The Coffee Shop

Steve Winn, tells it like it is! What’s really amazing is that CNBC actually aired this—CNBC, one of the WH’s favorite propaganda machines! It is reported that not even 2 hours after Steve Wynn’s interview he received a invitation from the tenants at 1600 Pennsylvania blvd, Washington , DC . 20500 wanting him to explain in person why he said what he said !!!

View his short interview. Steve is a Multi Billionaire, Hotelier and Real Estate Investor in Las Vegas , Asia and Macau . He’s been a guest from time to time on all the network financial news programs. If you listen to this recent CNBC interview (short & to the point) and nothing else today, you will be better informed than your neighbor about the current state of the union under the Democratic Party leadership. I would suggest sharing this with your children so they know what to expect once they’re faced with the results.

(There will be a short CNBC header before the interview begins.)

I do not like these dirty crooks, or how they lie and cook the books.

I do not like when Congress steals,

I do not like their secret deals.

I do not like this speaker Nan,

I do not like this ‘YES WE CAN!’

I do not like this spending spree,

I’m not dumb, I know that nothing’s free,

I do not like your smug replies, when we complain about your lies.

I do not like this kind of hope.

I do not like it. nope, nope, nope!

This concept, coined by Rahm Emanuel have been used repeatedly by the current administration to force through first one ill-conceived left wing scheme after another on an unsuspecting American people. Bailouts that funded their political cronys along with takeovers of major auto companies. These done in favor of their labor union buddies and at the expense of legitimate stock and bond owners. Non-stimulating “Stimulus Packages” that increase government power without truly stimulating the economy or creating real long-term new jobs. Health care power grabs which increases costs to the taxpayers while doing little or nothing to improve the long term status of health care. And this using accounting tricks to disguise the cost from the American people by providing ten years’ taxes to fund six years’ costs.

Now Obama is using scare tactics of the gulf oil spill to push through a totally unrelated cap-and-tax plan that is designed to enrich more of his cronys while advancing another huge government power grab designed to flood the government with money to finance its cockamamie schemes. When are the tax payers finally going to wise up? So far Obama has done absolutely nothing to help the people of the gulf in this major disaster and still seven weeks later apparently has no plans to do so. He only wants to use crisis after crisis to push more servitude on the people of the United States.

It has now surfaced that he refused to accept help with the oil cleanup offered by a number of other nations apparently in support of his union backers. Now seven weeks later he still refuses to exempt the cleanup from the restrictions of the Jones Act that precludes foreign ships from participating in the cleanup. GW Bush, whatever his shortcomings, did that right away after Katrina to allow the maximum help to the people of the Gulf coast. Obama has even withheld requested help from the governor of Louisiana in the construction of barrier sand islands to protect the marshes from the oil onslaught. Apparently this just because Gov Jindal doesn’t have a (D) after his name.

If the e-mails I have received from several South Louisiana residents are correct, he has even orchestrated photo opp “shows” by busing large numbers of “clean up crews” in white uniforms who have made a big show of picking up sludge on the beaches then leaving as soon as the cameras are gone. His actions make it appear as if he really doesn’t really want the crisis to end because that would end his ability to use it as a reason for implementing more of his ill advised legislation.

Even the late night comedy shows express dismay at Obama’s opportunism. Right after Obama’s oval office speech Leno stated, “President Obama said today he is going to use the Gulf disaster to immediately push a new energy bill through Congress. I got an idea … How about first using the Gulf disaster to fix the Gulf disaster?”

It is hard to believe that the president of the United States does not have the best interest of the United States at heart, but how else can you interpret his cold hearted approach to the suffering of the people of the gulf coast? He wants to freeze offshore drilling for six months, a policy that will cost another 20,000 jobs in the area already being devastated by the spill and is directly opposite to the recommendations of the best scientific minds in the field. He wants to use this as an excuse to pass legislation that will raise the cost of energy drastically and make us even more dependent on foreign sources of energy. He wants this even though in his own words he has previously stated that, “. . . under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. . . “ What ever happened to his promise that he wouldn’t raise taxes on people who made less than $250,000 a year? Well I guess that was just rhetoric before a crisis-opportunity occurred.

Amazing! A late night comic is in better touch with the problems and the suffering of the people than the President of the United States of America. God help us all.

