Gold

Gold, Oil, Interest, O”Reilly, Obama

The price of gasoline is soaring while interest rates remain at historic lows. Working people and their families are suffering from high unemployment and gas prices, while seniors, dependent on interest income, are eating dogfood. All Americans are suffering from the housing crisis in various ways.

Bill O’Reilly on The Factor goes on a nightly rant against the oil companies (everyone hates them), but, although many factors are involved, the main reason for rising gas prices and low domestic interest rates is rooted in policies of the Obama Administration.

First, a little history: although the Arabs publicly stated that the reason for their oil embargo in October, 1973 was payback for our support of Israel, the main reason was economic. Traditionally, Arabs sell oil for dollars and convert their dollars to gold. From 1933 to 1972 the gold price was fixed at $32 per once, and it was illegal for Americans to own gold. In 1972 gold was freed, and its price soon went to $100. The oil embargo caused the dollar-price of oil to jump so that the gold-dollar-oil relationship was repaired, and the embargo ended.

Now, as the debt-financing of the Obama Administration continues, see what is happening to the price of gold:

Now look at what has happened to interest rates within the United States:

In other words, Obama is deliberately keeping interest rates near zero here while the causing the value of the dollar as an international currency to plummet, thus causing gold and oil prices to increase dramatically.

One might ask what Obama’s motives really are in arranging this catastrophe.

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Star Spangled Banner - Whitney Houston

Occupy Mobs Organized by Obama Operatives?

Occupy Mobs Organized by Obama Operatives
As Robin of Berkeley explained in her article that I featured on September 7, 2011, the mobs we see and the violent language we hear have been organized and encouraged by Obama operatives as Barack Obama stands back and pretends otherwise. These are the ‘brown shirts’ of the 1930’s now befouling the streets of our major cities in 2011-2012 – all in the pursuit of an Obama re-election. This is a community organizer at work encouraging class warfare and violence against successful people – in the guise of equality and social justice.

I said during the summer of 2008 that Barack Obama was the most dangerous man ever to appear on the national scene in our country, and nothing I have seen since then makes me think I may have been wrong.

The following article was uncovered by Andrew Breitbart, the journalist to whom all Americans who love freedom owe so much. Biggovernment .com is Breitbart’s website.

Barack Obama organized Occupy Chicago in 1988 using means and to ends eirily similar to today’s ‘Occupy’ mobs. Why would anyone think he is not behind the mobs now protesting something or other today – especially since William Ayers is prominently featured in the current Occupy Chicago mob scene?
Barack Obama Led #OccupyChicago – Circa 1988

by Joel B. Pollak Biggovernment.com
Just twenty or so years ago, Barack Obama wouldn’t just have supported the Occupy protests.

He would have organized them.

From Stanley Kurtz’s essential Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, pp. 117-8:

In fact, Obama personally helped plan one of UNO’s most confrontational actions of the eighties [in 1988]: a break-in meant to intimidate a coalition of local business and neighborhood leaders into dropping a landfill expansion deal.

We know of Obama’s involvement in this demonstration only because his supporters in 2008 felt it necessary to rebut charges that, contrary to his claims of inter-racial healing, he had organized exclusively with blacks. Only then did Obama’s former colleagues from UNO [United Neighborhood Organization, a largely Mexican group] of Chicago reveal that he had helped to plan and lead this multi-ethnic demonstration against landfill expansion on Chicago’s South Side.

…Shouting “No deals!” somewhere between eighty and a hundred UNO-DCP [Developing Communities Project, a black group organized by Obama] marched to a local bank. There they broke into a meeting being conducted by the bank president and local community leaders. The group was exploring the possibility of a deal with Waste Management. The protestors, presumably including Obama, surrounded the meeting table while [Mary-Ellen] Montes [of UNO] told the negotiators, “We will fight you every step of the way.”

Obama was also likely involved with other aggressive UNO protests, including protests for school reform, through which he likely met former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Ayers is involved in the Occupy protests today.

In the 1990s, Obama maintained his ties to radical activists, and “channel[ed] foundation funding to his confrontational Alinskyite colleagues.”

