lie of Global Warming has been totally exposed and we can thank The Heartland Institute, a free market think tank that has organized and hosted eight international Conferences on Climate Change since 2008 to expose the lies behind global warming—now called “climate change”—as it became clear that seventeen years of continuous cooling has put a Big Chill on this Big Lie.

I suspect that the Heartland team, led by Joe Bast and including some remarkable, dedicated people, will only get a line or two in some future historian’s account of the deception that began in 1988 before a congressional committee. Thereafter the global warming hoax was given momentum by former Vice President Al Gore who, along with the IPCC, would receive a Nobel Peace Prize!

It helps to have a sense of humor when you are doing battle with hucksters who have the entire world’s media to defend them. The climate “skeptics”—some of the world’s most renowned meteorologists—dubbed their effort the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) and, working with the Heartland Institute, have just released a new edition of “Climate Change Reconsidered II.”

It arrives just as the IPCC will release its 5^th Assessment Report. The IPCC’s lies will get lots of news coverage. Heartland's NIPCC report was fortunate to have notice taken by Fox News, but beyond that most of the intransigent U.S. news media ignored it.

As often as not one has to look to foreign newspapers to get the truth. In Great Britain’s The Mail, the headline on September 14 was “Global warming just HALF what we said: World’s top climate scientists admit computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong.” A leaked copy of the IPCC report revealed “scientific forecasts of imminent doom were drastically wrong.”

Well, of course, they were wrong. The so-called “science” on which they were based was idiotic. It focused primarily on carbon dioxide (CO2) and other so-called “greenhouse gases”, claiming they were trapping heat while being produced by all manner of human activity related to generating energy with coal, oil, and natural gas.

Dr. Martin Hertzberg, Ph,D, co-author of “Slaying the Sky Dragon—Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory”, summed it up neatly, pointing out that water vapor in the Earth’s atmosphere is a primary factor affecting climate long term and weather short term.

“The determinant of weather is mainly water in all its forms,” said Dr. Herzberg, “as vapor in the atmosphere, in its heat transport by evaporation and condensation, as the enormous circulating mass of liquid ocean whose heat capacity and mass/energy transport dominate the motions of our atmosphere and the precipitation from it, and finally as cloud, snow, and ice cover which influence the radiative balance between the Sun, the Earth, and free Space.”  As you try to wrap your mind around that explanation, just think about the way the Earth goes through regular seasons as well as predictable cycles of warming and cooling. It has done this now for some 4.5 billion years.

To read "Climate Change Reconsidered II", visit its website. Among its findings, the report notes that “no close correlation exists between temperature variation over the past 150 years and human related CO2 emissions.” Blaming the climate or even the weather on humans is insane. You might as well blame the floods in Colorado on humans instead of the downpours of rain, comparable to 1894 and 1969.

Indeed, the U.S. gives ample evidence of greatly reduced events associated with the weather. There have been fewer tornadoes over recent decades. It’s been eight years since a Category 3 hurricane hit the U.S. Droughts have been shorter and less extreme than the 1930s and 1950s. And sea levels are predicted to increase barely four to eight inches per century and that may be on the high side. There will be dramatic weather events, but there have always been dramatic weather events!

The Heartland’s new report is welcome, but both they and I know that the same deceitful charlatans are still at work in the United Nations, in the United States, and around the world to keep this greatest of hoaxes alive.

The harm the global warming hoax has done and continues to do is best seen in the efforts of the Environmental Protection Agency to wipe out the coal industry based entirely on the lie that CO2 is a “pollutant.” When the House Energy& Commerce Committee held a hearing on the Obama administration’s climate policies thirteen agencies were invited to testify, but the administration provided only EPA administrator Gina McCarty and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The latter read a prepared statement that was one long lie about global warming. Presumably he was under oath!

Ms. McCarty, the latest in a long line of environmental fanatics to run the agency, was forced under questioning to admit that current and proposed greenhouse gas regulations are not there to protect the public but to influence “the international community” to reduce their CO2 and other alleged emissions. Not only do the regulations have no basis in science, but they exist to keep the environmental war on energy use going and to pressure developing nations such as China and India. Within the past month, the citizens of Australia rose up and threw out the politicians who imposed a “carbon” tax on them. The new prime minister has shut down the “climate ministry” that existed to enforce it.

