Bill Whittle's wonderful web of trust.

The Web Of Trust

By Bill Whittle, "Silent America"

I like to fly. Lots of reasons, but here’s one of the best: there is a moment during an instrument departure when – just for an instant – your head breaks out of the clouds but your body still feels engulfed in the mist. For those amazing few seconds you have a real, stationary frame of reference, and the sensation of brightening whiteness, followed by that incredible rush of speed as you punch through the top of the cloud deck, and the cotton turns to a blur as it roars past your ears…well, that’s worth the work it takes to do such things.

On the last day before my Instrument checkride, I departed from Santa Monica airport with my flight instructor to my right and my gorgeous pilot girlfriend in the back seat. We were given a clearance to climb to 4,000 ft. out to an intersection called SADDE. I expected we’d pop right out of the thin marine layer in a few seconds, as we usually did. But nooooo. This was several thousand feet thick – and dense. I can tell you in all honesty we could not see the wing tips ten feet away. It’s like the windows were painted white. Flying on instruments is just like regular flying, only you can’t see anything.

So barreling through the air at about 180 mph, I began my right turn towards SADDE. A glance down at the Turn Coordinator, a nice standard rate turn to the right, airspeed’s good, the engine seems happy…and then I notice that the Attitude Indicator – also known as an Artificial Horizon and my main view of the world outside – is showing me in a turn to the left, and increasing – fast.

Turn Coordinator showing right turn…Artificial Horizon showing one to the left. And in that instant, I felt something grab me by the toes. It was the sharp, tearing claws of panic, working their way into my shoes. I’ve had two engine failures in my flying career, and both of them were immediately followed by this same sick feeling. That fear has to be stepped on right now. If you start thinking about the hundreds of JFK Juniors I’ve read about and all the airplane wreckage scraped off mountainsides like the one I was approaching, then you are already most of the way to being dead.

Craig, we got a problem here. That was what I said, if in a vocal pitch that only dogs and flight instructors could hear. The turn coordinator and the AI are telling me different things!

He turns and looks at me calmly. Bummer!, he says casually, showing why the vast majority of CFI’s are not killed in training accidents but rather choked to death, found with finger-shaped bruises to the left side of the neck.

Then he gave me the best piece of advice I have ever received.

Kick its ass, he said. And that was it.

But that was all I needed to hear. God damn right! I’ll kick its ass!

That’s a decision you make…a decision to not be ruled by fear and panic. It is a decision to take all of those hard-wired instincts that have brought us so far – the fear of falling, the rising desire to just call for help then curl up in a ball – and put them away. Forget what the seat of your pants is telling you: that’s an express elevator down to an NTSC report with your name on it. The Attitude Indicator shows a turn to the left. Turn coordinator shows a turn to the right. But! Both the heading indicator and the whiskey compass also show a turn to the right. The A.I. – my only intuitive look at the world outside – is lying to me. I force myself to realize it is outvoted. We’re not turning left, like the little airplane wings on the little horizon in the little picture. We’re turning right.

This is the essence of training: the ability to do the right thing, not the instinctive thing. It is the voluntary placement of the human above the animal, the cerebral cortex above our reptile brain, which can be very LOUD in times like these. It is, in the end, a call to trust: trust your instruments, trust your airplane, trust your training and ultimately to trust yourself. This willing shift, this prying the claws of emotion from the inner voice of reason… this is the very essence of civilization. Trust what thousands of people have literally given their lives to teach us, even if it goes against instinct, survival and fear. Trust... It’s what makes the whole thing work.

Meanwhile, I need to notify Air Traffic Control that we’ve got a problem. Socal approach, Experimental One Echo Foxtrot has a failed attitude indicator.
One Echo Foxtrot, roger. Do you wish to continue the approach?

No sir. What I’d really like is for someone to get a really big f***ing ladder and get us out of this mess.

Affirmative, One Echo Foxtrot will continue inbound on the ILS to Burbank.
One Echo Foxtrot, roger.

It’s much, much later that I wonder how and why the human animal – which when you get right down to it should really only need enough brainpower to make a sharp stick to throw at a gazelle – has enough reserve neuron connections to build a civilization so complex that a hairless ape like myself can chase a set of white needles across a four-inch instrument, while hurtling blind a mile up in the air at 150 knots without leaving nail and bite marks on the plexiglass. But, somehow, that’s what I did.

