Did the NY Times Just Lose the Election for the Empty Chair?

New York Times Proves Clint Eastwood Correct -- Obama Is Lousy CEO

Forbes:

h/t to Deonia Copeland

A Sunday New York Times front page story — New York Times! — might have killed President Obama’s re-election hopes.

The story is called “The Competitor in Chief — Obama Plays To Win, In Politics and Everything Else.” It is devastating.

With such a title, and from such a friendly organ, at first I thought Jodi Kantor’s piece would be a collection of Obama’s greatest political wins: His rapid rise in Illinois, his win over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries, the passage of health care, and so on.

But the NYT piece is not about any of that. Rather, it is a deep look into the two outstanding flaws in Obama’s executive leadership:

1. How he vastly overrates his capabilities:

But even those loyal to Mr. Obama say that his quest for excellence can bleed into cockiness and that he tends to overestimate his capabilities. The cloistered nature of the White House amplifies those tendencies, said Matthew Dowd, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, adding that the same thing happened to his former boss. “There’s a reinforcing quality,” he said, a tendency for presidents to think, I’m the best at this.

2. How he spends extraordinary amounts of time and energy to compete in — trivialities.

“For someone dealing with the world’s weightiest matters, Mr. Obama spends surprising energy perfecting even less consequential pursuits. He has played golf 104 times since becoming president, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who monitors his outings, and he asks superior players for tips that have helped lower his scores. He decompresses with card games on Air Force One, but players who do not concentrate risk a reprimand (“You’re not playing, you’re just gambling,” he once told Arun Chaudhary, his former videographer).

His idea of birthday relaxation is competing in an Olympic-style athletic tournament with friends, keeping close score. The 2009 version ended with a bowling event. Guess who won, despite his history of embarrassingly low scores? The president, it turned out, had been practicing in the White House alley.

Kantor’s piece is full of examples of Obama’s odd need to dominate his peers in everything from bowling, cards, golf, basketball, and golf (104 times in his presidency). Bear in mind, Obama doesn’t just robustly compete. The leader of the free world spends many hours practicing these trivial pursuits behind the scenes. Combine this weirdly wasted time with a consistent overestimation of his capabilities, and the result is, according to NYT’s Kantor:

He may not always be as good at everything as he thinks, including politics. While Mr.

“Obama has given himself high grades for his tenure in the White House — including a “solid B-plus” for his first year — many voters don’t agree, citing everything from his handling of the economy to his unfulfilled pledge that he would be able to unite Washington to his claim that he would achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Those were not the only times Mr. Obama may have overestimated himself: he has also had a habit of warning new hires that he would be able to do their jobs better than they could.

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Though he never ran a large organization before becoming president, he initially dismissed internal concerns about management and ended up with a factionalized White House and a fuzzier decision-making process than many top aides wanted.

Kantor’s portrait of Obama is stunning. It paints a picture of a CEO who is unfocused and lost.

Imagine, for a minute, that you are on the board of directors of a company. You have a CEO who is not meeting his numbers and who is suffering a declining popularity with his customers. You want to help this CEO recover, but then you learn he doesn’t want your help. He is smarter than you and eager to tell you this. Confidence or misplaced arrogance? You’re not sure at first. If the company was performing well, you’d ignore it. But the company is performing poorly, so you can’t.

With some digging, you learn, to your horror, that the troubled CEO spends a lot of time on — what the hell? — bowling? Golf? Three point shots? While the company is going south?

What do you do? You fire that CEO. Clint Eastwood was right. You let the guy go.

The Empty Chair Is Losing

American Thinker:

President Obama is headed to defeat in November, and it won't be close. Forget about the polls, and forget about the cadre of delusional Democrats who can't stop telling us how great and successful the last three and a half years have been. Slick Willy can shill all he likes, but seriously, he's preaching to the choir, because the only ones believing his shtick are bought and paid for sycophants, crony capitalists, and members of the mainstream media.

Can you think of a single person who didn't vote for Barack Obama in 2008 but will vote for him this time around? Yet it is easy to find former minions admitting to the dissolution of their belief in the primacy of the "one." These people will not vote for him again -- and they are legion.

Pols like Bill Clinton say what they have to say, and election polls are often designed to say what the designers want them to say. But Americans, ever the social creatures they are, remembering the hopes and dreams they had for a better world in 2008 -- and the hopes and dreams they have today for a better tomorrow -- are reluctant to tell someone taking a poll that they don't like Barack Obama. It doesn't matter how well a case can be made against the man's disastrous and disgraceful leadership; guilt can often preclude telling a stranger they plan to vote against the black guy -- especially today, when all opposition to the president is framed as racist.

Yet, at some point, that curtain closes in the voting booth, and a decision has to be made as to which candidate is better for voters, their children, and the future of America.

When watching the news or any of the president's campaign speeches, it is easy to get the message that Barack Obama is way ahead and can't lose. His successes are portrayed as many and significant, although he needs another term because much still needs to be done. After all, the Republicans have stymied his every selfless effort these last three and a half years, and "we can't go back."