It’s clear that Obama’s ties to the Occupy movement–its forbears, its tactics, and some of its current luminaries–run deep.

This is what “community organizing” looks like.

Obama’s Jobs Plan

Obama’s Jobs Plan and a Video
It is common knowledge that American business owners and managers are sitting on billions that could be invested in projects that would create jobs.

I ran my own business for 13 years; I have some idea of what a business owner considers when evaluating whether or not to make an investment that, as a side effect, will create more jobs.

The thousands of new regulations and the dozens of new taxes are having a massive dampening effect on this type of investment. Temporary gimmicks, like reducing the payroll tax on employees only and extending the Bush tax cuts only for a limited time, have no effect. Business owners want some certainty about the future environment, and all they see are the continued imposition of new regulations and the continued attempts to add new taxes and tax increases.

It is virtually impossible today for an entrepreneur to start a new business, as I did in 1968, because of the stifling and unnecessary regulations that are in place.

President Obama is being devious, or he simply has no conception of how business and our economy works!

This is what business owners face right now (21 new taxes):

1. A 156 percent increase in the federal excise tax on tobacco

2. Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax (takes effect in Jan 2014)

3. Obamacare Employer Mandate Tax (takes effect Jan. 2014)

4. Obamacare Surtax on Investment Income (Tax hike of $123 billion/takes effect Jan. 2013)

5. Obamacare Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans (Tax hike of $32 bil/takes effect Jan. 2018)

6. Obamacare Hike in Medicare Payroll Tax (Tax hike of $86.8 bil/takes effect Jan. 2013)

7. Obamacare Medicine Cabinet Tax (Tax hike of $5 bil/took effect Jan. 2011)

8. Obamacare HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike (Tax hike of $1.4 bil/took effect Jan. 2011)

9. Obamacare Flexible Spending Account Cap – aka “Special Needs Kids Tax” (Tax hike of $13 bil/takes effect Jan. 2013)

10. Obamacare Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers (Tax hike of $20 bil/takes effect Jan. 2013)

11. Obamacare "Haircut" for Medical Itemized Deduction from 7.5% to 10% of AGI (Tax hike of $15.2 bil/takes effect Jan. 2013)

12. Obamacare Tax on Indoor Tanning Services (Tax hike of $2.7 billion/took effect July 2010)

13. Obamacare elimination of tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D (Tax hike of $4.5 bil/takes effect Jan. 2013)

14. Obamacare Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike (Tax hike of $0.4 bil/took effect Jan. 1 2010)

15. Obamacare Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals (Min$/took effect immediately)

16. Obamacare Tax on Innovator Drug Companies (Tax hike of $22.2 bil/took effect Jan. 2010)

17. Obamacare Tax on Health Insurers (Tax hike of $60.1 bil/takes effect Jan. 2014)

18. Obamacare $500,000 Annual Executive Compensation Limit for Health Insurance Executives (Tax hike of $0.6 bil/takes effect Jan 2013)

19. Obamacare Employer Reporting of Insurance on W-2 ($min/takes effect Jan. 2012)

20. Obamacare “Black liquor” tax hike (Tax hike of $23.6 billion/took effect immediately)

21. Obamacare Codification of the “economic substance doctrine” (Tax hike of $4.5 billion/took effect immediately)

All tax information summarized from the Americans for Tax Reform website.

This whole mess isn’t a bit funny, but we all need a laugh sometime. Watch this Obama impersonator for some laughs:

What to Think About Black-on-White Violence

I certainly understand why the media and politicians shy away from confronting the outbreak of black-on-white violence that seems to have broken out recently. We do not want to lose the gains made in racial harmony and civil rights since the 1960's, nor do we want to place labels on any ethnic group. But just as we have to face the fact that virtually all terrorists are Muslims to deal with the problem, so must we deal with inter-racial violence before lots of white people decide they must carry firearms to protect themselves.

Why does this seem to be happening now? Is it because black people are suffering disproportionately from the failures of Obamanomics? Have we reached a tipping point with respect to the violent behavior of fatherless children? Is it another symptom of the general breakdown of American society we see on all sides from television programs designed for ignorant slobs to incivility and invectives in our politics? Can it possibly be a black reaction to the criticisms being heaped on a failed black president? I don't know the answers, but we need answers and effective action fast.

