Did the NY Times Just Lose the Election for the Empty Chair?

New York Times Proves Clint Eastwood Correct -- Obama Is Lousy CEO

Forbes:

h/t to Deonia Copeland

A Sunday New York Times front page story — New York Times! — might have killed President Obama’s re-election hopes.

The story is called “The Competitor in Chief — Obama Plays To Win, In Politics and Everything Else.” It is devastating.

With such a title, and from such a friendly organ, at first I thought Jodi Kantor’s piece would be a collection of Obama’s greatest political wins: His rapid rise in Illinois, his win over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries, the passage of health care, and so on.

But the NYT piece is not about any of that. Rather, it is a deep look into the two outstanding flaws in Obama’s executive leadership:

1. How he vastly overrates his capabilities:

But even those loyal to Mr. Obama say that his quest for excellence can bleed into cockiness and that he tends to overestimate his capabilities. The cloistered nature of the White House amplifies those tendencies, said Matthew Dowd, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, adding that the same thing happened to his former boss. “There’s a reinforcing quality,” he said, a tendency for presidents to think, I’m the best at this.

2. How he spends extraordinary amounts of time and energy to compete in — trivialities.

“For someone dealing with the world’s weightiest matters, Mr. Obama spends surprising energy perfecting even less consequential pursuits. He has played golf 104 times since becoming president, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who monitors his outings, and he asks superior players for tips that have helped lower his scores. He decompresses with card games on Air Force One, but players who do not concentrate risk a reprimand (“You’re not playing, you’re just gambling,” he once told Arun Chaudhary, his former videographer).

His idea of birthday relaxation is competing in an Olympic-style athletic tournament with friends, keeping close score. The 2009 version ended with a bowling event. Guess who won, despite his history of embarrassingly low scores? The president, it turned out, had been practicing in the White House alley.

Kantor’s piece is full of examples of Obama’s odd need to dominate his peers in everything from bowling, cards, golf, basketball, and golf (104 times in his presidency). Bear in mind, Obama doesn’t just robustly compete. The leader of the free world spends many hours practicing these trivial pursuits behind the scenes. Combine this weirdly wasted time with a consistent overestimation of his capabilities, and the result is, according to NYT’s Kantor:

He may not always be as good at everything as he thinks, including politics. While Mr.

“Obama has given himself high grades for his tenure in the White House — including a “solid B-plus” for his first year — many voters don’t agree, citing everything from his handling of the economy to his unfulfilled pledge that he would be able to unite Washington to his claim that he would achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Those were not the only times Mr. Obama may have overestimated himself: he has also had a habit of warning new hires that he would be able to do their jobs better than they could.

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Though he never ran a large organization before becoming president, he initially dismissed internal concerns about management and ended up with a factionalized White House and a fuzzier decision-making process than many top aides wanted.

Kantor’s portrait of Obama is stunning. It paints a picture of a CEO who is unfocused and lost.

Imagine, for a minute, that you are on the board of directors of a company. You have a CEO who is not meeting his numbers and who is suffering a declining popularity with his customers. You want to help this CEO recover, but then you learn he doesn’t want your help. He is smarter than you and eager to tell you this. Confidence or misplaced arrogance? You’re not sure at first. If the company was performing well, you’d ignore it. But the company is performing poorly, so you can’t.

With some digging, you learn, to your horror, that the troubled CEO spends a lot of time on — what the hell? — bowling? Golf? Three point shots? While the company is going south?

What do you do? You fire that CEO. Clint Eastwood was right. You let the guy go.

The Empty Chair Is Losing

American Thinker:

President Obama is headed to defeat in November, and it won't be close. Forget about the polls, and forget about the cadre of delusional Democrats who can't stop telling us how great and successful the last three and a half years have been. Slick Willy can shill all he likes, but seriously, he's preaching to the choir, because the only ones believing his shtick are bought and paid for sycophants, crony capitalists, and members of the mainstream media.

Can you think of a single person who didn't vote for Barack Obama in 2008 but will vote for him this time around? Yet it is easy to find former minions admitting to the dissolution of their belief in the primacy of the "one." These people will not vote for him again -- and they are legion.

Pols like Bill Clinton say what they have to say, and election polls are often designed to say what the designers want them to say. But Americans, ever the social creatures they are, remembering the hopes and dreams they had for a better world in 2008 -- and the hopes and dreams they have today for a better tomorrow -- are reluctant to tell someone taking a poll that they don't like Barack Obama. It doesn't matter how well a case can be made against the man's disastrous and disgraceful leadership; guilt can often preclude telling a stranger they plan to vote against the black guy -- especially today, when all opposition to the president is framed as racist.

