A salute to an American hero!
As long as there's a U.S.A. don't let his memory die...
Yep. That's the lyric. Ponder that! Connect the dots!
If - prior to exposing you to the above links - I had asked you who Jim Bridges was... could you have answered me correctly?
Could your spouse? Could your son or daughter assuming he or she has reached high school age or beyond?
I'm pretty sure I learned about Jim Bridges and the mountain men in school... perhaps during elementary school; definitely by the time I had finished middle school.
Thing is... it wasn't via a few paragraphs in a primary school text where I learned who Jim Bridges and his compatriots were, it was via reading "youth fiction" - adventure novels for boys - which back then were still found in school libraries and to a lesser extent, public libraries.
The books I read as a youth... some had copyrights from the teens... as in 1913-1919.
More common were the books I read copyrighted in the 1950's... and 1960's... but also also 1940's and 1930's. Historical fiction... biographies... science fiction... fantasy... historical non-fiction... all of this is what I was raised upon... what I raised myself upon.
What did you read as a child?
More important... what are your children reading today?
My friends, a major reason why we're seeing America crumble around us is that many of us don't know what America truly is... what it is truly supposed to be.
It's not just that traditional American values are in retreat; it's far worse than that! No... it's that large segments of the population don't even know what traditional values are!
Wise up, folks. Start reading. Buy your kids books instead of video games. Take charge of re-educating those you have access to in what it means to be an American.
4 comments:
http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/autopsy-results-show-trayvon-martin-had-injuries-h/nN6gs/
SANFORD, Fla. — WFTV has confirmed that autopsy results show 17-year-old Trayvon Martin had injuries to his knuckles when he died.
(*SMIRK*)
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=51499
When the April figures on unemployment were released May 4, they were more than disappointing. They were deeply disturbing.
* TO THOSE OF US WHO PAY ATTENTION... YES. TO THE AVERAGE AMERICAN WHO RELIES UPON "HEADLINE" NEWS PROVIDED BY THE LIBERAL MSM... NOT SO MUCH.
While the unemployment rate had fallen from 8.2% to 8.1%, 342,000 workers had stopped looking for work. They had just dropped out of the labor market.
* AHH... BUT THE "DROP" IN THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE... (*SIGH*)... THAT'S WHAT THE AVERAGE IGNORAMOUS TAKES AWAY FROM MSM NEWS COVERAGE. (DELIBERATELY SO!)
Only 63.6% of the U.S. working age population is now in the labor force, the lowest level since December 1981.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
During the Reagan, Bush I and Clinton years, participation in the labor force rose steadily to a record 67%. The plunge since has been almost uninterrupted.
* PUT MORE SUCCINCTLY... SINCE OBAMA HAS BECOME PRESIDENT THINGS HAVE GONE FROM BAD TO WORSE. (AND REMEMBER, FOLKS... THE DEMS TOOK OVER BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS AND THUS CONTROLLED CONGRESS DURING THE LAST TWO YEARS OF THE BUSH PRESIDENCY! INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH, IT WAS DURING THESE TWO YEARS THAT THE SHIT FIRST HIT THE FAN!)
The number of Americans of working age not in the labor force grew in April...by an astonishing 522,000.
* OVER HALF A MILLION NEWLY UNEMPLOYED AMERICANS! FOLKS... THERE IS NO OBAMA RECOVERY...!!!
This is an immense army for the rest of society to carry. A shrinking share of our population is carrying an ever-expanding army of dependents.
Why are Americans dropping out?
Some have given up looking for jobs in towns they grew up in, because the jobs are gone and not coming back, and they don't want to leave. Some are rejecting the low-wage unskilled work being offered, because the alternative - unemployment checks and federal and state welfare - is not all that torturous.
With some, the work incentive was never implanted. With others, the option of moving back in with the parents is not all that terrible. America, it seems, is becoming less like the country we grew up in, in its attitudes about work and idleness, and more like Europe.
(*SMASHING MY FIST THROUGH THE WALL*)
In 1965, LBJ announced his plan to convert our ordinary society into a Great Society. Since then, trillions have been spent. The fruits of that immense investment? The illegitimacy rate, dropout rate, crime rate and incarceration rate have set new records, as the test scores of high school students have plummeted to new lows.
