Thursday, 18 December 2008
'Jesus was a Palestinian,' claims U.S. history text  Study: American public school books have 'same inaccuracies' as Arab texts
By Bob Unruh
A new study reveals that if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to criticize the nation of Israel before the United Nations, he could use American public school textbooks to do so.
"It is shocking to find the kind of misinformation we discovered in American textbooks and supplemental materials being used by schools in every state in the country," said Dr. Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research and a co-author of the study.
"Elected officials at every level should investigate how these offensive passages are creeping into our textbooks. Presenting false information in the classroom undermines the very foundation of the American educational system," he said.
Tobin teamed with insititute research associate Dennis Ybarra for the study, titled, "The Trouble with Textbooks: Distorting History and Religion." The five-year effort, which looked at 28 prominent history, geography and social studies textbooks, reveals American public school students are being loaded up with indoctrination about Christianity, Judaism, Islam and the Middle East, to the cost of Christianity and Judaism and the benefit of Islam.
The study also supports other assessments of U.S. texts on which WND has reported.
According to an earlier report from the American Textbook Council, history textbooks throughout the U.S. schooling system promote Islam.
The new study by the IJCR found more than 500 erroneous passages in the books, including one textbook that charged that early Jewish civilization contributed little to the arts and sciences.
An excerpt from "World Civilizations," published by Thomson Wadsworth, for example, said, "Excepting the Old Testament's poetry, the Jews produced very little of note in any of the art forms ... There is no record of any important [early] Jewish contributions to the sciences."
The level of outrageousness grew: "Christianity was started by a young Palestinian named Jesus," claims "The World," published by Scott Foresman.
"The textbooks tend to be critical of Jews and Israel, disrespectful about Christianity, and rather than represent Islam in an objective way, tend to glorify it," said co-author Ybarra. "To teach children, for instance, that Jesus was a Palestinian and de-emphasize his Jewishness does a disservice to Christians and Jews as well as anyone who cares about historical accuracy."
The institute analyzes issues such as racial and religious identity, philanthropy and higher education. Its full report is available at TroubleWithTextbooks.org, where all 28 books that came under its review are listed.
The organization said its study revealed textbooks include routinely negative stereotypes of Jews, Judaism and Israel. For example, Israel is blamed for starting wars in the Middle East and Jews are charged with deicide, and the problems are rife through the three mega-publishers that have deep enough pockets to get approval and publish a textbook in the major states of Texas and California.
"The 'Trouble with Textbooks' is a very important book not only for Jews but for the entire Christian community," said Rev. John J. Keane, ecumenical officer for the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement. "This volume is an excellent tool for anyone who is interested in balanced information that is fair and reliable concerning Judaism, Christianity and Islam."
The authors found textbooks that stated or suggested:
- Jesus was a "Palestinian," not a Jew.
- The Arab nations never attacked Israel. Arab-Israeli wars “just broke out,” or Israel started them
- Arabs nations want peace, but Israel does not
- Israel expelled all Palestinian refugees
- Israel put the Palestinians in refugee camps in Arab lands, not Arab governments
- Palestinian terrorism is nonexistent or minimal
- Israel is not a victim of terrorism, or terrorism against Israel is justified
- U.S. support of Israel causes terrorism, including 9/11
- The intifadas were children’s revolts not involving adults or terrorism
Read more here
Posted on 7:06 AM by Bobbie Patray
Wednesday, 17 December 2008
Treasury submits to Shariah The U.S. Treasury Department is submitting to Shariah - the seditious religio-political-legal code authoritative Islam seeks to impose worldwide under a global theocracy.
As reported in this space last week [article published in early November], Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt set the stage with his recent visit to Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Persian Gulf states. His stated purpose was to promote the recycling of petrodollars in the form of foreign investment here.
Evidently, the price demanded by his hosts is that the U.S. government get with the Islamist financial program. While in Riyadh, Mr. Kimmitt announced: "The U.S. government is currently studying the salient features of Islamic banking to ascertain how far it could be useful in fighting the ongoing world economic crisis."
"Islamic banking" is a euphemism for a practice better known as "Shariah-Compliant Finance (SFC)." And it turns out that this week the Treasury will be taking officials from various federal agencies literally to school on SFC.
The department is hosting a half-day course entitled "Islamic Finance 101" on Thursday at its headquarters building. Treasury's self-described "seminar for the policy community" is co-sponsored with the leading academic promoters of Shariah and SCF in the United States: Harvard University Law School's Project on Islamic Finance. At the very least, the U.S. government evidently hopes to emulate Harvard's success in securing immense amounts of Wahhabi money in exchange for conforming to the Islamists' agenda. Like Harvard, Treasury seems utterly disinterested in what Shariah actually is, and portends.
Unfortunately, such submission - the literal meaning of "Islam" - is not likely to remain confined long to the Treasury or its sister agencies. Thanks to the extraordinary authority conferred on Treasury since September, backed by the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the department is now in a position to impose its embrace of Shariah on the U.S. financial sector. The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Treasury's purchase of - at last count - 17 banks and the ability to provide, or withhold, funds from its new slush-fund can translate into unprecedented coercive power.
Concerns in this regard are only heightened by the prominent role Assistant Treasury Secretary Neel Kashkari will be playing in "Islamic Finance 101." Mr. Kashkari, the official charged with administering the TARP fund, will provide welcoming remarks to participants. Presumably, in the process, he will convey the enthusiasm about Shariah-Compliant Finance that appears to be the current party line at Treasury.
As this enthusiasm for SCF ramps up in Washington officialdom, it is worth recalling a lesson from "across the pond." Earlier this year, the head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, provoked a brief but intense firestorm of controversy with his declaration that it was "unavoidable" that Shariah would be practiced in Britain. Largely unremarked was the reason he gave for such an ominous forecast: The U.K. had already accommodated itself to Shariah-Compliant Finance.