Muslim groups are attempting to build a mosque at the site of the 911 attack on the World Trade Center. View this video that explains what such a thing actually means to Muslims.

Congressman Bob Etheridge (D-SC2) assaults a student journalist on the sidewalk in Washington. Posted on June 14th, 2010 after the incident occurred the previous week.

It is no doubt that journalists can be obnoxious and it probably happens to congressmen often. I can understand being annoyed by their questions, but it is no excuse for such conduct. In this case a simple “no comment” would have been appropriate. This is an outrageous abuse of power and authority and should result in criminal charges. This sort of action has no place in a democratic society and especially from someone who is supposed to be one of our representatives.

Etheridge did issue an apology on Monday after the video “went viral” on the internet. However, it is not enough for our representatives to apologize for their mistakes once they realize they have been “caught on camera.” His apology can be found here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20007604-503544.html

We should expect and demand better from our representatives. I sincerely doubt that his colleagues will hold him to task for this as they have stacked their ethics panel with people who regularly ignore ethics violations even among their leadership. Since congress likely will do nothing at the very least this guy should be fired by the good people of South Carolina’s 2nd district.

Viewers may better understand this clip if you knew the original poem upon which this is based – “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Thayer – often considered one of baseball’s greatest writings.

The question posed here is extremely important to us all today.  View it in its entirety.

Published on 05-25-2010 by the Blacklisted News

By Michael Snyder – BLN Contributing Writer

If you listen to the mainstream media long enough, you just might be tempted to believe that the United States has emerged from the recession and is now in the middle of a full-fledged economic recovery. In fact, according to Obama administration officials, the great American economic machine has roared back to life, stronger and more vibrant than ever before. But is that really the case? Of course not. You would have to be delusional to believe that. What did happen was that all of the stimulus packages and government spending and new debt that Obama and the U.S. Congress pumped into the economy bought us a little bit of time. But they have also made our long-term economic problems far worse. The reality is that the U.S. cannot keep supporting an economy on an ocean of red ink forever. At some point the charade is going to come crashing down.

And GDP is not a really good measure of the economic health of a nation. For example, if you would have looked at the growth of GDP in the Weimar republic in the early 1930s, you may have been tempted to think that the German economy was really thriving. German citizens were spending increasingly massive amounts of money. But of course that money was becoming increasingly worthless at the same time as hyperinflation spiralled out of control.

Well, today the purchasing power of our dollar is rapidly eroding as the price of food and other necessities continues to increase. So just because Americans are spending a little bit more money than before really doesn’t mean much of anything. As you will see below, there are a whole bunch of other signs that the U.S. economy is in very, very serious trouble.

Any “recovery” that the U.S. economy is experiencing is illusory and will be quite temporary. The entire financial system of the United States is falling apart, and the powers that be can try to patch it up and prop it up for a while, but in the end this thing is going to come crashing down.

But as obvious as that may seem to most of us, there are still quite a few people out there that are absolutely convinced that the U.S. economy will fully recover and will soon be stronger than ever.

So the following are 25 questions to ask anyone who is delusional enough to believe that this economic recovery is real….

#1) In what universe is an economy with 39.68 million Americans on food stamps considered to be a healthy, recovering economy? In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011. Is a rapidly increasing number of Americans on food stamps a good sign or a bad sign for the economy?

#2) According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in the month of March. This was an increase of almost 19 percent from February, and it was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report back in January 2005. So can you please explain again how the U.S. real estate market is getting better?

#3) The Mortgage Bankers Association just announced that more than 10 percent of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment in the January-March period. That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago. Do you think that is an indication that the U.S. housing market is recovering?

#4) How can the U.S. real estate market be considered healthy when, for the first time in modern history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together?

#5) With the U.S. Congress planning to quadruple oil taxes, what do you think that is going to do to the price of gasoline in the United States and how do you think that will affect the U.S. economy?

#6) Do you think that it is a good sign that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of the state of California, says that “terrible cuts” are urgently needed in order to avoid a complete financial disaster in his state?

#7) But it just isn’t California that is in trouble. Dozens of U.S. states are in such bad financial shape that they are getting ready for their biggest budget cuts in decades. What do you think all of those budget cuts will do to the economy?