The Racial Violence that Dare Not Speak Its Name

By John T. Bennett August 30, 2011 American Thinker

Recent flash mob violence has alerted Americans to a troubling wave of sadistic racial mayhem. A notable outbreak occurred in Denver in 2009, setting a pattern of delay, denial, and silence. Now that same scourge has returned to Denver, among many other places.

In 2009, a four month wave of mayhem broke out in Denver. There were at least 26 violent robberies committed by two black gangs. The victims were -- without exception -- whites and Hispanics. When the dust settled from that initial spate of violence, victims were left with injuries ranging from a skull fracture to broken noses and shattered eye sockets. The local Denver ABC news affiliate summarized the crime spree:
Black gangs roaming downtown Denver often vented their hatred for white victims before assaulting and robbing them during a four-month crime wave, according to interviews and court records obtained by 7NEWS.

That is not the language of a conservative commentator; it's simply a mainstream local news report from an American city that has witnessed widespread racial violence.

The first-hand accounts and surveillance videos of the 2009 attacks are shocking. These weren't sucker punches or fair fights -- the attackers swing madly and rapidly with a viciousness that can only come from blind cruelty. The victims, who can be seen in interviews, were kind-looking, ordinary people. The victims were mostly either gay or straight couples. They didn't provoke the attacks in any conceivable way. The attackers sometimes fractured skulls, or broke eye sockets, and left one victim in a coma. There were a total of 26 attacks from July 17 to Nov. 17.

An incredible 38 people were arrested in connection with this campaign of racist violence. Thirty were ultimately charged, all black. Has this number of arrests been made against any violent white supremacist or right wing organization in the last 50 years?

The story first came to light in 2009 when a source inside the Denver police department said that the department was "keeping the public in the dark" about the attacks. Court documents show that the police did indeed have knowledge of a pattern of racial attacks, but remained silent for 27 days. One victim complained that, had the police informed the public sooner, he could have protected himself.

The same group responsible for that violence is suspected in the murder of Andrew Graham, a young graduate student who was senselessly shot in 2010.

Late last month, Denver saw a possible return to violence, as couples leaving restaurants were being attacked by a group of black men with baseball bats. The Denver Police have renewed warnings of those attacks.

The brutality in Denver is disturbingly similar to violence occurring elsewhere, nationwide. In the last few months alone, a young white lady named Shaina Perry was taunted and beaten in Milwaukee. A young white man named Carter Strange had his skull fractured by a mob in South Carolina. Dawid Strucinski was beaten into a coma by a mob in Bayonne. Anna Taylor, Emily Guendelsberger, and Thomas Fitzgerald were beaten and kicked to the ground in separate Philadelphia flash mobs. Every weekend in July, mobs have attacked in Greensboro, NC. In a mostly-white suburb of Cleveland, witnesses reported large groups of "teens" walking through the streets, "shouting profanities and racial epithets," and one man was viciously beaten while leaving a restaurant with his wife and friends. In all of those cases, the victims were white and the attackers were black.

Then there are the ominous stories that no one has ever heard about. For instance, a mob of 150 "young people" descended on a small, predominantly white NJ town named Winfield Township during a firefighter's carnival. Perhaps the townspeople are merely lucky that there wasn't violence. Isn't the racial mob mentality scary enough that we shouldn't have to wait for violence before we take it seriously?

It cannot be emphasized enough that these attacks often occur in suburban areas where the black groups have to leave their own neighborhoods and purposefully travel to areas that are predominantly non-black, to attack non-black victims. For instance, in one of the many flash mob attacks in Chicago, Trovulus Pickett, 17, is part of a group that attacked and robbed several victims, including a 68-year-old doctor. The attacks occurred in the North side, which is 15 miles away from Pickett's home. This indicates a serious level of planning and potential racial targeting. If these were just run-of-the mill robberies, it wouldn't be too surprising. But the social problem we're looking at is large groups, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, sometimes armed, engaging in racially-focused violent crimes.