He did his best, and there was nothing more he could have done to improve what was an unprecedented (everything with Barack is unprecedented) decline in economic activity. Didn't Obama call the downturn the "great recession?" The misery the nation feels now is an illusion -- or else, they tell us, it is simply the "new normal."

But usually in mainstream media world, all is well -- and Americans should pay no attention to the price of gasoline, or the unavailability of financing for mortgages or business investment, or the price of groceries and the dearth of jobs. Who needs a job when they have Barack Obama?

The media, Obama, and his adulators have become the "check is in the mail" bloc. Things are better; we just haven't noticed.

Yet there are no real accomplishments, which would be bad enough if it stopped there, but in actuality, everything is much worse since many trusted the "one" in 2008 to solve all the ills of the nation and humanity. All he has done during his tenure is torture the economy into submission with poor decisions, bad legislation, overregulation, and threats of onerous taxation.

It's been said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of Americans, but it is also true that no one ever got rich continually assuming that Americans were idiots. You see, just when a demigod like Barack is convinced he has demagogued his way into the hearts and minds of the electorate, the nation wakes up, and a deafening "thud" can be heard as he falls back down to earth.

Seniors see the true danger to Medicare comes from ObamaCare, a legislative nightmare. Obamacare strips $716 billion from Medicare, and as a result, seniors in states like Florida will make their voices heard this Election Day.

Workers and commuters see the price of gasoline as a function of Barack's desire to be the one who breaks America's dependency on fossil fuels. Yet like everything Obama does, he seeks to do it backwards. Because he can't make alternative energy cheap enough to overwhelm fossil fuels as the main source of energy in America, he chooses to make fossil fuels so expensive that his green energy dreams seem cheap by comparison. Gasoline at $4 a gallon and necessarily skyrocketing electric bills are the "new normal." Didn't you know?

If people's lives have to be destroyed to usher in this new era, then, so be it. They should be grateful that the destruction of their hopes and dreams is in service of the greater Barack Obama good. History books will not remember the individual whose life was ruined today, but they will certainly remember Obama as the man who saved humanity from what might have happened in a hundred years. And isn't that what's important?

Small business understands that Obama built this. They understand this so well that there are trillions of dollars sitting on the sidelines awaiting his departure next January. They may have supported him in 2008, but does anyone think business owners, long demonized by Barack and minions, are going to vote for Mr. Obama again? No, they will run kicking and screaming to the polls to vote for anyone but the man who has destroyed their incomes and futures, and those of their children.

States with a culture of coal mining are also running away from Barack. After all, miners have families, and killing King Coal has not only hurt the interests of America and Americans, but slain the future of an industry long important to the nation's prosperity. Who needs cheap energy anyway?

The United Coal Miners Union sat out the Democrat National Convention. Although they didn't jump ship, they weren't about to support the moron killing coal jobs while making electricity more expensive and ceding energy independence in the process. I suspect that Obama will get few miner votes this election.

I believe that the administration's war on coal and the slow realization that the EPA's future plan for war on fracking have already won Ohio and Pennsylvania for Mitt Romney, despite what the polls say. A union member working in the fossil fuel industry is never going to admit to supporting a Republican, yet he still wants to feed his family and send his kids to college...and maybe someday even retire. Four more years of Barack, and he won't even have a job.

At the Democrat National Convention, John Kerry said Americans should "ask Osama bin Laden if he's better off now than he was four years ago."

The answer would be "no," just as it is for most Americans, because Obama is killing us. Bin Laden at least has the luxury of being dead; the job is finished.

For us, Obama needs another 4 years.

On November 6, 2012, Americans will flock to the polls to ensure that Barack Obama does not get another term to finish the job he started, and the empty chair will lose in a landslide.

For anyone who thought that Clint Eastwood had lost it at the Republican National Convention with his  chair routine… carrying on a conversation with President Barack Obama (represented by an empty chair).

Clint knew exactly what he was doing…  Here is the only known portrait of Karl Marx… with the Barack Obama Chair.

Technorati Tags: empty chair,Obamaland lost,Clint Eastwood,NY Times,Obamaland,Karl Marx,Election 2012,2012 Election,EPA,PC,Politicial Correctness,racism,reverse racism,national debt,ObamaCare,Medicare,gas prices,recession,joblessness,fracking,groceries,Narcissism,radical ideology,socialism,Progressivism,Mitt Romney in 2012,Romney-Ryan,Forbes,one term Obama,radicals in the White House,Eastwooding

Why the Supreme Court Will Strike Down All of Obamacare

By Peter Ferrara  -  Forbes

Barack Obama made a national laughingstock out of himself with his recent comments on the Obamacare law now before the Supreme Court. Obama said on Monday, “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” (emphasis added).

President Obama is not stupid. But he thinks you are. He knows the Obamacare health care takeover was not passed by a strong majority. But he figures you’re so dumb he can rewrite recent history in plain sight. The law passed a House with a huge Democrat majority at the time by only 219-212. It did not get a single Republican vote, but the opposition was bipartisan.

