Hollywood Lefty, Redford, Celebrates Obama for Dumping Big Oil, America’s Number One Enemy

I am thinking there is a financial crisis here in the US of A.

I am thinking that there are over 20 per cent of American workers are not gainfully employed by actual count.

I am thinking that the price of gasoline at the pump is costing me twice today than it did when Obama swept himself into the White House pledging all those things he’d do but has never done.

I am asking why Marxists in America huddling under the once All-American umbrella of the Democratic Party hate America’s Big Oil, a rather puny negotiator in the world of Oil politcs rejoice   so in president Barack Hussein Obama’s sending Canadian Oil  to China.

I am answering that this Obama decision is adverse to American interests in every conceivable way because of international  Marxist dogma and its political dance partners the Democrats who tag along with their comrades.   Consider Nancy Pelosi’s   plea of pompous  religious devotion: “I’m trying to save the planet.  I’m trying to save the planet!”    Let someone else drill for oil.

Please examine the Obama-Marxist thinking here.   Where King Obama does not reign on Earth, someone WILL be drilling  and piping along oil and refining it, but not in his kingdom in America.    King Obama’s Marxists oppose profits in America, but smarter peoples of the World don’t.    Arab tyrants will become wealthier, Russian agents will push more arrogantly, the Chinese military will grow more quickly, because their governments will reap the profits of drilling , transporting, and refining.

Despite  the Obama and Pelosi  ’saving the planet noises’ , excuses for forbidding  our America to develop its own petroleum industry, oil will be drilled, will be piped and shipped and refined somwhere but NOT in the good old US of A.   Arab tyrants will become richer and more vulgar, the Russians wealthier and more tyrannical,  China will become more aggressive, and America becomes poorer,  weaker, and more irrelevant on the world stage……THE MAJOR GOAL OF INTERNATIONAL MARXISM and Marxist Obama’s financial backer, Marxist George Soros.

Robert Redford, Hollywood Lefty fame, wrote the following cheer backing Obama’s decision for the nations to go jobless regarding the building of the Keystone Pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.   It appeared at the Huffington Post:

 PRESIDENT OBAMA STANDS UP TO BIG OIL

by Robert Redford, actor:

“Let’s face it: Big Oil is used to getting its way. But not today… and we have President Obama to thank for standing up to them in spite of the political risk.

President Obama has just rejected a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline — a project that promised riches for the oil giants and an environmental disaster for the rest of us.

His decision represents a victory of historic proportions for people from throughout the pipeline path and all across America who have waged an uphill, years-long fight against one of the most nightmarish fossil fuel projects of our time.

But make no mistake: Big Oil is going to fight back hard and fast.

Why? Because this was a prime-time fight. The oil giants made sure of that.

Big Oil had their Congressional boosters put the president to an election-year test by forcing him to decide the pipeline’s fate within 60 days. Then, the oil lobby itself rolled out its biggest PR guns to get the job done.

The head of the American Petroleum Institute sent the White House a very public and blatant warning: Approve the Keystone XL or face “huge political consequences.”

Because Big Oil lost, this is not the end of the fight. This is the beginning of the real battle for America’s energy future.

That battle will be fought in Congress, where Representatives who’ve collected $12 million from the Oil & Gas industry over the past two years are sure to try to raise Keystone XL from the dead.

So when you hear Big Oil call Keystone XL a national jobs plan — ask “Are you kidding me?” A single pipeline project is not a jobs plan. Economic security is to be found in clean energy not in dirty energy that threatens us with oil spills and ever worsening harm from climate change.

And when you hear Big Oil say that we need Keystone XL for our security — tell them to get real. Energy security comes from reducing our dependence on oil, not from a pipeline that would leave us with the risk but send the tar sands oil overseas.

The president stood up to Big Oil and listened to Americans saying: “We’re done with fossil fuel schemes that destroy our land, poison our water and wreak havoc with our climate so that oil companies can make out like bandits.” Now we need to continue to stand with the president and make it clear that tar sands pipelines are not in our national interest.”

