"All truth passes through 3 stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." - - - Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860 Whatever the evil (poison) is, it must be presented in a mix of something good, or good for you. Rat poison is like this, 99.5% of the ingredients are tasty and nutritious for the rat (otherwise, they wouldn't eat it, would they?).  Only .5% (1/2 percent) is deadly.

of News, Current Events & Comment for November 2004  July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 the URL for this page can be found by returning to the previous page (if a contributing editor, wishes recognition, they should so indicate with their submission) Best printing w/a black only printer is accomplished when your settings are for "black text and black lines"

To save on the amount of forced emails that consume MEGA bytes of HD space,  these pages are created for your convenience. Pictures can be saved by right clicking then follow the yellow brick road, and original of reports can be located by available links in the articles and saved as you would other web pages. I am reminded of Dad's special brownies.  It is the same truth.

Black November - An After Thanksgiving Poem
contributing editor to   - Alan

When I was a young turkey, new to the coop,
My big brother Mike took me out on the stoop,

He then sat me down, and he spoke real slow,
And he told me there was something that I had to know;

His look and his tone I will always remember,
Then he told me of the horrors of..... Black November;

Come about August, now listen to me,
Each day you'll get six meals instead of just three.

"And soon you'll be thick, where once you were thin,
and you'll grow a
big rubbery thing under your chin;

"And then one morning, when you're warm in your bed,
In'll burst the farmer's wife, and hack off your head;

"Then she'll pluck out all your feathers so you're bald 'n pink,
And scoop out all your insides and leave ya lyin' in the sink;

"And then comes the worst part" he said not bluffing,
"She'll spread your cheeks and pack your rear with stuffing."

Well, the rest of his words were too grim to repeat,
I sat on the stoop like a winged piece of meat,

And decided on the spot that to avoid being cooked,
I'd have to lay low and remain overlooked;

I began a new diet of nuts and granola,
High-roughage salads, juice and diet cola;
 

And as they ate pastries, chocolates and crepes,
I stayed in my room doing Jane Fonda tapes;

I maintained my weight of two pounds and a half,
And tried not to notice when the bigger birds laughed;

But 'twas I who was laughing, under my breath,
As they chomped and they chewed, ever closer to death;

And sure enough when Black November rolled around,
I was the last turkey left in the entire compound;

So now I'm a pet in the farmer's wife's lap;
I haven't a worry, so I eat and I nap;

She held me today, while sewing and humming, And smiled at me and said

"Christmas is coming..."
 
 

A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.

John tried and tried to change the bird's attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else he could think of to "clean up" the bird's vocabulary.

Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even ruder. John, in desperation, threw up his hand, grabbed the bird and put him in the freezer.

For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed. Then suddenly there was total quiet. Not a peep was heard for over a minute. Fearing that he'd hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the door to the freezer.

The parrot calmly stepped out onto John's outstretched arms and said "I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior."

John was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude. As he was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behavior, the bird continued, "May I ask what the turkey did?"
 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
 
 
 

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe

Former IRS agent charged as tax cheat

Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, November 19, 2004
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/19/BAG6J9TV0U1.DTL
contributing editor to   - Bill

[There are some of you who will not care a small wit about this, but others will see the tragedy.  May this feed you well. You should be reminded that about 2000 years ago, there was a man who reportedly did NOTHING wrong and EVERYTHING right, yet he was crucified by the powers-that-be, supported by the masses.  How better can we do.  This man, Banister, did nothing wrong, yet the powers-that-be, supported by the masses,are crucifying him.  --  Tribble]

Joseph Banister was once a gun-toting Internal Revenue Service special agent who investigated tax cheats for six years. On Thursday, the certified public accountant was arrested on a federal indictment accusing him of numerous tax crimes.
 

Banister, 41, whose Web site proclaims, "The Income Tax is a Hoax," was taken into custody by IRS agents at his San Jose home at about 7:30 a.m. He pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Sacramento and was released on $25,000 bond. A co-defendant, Walter A. Thompson, 57, of Redding, was arrested at 10 a. m. Thursday after a brief chase and standoff on Interstate 5, authorities said. Thompson is to appear in court today. Banister has advised clients they don't have to file income tax returns on the grounds that the 16th Amendment, which gives the federal government the power to collect income taxes, was not properly ratified. He maintains that only foreign-sourced income is taxable.

In a statement, IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said, "Joe Banister, a former IRS agent, knew exactly what he was doing. Tax professionals and employers who break the law will be held accountable."

Banister could not be reached for comment. His attorney, Donald Kilmer Jr. , said Thursday that he had just received a copy of the indictment and could not discuss the case.

Asked to comment on his client's income tax theories, Kilmer said, "I'd rather not get into that in a newspaper article."

Banister and Thompson were accused in the indictment of conspiring to defraud the United States of nearly $260,000 in income and employment taxes from July 2000 to December 2002.

Banister was also charged with three counts of aiding and assisting the filing of false tax returns for Thompson.

Thompson, who owned Cencal Sales, an aviation travel-bag manufacturing business in Shasta Lake City (Shasta County), was also charged with two counts of filing false claims with the IRS, one count of filing a false income tax return and 10 counts of failing to collect and pay more than $176,000 in taxes from his employees, who included seamstresses and office workers.

Banister and Thompson allegedly decided to remove Cencal employees from taxpayer rolls by no longer withholding employment taxes from wages and not filing employer's quarterly tax returns and other required forms.

At an October 2000 staff meeting, Thompson told his employees that the pay they received for their work was not income under IRS regulations, the 26- page indictment said. Banister, who attended the meeting, told the group that Thompson "was an honorable man who would not lie to them," the indictment said.

In December, in a separate proceeding, Administrative Law Judge William Moran ordered Banister not to represent tax clients before the IRS.

Banister was an IRS criminal investigator from 1993 until he resigned in 1999 because he felt that he was breaking the law by investigating alleged scofflaw taxpayers.

The IRS taxes people based on "intimidation and propaganda and fear that they've been putting out there for decades," Banister told The Chronicle in January.

E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.
 
 

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered. -- Lyndon Baines Johnson, U.S. President

[Another related postulate for a national sales tax has it that such a tax will be graduated, whereby everyone pays their relative tax rate.  This is intended to mean the poor would pay little or no tax and increase the rate as you earn more.  But how do you make a purchase at the cashier, how does the cashier know your tax bracket?  The simple answer is a "national ID card", which the database affixed thereto would conveniently show your life history and tax bracket.  Can anyone say Revelation 13?  --  Tribble]

“Abolish the IRS!”

So goes the cry. And who could disagree? The income tax is unAmerican in the most profound way, punishing people for being successful. The tax code is vast and incomprehensible. The agency that enforces it is universally loathed.

Yes, let's abolish the IRS. And the income tax.

Unfortunately, the statement that usually comes next begins, “And replace it with ...” And there a new round of troubles begin.

Over time, proposals have included replacing the graduated income tax with a flat tax, a VAT (value added tax), or some form of consumption tax. For several years now, the buzz has been growing for a national sales tax. While other “abolish the IRS” reforms have languished, the national sales tax has, as they say, developed legs.

The most durable proposal for a national sales tax – called the FairTax – is promoted by an organization called Americans for Fair Taxation (AFT) (http://www.fairtax.org). A bill to implement that tax (H.R. 25; Senate Bill 1943)(1) was introduced in Congress early in the 108th Congress. The so-called “Fair Tax Act” has 54 co-sponsors as of this writing, plus the outspoken support of both Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. President George W. Bush expressed cautious support for the act (http://www.georgewbush.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=3422) in response to a pre-screened questioner at one of his campaign events. In his acceptance speech at the 2004 Republican Party convention, Bush strongly advocated a total revamp of the U.S. tax system. Although he made no specific proposal, his language was similar to that of the FairTaxers. And at the moment, the FairTax is the only serious tax-revamp proposal on the Congressional table.

Finally, many, many ordinary freedom-loving people, weary of the present outrageous system, are cheering the FairTax as a great improvement.

But it's not.

The FairTax is not only not an improvement. We believe it's UnFair, dangerous, and a disaster in the making. You think nothing could be worse than the graduated income tax? We can virtually guarantee you that, after five years of the FairTax, you'd be looking back with nostalgia on the days when Americans had to put up only with the IRS and the income tax.

What does the FairTax do?

The misnamed FairTax is a national sales tax. Under the act promoted by AFT and now being considered by Congress, the federal government would impose a tax on all new goods and all services at the retail level. Proponents claim the tax would initially be 23 percent, but the federal government would actually add 30 percent to the cost of nearly everything you buy. (We'll explain the disparity below.)

The IRS would be abolished, effective three years after passage of national sales tax legislation. The sales tax would replace both the income tax and the FICA payroll tax. Gift and estate taxes would go, under the provisions of H.R. 25. That's the good part. (But don't count on it – as we'll also see below.)

The new tax would be levied on food, clothing, medicine, all services, newly constructed homes – everything except used items. Then every U.S. household would receive a check from the federal government each month, based on the number of Social Security card holders in each family. This check would supposedly compensate each of us for the tax we pay on necessities.

Under current projections, an individual (married or single) would get $178 per month or $2141 per year. For every child or dependent the household would get an additional $61 per month or $732 per year. Therefore a family of two adults and two children would receive payments from the federal government of $5,746 per year or $478.83 per month supposedly to compensate them for taxes payed on necessities.

Proponents point out that the sales tax is simple and highly visible, so Congress won't have such an easy time imposing hidden taxes. And they call it self-limiting: If taxes get too high, people simply stop buying. A tax increase might thus actually result in a revenue decrease for the federal government.

The following are some of the reasons we firmly believe the FairTax would be a disaster for our freedom and our economic well-being. Some of these “unintended consequences” of the national sales tax are verifiable facts or solid certainties based on historical experience. Others are our projections, based on our knowledge of history, the devious ways and means of government, and on technologies and trends that are now developing. These trends may, and probably will, intersect with the “FairTax” in ways that tax proponents would simply rather not consider.

Here is what we expect:

We're likely to end up with both a national sales tax and an income tax. Even if legislation required abolition of the income tax (as HR 25 does), a “national crisis” would soon cause the income tax to be “temporarily re-instated” and the Internal Revenue Service would remain in our lives on an “emergency basis” that never ended.

Likelihood: High probability.

When we posed this issue to Dr. Karen Walby, research director for AFT, she responded in part, “The income tax code would be abolished. Not in my wildest dreams can I see the members of Congress being able to agree on a new income tax code. The current Internal Revenue Code, regulations, and IRS rulings amount to 60,000 pages. Not one person in this country understands all of it.”

Unfortunately, Dr. Walby's statement contains two elements that are common to too many “FairTax” arguments: some verbal sleight-of-hand and a lot of naivete. Although she correctly notes that the income tax portions of the Internal Revenue code would be abolished by H.R. 25, she implies that the entire tax code is scheduled for abolition. That is untrue. H.R. 25 is loaded with amendments to the Internal Revenue Code (including new forms of punishment for tax evasion), but it abolishes only a portion of the enormous, incomprehensible tax code. Also, it would not be necessary for Congress to re-invent a new, complex, controversial income tax code. All they'd have to do is write a few lines reinstating the existing tax code and retaining the IRS.

Furthermore, even if the income tax does truly go away (an outcome devoutly to be wished) bureaucracies never simply disappear. It took nearly 30 years for Congress to have the courage to disband the ridiculous U.S. tea-tasting board. When Prohibition ended in the early 1930s, the federal government's booze-busting apparatus was almost immediately put to work creating and enforcing America's first war on drugs. That's history. And that's the reality of how Washington works. Those savage tax auditors and armed tax enforcers won't be put out in the streets to get honest jobs; they'll continue to be employed – most likely as sales tax enforcers.

The rate of a national sales tax would be colossal. Remember, even the proponents admit they'd need a 23 percent tax rate to fund the current size of the federal government. However, they are starting out their new “fair” tax system with highly deceptive language.

H.R. 25, Section 101(b)(1) states “FOR 2005- In the calendar year 2005, the rate of tax is 23 percent of the gross payments for the taxable property or service.” Note the phrase “of the gross payment.”

Here's how it works: You buy a candy bar for a total price, including tax, of $1.30. One dollar of that price pays for the candy bar, $.30 goes to the federal government.

One dollar purchase + $.30 in tax sounds like 30 percent to you and me (and to every state that currently has a sales tax). But the “FairTaxers” don't calculate it that way. They say: $1.30 total price. $.30 = 23 percent of $1.30, therefore the tax is 23 percent.

Many critics have pointed out that this is a deceptive way to calculate a sales tax. AFT rebuts the critics by saying (we paraphrase for simplicity), “If you made $1.30 in income and paid $.30 of it in tax, you'd call it a 23 percent tax rate.” The 23 percent figure is what AFT refers to as the “tax inclusive” rate.

But a sales tax is not an income tax, and when we see national sales tax advocates and uncritical journalists promoting the 23 percent figure without giving the underlying explanation, we can only think that some very thick wool is being pulled over people's eyes.

It gets worse. A 1998 analysis by the William Gale of the Brookings Institute calculates that in reality (to pay all current government expenditures while also compensating for such factors as tax evasion), the national sales tax might have to run as high as 67 percent. AFT disputes that high figure. But they do not dispute that their initial “23 percent” tax rate would actually be achieved by adding 30 percent to the purchase price of goods.

Bruce Bartlett a senior fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis, slams the 23 percent claim, also, saying it's too low even to cover current government spending. He writes in the National Review:

When Congress' s Joint Committee on Taxation scored the Linder proposal [The “Fair Tax Act”] four years ago it estimated that it would actually require a tax-inclusive rate of 36 percent, not 23 percent, to equal current federal revenues. Calculating the rate in a normal, tax-exclusive manner would mean a 57 percent rate.(2)

Likelihood of the tax actually being more than 23 percent: Certainty.

Inflation will kill you. For decades, the income tax gradually crept up as government-caused inflation pushed Americans into higher and higher tax brackets. This outrage caused horrific hardship before Congress was finally forced to index the income tax to the inflation rate (meaning that if your income goes up with the inflation rate, your tax rate doesn't). There is no indexing with the sales tax. As goods become more expensive, you have only two choices: pay more in taxes or do without the things you need.

Given the U.S. government's eternal spending spree, the mounting deficits, and a national debt whose true long-term obligations run into the tens of trillions, it's a virtual certainty that the federal government will inflate the currency in an attempt to keep Medicare and Social Security afloat and to keep its fiscal house of cards from collapsing. As your food, clothing, vehicles, and medical care get more and more expensive, you'll pay more and more and more sales tax.