The law also barely squeaked past a Senate filibuster despite an overwhelming 60 Senate Democrats, and even then humiliating buyoffs were necessary. Public opposition was so strong that the ultraliberal Democrat controlled Massachusetts, the only state to go for George McGovern in 1972, elected a Republican in a special election for Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, to terminate the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority. That required final passage of the law improperly in violation of Congressional rules as a reconciliation measure, which is only to be used to clean up the budget and so cannot be filibustered.

And given that Obama is so certain you can’t remember what happened just two years ago, he is more than certain that you have never heard of the ancient history of Marbury v. Madison, where the 14-year old Supreme Court in 1803 took the then unprecedented step of overturning a provision of law adopted by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress, in the Judiciary Act of 1789. That case was where the Supreme Court first recognized its power of judicial review, under which it is empowered to strike down laws found unconstitutional. As the Wall Street Journal observed on Tuesday:

“In the 209 years since, the Supreme Court has invalidated part or all of countless laws on grounds that they violated the Constitution. All of these laws were passed by a ‘democratically elected’ legislature of some kind, either Congress or in one of the states. And no doubt many of them were passed by ‘strong’ majorities….probably stronger majorities than passed the Affordable Care Act.”

As a former constitutional law professor and President of the Harvard Law Review, Obama no doubt knows all about Marbury v. Madison and judicial review. But he figures he can safely assume a majority of you know nothing about it, and his party controlled media will not tell you anything concerning it at this inopportune moment. Hence, another classic example of what I have called Calculated Deception.

President Obama further assailed any Supreme Court decision ruling his Obamacare health care takeover unconstitutional as “judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.” Alexander Hamilton disagreed over 200 years ago in Federalist 78, writing, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. . . .”

Or, as the Wall Street Journal explained on Monday:

“Judicial activism is not something that happens every time the Supreme Court overturns a statute. The Justices owe deference to Congress and the executive, but only to the extent that the political branches stay within the boundaries of the Constitution. Improper activism is when the Court itself strays beyond the founding document to find new rights or enhance its own authority without proper constitutional grounding.”

The Journal added, “Far from seeking an activist ruling, the Obamacare plaintiffs aren’t asking the Court to overturn even a single commerce clause precedent.”

In my role as General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union, I filed 3 amicus curiae briefs with the Supreme Court in the Obamacare litigation. I also filed amicus briefs in the lower federal courts in the cases in Virginia and Florida.

The reason that at least 5 Justices are going to find the law’s individual mandate unconstitutional is that it is contrary to the fundamental federalism architecture of the Constitution. Under the Constitution, the federal government is an authority of limited, enumerated, delegated powers. All other powers of government are reserved for the states, including the broad authority labeled the “police power.” That is the power to compel individuals to take specific actions for the public good, such as actions for the public health like vaccinations or quarantines, or obtaining car insurance, or attending school. Notice that all such laws are adopted at the state or local level. (Any federal laws compelling action are based on specific delegated powers other than the Commerce Clause, like those providing for national defense, or taxation).

The power to compel the purchase of health insurance for the public good, as in Obamacare’s individual mandate, is a function of the police power reserved to the states, and denied to the federal government by the Constitution and Supreme Court precedents. If the federal government is now to hold a national police power, then the constitutional framework of federalism, with limited, enumerated powers delegated to the federal government, and the remaining powers of government retained by the states, would be obliterated.

That is why the Supreme Court held in United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000), “We always have rejected readings of the Commerce Clause and the scope of federal power that would permit Congress to exercise a police power.” The Court added, “the principle that the Constitution created a Federal Government of limited powers, while reserving a generalized police power to the States, is deeply ingrained in our constitutional history.” The Court explained in New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992) that Congress may not exercise its enumerated powers in a way that “infring[es] upon th[at] core of state sovereignty.” The Court in Morrison rejected the argument that women who are sexually assaulted would need medical care provides a sufficient interstate commerce connection under the Commerce Clause.

As Justice Kennedy explained in United States v. Comstock, 130 S. Ct. 1949 (2010), “the precepts of federalism embodied in the Constitution inform which powers are properly exercised by the National Government in the first place.” The Court added in Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 457 (1991), “[t]he Constitution created a Federal Government of limited powers [and] withhold[s] from Congress a plenary police power that would authorize enactment of every type of legislation.”

The Obama Administration tried to shoe horn the individual mandate into the federal enumerated power of the Commerce Clause, which grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. Their argument boiled down to the claim that millions of people choosing to not buy health insurance substantially affects interstate commerce. But every economic decision, when aggregated across the whole market, substantially affects interstate commerce in this way, including decisions not to do something. So that would leave the Commerce Clause eating up the whole Constitution and its most fundamental doctrine that the federal government is an authority of limited, enumerated, delegated powers. Federal power would then be without limit, contrary to the whole concept of the federal government in the Constitution.

That is why the Court kept asking the government for a principle that would limit its interpretation of the Commerce Clause, and its failure to come up with one is fatal to the government’s case. All prior cases under the Commerce Clause were based on the principle that some action had been taken that the federal government could then regulate as interstate commerce. To hold that inaction could be regulated as well as itself substantially affecting interstate commerce would break through any limitation on the power, and so was not what was intended. That would also again tear down the Constitution’s fundamental federalism architecture and any distinction between limited federal and plenary state power.