Dennis Prager’s Discussion with Eric Weiner about “Man Seeks God”

“YOU WILL BE KNOWN BY THE COMPANY YOU KEEP”  was one of the over fifty adages my tyrant Mother threw  at me weekly to ‘assist’ my thinking and behavior.

“Remember this, Glenn Ray, YOU CAN NEVER ESCAPE YOUR GOD!”   was a scarrier warning  announced with much greater frequency even before I entered kindergarden in 1939.  

I have never, never really had a problem with ‘my God” as this wonderful and clever woman craftily or perhaps in error, pounded into my head.   She never commanded  any such  knowledge to my sister, her other child.  She played with dolls.

Although I,  early in life,  had a little difficulty thinking of any other God but  my Mother, this notion of the Diety   quickly disappeared by the time I went to school and Sunday school.    We studied the Bible and behavior  in one and science, language, and behavior in the other.   By age six I recognized  that Mother was just another preacher, but a very powerful one telling me how to behave.

I believe it was in Miss Moe’s tenth grade World History class where I first read or heard the sentence from the ancients, “There is neither good nor bad.   Only THINKING makes it so!”   The word emphasized here was the word that for me parted the clouds to let the sunlight shine in;  the sunlight being my Mother and Dad, Bible studies, school learnings, and Nature as I had already had known it from my experiences managing almost  single handedly tending to our World War II Victory Garden work which had begun as a means of punishment to keep me out of trouble.

The most frequent punishment throughout  each year of my childhood, was for me to stand  face to a wall, the same wall standing there seemingly forever.   Except upon this very wall there was  hung a picture which came ever closer to my eyes, mind  and my mind’s conscience each year of my growth until I was about eleven.   By then I got close enough to read the name of the ‘author’ of the print……R. Atkinson Fox, a name I have never forgotten.

Hundreds of hours I stood  at that wall  snivelling  or sulking for  about a minute until my mind switched from the unfairness of the punishment to the content of the picture.  The switching was easier to do with each standing .   For this picture wasn’t just any old picture.    My Mother had bought it,  I learned many years later, “when I was about 15 or 16 years old” she said proudly.   She had graduated 8th grade and  entered the adult world at age 13 as a cashier  at Friedman’s Super Market downtown St. Paul (around 1920).      “I was passing by a picture store”, she explained, “and I thought it so beautiful.”    

R. Atkinson Fox was noted for his stylized beautiful landscape garden prints.   To this day I can  see clearly  this dynamic, full speed ahead woman as a teenage  girl  entering that picture store downtown St. Paul spending her ten cents an hour salary on buying this R. Atkinson Fox print because she ‘thought it so beautiful’.  

Mother  listened to classical music on radio….Beethoven  Strauss Waltzes, and anything polka were her favorites.   My sister was always quietly playing in her room  with her dolls and paper dolls.    I was seldom quiet.   I had noises to make and questions to ask.   Even when I built my cities with blocks, the cars that I drove along its streets had to be heard.   They’d get stuck in the snow.

I therefore had even more opportunities to enjoy beauty.   I could  listen to the Moonlight Sonata while standing at the wall appreciating  an  R. Atkinson Fox  creation of the beautiful landscape garden both at the same time.

While listening to these  classics, I in total silence, often could hear this Mother,  driving hard to finish her work   while I am occupied at the wall, announce , “I feel I am in heaven when I hear music like this”!

During much of the first hour of his radio show, Dennis Prager interviewed Eric Weiner regarding  Mr. Weiner’s book,  ‘Man Seeks God:  My Flirtation With the Divine.

Intelligent and well ‘educated’ Americans  today seem to have trouble believing in “God” went the discussion .   Dummies like me and many of my conservative friends which in the broader collection include Dennis himself)  are ‘so yesterday’ according to the truths taught at  the nation’s schools and universities.

“All is maningless if their is there is no God!  Dennis, exclaimed in his usual cheery uplifting manner.  “Science and reason are not enough”, the leftist author added as agreement.    “Science has become less tolerant than religion”, Dennis continued with another agreement.