And while most of the world wasn’t watching, the United Nations was seeking to impose, once again, an international agreement similar to the failed and defunct Kyoto Protocol to limit CO2 and other greenhouse emissions, based on the BIG LIE! The 44^th Pacific Islands Forum, held in the Marshall Islands, was intent on “an ambitious future climate regime to be finalized in 2015.”

That is what must be understood. These people will not give up until they have no other option. They will continue to exploit the ignorance of people regarding the actual science, penalizing them by driving up the cost of energy use, by closing down energy industries, prospective projects, and the jobs they provide,

They sustain the malignant ethanol scam that is ruining engines as this is being written. They are behind the useless solar panel and wind turbine industries that produce so little actual electricity they are a negative drag on the national grid. You, however, are picking up the tab for their mandated use. They practice a form of child abuse to tell children the Earth is doomed if their mother uses a plastic bag to bring groceries home from the supermarket.

The world’s BIGGEST LIE has been exposed and it will have to be exposed again and again until a stake is driven into the evil heart of the “global warming” hoax.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

Alan Caruba's blog, Warning Signs, has recently passed 2.9 million page views. His monthly report on new books, Bookviews.com, is ideal for anyone who loves to read, reporting on many new fiction and non-fiction titles.
.

What We Can Learn from Singapore (Townhall.com)

 

John C. Goodman | Sep 21, 2013

In 1984, Singapore instituted a revolutionary idea: a system of compulsory saving for medical expenses. That was the same year my colleagues and I at the National Center for Policy Analysis introduced the idea of Health Savings Accounts in this country.

After almost three decades, Singapore has now come to the attention of a lot others, including a book by Brookings, and a whole slew of posts by bloggers.

At the risk of disappointing you, Singapore does not have a free market for health care. What it does have is an alternative to the European/American welfare state, in which private saving and private insurance do what employers and governments do in other countries. The Singapore philosophy is:

• Each generation should pay its own way.

• Each family should pay its own way.

• Each individual should pay his own way.

• Only after passing through these three filters, should anyone turn to the government for help.

If the United States adopted a similar approach to public policy, there would be no deficit problem in this country.

How the system works. In Singapore, people are required to save for health care, retirement income and other needs. They can use their forced saving to purchase a home, pay education expenses, and purchase life insurance and disability insurance. For individuals up to age 50, the required saving rate is 36% of income (nominally divided: 20% from the employee and 16% from the employer). Of this amount, 7 percentage points is for health care and is deposited into a Medisave account. Individuals are also automatically enrolled in catastrophic health insurance, although they can opt out.

Self-insurance. A controversial issue both in the United States and in Singapore is: can individuals be counted on to manage some of their own health care dollars in a responsible way or does health care work better if all the dollars are controlled by insurance companies, employers or the government? After three decades of experience, Singapore has shown the world that individual self-insurance works and it works well.

Incentives to control spending.There has been some argument about whether Medisave accounts have reduced overall health care spending in Singapore. On the one hand, anytime you force people to save for a consumption item and the savings rate for a lot of them is higher than what they were previously spending, total spending is going to go up. But, money in the accounts belongs to the account holder and anything not spent in the current period rolls over and is available for future spending. So, compared to taxing people and giving the revenue to insurance companies to pay for first-dollar coverage, spending in Singapore is definitely lower than it would have been.

A shift from the public to the private sector.The most important thing Singapore has accomplished in health care (in contrast to all the other developed countries) is an enormous shift of money and power from the government to the private sector. Since 1984, the Singaporean government's share of the nation's total health care expenditure dropped from about 50% to 20%. When you stop to think about it, that's incredible.

A different approach to social welfare. The most important feature of Singapore's overall approach to social welfare is that the country has found a rational way to provide services that are provided by ill-conceived social insurance programs in the rest of the developed world. As is well known, programs for the elderly have devolved into little more than legalized Ponzi schemes in the United States and throughout Europe. Governments everywhere have made promises of benefits they were unwilling to fund. So now they must either default on those promises or impose draconian taxes on the productive sector. Singapore has avoided that problem.