That is why the Supreme Court in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995) rejected the notion of unlimited Commerce Clause power, holding that it will strike down regulation under the Commerce Clause which leaves no principled limit to federal power under the Clause. The Court said, “the Constitution’s enumeration of powers does not presuppose something not enumerated and that there will never be a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local.” Justice Kennedy added, “[T]he federal balance is too essential a part of our constitutional structure and plays too vital a role in securing freedom for us to admit inability to intervene when one or another level of Government has tipped the scales too far.”

Once the Court finds the individual mandate unconstitutional on these grounds, as it will, the question becomes whether the whole Obamacare Act must be struck down as unconstitutional as a result. The law does not include a traditional severability clause providing that if one of provision of the Act is found unconstitutional, the rest of the law should stand.

Consequently, the question becomes whether the remaining parts of the Obamacare law can still remain fully operative and function as Congress intended, and whether Congress would have passed the Act without the individual mandate. The answer in both cases is indisputably no.

Obama’s lawyers themselves have repeatedly argued in courts all over the country that the Obamacare law cannot function without the individual mandate. That is because of the Act’s regulatory requirements for guaranteed issue and community rating. The Act requires all insurers to cover all pre-existing conditions and issue health insurance to everyone that applies, no matter how sick they are when they first apply or how costly they may be to cover. Moreover, the insurers can only charge them the same, standard, market rates as everyone else.

Under these regulatory requirements, younger and healthier people delay buying insurance, knowing they are guaranteed coverage at standard rates after they become sick. Sick people show up applying for an insurer’s health coverage for the first time with very costly illnesses such as cancer and heart disease, which the insurer must then cover and pay for, out of the same standard premiums as everyone else pays. This means the insurer’s covered risk pool includes more costly sick people and fewer less costly healthy people, so the costs per person covered soar. The insurer then has to raise rates sharply for everyone just to be sure to have enough money to pay all of the policy’s benefits.

Those higher rates encourage even more healthy people to drop their insurance, leaving the remaining pool even sicker and more costly on average, which requires even higher premiums, resulting in a financial death spiral for the insurers and the insurance market.

If regulation required fire insurers to issue policies to people whose houses were already on fire at standard rates, the fire insurance pool would include only all burned down houses, which would obviously be dysfunctional.

The Obamacare law tries to counter this problem by adopting the individual and employer mandates, seeking to require everyone to be covered and contributing to the pool at all times. Without these mandates, the government itself has repeatedly argued, those who would remain uninsured would substantially affect the interstate market for health insurance, by allowing the remaining regulatory requirements to cause soaring health insurance premiums through the above process and ultimately a financial death spiral.

That financial death spiral would cause the costs of other provisions of Obamacare to soar, such as the subsidies for purchase of health insurance on the Exchanges, which would be even more costly than expected, and the costs for the Medicaid expansion, where more people would qualify given the decline of private insurance.

Indeed, Obamacare itself in its very statutory language recognized the essential role of the individual mandate in the statute’s overall framework, saying in Section 1501(a)(2)(I):

“[I]f there were no [individual mandate], many individuals would wait to purchase health insurance until they needed care….The [individual mandate] is essential to creating effective health insurance markets in which improved health insurance products that are guaranteed issue and do not exclude coverage of pre-existing conditions can be sold.”

As the court said in Alaska Airlines v. Brock, 480 U.S. 678 (1987), “Congress could not have intended a constitutionally flawed provision to be severed from the remainder of the statute if the balance of the legislation is incapable of functioning independently….” Moreover, the Court also recognized that in the absence of a statutory severance clause the entire statute must be struck down if Congress would not have enacted the statute without the unconstitutional provision.

Consequently, the loss of the individual mandate so centrally affects the entire structure of the Act that without it the entire structure must fall. Trying to determine what could be salvaged would embroil the Court in rewriting the statutory policy and framework to govern one-sixth of the entire U.S. economy, which is obviously not a judicial function.

The only other foreseeable outcome is for the liberals on the Court to agree to go along with a ruling declaring the mandate unconstitutional if the Court will just decide to hold back on deciding severability to give Congress the chance to figure out how it wants to fix it. But Congress could just pass a whole new law in any event if the Court just strikes down the whole thing, which based on its precedents is exactly what it should do.

But liberals should not despair. There is broad bipartisan agreement on alternative means of covering the uninsured with a health care safety net, which would not be expensive if done right, and addressing health costs through market competition and incentives, which altogether could well actually reduce federal spending sharply. The end result would be a much better bill that satisfies all desirable social goals. But that would still require a different President, because Obama’s anti-market, left wing, ideology would not allow him to accept that desirable result.

Cross-Posted at True Health Is True Wealth! and at Ask Marion

TECH ENTREPRENEURS TAKE CAUTION WITH OBAMA’S NEW PATENT LAW

Earlier this month, President Obama signed the America Invents Act into law after it past in the House and Senate with strong support on both sides. This is the first major step in patent reform, according to some, since 1952.