There is quite simply no way for a politically correct society to grasp these events, much less effectively deal with them. Liberals have reached the depths of self-deception and self-censorship in response. The Washington Post, New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune, have all openly stated that they will refuse to report on the racial facts of these violent crimes. The Los Angeles Times explains that they don't want to "unfairly stigmatize racial groups." They prefer the soft bigotry of low expectations instead.

These flash mobs have turned the comfortable narrative of racism on its head.

Politicians, the media, academics, and the legal community do not have the capacity to face the issue. The reigning dogma of white racism is too deeply entrenched.

There is a small grievance industry built around condemning white racism and intolerance, real or imagined. Indeed, the welfare state itself is in large part based on the assumption that whites need to give more to achieve racial equality, as reflected in President Obama's lament that the civil rights movement didn't focus on economic redistribution. Legal treatises complain that the racist white power structure grows into the bitter fruit of anti-minority racist violence. For instance, the work of Mari Matsuda and Richard Delgado is featured in countless undergraduate courses, and is ubiquitous in graduate and law school courses. They argue that hate speech is a severe social problem and that such speech, along with other tools of racism, keeps minorities in an inferior position (1). While academics dwell on hateful speech, the actual violence continues. We all pay the price, as racial guilt is used to extort tax money for the welfare state, which fosters the mobs. The PC status quo will not acknowledge the fact that the worst form of racism today is black mob violence.

We Need to Call Them Bastards Again

We have learned that they may be black, or they may be white, but one thing that links the rioters in London, Philadelphia and Wisconsin is that they are fatherless children of welfare, and they hate us. In England, more than 50% of births are to unwed mothers; in the USA it has risen to over 40%.

Senator Moynihan, who coined the phrase, “defining deviancy down”, warned us that this was coming. Children, particularly boy children, need fathers who work, both to discipline them and to set an example for them. In Moynihan’s time the statistics were just starting to move; today it’s clear: before President Johnson’s Great Society and its expansion of government benefits, the percent of children of unwed mothers for both blacks and whites was only 5%. Today it’s 33% for whites and 72% for blacks, even higher for Hispanics, and society is unraveling.
Left Click to Enlarge

We need to make more changes in welfare, specifically AFDC. I wouldn’t change things for those now getting benefits, but, unless there is some form of real disability involved, we need to make welfare a temporary program to handle emergency situations. The unintended consequences of today’s welfare programs are destroying the people who get the benefits, and, shortly, they will be out there destroying the rest of us. Obama's broken promises of hope and change have also accelerated the destructive process. See The Sleeping Giant Awakens.

Unfortunately the acceptance by society of unwed births has also had devastating effects on the moral choices being made by women who are not on welfare:

Women in 20s, 30s Are Driving Trend, Report Shows

By Rob Stein and Donna St. George Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Katrina Stanfield, 25, is raising her 3-year-old daughter in Middletown, Md., without a husband because she and her boyfriend decided that marriage would not work for them.

Heidy Gonzalez, 21, is living with her two children and their father in Mount Rainier, but tying the knot is not a priority for them now.

Emily Smatchetti, 38, is a single mother of a toddler in Miami because she had not found the right man and worried that time was running out. So she found a sperm donor.

The mothers are part of a far-reaching social trend unfolding across the United States: The number of children being born out of wedlock has risen sharply in recent years, driven primarily by women in their 20s and 30s opting to have children without getting married. Nearly four out of every 10 births are now to unmarried women.

"It's been a huge increase -- a dramatic increase," said Stephanie J. Ventura of the National Center for Health Statistics, which documented the shift in detail yesterday for the first time, based on an analysis of birth certificates nationwide. "It's quite striking."

Although the report did not examine the reasons for the increase, Ventura and other experts cite a confluence of factors, including a lessening of the social stigma associated with unmarried motherhood, an increase in couples delaying or forgoing marriage, and growing numbers of financially independent women and older and single women deciding to have children on their own after delaying childbearing.

"I think this is the tipping point," said Rosanna Hertz, a professor of sociology and women's studies at Wellesley College. "This is becoming increasingly the norm. The old adage that 'first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage' just no longer holds true."