This statement provides an important insight for the incumbent U.S. administration and whomever succeeds it: Shariah-Compliant Finance serves as a leading edge of the spear for those seeking to insinuate Shariah into Western societies.
Regrettably, SCF is not the only instrument of the stealth jihad by which Shariah-promoting Islamists are seeking to achieve "parallel societies" here and elsewhere in the West. The British experience is instructive on this score, too. Her Majesty's government has allowed the establishment of at least five Shariah courts to hear (initially) family law cases. Polygamists in the U.K. can get welfare for each of their wives (as long as all the marriages beyond the first were performed overseas).
Read more here
Posted on 5:23 AM by Bobbie Patray
Tuesday, 09 December 2008
The World has never seen such freezing heat By Christopher Booker
A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.
So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.
Read more here Posted on 6:25 AM by Bobbie Patray
The Killer Frost for global warming
Wesley Pruden
Turn up the heat, somebody. The globe is freezing. Even Al Gore is looking for an extra blanket. Winter has barely come to the northern latitudes and already we've got bigger goosebumps than usual. So far the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports 63 record snowfalls in the United States, 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month. Only 44 Octobers over the past 114 years have been cooler than this last one.
The polar ice is accumulating faster than usual, and some of the experts now concede that the globe hasn't warmed since 1995. You may have noticed, in fact, that Al and his pals, having given up on the sun, no longer even warn of global warming. Now it's "climate change." The marketing men enlisted by Al and the doom criers to come up with a flexible "brand" took a cue from the country philosopher who observed, correctly, that "if you've got one foot in the fire and the other in a bucket of ice, on average you're warm." On average, "climate change" covers every possibility.
This is similar to the science practiced by Dr. James Hansen at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the source of much of the voodoo that Al Gore has been peddling since the doctor showed up at a Senate hearing in 1988 and told ghost stories that Al swallowed whole. Only last month Dr. Hansen's institute announced that October was the hottest on record, and then said "uh, never mind." The London Daily Telegraph calls this "a surreal blunder [that] raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming."
In this account, the institute had to make the humiliating climb-down after two leading skeptics of the global-warming scam, Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist, and Steve McIntyre, a Canadian computer analyst, discovered that temperature readings from September had been carried over and repeated for October.
We should sigh, shrug and give the scientists at NASA the benefit of the doubt that this was a mistake and not a deliberate howl at the moon. A spokesman for the institute explains that readings borrowed from Russia, which had been described as 10 degrees higher than normal for October, distorted the figures but, after all, the data had been obtained from others. So we should blame someone else.
This is the science we're expected to take on faith. The false figures - we must be generous and not say "faked" - were supplied by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change. These are the most widely quoted readings, and consistently show higher temperatures than other "data sets." Would the United Nations lie? (No giggling, please.)
This sets a new standard for hubris, arrogance and haughty self-importance. Skeptics of the global-warming scam, even those with unquestioned academic and real-world credentials, are treated as ignorant pariahs by pundits, presidential candidates and other politicians who know better, or ought to.
Read more here
Posted on 6:22 AM by Bobbie Patray
Friday, 05 December 2008
Outrage over Planned Parenthood Christmas 'gift' cards
'It is difficult to think of a more tasteless, ghoulish thing to give anyone'
Planned Parenthood, which in past years has promoted a "Choice on Earth" abortion campaign during the Christmas season, has a new outreach, offering Christmas gift certificates to be used for abortions.
"It is difficult to think of a more tasteless, ghoulish thing to give anyone. I refuse to refer to these financial instruments as gifts as they are nothing more than a legal way to put a hit out on someone," said a participant in a forum at the online Lone Star Times, where the plan was reported.
"Planned Parenthood, this generation's King Herod, you know, the guy who ordered the mass slaughter of babies when Jesus was born," added WND columnist Jill Stanek, who also documented the plan on her blog.
According to the Lone Star Times, the nation's leading player in the abortion industry is "celebrating the most important crisis pregnancy of all time by selling gift certificates, perfect for the woman who has everything but moral fiber … And it's so much easier than finding the perfect 'Baby's First Christmas' ornament."
According to WISH-TV in Indianapolis, the controversial plan has people talking.
"People are making really tough decisions about putting gas in their car and food on their table, so we know that many women especially put healthcare at the bottom of their list to do," Chrystal Struben-Hall, an official for the abortion business, told the station.
The report said the certificates come in $25 increments and can be used for everything from birth control to $58 examinations that include breast exams and pap tests.
"They can be seen for sexually transmitted disease screenings, HIV tests and general prostate exams and those kinds of things," said Struben-Hall.
But can they be used for abortions?
Of course, Struben-Hall said. "We decided not to put restrictions on."
Stanek has campaigned to alert the American public of President-elect Barack Obama's extreme pro-abortion position. In fact, Obama considered partial birth abortion a "legitimate medical procedure" and opposed a requirement that abortionists provide life-preserving care for infants who survive abortion attempts, because of the burden it would impose on the abortionist.
Read more here
Posted on 5:56 AM by Bobbie Patray
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
How 25 Years of Gay Activism in Hollywood Has Paid Off
By Robert Knight
If you’re noticing your TV screen turning pink, it’s not just your imagination.
The new broadcast TV season includes 22 series featuring a total of 35 openly gay characters, according to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). GLAAD, which rides herd over all Hollywood scripts dealing with homosexuality, says the number of series with homosexual characters is a record.
These series are on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and the CW networks. The total figure does not include shows on cable, like “The L Word” on Showtime, or MTV’s all-gay LOGO network.
A new “Eye on Culture” report from the Culture and Media Institute, “Lavender Propaganda,” reveals the depth and breadth of the current media campaign to promote homosexuality to average Americans. But Hollywood became a uniformly pro-gay industry well before “Will & Grace” or the slew of 2008-2009 network shows.
In 1996, the year before Ellen DeGeneres “came out” as a lesbian on “Ellen,” Los Angeles magazine writer David Ehrenstein boasted in a May cover story, “More than Friends”:
“There are openly gay writers on almost every major prime-time situation comedy you can think of … In short, when it comes to sitcoms, gays rule.”