The most notable reform is a change from “first to invent” system to a “first to file” system. This is the system that most of the world operates on, according to CNN, that prevents “investors from coming out of the woodwork and laying claim to a patent.” Obama and others tout that this new system will spur jobs. Business Insider guest writer Henry Nothhaft says it will do the opposite:

This will shift the advantage to large, deep-pocketed companies who, with their legions of lawyers and many millions of dollars in resources, can now swamp the USPTO’s inboxes with a tsunami of applications. Independent inventors and small start-ups who do not have the equivalent legal and financial resources to compete, meanwhile, will be forced to the back of line at the patent office.

He notes entrepreneurs saying in the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey that getting a patent is the first set to getting financial backing. Without this patent, they will not be able to get the financing. Nothhaft also brings up the fact that 100 percent of job growth in the past 35 years, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, was from start-up companies, without which the country would have experienced negative job growth:

“These findings imply that America should be thinking differently about the standard employment policy paradigm,” said Robert E. Litan, vice president of Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation. “Policymakers tend to focus on changes in the national or state unemployment rate, or on layoffs by existing companies. But the data from this report suggest that growth would be best boosted by supporting start-up firms.”

In regard to the fact that the rest of the world operates on a similar first to file system, Nothhaft writes:

[...] less than 1 percent of patents are filed by job-creating small businesses and independent inventors compared to 28 percent in the U.S. [...] Our patent system is a big reason why almost every major technological breakthrough of the last 100 years — from autos and airplanes to semiconductors and PCs — originated in America rather than Europe or someplace else.

On a similar note, Forbes guest writer Gary Lauder reports several examples of how Europe is discontent with its own system:

In May, the U.K.’s Small Medium-sized Entity Innovation Alliance sent a letter to their prime minister complaining that they “know only too well the failure of the patent system and have given up.”  Two years ago, a European research organization published a study titled “Lost property: The European patent system and why it doesn’t work.”  In February, the EU declared an “innovation emergency” due to how far behind us they are falling in innovation and in R&D investments.

Some in the gaming industry also have misgivings over the law. Gaming Bus reports that the new patent system for this industry will result in favoritism of larger companies that file patents for everything they invent, while small businesses selectively choose patents they apply for due to cost.

Source:  the Blaze

Sample Comments:

CONVOYUSA  -  Posted on September 29, 2011 at 2:13pm

As a small biz start up and being involved in patent development and filing THERE IS NO UPSIDE TO THIS BILL. What the hell was the House thinking??? 2012 cannot come soon enough to get rid of these moron’s who are not looking at the consequences of their decisions. Has it dawned on anyone that WHATEVER Obama puts forth is INTENDED to destroy this country?

Who is to say that the crony capitalists will not have a heads up from the patent office (and predate their filing) so they could end-run a patent filed by an independent that may have put years of sacrifice into their research? If they want to dry up innovation, then I guess they are on the right track.

DAMAGE6  -  Posted on September 30, 2011 at 7:03am

Gee Thanks Mr. President / Congress! In 2008 you crashed my small defense related R&D consulting business with 5 of 5 clients bailing on me citing your policies as the reason they were cutting back on R&D expenditures. Since then I’ve been killing myself doing manual labor and taking every menial job I can find to save my house while I rethought my business plan and spent thousands of hours inventing some really cutting edge new products. Since I‘m barely keeping my nose above water financially there’s no way I can afford the $7 to 10k per item it costs to secure a patent and now you virtually guarantee that any big company I show them to in order to try and get some backing can simply steal my designs instead. REALLY WHY DON’T YOU JUST COME TO MY HOUSE AND KICK ME IN THE B@!!$ WHILE YOU’RE AT IT. As if you haven’t made starting a business hard enough as it is. Unless you want to make solar panels that couldn't‘t possibly turn a profit it’s damn near impossible to get a manufacturing start up off the ground in Obamerica.

BEEALERT  -  Posted on September 30, 2011 at 11:13am

I think that all we have to do to discern the intent of any Obama legislation is to tack the word “destroy” onto the front of it. As in “Destroy American Jobs Act”, “Destroy America’s Inventors Act”, etc

Has Forbes Gone Psychotic or Taken the Blue Pill?

Posted by: Dr. Mercola – January 2010
Forbes has declared Monsanto “Company of the Year,” calling criticism of the notorious company “vicious” attacks against a company that “has been working to make humanity better fed.”

What’s more, Forbes claims that the attacks come because Monsanto has close to a monopoly in some seed markets, which Forbes argues is because they are making “seeds that are too good.”

You read that right. Apparently, Monsanto’s decades-long attempt to control the seed market -- which has led it lawsuits against small farmers and genetically modified plants that never regerminate, forcing farmers to buy seeds year after year -- is apparently just a result of their being “too good.”

I encourage you all to BOYCOTT Forbes and cancel any subscription you may have.

Sources: Forbes January 18, 2010

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

For anyone who knows anything about the business of Monsanto, the news that this ominous company has been named “Company of the Year” by renowned Forbes magazine is simply shocking.