As Freedom Destroys Itself (From NRO)

Laws can’t protect a society that has lost its way.

By Sarah Palin

All of us were horrified by the murders at the Washington Navy Yard this week. Once again, in the aftermath of a shooting, a new installment of the debate about gun laws has broken out. But what we really need is a new discussion about what kind of people we are and what kind of country we want to be.

It’s no secret which side I’m on in any debate involving the Second Amendment (or the whole Constitution, for that matter). We call Alaska America’s Last Frontier, and firearms are a big part of our lifestyle here because they are part of our frontier tradition. And, as I tell my daughters, the ability to use a firearm responsibly and to defend yourself is also part of our heritage as American women.

Advertisement

The iconic musket over the fireplace wasn’t just for the menfolk on the frontier. Those stalwart women who crossed oceans and wilderness to settle our country knew how to protect themselves and their families. (One of my favorite scenes in the miniseries John Adams is when Abigail Adams, alone with her children in besieged Massachusetts while her husband is away at the Continental Congress, shoulders the family musket to protect her little ones when she hears the distant sounds of battle. That’s our heritage, ladies.)

Hunting is an integral part of our lifestyle in the 49th state. Using guns isn’t just recreation for us; it’s how many of us get our dinner. Granted, today, with a grocery store on virtually every corner, there isn’t the actual necessity to live a “subsistence lifestyle” that there was a generation ago in Alaska when I was growing up, but my family still lives by the motto “We eat; therefore, we hunt.” We live off the healthy organic protein provided by Alaska’s wild fish and game.

Todd and I have taught our kids how to handle firearms responsibly, just as my dad taught me. In fact, we took our girls for a special hunt on Mother’s Day this year at our cabin looking out at the distant majestic peak of Mt. McKinley, and we had a blast teaching twelve-year-old Piper mounted shooting in warm Montana this summer.

I’m proud of my frontier heritage, and I’ll fight vehemently against anything that would limit the constitutional rights of Americans. But I can certainly sympathize with the many well-meaning Americans who desperately feel the need to find a way to prevent these senseless killings. Who among us doesn’t feel sadness, anger, and even despair after these tragedies?

But we must remember that emotion won’t make anybody safer or protect our rights. Beware of politicians who exploit our emotions in an attempt to pass laws that even they admit wouldn’t have prevented the violence.

CNN’s Don Lemon recently saw the light on this issue and highlighted the Centers for Disease Control study showing that so-called military assault rifles account for a small fraction of gun violence. The overwhelming majority of gun-related deaths are inflicted with handguns, but a ban on handguns is not only politically untenable; it would also hinder the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves (especially Americans who live in troubled urban areas where the police are slow to respond to emergency calls).

Instead of offering real solutions based on facts, reactionary politicians offer us the politics of emotion, which is the opposite of leadership. It is the manipulation of the people by the political class for their own political ends. It is so very self-serving, but, worse, it is destructive.

The first thing politicians ask after these tragedies is essentially: “What can we do to limit the freedom of the people?”

And that is the wrong question. The question we should be asking is: “What can we do to nurture and support a people capable of living in freedom?”

Earlier this year I spoke at the NRA convention and reminded a conscientious, patriotic audience that our country’s Founders asked themselves that question and knew the answer. They understood that a free people must either nurture morality or lose their freedom. John Adams wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Not coincidentally, he wrote that to the officers of the Massachusetts militia when the young republic was on the verge of war with France. He reminded those officers who were charged with leading armed men that the freedoms secured by the Constitution take for granted a decent and civil society.

This isn’t just a question for American society. It’s a civilizational question for all humanity. Margaret Thatcher spoke eloquently of this co-dependence of freedom and morality. She said, “Freedom will destroy itself if it is not exercised within some sort of moral framework, some body of shared beliefs, some spiritual heritage transmitted through the Church, the family, and the school.”

I’m reminded of that quote every time I see politicians reach for the easy answers instead of asking the hard questions after tragedies like the one this week. When they seek to strip away our Second Amendment rights instead of suggesting that those who hide behind the First Amendment need to act more responsibly, they are helping freedom destroy itself. When Hollywood glorifies violence with its movies and music, but then underwrites efforts to take away our rights, it is helping freedom destroy itself. When those incorporating virtue into their lives are criticized, mocked, and bullied while pop culture’s kingmakers elevate and celebrate a self-centered “I’ll do what I want and consequences be damned” mentality, those kingmakers and bullies are helping freedom destroy itself. And when We the People shrug our shoulders and duck our heads while society becomes more cynical and our sense of family and community atrophies, we’re all helping freedom destroy itself.