Consider just one example. You've been saving to buy a new house. That house now costs $260,000 (which is already 10 times what your parents would have paid for an identical house in 1968). Your “FairTax” on that home will already be a whopping $78,000, for a total purchase price of $338,000. Then government printing presses go into high gear. While you're still saving up for your down-payment, double-digit inflation takes over and the price of your house zooms 20 percent in one year. The house now costs $312,000. Your “FairTax” on that house is now $93,600 for a total purchase price of $405,600. And you have to wait another year to buy it. And if inflation continues to go up, your hopes recede even further. (And all this is without mentioning the increased mortgage interest you'll have to pay over the decades to cover both the government-caused inflation and the government-benefiting tax.)

AFT never mentions the effects of inflation and always insists simply that prices of all American-made goods (presumably including house prices) will drop once the income tax ceases to be an underlying factor in the cost of goods.

Likelihood of inflation boosting the sales tax: Certainty

The FairTax is monumentally unfair to retiring Baby Boomers. People who have paid 1/4 or 1/3 of their income in taxes for 40 years will now have to pay an equally high tax on all the after tax income they've managed to put aside for their retirement. Every time Boomers buy anything with their lifelong savings, they'll be double taxed.

Likelihood: Certainty

Once again, we asked Dr. Walby about this double taxing. She wrote:

First, prices will decline once the 22 percent embedded [income] taxes are repealed. Second, they will get the rebate to pay the taxes up to the poverty level. If they have an IRA or 401k or pension plan in which they made deposits with pre-tax dollars, with the idea being that they would pay taxes on it when they drew it out, they will be better off. With the FairTax there will be no taxes to pay when they take their money out. So these income taxes saved have to be credited back against the taxes you said they paid under the income tax system.

In fact, we suspect that this (along with the ability to profit from inflation) is a prime motivation for the tax change, from Congress' perspective. Politicians know that retiring Boomers are soon to be paying less in taxes on their reduced incomes. They want their cut to continue!

The national sales tax is subject to manipulation in even more direct ways than the income tax has been. Let's say that Congress or some powerful regulatory agency decides that fatty foods or sugar or potato chips are bad for you – wham! Suddenly there might a 200 percent tax on those items.

Government won't have to ban firearms; they'll just place a 500 percent sales tax on them. Or a 1,000 percent sales tax on ammunition. Cigarettes? Imported clothing? “Gas-guzzling” SUVs? Given the wonders of the computer age, the eternal greed of government, and the unquenchable meddling of social engineers, we'll soon have custom tax levels for them all, constantly calculated and adjusted by computer.

FairTaxers talk about the tax being self-limiting; when it gets too high, people stop buying. While they praise the limiting effect that might have on government, they ignore the damage that a too-high tax might have on the unfortunate industries or individuals that get hit with it – a problem that's built into the tax even in its initial form, and which becomes Draconian once politicians realize they can use the sales tax as a club or a threat.

Likelihood: Probable.

The tax will be used to track your entire financial life. While H.R. 25 does not contain any requirement that every purchase be linked to an individual's ID, the trend toward tracking every purchase is growing. We expect that eventually, your “national ID cash card” will be required when you buy anything. Or giant databases will combine the records of your credit cards, store loyalty cards, radio-frequency ID tags on merchandise, government ID, etc. into one vast set of interlinked records, immediately accessible to – and subject to manipulation by – government agencies.

Therefore, the national sales tax will eventually be used to track – and manipulate – what we purchase. Instead of merely being profiled by Wal-Mart or Safeway, your buying habits will be available in detail to the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, university researchers – you name it.

The government will then decree that it has a vital interest in knowing exactly who is buying too much unhealthy food, the “wrong” kinds or amounts of medicine, ammunition, or unapproved reading matter. Your purchases could lead to criminal investigations (for buying unapproved books or contributing to the “wrong” charities), denial of insurance (for buying unhealthy foods, firearms, or cigarettes), suspension of your drivers license (for buying too much liquor), and other arbitrary bureaucratic punishments. Such investigations and prohibitions are already underway in America. The national sales tax can make them much easier by creating a federal database of all purchases in real time, linked to the identity of the purchaser.

Katherine Albrecht of the consumer-privacy group CASPIAN points out one way in which the social engineering and people-tracking aspects of the national sales tax might go together: As databases come to hold more information on each individual American, the tax could be manipulated to fit the person, rather than the item: “A welfare mother puts her RFID-enabled ID card under the scanner (or waves her RFID-chip implanted hand across the scanner) and the system says, 'Oh, you're a person who's taxed at the one percent rate.'” On the other hand, a person with a $100,000 salary flashes his card or waves his chipped hand and the system recognizes someone who's “rich” enough to be taxed at the 50 percent rate.

If Albrecht turns out to be right, that would also, of course, lead to the new “crime” in which low-taxed individuals purchased items for high-taxed individuals. Again, in fairness we must assure you that nothing in the current legislation calls for purchase tracking or custom taxing. (In fact, the FairTaxers appear to believe seriously that the tax will always remain absolutely flat and neutral.) We're just remembering our history, being realistic about the methods of government, and heeding Lyndon Johnson's words at the top of this article.

Likelihood: High probability (of tracking); possibility (of custom tax rates for individuals).

A national sales tax will create a huge black market. A punitive sales tax on everything you buy will lead to enormous black markets. You'll soon see gang violence and vast new prisons being built to house the millions of people illegally trading DVDs, cigarettes, canned foods, TV sets, and clothing. This will be true even if the underlying prices of goods drop – as the FairTaxers assure us will happen. If people can evade a 30+ percent tax – they will. Even if the price of items is 20 or 25 percent lower than today (a claim we'll examine in a moment) people will still want – and go after – their 30 percent black-market discount.

Although the tax is initially only to apply to services and new items, here's another projection: Swap meets, farmers' markets, gun shows, and garage sales will automatically come to be considered prime places for black market activity. Either the tax will eventually be extended to used items, or all such free markets will eventually be heavily regulated and patrolled – or banned outright as havens for the new anti-sales tax criminals and resisters.

Likelihood: Certainty (of black markets); high probability (of regulating used and private sales)

AFT persistently denies any possibility of black markets developing. When we raised the issue Dr. Walby responded:

First of all, the FairTax, since it is a tax on consumption, will make the underground economy, which is not paying any income tax, subject to taxation. When those who earn income from these illegal activities (sales of illegal drugs, for example) spend their unreported earnings they will have to pay the FairTax on their purchases just like anyone else. The same holds true for illegal aliens working in this country.

And remember – to whatever extent some people manage to keep more of their own money through black-market purchases, those who buy on the legal (taxed) market will end up paying higher taxes to feed the insatiable federal government.

The national sales tax will give government another reason to make cash purchases illegal. Because buying with cash will make it easier to evade the sales tax, taxing authorities will quickly conclude that buying with cash is a sure indicator of criminal activity. The federal government has already classed all large cash transactions (in some cases, that means amounts as low as $750) as “suspicious.” Expect cash purchases of all sorts eventually to become criminal under the sales tax regime. After all, as government and the media will soon tell us, “It used to be that big drug dealers and crooked businessmen evaded taxes on large purchases. But now millions of Americans are cheating their countrymen every day by evading tax on billions of small, but cumulatively huge, purchases of milk, coffee, CDs, and tee-shirts!”

Cash purchases, of course, will also make it more difficult for government social engineers and corporate marketers to make sure your buying habits meet their standards. Cash purchases make it harder to tell whether you're guilty of eating too much butter, consuming too much beer, or owning too many guns. That will be yet another reason to make all purchases trackable. But the excuse given will be to prevent the terrible crime of sales tax evasion.

Likelihood: High probability.

This tax is designed to put every single American household on welfare. The FairTax is regressive – that is, the poorer you are, the more you pay, proportional to your income. Sponsors of the new tax have come up with the worst possible solution for making it more “fair.” They want to put every single American household on the dole.

Instead of simply not taxing staple items like food, health care, transportation, or clothing, they want the federal government to send each of us a check every single month. Think of the dependence this would create. It's very hard to imagine a “limited government” -- which many of the FairTaxers say they want – buying the loyalty of every American household with a monthly government payment of $478.83 – or any other substantial amount.

Likelihood: Fact; it's built into H.R. 25.

If everything else about the FairTax proposal were simply wonderful, we would oppose it because it creates universal dependence on a government check (or direct bank deposit) each and every month. Yet once again, AFT doesn't even want to look at the effects of such dependency. When we raised the question, Dr. Walby responded only:

The purpose of the rebate is to make essential consumption (as measured by spending up to the poverty level) exempt from the tax. We do not want to tax the poor. This is similar to the earned income credit (in the income tax) that doesn't tax income below a certain level. Only the poor will not have to pay a tax preparer to fill out a complicated form in order to qualify for it. many have paid $200 to file that return.

Some religious people will be penalized. The monthly rebate check is to be paid by the Social Security Administration, based on the number of SSN holders in a household. Tens of thousands of Americans (for instance, the Amish, or those who believe the SSN is the biblical Mark of the Beast) do not have social security numbers. Therefore, they would have to pay the heavy national sales tax without being compensated in any way. When we asked AFT how their proposal addressed this inequity, their reply was one sentence long: “There is no requirement that any individual apply for the rebate.”

In other words, tough luck.

A working-class religious family of four, forced to absorb $478.83 more than its neighbors for basic expenses each month simply to remain true to its faith, would have considerable incentive to make its purchases on the black market or otherwise go underground to survive.

The economy would very likely collapse. Just before the FairTax went into effect, the economy would boom as Americans raced out to buy cars, electronic gear, or even to stock up on food. They would not believe that prices on everything would drop the very next day, or the very next week, after the sales tax was imposed. Their spending would reflect their quite rational fear that prices would simply jump 30 percent.

The day the tax went into effect, the American economy would collapse. Eventually, the economy would restabilize, and some prices would drop, as AFT claim. But some industries producing high-ticket items, like the automobile industry, furniture manufacture, or construction, might never recover – even if removal of the income tax did allow prices to drop and Americans to keep more of their paychecks.

Likelihood: Probable.

You'll pay a higher sum for your new home. If the tax passes as written, new homes would suddenly become 30 percent more expensive than existing ones (because all new construction, but not existing homes, would be subject to the tax). Two homes could sit side-by-side – each with four bedrooms, two baths, and comparable features – and one would cost $50,000 or $100,000 more than the other, simply because it was being marketed by its builder, rather than a resident.

No one would want new homes. Construction would dry up. The lack of new homes and the price differential between new and existing ones would in turn create demand for existing homes and push their prices up. Eventually, Congress might feel compelled to save the construction and building materials industries by imposing the sales tax on “used” homes, as well. Or the upward thrust of “used” home prices might, by comparison, make new homes desirable again. Housing markets would eventually stabilize, but only after traumatic disruption.

Oh, and that tax applies to your remodeling supplies, too.

This process of constantly adjusting the tax in vain attempts to undo such unintended consequences will take place all across the economy – and go on for decades.

Likelihood: Probable (disruption of the housing market); high probability (tinkering with the tax in panicky attempts to fix unintended consequences)(3).

Countering the “FairTaxers” claims

AFT makes dozens of claims that are backed by only the most sketchy evidence. We don't have space to refute them all. But here are four examples of dubious claims and the realities behind them.

Claim #1: Goods would be cheaper. Proponents of the new tax say that their claimed 23+ percent tax rate wouldn't be so painful because goods would be cheaper. Without an income tax, businesses could charge less for the items they manufacture.

Maybe. And in a truly free market, even likely. But in our real world and our managed economy, this is far from assured. First of all, even if the income tax were repealed, the price of imported goods would have no reason to drop – and think about the huge percentage of our vehicles, electronics, clothing, and other goods that are now manufactured overseas (again, more on that in a moment).

Second, there is simply no guarantee that manufacturers would lower prices – or that the government would resist the temptation to continue placing various punitive taxes on makers of goods – which would force up their underlying cost. The income tax is hardly the only tax the government uses to make our goods more expensive.

And what about products and services whose prices are already set (or “supported”) by the government? Americans already pay three times the typical world rate for sugar, for instance, solely because of government price supports. Neither the income tax nor free markets have anything to do with it. Would powerful industries with high-paid lobbyists urge the federal government or state governments to set their prices considerably lower? Not likely.

Prices of domestic goods and services may certainly fall a bit. Some may fall substantially. But overall, we predict that the after-national-sales-tax price of goods (including the tax) will be higher than the after-income-tax price of goods. And once again we need to consider the worst case: what happens if we end up with both the national sales tax and the income tax?

Likelihood of goods remaining more expensive than the FairTaxers claim: High probability.

Claim #2: A national sales tax would create jobs and support American manufacturing. At first, this seems counterintuitive. A tax that boosts the price of all consumer goods by 30 percent (or more) would help manufacturers? Well, yes, after the U.S. economy recovered from the probable post-tax crash, in the long run the national sales tax actually might boost certain American industries.

What the FairTaxers don't tell you is that it would do so by making one enormous class of goods cost 30 percent more than competing goods. Here's the plan: imported products, which would not benefit by the planned repeal of the income tax, would suddenly be that much more expensive than their domestic counterparts.

That would be the big advantage gained by U.S. manufacturing – and no doubt many people reading this article are all for that. “Buy American!” they cry. “Quit sending our jobs overseas!”

Yet placing a 30 percent or higher penalty on foreign goods essentially forces us to carry U.S. companies on our backs – even when they're less efficient, less innovative, or produce poorer goods. Competition from overseas has often forced American manufacturers to improve their products (as Japanese autos did in the 1970s). Without competition, companies become complacent and sloppy – and their customers are the ones who ultimately suffer.

And again ... what happens if the price of American goods don't drop? Or if we still end up with the income tax on top of the sales tax?

Likelihood: Probable.

Claim #3: Ordinary Americans would be freed from record-keeping and tax filing. Initially – if indeed Congress were to abolish the income tax – this might be true. But not in the long run! Again, look at what the actual legislation says.

From HR 25 Section 101(d):

(1)The person using or consuming taxable property or services in the United States is liable for the tax imposed by this section, except as provided in paragraph (2) of this subsection.

(2) EXCEPTION WHERE TAX PAID TO SELLER- A person using or consuming a taxable property or service in the United States is not liable for the tax imposed by this section if the person pays the tax to a person selling the taxable property or service and receives from such person a purchaser's receipt within the meaning of section 510.

We believe her when she explains that this is how the law is intended to work. We simply don't believe this is the way the law will work in the long run. No, when a business is caught not charging sales tax, eventually the federal government will seek to make criminals out of business customers – who are, after all, “conspirators” in tax evasion, black marketeering, and racketeering.

You'll have to have a receipt to prove you bought that can of beans, that computer, or that car “legally.” Lose your receipt and you could be required to pay that 30+ percent tax all over again – plus penalties and interest.

Worse, using the precedent of the drug war and the income tax, we'd be presumed guilty until we proved ourselves innocent. Or, under the legal fiction now used to perpetrate civil forfeiture, our property would be considered guilty if we had no receipts for it. Without due process, it could be confiscated.