This follows on the heels of other oxymoronic honors, such as

• President Obama accepting the Nobel Peace Prize while firmly entrenched in a seemingly never-ending war spread across two countries, and

• Time magazine naming Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke “Man of the Year,” supposedly for “saving” the US from “an even worse” financial collapse than what Bernanke himself helped create.

• Even more ironic are the media efforts to convince you that the unsustainable situation created by printing of billions of dollars to bail out failing banks and companies can be sustained indefinitely.

So, who is responsible for these strange decisions? And perhaps more importantly, why?

Through the lens of these examples, a rather bizarre picture is taking shape. I can’t say exactly what the message is, but I believe I can say this: Beware, because deception is taking place through coordinated media manipulation.

If you know anything about how conventional media is being used on a mass scale, you realize that typically someone is trying to sell you on something – an idea, an ideology, a certain mindset, in order to eventually produce a certain behavior.

The question is, what are they trying to convince you of now?

Are We Living in Some Alternative Reality?

When reading the news these days, I often feel like I’m getting information from some alternate Universe where up is down, and left is right. Because they surely aren’t reporting reality on this planet. It’s gotten so blatantly bizarre lately, it’s as though they don’t even bother to come up with a decent cover story to shroud their attempts at manipulating your mind.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that there are still many who have not figured this game out yet, who will swallow just about anything that magazines like Time and Forbes put in print – like the story that Monsanto is a world class do-gooder.

Unfortunately, there are still those who are unaware of the many improprieties and outright crimes committed by Monsanto, such as:

• Suing small farmers for patent infringement after Monsanto’s GM seeds spread wildly into surrounding farmers’ fields, contaminating their conventional crops

• Secretly discharging PCB-laden toxic waste into an Alabama creek, and dumping millions of pounds of PCBs into open-pit landfills for decades after PCBs were banned in the US for being a possible carcinogen.

• Being found guilty of bribery to bypass Indonesian law requiring an environmental assessment review for its genetically engineered cotton.

• Last year, the supreme court of France found Monsanto guilty of falsely advertising its herbicide Roundup as "biodegradable" and “environmentally friendly.” Scientific evaluation discovered that glyphosate, the active ingredient inRoundUp, is acutely toxic to fish and birds and can kill beneficial insects and soil organisms that maintain ecological balance. Additionally, the surfactant ingredient in Roundup is more acutely toxic than glyphosate itself, and the combination of the two is even more toxic.

• In 2007, the South African Advertising Standards Authority also found Monsanto guilty of lying when advertising that “no negative reactions to Genetically Modified food have been reported.”

• According to one EPA scientist, Monsanto doctored studies and covered-up dioxin contamination of a wide range of its products. She concluded that the company’s behaviour constituted “a long pattern of fraud.”

• In 1999, the New York Times exposed that Monsanto’s PR firm, Burson Marsteller, had paid fake "pro-GMO" food demonstrators to counteract a group of anti-biotech protesters outside a Washington, DC FDA meeting.

This is but a short list of examples, but it should give you a clue as to why I question the rationale behind giving them this honor.

Monsanto – Company of the Year?

Anyone who has studied the devastating effects of the unrestrained release of genetically modified crops into the environment will see the insanity in declaring Monsanto “Company of the Year.”

What the world needs is a return to saner, more sustainable farming practices, not mass cultivation of crops infused with “suicide genes” that prevent regermination the year after, or food crops that have been contaminated with GM seeds used for pharmaceutical production.

I truly believe that letting Monsanto lead us down the garden path is nothing short of suicidal.

It’s time for people to realize that while the declared motive behind GM food is an altruistic one -- to alleviate hunger, poverty and malnutrition worldwide – in reality, the ruthless propagation of GM crops are intended to create previously unimaginable profits above anything else.

Despite their assurances, we’re already beginning to see the real price of all that tinkering with Mother Nature: unnatural crop combinations that can harm your health and potentially cause generational DNA changes, for example.

Not only that, but contrary to promises, GM crops are FAILING MISERABLY all across the world. The reality simply isn’t living up to the hype of increased yields of healthy crops.

After 30 years of GMO experimentation, we have the data to show:

• No increase in yields; on the contrary GM soya has decreased yields by up to 20 percent compared with non-GM soya. Up to 100 percent failures of Bt cotton have been recorded in India. And recent studies by scientists from the USDA and the University of Georgia found that growing GM cotton in the U.S. can result in a drop in income by up to 40 percent.

• No reduction in pesticides use; on the contrary, USDA data shows that GM crops has increased pesticide use by 50 million pounds from 1996 to 2003 in the U.S., and the use of glyphosate went up more than 15-fold between 1994 and 2005, along with increases in other herbicides to cope with rising glyphosate resistant superweeds.

• Roundup herbicide is lethal to frogs and toxic to human placental and embryonic cells. Roundup is used in more than 80 percent of all GM crops planted in the world.

• GM crops harm wildlife, as revealed by UK and U.S. studies.

• Bt resistant pests and Roundup tolerant superweeds render the two major GM crop traits useless. The evolution of Bt resistant bollworms worldwide have now been confirmed and documented.