Here is an excerpt from my book, “The Age of Consent: The Rise of Relativism and the Corruption of Popular Culture,” about the gay influence on TV:
“Ehrenstein, a professed homosexual, cheerfully admits that gay writers are attempting to influence viewers with a homosexual agenda:
‘The gay and lesbian writers of today have been pushing the envelope any chance they get. In fact, they’re encouraged to do so. Since current comedies are positively obsessed with the intimate sex lives of straight young singles, who better to write them than members of a minority famed for its sexual candor … as a result of the influx of gay writers, even the most heterosexual of sitcoms often possess that most elusive of undertones – the “gay sensibility”—‘Frasier’ being a case in point.’
“The ‘gay sensibility consists, according to two homosexual writers, of ‘a very urban, very educated, ironic, detached, iconoclastic attitude.’ Plus, a deliberate overdose of sexuality.”
In her 1989 book “Target: Primetime: Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Television,” Kathryn Montgomery explains why homosexual activists have been particularly effective in Hollywood:
“Gays had one important advantage over other groups. They referred to it as their ‘agents in place.’ According to gay activists, there were a substantial number of gay people working in the television industry who were not open about their life-style. Some held high-level positions. While unable to promote the gay cause on the inside, they could be very helpful to advocates on the outside, especially by leaking information. These ‘agents in place’ became one of the linchpins of gay media strategy.”
In January 1973, Ron Gold, the New York-based Gay Activist Alliance’s Media Director, wrote to all three networks, requesting meetings. Gold, who had been a reporter for Variety, also helped stage a hostile confrontation at ABC that was strikingly similar to the strong-arm tactics employed at the American Psychiatric Association convention in 1971, when gay activists openly threatened psychiatrists who viewed homosexuality as a treatable disorder.
As Montgomery reports:
“Before a meeting had been scheduled with ABC, GAA members were smuggled a script by one of their agents in place. It was for an upcoming episode of Marcus Welby, M.D., entitled ‘The Other Martin Loring’ and it concerned a married man who asked Dr. Welby to help him with his homosexual tendencies. Welby assured the man that as long as he suppressed his homosexual desires, he would not fail as a husband and father.
“As Gold remembers, GAA leaders ‘blew a cork’ when they read the script. … Instead of waiting for an appointment with ABC executives, the activists – with the help of another network insider – ‘took over’ the network executive offices. Recalls Gold: ‘We knew somebody who worked there who gave us a kind of place of the place and we did a little scouting in advance and we managed to sneak into the offices. The confrontation at ABC headquarters was hostile and explosive.”
It ended with the arrests of several activists. Montgomery notes that although the program in question still aired, “it did have an impact on later decisions … ABC executives decided to invite gay activist comments on any new scripts dealing with homosexuality. Since gays had their own ways of getting scripts anyway, this approach was even more essential than with other groups.”
Read more here
Posted on 6:14 AM by Bobbie Patray
Obama Is Likely to Use Executive Power to Halt Drilling, Fund Stem-Cell Work
President-elect Barack Obama will likely use his executive powers after taking office to block new drilling leases on environmentally sensitive land in Utah and to allow federal funding of stem-cell research, putting a quick mark on policy making.
"There's a lot the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action," John Podesta, head of Mr. Obama's transition team, said on "Fox News Sunday."
Mr. Podesta said Mr. Obama is "a transformational figure" and that the support he received among voters in some Republican states and conservative counties gives him a mandate to pursue his agenda aggressively.
Rolling back executive orders issued by the Bush administration could give Mr. Obama a fast way to put his mark on policy making after he takes office, as past presidents have. Other Bush-era executive orders that Mr. Obama could reverse include a ban on federal aid to family-planning organizations that counsel women on abortion, and a decision in December that restricts California in regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from cars.
The Bush administration has been rushing to implement regulations before Mr. Obama takes office. Unlike with executive orders, some of these would take longer for Mr. Obama and the Democrats to roll back.
One Bush-era measure Mr. Obama is likely to address quickly are the new oil and gas leases approved recently by the Department of Interior that would open up for drilling land near Arches and Canyonlands national parks in southern Utah's desert. Environmentalists said drilling in the area could potentially damage the parks and surrounding land.
Mr. Obama could also lift restrictions placed by President George W. Bush on the type of stem-cell research that can be funded with federal dollars. Democratic congressional leaders have vowed to push a twice-vetoed stem-cell research bill as one of the first acts of the next Congress.
Mr. Podesta and other top Obama aides fanned out on the Sunday news talk shows, suggesting that after Tuesday's electoral sweep, the incoming administration would begin to try to influence policy making before January's inauguration.
Speaking on the Sunday shows, Mr. Podesta, incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and transition Co-Chair Valerie Jarrett touched upon the detailed preparations the Obama team has made to pave the way for a smooth transition to the presidency. Mr. Podesta said his team has been working since early August, with transition leaders meeting frequently with officials in the Bush White House. About 100 Obama aides received security clearance before the election, so they could begin accessing national-security information immediately after Mr. Obama won.
Read more here
Posted on 6:11 AM by Bobbie Patray
Saturday, 08 November 2008
Study First to Link TV Sex To Real Teen Pregnancies
Study First to Link TV Sex To Real Teen Pregnancies
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 3, 2008; A01
The study, which tracked more than 700 12-to-17-year-olds for three years, found that those who viewed the most sexual content on TV were about twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy as those who saw the least.
"Watching this kind of sexual content on television is a powerful factor in increasing the likelihood of a teen pregnancy," said lead researcher Anita Chandra. "We found a strong association." The study is being published today in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
There is rising concern about teen pregnancy rates, which after decades of decline may have started inching up again, fueling an intense debate about what factors are to blame. Although TV viewing is unlikely to entirely explain the possible uptick in teen pregnancies, Chandra and others said, the study provides the first direct evidence that it could be playing a significant role.
