by Thomas E. Brewton
Contrary to the popular understanding, higher wage rates and higher oil prices do not cause inflation. They are symptoms of the real danger.
News reports express concern that the tightening labor market and increasing oil prices will lead to increased inflation. This is an upside-down view of reality.
Inflation is nothing more nor less than an increasing ratio of money to available goods and services.
Higher prices – rising wages or higher oil prices, for example – result from two things.
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Posted by Walt as Economics at 10:24 PM EDT
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by Sher Zieve
In a first of its kind lawsuit, CAIR (Council on America-Islamic Relations) attorneys are representing the so-called "Flying Imams" in suing both US Airways and passengers. The suit stems from an incident that occurred on a US Airways’ flight in November 2006, from Minneapolis to Arizona, on which six Islamic Imams were reported to have stood up on the plane and prayed loudly, took seats that were not assigned to them (reminiscent of the 9/11 hijackers’ locations) and requested seatbelt extensions (which can be used as weapons) when they were neither required nor justified. They are also reported to have made anti-American and pro-Saddam Hussein and Osama bin-Laden comments. The actions of the Imams were not only overtly menacing but, seemed designed to instill fear amongst their fellow passengers. Several passengers, including at least one who speaks and understands the Arabic language, reported the Imams’ behaviors to flight attendants. The Imams were, subsequently, removed from the flight.
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Posted by Walt as CAIR, Islam at 10:02 PM EDT
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By Alan Caruba
Hating so-called “fossil fuels”, coal, oil, and natural gas, with a passion, the environmentalists have perpetrated every deception possible and, among them, is the notion that Americans can avoid destroying the Earth if they just fill up the tanks of their automobiles with ethanol.
As I have pointed out in the past, the world is not running out of oil and, here in the United States, we have enough reserves of coal to provide electricity and other needs for centuries to come. So who has the new Democrat majority in Congress declared persona non grata? The oil industry. Their proposed “answer” to our transportation energy needs is ethanol.
Instead of pandering to the environmentalist’s obsession over fossil fuels, Congress should be making areas in and around the United States more accessible to exploration and extraction of known oil and natural gas supplies. That is the true definition of “energy independence.”
This has not occurred because most of America’s onshore energy is in the West and Alaska where more than half the land is under federal control. We are talking about estimates, according to the U.S. Interior Department, of 187 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 21 billion barrels of oil, representing 76 percent of onshore federal oil and gas resources.
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Posted by Walt as Environmental Issues, Oil Production at 8:51 PM EDT
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by Alan Caruba
A lot of people, attributing the current conflicts in the Middle East to either religion or oil, believe they don’t really have a dog in the fight. What cannot be ignored however is that a paroxysm of religious strife has broken out in the Middle East and it is exporting death and terror in the name of Allah.
Still angry over the defeat in 732 A.D. at Poitiers, France that stopped their northward conquest of Europe and the Crusades that followed from 1095 to 1291, the Arabs of the Middle East have taken the temperature of the West today and concluded that it’s time for a big comeback. Either through birthrates in Europe or the use of terror from Bali to Manhattan, they have concluded it’s time to try once again to be the ones who run the world.
Considering how little previous generations of these Arabs or Islam have contributed to modern civilization this seems astonishingly arrogant. The modern world is entirely the creation of the West.
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Posted by Walt as Islam, Middle East Issues at 8:42 PM EDT
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by Erik Rush
How many Americans would vote for a presidential candidate who was the member of a church that professed the following credo?
- 1. Commitment to God
- 2. Commitment to the White Community
- 3. Commitment to the White Family
- 4. Dedication to the Pursuit of Education
- 5. Dedication to the Pursuit of Excellence
- 6. Adherence to the White Work Ethic
- 7. Commitment to Self-Discipline and Self-Respect
- 8. Disavowal of the Pursuit of "Middleclassness"
- 9. Pledge to make the fruits of all developing and acquired skills available to the White Community
- 10. Pledge to Allocate Regularly, a Portion of Personal Resources for Strengthening and Supporting White Institutions
- 11. Pledge allegiance to all White leadership who espouse and embrace the White Value System
- 12. Personal commitment to embracement of the White Value System.