Yet, at some point, that curtain closes in the voting booth, and a decision has to be made as to which candidate is better for voters, their children, and the future of America.

When watching the news or any of the president's campaign speeches, it is easy to get the message that Barack Obama is way ahead and can't lose. His successes are portrayed as many and significant, although he needs another term because much still needs to be done. After all, the Republicans have stymied his every selfless effort these last three and a half years, and "we can't go back."

He did his best, and there was nothing more he could have done to improve what was an unprecedented (everything with Barack is unprecedented) decline in economic activity. Didn't Obama call the downturn the "great recession?" The misery the nation feels now is an illusion -- or else, they tell us, it is simply the "new normal."

But usually in mainstream media world, all is well -- and Americans should pay no attention to the price of gasoline, or the unavailability of financing for mortgages or business investment, or the price of groceries and the dearth of jobs. Who needs a job when they have Barack Obama?

The media, Obama, and his adulators have become the "check is in the mail" bloc. Things are better; we just haven't noticed.

Yet there are no real accomplishments, which would be bad enough if it stopped there, but in actuality, everything is much worse since many trusted the "one" in 2008 to solve all the ills of the nation and humanity. All he has done during his tenure is torture the economy into submission with poor decisions, bad legislation, overregulation, and threats of onerous taxation.

It's been said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of Americans, but it is also true that no one ever got rich continually assuming that Americans were idiots. You see, just when a demigod like Barack is convinced he has demagogued his way into the hearts and minds of the electorate, the nation wakes up, and a deafening "thud" can be heard as he falls back down to earth.

Seniors see the true danger to Medicare comes from ObamaCare, a legislative nightmare. Obamacare strips $716 billion from Medicare, and as a result, seniors in states like Florida will make their voices heard this Election Day.

Workers and commuters see the price of gasoline as a function of Barack's desire to be the one who breaks America's dependency on fossil fuels. Yet like everything Obama does, he seeks to do it backwards. Because he can't make alternative energy cheap enough to overwhelm fossil fuels as the main source of energy in America, he chooses to make fossil fuels so expensive that his green energy dreams seem cheap by comparison. Gasoline at $4 a gallon and necessarily skyrocketing electric bills are the "new normal." Didn't you know?

If people's lives have to be destroyed to usher in this new era, then, so be it. They should be grateful that the destruction of their hopes and dreams is in service of the greater Barack Obama good. History books will not remember the individual whose life was ruined today, but they will certainly remember Obama as the man who saved humanity from what might have happened in a hundred years. And isn't that what's important?

Small business understands that Obama built this. They understand this so well that there are trillions of dollars sitting on the sidelines awaiting his departure next January. They may have supported him in 2008, but does anyone think business owners, long demonized by Barack and minions, are going to vote for Mr. Obama again? No, they will run kicking and screaming to the polls to vote for anyone but the man who has destroyed their incomes and futures, and those of their children.

States with a culture of coal mining are also running away from Barack. After all, miners have families, and killing King Coal has not only hurt the interests of America and Americans, but slain the future of an industry long important to the nation's prosperity. Who needs cheap energy anyway?

The United Coal Miners Union sat out the Democrat National Convention. Although they didn't jump ship, they weren't about to support the moron killing coal jobs while making electricity more expensive and ceding energy independence in the process. I suspect that Obama will get few miner votes this election.

I believe that the administration's war on coal and the slow realization that the EPA's future plan for war on fracking have already won Ohio and Pennsylvania for Mitt Romney, despite what the polls say. A union member working in the fossil fuel industry is never going to admit to supporting a Republican, yet he still wants to feed his family and send his kids to college...and maybe someday even retire. Four more years of Barack, and he won't even have a job.

At the Democrat National Convention, John Kerry said Americans should "ask Osama bin Laden if he's better off now than he was four years ago."

The answer would be "no," just as it is for most Americans, because Obama is killing us. Bin Laden at least has the luxury of being dead; the job is finished.

For us, Obama needs another 4 years.

On November 6, 2012, Americans will flock to the polls to ensure that Barack Obama does not get another term to finish the job he started, and the empty chair will lose in a landslide.

For anyone who thought that Clint Eastwood had lost it at the Republican National Convention with his  chair routine… carrying on a conversation with President Barack Obama (represented by an empty chair).

Clint knew exactly what he was doing…  Here is the only known portrait of Karl Marx… with the Barack Obama Chair.