"Sexual content on television has doubled in the last few years, especially during the period of our research," said Chandra, a researcher at the nonpartisan Rand Corp.
Studies have found a link between watching television shows with sexual content and becoming sexually active earlier, and between sexually explicit music videos and an increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases. And many studies have shown that TV violence seems to make children more aggressive. But the new research is the first to show an association between TV watching and pregnancy among teens.
The study did not examine how different approaches to sex education factor into the effects of TV viewing on sexual behavior and pregnancy rates. Proponents of comprehensive sex education as well as programs that focus on abstinence said the findings illustrate the need to educate children better about the risks of sex and about how to protect themselves, although they disagree about which approach works best.
"We have a highly sexualized culture that glamorizes sex," said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association. "We really need to encourage schools to make abstinence-centered programs a priority."
But others said there is no evidence that abstinence-centered programs work.
"This finding underscores the importance of evidence-based sex education that helps young people delay sex and use prevention when they become sexually active," said James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth. "The absolutely last thing we should do in response is bury our heads in the sand and promote failed abstinence-only programs."
Chandra and her colleagues surveyed more than 2,000 adolescents ages 12 to 17 three times by telephone from 2001 to 2004 to gather information about a variety of behavioral and demographic factors, including television viewing habits. Based on a detailed analysis of the sexual content of 23 shows in the 2000-2001 TV season, the researchers calculated how often the teens saw characters kissing, touching, having sex, and discussing past or future sexual activity.
Among the 718 youths who reported being sexually active during the study, the likelihood of getting pregnant or getting someone else pregnant increased steadily with the amount of sexual content they watched on TV, the researchers found. About 25 percent of those who watched the most were involved in a pregnancy, compared with about 12 percent of those who watched the least. The researchers took into account other factors such as having only one parent, wanting to have a baby and engaging in other risky behaviors.
Read more here Posted on 10:45 AM by Bobbie Patray
Thursday, 06 November 2008
GOP majority in Tennessee Legislature could lead to sweeping change NASHVILLE — As Tennessee Republicans prepare to take control of the entire General Assembly for the first time since Civil War Reconstruction, the likely new House speaker, Jason Mumpower, said GOP lawmakers plan to install their own candidates as secretary of state, comptroller and treasurer.
Democrats currently occupy the positions, which are elected by the legislature. The constitutional officers collectively control more than 1,000 positions in areas ranging from state auditing functions to bond finance, business incorporations and fundraising by charities.
“We have a constitutional majority so it is time to have new constitutional officers,” said Rep. Mumpower, R-Bristol. “I think there are people who can serve ably in those positions that we will have confidence in as representative and senators.”
Rep. Mumpower’s comments came as Tennessee Republicans and Democrats pondered the aftermath of Tuesday’s elections. The national wave that lifted Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama to victory Tuesday night left Tennessee Democrats floundering.
House Republicans in Tuesday’s elections won a narrow majority of the 99-member House with a 50-49 majority, according to unofficial returns. Republicans last elected a House speaker in 1969 when the chamber was divided 49 to 49 with one independent.
Rep. Gerald McCormick, R-Chattanooga, said that he expects Rep. Mumpower, who is currently Republican leader, will become speaker although bipartisan ruling coalitions are not unknown in the legislature where former Speaker John Wilder, D-Mason, held sway for years with GOP support.
“I believe the Republicans will stand together by whomever we nominate as our leader and I expect that to be Jason Mumpower,” Rep. McCormick said.
House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, D-Covington, who became speaker in 1991, has a 53-46 majority in the current General Assembly.
Tennessee Republicans also made important gains Tuesday in the 33-member Senate, where they had previously enjoyed operational control in a chamber that was divided 16 to 16 with one independent who often sided with Democrats. According to unofficial returns, Republicans now have a 19 to 14 majority.
Read more here Posted on 7:28 AM by Bobbie Patray
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Bush's Calls for Financial Reform Ignored Bush's Calls for Financial Reform Ignored
Monday, September 22, 2008 3:06 PM
By: Ronald Kessler
Triggering the financial implosion on Wall Street were the problems at Fannie Mae and Feddie Mac, which fostered lax lending practices and covered up their own financial deficiencies.
Going back to the beginning of his administration, President Bush warned of the problems at these institutions and the consequences if Congress did not bring them under control. Seventeen times, Bush publicly called for reform of both institutions. But Democrats and Republicans in Congress ignored the warnings and denied there were any problems. What follows is an administration chronology of efforts to achieve reform:
2001
April: The Administration's FY02 budget declares that the size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is "a potential problem," because "financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting Federally insured entities and economic activity."
2002
May: The President calls for the disclosure and corporate governance principles contained in his 10-point plan for corporate responsibility to apply to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (OMB Prompt Letter to OFHEO, 5/29/02)
2003
January: Freddie Mac announces it has to restate financial results for the previous three years.
February: The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) releases a report explaining that "although investors perceive an implicit Federal guarantee of [GSE] obligations," "the government has provided no explicit legal backing for them." As a consequence, unexpected problems at a GSE could immediately spread into financial sectors beyond the housing market. ("Systemic Risk: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Role of OFHEO," OFHEO Report, 2/4/03)
September: Fannie Mae discloses SEC investigation and acknowledges OFHEO's review found earnings manipulations.
September: Treasury Secretary John Snow testifies before the House Financial Services Committee to recommend that Congress enact "legislation to create a new Federal agency to regulate and supervise the financial activities of our housing-related government sponsored enterprises" and set prudent and appropriate minimum capital adequacy requirements.
October: Fannie Mae discloses $1.2 billion accounting error.