Our labor force is shrinking, the number of dependent U.S. adults is growing, our social programs are failing, and our best educated and most productive generation is retiring.
To borrow from Merle Haggard, "Are the good times really over for good?"
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/300075/obama-and-gm-cook-books-john-lott-jr
Would you hire President Obama as your financial adviser?
Three years ago his administration invested more than $100 billion in taxpayer money to bail out General Motors. On Tuesday, the entire company, not just what the government owns, was worth less than $34 billion. By anyone’s definition, that investment is a glaring failure. Yet over the last few days the Obama campaign, in a $25 million marketing blitz, has flooded the airwaves with ads in battleground states, claiming the bailout should be counted a rousing success.
Unfortunately, assertions that “all loans have been repaid to the federal government,” that the bailout “saved more than one million American jobs,” that “U.S. automakers are hiring hundreds of thousands of new workers,” that GM is again the “number-one automaker” — all are based on creative accounting.
The money the government spent adds up quickly: $50 billion in TARP bailout funds, a special exemption waiving payment of $45.4 billion in taxes on future profits, an exemption for all product liability on cars sold before the bailout, $360 million in stimulus funds, and the $7,500 tax credit for those who buy the Chevy Volt.
GM’s share of other programs is harder to quantify but includes, for example, some of the $15.2 billion that went to Cash for Clunkers. (Those costs are in addition to the billions taken from GM’s bondholders by the Obama administration.)
A look at the accounting shows the trouble with contentions that much of the TARP money is getting paid back.
The Obama administration compares the $50 billion in direct bailout funds with the price it will eventually be able to get for selling the GM stock it owns. But that assumes that the stock price won’t reflect government subsidies, including GM’s exemption from paying $45 billion in taxes. (By the Obama administration’s logic, if the stimulus grants to TARP recipients were simply large enough, all the TARP money could be paid.)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Claims that GM paid back its TARP loan are true but misleading. President Obama clearly wants to create the impression that all the money given to the auto companies has been paid back. But the $6.7 billion loan to GM was just a tiny fraction of the money given to it. As TARP special inspector general Neil Barofsky explained, GM used “other TARP money” to pay off the loan.
So what about President Obama’s boast in a White House speech in late April that the bailout “saved probably a million jobs” and that “GM is now the number-one automaker again in the world”?
The “million jobs” contention is quite a stretch. Before filing for bankruptcy in July 2009, GM had 91,000 employees in the United States. You can reach a 400,000 total by assuming that all of GM’s jobs, as well as all the jobs of its parts suppliers and car dealers, would have been lost. Last year, employment in the entire automotive industry in the U.S. (counting Ford, Toyota, and other companies and their suppliers, in addition to GM and Chrysler) was only 717,000.
Obama’s economic advisers told him during an April 2009 meeting that job losses in the auto industry would be only a fraction — 10% to 20% — of these claimed numbers, even for the much weaker Chrysler. The advisers reported the obvious: Bankruptcy would not kill all jobs at GM and, even with cutbacks, suppliers would pick up other work. But Obama keeps using numbers that his own advisers told him were wrong.
Even saving 20% of 400,000 comes at quite a cost — at least $780,000 per job. (How many workers would have been willing to quit working for GM for a $780,000 severance payment?)
The “number one automaker” assertion is no more accurate. Obama’s sales totals include 1.2 million mostly cheap commercial vehicles built by China’s Wuling, a company in which GM owns a small stake, and it excludes sales by vehicle makers in which Volkswagen owns a majority share. (Fortune magazine lists GM’s revenue as smaller than Toyota’s and Volkswagen’s.)
The only real winners from the GM bailout were unions, which were protected from pay cuts, from losing their right to overtime pay after less than 40 hours a week, and from cuts to their extremely generous benefits. They faced only minor tweaks in their inefficient union work rules.
As for “hundreds of thousands of new workers,” the truth is closer to a tenth of that.
Having just $34 billion to show after a $100 billion-plus investment would get a chief executive of any private company fired.
Unfortunately, Obama does not seem to understand how this money has been wasted.
Post a Comment