The question is rhetorical, of course. The answer is that such a candidate wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected dog catcher (apologies to America’s animal rescue and public safety personnel) let alone President, because that candidate would be instantly branded a racist, among the most vile and frightening of white supremacists.
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Posted by Walt as Presidential Race at 1:05 PM EDT
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by Sher Zieve
The US National Guard has been insanely prohibited from using its weapons against armed drug dealers and others at the US-Mexico border. They have been warned that they are to only provide support for the US Border Patrol. This dictate came from the US government and, presumably, the Mexican government as well. Now, Democrat leaders are planning to apply this policy to US troops fighting terrorists in Iraq.
In an attempt to usurp and end the Executive branch of government’s Constitutional powers and ability to wage wars, Democrats are planning to issue legislation that would take all US troops out of a combat role and place them into the tenuous and hazardous position of a ‘support role’—only. Note: We presume this attempt to seize power from the President of the United States only applies to Republican presidents.
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Posted by Walt as U.S. Borders Issues, US Military at 9:52 PM EDT
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by Daniel Clark
There's a reason it's called the American Civil Liberties Union, and not the American Constitutional Rights Union. The ACLU and other liberal organizations like to say that they're defending the Constitution, but since the language of that document seldom coincides with their agenda, they've needed to devise a rhetorical fallback position. Hence the term "civil liberties," a concept whose definition is essentially a matter of individual choice.
Take a look at the controversy surrounding the NSA surveillance program. Critics charged that it violated the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. The flaws in that argument are both vast and plentiful. Electronic communications do not fit into the categories of "persons, houses, papers, and effects." Furthermore, the monitoring of those communications cannot be characterized as a search or seizure, and few people would consider the surveillance of phone calls and e-mails from known members of al-Qaeda to be unreasonable.
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Posted by Walt as ACLU at 12:03 PM EDT
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by Robert E. Meyer
An issue that has garnered much attention lately, in between the media bites about Iraq and the salacious lives of celebrities, is the controversy over global warming. Both the pro and the con side consider their opponents the heretical misfits and purveyors of junk science.
But the debate is not so much about whether the earth is actually warming, but whether the phenomenon is man-made, and must culminate in catastrophe.
While most of us lack any academic credentials to have an informed opinion on the matter, we do possess the logical faculties to philosophically cross-examine the cogency of any theory presented to us.
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Posted by Walt as Environmental Issues, Global Warming, Science at 10:40 PM EDT
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by Vincent Fiore
To some, 1983 may as well have been the dark ages in the United States..
At that time, America had a conservative president in the White House, who, in addition to being responsible for the worldwide outbreak of AIDS and the nation’s homelessness problem, also thought to "intercept nuclear weapons and destroy them as they emerge from their silos."
For on March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan revealed to the American people his vision for the nation’s protection by asking this question:
"What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?"
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Posted by Walt as U.S Foreign Policy, U.S. Political Issues at 10:41 PM EDT
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by Sher Zieve
Osvaldo Aldrete Davila is an admitted Mexican drug dealer who regularly transports Marijuana and other illegal narcotics across the US-Mexico border. In February 2005, US Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, who said Davila had a gun, fired on Davila and the drug dealer fled back across the border. It was later discovered that Davila had been hit, in one of his buttocks, by a bullet. The US Border Agents, not Davila, were convicted of "violating Davila’s civil rights".
For testifying against the Border Agents, drug dealer Davila was given immunity from prosecution on his own drug charges. Instead, Agent Ramos was sentenced to 11 years in prison and Agent Compean received a 12 year prison term. Davila is expected to renew his drug trade, as soon as possible. Note: The Mexican influence at the US border is growing even larger.
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Posted by Walt as U.S. Legal Issues, Islam, U.S. Borders Issues at 10:40 PM EDT
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