November: Council of the Economic Advisers (CEA) Chairman Greg Mankiw explains that any "legislation to reform GSE regulation should empower the new regulator with sufficient strength and credibility to reduce systemic risk." To reduce the potential for systemic instability, the regulator would have "broad authority to set both risk-based and minimum capital standards" and "receivership powers necessary to wind down the affairs of a troubled GSE." (N. Gregory Mankiw, Remarks At The Conference Of State Bank Supervisors State Banking Summit And Leadership, 11/6/03)
2004
February: The President's FY05 Budget again highlights the risk posed by the explosive growth of the GSEs and their low levels of required capital, and called for creation of a new, world-class regulator: "The Administration has determined that the safety and soundness regulators of the housing GSEs lack sufficient power and stature to meet their responsibilities, and therefore…should be replaced with a new strengthened regulator." (2005 Budget Analytic Perspectives, pg. 83)
February: CEA Chairman Mankiw cautions Congress to "not take [the financial market's] strength for granted." Again, the call from the Administration was to reduce this risk by "ensuring that the housing GSEs are overseen by an effective regulator." (N. Gregory Mankiw, Op-Ed, "Keeping Fannie And Freddie's House In Order," Financial Times, 2/24/04)
Read more here Posted on 7:14 AM by Bobbie Patray
Saturday, 13 September 2008
Platforms: Republican vs. Democrat The Republicans' Call to Arms
by Phyllis Schlafly, September 5, 2008
We recall the words of the old popular song, "What a Difference a Day Makes; 24 Little Hours." In this political year, it was actually 38 hours, but the poetry is the same.
That's the time-spread between the locking up of the 2008 Republican Platform on Wednesday at 8 p.m. and the selection of conservative Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as John McCain's Veep choice at 10 a.m. on Friday. In just 38 hours, disheartened conservatives were transformed into enthusiastic Republicans, armed and ready to storm the pseudo Greek temple that Barack Obama erected in the mile-high city of Denver.
It's hard to exaggerate the turnaround in the attitude of grassroots Republicans; a CNN reporter expressed herself as "shocked." Sarah Palin is a breath of fresh air to John McCain's campaign.
The Republican Party Platform, hammered out by a grassroots committee with representatives from every state, gives Republicans a basis on which to rebuild their party. It's a "call to arms," a platform of bold colors with no pastel shades, just as Ronald Reagan described the 1976 Platform that Delegates adopted after rejecting the Ford-Kissinger platform.
This year's Platform is a complete break from the ponderous 2004 Platform, which strung together 40,000 tiresome words. The 2008 Platform isn't about personalities; it's about principles.
The 2004 Platform had endorsed the "Free Trade Area of the Americas," a foolish notion to bring about the economic integration of the Western Hemisphere and allow cheap labor to replace American jobs. The 2008 Platform sensibly calls for "a Western Hemisphere of sovereign nations with secure borders," and the committee unanimously rejected the goal of a "North American Union" modeled on the European Union.
This year gave us a clear improvement over the previous Platform in regard to the English language. In 2004, Republicans called English "our nation's common language" and endorsed bilingual education, but the 2008 Platform supports "English as the official language in our nation" because it is "essential as a unifying cultural force" and omits mention of bilingual ed (often called language apartheid).
The 2004 Platform had lined up with the now-defeated amnesty plan of the U.S. Senate. It endorsed a "new temporary worker program" and allowing illegal aliens currently holding jobs in the U.S. "to apply for citizenship in the same manner as those who apply from outside the United States." In a clear break, the 2008 Platform calls for building the border fence, securing our ports, enforcing existing laws against "illegal workers and lawbreaking employers," requiring the use of E-Verify, deporting criminal aliens, denying federal funds to sanctuary cities, and refusing driver's licenses, in-state college tuition rates, and Social Security benefits for illegal aliens.
The 2008 Platform marks a refreshing break from the previous Platform's obsequious kowtowing to the United Nations and other international bureaucrats. The 2004 Platform had said that the United States is "committed to lasting institutions like the United Nations and the World Trade Organization."
The 2008 Platform doesn't mention the WTO and includes several paragraphs of criticism of the United Nations, citing its "scandal-ridden and corrupt management," the "disproportionate" dues we are forced to pay, and its discrimination against Israel and the Vatican.
The 2008 Platform specifically rejects the United Nations Treaty on Women and the UN Treaty on the Rights of the Child, and expresses "deep reservations" about the UN Law of the Sea Treaty.
The 2008 Platform recognizes that energy independence is vital to our national security. The Platform calls for drilling in "new oilfields" in Alaska and elsewhere, as well as developing nuclear power and clean coal.
The 2008 Platform demands that "the risk of climate change" be based on "sound science without succumbing to no-growth radicalism." The Platform also cautions against "doomsday climate change scenarios."
The plank affirming that "the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed," which has been part of the Republican Platform since 1984 was, of course, included again this year. The 2008 Platform becomes the most pro-life ever by endorsing the Born Alive Infants Protection Act and the ban on partial-birth abortion, both of which identify a sharp division with Barack Obama's legislative record.
Four years ago, many grassroots Republicans were offended by a Platform that called public schools "a foundation of a free, civil society" and bragged about having given us "the largest increase in federal education funding in history."
The 2008 Platform better represents Republicans by standing up for parents' rights to use vouchers, tax credits, private schools, or homeschooling, and to stop public schools from forcing students to answer personal, non-academic questionnaires without prior parental consent.
Sarah Palin and the 2008 Platform have given Republicans a new lease on life and put John McCain on the road to victory.
Republican Platform
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We Can't Afford the Democrats' Platform
by Phyllis Schlafly, September 12, 2008
The past two presidential elections taught the losing Democrats a couple of political lessons. They learned that attacks on guns and defense of abortion are no longer winning issues for them, and this new awakening is reflected in their 2008 Party Platform adopted in Denver.
The Platform grudgingly states: "we will preserve Americans' Second Amendment right to own and use firearms." The powers-that-be in the Democratic Party have learned to tolerate a few pro-gun candidates.
Feminist pressure won't let the Democrats recede from their "proudly"-stated 2004 Platform position that "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare." This year's Platform is just as pro-abortion, but uses slightly softer words, stating that the Democrats support "a woman's ability to make her own life choices and obtain reproductive health care, including birth control" (throughout nine months and with taxpayers' money, of course).