Technorati Tags: empty chair,Obamaland lost,Clint Eastwood,NY Times,Obamaland,Karl Marx,Election 2012,2012 Election,EPA,PC,Politicial Correctness,racism,reverse racism,national debt,ObamaCare,Medicare,gas prices,recession,joblessness,fracking,groceries,Narcissism,radical ideology,socialism,Progressivism,Mitt Romney in 2012,Romney-Ryan,Forbes,one term Obama,radicals in the White House,Eastwooding

Why the Supreme Court Will Strike Down All of Obamacare

By Peter Ferrara  -  Forbes

Barack Obama made a national laughingstock out of himself with his recent comments on the Obamacare law now before the Supreme Court. Obama said on Monday, “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” (emphasis added).

President Obama is not stupid. But he thinks you are. He knows the Obamacare health care takeover was not passed by a strong majority. But he figures you’re so dumb he can rewrite recent history in plain sight. The law passed a House with a huge Democrat majority at the time by only 219-212. It did not get a single Republican vote, but the opposition was bipartisan.

The law also barely squeaked past a Senate filibuster despite an overwhelming 60 Senate Democrats, and even then humiliating buyoffs were necessary. Public opposition was so strong that the ultraliberal Democrat controlled Massachusetts, the only state to go for George McGovern in 1972, elected a Republican in a special election for Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, to terminate the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority. That required final passage of the law improperly in violation of Congressional rules as a reconciliation measure, which is only to be used to clean up the budget and so cannot be filibustered.

And given that Obama is so certain you can’t remember what happened just two years ago, he is more than certain that you have never heard of the ancient history of Marbury v. Madison, where the 14-year old Supreme Court in 1803 took the then unprecedented step of overturning a provision of law adopted by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress, in the Judiciary Act of 1789. That case was where the Supreme Court first recognized its power of judicial review, under which it is empowered to strike down laws found unconstitutional. As the Wall Street Journal observed on Tuesday:

“In the 209 years since, the Supreme Court has invalidated part or all of countless laws on grounds that they violated the Constitution. All of these laws were passed by a ‘democratically elected’ legislature of some kind, either Congress or in one of the states. And no doubt many of them were passed by ‘strong’ majorities….probably stronger majorities than passed the Affordable Care Act.”

As a former constitutional law professor and President of the Harvard Law Review, Obama no doubt knows all about Marbury v. Madison and judicial review. But he figures he can safely assume a majority of you know nothing about it, and his party controlled media will not tell you anything concerning it at this inopportune moment. Hence, another classic example of what I have called Calculated Deception.

President Obama further assailed any Supreme Court decision ruling his Obamacare health care takeover unconstitutional as “judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.” Alexander Hamilton disagreed over 200 years ago in Federalist 78, writing, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. . . .”

Or, as the Wall Street Journal explained on Monday:

“Judicial activism is not something that happens every time the Supreme Court overturns a statute. The Justices owe deference to Congress and the executive, but only to the extent that the political branches stay within the boundaries of the Constitution. Improper activism is when the Court itself strays beyond the founding document to find new rights or enhance its own authority without proper constitutional grounding.”

The Journal added, “Far from seeking an activist ruling, the Obamacare plaintiffs aren’t asking the Court to overturn even a single commerce clause precedent.”

In my role as General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union, I filed 3 amicus curiae briefs with the Supreme Court in the Obamacare litigation. I also filed amicus briefs in the lower federal courts in the cases in Virginia and Florida.

The reason that at least 5 Justices are going to find the law’s individual mandate unconstitutional is that it is contrary to the fundamental federalism architecture of the Constitution. Under the Constitution, the federal government is an authority of limited, enumerated, delegated powers. All other powers of government are reserved for the states, including the broad authority labeled the “police power.” That is the power to compel individuals to take specific actions for the public good, such as actions for the public health like vaccinations or quarantines, or obtaining car insurance, or attending school. Notice that all such laws are adopted at the state or local level. (Any federal laws compelling action are based on specific delegated powers other than the Commerce Clause, like those providing for national defense, or taxation).

The power to compel the purchase of health insurance for the public good, as in Obamacare’s individual mandate, is a function of the police power reserved to the states, and denied to the federal government by the Constitution and Supreme Court precedents. If the federal government is now to hold a national police power, then the constitutional framework of federalism, with limited, enumerated powers delegated to the federal government, and the remaining powers of government retained by the states, would be obliterated.