#8) In March, the U.S. trade deficit widened to its highest level since December 2008. Month after month after month we buy much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. Wealth is draining out of the United States at an unprecedented rate. So is the fact that the gigantic U.S. trade deficit is actually getting bigger a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?

#9) Considering the fact that the U.S. government is projected to have a 1.6 trillion dollar deficit in 2010, and considering the fact that if you went out and spent one dollar every single second it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars, how can anyone in their right mind claim that the U.S. economy is getting healthier when we are getting into so much debt?

#10) The U.S. Treasury Department recently announced that the U.S. government suffered a wider-than-expected budget deficit of 82.69 billion dollars in April. So is the fact that the red ink of the U.S. government is actually worse than projected a good sign or a bad sign?

#11) According to one new report, the U.S. national debt will reach 100 percent of GDP by the year 2015. So is that a sign of economic recovery or of economic disaster?

#12) Monstrous amounts of oil continue to gush freely into the Gulf of Mexico, and analysts are already projecting that the seafood and tourism industries along the Gulf coast will be devastated for decades by this unprecedented environmental disaster. In light of those facts, how in the world can anyone project that the U.S. economy will soon be stronger than ever?

#13) The FDIC’s list of problem banks recently hit a 17-year high. Do you think that an increasing number of small banks failing is a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?

#14) The FDIC is backing 8,000 banks that have a total of $13 trillion in assets with a deposit insurance fund that is basically flat broke. So what do you think will happen if a significant number of small banks do start failing?

#15) Existing home sales in the United States jumped 7.6 percent in April. That is the good news. The bad news is that this increase only happened because the deadline to take advantage of the temporary home buyer tax credit (government bribe) was looming. So now that there is no more tax credit for home buyers, what will that do to home sales?

#16) Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently told the U.S. government that they are going to need even more bailout money. So what does it say about the U.S. economy when the two “pillars” of the U.S. mortgage industry are government-backed financial black holes that the U.S. government has to relentlessly pour money into?

#17) 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement. Tens of millions of Americans find themselves just one lawsuit, one really bad traffic accident or one very serious illness away from financial ruin. With so many Americans living on the edge, how can you say that the economy is healthy?

#18) The mayor of Detroit says that the real unemployment rate in his city is somewhere around 50 percent. So can the U.S. really be experiencing an economic recovery when so many are still unemployed in one of America’s biggest cities?

#19) Gallup’s measure of underemployment hit 20.0% on March 15th. That was up from 19.7% two weeks earlier and 19.5% at the start of the year. Do you think that is a good trend or a bad trend?

#20) One new poll shows that 76 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is still in a recession. So are the vast majority of Americans just stupid or could we still actually be in a recession?

#21) The bottom 40 percent of those living in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. So is Barack Obama’s mantra that “what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street” actually true?

#22) Richard Russell, the famous author of the Dow Theory Letters, says that Americans should sell anything they can sell in order to get liquid because of the economic trouble that is coming. Do you think that Richard Russell is delusional or could he possibly have a point?

#23) Defaults on apartment building mortgages held by U.S. banks climbed to a record 4.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010. In fact, that was almost twice the level of a year earlier. Does that look like a good trend to you?

#24) In March, the price of fresh and dried vegetables in the United States soared 49.3% – the most in 16 years. Is it a sign of a healthy economy when food prices are increasing so dramatically?

#25) 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 – a 32 percent increase over 2008. Not only that, more Americans filed for bankruptcy in March 2010 than during any month since U.S. bankruptcy law was tightened in October 2005. So shouldn’t we at least wait until the number of Americans filing for bankruptcy is not setting new all-time records before we even dare whisper the words “economic recovery”?

The left-leaning socialist democracies of Europe are in big trouble. Numerous articles are appearing about the problems faced by their never-ending cycle of debt caused by spiraling cost of their cradle-to-grave welfare systems their aging populations and their declining productivity.

Ever since WWII the US has assumed much of the defense responsibility and protected Europe from most of its costs. In that favorable environment Europe has voted themselves more and more personal benefits with generous pension plans, light work schedules, extensive vacation allowances, free healthcare, and the results of this generosity is now showing up in declining tax coffers and increasing public debt. Today the Euro is tanking while Greece is rioting.