Eric Weiner then stated  that which scientific surveys report repeatedly, “The religious are happier people”……

“Yes, but the Left would respond, “Ignorance is bliss” Dennis reminded his audience.  

Thirty per cent of America’s young are ‘nones’……not among the religious or the God deniers.   And the culture certainly displays the ‘none’  behaviors  in all aspects of today’s western culture.  

The personality of the culture is exposed in that culture’s art.     If this is so, modern mankind is in deep trouble!

God exists because man is a thinking animal and therefore knows his life’s fate.   Man is born curious using his thinking  to corral, yet respect what he does not know to improve his lot.   He is by Nature drawn to know the unknown, THEREFORE HE IS DRAWN TO THE FOREVER GOD, the eternally unknown.   

Man is more God-like seeking harmony rather than disharmony.   God exists most noticeably  in the beauty of harmony as opposed to the ugliness of disharmony. the good versus the bad.     The inspiring saying, “One is closest  to God in the garden”  is a Truth from the ancients.    

Yet harmony can drive man to final death as quickly as any disharmony.   Thinking man understands this,  and so, seeks wisdom for guidance, another feature of God’s unknown realm which lures and haunts the living.

God exists and always will exist as long as the senses of a living being  include the ability to be curious and  know their fate,  death.

A  civilization is in decline when its people no longer worshipfully believe in,  bear respect for, or demonstrate curiosity in exploring  the mystery and power of the eternally  unknown. 

The fokllowing is a New York Times review by Joshua Hammer  of Eric Weiner’s book,  “Man Seeks God:”

 

“Books about God tend to fall into two categories: objective inquiries into the nature of belief and personal tales of spiritual awakening. One type explores history, creation myths and religious ritual. In the other, the author typically undergoes a crisis — a terminal illness, the death of a loved one, an onset of existential dread — that causes him to confront his life’s emptiness, coming to realize that there is something out there greater than himself.

MAN SEEKS GOD:  My Flirtations With the Divine      

Eric Weiner’s “Man Seeks God: My Flirtations With the Divine” nimbly and often hilariously straddles the fence between the two genres. A former war correspondent for National Public Radio, Weiner is also the author of “The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World.” In that best-selling romp, he ditched the hellhole beat for a year and wandered the globe, from Bhutan to Iceland to Switzerland, looking for countries with a high “happiness index.” His new ramble begins after doctors mistake a nasty bout of intestinal gas for something far more dire. Weiner gets the scare of his life, and after a nurse confronts him in his hospital room (“Have you found your God yet?”) this self-described “Confusionist” sets off on a journey through five countries and eight religions to figure out which faith fits him best.

As Weiner explains in his introduction, he was born into a family of “gastronomical Jews” whose sense of a divine presence began and ended in the kitchen: “If we could eat it then it was Jewish and, by extension, had something to do with God. As far as I was concerned, God resided not in Heaven or the Great Void but in the Frigidaire, somewhere between the cream cheese and the salad dressing. We believed in an edible deity, and that was about the extent of our spiritual life.”

But that period of apathy ends with Weiner’s fear-of-death experience. Each subsequent chapter begins with a ­Craigslist-style personal ad, a plea from a “CWM” (Confusionist White Male) looking for divine inspiration. “Craves sanity and peace of mind,” he writes before heading off to Katmandu to explore the concepts of karma, suffering and reincarnation with Buddhist scholars, including a mystic from Staten Island named Wayne.

“Looking for a levelheaded partner and noble truth teller who has been here before. Please, enlighten me.” After postings like this, Weiner spends time with witches, Franciscan monks, whirling dervishes, shamans and other true believers, managing both to generate one-liners and stimulate inquiry into the nature of faith. He’s Woody Allen channeling Karen Armstrong.

Weiner’s sampling of the religious smorgasbord generates some rich insights. He notes that Buddhism is based on “a tiny barely perceptible pause between our thoughts, a pause that, while we normally are not even aware of its existence, contains the entire universe. We know this intuitively. We say that something ‘gives us pause’ when it makes us stop and think, or rethink.” And he shows that the sheer improbability of many creation stories is what makes them so appealing, bonding believers in a shared leap of faith. “One person’s insanity,” he observes, “is ­another’s theology, and vice versa.”