A few minutes later, I could see a patch of ground directly below, and then, after a little more needlework, we popped out beneath the layer. There, dead ahead, were the flashing approach strobes…Burbank Airport, right where those damn little white needles said it would be. Truth to tell, I was actually slightly to the left of the runway centerline, and Craig, my mute flight instructor in the seat next to me, was slightly to the right of it. That is a hell of a feeling, coming home to civilization, to an airport beacon right where it was supposed to be, to leave death up in the grey soup just this once with a weird, indescribable, clearly paradoxical mixture of burning pride and deep humility.

How many people were there with me that day? Not just the obvious two – Dana and Craig, whose support kept my monkey brain in the back of my head to return to throw pooh another day. How many guys were watching me on radar, keeping me separated from far, far better men and women who do this in their sleep up there? How many people did it take to make the instruments, to mine the silica for the glass, to tap the rubber for the wires? Who laid the asphalt on the runways, who built the filaments in the approach strobes, and who attached the ceramic tips to my spark plugs? And how many millions of other unseen connections had to be made to allow me to do, routinely, and on a middle-class salary, what billions of dead men and women would have given a lifetime to taste – just once. In those few minutes I just told you of, I stood on the shoulders of millions of my brothers and sisters, not the least of which were two sons of a preacher from Dayton, Ohio – now long dead but with me in spirit every day. I was atop a pyramid of dedication, hard work, ingenuity and progress, following rules written in the blood of the stupid and the brave and the unlucky.

I had tossed myself a mile into the air and landed safe in this Web of Trust.

Get it Here:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Silent+America&x=14&y=15

The cure for fear...

You Have To Get Close To the Knife
By Froggy

*I FOUND IT! Please read the post above this one that Bill Whittle wrote; he was my inspiration for this piece. Though I can't hope to echo his fine words, I have attempted the same truth, in my small way. 

After reading Bill Whittle's wonderful essay on trust, when he was learning to fly and his engine stalled out, I couldn't imagine having a moment of panic and life-threatening fear like that. However, in telling my sister about it, and reading his experience to her, I realized that that was not so; I HAD had a moment of tremendous fear like that--and every word Bill wrote about fear is true. You have to kick it's ass.

In about 1988, I was working in a group home with autistic and emotionally disturbed teenagers. This was a group that acted out--and on a daily basis. We governed and taught the boys using principle of behavior modification/positive reinforcement and extinguishing negative behaviors.

There was a 14 year old boy named Arlen. I did not know him well. He was as tall as I was--and about as big--and he was, by turns, slick, manipulative, needy and confused. Unstructured Sunday afternoon was a popular time for cooking up some nonsense. Favorite activities included locking the blind kid in the closet, swiping candy from the local 7-11, and sneaking out to diners wherein they'd order a meal, eat it, and then play the-poor-retarded-kid-didn't-realize-he-had-to-pay-for it (and didn't bring any money) routine. It didn't usually get any worse than that, maybe some food or dishes thrown. We occasionally got bitten, hit, or scratched.

But Arlen was a step or two smarter than most of the others; he'd been in the system. One such Sunday he and his roommate, Jerry, thought they'd cook up something. I didn't know what it was but, I'd worked there for a coupla years and had good instincts. I called for a time out; Jerry and Arlen needed to spend some time apart. I sent Arlen to the livingroom to watch basketball with everyone else, and sent Jerry upstairs to find something to do. I sat on the stairs to prevent a regroup by the two, for which Arlen angrily nagged.

Instead of going to the livingroom, however, Arlen strolled into the kitchen and, in two seconds flat grabbed a 14 inch butcher knife. And, in 2 seconds flat, I had instrument failure at 30,000 ft. Such fast fear steals every breath you've ever had (it's so palpable, I can feel it to this day in the retelling.) But Bill's right; you not only have to kick it's ass--you have to take the fear completely outside of yourself and not even look at it. (You sure as hell can't think about it. If Bill couldn't think of JFK Jr., I couldn't think of Freddie Krueger.)

In that maybe 2 seconds that I came off the stairs and sprinted into the kitchen, Arlen raised the knife over my head to slash at my face. I knew I couldn't let him out of the kitchen. The gal I worked with said "Come on Donal, we can't handle this"--and she ran off. I was all that stood between that boy and the 6 other boys. I was all that stood between Arlen and himself. I knew whatever I did that day would be a large part of Arlen's future; it might be a large part of mine.

In that two seconds I had, fighting with my older brother growing up taught me that I had to move in. I had to get close to him. It's one thing to be able to move a butcher knife 3 inches--it's quite another thing to have the full swing of your arm behind it, and the weight of a deliberate move. I had to get close to the knife.