Americans have always had access to firearms. Guns certainly aren’t any more pervasive now than they were back when the Minutemen were stockpiling weapons at Lexington and Concord. But something definitely has changed since then. It’s not the weapons. It’s us.

Instead of rushing to find some magical legislative solution, we need to ask ourselves a few hard questions: Are we creating a culture that can live and thrive in freedom? Do we have bold leaders willing and able to nurture such a culture? Do we have artists whose works reflect and inspire such a culture? Consider the answers to these questions carefully, because, if the answers are no, then we are in much more trouble than any new law can fix.

A decent and moral society is guided by voluntary self-restraint. The less moral we are, the more legalistic we become. But more laws can’t protect a civilization that has lost its way. At most, they’re just tiny speed bumps for a runaway truck.

The solutions we seek won’t be found in the halls of Congress or state legislatures. Might I humbly suggest that we step back from the TV, take a breath, hug our kids, reach out to friends and neighbors, and say a prayer.

— Sarah Palin is the former governor of Alaska and was the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee.

The Democrat Moral Superiority Complex (American Thinker)

 

By Karin McQuillan

I recently met a man who cycled from his home in California to Maryland.  When I exclaimed how interesting it must have been to talk with Americans across the country, he looked at me as if I had two heads.  "Are you crazy?  I didn't talk to anyone," he told me.  "They're all red-necks."

A liberal friend solemnly warned me not to tell anyone I support the Tea Party.  They're all racists, wacko survivalists and birthers, she told me, impervious to anything I said about my pride in the Tea Party, and our mainstream issues: fiscal responsibility and constitutional, limited government.  She knew we were racist because there were only white people at our rallies.   No matter there's not a black face at the anti-global warming groups she goes to, or in her neighborhood or church.  It's only conservatives who are judged guilty of racism before proven innocent.

Democrats believe that good and evil in this country is divided along party lines, with all the caring people in their party, and all the greedy, mean people in the other.  They also believe that intelligence is doled out along party lines.  Conservatives are morons while liberals are the most brilliant people ever seen. 

I hear these comments every time I talk to Democrat friends, relatives and acquaintances.  They are core to Democrat identity, keeping people loyal voters even as the economy tanks and poor communities flounder under Democrat policies.

It gets worse.  Enclosed in their liberal bubble of superiority, Democrats can't picture an intelligent person sincerely and rationally disagreeing.  So they jump to the conclusion that conservatives don't believe in their own ideas!  

It's true: Democrats can't imagine anyone taking conservative ideas seriously, not even conservatives.  They logically infer that Republicans are malevolent liars.  We are just pretending to have our own ideas for how to set the country on the right track.  When Republicans say they hate socialized medicine, they really mean they hate blacks.  When Republicans say they want to respect and strengthen families, it means they hate gays.  When they say people should pay for their own birth control, it means they hate women.  When they say the right to bear arms is in our Constitution, it means they want school massacres.  When they say we need to make Social Security solvent, it means they hate old people.

Republicans can't really believe that individual responsibility is the only path to a free, good and prosperous life.  We don't mean it when we say a fiscally responsible government is necessary for a functioning economy and social safety net.  The Democrats can see through all ridiculous ideas.  It's obvious that Republicans want the old to die, the poor to starve, the young to have no sex, homosexuals to be humiliated and women to have no rights.  Above all, we are racist.

As my mother who grew up in Brooklyn would say, what a crock.

A liberal academic study on Obama's election concluded that racism cost him five percent of Democratic votes.  At the same time, nine percent of registered Republicans crossed party lines to vote for the first black President.  Prejudice correlates with education, not party affiliation.   A map by Swedish economists ranks all the countries in the globe on racism.  The United States is among the most fair, with less than 4% prejudiced against blacks.  According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 31 percent of blacks think that most blacks are racist, more racist than whites.    