Since current paper receipts are easy to forge, an ever-escalating federal program would have to be dedicated to designing – and eternally re-designing forge-resistant store receipts, which private businesses would be forced to adopt under penalty of law. New federal crimes would be created for receipt forgers or possession of forged receipts. Being found in possession of an item originally purchased by a relative or acquaintance could conceivably become a crime, if the tax is extended to used goods.

Yes, these are projections and they sound draconian. Nothing in the above several paragraphs is written into the current bill. But remember Lyndon Johnson's warning. And remember the way government works.

Likelihood: Certainty in the long run (of paperwork for citizens); High probability (of Draconian punishments and controls for failure to keep receipts and other records

Claim #4: A national sales tax is simpler than the income tax.

David Gross (6), an alert critic of both the present and proposed tax system writes:

National sales tax promoters promise that the tax will be a simple one, but I think they're using wishful thinking when they say things like: Exemptions are the work of special interests and their Gucci-shod lobbyists. The FairTax has no exemptions. Sure it doesn't have any exemptions – now -- when it's just an unamended bill on some congressman's desk. But if it gets closer to being law, you can bet that it will get more and more complicated.

What do you mean the tax is the same for bibles as it is for pornography? Are you saying that someone buying good, wholesome Iowa corn has to pay the same tax as someone who buys French wine? A poor family pays the same sales tax on baby food that a rich bachelor spends on his sports car? and before you can say Gucci-shod lobbyists, there are a thousand pages of regulations describing which sales tax rates apply to which items.

Anyone who believes a national sales tax would never be used for social engineering, or that it would never be used to favor one industry over another, or that it would never be jacked up even more sky-high that it's already proposed to be, or that it would never be used to persecute ordinary Americans, or that it would never lead to black markets, is simply naive about the ways of government and ignorant of history.

Read the “Fair Tax Act” for yourself. You'll discover there's absolutely nothing simple about the legislation. Already – before the inevitable decades of amending and tinkering – H.R. 25 is an enormously complex proposal that contains gems like these:

SEC. 602. (a) IN GENERAL- The sales tax administering authority may levy and seize property, garnish wages or salary and file liens to collect amounts due under this subtitle, pursuant to enforcement ...

SEC. 103. (f) BARTER TRANSACTIONS- If gross payment for taxable property or services is made in other than money, then the person responsible for collecting and remitting the tax shall remit the tax to the sales tax administering authority in money as if gross payment had been made in money at the tax inclusive fair market value of the taxable property or services purchased.

SEC. 905. (a) IN GENERAL- All persons, in whatever capacity acting (including lessees or mortgagors or real or personal property, fiduciaries, employers, and all officers and employees of the United States) having control, receipt, custody, disposal, or payment of any income to the extent such income constitutes gross income from sources within the United States of any nonresident alien individual, foreign partnership, or foreign corporation shall deduct and withhold from that income a tax equal to 23 percent thereof.

Likelihood: Dead solid certainty (of complexity and punishments)

Advocates of the national sales tax are naive – or believe that we are.

Virtually all of the assumptions promoted by AFT are based on the rosiest possible projections. That there will be zero tax evasion. That all new goods and services will always be taxed equally, without social engineering or other political manipulation. That the base price of new goods will drop 22 percent across the board in the first year (and the price of all services will drop by 25 percent in the same period). That “compliance costs” under the new tax bureaucracy will be lower than those under the existing tax system.

They totally ignore, or breezily dismiss, the jolting disruptions to the economy that imposition of their plan will cause. They pretend there will be no black markets. Despite the clear statement of tax liability in the proposed law, they claim Americans will be forever free of paperwork. They simply don't deal at all with all the obvious implications for citizen tracking inherent in a national sales tax.

They assume that the IRS and a raft of long-time taxes will simply go away, despite every clue that history and the nature of bureaucracy has to offer.

They rightly call all income taxes a “tool of tyranny.” The FairTax, they say, “dramatically changes the basis for taxation by eliminating the root of the problem: Taxing income.” But taxing income isn't the root of the problem – although indeed the income tax is a horrible Marxist system. The root of the problem is a government unchecked, a government that believes it has an inherent right to some government-defined percentage of our property, our time, our very lives. These starry-eyed tax advocated fail to see – or hope we fail to see – that other forms of taxation can easily fill that same role.

Above all, they make the stupidest possible assumption – or they ask us to. They assume that the federal government will not grow, that it will not get more greedy, that it will not consume an ever larger share of everything Americans produce.

Why is this article coming from a gun-rights group?

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (of which one of the co-authors is executive director) is a Second Amendment educational foundation, not an economic think tank. So why is this article coming from us?

Two reasons. One: The tax will be used to attack and limit gun ownership; two, it's bad for freedom, and what's bad for freedom is bad for all gun owners.

It is painfully obvious to anyone who observes the tactics of the federal government (and the lobbying groups that buzz around it like flies) that a national sales tax will be used to attack gun ownership. Already, under the planned tax, anyone who wants to buy an imported firearm like a Glock or a SIG Sauer may have to pay 30 percent more than any American equivalent. But the ardent, and persistent gun prohibitionists in Congress – people like Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Caroline McCarthy, and John Kerry – will never be content with that.

Do you want to see a 500 percent tax on firearms? A 1,000 percent tax on ammunition? A 200 percent tax on targets, smokeless powder, camouflage clothing, and knives? Then tell your Congressperson you want a national sales tax.

Our second reason is that, as horrible as the IRS and the income tax are, the FairTax proposal is even worse for freedom.

Particularly worrying is the plan to put every single American household on federal welfare. Many households will become desperately dependent on government payments to help them survive the higher price of food, clothing, transportation, health care, and shelter. Wealthier people will simply see their monthly handout as an entitlement, a bonus – fun money to help fund their spending sprees.

Either way, a direct payment from the federal government each month will make people less inclined to protest injustice, less inclined to make waves, even when waves are seriously needed. Because people won't want to risk losing their monthly “freebie,” they'll be less inclined to look critically upon the government – and more inclined to oppose anybody who threatens to cut off their monthly handout.

It's all a matter of perception; in all too many cases, people are going to view their $500 freebies as being more important than the even higher – but incrementally smaller – amounts they pay out in sales taxes day by day. They'll say (as so many do with government handouts now), “I'm entitled. After all, I'm only getting my own money back.”

And besides, millions of households will be happily gaming the system – collecting their monthly handouts while buying tax-free goods on the black market. Big government will have achieved its ultimate dream: Citizens will like higher taxes.

In the end, as tyranny tightens its iron grip, Americans will be less inclined to bite the fist that they believe feeds them – even if they're actually paying more in taxes than they do now. All they'll see is that freedom might threaten their government payment. And since fewer will be able to buy guns, even those who want to fight a future tyrant will have a harder time doing so.

Some time ago, we wrote an article claiming that gun-rights and Social Security couldn't co-exist in the long run (http://www.jpfo.org/ssandguns.htm). We'll go further now and add that gun-rights and a national sales tax cannot and will not co-exist in the long run.

We sincerely hope we're wrong. But from where we stand, the conclusion seems inescapable: Imposition of a national sales tax will inflict the same kind of long-term damage to American society that was earlier inflicted by imposition of the income tax, the adoption of fiat currency, and life-consuming programs like the New Deal and the Great Society. And it will be coming at a time when America's fiscal health is already too shaky to absorb one more such blow.

What type of tax do we propose instead?

Now comes the moment where we're supposed to propose our alternative. “Be constructive,” someone will demand. “If you don't like their proposal, what have you got to offer that's better?”

Here's our alternative: Nothing.

Ban the income tax, definitely. Banish it. Disband the Internal Revenue Service and auction their buildings to the highest bidder. Let all the IRS auditors, clerks, and armed enforcers get honest jobs.

But don't replace the income tax with any tax, of any variety.

The United States survived until 1913 without an income tax. It survived until World War II without wage withholding (a federal trick “for the duration of the war” that increased tax collections enormously).

The income tax has enabled and encouraged wild governmental spending sprees. And irony of ironies, the federal government has now gotten so drunk on reckless spending and its attendant debt that (5) an amount equivalent to all the income taxes collected west of the Mississippi River accomplishes nothing but helping pay the interest on that debt! You pay and pay and you're not even getting government services for your money. Just paying off debt that should never have been incurred – and probably wouldn't have been incurred if Americans hadn't been forced to hand over so much money to government.

If you want smaller government, then don't spend your time thinking of “better” ways to feed big government. If you want freedom, don't fall for ploys that simply enable to government to find new routes into your pocket and your life.

If you want to tame the beast of tyranny – starve it into submission. Ban the income tax. Trash the unFairTax. And put the government back on a leash. 

(1)The “Fair Tax Act” will almost certainly not pass during the 108th Congress, which ends this year. However, it's gaining support and will surely be re-introduced in the 109th Congress. At that point, the bill numbers will change. We refer to H.R. 25 in this article because that's the bill that's now under consideration. You'll be able to find the text of both the current bill and any new versions of it by doing a keyword search at Congress' Thomas web site: http://thomas.loc.gov.

(2)Bartlett, Bruce. “A National Sales Tax No Vote.” National Review Online. August 9, 2004. http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett200408090847.asp

(3)It's also worth noting that if the income tax is indeed abolished, the homeowner's interest deduction goes with it. That automatically eliminates part of the incentive for buying houses, rather than renting. It also means that, with no deduction, home buyers effectively pay a larger percentage of their own money for their houses. We don't believe that any tax should ever have been used for a social engineering purpose (e.g. artificially encouraging home ownership). We merely note that this would be one of many disruptive factors Americans would have to cope with.

(4) Use this link and input H.R. 25 into the search box: http://thomas.loc.gov/. If you are reading this article after 2004, then go to the bills of the 108th Congress and search for H.R. 25. Or use keywords to search for any version of the FairTax bill introduced in your current Congressional session.

(5)This is according to a statement by Rep. Christopher Cox made to the House Judiciary Committee on February 3, 1997. http://www.house.gov/judiciary/187.htm. Cox estimated that in that year, $340 billion -- roughly half the federal income taxes collected in the United States – would go to pay interest on the national debt. The actual interest payment in 1997 was $355.8 billion. Interest expenses have gone down slightly since then. However, income tax receipts have also gone down. In 2003, for example, actual receipts from individual federal income taxes were $793.3 billion, and interest on the national debt was $318.2 billion. You can see historic and current national debt interest figures here: http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdint.htm.

(6) Gross, David. The Picket Line. August 29, 2004. http://www.sniggle.net/Experiment/index.php?entry=29Aug04&showyear=2004

Copyright © Aaron Zelman 2004. Permission is granted to distribute this article in its entirety, so long as full copyright information and full contact information is given for JPFO.

Published by:
Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc.
P.O. Box 270143
Hartford, WI 53027
Phone (262) 673-9745
Fax: (262) 673-9746 http://www.jpfo.org
 
 
 

I N S I G H T

Is Hell Exothermic (gives off heat) or Endothermic (absorbs heat)?
contributing editor to   - Cindy

[This was circulated previous and on several occassions, but still deserves another round  --  Tribble]

The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of    enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different Religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you, and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only Heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."

n

WELCOME TO THE GULAG
By Mary Starrett
June 21, 2003
NewsWithViews.com
http://www.newswithviews.com/Mary/starrett15.htm
contributing editor to   - Rodger

[I have recorded an NBC Dateline television news report of December 29, 2002, where this man was interviewed and his story told, at least in part.  --  Tribble]

This week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the case of a dentist who's been behind bars for SIX years awaiting trial for "Medicaid fraud"; charges which, if they were all PROVEN true, would only have netted the man a little over THREE years of prison time!

The government contends the 53 year old professional is "delusional" and it should have the right to forcibly medicate him to make him capable of standing trial. The Justice Department told the Supremes that the government must have the right to medicate defendants like him to "maintain social order and peace".

Before we get to why the government might have had it out for the dentist from the giddy-up, let's first understand this recent decision by the highest court in the land.

Psychiatric professionals have managed to convince us that without pharmaceutical intervention most of us would be sad, depressed, hyperactive, psychotic zombies. With their help, they promise, we can all get through this thing called "life". They and their willing accomplices in the medical profession (along with school counselors and social workers and anyone else with some title or other) have convinced millions of Americans that the simple solution to all of the so-called "mental illnesses" and "disorders" that seem to be plaguing so many of us is…drugs. So women with PMS are encouraged to take Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft. Children are given kiddie-crack like Adderal or Ritalin, seniors are put on Haldol. "Schizophrenics" are put on neuroleptics and on and on. What the "experts" don't tell us is these drugs mess up minds and bodies… Permanently. Do some research and you'll find horrifying stats and studies that show as side effects….. SIDE EFFECTS! " suicide, depression, violent ideation and lethargy". SUICIDE as a SIDE EFFECT?

Not too long ago I went to the women's prison outside Portland, Oregon.The inmate I visited was a 'soccer mom" who had had a comfortable life a husband a couple of real great kids. She took one of the drugs I mentioned for "depression" and began having "bloody nightmares." Within weeks, she had out- of- the -blue- shot and killed her husband. Just like that. No violent past, no criminal tendencies. She will spend the better part of the rest of her life in prison, like others who've taken these types of medications and become violent. All you have to do when you hear of one of these cases is do some probing and you will more often than not find a psychiatric drug link.

Dr. Sell has been fighting to keep from being forcibly medicated. He knows the dangers of psychotropic drugs. He insists he's competent to stand trial, so why has been denied the right to do so?

In the 6-3 ruling Monday, the Court said prosecutors could forcibly medicate defendants: If it can be shown that other methods of treatment have been tried.(Sell had been in solitary confinement for almost two years and no other treatments have been tried.) Or, if the drug is " likely to work" and if the drugs are "medically appropriate".

According to Harvard-trained psychiatrist Peter Breggin, "evidence indicates the drugs (neuroleptics like the ones they want to give Dr. Sell) produce ( a psychosis) that is irreversible and more severe than the patients original problems".(Breggin, 1989)

"…these drugs may suppress rebelliousness… (which) is why they are effective wherever social control is (desired)". Hear that? The drugs they want to give Sell don't work and will likely mess him up for good, but at least they would the desired effect of making him compliant.

Now the government has been handed the go-ahead to addle our brains with powerful chemicals "if they work". A cursory look at how these drugs affect the brain should lead us to dismiss the Supreme Court's decision out of hand.

Breggin says" there is no significant body of research to prove neuroleptics have any specific effect on psychotic symptoms, such as …delusions. To the contrary, these remain rather resistant to the drugs… a recent …definitive review of controlled studies showed that (these drugs) showed that they perform no better than…placebo".(Mosher and Burti, 1989, Breggin, 1991)

So while the headlines in the Supreme Court decision assuage the fears of some, others see right through the false sense of security the ruling brings us. All prosecutors have to "prove" is that strong psychotropic drugs are "medically appropriate"(according to whom? The psychiatric profession?) and even non-violent defendants like Dr. Sell(or you or me) can be told to shut up and roll up our sleeves. Not good enough, I say to the vaunted Justices. But Sell's not alone in this.

