At this writing, circumstances in the Middle East may change between this sentence and my last paragraph.

What began in mid-December as an uprising that sent Tunisian President Ben Ali into Saudi exile on Jan. 14 quickly inspired Cairo’s Tahrir Square rebellion. Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for 29 years, eight more than Cleopatra, hastily retired when his people hounded him from Heliopolis Palace into his vacation compound in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Just outside Mubarak’s hideaway, two Iranian war ships this week floated north through the Suez Canal. This was the Iranian Navy’s first appearance in the Arab equivalent of the Panama Canal since 1979′s revolution installed the Ayatollah Khomeini and his joyless, sexist, bloodthirsty theocracy.

Eastern Libya now is controlled by regular citizens, freshly armed by soldiers who largely disobeyed orders to shoot their fellow citizens. Strongman Moammar Gadhafi ordered two fighter jets to bomb his constituents, prompting the pilots to defect to Malta.

“I have not yet ordered the use of force,” Gadhafi said Tuesday night. “When I do, everything will burn.”

Time.com reports that Gadhafi has instructed his operatives to sabotage Libya’s oil fields, supposedly to show Libyans that without Gadhafi, things could get really crazy. Libyan production already is down 25 percent, and Italy’s Eni and Spain’s Repsol have suspended operations there.

Read the rest of the Story here:

http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/59902

Face Forward Comments:The domino theory is that when one nation falls others will follow suite. We feared it in Southeast Asia and South America and while it did happen to some extent, America was not really harmed. This time it’s different for a couple of reason. First oil, second religion.

 Oil is so unbelievably interwoven into our lives. Most people only think of the cost of a gallon of gas. But when you consider that pesticides and fertilizers that provide us with cheap food prices, plastics and rubber products as well as medicines will either be gone or become hard to find, we cannot easily escape it grip on us. We get about 30% of our oil from the middle east. Without it $10 a gallon gas will be the least of your worries. Because without oil our economy will collapse.

 The reason that the wars in SE Asia and Latin America eventually ran out of steam is that they were based on an ideology (Communistic / Socialistic style of government) and they were powered by the poor underclass. Once the poor became integrated into the system and got enough food int their stomachs, the revolts largely died. Not so with what is happening in the middle east.

 The middle east is driven by a need to topple anything western in nature (think democracy and capitalism). While the media is presenting it to the world as the poor wanting to be free. However, it is actually an Islamic revolt. Don’t be fooled that the middle east will suddenly blossom and we will see the area full of little Islamic democrices just like Israel. Once the current leadership is removed, you may see elections but it will only be leaders that are approved by the Islamic Mullahs and that follow Sharia law. Once that happens Israel is doomed and the rest of the world could be pushed into WWIII.

President Obama: Federal Government ‘Will Go Bankrupt’ if Health Care Costs Are Not Reigned In

President Obama told ABC News’ Charles Gibson in an interview that if Congress does not pass health care legislation that will bring down costs, the federal government “will go bankrupt.”

The president laid out a dire scenario of what will happen if his health care reform effort fails.

 “If we don’t pass it, here’s the guarantee….your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you,” he said. “Potentially they’re going to drop your coverage, because they just can’t afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year. “

Charlie, Barack and the ABC propaganda machine

The president said that the costs of Medicare and Medicaid are on an “unsustainable” trajectory and if there is no action taken to bring them down, “the federal government will go bankrupt.”

“This actually provides us the best chance of starting to bend the cost curve on the government expenditures in Medicare and Medicaid,” Obama said.

Obama told Gibson that anybody who says they are concerned about the rising deficit or worried about tax increases in the future has to support this health care bill.

“Because if we don’t do this, nobody argues with the fact that health care costs are going to consume the entire federal budget,” the president said.

Obama is facing an increasingly skeptical American public when it comes to his push for health care reform.

For the rest of this scare tactic please go here:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/12/president-obama-federal-government-will-go-bankrupt-if-health-care-costs-are-not-reigned-in.html

Face Forward Comments:

Who the heck is this guy kidding?  The only people that care if America will go bankrupt are the tax payers, the people who built this country.  These individuals (you and I) know that we are the ones that will be forced (are being forced) to bail the country our by the sweat of our brow and our savings accounts. The parasites that have been living off of the fat of the land without contributing could care less. 