A journey to Turkey to investigate Sufism opens Weiner to the joyous, mystical side of Islam. And he’s moved by the self-sacrifice that many major religions, from Buddhism to Roman Catholicism, encourage. Hanging out with a group of Franciscan monks who run a homeless shelter in the South Bronx, he is touched by these dedicated men, who embrace a vow of total poverty and give over their lives to serving not just God but the drug-addled and the destitute. “If we were to wake one morning and find we have lost everything — our job, our house, our money, our reputation, our loved ones — would we roll over and die? Or would we keep going?” he asks. “The Franciscans don’t merely entertain that question as some sort of intellectual exercise. They live it.”

At the other extreme is Weiner’s uproarious visit to a Las Vegas convention of Raëlians, a U.F.O.-based sect whose adherents believe humankind was created 25,000 years ago by a benevolent race of aliens called the Elohim. Mixing self-help mumbo jumbo, worship of extraterrestrials and unabashed pursuit of pleasure, the group was founded by a French journalist, Raël, who appears before the crowd with his hair in a “samurai topknot” in a costume that makes him look “like he just popped out of a ‘Star Trek’ episode.”

Weiner cross-dresses as part of a ­perspective-shifting exercise (“My thick blond hair falls nicely across my ample bosoms. My freshly shaved face is smooth, and the rouge lends a subtle yet healthy glow to my complexion”), and he wryly notes that the sect’s Order of Angels — a group of beautiful female acolytes — are sworn to a vow of celibacy, with a significant exception: they’re permitted to have sex with the founder. “Raëlianism is the perfect religion for 16-year-old boys,” he concludes. “It has cool gadgets and hot chicks, and has elevated masturbation to an act of holy submission. . . . Yes, between the Raëlians and my local synagogue, it would have been no contest. Not even close.”

In the end, though, Weiner dismisses such sects as “some frothy tonic for our everyday neuroses,” their allure lying in their evasion of the arduous demands made by the world’s “good religions.” A later chapter finds him in the company of Wiccans, participating in black-magic ceremonies — “Macbeth meets Harry Potter” — and pondering the benefits of pagan worship versus monotheism. “If Hashem tanks, has a bad year, Jews have no recourse,” he writes. “Not so with Wiccans. There is always another god.”

Still, Weiner’s odyssey feels unsatisfying. His quest for a religious identity isn’t particularly convincing; in fact, it often seems less a heartfelt search than a device cooked up by an enterprising journalist and his editors, a way to get him on the road again. We never believe, for example, that Weiner is genuinely drawn to the spirit world of shamanism or the spooky ceremonies of modern-day witchcraft. His peripatetic approach doesn’t allow for much depth. And while he deftly captures the kooky spirit of the fringe religions, he’s on far shakier ground trying to explain the concepts of, say, Buddhism and Taoism. A succession of encounters with gurus, meditation teachers and other spiritual advisers results in runic comments and riffs of vagueness that leave both Weiner and his readers frustrated.

He completes his quest with a homecoming of sorts by traveling to the Israeli town of Safed, long a center for the study of kabbalah, a mystical strain of Judaism created by French and Spanish scholars who settled there in the 16th century. “I have lusted in my heart, flirted with a bevy of exotic gods, dabbled in witchcraft,” he writes. “I feel like the wayward spouse, reeking of sweet perfume and cheap booze, sheepishly knocking on the front door after a lengthy and unexplained absence.” Weiner takes lessons in the Zohar — the kabbalah’s scripture — savors the cobblestone streets and shops full of “Jewish misfits,” rekindles a dormant Jewish identity and tries to crack the code that followers of Kabbalah believe keeps God hidden in plain sight. As always, Weiner is great on atmospherics but thin on specifics: we come away with neither a firm sense of what kabbalah is nor an understanding of the demands it makes on its adherents.