The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, drawn up for the Centers For Disease Control And Prevention states that once public health officials declare a "state of public health emergency" all of us can be subject to "forced vaccination and treatment"(Section 104(1),504), "the tracking of individuals, prohibition of firearms"(huh?), and "mandatory quarantine". So, if a "public health emergency" like Monkeyshines Pox or West Pile virus should be declared a threat, kiss exercising your Constitutional and health choice freedoms bye-bye.

And, by the way, the Supreme Court decision was accompanied this week by the announcement by a federal appeals court that the U.S. government can keep the names of hundreds of people arrested and detained after September 11th secret. (So much for Article VI of that archaic parchment paper) Welcome to the Gulag.

Now, as to why this dentist has been held behind bars for so long, with the threat of forced medication hanging over his head: Sell's been diagnosed as having "delusional disorder, persecutory type". They say he plotted to kill the FBI agent who arrested him(I'd be interested in hearing the case against him in this charge)

Was it the Medicaid fraud he stands accused of? Fraud happens every day and they don't put the accused away for six years awaiting trial. Could it be something else?

Yes.

Dr. Charles "Tom" Sell was a member of the Army Reserves, called up to serve as an expert in forensic dentistry at the gruesome scene of carnage that was Waco.

Here's where his "delusions" come in. He thinks the government is to blame for the fiery deaths. Sound like reason to call the man crazy and want to drug him?

It appears the government is making an example of this man. Which would lead us to ask this question:

"I wonder if they think we're delusional, too?"

© 2003 Mary Starrett - All Rights Reserved
 
 

A store that sells husbands has just opened where a woman may go to choose a husband from among many men. The store is composed of 6 floors, and the men increase in positive attributes as the shopper ascends the flights.

There is, however, a catch. As you open the door to any floor you may choose a man from that floor, but if you go up a floor, you cannot go back down except to exit the building.

So a woman goes to the shopping center to find a husband.

On the first floor the sign on the door reads:
Floor 1 - These men have jobs.

The woman reads the sign and says to herself, "Well, that's better than my last boyfriend, but I wonder what's further up?" So up she goes.

The second floor sign reads:
Floor 2 - These men have jobs and love kids.

The woman remarks to herself, "That's great, but I wonder what's further up?" And up she goes again.

The third floor sign reads:
Floor 3 - These men have jobs, love kids and are extremely good looking.

"Hmmm, better" she says. "But I wonder what's upstairs?"

The fourth floor sign reads:
Floor 4 - These men have jobs, love kids, are extremely good looking and help with the housework.

"Wow!" exclaims the woman, "very tempting. BUT, there must be more further up!" And again she heads up another flight.

The fifth floor sign reads:
Floor 5 - These men have jobs, love kids, are extremely good looking, help with the housework and have a strong romantic streak.

"Oh, mercy me! But just think...what must be awaiting me further on?" So up to the sixth floor she goes.

The sixth floor sign reads:
Floor 6 - You are visitor 3,456,789,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please.

Thank you for shopping at Husband Mart and have a nice day.
 
 

Carelessness leads to chaos
chaos to anarchy
anarchy to ruin
 
 

duh

Beware The Natives When Returning To Your Plane
contributing editor to   - Viv
Imagine that you are a South African bush pilot. You fly in some critical medical supplies, enjoy a quick lunch at the hospital.

It's a stifling 100 degrees in the shade and you're eager to get back up to the cool, high blue  yonder. On the way back to your plane, you discover that the only bit of shade  within a mile has become very popular......

You start calculating the distance to the plane door....... and wonder, do I feel lucky today?"

 
 

The Flat Earth Report

A Bureaucrat, NOT Nature Decides When To Harvest
contributing editor to   - Viv

One always suspected that eurocrats/bureaucrats had never actually seen a crop growing much less got dirty on a farm but this takes the lunacy to unbelievable extremes. - Viv

GUARDIAN  15/11/04 Brussels leaves harvest of sprouts down to government

Minister to decide on crops according to rainfall levels         David Hencke, Westminster correspondent

Margaret Beckett, the agriculture minister, will next year be able to decide when farmers can harvest potatoes - depending on how much rain falls in Britain.

European Union rules accepted by the government have led her to be dubbed "the rain goddess" - because of her powers to decide when farmers can harvest a range of crops depending on weather.

Under a payment system farmers can apply, for the first time, for funds to grow potatoes, brussels sprouts, cauliflowers, celery and parsnips as well as profitable sugar beet.

But confidential draft regulations - sent out by the ministry for consultation and seen by the Guardian - reveal that to qualify for the cash the farmers will have to meet new rules.

The most controversial involves the amount of rain that may fall in winter: farmers, if they want the subsidy, are banned from harvesting the crop if the ground is saturated.

The sticking point is the EU definition of saturated ground, which depends on the location of puddles in a field of crops. If the puddle is within 20 metres of a field gate, it is not standing water; if it is 21 metres, it is.

Farmers with puddles outside the 20m zone can only hope Mrs Beckett will declare that "exceptional weather conditions" apply under the regulations, permitting her to order farmers to harvest crops.

Tory MPs from farming constituencies are not impressed. Ian Liddell-Grainger, MP for Bridgewater and member of the select committee monitoring agriculture, described the new rules as "mad".

 "It seems absurd that farmers will have to wait until a big sister government can decide when they can harvest their crops. It is turning the minister into a rain goddess who decides if or when farmers can make a living. It is not clear whether there has to be national downpour or whether regional weather conditions apply. It also takes no account of the different types of soil. There is an enormous differ ence to fields - such as in my constituency - like the Somerset levels which are naturally marshy or drier land in East Anglia."

The National Farmers Union has also raised questions about the rules - fearing farmers may have to plough crops back. A spokesman said: "The NFU has raised a number of issues with the Department of the Environment, Food and Regional Affairs during the initial consultation process. The purpose of consultation is to iron out any difficulties and seek a positive way forward."

A Defra spokesman confirmed that the document, still officially confidential, was out for consultation. "The secretary of state would obviously take advice from the Met Office before declaring exceptional weather conditions. Details of how we would implement this are still for discussion, and we will take account of people's views before the final regulations are published."
 
 

I N S I G H T

Some Consequences of Irresponsible Highway Travel
contributing editor to   - Viv

[I normally would not forward any of the "chain" type mail.  You know the type, where you should pass it to 15 of your friends or else your big tow will fall to decay.  What follows is not a "chain", but was received with the intent to have it passed to friends.  After looking at the images, I was convinced to pass this one to you.

Warning - what follows are rather gruesome photos.
[I have deliberately reduced the image size here.  If you want to see the images in larger size, then right click on the image and select the option to save the image and then put it on your hard drive where you know to go find it.  Then you can look at it with your favorite image viewing program and alter it to your desire.]

Responsibility on the road includes what you do prior and during getting on the road.  If you drink or get high or get stoned, then get on the road, you are in fact putting others at risk.  It is true that you are putting yourself at risk, but that is your own sorry a--, we here are talking about the other people in this world.]
 
 

Jacqueline Saburido - September 19, 1999.	She and her Father, 1998.
on Vacation in Venezuela.	Birthday party as a child.
At a party with friends.	The car in which Jacqueline traveled.  She was hit by another car that was driven  by a 17-year old male student on his way home  after a couple of hard packs with his friends. December 1999.
Jacqueline has needed over 40 operations.	Jacqueline was caught in the burning car  and her body was heavily burnt  during around 45 seconds of fire.
With her Father, 2000.	Getting treatment.
Three months after accident.	Without a left eyelid,  Jacquie needs eye drops to keep her vision.
Now 20 years old, he cannot forgive himself  for driving drunk on that night three years ago.  He’s aware of devastating Jacqueline Saburido’s life.	Not everyone who gets hit with a car dies.  This picture was taken 4 years after the accident  and the doctors are still working on Jacqueline,  who’s body was covered with 60% severe burnings.

[Any response to a writing is good.  It does not matter whether the response in in favor or opposed to the writing.  Something is to be learned from it, by one party or the other.  The following is a response to the article "We've Been Had"]

It's amazing what some people will say or promote or propose just to sell a book or a movie. I'll bet this guy could write great scripts for Michael Moore. Is his middle name "Paranoid" or is he just that way "normally?"
What a dipshit! Voting machines controlled via the Internet connected by modem? I guess this fits in better with today's technology else he would be saying that there were pro-Bush midgets hiding inside the voting machines changing votes. At least this e-mail was good for a laugh.

[Having shown that example of a response, it must then be shown that the voting fraud and fact that our votes do not count - literally.
http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB04-252.html
and look at the 3rd item below "Windows Operating System" and follow the link to
http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/bulletins/SB04-252.html#diebold

This is only one government report showing that as late as 8/31/04, there were security and tampering problems with the Diebold voting machines.

A reply to the response was the following]

I must defend Mr. Steele a bit on the matter.  The basis for Steele's rigged voting machine position has been substantiated in many news circles.  CBS even did a piece on it as late as Oct 27, 2004 (I am attaching a page from their web site on the show in question).  There is abundant "mainstream" evidence/reporting of the problems with Diebold (the sole contractor for electronic voting machines) and with the various rigged voting machines over the past 15 years (that I know).  I recall a report maybe 10 years ago about a tech being called in to repair a machine early in a voting day, and he discovered the ending tally already printed and waiting to be presented.  This alone is enough to show none of the votes cast in that machine counted that day.

In the case of Diebold, they will not let anyone check the veracity of their algorithms.  I understand corporate profits are at risk, but what should be more important is the protection of the peoples votes.  There is no paper, or tangible, backup.  Diebold says, if you want a recount we will tell the computer to recount.  This is using the same computer, with the same program with the same "1's" & "0's".  What result do you expect to get?

When Diebold's code was "accidentally" released on the web a year ago, it was captured by several people prior to it being pulled.  One of the people who got a hold of it was Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute.  They found the code to be rife with problems.

I have been watching the votescam matter for about 15 years and am convinced that in this modern time, our votes do not count - literally.

Steele went farther to say that certain polls going into the day of election and the exit polls which usually have high accuracy, did not even have the correct slope on their graph.  This is evidence of something screwy in the vote counting (or lack thereof) process.
 

I am not speaking for Steele when I say the issue is not Bush or Kerry, but rather that they are both marionettes of the same puppeteers. The only issue I see by selecting (assuming you actually are having an influence) one candidate or another is the route you choose to get to the destination.  This is because they all will take you to the same place, but by different paths.  Some may take you by way of the super highway and other by way of country roads.

the CBS link is
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/25/60II/main651229.shtml
 
 

I N S I G H T

"You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something.Nowadays, everybody's crazy."
   -- Charles Manson, serial killer and one-time cult leader

I'm glad that Kerry lost.  However, I am horrified that Bush won.  Or did he?

We get the government we deserve, it is said.  What, exactly, did I do to deserve this?  And I'm a conservative, too.  Imagine how the liberals must feel.

For every person I know who voted for Bush, I know four who voted for Kerry or a third-party candidate, not to mention another six who didn't vote at all!  But, then, I run in some unusual circles.  Even so...

The Zogby Polls, which usually are pretty accurate, had Kerry winning a clear majority, not just a plurality, and sweeping the Electoral College.  Exit polls, which are even more accurate, had Kerry winning going away, especially in the key "Battleground States" of Ohio and Florida, both of which inexplicably ended up in Bush's column at the end.  I noticed that, for once, none of the network anchors really discussed either type of poll, though CNN has been accused of jiggering its report of exit poll results.  In an excuse switch reminiscent of Iraq being blamed for possessing weapons of mass destruction, suddenly the blame for the voting-booth conversion to Bush is being placed upon the desire of the common man to stamp out homosexual marriage.  As comedienne Judy Tenuta likes to say: "It could happen!"  Yeah...right.

Dick Morris, ex Clinton political consultant, wrote an article for The Hill, read by a great many Washington insiders, in which he said, "This was no mere mistake.  Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night."

Yes, I called for Bush's ouster well over a year ago (IMPEACH BUSH NOW and Bush Must Go!), but I'm still pretty much a conservative.  Aside from the lunatic-fringe Christian fundamentalist/dispensationalists, many conservatives started talking about Bush that way at about the same time.  That's just paleoconservatives, however; we who predate neoconservatives, those who are but old liberal whine in new battles.  That's why you should listen to my ilk more closely than the liberals who just upped their intake of Prozac, alcohol and a variety of other reality-altering substances.  They would be railing against anything Republican or conservative just now.  People like myself are a different matter altogether.  And there are a lot of us.  Which is why Bush's victory quite simply does not pass the smell test.

It seems clear to me that Bush didn't win fairly.  I think Kerry actually won the election and allowed Bush to steal it.  In retrospect, it appears to me that Al Gore did the same thing, albeit less abjectly than did Kerry.  But, this time Bush got caught with his hand in the ballot box.  I've just had a heel-of-the-hand-forehead-thumping "aha" experience.  How could I, of all people, have missed something so obvious?

Yes, I have noted rampant vote fraud in the past and expected it this time, as well.  I have witnessed it first hand at the local level.  I have read many credible reports from others at all levels, concerning past vote fraud.  Yet, I did not believe it was so blatant...so massive as what obviously just occurred.  How could I possibly expect others to see it now if I didn't see it coming?  How could I be so...dumb?

Now comes the hard part:  How do we make clear that free elections in America were a thing of the past as long as four years ago?

It's a good thing that Kerry won't be in the Oval Office; but, another four years like we just had?  America won't make it.  On the other hand, that could turn out to be the good news, I suppose, for survivors of what America is about to become.

Bad as Kerry would have been, he would have been gridlocked by the Republican Congress.  None of that for Bush, though, who has presided over the biggest runup in deficits and most criminal war that America has ever seen.  Kerry could never have obtained the blank check for war that Congress handed to Bush - and will again.  Expect the upcoming mid-term election in 2002 to produce more of the same miraculous Republican victories and give Bush the 60-Republican Senate edge that he needs to advance any legislation without danger of Democrat filibuster.

The smell left over from Election Day is bad enough, all by itself, but there is evidence, lots of evidence, of vote fraud on a scale not seen since the heydays of Communist Russia.  Next we will see ballots with only one name appearing in each slot (given our "choice" of candidates, we essentially got there years ago, however).

How on earth did despicable Democrat Tom Daschle get beaten?  Mind you, the only Senators I would be more pleased to see go are Hillary, Feinstein and the execrable Charles Schumer, but it seems extremely unlikely that Daschle's constituents would have voted him out of office in a fair election. Is it just coincidence that Daschle has been a particularly nettlesome thorn in George W. Bush's side for the past four years?