I’m not sure which companies Barack has been talking to but I don’t know of any company that got a 25% increase in health insurance cost.  I just checked with our HR department and the most ours have ever gone up in one year is 4.5%.  Just more scare tactics and propaganda from a man who is scared and is using the only skill set he knows.  Like the old saying goes, “If the only tool in your tool kit is a hammer, then everyone looks like a nail”!

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama called for a major new burst of federal spending Tuesday, perhaps $150 billion or more, aiming to jolt the wobbly economy into a stronger recovery and reduce painfully persistent double-digit unemployment.

Despite Republican criticism concerning record federal deficits, Obama said the U.S. has had to “spend our way out of this recession” with so many people out of work but insisted he was still mindful of a need to confront soaring deficits. More than 7 million Americans have lost their jobs since the recession began two years ago, and the jobless rate stands at 10 percent, statistics Obama called “staggering.”

Congressional approval would be required for the new spending.

“We avoided the depression many feared,” Obama said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. But he added, “Our work is far from done.”

It was the third time in a week the president had presided over a high-profile event on jobs, responding to rising pleas in Congress that he spend more time discussing unemployment as midterm election season draws near.

Obama proposed new spending for highway and bridge construction, for small business tax cuts and for retrofitting millions of homes to make them more energy-efficient. He said he wanted to extend economic stimulus programs to keep unemployment insurance from expiring for millions of out-of-work Americans and to help laid-off workers keep their health insurance. He proposed an additional $250 apiece in stimulus spending for seniors and veterans and aid to state and local governments to discourage them from laying off teachers, police officers and firefighters.

On Capitol Hill, estimates of a potential jobs bill range from $75 billion to $150 billion, said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House.

For the rest of this article please go here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091209/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_jobs

Face Forward Comments:

It defies all logic.  Other than creating another slush fund for the Democrats to run their pet projects out of, another “Stimulus Package” makes no sense.  Every lawmaker in America took heat from the “tax payers”over the first package.  It was in large part what kicked off the tea parties.  This is just another example of the government not listening to the people that are paying the bill.

Everyone has heard about the jobs saved or created that weren’t not really there.  One of the more famous ones was the Georgia district that claimed (in support of Obama) that it has saved 9 out of 5 jobs.  I guess they forgot to save the math teacher’s job.  So far, the cost of creating a single job is running about $250,000.

The Obama administration has spent around $217 billion of the stimulus funds.  The Republican party, which opposes another stimulus package, points out some of the wasteful pet project that have been funded by the Democratic controlled administration.  The money is still being accounted for but it looks like pure waste could run as high as 25%.  If you add the mismanagement and overspending on needed projects, the waste could run as high as 50 percent.

Here are just a few the more blatantly stupid projects uncovered

$5 million grant from the Department of Energy to create a geothermal energy system for the EMPTY Oak Ridge City Center shopping mall in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Penn State University received $1.57 million to search for fossils in Argentina

A liberal-leaning theater in Minnesota, In the Heart of the Beast, named after a famous quote by communist leader Che Guevara, received $100,000 for socially conscious puppet shows.

$6 million that went to the New York advertising firm Young & Republican to advertise the transition from analog to digital television. GOP lawmakers criticized the project for only creating three jobs.

$4.7 million that Lockheed Martin received to conduct advance research of supersonic jet travel

$2 million in stimulus funds that went to pay for new pipes to pump recycled water to the Sharp Park Golf Course, which the San Francisco City Council considered closing because of the threat it posed to the California red-legged frog.

$2 million in stimulus money went to build a replica railroad as a tourist attraction in Carson City, Nev.

 A dinner cruise company based in Chicago received nearly $1 million in funds to combat terrorism.

 Half a million dollars went to Arizona State University to study the genetic makeup of ants to determine distinctive roles in ant colonies;

$450,000 went to the University of Arizona to study the division of labor in ant colonies.

The State University of New York at Buffalo won $390,000 to study young adults who drink malt liquor and smoke marijuana.