As he slashed towards me, I grabbed this arm on the downswing before it got to me those 4-5 times. I jammed his body into a niche between the stove and refrigerator. I pinned the knife to his side with the weight of his body where he could not swing it. We stayed that way for the full 40 minutes it took for my supervisor to arrive. She came and we stayed pinned for another 20 minutes until an hour of unmoving boredom--and the prospect of it's continuation into the night--with the suggestion he talk about what was bothering him rather than use the cutlery to express himself, made him drop the knife at my feet.

I said "you want a bottle of pop, hon?" We sat at the table to talk. And that was it.

And it is about trust. I had to put my fear completely away, and trust I knew what was going on, trust I could handle it--and by myself. I had to trust my instincts enough to not let him out of the kitchen, trust that perhaps he was not a slasher as much as simply acting out, trust that moving in close was the right thing to do, trust that his--hopefully--small experience with such a large weapon would give me the instant or two I needed before he could summon a short swift jab or hold the knife so that I might be impaled.

I had the moment between seeing the knife in his hand and when I came off the stairs in which to make up my mind; I was already at a safe distance. I had a second to decide if I fought him now--or if I faced a worse fight later--perhaps with injuries, or even a hostage or the police. How I handled it would determine if it happened again.

It never did.

The crescent knife of Islam is at America's throat. How we handle it will determine if it keeps happening. Rather than run from it, thinking we can't handle it, with nancy-boy, prettied up consensus-saying-nothing-study-group reports disguising our gutlessness, instead, we have to get close to the knife.

The eternal choice.

The Dilemma

By Froggy

Today, I finally got it about the Jews. My mental disconnect ended and I realized their eternal dilemma. I mean, these people have been beset with various nations and groups trying to assassinate them for centuries. And, now, they are being pushed to the edge of having to guard their own survival (no less because no one else will).

However, they do not want to be genocidal themselves. It's abhorrent to them; they are too moral a people. It's not just a matter of it having been done continually to them.

I finally understand because I am at the point where I am done. My tolerance is gone. I despise the muslims and wish they were removed from the face of the earth--and I am so far gone it is only in some moments that I feel badly about this. I can just imagine how the Israelis feel. Living next door to people who want nothing more than your death, ones who call you apes and pigs. Living down the street from an Iranian madman who says he wants nuclear bombs with which to do it with even more dispatch.

Then, the Jews, thinking of Hitler--and having him forever imprinted on their collective memory and wanting SO badly to never be equated with him--and, yet, having to make sure they endure and that maybe they cannot do that without taking out a large swath. That conundrum is surely the definition of hell: to be genocidal or exterminated yourself.

You see, I've never quite understood why Israel has not done more to defend itself (though I do understand the United States has had a hand in this, wanting 'stability' in the middle east...) Instead, I think this forever-dilemma has more to do with it, sometimes.

Fortunately, Ahmadinejad may make the question moot (and the mullahs, understanding these issues more closely, might be what is making him unchampioned in Iran). He is playing a fools game because, of all the people on earth that would be willing to believe a people are really trying to kill them, it would be the Jews. Ahmadinejad does not understand this; they are quite serious, and one bad move on his part will give them the justification they currently may not feel they have.

They've had it for years.

Too many of both.

Male Rape
 
By Susan Estrich
 
"None," the police officer in charge reported to my student. That was the answer to how many instances of rape of males and boys had been reported in the city (it happened to be Boston, where I was teaching at the time) in the previous year.

We need more men on our team. We need to bring male rape into the 21st century. None was never the true answer. It certainly isn't today. What none means is that serious criminals are getting away with rape, and boys and men are suffering the stigma of shame along with the pain and anguish of brutalization. And they still are...
 
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/12/20/111011.shtml

More Vicious Than Rape

http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2006/11/congos_wounds_o.php

(Ribbet!)

I don't exactly consider myself a feminist, but this is an issue about which I can easily get enraged. The above-mentioned article talks about male rape (and I have included the link to Susan Estrich's article because I printed some lines from it.)

However, the more relevant article is the one below it titled "More Vicious Than Rape". Yes, it's gawdawful. However, it's important that you read it because it provides an important perspective. Women all over the world are being used for terrible sexual purposes.

Either as weapons in war, or by having their genitals scraped away with broken glass or rusty metal--with no anesthesia--by the muslims (when they are not having acid thrown in their faces, or burned in suttee, or as victims of an 'honor killing'--or just a thrown away fetus because the family prefers boys), woman are treated like garbage all over the world. This must be addressed before we even get to the subject of male rape.