The problems in Ohio on election day are starkly outlined by attorney Ray Beckerman in his Basic Report from Columbus: "Touch screen voting machines in Youngstown OH were registering "George W. Bush" when people pressed "John F. Kerry" ALL DAY LONG."  One precinct in suburban Columbus reported that nearly 4,000 votes were "accidentally" credited to Bush. Mr. Beckerman also reports that lines in predominantly-Democratic precincts were 5-10 hours in length, versus near nonexistent in Republican strongholds, for the simple reason that precincts expected to line up in the Republican column had five times as many voting machines as others.  Beckerman outlines a number of other irregularities in one of this election's two key "battleground" states, the one that gave the election to Bush, just as Florida did four years ago with a healthy assist from the US Supreme Court.  Is all of this simply coincidental in an election where the disputed votes decided the outcome?

The other key battleground state, Florida, reported similar problems:  "(S)everal dozen voters in six states - particularly Democrats in Florida - who said the wrong candidates appeared on their touch-screen machine's checkout screen...In many cases, voters said they intended to select John Kerry but when the computer asked them to verify the choice it showed them instead opting for President Bush..." (Globe and Mail, 11/3/04).  More coincidence?

But, the machines don't have to be obviously in error to be rigged.  Ronnie Dugger, in How They Could Steal the Election This Time, several months ago described the November 2004 election machinery:  "36 million (votes) will be tabulated completely inside the new paperless, direct-recording-electronic (DRE) voting systems, on which you vote directly on a touch-screen...you get no paper record of your vote...you never know, despite what the touch-screen says, whether the computer is counting your vote as you think you are casting it or, either by error or fraud, it is giving it to another candidate.  No one can tell what a computer does inside itself by looking at it; an election official 'can't watch the bits inside,' says Dr. Peter Neumann, the principal scientist at the Computer Science Laboratory of SRI International and a world authority on computer-based risks...The four major election corporations count votes with voting-system source codes (which) are kept strictly secret..."

Even if they aren't obviously in error or secretly rigged, these new machines can still have their tabulations changed, with nobody the wiser.  One of my favorite Internet columnists, Devvy Kidd, two weeks ago predicted "monstrous problems that will make Florida 2000 pale in comparison."  Quoting from the December 1996 issue of Cincinnatus News Service, a vote fraud newsletter, Devvy went on to note, "The missing link in the vote fraud investigation has been found. The November 1996 issue of Relevance Magazine reveals that two-way hidden modems are being built into the ever growing number of computerized optical scanner/direct recording voting machines in use all across the country from New England to California...these hidden modems are accessible by remote cell phone technology...these voting machines can be accessed and manipulated from a central super computer without a phone line connected to the wall, and without the local precinct workers knowing that anything is happening at all."  I wonder why Dan Rather didn't tell us about this?

Just look at all the "user login" notations in this rare audit log from Washington State's King County, where a number of voting tabulation irregularities are now under investigation.  No notation is made, of course, of what those anonymous users did, once logged into the database.  Go here for an interesting report and speculation about how and by whom the voting machines are being hacked - particularly, note the Republican connection through an attorney.

Diebold, Inc., is one of the country's biggest suppliers of paperless, touch-screen voting machines.  Diebold's CEO, Walter O'Dell, wrote a letter four months ago soliciting major-league campaign contributions for Bush, in which he said, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."   Diebold is based in Canton, Ohio. Coincidence?

Convinced yet?  I am.

This year apparently wasn't the first to see this new technology exploited, either.  In "The Stolen Election of 2004:  Welcome Back to Hell," Larry Chin reports on touch-screen "black-box" voting:  "The technology had a trial run in the 2002 mid-term elections.  In Georgia, serviced by new Diebold systems, a popular Democratic governor and senator were both unseated in what the media called 'amazing' upsets, with results showing vote swings of up to 16 percent from the last pre-ballot polls.  In computerized Minnesota, former Vice President Walter Mondale - a replacement for popular incumbent Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash days before the vote - was also defeated in a large last-second vote swing.  Convenient 'glitches' in Florida saw an untold number of votes intended for the Democratic candidate registering instead for Governor Jeb 'L'il Brother' Bush."  More coincidence, do you suppose?

Now pay particularly close attention to the very next sentence from Mr. Chin's article:  "A Florida Democrat who lost a similarly 'glitched' local election went to court to have the computers examined - but the case was thrown out by a judge who ruled that the innards of America's voting machines are the 'trade secrets' of the private companies who make them."  So, the legal system steps in and removes any chance of our being able to audit what these things do.  Coincidence?

And it's not just the touch-screen voting machines that are susceptible.  CommonDreams.org's Thom Hartmann notes that  "(I)n Florida's smaller counties the results from the optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking - seem to have been reversed" (Evidence Mounts that the Vote was Hacked, Rense.com).  Mr. Hartman's analysis shows that Florida would have gone to Kerry, had those small-county anomalies been more consistent with actual party affiliation registration by voters. Do you believe in coincidence?  Did all those rural Floridian Democrats really vote for Bush, do you suppose?  Florida, alone, would have changed the outcome of the election.

Also in Florida, the other key "battleground" state that was widely expected to go Kerry, the official election results of Palm Beach's (of 2000's "butterfly ballot" fame) disclosed that, while 454,427 people voted, 542,835 votes were tallied, a discrepancy of 88,000 votes.  Shortly after this oddity was picked up and reported by The Washington Dispatch, officials inexplicably "found" over 91,000 additional absentee ballots which had, somehow, already been counted, thus balancing its own tally. More coincidence, I suppose.

Americans seem to believe that the world thinks as we do; that, somehow, Bush is viewed favorably.  He is not, as vividly demonstrated by England's Danny Dayus in his article, Don't Be American:  "According to recent opinion polls, a majority of people in the USA actually believe that most of the world favoured the re-election of George W Bush as president - this despite several surveys that suggest that support for Kerry over Bush in the wider world was something between a 2:1 and 10:1 ratio."
 
 

At left:  George W. Bush in an increasingly typical pose.  Talk about character.  Can you imagine George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy or, even, Richard Nixon ever doing this publicly?  Why is this man's obvious mental imbalance, intemperance and lack of propriety not apparent to every American?  This is precisely the image of America now held by the rest of the world. This election was a foregone conclusion, as some noted beforehand.  Greg Palast, Harper's editor who investigated American vote fraud on behalf of the British Broadcasting System, reported on November 1 that upwards of one million votes, expected to be cast overwhelmingly for Kerry, would not be counted "(B)ecause, in important states like Ohio, Florida and New Mexico, voter names have been systematically removed from the rolls and absentee ballots have been overlooked—overwhelmingly in minority areas..."  More coincidence, of course.

Houston, we have a problem.  Many have taken me to task recently for advocating voting - just not voting for Democrats or Republicans - rather than pointedly not voting.  In view of the massive and unprecedented vote fraud that now is apparent, my attitude concerning this is undergoing revision...and I'm leaning toward not voting.  Of course, I'm having some other leanings, too - leanings that might get me put in jail, were I to share them with you.

Look - the people apparently disenfranchised this time around primarily are those with whom I generally disagree, but it is the fundamental unfairness of what has taken place that most offends me, not to mention the path down which America now treads.  If I really believed this election showed the true color of conservatism, I would join the liberals in a heartbeat and replace my "Nuke the Whales" bumper sticker with one that says "Save the Baby Seals."

If this is what it means to be conservative today, I want to be liberal.

New America.  An idea whose time has come.

On-Line link to this article in HTML format:  http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/columns/bushwon.htm
 
 

related articles can be found at
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2004/October/theuae_October182.xml&section=theuae&col=
http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2015938
 

WOMEN bosses are tougher on female staff than senior male colleagues, a study suggests. The so-called Queen Bee Syndrome sees them questioning the commitment of those on the lower rungs of the career ladder, it says.

But the tendency of women in power to regard female beginners as less dedicated than male starters may come from a desire to protect their own interests rather than reflecting the reality of the situation.

The findings by researchers at Lieden University, in Holland, show male managers do not see either sex as being the more I committed.

Women who have prospered in male-dominated environments are more likely to hold stereotypical views of other females as lacking drive and ambition, says the study.

Experts claim this is because they believe they have to display masculine attitudes or behaviour patterns to fight their way to the top - and once there are determined to protect their hard-won position from female competition.

Dr Naomi Ellemers, who led the study, describes this as the Queen Bee Syndrome-because bee colonies have only one reproductive queen with all other female bees being infertile and serving her.

Researchers studied how university lecturers and professors of science rated the commitment of doctoral students beginning an academic career.

However, they believe their findings are of much wider significance to the world of work.

The study found no evidence that females were less committed to their work than male colleagues, said Dr Ellemers. 'It is a common belief that men are more inclined than women to endorse gender stereotypes.
.
'Nevertheless, we found that women are sometimes more likely than men to rate other women negatively.'

The study involved 132 doctoral students and 179 professors and lecturers at Free University, in Amsterdam.

Students were given 32 statements about their attitudes to work, and had to say how strongly they agreed on a scale from one to seven. The results, published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, showed no significant difference between the commitment of men and women.

A second related study found older women bosses were most likely to give female staff a hard time, possibly because when they began work it was rare for women to be bosses.

'I was hounded out'

FINANCIAL adviser Karen Smyth won a near-£60,000 payout after an employment tribunal was told she was hounded out of her job by her jealous woman boss.

Economics graduate Miss Smyth, 28, was one of the Halifax's most talented high-fliers, earning £95,000 a year, plus bonuses.

But her career took a nosedive when Joy Clegg, ten years her senior, was. appointed her manager.

Mrs Clegg criticised Miss Smyth's approach with customers, gathered complaints on their behalf and went to senior management, the tribunal heard.

Miss Smyth, from Sheffield, suffered stress and later resigned. In April she was awarded £59,030 for unfair dismissal after the bank admitted liability.

Afterwards she claimed Mrs Clegg had decided to victimise her because she was 'envious of her success'.

She added: 'I'm young, well-educated and a high earner. She was just jealous.'
 
 

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe

TESTING THE FAITH
IRS: Churches can't pray for Bush victory
Ruling says tax-exempt groups prohibited from asking God to intervene
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41145
contributing editor to   - Rodger

By Ron Strom
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Posted: October 28, 2004

[There are many who still do not believe that the chruches are controlled by unseen forces, whether those forces be the Council of Churches, the IRS or some other forces.  Here is yet another example of how the churches must preach the party line.  --  Tribble]

In a letter of clarification requested by a traveling minister, the Internal Revenue Service has declared people gathered in tax-exempt churches can't pray for President Bush to win the election on Tuesday.

The ruling comes in response to a request by the Christian Defense Coalition, which is in the midst of a 15-day prayer tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, director of the organization, had planned to lead in prayer for a Bush victory during evening services in each town. Though he had hoped to hold the services in churches, Mahoney says he has used American Legion halls, hotels and other venues pending a clarification from the IRS.

The American Center for Law and Justice wrote the letter to the IRS on behalf of the Mahoney's group, explaining that the pastor planned to "offer prayer during the evening services in the churches he visits that God grants President Bush four more years as president and that Senator Kerry does not become president."

"This is rank censorship," Mahoney told WND. "If churches felt compelled to pray for Senator Kerry, they should be able to do that, too.

"Now we have the IRS not only limiting what can be said behind a pulpit in terms of electioneering, but churches aren't even allowed to pray the dictates of their consciences."

Mahoney said he would consider legal action against the IRS, saying churches that had considered hosting the tour were unable to do so. He also said he considers his First Amendment rights to have been violated.

Reaction to the IRS ruling, Mahoney predicts, will include "massive anger" in the Christian community.

"Our organization, along with the American Center for Law and Justice, is going to make this a major issue," he said.

Mahoney considers the ruling a "much greater leap into censorship" than the prohibition on endorsing candidates from church pulpits.

"You hear people talk about the separation of church and state," he said. "This is a massive violation of the separation of church and state from the standpoint of the government intruding on the private dictates of churches."

Under IRS regulations, churches that are tax-exempt organizations cannot openly advocate for candidates for office and can only use a small percentage of their budgets on political activity.

As WorldNetDaily reported, an concerted effort is under way to get the IRS to crack down on churches that might push certain candidates or parties. In July, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, headed by Barry Lynn, filed a complaint with the IRS against Ronnie Floyd, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Springdale, Ark., accusing him of preaching a sermon promoting President Bush's re-election July 4.
 
 

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe

The Story of the Modern Little Red Hen
contributing editor to   - Viv

ONCE upon a time, there was a little red hen who scratched about the barnyard until she uncovered some grains of wheat. She called her neighbours and said, "If we plant this wheat, we shall have bread to eat. Who will help me plant it?"
'Not I," said the cow.
'Not I,' said the duck.
"Not I," said the pig.
"Not I," said the goose.
"Then I will," said the little red hen. And she did. The wheat grew tall and ripened into golden grain.

"Who will help me reap my wheat?" asked the little red hen.
'Not I," said the duck.
"Out of my classification," said the pig.
 "I'd lose my seniority," said the cow.
"I'd lose my unemployment compensation," said the goose.
"Then I will," said the little red hen, and she did.

At last it came time to bake the bread. "Who will help be bake the bread?" asked the little red hen.
"That would be overtime for me," said the cow.
" I'd lose my welfare benefits," said the duck.
"I'm a dropout and never learned how," said the pig.
"If I'm to be the only helper, that's discrimination," said the goose."
'Then I will," said the little red hen.

She baked five loaves and held them up for her neighbours to see. They wanted some and, in fact, demanded a share. But the little red hen said, "No, I can eat the five loaves."
"Excess profits!" cried the cow.
"Capitalist leech!" screamed the duck.
" I demand equal rights!" yelled the goose.
And the pig just grunted. And they painted ... unfair" picket signs and marched round and round the little red hen, shouting obscenities.

When the government agent came, he said to the little red hen, "You must not be greedy."
"But I earned the bread," said the little red hen.
"Exactly," said the agent. "That is the wonderful free enterprise system. Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he wants. But under our modern socialist government regulations, the productive workers must divide their product with the idle."

And they lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked, "I am grateful. I am grateful."

But her neighbours wondered why she never baked any more bread.
 
 
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y

Bush lied, he misled us...
At least, that has been John Kerry's most oft-repeated assertion for the last six months.
http://federalistpatriot.us/current/

contributing editor to   - Bob

[This article is offered in contrast to the usual articles that grace this publication.  --  Tribble]

It is no coincidence that Kerry would use such a claim as the foundation of his campaign rhetoric. In fact, it is enlightening. You see, campaign hacks for a challenger use focus groups to determine their candidate's most distinguished flaw, and then tutor their candidate on how to cast the incumbent with a greater measure of that flaw. Clearly, John Kerry's most apparent liabilities are his lack of integrity and lack of fitness for command -- and there is plenty of evidence for both deficiencies.

Kerry insists, "I've never, ever used the harshest word ['lie']." But of course, that is a lie. Preceding that remark, he said, "This administration has lied to us. They have misled us." After it, he said, "[Bush] failed to tell you the truth. ... I believe that it is important to tell the truth to the American people."