At the end of the book, Weiner embraces a hybrid God cobbled together from his various encounters: “His foundation is Jewish, but His support beams Buddhist. He has the heart of Sufism, the simplicity of Taoism, the generosity of the Franciscans, the hedonistic streak of the Raëlians.” It’s a neat way to tie up the loose ends, but it somehow left me a ­nonbeliever.”

Joshua Hammer is the author of “Chosen by God: A Brother’s Journey” and other books.

Dan Henninger: Let us count the ways BAIN CAPITAL SAVED AMERICA!

Bain Capital Saved America

In the 1980s, the resilient U.S. economy saved itself

 from becoming Europe. Bain was part of the rescue.

 by  Dan  Henninger    at   the Wall Street Journal:

“Not only did Bain Capital save America, but no matter what turn Mitt Romney’s political career takes, Bain Capital may stand as the best of Mr. Romney’s lifetime contributions to the nation’s economic well-being. If only he’d tell the story.

We are of course putting forth “Bain Capital” as not merely the Romney private-equity house but as the stand-in for the period of American economic history that ran from 1980 to 1989. Back then it was called the Greed Decade, with asset-stripping barbarians at the gate. Virtually everything about this popular stereotype is wrong. Properly understood, the 1980s, including Bain, were the remarkable years when an ever-resilient America found a way to save itself from becoming what Europe is now—a global has-been.After centuries of First World status—and all the perquisites of prestige and power that came with it—Europe is watching its economic status slide inexorably toward new national powers in the East and elsewhere. Because of the modernizing change that Bain and others like it forced on U.S. corporations in the 1980s, we are not fading. Not yet.

Standard & Poor’s credit downgrades aren’t the biggest news about Europe’s fallen status. A larger historic change became clear in the first two weeks of 2012, as national treasuries brought sovereign debt issues to market. The new world order was made plain in a Jan. 12 Wall Street Journal headline: “Reversal of Fortune in Debt Market.” The story told how global investors who routinely bought the debt of Italy or Spain were now buying the 25- and 30-year bonds of Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, South Africa and other so-called “emerging market” nations.

Pimco global fund manager Curtis Mewbourne was explicit about the changing of the global guard in Barron’s this past weekend: “There are a couple of very important changes going on. One, which is pretty broadly accepted, is that we are seeing a very significant shift of economic importance, away from the developed economies into the developing economies.”

Read through S&P’s justification for last week’s downgrades of nine European countries. Along with the expected dumping on those countries’ fiscal profligacy, one finds as well a blunt recognition of Europe’s moribund “fundamentals,” meaning their ability to produce “strong and consistent” economic growth.

If not for Bain Capital and the other, bigger players who commenced a decade of leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers in the 1980s, the odds are that the U.S.’s “fundamentals” would be similarly weak. Instead, the U.S. corporate sector remade itself during the Bain years.

In a comprehensive 2001 re-examination of the buyouts and takeovers of the 1980s, economists Bengt Holmstrom of MIT and the University of Chicago’s Steven Kaplan made clear (as have others) that the results were far from the stereotype of zero-sum pillage revived last week by economic historian Newt Gingrich and un-Texan Gov. Rick Perry (“vulture capitalism”), and sure to be promoted in grainy, tear-soaked campaign ads by the Obama team.

“When large-scale hostile takeovers appeared in the 1980s,” Messrs. Holmstrom and Kaplan write, “many voiced the opinion that they were driven by investor greed; the robber barons of Wall Street had returned to raid innocent corporations. Today, it is widely accepted that the takeovers of the 1980s had a beneficial effect on the corporate sector and that efficiency gains, rather than redistributions from stakeholders to shareholders, explain why they appeared.”

In the 1980s, the resilient U.S. economy saved itself from becoming Europe. Bain was part of the rescue.

Arguably, the primary force that set off the 1980s upheaval in U.S. corporate restructuring was the deregulation begun by Jimmy Carter and continued by Ronald Reagan. Airlines, ground transportation, cable and broadcasting, oil and gas, banking and financial services all experienced regulatory rollback. Meanwhile, a competitive, globalized marketplace was rising. Management at some of America’s biggest companies, confused by these rapid changes, found themselves sitting on huge piles of unused or poorly deployed cash and assets.