Not only are the numbers so entirely disproportionate, but the size and strength differential of men vs. women is enormous. In so many societies, woman also have no social power with which to deal with this--many times not even literacy. At least, with a man--where so many these rapes happen to men who have landed in prison--a relatively fair fight could be had, one-on-one.

With woman, she often must face a foe who weighs a hundred pounds more than she does and is much stronger--someone who has the power of the courts on his side. Men that rape women are deliberately picking on someone weaker and smaller than themselves--and it's time someone got serious about it.

And who is it that must get serious about it? It's the MEN. I have never heard a man speak out against the rape of women. Never.

In all my 53 years, never have I heard one man bring it up. Most especially have I never heard a man speak out against it at an all-male gathering. In every single class I had in school, where the subject of violence against women was brought up, there was always a guy who jumped up--and before a single sentence could be uttered on our behalf--he'd say "well, um, well um, what about women who hit men, huh, huhh?" And then everyone would groan and the round-robin would start and the subject would be tabled--as if what he said evened things out and made them commensurate.

NOT ONE MAN EVER STOOD UP AND SAID "Raping women is wrong, it's weak, and I deplore it--and I plan to do something about it."

Even all the fine men I know on the Internet--and I know some very good ones--have never said it, either. The subject hasn't always come up, but with the spate of continual 'honor' killings, rapes, and murders of the women who are accosted by muslims, or in the Congo, or who walk around Europe uncovered, there has been plenty of opportunity for them to comment.

It is men that have the power--and men who listen to other men. Just like bull elephants are needed to keep the younger males elephants in line, it's time MEN spoke out against the rape and sexual abuse of women to other men; that may give us gals a little breathing room in which to consider how they'd feel if it happened to them.

Americans will keep throwing out incumbents until someone gets it right...

It’s All Breaking Bad For Obama

By Margaret Wente 

Barack Obama should try to enjoy his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard for as long as possible. A swaggering governor from Texas (yes, another one) is about to eat his lunch.

Until this week, next year’s election was still his to lose.

The Republicans couldn’t field a decent candidate. Michele Bachmann is too crazy. Sarah Palin has peaked. Mitt Romney, the only one who seems even slightly qualified, is as electrifying as a slab of tofu. Everyone agrees that Mr. Obama is a major disappointment. But at least he’s trying hard, and he’s likeable

Rick Perry is likeable, too. The handsome three-term governor (they call him Governor Goodhair) has swiped Mr. Obama’s rhetoric of hope. As Mr. Obama discussed the finer points of cattle manure with Midwestern farmers this week, Mr. Perry announced his run for the presidency and released a devastating campaign ad. Of all the jobs created lately in the U.S., 40 per cent of them are in Texas. On top of that, the guy looks fabulous in cowboy chaps.

The Perry-Obama race (if it turns out that way) would be a contest between two starkly different visions of how to save America. The Perry vision is to unleash the forces of private enterprise through low taxes, less regulation and dramatically smaller government. “I’ll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can,” he vows. The Obama vision (which he plans to reveal in September, as soon as his advisers can think one up) probably will involve big-government job-creation schemes dreamed up by a bunch of wise people in Washington.

Mr. Perry “occupies the cultural and intellectually empty heartland of the Republican Party,” wrote Richard Cohen, a liberal pundit, in The Washington Post. “He vows to diminish Washington’s influence – a conservative applause line but a moronic policy.”

Moronic or not, it’s a message that resonates across America. Most Americans have lost their trust in the folks in Washington. Eighty-five per cent of them think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-three per cent doubt the government can solve their economic problems – up from 41 per cent a decade ago. In their view, it’s the folks in Washington (and their reckless buddies on Wall Street) who’ve wrecked the country.

This isn’t just a Tea Party sentiment. It’s the most important theme in American politics today, and it’s a major reason why Mr. Obama got elected in the first place. It’s also the reason why he’s likely to get unelected next time. Americans will keep throwing out incumbents until someone gets it right...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/its-all-breaking-bad-for-obama/article2135672/

Prudence: the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason...

See all of Michael Ramirez's wonderful cartoons!

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/toons/ramirez/ramirez.php3

An action by the Navy is virtually without precedent.

Did Kerry's Swift Boat Hatchet Man Fake His Own Silver Star?

 

By Scott Swett


Last August, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus revoked a Silver Star medal formerly held by retired Navy Captain Wade R. Sanders.  In a short, vague memorandum to the Chief of Naval Personnel, Mabus cited "subsequently determined facts and evidence surrounding both the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself" as the reason.  Such an action by the Navy is virtually without precedent.