The National Institutes of Health got $219,000 in funds to study whether female college students are more likely to “hook up” after drinking alcohol.

 The University of Hawaii collected $210,000 to study the learning patterns of honeybees

$700,000 went to help crab fishermen in Oregon recover lost crab pots.

If the government wants to create real jobs in America, it’s simple.  Do whatever it takes to get our manufacturing sector back, let us drill for oil and gas on our own lands, build nuclear plants and stop trying to hand over our sovereignty to the UN through the ridiculous cap and trade taxes that are being proposed.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Suddenly the Federal Reserve is everybody’s punching bag. Strip the Fed of its bank regulation powers, some in Congress are demanding. Get probing audits of its behind-the-scenes operations, others say.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is always fair game for criticism and second-guessing, usually over interest rate actions. But this year the criticism is much broader

Ron Paul

 as Congress responds to widespread public anger that the Fed bailed out Wall Street but not ordinary Americans, and with unemployment in double digits.

Former Fed Chairman William McChesney Martin Jr. famously said that the central bank’s job was to yank away the punchbowl just when everybody is starting to party. And while Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has signaled the Fed will keep interest rates low for now, a round of higher rates inevitably will come.

The Fed finds itself both the punchbowl keeper and the punching bag. Imagine the outcry when it does begin to crank up rates – perhaps just ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Fireworks seem likely at Senate confirmation hearings early next month on President Barack Obama’s nomination of Bernanke to a second four-year term as chairman.

Bernanke, first appointed by President George W. Bush, has worked closely with both Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in confronting the worst financial crisis in decades. Geithner also has gotten his share of congressional wrath, mainly for his administering of the $700 billion bank bailout fund.

“In the past, the Federal Reserve was held in very high esteem,” said Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a libertarian who twice ran quixotic presidential campaigns and remains a darling of skeptics of Washington. Now, it’s “the source of our problem,” suggests Paul, author of the best-seller “End the Fed.”

Usually an outlier, Paul suddenly has found an army of at least 307 House colleagues and 30 senators marching behind his legislation to subject the Fed to intense scrutiny by Congress’ Government Accountability Office. The House Financial Services Committee endorsed Paul’s approach 43-26 last week over objections from its chairman, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

The bill would authorize Congress to audit not only the Fed’s lending programs but its basic decisions to set monetary policy by raising or lowering interest rates. Paul has been introducing a version every year since the early 1980s, but this is the first time it has garnered any serious attention.

For the rest of the article please go here:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091122/D9C4MSNG0.html

Face Forward Comments:

I am not sure, long term, what needs to be done with the Federal Reserve.  They are so large and control so much now, it could take decades to withdraw from their monetary control.  Having said that, I do know one thing.  I would very much like the Fed audited.  There are far too many inside deals going on and far too much of tax payers money being used to cover the mistakes of those banks. 

When the Federal Reserve was created it was for the distinct purpose in 1913 it was for the distinct purpose of helping the US avoid recessions.  If you have followed Glenn Beck at all you know the bill to create The Fed was a late night back-room political deal pushed through by the liberals (progressives) under Woodrow Wilson.  While they claim to be non-partisan and not part of government or private industry, they have always favored liberal monetary policy.

Here is a snippet from Wikipedia on The Federal Reserve:

The main motivation for the third central banking system came from the Panic of 1907, which renewed demands for banking and currency reform. During the last quarter of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century the United States economy went through a series of financial panics. According to proponents of the Federal Reserve System and many economists, the previous national banking system had two main weaknesses: an “inelastic” currency, and a lack of liquidity. The following year Congress enacted the Aldrich-Vreeland Act, which provided for an emergency currency and established the National Monetary Commission to study banking and currency reform. The American public believed that the Federal Reserve System would bring about financial stability, so that a panic like the one in 1907 could never happen again; but just 22 years later in 1929, the stock market crashed again, and the United States entered the worst depression in its history, the Great Depression. Some economists including Milton Friedman, Ben Bernanke, Robert Latham Owen and Murray Rothbard believe that the Federal Reserve System helped to cause the Great Depression.