12/4/09

Nevada News & Views – December 4, 2009

By: Chuck Muth
Nevada News and Views

TODAY’S NN&V HEADLINES

  • Obama’s Afghanistan Speech: Ghastly, Dreary, Dreadful and Morose (Herschel Smith) – The speech was ghastly, dreary, dreadful and morose, full of wishful thinking and blame of others for the situation we now face. Obama seemed to be unable to stay focused on Afghanistan, appeared bored with the subject, and even seemed a bit peeved that he had to deliver such a speech.
  • Heller Calls for Death Penalty for Death Tax (Sean Whaley/Nevada News Bureau) – Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., spoke out today against a measure that would permanently set the estate tax at 45 percent. Under current law the tax, also referred to as the death tax, is set to expire at the end of this year.
  • Gibbons Urges Nevada Delegation to Oppose Obama-Care (Sean Whaley/Nevada News Bureau) – Gov. Jim Gibbons today asked Nevada’s Congressional delegation to oppose the U.S. Senate health care legislation, saying a mandated expansion of the Medicaid program would cost the state $613 million in general fund dollars between 2014 and 2019.
  • Daschle-Slayer Says Lowden Can Beat Reid (Dick Wadhams) – Five years ago, we made history when John Thune defeated Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle in South Dakota.
  • Special Session, Here We Come! (Sean Whaley/Nevada News Bureau) – An official with the Gibbons administration said today there will be a special session of the Legislature by June to repeal a Nevada law that is keeping the state from going after millions of dollars in federal funds to improve schools.

Click here to read these stories at the Nevada News & Views site!

FIRST FRIDAY HAPPY HOUR TONIGHT!

OK, talk about a fun-filled, star-studded, action-packed cast for tonight’s monthly First Friday Happy Hour Brew-ha-ha & Christmas Party.

Not only will we have Nevada’s only conservative member of Congress not under investigation, Rep. Dean Heller.

Not only will we have former Gov. Kenny Guinn and former First Lady Dema Guinn.

Not only will we have Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle all the way down from Reno.

An not ony will we have the United States Marines collecting unwrapped new toys for their annual Toys for Tots campaign.

But I was just informed yesterday that Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Amodei will also be “in the house” all the way from the state capital (which is Carson City, by the way, for you Clark County publik skool kidz).

SURVEY SAYS!

Would you like to see Newt Gingrich’s “Real Jobs Summit” come to Las Vegas?

  • Yes
  • No

To cast your vote in today’s online survey, click here!

MUTHS TRUTHS

Remember those Nike “I’m Tiger Woods” commercials? If not, check it out HERE

And for the record, Nike swears there are no plans to update the commercial featuring John Ensign, Mark Sanford, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Bill Clinton, James McGreevey, Gavin Newsome and Eliot Spitzer.

OTHER NEWS & VIEWS

Despite a recent bombing run of glowing, greatest-thing-since-sliced-bread television, radio, newspaper and direct mail ads on behalf of embattled U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, only 38 percent of Nevadans like the guy according to a new poll today.

Meanwhile, the GOP race for the right to challenge Reid next November shows Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian running neck-and-neck in the lead and Sharron Angle within closing distance. Everyone else is way back in the pack.

Read all about it HERE

This is the first major poll on this race since Lowden got in. That she and Tark are running neck-and-neck likely means the two are going to have to finally start campaigning against each other for the GOP nomination and worry more about Harry after the primary.

Don’t get me wrong: No one will ever stop beating up on Reid in this race, but you don’t go to the big dance by winning opinion polls. You go to the big dance by winning the primary. And that race is about to heat up considerably. Let the games begin!

P.S. The news story doesn’t report it, but I understand that GOP senatorial candidate Mike Wiley is actually leading in the new poll in Nevada’s 32nd, 22nd, 9th and 25th congressional districts.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“We know that since Harry Reid has become the Senate Majority Leader, our state has lost over 64,000 jobs and in the Las Vegas metropolitan area the unemployment rate has gone from 4.3 to over 13 percent. Rather than working towards creating jobs, Reid has been fixated on his government-run health care that according to the CBO will raise premiums on hard-working families in Nevada by over $1,100. Next November, Nevadans will finally have the chance and an important opportunity to replace Senator Reid with a senator who is committed to putting Nevada back on track.” – Nevada Republican Party Chairman Chris Comfort

HELP WANTED

Freelance “Stringers” – Volunteers wanted to write interesting op-eds or engage in targeted “citizen journalism” around the state. If you have a gift for the written word and an interest in government and/or politics, please contact Nevada News Bureau editor Elizabeth Crum at [email protected]