(snip)


Kerry's most virulent supporter

Wade Sanders' name will be familiar to those who recall the political battles between John Kerry and the veterans who opposed him in 2004.  A key member of Kerry's "Band of Brothers," Sanders helped introduce his long-time friend at the Democratic National Convention.  The two men had trained together at Naval Base Coronado nearly 40 years earlier, before deploying to Vietnam to serve as Navy Swift boat officers.   Like Kerry, Sanders found time to do extensive filming in Vietnam, accumulating footage later used in Kerry's campaign film "Going Upriver."   Among Kerry's handful of highly-publicized veteran supporters, Sanders was probably the most visible -- and the most virulent.

Most of Sanders' efforts targeted the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group formed by Navy veterans who had known Kerry in Vietnam and doubted his fitness to serve as Commander-in-Chief.  While the group was being organized, Sanders was already calling and firing off messages to hundreds of former sailors, pressuring them not to sign up. 

In one email, Sanders slandered the anti-Kerry veterans as "bitter drunks."  In another, he ridiculed disabled veteran Joe Ponder as a "whining baby."  Ponder had become emotional at the initial Swift Vet press conference as he recalled his wife and daughters asking if he had participated in the "atrocities" described in Kerry's campaign biography.

(snip)


Honor, integrity and sound judgment

In 2009, Wade Sanders was convicted on felony charges of possessing child pornography and sentenced to 37 months in prison, considerably less than the 63-month term Federal prosecutors had requested.  Sanders' military record and a letter of support from John Kerry may have been factors in the reduced sentence.  A San Diego news editor also wrote a letter, but later told the court that the copy Sanders submitted had been modified.

Even before the trial ended, the Navy was looking into Sanders' much ballyhooed Silver Star, which first surfaced in the early 1990's, more than 20 years after he left Vietnam. During the months that followed, Sanders relentlessly denounced Kerry's opponents as liars and Bush shills, while reviling Swift Vet spokesman John O'Neill as a student of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.  [My co-author and I would later receive the Goebbels treatment as well, when Sanders reviewed our book on the 2004 election.]

Sanders' fellow Navy veterans weren't the only targets of his venom.  He repeatedly called President Bush and others "chicken hawks" -- a vicious term used to smear non-military supporters of a war by associating them with child molesters.  He also offered the bizarre suggestion that if Kerry lost, it would mean the end of democracy in America.

After the election, Sanders continued his attacks.  He threatened to sue the non-partisan Swift Boat Sailors Association because several of its leaders had joined the Swift Vets.  In 2007, he called the latter group a "distasteful smear machine," adding, "Those of us who are real swift boaters know something about judgment and responsibility for our decisions."  He also boasted to the Boston Herald, "Yes, I am a member of Kerry's ready reserve of Swift Boat vets and unlike those who served with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and their ilk, I serve with honor, integrity and exercise sound judgment."


Read the whole disgraceful story here:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/did_kerrys_swift_boat_hatchet_man_fake_his_own_silver_star.html

No intelligent American president would do the things Obama has done.

The Anti-American President

By Boyd Richard Boyd

Obviously something is rotten on Pennsylvania Avenue; no intelligent American president would do the things Obama has done.  There has been talk of his inexperience,  incompetence, or just plain stupidity to explain his Bizarro-administration.  However, Obama is not incompetent; he is an intelligent anti-American president.  Obama is not a failure at his job -- his job is the failure of our country.

Liberty-minded folk have several reasons why we assume another person is incompetent rather than malicious.  One reason is our belief that a person is "innocent until proven guilty"; another is the natural presumption others are similar to ourselves.  Unfortunately, these ideas have been coupled with a pair of dangerously pragmatic moral equivalencies foisted upon us all: "Who am I to judge?" and "They couldn't possibly mean that."  As long as there is any possibility that Obama is just in over his head and doesn't mean what he says and does, many will excuse him on those grounds.

Every American must judge Obama and his ideas and understand he does mean what he says, and realize there is no excuse, save one -- Barack Obama is an anti-American in thought and deed.

Obama gets dreams from his socialist father.  His mother was a fellow traveler.  Obama lived in anti-American Indonesia as a child.  Later, granddad decided Obama needed a Communist mentor.  O got into Harvard on the recommendation of anti-Semitic Khalid al Mansour, an adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.  In college O chose his friends carefully -- "the more politically active black students, foreign students, Chicanos, Marxist professors and structural feminists."  As a professor he taught Marxist Saul Alinsky tactics, and as a constitutional scholar he believed that there are fundamental flaws in the Constitution, such as restraint on governmental power.  As a community organizer and counsel he pushed sub-prime mortgages which helped buckle our economy.