Public expenditures as a percentage of the GNP in Europe have increased dramatically while the population is aging and there are fewer and fewer young people to pay the taxes to perpetuate the system. Today even the NY Times has joined in the fray with an article by Steven Erlanger about the severity of Europe’s economic woes. Certainly it is a true mark of severity when even the Times, that great bastion of liberal thought has to weigh in and point out the failures just at a time when the US is jumping in to follow the European liberal pathway. Of course it also makes us wonder about the security of Mr Erlanger’s tenure at the paper considering how the article diverts from the Old Gray Lady’s leftist editorial policies of recent years.

Europe is experiencing a wide divergence between public sector and private sector pay and benefits. In Greece today when a bankrupt government is forced to make cuts the people are rioting in the streets. Public promises are unfulfilled and there is widespread dissatisfaction among the populace. Surprise surprise! A few famous quotes come to mind, such as: “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” and “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

Perhaps the best quote illustrating the situation in both Europe and to an only slightly lesser degree in the US is one attributed to an obscure Scottish writer and historian of the late eighteenth century, Alexander Tytler, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”

We in the US should be taking note of the folly of the European Socialist model. Instead the current Obama administration is plunging headlong into what is a proven failing system of non-governance. What Europe is facing in the next five to 10 years is our future as well if we continue to follow their path as our Washington leadership is directing.

We have enacted numerous laws for grand sounding goals of environmental responsibility, workplace safety, consumer protection, employee rights, and the like that have the effect of handcuffing private businesses as compared with their foreign competition. Unions have won generous benefits that lower work weeks, reduce performance standards, raise benefits packages, and paint the employer as a opponent to be manipulated at will. Our elected representatives have legislated minimum pay, maximum work hours, required benefits, and numerous other grand sounding goals. The result is a migration of jobs away from our shores. Once upon a time workers took pride in their company. They worked hard to make it succeed because when the company succeeds the employees and their community benefit as well. Unfortunately that is all too often an outdated model in many workplaces in the US today. Today the average worker likely views the employer as the enemy, not as the “team captain”. Can you imagine what would happen if a football team took that view of their team captain? Last placeville comes to mind.

Jobs are leaving our shores to go elsewhere where there is a more business friendly environment. Farmers here are increasingly denied using effective pesticides and cost efficient methods so they are producing less of many of our popular food crops. As a result we are importing those items from countries that do not so regulate their growers. Does that make our food supply more safe? There have been a number of outbreaks of diseases from tainted imported foods have appeared in recent years. Lead contamination in toys from China and similar problems from products from other developing nations have recently surfaced. We regulate our producers out of business, but allow products from unregulated producers in foreign countries to enter our markets and compete unfairly.

Government jobs when I was a kid back in the 40s and 50s paid less than the private sector. However, they compensated by providing more job security and benefits. Today in the age of public employee unions the public jobs in the US are paying over 20% more than comparable jobs in the private sector. They generally require less effort expended by the employee, more fringe benefits and often promise fantastic early retirements. There is little or no threat of layoffs and productivity is often not required. Private companies can simply not compete because when their employees do not produce enough work to justify their pay they can not simply raise taxes to make up the difference. Their only choice is layoffs or shut downs.

What we as a nation have embarked upon is not sustainable and we will find ourselves very soon in the same pot with the failing nations of Europe. Already we do not have the intestinal fortitude to protect our borders. We have allowed political correctness to replace common sense. We will not hold anyone responsible for their own blunders but assess blame to others for our own stupidities.  If we spill coffee in our lap and burn ourselves we sue McDonalds, if we drop and break a bottle of soda and slip in the mess breaking a hip we sue WalMart.  Where does it end?

Our own government sets the tone. Instead of standing up to their failures and learning from the experience to correct the deficiencies they seek some scapegoat to demonize such as the “rich bankers”, “greedy capitalists”, or the ever popular “George Bush Administration”. There are some very hard decisions to be made in our near future and if we do not stand up to the plate and face them objectively we, as a nation will most certainly go the way of the Dodo.

In the wise words of Pogo Possum, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Read Mr Erlanger’s excellent article in the Times,  compare the Europe he describes and the US of today, and then pray for America that God will deliver us from ourselves.