A Troll Perspective

We have all seen the Joe the plumber tape but I haven't put my two cents worth in.

Obama is the perfect asshole, the more they have him speaking freely the more damage he does.

Number 1 not one democrat has lowered taxes since JFK, and there are similarities between Obama and JFK, but that ain't one of them. They are both or in Johns case "was" very charismatic. They both have corrupt backgrounds, and ties to the most corrupt political machine the Chicago machine.

Obama has continually hurt himself by being himself he can't help it. The only reason McCain is in the running is because he is running against this Marxist idiot.

What the Obama campaign has achieved is unprecedented. He will have 99.9% of the black vote in America and a larger number of students will vote than before and all for him.

What he has also accomplished is not fill the majority of American voters with despair which he actually believes they should be feeling. What he has done was aggravate the real people who these type of elections are decided by.

The Joe the Plumbers, now Joe is just a schmuck, but he's a schmuck like the majority of Americans. He works hard he has dreams and he pays his taxes goes to work every day and struggles to provide for his family.

Joe's question was legit, so was Obama's answer. The answer however pushes the angry White male right over the edge. The Group that is still the largest voting block in America.

You have seen polls with amazing swings in leads to double digits to one or two points. This is because they expect more people to vote in this election than have in decades and they can't read all the factors what such a large turnout is going to bring.

Neither dog is dead but the Obammanation just gave himself what could be a fatal blow.

Election 2008: Objective journalism the loser

By Michael Graham

Did you see that amazing video obtained by the Los Angeles Times of Sen. Barack Obama toasting a prominent former PLO member at an Arab American Action Network meeting in 2003? The video in which Obama gives Yasser Arafat’s frontman a warm embrace, as Bill Ayers look on?

You haven’t seen it? Me, neither. The Los Angeles Times refuses to release it.

And so an incriminating video of Obama literally “palling around” with PLO supporters becomes one more nail in the coffin of “objective journalism.”

Alas, the obit for objective reporting has been buried - along with the stories about Obama’s 2001 support for court-imposed “redistribution of wealth” and Joe Biden’s latest gaffe.

For the record (that’s J-school talk for “I actually know what I’m talking about for a change”), I am not a journalist. I’m an opinion writer and talk show host. But I admire reporters tremendously. I married one. My oldest son is named for the great H. L. Mencken.

So it is particularly heartbreaking for me to see the death of objective journalism. And believe me - it is stone cold dead. Sacrificed on the altar of service to Barack Obama.

Former New York Times [NYT] columnist and veteran newspaperman Michael Malone knows it.

“I’ve begun - for the first time in my adult life - to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living,” he said.

Malone is disturbed by the “shameless support” journalists have been giving the Obama campaign. Where’s the hardball coverage for Obama they give McCain? Instead, journalists are “actively serving as attack dogs for the [Obama/Biden] ticket.”

“That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault,” Malone points out. He blames the media, whose job it is to give Obama a thorough vetting “and has systematically refused to do so.”

This is hardly news to regular readers of the Boston Globe-Democrat, or viewers of MS-We-Hate-Bush. But when the Associated Press starts adding Kool-Aid at the water cooler, we readers are in real trouble.

Jay Newton-Small, a longtime AP reporter, points out in a column in the Washington Post that her old employer has begun practicing “accountability journalism,” which is a media euphemism for “picking the good guys and the bad guys.”

“Some of the most eyebrow-raising stories this presidential-election cycle have come from a surprising source: the stodgy old AP,” Newton-Small wrote.

The AP, once the gold standard of unbiased “hard news,” is now just another voice in the Spin Room.

Newton-Small asks:

“When the news organization entrusted with calling elections sets off down the slippery slope of news analysis, it’s hard not to wonder: Is the journalism world losing its North Star, the one source that could be relied upon to provide ‘Just the facts, ma’am’ ?”

Facts? Who needs ’em, when we’ve got Obama’s magic tax plan to promote and an uppity Alaska governor to trash?

At the risk of violating union rules, allow me to do a bit of reporting: A new study by the Pew Research Center found that, while 71 percent of Obama’s recent media coverage has been “positive” or “neutral,” almost 60 percent of McCain’s coverage over the same period has been “decidedly negative.”

And how much positive coverage did the media give McCain? Fourteen percent.

The American people have figured this out.

“By a margin of 70 percent to 9 percent,” another Pew study reported, “Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4.”

The percentage of Americans who rate reporters as objective and not favoring either candidate? Eight percent.

My friends in the Partisan Press, your reputation has now fallen lower than both President Bush (25 percent) and the Democratic Congress (18 percent). Journalistic integrity now ranks along side communicable diseases and nuclear mishaps.

Obama will likely be the next president. He will use that power to do things both good and bad. But when Americans look for tough, honest journalists to challenge him, where will we find them?

Michael Graham hosts a talk show on 96.9 WTKK.


Michael Graham hosts a talk show on 96.9 WTKK.
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Envy so unbecoming

Be Prepaired for DOOMED FAILURE

In the 1950s, Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev made the bold statement “We will bury you without firing a shot.” No one knew exactly what he meant at the time, but we can now see that Russian Marxist-Leninism has manifested itself within not just the Democrat Party at the national level, but within our Congress and Senate and most of our government institutions. Their goals are being achieved, and they have yet to fire a shot. And they are being supported by good Americans who as dyed-in-the-wool Yellow Dog Democrats, simply because his daddy was, and his grandpappy, No other reason. Just vote Democrat.