• Vast areas of forests, pampas and cerrados lost to GM soya in Latin America.

• Epidemic of suicides in the cotton belt of India. 100,000 farmers between 1993-2003, and an estimated 16,000 farmers a year since, have committed suicide since Bt cotton was introduced.

• Transgene contamination is completely unavoidable, as science has recently revealed that the genome (whether plant, animal or human) is NOT constant and static, which is the scientific base for genetic engineering of plants and animals. Instead, geneticists have discovered that the genome is remarkably dynamic and changeable, and constantly ‘conversing’ and adapting to the environment. This interaction determines which genes are turned on, when, where, by what and how much, and for how long. They’ve also found that the genetic material itself has the ability to be changed according to experience, passing it on to subsequent generations.

• GM food and feed linked to deaths and sicknesses both in the fields in India and in lab tests around the world. For example, in April 2006, more than 70 Indian shepherds reported that 25 percent of their herds died within 5-7 days of continuous grazing on Bt cotton plants.

Forbes on a Roll – But Where?

But Forbes doesn’t just throw your intelligence for a loop by hailing the success of a destroyer like Monsanto. Oh, no. There’s more.

Tellingly, in the same issue, Forbes also lashes out against chelation therapy, and derides anyone who thinks there may be a connection between vaccines and autism.

So what is this all about, really?

I have to seriously wonder why we are being urged to imagine we live in a world where no bad deed goes unrewarded; a place where what’s bad for you is somehow beneficial, and where lack of integrity, reason and logic is applauded.

What is this type of media coverage saying to you? What is this saying to your children?

This is not what America used to stand for, if I remember correctly. And it’s not what America should stand for now, or in the future.

Quite frankly, it’s all wrong. It’s all upside-down and backwards.

The only good thing about these blatantly bizarre media displays is the fact that they are just that – blatantly bizarre. And hopefully that will shake more people from their slumber and cause them to ask some basic questions about what’s really going on in this world.

Important Questions Only You Have the Answer to

• Who taught you what you know?

• Who do you listen to? What messages are you receiving from conventional media? How do you determine what’s real and what’s not?

• When was the last time you turned OFF the television and really pondered some issue at length, on your own, looking at it from all sides, including the sides you’ve been told to ignore? Heck, when was the last time you asked WHY you are being told to ignore it in the first place!

Other questions may be even more important than the preceding ones, as they involve really tuning into yourself:

• Where do you fall within the scheme of nature?

• Do natural laws apply to you?

• Where does science fit in? How far can science take you? Are you willing to gamble the future of your children on the assurances of mega-companies like Monsanto, who have tremendous responsibility to their shareholders to turn a profit in a crumbling market?

• To what degree do you think man-made chemicals can improve your health? What IS health, really? What does your body really need in order for all those trillions of cells to thrive in harmony?

Folks, I encourage you to open your mind; think deeply and clearly, and avoid jumping to preconceived conclusions based on what you think you “know,” without first challenging yourself to discern who fed you that “knowledge” in the first place.

Personally, I’m fed up with the brainwashing that conventional media dishes out, and if you too have had enough, I suggest you boycott Forbes and cancel any subscription you may have to their magazine. Unless you simply don’t want to live in a right-side-up world, that is.

Congressman Ron Paul said the following in one of his speeches before Congress earlier this year, and it sums up my sentiments exactly:

"Is this a dream or a nightmare? Is it my imagination or have we lost our minds? It is surreal. It is just not believable. A grand absurdity. A great deception. A delusion of momentous proportions based on preposterous notions and ideas whose time should never have come.

Insanity passed off as logic. Evil described as virtue. Ignorance pawned off as wisdom. Slavery sold as liberty.The philosophy that destroys us is not even defined. We have broken from reality, a psychotic nation. Ignorance with a pretense of knowledge replacing wisdom."

Related Links:

The Doors Of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything

Why You Are Being Deceived by the News Media

World's Largest Media Source Controlled by World's Largest Drug Company

(Sometimes I wonder if we the American People have gone psychotic or taken the idiot pill??)

Glenn Beck on Glenn Beck

Controversial Fox Host Talks About Kicking Bottle, Turning Mormon and Common Sense

John Stossel explores why some seem to hate the conservative commentator.

Forbes magazine's new list of the 100 richest and most influential celebrities in America includes Oprah Winfrey, Angelina Jolie, and only one TV news personality -- Fox News' Glenn Beck.

Video: Preview of Stossel 20/20 Interview With Glenn Beck

A few years ago, not many people had heard of Glenn Beck. Nowadays, the conservative commentator seems to be everywhere. Over the past two weeks, he's performed before sold-out crowds on his comedy tour. He's had several New York Times No. 1 best-selling books (a new book, "Glenn Beck's Common Sense," is due to hit stores next week); 8 million listeners tune in each week to his radio show; and now he's the host of his own television show on Fox News.

Watch John Stossel's interview with Glenn Beck on "20/20" Friday at 10 p.m. ET.

Glenn Beck: The Drinking Years

"[My mother] was an alcoholic and a drug addict," he said. "When I hit 30, I was going down that same path."