Proclaiming that "we will end the Bush Administration's war on science," the Democratic Platform promises to "lift the current Administration's ban on using federal funding for embryonic stem cells." The genuinely pro-life Republican Platform calls for "a ban on human cloning and a ban on the creation of or experimentation on human embryos for research purposes."
The 2008 Democratic Platform stridently toadies to the feminists on all their issues. The Platform reaffirms support for the Equal Rights Amendment (which was declared dead by the Supreme Court 26 years ago), enforcement of Title IX (which has canceled hundreds of men's college athletic teams, thereby costing us dearly in the recent Olympics), passage of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (which would use a UN treaty to keep abortion legal), and the Violence Against Women Act (which puts a billion taxpayer dollars a year into the coffers of the radical feminists).
The Platform reiterates the phony feminist slogan that "women still earn 76 cents for every dollar that a man earns." That figure includes women who have spent many years out of the workforce and, of those who do have jobs, about a third work only part-time.
The Platform promises to "expand" the Family and Medical Leave Act. "Expanding" means forcing employers to pay wages to employees who are on extended leave at times of their own choosing.
The Democratic Platform goes all-out in recognizing the support of their gay rights constituency. "We support the full inclusion of all families, including same-sex couples, in the life of our nation, and support equal responsibility, benefits, and protections."
The Platform adds, "We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act." Overwhelmingly passed in 1996 to prevent judges from forcing other states to validate Massachusetts' same-sex marriages, DOMA was one of the most popular laws ever passed and it was even signed by Bill Clinton.
Most of the Democratic Platform consists of promising benefits that will cost already burdened taxpayers aplenty. There's no mention of how these extravagant handouts will be paid for.
For example, the Democratic Platform enthusiastically endorses the incredibly extravagant worldwide handouts in the bill sponsored by Barack Obama called "the U.S. Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015." The Platform promises to "double our annual investment in meeting these challenges to $50 billion by 2012."
The Democrats' mindset is that "we need stronger international institutions." So, the Platform promises to "create a $2 billion Global Education Fund ... with the goal of supporting a free, quality, basic education for every child in the world."
The Democrats want the government to take care of American kids from birth through college. "We will make quality, affordable early childhood care and education available to every American child from the day he or she is born," and "we will provide all our children a world-class education, from early childhood through college."
The Democratic Platform is full of proposals to raid the pockets of John Q. Taxpayer and reduce the American standard of living. This includes "an economy-wide cap and trade program," a plan to "reduce oil consumption by at least 35 percent, or ten million barrels per day, by 2030," and designing legislation based on the belief that "global climate change is the planet's greatest threat."
These expensive plans will require a giant expansion of government money and government jobs. The Democrats must have had this result in mind when they promised they "will make government a more attractive place to work."
There is much more expensive foolishness in the Democratic Platform, but the plank that takes the cake is: "we oppose laws that require identification in order to vote or register to vote." That sounds like the Democrats are planning on winning the 2008 election by stuffing the ballot box.
Democrat Platform
Posted on 7:09 PM by Bobbie Patray
Thursday, 04 September 2008
Gov. Sarah Palin hits it out of the park
COMMENT: Without a doubt, Gov. Palin came out of the blocks running last night. While she is still under attack by the main stream media, it appears that she will be equal to the task. She looked composed, confident and fearless. The strangest thing of all is the feminists suggesting that maybe she should stay home with her children. Wait just a minute -- I thought they wanted women in the workforce! Oh, maybe it's just that they don't want pro-life, conservative, articulate, accomplished, successful women who are elected officials in the workforce.
Have you read Proverbs 31:10-31 lately? Let's continue to pray for Gov. Palin and her family.
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
"The difference between hockey moms and pit bulls is lipstick."
"But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people."
Read more here
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Palin’s Powerful Debut
09/03/2008
Rudy Giuliani is a tough act to follow. He loves campaigning, and when the crowd began to yell, “Drill, baby, drill,” he ate it up. Following him, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin needed to be nearly perfect. And she was.
Palin’s performance was so good, her vice presidential adversary, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) will not be able to bob and weave only in the October 2 debate. He may float like a butterfly, but Palin stings like a bee.
Read more here
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Palin's Home Run
Twenty years after Ronald Reagan left office, Republicans who have long missed him may have found a future Margaret Thatcher. If John McCain wins, conservatives may find one of the most enduring accomplishments of his term will have been what he did before it started: helping to fill the Republican Party's future talent bench with such a fresh and compelling figure.
Sarah Palin is a conviction politician, a naturally compelling speaker and someone who can relate to her audience on very human terms. America has just learned why Mrs. Palin enjoys the highest approval ratings of any governor in America.
Read more here
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The Best Man Turned Out To Be A Woman
09/03/2008
They claimed Palin was chosen only because she's a woman. In fact, Palin was chosen because she's pro-life, pro-gun, pro-drilling and pro-tax cuts. She's fought both Republicans and Democrats on public corruption and does not have hair plugs like some other vice presidential candidate I could mention. In other words, she's a "Republican."
As a right-winger, Palin will appeal to the narrow 59 percent of Americans who voted for another former small-market sportscaster: Ronald Reagan. Our motto: Sarah Palin is only a heartbeat away!
Read more here
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Who’s Off Limits?
09/04/2008
St. Paul, Minn. -- Since the revelation that Bristol Palin, GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, is pregnant, the mainstream media have been covering the story with a zeal not seen since they discovered Jamie Lynn Spears’s pregnancy. But the current media feeding frenzy is actually much worse, as the liberal press savage Sarah Palin in the hopes of damaging her street cred with socially conservative voters.
US Weekly magazine’s cover this week will have a photo of Gov. Palin with her youngest son, Trig, along with this gem of a feature title: “Babies, Lies and Scandal: John McCain’s Vice President.”
Read more here
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Media on Palin - a sudden case of 'family values'?