A charter member of Kerry's Leftist cadre, Al Franken, wrote a book a few years back entitled, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them." Apparently, Kerry adopted it as his campaign playbook. While the "F" in JFK may stand for "fib," "fabrication," "falsehood," "fallacy," "feint," "forgery," "fake," "fraud" and, phonetically speaking, "phony," it also stands for "flip-flop." Kerry's strategy to paint President George W. Bush as a liar is subterfuge to divert attention from Kerry's own extensive record of fibs and flips. As readers of this column well know, Kerry has been on both sides of just about every issue -- which is to say, he has lied to just about everyone at one time or another.

In this, the last Patriot essay before Election Day, 2004, it is worth reviewing a few of Kerry's lies -- in his own words. We don't have sufficient bandwidth to publish all of them, but those that follow are both representative, and typically transparent, of Kerry's mendacity.

Who can forget these memorable recollections from Kerry's "heroics" in Vietnam: "I remember spending Christmas Day of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me. ... [American military personnel in Vietnam] personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, [blew] up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to...the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country. ... There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed...."

He is still trying to make amends for those lies: "When it comes to war and peace, I will tell the truth to the American people.... For 35 years I have stood up, and fought, and kept faith with my fellow veterans. [Bush has] not kept faith with veterans across this country. And one of the first definitions of patriotism is keeping faith with those who wore the uniform of our country."

On the economy, Kerry lies: "Now, the president has presided over an economy where we've lost 1.6 million jobs. The first president in 72 years to lose jobs. ... This is the worst economy since Herbert Hoover. ... This president chose a tax cut over homeland security. ... We didn't need that tax cut. ... I'm fighting for the middle class."

On social issues, Kerry lies: "They are going to privatize your Social Security. ... They're taking money from Social Security and transferring it to the wealthiest people in America to drive us into debt. ... I believe it's time to stop viewing innovative approaches as anomalies or threats to traditional public schools and begin seeing them as part of the future of public education. ... Public schools need resources and support, and vouchers drain them of both. ... I oppose abortion, personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception. ... I have a plan to cover all [make that 25 of 45 million uninsured] Americans. ... I am not proposing a government-run [healthcare] program. It is not a government takeover. The government has nothing to do with it."

On the most important issue of the day, our worldwide war against Jihadi terrorists, and particularly the Jihadi warfront in Iraq, Kerry lies: "We were safer before President Bush came to office. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them. ... I sat with the French and British, Germans, with the entire Security Council. ... I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. ... America must fight and win two wars. The war in Iraq and the war on terror. ... President Bush likes to confuse the two. ... In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war [on terror] and the battle against the enemy. ... I can do a better job of protecting America's security because the [global] test that I was talking about was a test of legitimacy, not just in the globe, but elsewhere. ... If George Bush were to be re-elected ... there is great potential [that he would re-instate the draft]."

And there's much more from Kerry on the war: "Osama bin Laden escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. But we didn't use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords. ... We are 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq. ... The war costs -- $200 billion. And it's in Iraq. And Iraq is not even the center of the focus on the war on terror. I don't think any United States Senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running. That's irresponsible. ... My position on Iraq has been consistent. ... I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.... That's not a flip-flop. That's not a flip-flop. ... I have no intention of wilting. I've never wilted in my life. And I've never wavered in my life. ... Let me tell you straight up: I've never changed my mind about Iraq."

On the flip-side, Kerry has said of the war in Iraq: "Saddam Hussein has used weapons of mass destruction against his own people.... I think we ought to put the heat on Saddam Hussein. I've said that for a number of years. I criticized the Clinton administration for backing off.... I think we need to put the pressure on, no matter what the evidence is about September 11. ... I think we clearly have to keep the pressure on terrorism globally. This doesn't end with Afghanistan by any imagination. And I think the president has made that clear. I think we have made that clear. Terrorism is a global menace. It's a scourge. And it is absolutely vital that we continue, for instance, Saddam Hussein. I agree completely with this Administration's goal of a regime change in Iraq. ... Saddam Hussein is a renegade and outlaw who turned his back on the tough conditions of his surrender put in place by the United Nations in 1991. ... If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community's already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement...even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act. ... The president always reserves the right to act unilaterally to protect the interests of our country. ... I do not regret my vote [in support of the Iraq war]. ... I think it was the right vote based on what Saddam Hussein had done, and I think it was the right thing to do to hold him accountable. [My position] can't be clearer."

And Kerry's lies keep piling up.

In old news that was slated to be recycled by CBS talkinghead Dan Rather this Sunday (leaving too little time to debunk it), the latest, and perhaps last Kerry prevarication of this campaign (concerning some quantity of HMX and RDX explosives missing at al-Qa Qaa weapons installation south of Baghdad) was printed by The New York Times ahead of schedule. "Our plan was to run the story on October 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold," said Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday "60 Minutes" said.

(Memo to CBS News President Andrew Heyward: Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?)

And speaking of decency -- or the egregious lack thereof -- Kerry was quick to spin the "story," blaming our military forces in Iraq, and their commander in chief, with dereliction of duty. Of the latter, Kerry said: "Now we know that our country and our troops are less safe because this president failed to do the basics. This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration. The incredible incompetence of this president and his administration has put our troops at risk and put our country at greater risk than we ought to be. After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, this administration failed to guard those stockpiles -- where nearly 377 tons of highly explosive weapons were kept. The missing explosives could very likely be in the hands of terrorists and insurgents, who are actually attacking our forces now 80 times a day on average."

Unfortunately for Kerry, et al., it only took a few hours to debunk this feeble crack at an October surprise.

As The Patriot previously noted in October, 2002, our well-placed sources in the region, and intelligence sources with the NSA and NRO, estimated that the UN Security Council's foot-dragging provided a large window for Saddam to export some or all of his deadliest WMD materials and components. At that time, we reported Allied Forces would be unlikely to discover Iraq's WMD stores, noting, "Our sources estimate that Iraq has shipped some or all of its biological stockpiles and nuclear WMD components through Syria to southern Lebanon's heavily fortified Bekaa Valley." In December of 2002, our senior-level intelligence sources re-confirmed estimates that some of Iraq's biological and nuclear WMD material and components had, in fact, been moved into Syria and Iran. That movement continued until President Bush finally pulled the plug on the UN's ruse.

Indeed, Kerry and his Leftmedia minions have it all wrong -- again. The NRO released photos of heavy trucks loading materials from the bunker in question at al-Qa Qaa Explosive Storage Complex on 17 March 2003, three days prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq [http://federalistpatriot.us/news/alqaqaa.asp]. And Kerry and company may have gotten additional facts all wrong. U.S. forces did find conventional weapons in the bunker in question but did not find what the UN's IAEA estimated to be three tons of HMX and RDX -- not 377 tons as claimed by Kerry.

Of course, 6,000 pounds of HMX and RDX is significant -- it only took one pound of this substance in the hands of Libyan agents to bring down PanAm 103 in 1988. Of course, we all know by now how accurate these weapons estimates have been -- and the UN was one step removed from the best intelligence available.

President Bush responded to Kerry's allegations, "Now the Senator is making wild charges about missing explosives, when his top foreign-policy adviser admits, quote, 'We do not know the facts.' Think about that: The senator is denigrating the actions of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts...."

Which brings us to the greatest of Kerry's lies this campaign season: "It is vital for us not to confuse the war, ever, with the warriors. That happened before."

Indeed, it did happen before -- Vietnam. Swift Boat Vet Robert Elder notes, "It is a fact that in the entire Vietnam War we did not lose one major battle. We lost the war at home, and at home John Kerry was the field general." (Kerry's extensive and well-documented record of anti-American activities over the past three decades are covered in "Aid and comfort to the enemy: The Kerry record..." and "John Kerry: More aid and comfort..." at http://FederalistPatriot.US/alexander/)

Again, as President Bush noted, Kerry is "denigrating the actions of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts...."

Kerry can't have it both ways. There is a direct correlation between his undermining of U.S. and Allied resolve in the war against terrorism -- specifically on the Iraqi warfront with Jihadistan -- and American and Allied causalities on that front. Those forces, including countless Iraqis, are being injured and killed in larger numbers because of the political dissent Kerry and his ilk are fomenting.

A few weeks ago, John Edwards unwittingly provided the evidence for this very correlation: "We lost more troops in September than we lost in August; lost more in August than we lost in July; lost more in July than we lost in June."

As Kerry's use of the war for political fodder has increased in tenor, so too has the spirit of our Jihadi enemies. As noted recently by Mohammad Amin Bashar, a professor at Baghdad's Islamic University, "If the U.S. Army suffered numerous humiliating losses, Kerry would emerge as the superman of the American people." Abu Jalal, an Iraqi resistance leader, added, "American elections and Iraq are linked tightly together. We've got to work to change the election, and we've done so. With our strikes, we've dragged Bush into the mud."

The net effect can certainly be felt in terms of increased numbers of American and Allied casualties. Those casualties equal more votes for John Kerry. This was, and remains, the unavoidable consequence of Kerry's reckless campaign rhetoric. The blood of those American Patriots (like the blood of his "brothers" in Vietnam, after he used that war as fodder for his 1972 congressional campaign), is on John Kerry's hands. To be sure, this is the harshest of all condemnations. But it is also the truth.

Both Kerry and Edwards know the consequences of their actions. Fact is, they think the lives of American military personnel on the warfront with Jihadistan are second-rate to their political ambitions. He should be held accountable.

As for Kerry's lie: "I've met with foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly. But, boy, they look at you and say: 'You've got to win this. You've got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.' Things like that."

Indeed, Saddam Hussein, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il, Mohammad Khatami, Moammar al-Ghadafi, Hu Jingtao, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder and Kofi Annan are all rooting for John Kerry to beat George W. Bush on Tuesday. What does that tell you, fellow Patriots?

A vote for John Kerry is a vote for a lie -- a fraud. It is a vote against liberty and freedom. But if the Democrat Party has been fully co-opted by Kerry's deceit, that assertion may be purely academic.

We agree with President Bush: "John Kerry is the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time."

And a final note. Election seasons are always hard on The Patriot's editorial staff and contributors -- we are doing double time, covering both the news, policy and opinion outlets we always cover, plus all the election news. But one feature section, "The BIG Lie," has been easy to fill every week since John Kerry won the Democrat primaries last March. The challenge with that section has been choosing which of Kerry's comments in any given week constitute the BIGGEST lie!

On that note, a word from the wise Mr. Kerry: "It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." --Thomas Jefferson
_________________________________________________

Support The Patriot Fund -- http://FederalistPatriot.com/support.asp
 
 

duh

Daddy, why did we have to attack Iraq?
Questions and Answers about Foreign Policy (and the U.S. Invasion of Iraq)

[Then having said all that, the children still ask.  I know this is a bit dated, but the message is still there.  --  Tribble]

    Permission is freely granted to copy, print, and distribute this material by any means, so long as the author is given proper credit and so long as this statement is included in any and all copies made for distribution.