He's a trench-mate with voter-fraudsters ACORN and quasi-commie SEIU.  He had house parties and sat on boards with an unrepentant, revolutionary communist, who probably ghostwrote one of O's autobiographies.  He attended the social-justice church of Jeremiah Wright, where he was preached at on collective salvation and black liberation.  Illinois state senator and communism-lover Alice Palmer, picked O as her chief of staff.   As a U.S. senator, he had the most leftist voting record.  His wife's only source of American pride came in her 40s as a result of O's own success.  He was endorsed by the Communist Party in 2004, and in 2008 Obama got CPUSA's endorsement again, basically running on the CPUSA platform.  (And yes, CPUSA have endorsed him again for 2012!)

And this was before the campaign and presidency.  Does his bio reflect incompetence or something more sinister?  Does his journey sound like one of an all-American or an anti-American?

[You can read] his own words, during the campaign:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/the_anti-american_president.html

"A triple win," is how Biden characterized it.

Seattle's 'Green Jobs' Program a Bust

By Vanessa Ho, Seattlepi.com Published: Aug 16, 2011

Last year, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city had won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization. The unglamorous work of insulating crawl spaces and attics had emerged as a silver bullet in a bleak economy – able to create jobs and shrink carbon footprint – and the announcement came with great fanfare.

McGinn had joined Vice President Joe Biden in the White House to make it. It came on the eve of Earth Day. It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods.

But more than a year later, Seattle's numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program. Many of the jobs are administrative, and not the entry-level pathways once dreamed of for low-income workers. Some people wonder if the original goals are now achievable.

"The jobs haven't surfaced yet," said Michael Woo, director of Got Green, a Seattle community organizing group focused on the environment and social justice.

"It's been a very slow and tedious process. It's almost painful, the number of meetings people have gone to. Those are the people who got jobs. There's been no real investment for the broader public."

(snip)

Half the funds are reserved for financing and engaging homeowners in Central and Southeast Seattle, a historically underserved area. Most of the jobs are expected to come from this sector.

"A triple win," is how Biden characterized it.

By the time Seattle won the award, homeowners were battered by unemployment and foreclosures. The long-term benefits of energy upgrades lacked the tangible punch of a new countertop. And the high number of unemployed construction workers edged out new weatherization installers for the paltry number of jobs.

"Really, we couldn't have rolled out this program at a worse time," said Greenwich, who had helped write the city's grant proposal.

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/127844048.html

Phooey: a heart like His

Dear Phooey,

You do, indeed, have a heart like His. You say you're not a leader, but a follower... However, it is G*d's true heart that reigns in heaven. Yours is so large and full of exactly the kind of love G*d best put on the Earth that you can't help but be that bright shining presence that lights all here.

You fill my days with love and G*d's soul and every good thing He meant for us. I love you and I'm terribly concerned about you, and I pray for you and Ms. Page everyday and every night. Come back to us whole and--if not--I will be with you, hand-in-hand, every single day--and beyond...

Love, Froggy

My prayers for you.

To the Posters at the Connection:

I was mailed the brouhaha over on the Faith wall on Lucianne.com about me--and it was just as I supposed it would be--and by the usual people. People who write cruel things about others just to hurt them, just to dispense harm to them, have problems of their own, obviously un-addressed. People who attempt to 'diagnose' someone else--absent the necessary educational requirements--are only attempting to place themselves in a higher--more righteous plane--in order to feel better about themselves and think themselves  superior.

I don't feel superior to others. I know the things that make me very human; I apologize daily and ask G*d for forgiveness and help. I ask that G*d lay hands of kindness all over my world and change bitterness and partisanship into fellowship and love. I especially ask those who wished to hurt me so badly to ask themselves sincerely if that's the kind of person that they truly want to be. If their words made them feel good about themselves, if they felt joy in what they said and what they did, then I accept that.

I don't want to be like that. I ask that G*d grant you peace and a loving heart. I'll pray for you and I hope, in turn, that one day you'll pray at all--and if not for me, then for someone else--anyone--to whom you can give your understanding.