That is why the Supreme Court held in United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000), “We always have rejected readings of the Commerce Clause and the scope of federal power that would permit Congress to exercise a police power.” The Court added, “the principle that the Constitution created a Federal Government of limited powers, while reserving a generalized police power to the States, is deeply ingrained in our constitutional history.” The Court explained in New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992) that Congress may not exercise its enumerated powers in a way that “infring[es] upon th[at] core of state sovereignty.” The Court in Morrison rejected the argument that women who are sexually assaulted would need medical care provides a sufficient interstate commerce connection under the Commerce Clause.

As Justice Kennedy explained in United States v. Comstock, 130 S. Ct. 1949 (2010), “the precepts of federalism embodied in the Constitution inform which powers are properly exercised by the National Government in the first place.” The Court added in Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 457 (1991), “[t]he Constitution created a Federal Government of limited powers [and] withhold[s] from Congress a plenary police power that would authorize enactment of every type of legislation.”

The Obama Administration tried to shoe horn the individual mandate into the federal enumerated power of the Commerce Clause, which grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. Their argument boiled down to the claim that millions of people choosing to not buy health insurance substantially affects interstate commerce. But every economic decision, when aggregated across the whole market, substantially affects interstate commerce in this way, including decisions not to do something. So that would leave the Commerce Clause eating up the whole Constitution and its most fundamental doctrine that the federal government is an authority of limited, enumerated, delegated powers. Federal power would then be without limit, contrary to the whole concept of the federal government in the Constitution.

That is why the Court kept asking the government for a principle that would limit its interpretation of the Commerce Clause, and its failure to come up with one is fatal to the government’s case. All prior cases under the Commerce Clause were based on the principle that some action had been taken that the federal government could then regulate as interstate commerce. To hold that inaction could be regulated as well as itself substantially affecting interstate commerce would break through any limitation on the power, and so was not what was intended. That would also again tear down the Constitution’s fundamental federalism architecture and any distinction between limited federal and plenary state power.

That is why the Supreme Court in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995) rejected the notion of unlimited Commerce Clause power, holding that it will strike down regulation under the Commerce Clause which leaves no principled limit to federal power under the Clause. The Court said, “the Constitution’s enumeration of powers does not presuppose something not enumerated and that there will never be a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local.” Justice Kennedy added, “[T]he federal balance is too essential a part of our constitutional structure and plays too vital a role in securing freedom for us to admit inability to intervene when one or another level of Government has tipped the scales too far.”

Once the Court finds the individual mandate unconstitutional on these grounds, as it will, the question becomes whether the whole Obamacare Act must be struck down as unconstitutional as a result. The law does not include a traditional severability clause providing that if one of provision of the Act is found unconstitutional, the rest of the law should stand.

Consequently, the question becomes whether the remaining parts of the Obamacare law can still remain fully operative and function as Congress intended, and whether Congress would have passed the Act without the individual mandate. The answer in both cases is indisputably no.

Obama’s lawyers themselves have repeatedly argued in courts all over the country that the Obamacare law cannot function without the individual mandate. That is because of the Act’s regulatory requirements for guaranteed issue and community rating. The Act requires all insurers to cover all pre-existing conditions and issue health insurance to everyone that applies, no matter how sick they are when they first apply or how costly they may be to cover. Moreover, the insurers can only charge them the same, standard, market rates as everyone else.

Under these regulatory requirements, younger and healthier people delay buying insurance, knowing they are guaranteed coverage at standard rates after they become sick. Sick people show up applying for an insurer’s health coverage for the first time with very costly illnesses such as cancer and heart disease, which the insurer must then cover and pay for, out of the same standard premiums as everyone else pays. This means the insurer’s covered risk pool includes more costly sick people and fewer less costly healthy people, so the costs per person covered soar. The insurer then has to raise rates sharply for everyone just to be sure to have enough money to pay all of the policy’s benefits.

Those higher rates encourage even more healthy people to drop their insurance, leaving the remaining pool even sicker and more costly on average, which requires even higher premiums, resulting in a financial death spiral for the insurers and the insurance market.

If regulation required fire insurers to issue policies to people whose houses were already on fire at standard rates, the fire insurance pool would include only all burned down houses, which would obviously be dysfunctional.

The Obamacare law tries to counter this problem by adopting the individual and employer mandates, seeking to require everyone to be covered and contributing to the pool at all times. Without these mandates, the government itself has repeatedly argued, those who would remain uninsured would substantially affect the interstate market for health insurance, by allowing the remaining regulatory requirements to cause soaring health insurance premiums through the above process and ultimately a financial death spiral.