Q:  Daddy, why did we have to attack Iraq?
A:  Because they had weapons of mass destruction.
Q:  But the inspectors didn't find any weapons of mass destruction.
A:  That's because the Iraqis were hiding them.
Q:  And that's why we invaded Iraq?
A:  Yep. Invasions always work better than inspections.
Q:  But after we invaded them, we STILL didn't find any weapons of mass destruction, did we?
A:  That's because the weapons are so well hidden. Don't worry, we'll find something, probably right before the 2004 election.
Q:  Why did Iraq want all those weapons of mass destruction?
A:  To use them in a war, silly.
Q:  I'm confused. If they had all those weapons that they planned to use in a war, then why didn't they use any of those weapons when we went to war with them?
A:  Well, obviously they didn't want anyone to know they had those weapons, so they chose to die by the thousands rather than defend themselves.
Q:  That doesn't make sense. Why would they choose to die if they had all those big weapons with which they could have fought back?
A:  It's a different culture. It's not supposed to make sense.
Q:  I don't know about you, but I don't think they had any of those weapons our government said they did.
A:  Well, you know, it doesn't matter whether or not they had those weapons. We had another good reason to invade them anyway.
Q:  And what was that?
A:  Even if Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator, which is another good reason to invade another country.
Q:  Why? What does a cruel dictator do that makes it OK to invade his country?
A:  Well, for one thing, he tortured his own people.
Q:  Kind of like what they do in China?
A:  Don't go comparing China to Iraq. China is a good economic competitor, where millions of people work for slave wages in sweatshops to make U.S. corporations richer.
Q:  So if a country lets its people be exploited for American corporate gain, it's a good country, even if that country tortures people?
A:  Right.
Q:  Why were people in Iraq being tortured?
A:  For political crimes, mostly, like criticizing the government. People who criticized the government in Iraq were sent to prison and tortured.
Q:  Isn't that exactly what happens in China?
A:  I told you, China is different.
Q:  What's the difference between China and Iraq?
A:  Well, for one thing, Iraq was ruled by the Ba'ath party, while China is Communist.
Q:  Didn't you once tell me Communists were bad?
A:  No, just Cuban Communists are bad.
Q:  How are the Cuban Communists bad?
A:  Well, for one thing, people who criticize the government in Cuba are sent to prison and tortured.
Q:  Like in Iraq?
A:  Exactly.
Q:  And like in China, too?
A:  I told you, China's a good economic competitor. Cuba, on the other hand, is not.
Q:  How come Cuba isn't a good economic competitor?
A:  Well, you see, back in the early 1960s, our government passed some laws that made it illegal for Americans to trade or do any business with Cuba until they stopped being Communists and started being capitalists like us.
Q:  But if we got rid of those laws, opened up trade with Cuba, and started doing business with them, wouldn't that help the Cubans become capitalists?
A:  Don't be a smart-ass.
Q:  I didn't think I was being one.
A:  Well, anyway, they also don't have freedom of religion in Cuba.
Q:  Kind of like China and the Falun Gong movement?
A:  I told you, stop saying bad things about China. Anyway, Saddam Hussein came to power through a military coup, so he's not really a legitimate leader anyway.
Q:  What's a military coup?
A:  That's when a military general takes over the government of a country by force, instead of holding free elections like we do in the United States.
Q:  Didn't the ruler of Pakistan come to power by a military coup?
A:  You mean General Pervez Musharraf? Uh, yeah, he did, but Pakistan is our friend.
Q:  Why is Pakistan our friend if their leader is illegitimate?
A:  I never said Pervez Musharraf was illegitimate.
Q:  Didn't you just say a military general who comes to power by forcibly overthrowing the legitimate government of a nation is an illegitimate leader?
A:  Only Saddam Hussein. Pervez Musharraf is our friend, because he helped us invade Afghanistan.
Q:  Why did we invade Afghanistan?
A:  Because of what they did to us on September 11th.
Q:  What did Afghanistan do to us on September 11th?
A:  Well, on September 11th, nineteen men - fifteen of them Saudi Arabians - hijacked four airplanes and flew three of them into buildings in New York and Washington, killing 3,000 innocent people.
Q:  So how did Afghanistan figure into all that?
A:  Afghanistan was where those bad men trained, under the oppressive rule of the Taliban.
Q:  Aren't the Taliban those bad radical Islamics who chopped off people's heads and hands?
A:  Yes, that's exactly who they were. Not only did they chop off people's heads and hands, but they oppressed women, too.
Q:  Didn't the Bush administration give the Taliban 43 million dollars back in May of 2001?
A:  Yes, but that money was a reward because they did such a good job fighting drugs.
Q:  Fighting drugs?
A:  Yes, the Taliban were very helpful in stopping people from growing opium poppies.
Q:  How did they do such a good job?
A:  Simple. If people were caught growing opium poppies, the Taliban would have their hands and heads cut off.
Q:  So, when the Taliban cut off people's heads and hands for growing flowers, that was OK, but not if they cut people's heads and hands off for other reasons?
A:  Yes. It's OK with us if radical Islamic fundamentalists cut off people's hands for growing flowers, but it's cruel if they cut off people's hands for stealing bread.
Q:  Don't they also cut off people's hands and heads in Saudi Arabia?
A:  That's different. Afghanistan was ruled by a tyrannical patriarchy that oppressed women and forced them to wear burqas whenever they were in public, with death by stoning as the penalty for women who did not comply.
Q:  Don't Saudi women have to wear burqas in public, too?
A:  No, Saudi women merely wear a traditional Islamic body covering.
Q:  What's the difference?
A:  The traditional Islamic covering worn by Saudi women is a modest yet fashionable garment that covers all of a woman's body except for her eyes and fingers. The burqa, on the other hand, is an evil tool of patriarchal oppression that covers all of a woman's body except for her eyes and fingers.
Q:  It sounds like the same thing with a different name.
A:  Now, don't go comparing Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are our friends.
Q:  But I thought you said 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11th were from Saudi Arabia.
A:  Yes, but they trained in Afghanistan.
Q:  Who trained them?
A:  A very bad man named Osama bin Laden.
Q:  Was he from Afghanistan?
A:  Uh, no, he was from Saudi Arabia too. But he was a bad man, a very bad man.
Q:  I seem to recall he was our friend once.
A:  Only when we helped him and the mujahadeen repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan back in the 1980s.
Q:  Who are the Soviets? Was that the Evil Communist Empire Ronald Reagan talked about?
A:  There are no more Soviets. The Soviet Union broke up in 1990 or thereabouts, and now they have elections and capitalism like us. We call them Russians now.
Q:  So the Soviets - I mean, the Russians - are now our friends?
A:  Well, not really. You see, they were our friends for many years after they stopped being Soviets, but then they decided not to support our invasion of Iraq, so we're mad at them now. We're also mad at the French and the Germans because they didn't help us invade Iraq either.
Q:  So the French and Germans are evil, too?
A:  Not exactly evil, but just bad enough that we had to rename French fries and French toast to Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast.
Q:  Do we always rename foods whenever another country doesn't do what we want them to do?
A:  No, we just do that to our friends. Our enemies, we invade.
Q:  But wasn't Iraq one of our friends back in the 1980s?
A:  Well, yeah. For a while.
Q:  Was Saddam Hussein ruler of Iraq back then?
A:  Yes, but at the time he was fighting against Iran, which made him our friend, temporarily.
Q:  Why did that make him our friend?
A:  Because at that time, Iran was our enemy.
Q:  Isn't that when he gassed the Kurds?
A:  Yeah, but since he was fighting against Iran at the time, we looked the other way, to show him we were his friend.
Q:  So anyone who fights against one of our enemies automatically becomes our friend?
A:  Most of the time, yes.
Q:  And anyone who fights against one of our friends is automatically an enemy?
A:  Sometimes that's true, too. However, if American corporations can profit by selling weapons to both sides at the same time, all the better.
Q:  Why?
A:  Because war is good for the economy, which means war is good for America. Also, since God is on America's side, anyone who opposes war is a godless unAmerican Communist. Do you understand now why we attacked Iraq?
Q:  I think so. We attacked them because God wanted us to, right?
A:  Yes.
Q:  But how did we know God wanted us to attack Iraq?
A:  Well, you see, God personally speaks to George W. Bush and tells him what to do.
Q:  So basically, what you're saying is that we attacked Iraq because George W. Bush hears voices in his head?
A:  Yes! You finally understand how the world works. Now close your eyes, make yourself comfortable, and go to sleep. Good night.
Q:  Good night, Daddy.
 
 

duh

The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11
Distribution via the Unanswered Questions Wire
http://www.unansweredquestions.org/

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/08/coincidence-theorists-guide-to-911.html
Sunday, August 15, 2004

contributing editor to   - Jeanne

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I posted an earlier version of this last week at Democratic Underground. I've added a number of more entries, and links for all.

Happy coincidenting!

That governments have permitted terrorist acts against their own people, and have even themselves been perpetrators in order to find strategic advantage is quite likely true, but this is the United States we're talking about.

That intelligence agencies, financiers, terrorists and narco-criminals have a long history together is well established, but the Nugan Hand Bank, BCCI, Banco Ambrosiano, the P2 Lodge, the CIA/Mafia anti-Castro/Kennedy alliance, Iran/Contra and the rest were a long time ago, so there’s no need to rehash all that. That was then, this is now!

That Jonathan Bush’s Riggs Bank has been found guilty of laundering terrorist funds and fined a US-record $25 million must embarrass his nephew George, but it's still no justification for leaping to paranoid conclusions.

That George Bush's brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines means nothing more than you must admit those Bush boys have done alright for themselves.

That George Bush found success as a businessman only after the investment of Osama’s brother Salem and reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mahfouz is just one of those things - one of those crazy things.

That Osama bin Laden is known to have been an asset of US foreign policy in no way implies he still is.

That al Qaeda was active in the Balkan conflict, fighting on the same side as the US as recently as 1999, while the US protected its cells, is merely one of history's little aberrations.

The claims of Michael Springman, State Department veteran of the Jeddah visa bureau, that the CIA ran the office and issued visas to al Qaeda members so they could receive training in the United States, sound like the sour grapes of someone who was fired for making such wild accusations.

That one of George Bush's first acts as President, in January 2001, was to end the two-year deployment of attack submarines which were positioned within striking distance of al Qaeda's Afghanistan camps, even as the group's guilt for the Cole bombing was established, proves that a transition from one administration to the next is never an easy task.

That so many influential figures in and close to the Bush White House had expressed, just a year before the attacks, the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" before their militarist ambitions could be fulfilled, demonstrates nothing more than the accidental virtue of being in the right place at the right time.

That the company PTECH, founded by a Saudi financier placed on America’s Terrorist Watch List in October 2001, had access to the FAA’s entire computer system for two years before the 9/11 attack, means he must not have been such a threat after all.

That whistleblower Indira Singh was told to keep her mouth shut and forget what she learned when she took her concerns about PTECH to her employers and federal authorities, suggests she lacked the big picture. And that the Chief Auditor for JP Morgan Chase told Singh repeatedly, as she answered questions about who supplied her with what information, that "that person should be killed," suggests he should take an anger management seminar.

That on May 8, 2001, Dick Cheney took upon himself the job of co-ordinating a response to domestic terror attacks even as he was crafting the administration’s energy policy which bore implications for America's military, circumventing the established infrastructure and ignoring the recommendations of the Hart-Rudman report, merely shows the VP to be someone who finds it hard to delegate.

That the standing order which covered the shooting down of hijacked aircraft was altered on June 1, 2001, taking discretion away from field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, is simply poor planning and unfortunate timing. Fortunately the error has been corrected, as the order was rescinded shortly after 9/11.

That in the weeks before 9/11, FBI agent Colleen Rowley found her investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui so perversely thwarted that her colleagues joked that bin Laden had a mole at the FBI, proves the stress-relieving virtue of humour in the workplace.

That Dave Frasca of the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit received a promotion after quashing multiple, urgent requests for investigations into al Qaeda assets training at flight schools in the summer of 2001 does appear on the surface odd, but undoubtedly there's a good reason for it, quite possibly classified.

That FBI informant Randy Glass, working an undercover sting, was told by Pakistani intelligence operatives that the World Trade Center towers were coming down, and that his repeated warnings which continued until weeks before the attacks, including the mention of planes used as weapons, were ignored by federal authorities, is simply one of the many "What Ifs" of that tragic day.

That over the summer of 2001 Washington received many urgent, senior-level warnings from foreign intelligence agencies and governments - including those of Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Afghanistan and others - of impending terror attacks using hijacked aircraft and did nothing, demonstrates the pressing need for a new Intelligence Czar.

That John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial aircraft in July 2001 on account of security considerations had nothing to do with warnings regarding September 11, because he said so to the 9/11 Commission.

That former lead counsel for the House David Schippers says he’d taken to John Ashcroft’s office specific warnings he’d learned from FBI agents in New York of an impending attack – even naming the proposed dates, names of the hijackers and the targets – and that the investigations had been stymied and the agents threatened, proves nothing but David Schipper’s pathetic need for attention.

That Garth Nicolson received two warnings from contacts in the intelligence community and one from a North African head of state, which included specific site, date and source of the attacks, and passed the information to the Defense Department and the National Security Council to evidently no effect, clearly amounts to nothing, since virtually nobody has ever heard of him.

That in the months prior to September 11, self-described US intelligence operative Delmart Vreeland sought, from a Toronto jail cell, to get US and Canadian authorities to heed his warning of his accidental discovery of impending catastrophic attacks is worthless, since Vreeland was a dubious character, notwithstanding the fact that many of his claims have since been proven true.

That FBI Special Investigator Robert Wright claims that agents assigned to intelligence operations actually protect terrorists from investigation and prosecution, that the FBI shut down his probe into terrorist training camps, and that he was removed from a money-laundering case that had a direct link to terrorism, sounds like yet more sour grapes from a disgruntled employee.

That George Bush had plans to invade Afghanistan on his desk before 9/11 demonstrates only the value of being prepared.

The suggestion that securing a pipeline across Afghanistan figured into the White House’s calculations is as ludicrous as the assertion that oil played a part in determining war in Iraq.

That Afghanistan is once again the world’s principal heroin producer is an unfortunate reality, but to claim the CIA is still actively involved in the narcotics trade is to presume bad faith on the part of the agency.

Mahmood Ahmed, chief of Pakistan’s ISI, must not have authorized an al Qaeda payment of $100,000 to Mohammed Atta days before the attacks, and was not meeting with senior Washington officials over the week of 9/11, because I didn’t read anything about him in the official report.

That Porter Goss met with Ahmed the morning of September 11 in his capacity as Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has no bearing whatsoever upon his recent selection by the White House to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

That Goss's congressional seat encompasses the 9/11 hijackers' Florida base of operation, including their flight schools, is precisely the kind of meaningless factoid a conspiracy theorist would bring up.

It's true that George HW Bush and Dick Cheney spent the evening of September 10 alone in the Oval Office, but what's wrong with old colleagues catching up? And it's true that George HW Bush and Shafig bin Laden, Osama's brother, spent the morning of September 11 together at a board meeting of the Carlyle Group, but the bin Ladens are a big family.

That FEMA arrived in New York on Sept 10 to prepare for a scheduled biowarfare drill, and had a triage centre ready to go that was larger and better equipped than the one that was lost in the collapse of WTC 7, was a lucky twist of fate.

Newsweek’s report that senior Pentagon officials cancelled flights on Sept 10 for the following day on account of security concerns is only newsworthy because of what happened the following morning.

That George Bush's telephone logs for September 11 do not exist should surprise no one, given the confusion of the day.

That Mohamed Atta attended the International Officer's School at Maxwell Air Force Base, that Abdulaziz Alomari attended Brooks Air Force Base Aerospace Medical School, that Saeed Alghamdi attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey merely shows it is a small world, after all.

That Lt Col Steve Butler, Vice Chancellor for student affairs of the Defense Language Institute during Alghamdi's terms, was disciplined, removed from his post and threatened with court martial when he wrote "Bush knew of the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. What is...contemptible is the President of the United States not telling the American people what he knows for political gain," is the least that should have happened for such disrespect shown his Commander in Chief.

That Mohammed Atta dressed like a Mafioso, had a stripper girlfriend, smuggled drugs, was already a licensed pilot when he entered the US, enjoyed pork chops, drank to excess and did cocaine, was closer to Europeans than Arabs in Florida, and included the names of defence contractors on his email list, proves how dangerous the radical fundamentalist Muslim can be.

That 43 lbs of heroin was found on board the Lear Jet owned by Wally Hilliard, the owner of Atta’s flight school, just three weeks after Atta enrolled – the biggest seizure ever in Central Florida – was just bad luck. That Hilliard was not charged shows how specious the claims for conspiracy truly are.

That Hilliard’s plane had made 30-round trips to Venezuela with the same passengers who always paid cash, that the plane had been supplied by a pair of drug smugglers who had also outfitted CIA drug runner Barry Seal, and that 9/11 commissioner Richard ben-Veniste had been Seal’s attorney before Seal’s murder, shows nothing but the lengths to which conspiracists will go to draw sinister conclusions.

Reports of insider trading on 9/11 are false, because the SEC investigated and found only respectable investors who will remain nameless involved, and no terrorists, so the windfall profit-taking was merely, as ever, coincidental.

That heightened security for the World Trade Centre was lifted immediately prior to the attacks illustrates that it always happens when you least expect it.

That Hani Hanjour, the pilot of Flight 77, was so incompetent he could not fly a Cessna in August, but in September managed to fly a 767 at excessive speed into a spiraling, 270-degree descent and a level impact of the first floor of the Pentagon, on the only side that was virtually empty and had been hardened to withstand a terrorist attack, merely demonstrates that people can do almost anything once they set their minds to it.

That none of the flight data recorders were said to be recoverable even though they were located in the tail sections, and that until 9/11, no solid-state recorder in a catastrophic crash had been unrecoverable, shows how there's a first time for everything.

That Mohammed Atta left a uniform, a will, a Koran, his driver's license and a "how to fly planes" video in his rental car at the airport means he had other things on his mind.

The mention of Israelis with links to military-intelligence having been arrested on Sept 11 videotaping and celebrating the attacks, of an Israeli espionage ring surveiling DEA and defense installations and trailing the hijackers, and of a warning of impending attacks delivered to the Israeli company Odigo two hours before the first plane hit, does not deserve a response. That the stories also appeared in publications such as Ha'aretz and Forward is a sad display of self-hatred among certain elements of the Israeli media.

That multiple military wargames and simulations were underway the morning of 9/11 – one simulating the crash of a plane into a building; another, a live-fly simulation of multiple hijackings – and took many interceptors away from the eastern seaboard and confused field commanders as to which was a real hijacked aircraft and which was a hoax, was a bizarre coincidence, but no less a coincidence.