So why do Democrats remain convinced that they alone accepted the Civil Rights movement?  Because they quickly rejected the values of Martin Luther King and substituted Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  Affirmative action and War on Poverty programs constitute the Democrat test of racism.  You think people on welfare would have a better chance of escaping poverty if they are required to work?  Rascist and cruel to the poor.  You've read about the government report that Project Headstart is a complete failure and wonder if charter schools and strengthening the family are better ways to help children?  Clearly racist and cruel to small children.

A study was widely reported in the liberal press before the 2012 election, allegedly proving that America is a racist country.  People were asked if they agree or disagree with the following statements:

• "Irish, Italians, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without special favors."

• "Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class."

• "Over the past few years blacks have gotten less than they deserve."

• "It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites."

If Americans agree that blacks could achieve as much as whites with the same level of hard work they are judged racist.  If you do not think blacks are handicapped by having ancestors who were slaves, that is now proof of racism.  Anyone see a contradiction here?  That used to be the definition of not being racist. 

If you've noticed that over the past few years blacks get preferred treatment in hiring by police and fire departments, by diversity programs in corporations, by federal bidding procedures, in college admissions - most of these preferences required by law - that proves you're a racist.

Liberals are convinced by this logic.  To them it is common sense, irrefutable.  No one they respect would disagree.

Racism researcher David Bositis  "finds the (Tea Party) movement's arguments about reckless federal spending unpersuasive", so he concludes the Tea Party's real motives are racist.  He explains, 'They know they can't use any overtly racist language,' he contends. 'So they use coded language'-questioning the patriotism of the president or complaining about "socialist" schemes to redistribute wealth. Note that Bositis has no actual evidence.  He makes that part of his proof - Tea Partiers hide their racism so well they never say (or do) anything racist!  That proves they're talking in code.

Danita Kilcullen, the founder of Tea Party Fort Lauderdale counters Bositis' accusations:

"Nobody in the Tea Party movement that I know is a racist." She notes that she attends a church with a black pastor, supports a black candidate (Allen West) in a local congressional race, and backs a Latino candidate (Marco Rubio) for U.S. Senate. When a protestor showed up at one of her group's rallies with a racist sign, she says, she personally kicked him off the corner. "We absolutely don't tolerate anything like that," says Kilcullen."

No matter.  Liberals know what they know.

It is time for Republicans to go on the offensive.  There is no coded language.  We are not afraid and quite capable of saying exactly what we think.  Everyone can see with their own eyes how the War on Poverty approach has played out.  Democrats treat blacks like they can't get into a college on their own merits, are too emotionally damaged to get out of the ghetto, and can't be treated like capable adults.  It's demeaning and destructive.

The Nanny state is a nightmare of no future and no hope.  Not just for ghetto blacks, but for all of us.  We can't afford a government that is spending as much as 100% of all our income (yes, it would take 100% taxes on everyone to pay Obama's federal bills), squeezing out the private economy. We can't afford a welfare underclass that doesn't pull its own weight.  We live in competitive world and need the best efforts of every American.

Personal initiative, responsibility and hard work are the only paths to success.  They are G-d given gifts.  They are liberated by our free-enterprise system.  Government cannot give those gifts but it can destroy them.  The Nanny State is depriving not just ghetto blacks, but our entire country of a future.  Republicans have a better way.

Republican voters are fed up with our own pusillanimous leaders who don't speak up clearly and forcefully and honestly.  We are disgusted with the Republican elected officials who offered up that rodeo clown as a sacrificial lamb to the race-baiters out to lynch him.  The answer to Democrat lies is more free speech on our part, not less.

If anything good came out of George Zimmerman's trail in the court of public opinion, it is this:  Democrats don't get to define racism anymore.  Their race baiting is too ugly, too destructive, too false, and too self-serving.  If anything good came out of the IRS scandal it is this:  the Tea Party is back.  We're proud of our values, we have a positive vision for our country, we believe in both freedom and equality as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Now we've got to win so we can put our values into practice.  The country needs us.

The author volunteered in Project Headstart as a teenager, inspected tenements in Harlem for housing violations, served in the Peace Corps in Africa, became a clinical social worker and later a mystery author, writing books set in Kenya.  She is regular contributor to AT.