*IMPORTANT READ-Leftist blueprint for our lives: Agenda 21

UN’s Agenda 21 Forcing Society Back to the Ghetto

By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh

I came across an article from Baton Rouge, LA, with a sugary title like an elementary singsong, “Grow Forth and Prosper.” Then I zoomed in on the subtitle, “Smart Growth proponents say building up may save Baton Rouge – but only if we do it the right way.” I am not sure which way Kendra R. Chamberlain understands it, but it is obviously the UN Agenda 21 way.

Such articles supporting Smart Growth, SmartMeters, and Sustainable Development have started to appear across the country with regularity in support of UN Agenda 21’s goals of destroying our economy, control and reduce our population, control our land use, redistribution of wealth, under the guise of protecting our environment. Slowly but surely, they have made great strides across the U.S. with very little opposition or understanding from the population. None of the articles mentions UN Agenda 21 at all...

(snip)

UN Agenda 21 Smart Growth has five tenets:

1). Existing Infrastructure (rehabilitate areas already established in the city) Maybe Americans like living on their farms, why force them into ghettoes?

2). Low Auto Dependence (no driving within a community, offering trolley, buses, walkways, bike paths, rails) What if I don’t want to give up my car? What if I cannot bike, walk, take bus, or train?

3). High Density (anti-sprawl, plucking us from the suburbs and placing us forcefully into tenements with specific boundaries) 

4). Mixed-Use, Mixed-Income (multi-income community with multi-problems, disease born by overcrowding and close proximity, schools, supermarkets, retails, pharmacies, and work within the confines of the boundaries of the community; if it sounds Orwellian, it is)

5). Whole Community (all this crowding and proximity is supposed to create a wonderful kumbaya sense of togetherness and community) Yes, I remember the sense of community we had in our communist tenements, noise, dirt, disease, everybody spying on everybody else for a little extra food handouts from the ruling elite, beatings, and disappearances.

After the secret deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin responded with no hesitation, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

It looks like we are not going to keep our republic, we are headed in uncharted territory for us, a mixture of fascism and communist totalitarianism. The sad and frustrating thing is that Americans are acquiescing either because they are uninformed, have not studied history, are not paying attention, or are refusing to believe the evidence before their eyes.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/39477

Worst. Numbers. Ever.

Obama Approval Drops Below 40% For First Time

By Rick Moran 

  Gallup daily tracking poll has the president below 40% - but only for one threeday rolling average. We'll see how it plays out over the next week and see if that number is confirmed in subsequent pollings. President Obama's summer woes have dragged his approval rating to an all-time low, sinking below 40% for the first time in Gallup's daily tracking poll.

 New data posted Sunday shows that 39% of Americans approve of Obama's job performance, while 54% disapprove. Both are the worst numbers of his presidency. Obama's approval rating has hovered in the 40% range for much of 2011, peaking at 53% in the weeks following the death of Osama Bin Laden. But Americans' view of his job performance continued to tick downward as the debt-ceiling debate heated up. By the time he signed legislation averting a federal default, he was mired in the low-40% range.

 Lately, some of the economic numbers have been ticking slightly upward. And some of that low approval rating is from liberals - many of whom could be expected to hold their nose and vote for Obama anyway. In short, don't expect the president's approval ratings to remain below 40% for long. The low 40's seems to be his base of support as evidenced by where his numbers have been most of this year. That still makes him very beatable in 2012.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/08/obama_approval_drops_below_40_for_first_time.html

From a near-god to... intolerable.

This Presid.... This Man in the White House, is Intolerable

By Quin Hillyer

Barack Obama​ is intolerable. I watch right now as, yet again, he blames the bad economy, and now specifically the S&P downgrade, on "brinksmanship" in Washington and "an unwillingness to compromise" -- as if he has absolutely nothing to do with either brinksmanship or unwillingness to compromise.

Who was it who, just at the verge of a deal, suddenly insisted on an extra $400 billion in taxes, thus killing the "compromise"? Obama. Who was it who vowed to veto a debt-ceiling deal even if it made it through both branches of Congress, including a Democratic Senate, if it would require another debt-ceiling increase vote again before the next election? Obama. For that matter, Obama just said that the problem is people worrying too much about winning the next election rather than getting policy right. What a joke.

Again, he is the guy who, on the debt ceiling (as just described) and on several other items has insisted that the next move must, absolutely must, not occur until after the next election. He's the guy governing based on the next election.

He just said several times that "our politics is the problem." As if he isn't playing politics. He said it's time to stop the attacks -- even as his campaign says its goal is to "kill Romney."

Amazingly, he just called, again, for passage of "trade deals" -- even though he is the one who has blocked trade deals with Latin American allies for more than two years now.
This man is a hypcocrite, an egocentric louse, a liar, and a thoroughly unpleasant personality. He attacks, attacks, attacks, attacks -- and then says that the problem is politicians who attack.