That the National Military Command Center ops director asked a rookie substitute to stand his watch at 8:30 am on Sept. 11 is nothing more than bad timing.

That a recording made Sept 11 of air traffic controllers’ describing what they had witnessed, was destroyed by an FAA official who crushed it in his hand, cut the tape into little pieces and dropped them in different trash cans around the building, is something no doubt that overzealous official wishes he could undo.

That the FBI knew precisely which Florida flight schools to descend upon hours after the attacks should make every American feel safer knowing their federal agents are on the ball.

That a former flight school executive believes the hijackers were "double agents," and says about Atta and associates, "Early on I gleaned that these guys had government protection. They were let into this country for a specific purpose," and was visited by the FBI just four hours after the attacks to intimidate him into silence, proves he's an unreliable witness, for the simple reason there is no conspiracy.

That Jeb Bush was on board an aircraft that removed flight school records to Washington in the middle of the night on Sept 12th demonstrates how seriously the governor takes the issue of national security.

To insinuate evil motive from the mercy flights of bin Laden family members and Saudi royals after 9/11 shows the sickness of the conspiratorial mindset.

Le Figaro’s report in October 2001, known to have originated with French intelligence, that the CIA met Osama bin Laden in a Dubai hospital in July 2001, proves again the perfidy of the French.

That the tape in which bin Laden claims responsibility for the attacks was released by the State Department after having been found providentially by US forces in Afghanistan, and depicts a fattened Osama with a broader face and a flatter nose, proves Osama, and Osama alone, masterminded 9/11.

That at the battle of Tora Bora, where bin Laden was surrounded on three sides, Special Forces received no order to advance and capture him and were forced to stand and watch as two Russian-made helicopters flew into the area where bin Laden was believed hiding, loaded up passengers and returned to Pakistan, demonstrates how confusing the modern battlefield can be.

That upon returning to Fort Bragg from Tora Bora, the same Special Operations troops who had been stood down from capturing bin Laden, suffered a unusual spree of murder/suicides, is nothing more than a series of senseless tragedies.

Reports that bin Laden is currently receiving periodic dialysis treatment in a Pakistani medical hospital are simply too incredible to be true.

That the White House went on Cipro September 11 shows the foresightedness of America’s emergency response.

That the anthrax was mailed to perceived liberal media and the Democratic leadership demonstrates only the perversity of the terrorist psyche.

That the anthrax attacks appeared to silence opponents of the Patriot Act shows only that appearances can be deceiving.

That the Ames-strain anthrax was found to have originated at Fort Detrick, and was beyond the capability of all but a few labs to refine, underscores the importance of allowing the investigation to continue without the distraction of absurd conspiracy theories.

That Republican guru Grover Norquist has been found to have aided financiers and supporters of Islamic terror to gain access to the Bush White House, and is a founder of the Islamic Institute, which the Treasury Department believes to be a source of funding for al Qaeda, suggests Norquist is at worst, naive, and at best, needs a wider circle of friends.

That the Department of Justice consistently chooses to see accused 9/11 plotters go free rather than permit the courtroom testimony of al Qaeda leaders in American custody looks bad, but only because we don't have all the facts.

That the White House balked at any inquiry into the events of 9/11, then starved it of funds and stonewalled it, was unfortunate, but since the commission didn't find for conspiracy it's all a non issue anyway.

That the 9/11 commission's executive director and "gatekeeper," Philip Zelikow, was so closely involved in the events under investigation that he testified before the the commission as part of the inquiry, shows only an apparent conflict of interest.

That commission chair Thomas Kean is, like George Bush, a Texas oil executive who had business dealings with reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mafouz, suggests Texas is smaller than they say it is.

That co-chair Lee Hamilton has a history as a Bush family "fixer," including clearing Bush Sr of the claims arising from the 1980 "October Surprise", is of no concern, since only conspiracists believe there was such a thing as an October Surprise.

That FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds accuses the agency of intentionally fudging specific pre-9/11 warnings and harboring a foreign espionage ring in its translation department, and claims she witnessed evidence of the semi-official infrastructure of money-laundering and narcotics trade behind the attacks, is of no account, since John Ashcroft has gagged her with the rare invocation of "State Secrets Privilege," and retroactively classified her public testimony. For the sake of national security, let us speak no more of her.

That, when commenting on Edmond's case, Daniel Ellsberg remarked that Ashcroft could go to prison for his part in a cover-up, suggests Ellsberg is giving comfort to the terrorists, and could, if he doesn't wise up, find himself declared an enemy combatant.

I could go on. And on and on. But I trust you get the point. Which is simply this: there are no secrets, an American government would never accept civilian casualties for geostrategic gain, and conspiracies are for the weak-minded and gullible.

- Posted by Jeff at 5:15 PM

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a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y

Weblog: Episcopal Church Officially Promotes Idol Worship
"Women's Eucharist" calls for worship of pagan deities specifically condemned in Scripture.
Compiled by Ted Olsen | posted 10/26/2004

contributing editor to   - D

Imagine for one moment that you're a leader in the Episcopal Church USA. You know that within the next few days, a global commission is going to release a report on how the global Anglican Communion should respond to your church, and is likely to be critical of the ordination of an actively homosexual man as bishop. You know, and have said yourself, that the debate isn't just about sexuality: It's about how one views the Bible. And you know that all eyes will be on your denomination over the next few weeks. What do you do?

What the real leaders of the Episcopal Church did was to take an action that makes ordaining a homosexual man as a bishop almost a non-issue. They started promoting the worship of pagan deities.

This is not a joke nor an overstatement. In all truth and seriousness, leaders of the Episcopal Church USA are promoting pagan rites to pagan deities. And not just any new pagan deities: The Episcopal Church USA, though its Office of Women's Ministries, is actually promoting the worship of idols specifically condemned in Scripture.

"A Women's Eucharist: A Celebration of the Divine Feminine" is taken almost completely (without attribution) from a rite from Tuatha de Brighid, "a Clan of modern Druids … who believe in the interconnectedness of all faiths." But who cares where it's from? Look at what it says. Here's how it begins.

    We gather around a low table, covered with a woven cloth or shawl. A candle, a bowl or vase of flowers, a large shallow bowl filled with salted water, a chalice of sweet red wine, a cup of milk mixed with honey, and a plate of raisin cakes are placed on the table.

You might be wondering: What's with the raisin cakes? Is it just Communion wafers with raisins? No.

    The plate of raisin cakes is raised and a woman says,

    "Mother God, our ancient sisters called you Queen of Heaven and baked these cakes in your honor in defiance of their brothers and husbands who would not see your feminine face. We offer you these cakes, made with our own hands; filled with the grain of life—scattered and gathered into one loaf, then broken and shared among many. We offer these cakes and enjoy them too. They are rich with the sweetness of fruit, fertile with the ripeness of grain, sweetened with the power of love. May we also be signs of your love and abundance."

    The plate is passed and each woman takes and eats a cake.

So those raisin cakes have a historical reference: Those "brothers and husbands" banned them. Sound familiar? It's a reference to Hosea 3:1:

    And the LORD said to me, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins."

Now there are other biblical references to raisin cakes, but this is the only reference (except possibly this one) to them having any kind of role in worship.

Many scholars believe they were offerings to the goddess Asherah, the female counterpart to Baal, but in this context it may be more directly tied to Ishtar/Ashtoreth/Astarte, the "Queen of Heaven."

"Our ancient sisters called you Queen of Heaven," says the Episcopal liturgy. That's a reference to Jeremiah. And not a happy one. In Jeremiah 7, God complains, "The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger." The liturgy's reference to defiant women worshipping the Queen of Heaven with cakes comes directly from Jeremiah 44:

    Then all the men who knew that their wives had made offerings to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the people who lived in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: "As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you. But we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no disaster. But since we left off making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine." And the women said, "When we made offerings to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands' approval that we made cakes for her bearing her image and poured out drink offerings to her?"

In other words, it wasn't their brothers and husbands that the women were defying: It was God.

And now Episcopal Church leaders want you to do the same. Defy God. Worship pagan deities. There is no other possible reading of this "Eucharistic" text.

It should be noted that the pagan rite isn't on some hidden page in the deep recesses of the Episcopal Church's web site. The site is actually promoting this. The main pages of the web site (there are three: one for members, another for visitors, and a third for leaders) all link to an Episcopal News Service article on the "The Women's Liturgy Project." The article says, in part:

    The Office of Women's Ministries is working towards creating a resource to be used by women, men, parishes, dioceses, small groups, within the context of a Sunday morning service, or any other appropriate setting where the honoring of a woman's life passages and experiences beckons a liturgical response. These can include, but are not limited to, liturgies/rites pertaining to: menstruation, menopause, conception, pregnancy, any form of pregnancy loss, childbirth, forms of leave taking, and many others. … There is already a working section on the Women's Ministries website that contains worship resources that are currently available to be downloaded and used by all.

Go to that worship resources page, and there are only nine offerings, the second of which is the "Women's Eucharist." Another troubling entry is the Liturgy for Divorce, which includes this theology:

    While the couple have promised in good faith to love until parted by death, in some marriages the love between a wife and a husband comes to an end sooner. Love dies, and when that happens we recognize that the bonds of marriage, based on love, also may be ended . God calls us to right relationships based on love, compassion, mutuality, and justice. Whenever any of these elements is absent from a marital relationship, then that partnership no longer reflects the intentionality of God.

Such a view of love and marriage is profoundly unbiblical, but at least there's no prayer to fertility goddesses. (Commenters over Midwest Conservative Journal are discussing both rituals.)

The Anglican Primate of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, has been explaining that the difference between his church and the Episcopal Church USA isn't your standard intradenominational infighting. The Episcopal Church (along with other western churches, he says), isn't even Christian any more. Instead, he says, it's "embroiled in a new religion which we cannot associate ourselves with."

One would have thought that the Episcopal Church USA might have argued whether it was really practicing a different religion. Instead, their challenge to Akinola's statement might be that it's not new at all: Their idolatry has been around since Old Testament times.
 
 

duh

How Your Child Is Brainwashed
NSNS – Monday, October 25, 2004
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=2409
contributing editor to   - D

A study by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that watching videos as a toddler may lead to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD, also called ADD in the U.K.) in later life.

TV watching "rewires" an infant’s brain, says Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, lead researcher and director of the Child Health Institute at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Seattle, Wash. The damage shows up at age 7 when children have difficulty paying attention in school.

"In contrast to the way real life unfolds and is experienced by young children, the pace of TV is greatly sped up." says Christakis. His research appears in the April 2004 issue of Pediatrics.

Quick scene shifts of video images become "normal," to a baby "when in fact, it’s decidedly not normal or natural." Christakis says. Exposing a baby’s developing brain to videos may overstimulate it, causing permanent changes in developing neural pathways.

"Also in question is whether the insistent noise of television in the home may interfere with the development of ‘inner speech’ by which a child learns to think through problems and plans and restrain impulsive responding," wrote Jane Healy, psychologist and child brain expert in the magazine’s commentary.

Babies brains grow rapidly

Even a child playing with its own fingers has the neural patterning that comes from bending, flexing, stretching and grasping. Scientists tell us that the brain develops in completely unique ways between birth and three years. As a kiddie-viddie baby sits "mesmerized", neural paths are not being created. This is crucial brain development that stops by age three.

"You don’t want to think that something as innocent as half-an-hour’s peace and quiet could reduce your kid’s chances later in life," says Claire Eaton, 27-year-old mother from Lewisham, Australia.

Setting up baby for failure in school

Are parents who use infant videos such as "Baby Einstein" and "Teletubbies" putting their child at risk for a lifetime of Special Ed classes, school "behavioral therapy" and Ritalin?

In the study of more than 2,000 children, Christakis found that for every hour watched at age one and age three, the children had almost a 10 percent higher chance of developing attention problems that could be diagnosed as ADHD by age 7. A toddler watching three hours of infant television daily had nearly a 30 percent higher chance of having attention problems in school.

Infant videos:
They wouldn’t sell them if they were dangerous—Would they?

An explosion of kidvids for the bouncy chair set has hit the market. These include Baby Einstein, Baby Mozart, So Smart etc. TV shows, such as Teletubbies, aim at 18-month-old toddlers. These videos are peddled as "educational tools" to "give your baby a head start." The truth is, they are a video-tether that keeps baby out from underfoot.

"Max is learning German right now from a video"

Parents take away crucial life experiences from their child every time they pop in Baby Einstein. But they do love how it takes the baby out of their hair for awhile Listen to what parents say in testimonials about infant videos:

"I love spending time with my boy but let's face it, there are times when you just have to have 10 minutes or so to yourself so that you can wash the dishes or do laundry; that's when you pop this video in. It's 25 minutes of entertainment that holds the attention of even very young children." Chris Hudson (son 10 months), San Antonio, Texas.

"There are times I rewind it and play it again and again until I get the dishes done and order restored. My son is captivated (and hopefully learning something)". Mom In Connecticut

"The only thing I wish is that the videos were longer than 30min." Melissa Perruzi, Clinton Mississippi (From Baby Eisntein reviews on Amazon.com).

Big problem for little people

Twenty-six percent of U.S. children younger than age two have TV in their bedrooms—often watched from the crib, and 36 percent of families leave the TV on almost all of the time, even when no one is watching, according to a 2000 Kaiser Family Foundation study.

Don’t put your child at risk!

The good news is, infants and toddlers don’t need television to distract them. Humans raised children for 50,000 years before television sets, and you can do it, too. Your children can learn to entertain themselves or play with your supervision.

"When one-year olds are playing with a toy, they can explore it, poke at it, drop it," says Yale University Television Researcher Dorothy Singer. "They’re learning about space, about sound, and they’re developing sense of competence. Watching a TV show just doesn’t provide the same sensory experience."

Leaving a child alone with the TV is never a good idea.

"Would you entrust you toddler into the care of a baby sitter, even for a few minutes, who cannot hear or see your child?" writes Nancy Hall of Yale University’s Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy.

"Would you leave your child in an environment that encourages passivity, limits creativity and results in increased aggressive behavior? Many one-year-olds are spending time regularly with just such a baby sitter: the television set."

What is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?

ADHD affects 12 percent of U.S. school children and has increased dramatically over the past 50 years. Studies show ADHD increased with the introduction of children’s television in the 1950s and then spiked higher in the mid-1980s when VCRs and home video became commonplace. Although the condition is known to be genetic, scientists have noted its rapid spread throughout every social class of children, and guessed that there could be an environmental cause. TV-watching is a cause, this study shows.

How much TV should I let my baby watch?

No child under age two should watch television at all, the Academy of American Pediatrics advised in 1998. Doctors blame TV for increasing aggression and obesity in children, now they add ADHD risk to early TV use.

Also see:
Television: The Hidden Picture
www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=67

The Flickering Blue Parent
www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=713

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