Thousands of Mitt Romneys allied with huge pension funds representing colleges, unions and the like, plus a rising cadre of institutional money managers, to force corporate America to reboot. In the 1980s almost half of major U.S. corporations got takeover offers.

Singling out this or that Bain case study amid the jostling and bumping is pointless. This was a historic and necessary cleansing of the Augean stables of the American economy. It caused a positive revolution in U.S. management, financial analysis, incentives, governance and market-based discipline. It led directly to the 1990s boom years. And it gave the U.S. two decades of breathing room while Europe, with some exceptions, choked.

Every voter seems to sense that finding the answer to what comes next for America’s economic fortunes makes this election huge. The Washington Post-ABC poll just out produced an extraordinary 57% disapproval of the economic stewardship of Barack Obama, whose life goal seems to be to reverse the policies of 1980-2000.

Mr. Romney’s answer appears to be that voters want to keep hearing about him and his management résumé. Voters don’t want one man’s story. They want someone who understands how the next 10 years can produce an American economy that offers the opportunities for them that the 1980s produced for Mitt Romney.”

Write to henninger@wsj.com

 

 

 

Looking for Clarity in StopOnlinePiracyAct website Controversy

Chris Dodd: These anti-SOPA websites

are abusing their power

posted  by Tina Korbe  at HotAir:

Oh, the hypocrisy! But what did you expect Chris Dodd to say? That anti-SOPA websites are doing all of us a service by standing up for free speech? Not likely. Still, it’s unfailingly astonishing that politicians like Dodd are so capable of saying the things they say without the slightest trace of irony. Nate Nelson of UnitedLiberty.org brings us the story:

The MPAA selected Dodd as its new head lobbyist chairman and CEO last year. Now Dodd is taking aim at Wikipedia, Google, and other websites involved in today’s protest against the SOPA/PIPA internet censorship legislation pending in Congress:

“It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.”

Did you get that? The man whom the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) once called one of the most corrupt members of Congress thinks the websites that are protesting SOPA/PIPA today are abusing their power. Speaking for the motion picture industry, he accuses these websites of “skewing the facts … in order to further their corporate interests.” I wonder what Dodd thinks his angle is here? Trust me, I know abuse of power? That Dodd is serving as the commander-in-chief of the Hollywood forces seeking to censor the Internet illustrates how important today’s protest really is. We’re fighting an uphill battle and need all the media attention and popular support we can muster. You can bet it’s no accident that less than a year after the MPAA hired a former five-term senator as its chief executive we’re seeing this heavy-handed anti-piracy legislation that the MPAA so desperately wants.

But wait — maybe Chris Dodd has a highly compelling justification for SOPA that helps us to understand why he thinks websites willing to sacrifice a day of hits to stand against it are so power-abusive? Actually, he does. According to Dodd, we shouldn’t care that the government wants to censor the Internet. After all, communist China does it.

Seriously. That is his justification. From an article in Variety magazine late last year:

Dodd, who assumed his post in March, notes that the idea of blocking sites is by no means unprecedented. Other supporters of the legislation note Internet providers already block criminal content like child pornography. Citing a more controversial practice, Dodd notes “When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn’t do [business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites.”

While he was in the Senate, Dodd supported net neutrality, and we know from Dodd-Frank, too, that he’s regulation-happy. His support for SOPA comes as no surprise — but the hypocrisy of his criticism of SOPA-critical websites still appalls.

Incidentally, I do disagree with United Liberty’s Nelson on one point. At this point, I think the momentum is actually on the side of the anti-SOPA folks. Granted, if players like Chris Dodd are involved, the pro-SOPA contingent might find an unfair way to push this through — and Harry Reid remains committed to the passage of the Senate equivalent, PIPA — but Darrell Issa has said SOPA won’t make it out of committee until some kind of “consensus” is reached, Marco Rubio recently withdrew his support for PIPA and then, too, those “irresponsible” websites that blacked out today are awakening all kinds of awareness.