That financial death spiral would cause the costs of other provisions of Obamacare to soar, such as the subsidies for purchase of health insurance on the Exchanges, which would be even more costly than expected, and the costs for the Medicaid expansion, where more people would qualify given the decline of private insurance.

Indeed, Obamacare itself in its very statutory language recognized the essential role of the individual mandate in the statute’s overall framework, saying in Section 1501(a)(2)(I):

“[I]f there were no [individual mandate], many individuals would wait to purchase health insurance until they needed care….The [individual mandate] is essential to creating effective health insurance markets in which improved health insurance products that are guaranteed issue and do not exclude coverage of pre-existing conditions can be sold.”

As the court said in Alaska Airlines v. Brock, 480 U.S. 678 (1987), “Congress could not have intended a constitutionally flawed provision to be severed from the remainder of the statute if the balance of the legislation is incapable of functioning independently….” Moreover, the Court also recognized that in the absence of a statutory severance clause the entire statute must be struck down if Congress would not have enacted the statute without the unconstitutional provision.

Consequently, the loss of the individual mandate so centrally affects the entire structure of the Act that without it the entire structure must fall. Trying to determine what could be salvaged would embroil the Court in rewriting the statutory policy and framework to govern one-sixth of the entire U.S. economy, which is obviously not a judicial function.

The only other foreseeable outcome is for the liberals on the Court to agree to go along with a ruling declaring the mandate unconstitutional if the Court will just decide to hold back on deciding severability to give Congress the chance to figure out how it wants to fix it. But Congress could just pass a whole new law in any event if the Court just strikes down the whole thing, which based on its precedents is exactly what it should do.

But liberals should not despair. There is broad bipartisan agreement on alternative means of covering the uninsured with a health care safety net, which would not be expensive if done right, and addressing health costs through market competition and incentives, which altogether could well actually reduce federal spending sharply. The end result would be a much better bill that satisfies all desirable social goals. But that would still require a different President, because Obama’s anti-market, left wing, ideology would not allow him to accept that desirable result.

Cross-Posted at True Health Is True Wealth! and at Ask Marion

Legislating Fascism – Six States & One City Are Now Full-On-Fascist… with More to Come

Fascist states and city:

· HAWAII

· MARYLAND

· NEW JERSEY

· NEW YORK (Unanimously passed State Senate and Assembly; awaiting Governor’s signature)

· VERMONT

· VIRGINIA

· City of PHILADELPHIA

States that are in the Fascist pipe-line:

· CALIFORNIA

· COLORADO

· MICHIGAN

· NORTH CAROLINA

· PENNSYLVANIA

Governors and State Legislatures who enact the Benefit Corporation Legislation either condone the transformation of America, or they are ignorant sheeple who are too dumb to hold elected office. Either way, it is up to us, the people, to educate them and find at least one representative in each state who will introduce new legislation to make Benefit Corporations and Sustainable Development/Agenda 21 null and void. Then, for those who do not support abolishing the Benefit Corporations and Sustainable Development/Agenda 21, we must organize and support the candidate who is running against them so that we can kick their butts out of office.

Background Information:

Conjoining government with private corporations is commonly referred to as ‘crony capitalism,’ ‘public-private partnerships,’ ‘corporatism’ and now ‘Benefit Corporations.’

“Benefit Corporations are a new class of corporation that are required to create a material positive impact on society and the environment and to meet higher standards of accountability and transparency. Model legislation was drafted byBill Clark from Drinker Biddle & Reath.”

Packaged in the same rhetoric we hear from Obama, it begs the question, “Accountability and transparency to whom?”

Regardless of what they call it, it all leads to a fundamental transformation of the United States of America – away from the free market system that our country was founded upon and transforming it into a fascistic form of dictatorial totalitarian rule. We have seen Obama accelerate that transformation and now we discover that Progressives have been working at the state and local levels to advance their agenda and destroy our free market system through Benefit Corporations and Sustainable Development/Agenda 21. For those who do not yet realize what is at stake, one word encompasses all of it – FREEDOM.

Listen to Obama’s Manufacturing Czar; why would Obama appoint someone with such disdain for our free market system? We know why.

Obama’s Czar Ron Bloom Agrees With Mao – address at Investor Conf part3

Take a look at the logo for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Benefit Corporation logo (B Corporation – “Using the Power of Business to Solve Social and Environmental Problems”). Coincidence?