12/4/09

Links to Visit – 12/04/09

Michelle Malkin – Explosive: The not-safe-for-school reading list of the safe schools czar; Plus: GLSEN sponsors gay Santa play

Gateway Pundit – Breaking: Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Is Promoting Child Porn in the Classroom– Kevin Jennings and the GLSEN Reading List

Gateway Pundit – Breaking: Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Is Promoting Porn in the Classroom– Kevin Jennings and the GLSEN Reading List (Part II)

Bookworm Room – Reason to be grateful Obama appointed gay porn-purveyor Jennings as Safe Schools Czar

The Radio Patriot – NORMA GABLER WOULD HAVE HAD A STROKE

Friends of Mark Fuhrman – Breaking: Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Is Promoting Child Porn in the Classroom

Gates of Vienna – Surviving the Coming Crash

Michelle Malkin – The War on Cops

SFGate – Prop. 8 backers likely to win disclosure fight

WorldNetDaily – U.N. stands on plan to shut down reporters – Controversial ‘global warming’ Copenhagen conference looms

Family Security Matters – Exclusive: Soldiers of Allah – Preying on Innocent Targets in Their Quest for Jihad

Don Surber – We’re here, we’re for her, get used to it

Bookworm Room – Something’s missing this season

Gateway Pundit – Democrats Vote to Cut Half a Trillion Dollars From Medicare

Bookworm Room – When it comes to education, liberals continue to be invested in affirmative action *UPDATED*

Atlas Shrugs – ISNA Infiltration: “This is criminal and the Ft. Hood base commander should be fired right now.”

Atlas Shrugs – 911 Memorial in Israel

Atlas Shrugs – Bite Me Again!

The Radio Patriot – THE LAMESTREAM MEDIA IS CHEWING TOWELS

The Radio Patriot – SARAH, SARAH PALIN, QUEEN OF THE WILD FRONTIER!

The Radio Patriot – OBAMA “THE DECIDER” VOTES “PRESENT”. AGAIN.

Brutally Honest – A letter to the editor

Michelle Malkin – Next use for TARP: Government union slush fund

Breitbart – New Black Panther leader defends attorney general

Duluth News Tribune – Man arrested for trespassing on own property

Fox News – Vets Group Targets Fake Heroes

Fox News – 4 Charged With Helping Washington Man Kill 4 Officers

Fox News – Hundreds Evacuated From N.Y. Airport After Wired Device Found on Delta Plane

12/4/09

Financial News Update – 12/04/09

Obama likely to endorse using bailout funds to create jobs, Gibbs says

Wow – Back to 10%?

Rogers: Time to Dump the Flawed Dollar

Hussman: 80% Chance of Big Market Crash

Roubini: Dubai Shows How Safety Nets Fail

The Job Summit Theatricale

Senate health bill inches forward

Moderates seek greater health care cost controls

Big Costs Are Hurdle to Climate Pact

The Welfare State and Military Power

Obama’s Failed Stimulus in Pictures: Jobs Gap Grows to 7.6 Million

The November Jobs Report: Lack of Job Creation Making Jobs Difficult to Find

The New Squeeze on Private Pregnancy Care

TARP: Will This Crony Capitalist Slush Fund Ever Die?

Obamacare in the Senate: First Week Amendments

House Votes to Raise Death Tax

Where Are the Jobs? In Washington of Course

Morning Bell: The Definition of Economic Insanity

A Cool Trillion Later– Now Obama Tells Us Government Spending Is Not the Answer

Obama Unemployment Rate Remains in Double Digits — 10.0%

Opening of world’s tallest tower marks end of Dubai era

30% El Centro holds position for highest jobless rate

After Taking U.S. Bailout, CHRYSLER Hires Italian Ad Agency

Day After Announcing NBC Merger, COMCAST Head Endorse Obamacare

Schwarzenegger unveils dramatic climate change map which shows flooded San Francisco of the future

10% Jobless — And Obama Says That’s the Good News

Obama, Lawmakers Eye Bailout Fund for Jobs Bill

Bernanke Feels Bailout Bite-Back

GM, Chinese Partner to Sell Vehicles in India

SurvivalBlog:

Shadow Inventory in 10 Prime Southern California Cities. How Pent up Inventory and Option ARMs are the new Front for the California Housing Market.

FDIC Deposit fund had negative $8.2B balance in Third Quarter

More Evidence Gold is Being Hoarded as Comex Fulfills Gold Contracts with Paper

Where Dubai Leads, Britain Could Soon Follow

Lloyds To Suffer Further Job Losses

Fears Of Credit Card Crisis As Bank Write-Offs Double

Peter Schiff: Bull Market in Gold or BS?