A conservative analyst says the media are currently in a feeding frenzy, trying to assert that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is unfit to be vice president because her teenage daughter is pregnant. One pro-family leader says the way liberal media is reporting the story exposes a "rank hypocrisy."
Female news anchors and reporters from various media outlets, including CBS, NBC, and CNN, have suggested 17-year-old Bristol Palin's pregnancy should have disqualified her mother from becoming John McCain's running mate and raises questions about McCain's judgment. Katie Couric of CBS News even chided the McCain campaign for not notifying the press about the pregnancy sooner.
Read more here
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Savaging Sarah Palin
When MSNBC's Chris Matthews suggested in Denver that Barack Obama earned his present elevation in American politics, unlike "showcase appointments" like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, he reminded the world of the peculiarity of liberalism. John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate underlined it. Liberals find no joy when Republicans select women or minorities for top positions. They are all fraudulent traitors to their own apparent group interests. Conservative blacks aren't really black. Conservative Latinos aren't really Latino. Now, conservative women are somehow not really women.
Newsweek's Eleanor Clift spoke for her colleagues on the Palin selection: "If the media reaction is anything, it's been literally laughter in many places ... In very, very many newsrooms."
This principle -- that hell hath no fury like a liberal who's been insulted by a conservative not sticking to white male appointments -- explains why President Bush successfully placed two white men on the Supreme Court. Only picking Harriet Miers was outrageous (although her capacity for the job was clearly an issue). Bush saw how upset the Left became when Clarence Thomas was nominated. John McCain could have played safe. He chose to mix things up and pick a woman who matched his tendency to mix things up.
Read more here
Posted on 7:36 PM by Bobbie Patray
Monday, 01 September 2008
Profile of Governor Sarah Palin
Profile of Alaska's Sarah Palin:
Governor, Reformer, Mother
By JIM CARLTON
August 29, 2008 2:56 p.m.
[Click on the link at the end of this article, click on this picture for an album on the Governor.]
Current Office: Governor of Alaska
Date of Birth: Feb. 11, 1964
Age: 44
Place of Birth: Sandpoint, Idaho
Home: Wasilla, Alaska
Education: University of Idaho, 1987
Party: Republican
Political Experience: Wasilla Mayor, 1996-2002. Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission Chairman, 2003-04. Elected governor in 2006.
Misc.: Palin's son Track enlisted in the Army in 2007, and is scheduled to be deployed to Iraq in September.
When a hockey mom named Sarah Palin ran for governor as a Republican outsider in 2006, she took on not only a sitting governor from her own party but also Alaska's Republican establishment -- vowing to clean up a political system that had been rocked by an Federal Bureau of Investigation corruption probe.
After handily winning, her popularity in Alaska soared as she went on to sack political appointees with close ties to industry lobbyists and shelved pork projects. Gov. Palin has shown similar fearlessness in going after Big Oil, whose money has long dominated the state. She appears, for example, to have forced Alaska's dominant oil producers, ConocoPhillips and BP PLC, to finally get serious about a natural-gas pipeline -- without making any tax or royalty concessions.
"People see her as the symbol of purity in an atmosphere of corruption," says Anchorage pollster Marc Hellenthal. "She's more like Saint Sarah."
Republican presidential candidate John McCain drew on that image in choosing Gov. Palin as the first woman to run on a Republican Party presidential ticket.
The 44-year-old Gov. Palin is a mother of five. She served as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, (pop. 8,500) and was winner of the Miss Wasilla pageant. She has been featured in a photo spread in Vogue.
Although Alaska only has about 700,000 people, the state has outsized strategic importance because it contains some of the richest mineral resources in the world, including some of the largest known oil reserves in the U.S.
Before her selection as running mate, Gov. Palin served as an informal energy adviser to Sen. McCain, saying she has spoken with the Arizona senator about the need to drill more in places like Alaska.
Read more here
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For More information on Governor Sara Palin, see below:
McCain's Stunner: Gov. Sara Palin
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McCain Reaches Far Afield for His Running Mate
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Palin Speaks to Newsmax About McCain, Abortion, Cilmate Change
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McCain: Palin's 'Tough, Ready to Be President'
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A GOP First -- Female VP Nominee
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Miss Congeniality Comes to Washington
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The Sarah Sensation
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Sarah Palin's Feminists for Life Membership Points to Pro-Woman, ProLife View
Posted on 11:40 AM by Bobbie Patray
Evangelicals, conservatives pleased
COMMENT: It looks like the Wall Street Journal was incorrect when they reported that Gov. Palin was a Lutheran. Everything I have seen since reports that she is an evangelical. (See text in RED below.)
With this email comes a plea for some 'knee mail'. Let us pray for this lady, her husband and children, especially baby Trig, as she embarks on the whirlwind campaign between now and November.
Evangelicals, conservatives pleased
Tennesseans like Palin, her anti-abortion stance
By BOB SMIETANA • Staff Writer • August 30, 2008
Ecstatic.
That's how leading conservative Richard Land described himself after learning that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would be John McCain's running mate
Like many conservatives, Land feared that McCain would select a pro-choice running mate, with disastrous consequences. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released earlier this week showed that 27 percent of conservatives polled — and 29 percent of white evangelicals — would have been less likely to vote for McCain if he had a pro-choice running mate.
Those fears were put to rest Friday.
"I think 'ecstatic' would be an understatement," said Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's influential Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. "She's pro-life, solidly, both in word and in deed."
One of Tennessee's most prominent Republican women, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, called Palin "a very strong pick for McCain."
"He is a maverick who has selected a maverick governor who is known as a reform governor, who has worked to reduce spending, to fight corruption, and she will be a welcome and strong addition to the ticket."
McCain didn't carry Tennessee in the February primaries — Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is widely seen as more conservative than McCain, did. But Blackburn believes Palin will connect well with Tennesseans.