In the U.S. today, we see private corporations joining with the Federal government and doing its bidding. Think of Obama and GE, Facebook, Google, Monsanto, banks, major utility companies and many other large corporations. Liberal CEOs who have jumped on the Progressive bandwagon are just as dangerous as the Progressive politicians we elected into office.

Unfortunately these corporations are in our homes and our lives through the products and services we use… and those that Obama’s government forces down our throats (e.g. the SMART meter that monitors and records energy usage in our homes every minute of every day; hazardous light bulbs that are now mandated; Facebook that now monitors us and our children through facial recognition and more).

Brief History Lesson for Governors and State Legislators:

Fascism:

1. A) A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. [Note: Eric Holder’s DOJ actively practices racism against Caucasians.]

B) A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.

2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.

Corporatism:

“Theory and practice of organizing the whole of society into corporate entities subordinate to the state. According to the theory, employers and employees would be organized into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and largely controlling the people and activities within their jurisdiction. Its chief spokesman was Adam Müller (b. 1779—d. 1829), court philosopher to the Fürst (prince) von Metternich, who conceived of a “class state” in which the classes operated as guilds, or corporations, each controlling a specific function of social life. This idea found favour in central Europe after the French Revolution, but it was not put into practice until Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy; its implementation there had barely begun by the start of World War II, which resulted in his fall. After World War II, the governments of many democratic western European countries (e.g., Austria, Norway, and Sweden) developed strong corporatist elements in an attempt to mediate and reduce conflict between businesses and trade unions and to enhance economic growth.”

Benito Mussolini:

An Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and became the 40th Prime Minister of Italy in 1922.

“Mussolini was among the founders of Italian Fascism, which included elements of nationalism, corporatism, national syndicalism, expansionism, social progress, and anti-socialism in combination with censorship of subversives andstate propaganda. In the years following his creation of the Fascist ideology, Mussolini influenced, or achieved admiration from, a wide variety of political figures.”

Funders of Benefit Corporation – including us, U.S. Taxpayers through USAID:

“We thank our leading investors for their generous support of our work to use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.

————————————————————————————————–

$5 million – $2.5 million

• The Rockefeller Foundation

$2,499,999 million – $1 million

• B Lab Co-Founders†‡
• Deloitte LLP
• Halloran Philanthropies‡
• The Prudential Foundation†
• United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

$999,999 – $100,000

• The Clara Fund
• Panta Rhea Foundation
• Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• RSF Social Finance‡
• Tom Bird Charitable Trust‡†

$99,999 – $25,000

• Anonymous
• The Annie E. Casey Foundation
• Calvert Foundation†‡
• Good Energies Foundation
• Flora Foundation
• Armonia LLC
• Ruth Fuchs Charitable Trust‡
• Debra Dunn‡

$24,999 – $10,000

• Anonymous
• Linklaters
• Stuart Davidson

$9,999-1,000

• Anonymous
• David Chen
• John Fullerton
• Solidago Foundation
• Vertex

‡ Multi-year Contribution † Program Related Investment”

Connect with your local 912 and Tea Party groups to raise awareness about this and unite. Then contact your Governor and State Legislators. Fascism is being legislated at the state level and it is time for us to take action to restore and preserve our FREEDOM.

Braveheart In Defiance Of The English Tyranny! BRAVO

By: AJ - Hat Tip: Heather Gass/Freedom Advocates/Stephen Poole/Wynne Coleman From the NoisyRoom

Forbes: Obama, Hitler, And Exploding The Biggest Lie In History

No Government Bailout, Please, We're Swiss

Swiss banking house UBS ( who in the end controls the banking world anyway) now says it has “substantially reduced” its exposure to rotten U.S. mortgage-backed assets, although it is less clear where the garbage has gone. The toxic assets were likely snapped up by vulture investors, a source told Forbes, although UBS wouldn’t specify where it all went, saying simply it “disposed” of them. The bank said it could have offloaded up to $8.8 billion of its mortgage-related investments, if necessary. Shares in UBS soared on the news. At one point, UBS has $15.1 billion in bad debts of various types, reports Forbes. Analysts expect a new round of writedowns shortly when the bank reports earnings, although probably no greater than in previous quarters. Meanwhile, Julius Baer Holding, the biggest money manager in the country, is “selectively” buying, says its chief investment officer. “We've been buying financials for the last two weeks, selectively, which we haven't done since 2007,'' Beat Wittmann, chief executive officer of investment products for the $80 billion fund, told Bloomberg. “We're in capitulation territory and that's how the bottom of a market is created.” © 2008 Newsmax