Warning on US Muni Market Threat

Britain Faces Return to Victorian Levels of Poverty

12/4/09

America’s Great Leap Forward

By: Nancy Morgan
Right Bias

Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

When Barack Obama was campaigning for president in 2007, his backers frequently compared him to former president John F. Kennedy. After a year in office, however, President Obama’s words and actions align more closely with China’s despotic Chairman Mao than with JFK’s.

When Mao Tse Tung conquered China in 1949, his secret goal was to dominate the world. When Obama was elected President, many started referring to him as President of the World. Both Obama and Mao had carte blanche to set out a path of radical change.

As part of his strategy, Mao informed his top echelon, “There has to be a personality cult…it is absolutely necessary.”* With the aid of the state media, Mao crafted an iconic image of himself as the savior of the common man. Propoganda was everywhere – including the fields where workers could listen to messages from Mao as they worked. Sound familiar?

In 1958, Mao kicked off what he called The Great Leap Forward, an extraordinarily creative intervention in China’s economic development. Mao planned to abolish wages and put society on a non-cash basis. He then set about abolishing private property.

The ownership of tools, animals, and other means of production were taken over by the state – in the name of the people. Just as the ownership of the auto, banking and insurance industries of today have been taken over by our government.

Chairman Mao, in the name of the people, also took over China’s health care. The ‘state’ determined who would receive this essential service. The elderly were moved into “houses of happiness” so that they could be looked after – by the state. Much like the proposed government takeover of America’s health care today.

Chairman Mao’s government also plunged the country into a deep debt by drastically increasing spending on the development of heavy industry. But the state-sponsored industry that developed was not only non-productive, it ended up wasting money and resources on a massive scale without producing anything of value. Much like the bloated government behemoth Obama’s policies are producing today.

Mao, through a cult of personality and firm control of the levers of government, had the ability to impose his own version of reality on China. Just as Obama has today.

Mao believed that collectivizing agriculture would lead to a new ‘utopia.’ Obama’s campaign promise of ‘equality’ for all Americans is the modern vision of Mao’s utopia. Which, by the way, not only failed, but failed spectacularly.

One year after Mao launched China’s Great Leap Forward, things in China started to go wrong. Politics increasingly took precedence over commonsense. Mao’s utopian dream turned into a nightmare as the central leadership grew increasingly out of touch with reality.

By the spring of 1959, in theory China was awash in grain. In reality, it was not. Rural communal mess halls that had been handing out free food, ran out of food. China’s grain reserves were exhausted and the famine began.

Scholars have estimated that somewhere between 16.5 million and 40 million people died before Mao’s experiment came to an end in 1961, making the Great Leap famine the largest in world history. Even Mao himself was forced to acknowledge that he had been wrong. Oops.

By late 1960, private ownership of land was reinstated and a modicum of capitalism was re-introduced. Peasants were finally given incentives to produce as much spare food as was possible by allowing them to sell their excess on the open market. Socialism had failed, yet again.

Chairman Mao never had to pay the price for his failed social engineering. The Chinese people paid it for him. Leaving Mao free to regroup, repair his image, and emerge back on the national scene in 1966 with yet another bold plan. The cultural revolution – which resulted in yet another failed social experiment and untold human suffering. The beat goes on.

The similarities between Chairman Mao and President Obama are too numerous to ignore. Like Obama, Mao’s philosophy of how to ‘change’ China was clear from the outset. “…the country must be…destroyed and then reformed.” “People like me long for the destruction because when the old universe is destroyed, a new universe will be formed. Isn’t that better?” Quick – who said that? Mao, or Obama’s buddy Bill Ayers? Answer: Both.

All of Obama’s actions as president to date reflect the same mindset – the destruction of traditional values, the unwillingness to learn from history, the utter reliance on theory instead of reality. And the belief that man takes precedence over God and thus has the ability to shape reality according to man’s whim.

Hubris and a charismatic personality allowed both Mao and Obama the freedom to implement costly social and economic ‘change.’ Change which is not change at all, but another futile attempt to revive the failed model of socialism.

Like Mao, Obama will most likely never be held to account when the socialist, big government policies he has championed fail. And fail they must. History shows us that. The American people will, once again, be forced to pay the very real price for Obama’s naive attempt to redefine reality to his own specifications.

* Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday

Nancy Morgan is a columnist and news editor for RightBias.com.
She lives in South Carolina.