The trend has unfolded despite decades of political and social hand-wringing over the issue, such as Vice President Dan Quayle's attack on the unmarried television mother Murphy Brown, President Bill Clinton's revamp of welfare and President George W. Bush's focus on "family values." President Obama has said that one of his priorities is reducing abortions, in part by helping women who become pregnant and want to keep their children.

Some experts said the trend represents a positive change for many women, allowing them to avoid becoming social outcasts, being forced to give up their babies for adoption or having abortions, and letting them raise children in nontraditional families.

"Women can have children on their own, and it's not going to destroy your employment, and it's not going to mean that you'll be made a pariah by the community," Hertz said. "It's much more socially acceptable."

But others said the trend is disturbing because children who grow up without stable, two-parent families tend not to fare as well in many ways.

"I look at this and say, maybe this trend is what young adults want or stumble into, but it's not in the best interest of children," said Sarah Brown, chief executive of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

About 1.7 million babies were born to unmarried women in 2007, a 26 percent rise from 1.4 million in 2002 and more than double the number in 1980, according to the new report. Unmarried women accounted for 39.7 percent of all U.S. births in 2007 -- up from 34 percent in 2002 and more than double the percentage in 1980.

"If you see 10 babies in the room, four them were born to women who were not married," Ventura said.

Although experts have been concerned about a recent uptick in births to older teenagers after years of decline, that is not the driving force in the overall trend but more likely a reflection of it, Ventura said. Instead, much of the rise is due to significant increases in births among unmarried women in their 20s and 30s.

Between 2002 and 2006, the rate at which unmarried women in that age group were having babies increased between 13 percent and 34 percent, the report found.

The rates increased for all races, but they remained highest and rose fastest for Hispanics and blacks. There were 106 births to every 1,000 unmarried Hispanic women in 2006, 72 per 1,000 blacks, 32 per 1,000 whites and 26 per 1,000 Asians, the report showed.

The percentage of babies born to unmarried women in the United States is starting to look more like that in many European countries, the data shows. For example, the proportion of babies born to unmarried women is about 66 percent in Iceland, 55 percent in Sweden, 50 percent in France and 44 percent in the United Kingdom.
In many of those countries, couples are living together instead of getting married, which is also the case in the United States. Previous research indicates that about 40 percent of births to unmarried women occur in households where couples are cohabitating.

Gonzalez, the mother who lives with her children's father in Mount Rainier, said marriage has not loomed as a necessity for them. "Time goes by and we think about other stuff -- and we think about rent," she said. This holds true, she said, for most of her friends. "Most of the people I know just live with their baby's father or boyfriend and don't get married," she said.

Other couples today feel less compelled to marry just because they are having a child.

"It seems to be more wrong to be in a marriage with someone who you don't love and consider to be your best friend than not to be in a marriage at all," said Barbara Katz Rothman, a professor of sociology at the City University of New York. "It's not that people care less about marriage. In some ways, it's because they care more."

Stanfield and her boyfriend tried living together after she got pregnant, but he moved out when it became clear to both of them that they were not compatible, she said.

"He's a good dad and a good person, but he's just not right for me," Stanfield said.
In New Carrollton, Natrice McKenzie, 25, a teller supervisor at a bank, said she did not set out to become a single mother but has no regrets.

"Getting married was something I had in mind, but that basically was not what happened," said McKenzie, pregnant with her third child. She said it can be difficult, and she knows she is far from unique. "Nowadays it's becoming more like, single moms are everywhere," she said.

Alana Hill, 33, sees family history as an important influence. A single mother in Silver Spring who works as a dancer and a dance teacher, Hill was raised by a single mother and was part of a large extended family in which most of the mothers were not married. Except for grandparents, "I didn't have a role model of a husband and a wife who were married for years," she said. Even when she was very young, her foremost wish, she said, was motherhood, not marriage. "I knew I wanted a child," she said.

Smatchetti, who works as a U.S. attorney in Miami, said she is glad that she had the option of using a sperm donor after a long-term relationship ended.

"I didn't want to pick the wrong person just to have kid, so I just decided to go ahead and do it and work on the relationship later," she said. "It's hard, but in a good way."