"She is going to be very warmly received," the Brentwood Republican said. "She has impeccable conservative credentials, she is a wife, she is a mother, she is a businesswoman, she is a leader with a proven record of success, and she is pro-life, she is pro-Second Amendment, she is pro-energy."
Likewise, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander said Palin's nomination creates "a strong, balanced alternative to the competition offered by the other side" — the Democratic pairing of U.S. Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Since the beginning of the primary season, Democrats have tried to shrink the God gap between their party and Republicans. Despite intense outreach, Obama still trails McCain 68 percent to 24 percent among white evangelicals, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and American Life.
Palin, who has been governor of Alaska since December 2006, seems a natural fit for evangelical voters. She grew up among evangelicals, and attended the Wasilla Assembly of God as a teenager and young adult. While in Juneau, Alaska's capital, she sometimes attends Juneau Christian Center, an Assemblies of God congregation.
A strong performance by McCain at a recent Faith Forum run by the Rev. Rick Warren at his Saddleback Church in California, coupled with Palin's selection, has won over some of McCain's harshest evangelical critics.
Dobson changes mind
James Dobson, founder of the influential national group Focus on the Family, had sworn to stay home rather than vote for McCain. On Friday, he called Palin an "outstanding choice" — and even told a radio host that he would vote for McCain.
"Governor Palin's commitment to the sanctity of life is not just a political position," Dobson said in a statement. "She was advised to abort her fifth and youngest child when it was learned he had Down syndrome. She refused. That's bravery and integrity in action."
Read more here
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Obama Camp Hits, Then Praises Palin
MONACA, Pa. -- Barack Obama's spokesman fired off a fast criticism of Republican John McCain's new running mate on Friday, but the Democratic candidate himself quickly stepped in to offer her congratulations and praise.
Obama, who is eager to win over female voters who backed his rival Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primaries, blamed the mixed messages about McCain's choice, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, on campaign aides with a "hair trigger."
McCain made his surprise announcement moments before Obama flew from Denver with his running mate, Joe Biden, and their wives. Fresh off his nomination acceptance speech before 84,000 people Thursday night, Obama joined Biden on a three-day bus tour of crucial industrial states that began with a visit to a biodiesel fuel plant in western Pennsylvania.
As the plane was lifting off from Denver, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton issued a statement calling Palin an abortion-rights opponent and "the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience."
Soon thereafter, with the plane over the Midwest, a spokeswoman gave reporters on board a much kinder statement from Biden and Obama
Read more here
Posted on 11:33 AM by Bobbie Patray
Friday, 29 August 2008
'Climate Cops' + Global Tax
Beware your children: They might be 'Climate Cops'
Company recruits kids to keep records, bust parents for 'energy crimes'
Posted: July 28, 2008
8:44 pm Eastern
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
A new website campaign designed by a British power company recruits children through games, badges and cartoons to enlist as "Climate Cops," actively keeping records on their parents and neighbors for violations of "energy crimes" against the planet.
The "Climate Cops" website encourages children to investigate family and friends and "then build your 'Climate Crime Case File' and report back to your family to make sure they don't commit those crimes again (or else)!" The site also warns children that they "may need to keep a watchful eye" to prevent future violations.
A link on the site for teachers to download free materials for building lesson plans indicates the website is targeting children from ages 7-11.
The so-called crimes children are to watch for are listed on a poster (visible at right) and range from leaving the tap running and failing to use energy-saving light bulbs to running the dryer on a sunny day and putting hot food in the refrigerator.
The website also encourages children to download a series of "Climate Crime Cards" (such as the one pictured below) in which enlisted "Climate Cops" can keep an ongoing record of their family's violation of energy "crimes."
Recruiting children to spy on and keep records of their parents' infractions reminds some of Adolf Hitler's Nazi youth program, only with an environmentalist bent. The author of the blog EU Referendum wrote: "In a system which has echoes of Hitler's Deutsches Jungvolk movement … perhaps successful graduates can work up to becoming block wardens, then street and district 'climate crime Fuehrers,' building a network of spies and informers."
Hitler's youth program, which began in the 1920s and ended in 1945, enlisted children to be trained in the ideals of the Nazi party. Eventually folded into the German Sturmabteilung, also known as the SA or the "brownshirts," the Hitler Youth were given authority over different regions to report and keep records on neighbors, especially Jewish neighbors, as part of Nazi Germany's fear- and propaganda-based social control efforts.
Read more here
Scientist: 'Global warming' scheme to push global tax
Blames U.N. for using scare reports, 'mob rule,' to bully through agenda
Posted: June 19, 2008
11:15 pm Eastern
By Bob Unruh
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
A scientist whose reservations about "global warming" have been officially endorsed by tens of thousands of other scientists is accusing the U.N. of using "mob rule" to generate fear-mongering climate change reports intended to scare national leaders into submitting to its worldwide taxation schemes.
"Science has always progressed on the basis of observations, experiments, and thoughts published by individual scientists and sometimes pairs or small groups of scientific coworkers," Art Robinson, a research professor of chemistry and co-founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, said in a recent column in Human Events.
Except at the U.N., he said.
Robinson's concern over the political manipulation of science earlier led him to launch the Petition Project, a compilation of more than 31,000 scientists – with more names arriving daily – who have voluntarily signed their names to the following statement:
"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
He said the scientific process begins with the results of individuals' work and their distribution of their ideas.
"A few of these published articles are especially valuable; a greater number, while not remarkable, provide relative mundane studies that add to the infrastructure of science; many are not useful at all; and some are completely wrong. As individual scientists read these articles, they use their own wisdom, knowledge, and judgment to separate new information that they find valuable from information that they find of no use," Robinson said. Eventually, the good, accurate and valuable information is advanced.
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Saving sex for marriage is not just some old fashion idea to keep people from ‘having fun.’ It is the most intelligent, protective decision that can be made and the only decision that can provide TRUE FREEDOM. No worrying about disease, pregnancy, heartbreak, guilt, comparisons, betrayals, etc. Perhaps some can learn from the bad choices of others and save themselves years of regret.