He also said it's time to stop the blame game -- even as, again, he blamed everything but himself for today's economic problems. It was the unrest in the Middle East (not his anti-fossil fuels extremism) that caused high gas prices. It was European debt problems, and the Japanese Earthquake, and, and, and and and everything else he could think of, that just caused all these problems that he alone knows how to solve and would already be solving if only we would bow down before his exalted highness.

I could go on. Every word that passes his lops drops with demagoguery and nastiness. How we will put up with him for another 17 months, I really don't know. But in 17 months, this man must go. Leave. Get out of our faces, and get out of our lives. Too bad it just can't happen sooner. I'd take Joe Biden​ as president, in a heartbeat, over this intolerable creature.

http://spectator.org/blog/2011/08/11/this-presid-this-man-in-the-wh

Obama sets travel record, holiday fiesta to a plush vacation in Martha's Vineyard.

Obama Our Prince of Wails, Goes on Another Vacation to Forget Tea Party Terrorists

By Jerry McConnell 

I  am beginning to wonder if this arrogant creature that is usurping our office of the presidency has any conscience or shame in that super-ego of his to go off on ANOTHER golfing vacation at a critical time.  to the suspicions that he has amassed a record-breaking number of travel days and hours amassing huge costs just for Air Force One.  But the rest of the family have their own jet; so taxpayer dollars being spent are probably records also.

He wails at the people who provide all of the money for his junkets around the world in search of more foreigners he can apologize to for America’s actions while praising in particular, Islamic countries.  At times he brings great shame to the office he illegally occupies by acting so anti-American and pro-Islamic.

Now, just after the long dispute with conservatives in Congress over his desire to have our debt limit raised in order to spend even more of our tax dollars on foreign betterment programs, he goes away for a nine-day holiday fiesta to a plush vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.

What’s that, you say, he shouldn’t be blowing our tax dollars on luxurious trips when our stock markets are under-performing in horrible fashion, the worst in memory as America’s AAA financial rating is reduced to, if not catastrophic, certainly highly embarrassing lower levels with warnings of possibly more to come? 

Haven’t you gotten the picture yet?  He doesn’t give a damn about America’s financial ratings; just so long as he can keep robbing our Treasury for his personal satisfying follies and chicanery.  He wails that our rich people should be paying higher taxes to cover his junkets and world travels. 

(snip)

Obama’s actions, or the lack thereof, make one think that of all the hard-working citizens jobs that he has caused to disappear perhaps his own should have been among them.

So while Obama plays first fiddle for Nero’s dance band, whether in Rome, Rio, or Martha’s Vineyard, he is abandoning his responsibilities to make sure our stock markets don’t panic into a full-fledged recession and destroy thousands, if not millions more of our country’s jobs.  His last attempt to create close to a trillion dollars worth of “stimulus” new jobs was a colossal failure.  The country is still waiting with no relief in sight.  It is further proof that the man has no idea of what to do to help our financial jobs devastation scenario.

But as John Ransome asks, “... would it be too much to ask him to understand how his own job works?”

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/39413

If they cheated then, what are they going to do NOW?

Three North Carolina Democrats Admit Voting Twice For Obama

By Matthew Boyle

Three Wake County, North Carolina, Democrats have admitted to voter fraud charges, according to local news reports.

Kierra Fontae Leache, Shelia Romona Hodges and Brandon Earl Mclean each admitted to casting two ballots in recent elections. Local reports indicate all three voted for President Barack Obama twice in 2008.

According to ABC News Channel 11 in Raleigh-Durham,  authorities have placed the three on $10,000 bonds.

The North Carolina Republican Party says this kind of fraudulent voter behavior is why the state needs a voter ID  law. In July, Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue vetoed state Republicans’ latest attempt at instituting such a law, calling it an “obstacle” to constitutional principles.

(RELATED: Mississippi NAACP leader sent to prison for 10 counts of voter fraud)

“The reason why Republicans have fought to promote proper voter-identification laws is to prevent fraud like this from happening,” NCGOP chair Robin Hayes said in a statement. “While Republicans are fighting to protect the integrity of our democracy, Governor Perdue’s veto fights to protect criminality in our election process. I know she embraces her ‘fighter’ image, but it’s clear that the only thing she fights for is fraud.”...

http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/11/three-north-carolina-democrats-admit-voting-twice-for-obama/#ixzz1UlO4i0nv