Glenn Beck preps backstage for his Fox News talk show. Despite its weekday-afternoon time slot, normally a ratings wasteland, the show now has a bigger audience than any prime time show on cable.

(ABC News)

He believes the word "jerk" would be the kindest way to describe him at that stage.

"I fired a guy one time for bringing me the wrong kind of pen," he said remorsefully. "I was beyond a jerk.

"I hated myself. Hated myself," he admitted. "I tried for two years to stop drinking. I'd look myself in the mirror and I'd say, 'You're not an alcoholic, you don't have a problem.'"

Beck didn't admit he had a drinking problem until one morning when he was unable to remember a bedtime story he had drunkenly told his children the night before. And so, that evening, he attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

"I don't know what I expected, but you guys don't look like alcoholics," Beck recalled telling the attendees. "This lady, she must've been 70 years old. She was wearing a sweater set and pearls. She was sitting right in front of me, and she just leaned back and she said, 'Oh, honey, we're all drunks in here.'"

n typical Glenn Beck fashion, however, he didn't stop his reformation there. He became a Mormon.

"I apologize, but guys will understand this. My wife is hot and she wouldn't have sex with me until we got married, and she wouldn't marry me unless we had a religion," he said. "I'm like, ah, you've got to be kidding me! I've got to go to church for this?"

But now he says that going to church has given him the faith to ground himself, and so he's grateful to his wife. Glenn and Tania Beck have been married now for nearly 10 years, after first meeting in a parking lot.

"I was a loser at local radio and she came up to me and she said, 'Are you Glenn Beck?'" he recalled of their first meeting. "She said, 'I used to listen to you when I was in high school. Thanks for the laughs,' and then she turned around and walked away."

Beck has been called an "idiot" who engages in a lot of "crazy talk." Does it bother his wife when people have hateful things to say about her husband?

Glenn Beck: A Big Target

"If I let every single thing bother me, you know, I would have jumped off a bridge a long time ago," she said.

Glenn Beck talks with John Stossel about how he got his start in radio.

(Chris Kilmer / ABC News)

Beck has become a big target for comedians and commentators alike. Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert often mocks him, and Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" once said of Beck, "Finally, a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking."

"You can get rich making fun of me. I know. I've made a lot of money making fun of me," Beck said.

Beck is also criticized for crying on television.

"Somebody get this blubbering buffoon a Kleenex!" said journalist Tina Brown on her March 31 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." Others have accused Beck of faking the crying for entertainment purposes.

"I should be paid a lot more money if I were able to cry on will like that," he responded.

The criticism he receives from the media doesn't stop there. Al Franken wondered aloud on CNN whether Beck should be allowed on television. Keith Olbermann frequently names Beck the "Worst Person in the World."

Some even go as far as to charge that Beck's complaints about the government actually encourage violence.

"A man kills his own mother and nine others and turns out to have kept a hit list. And Glenn Beck is rationalizing it and blaming liberals for it," said Keith Olbermann on March 13.

But, does Beck actually encourage the anti-government violence of people like Timothy McVeigh?

"No. Timothy McVeigh was a coward," explained Beck. "Violence is the stupid way out. It'll discredit any real legitimate movement."

Beck added that most people who criticize him don't actually watch his show or listen to what he says.

Many in the media label Beck as a staunch Republican -- a label which he strongly disagrees with.

"Both parties only believe in the power of the party," he said. "Stand up. Throw off the shackles of the two-party system!"

He criticizes both parties for exercising more power than the Constitution intended and for abandoning what he considers to be common-sense ideas.

Glenn Beck: Freedom to...

"Look, the American experiment was about freedom," he explained. "Freedom. Freedom to be stupid. Freedom to fail. Freedom to succeed. Freedom to succeed.

"We just put General Motors in the hands of people who can't even run our own government," he added. "Our debt is -- just the interest -- a trillion dollars a year. You can't pay for that!"

Beck also compares himself to Howard Beale, the fictional anchorman from the 1976 film "Network" who famously exclaimed: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

"I am like Howard Beale," said Beck. "When he came out of the rain and he was like, none of this makes any sense. I am that guy."

And so Beck works constantly, on radio, TV and onstage, saying that a lot of life would be better if government -- Republicans and Democrats -- just left Americans alone.

"I believe that if we get out of people's way, the sky's the limit," he said. "The sky is the limit."

By JOHN STOSSEL and ANDREW KIRELL - June 10, 2009

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Related Resources:

• Barbara Walters (and Whoopi) Don't Check Facts, Attack Glenn Beck Anyway…
• Glenn ambushed on 'The View'
• Bit_h_s on the View at Their Nonsense Again...
• Glenn Responds to The View Debacle
• Can Andrew Breitbart Save Hollywood?
• Progressivism – The Progressive Movement Is A Cancer That Has Slowly Infested Both Major U.S. Parties Over the Past 100 Years
• Progressives dream to 'remake' America – Glenn Beck - (Part II)
• The Death of Common Sense
• We Surround Them
• Glenn Beck's Common Sense - New Book
• An Inconvenient Book - Book

WATCH:Whoopi's Blow Up With Glenn Beck