Since the time Kruschev made that statement It is now about to come to pass.

Senator Joe McCarthy (R-Wis) who conducted investigations in the 1950s for the Senate Anti-American Activities Committee was viciously attacked when he tried to expose Communists in various positions in politics, entertainment, the media and the business world. One example was Alger Hiss, who was a key player in the formation of the United Nations, and who later proved to be a spy for the Soviet Union, just as McCarthy alleged. But the media attack on “Tailgunner Joe” McCarthy and his committee was relentless and to this day, McCarthy and his “McCarthyism” is synonymous with “witch hunt.”

In fact, McCarthy was correct one extreme-left socialist organization that follows doctrine is the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Members of this group include such leftists as: Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, founder Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich , Jan Schakowsky, John Conyers, Maurice Hinchey, George Miller, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Bob Filner, Diane DeGette, Alcee Hastings, John Lewis, Patsy Mink, Jesse Jackson Jr. III, John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler, Jamor Owens, Charles Rangel, Dennis Kucinch, Sherrod Brown, Peter DeFazio, Robert C. Scott, James McDermitt, and Barney Frank, to name a few. There are more than fifty members to date, all Democrats. And the most socialistic (read “Communistic”) of our politicians are a band of rabid anti-American socialists: Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Fienstein, Frank Lautenburg, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Harry Reid and others, all Democrats. Of note is the fact that the Communist Party of the USA and the Chinese Communist Party “endorsed” John Kerry in the last election.

A country consists of three major things, Energy, Mineral Resources, Food, and Industry. How it manages them determines the nations success. Since the 50s those resources have been missed managed largely due to the Democrat part and it's policies.

The Democrat party has destroyed these 4 basic things with regulation, taxes and lawsuits. The US has lost to the old Soviet Union even though it no longer exists. We are one of the only nations in the world that have enough of the 4 to not only be self sufficient, but to feed and fuel half the rest of the world with our surpluses.

If the Obamanation wins, the shoe banging of Kruschev will have been brought to full fruition.

Any country that makes it illegal to use what God has given it to it's full advantage is doomed.

We were blessed by God but damned internally by our own Bolsheviks.

Get Ready for the New New Deal

Obama is much more dangerous to economic freedom than FDR.

In 1932, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president as the nation was heading into a severe recession. The stock market had crashed in 1929, the world's economy was slowing down, and all economic indicators in the U.S. showed signs of trouble.

The new president's response was to restructure the economy with the New Deal -- an expansion of the role of government once unimaginable in America. We now know that FDR's policies likely prolonged the Great Depression because the economy never fully recovered in the 1930s, and actually got worse in the latter half of the decade. And we know that FDR got away with it (winning election four times) by blaming his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, for crashing the economy in the first place.

Today, the U.S. is in better shape than in 1932. But it faces similar circumstances. The stock market has been in a tail spin, credit markets have locked up, and a surging Democratic presidential candidate is running on expanding the role of government, laying the blame for the economic turmoil on the current occupant of the White House and his party's economic policies.

Barack Obama is one of the most liberal members of the Senate. His reaction to the financial crisis is to blame deregulation. He even leverages fear of deregulation onto other issues. For example, Sen. John McCain wants to allow consumers to buy health insurance across state lines. Mr. Obama likens this to the financial deregulation that he alleges got us into the current mess.

But a President Obama would also enjoy large Democratic majorities in Congress. His party might even win a 60-seat, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, giving him more power than any president has had in decades to push a liberal agenda. And given the opportunity, Mr. Obama will likely radically increase government interference in the economy.

Until now, this election has been fought on the margins, over marginal issues. But it is important to understand how much a presidential candidate wants to move the needle on taxes, trade and other issues. Usually there isn't a chance for wholesale change. Now, however, it appears that this election will make more than a marginal difference. It might fundamentally change America.

Unlike FDR, Mr. Obama will not have to create the mechanisms government uses to interfere with the economy before imposing his policies. FDR had to get the Supreme Court to overturn a century's worth of precedents limiting the power of government before he could use the Constitution's commerce clause, among other things, to increase government control of the economy. Mr. Obama will have no such problem.

FDR also had to create agencies to implement regulations. Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Labor Relations Board (both created in the 1930s) as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and others created later are in place. Increasing their power will be easier than creating them from scratch.

Even before the current crisis, there was a great demand for increased government regulation to limit global warming. That gives the next president a ready-made box in which to place more regulation, and a legion of supports eager for it.

But if the coming wave of new regulation from an Obama administration is harmful to the economy, Mr. Obama will take a page from FDR's playbook. He'll blame Republicans for having caused the market crash in the first place, and so escape blame for the consequences of his policies. It worked for FDR and, so far in this campaign, blaming Republicans and George W. Bush has worked for Mr. Obama.

Democrats draw their political power from trial lawyers, unions, government bureaucrats, environmentalists, and, perhaps, my liberal colleagues in academia. All of these voting blocs seem to favor a larger, more intrusive government. If things proceed as they now appear likely to, we can expect major changes in policies that benefit these groups.

If those of us who favor free markets for the freedom and prosperity they bring are right, the political system may soon put our economy on track for a catastrophe.

Mr. Rubin is a professor of economics and law at Emory University. He held several senior economic positions in the Reagan administration, and is an unpaid adviser to the McCain campaign.

Irans Plan for the US

MAY and CARAFANO: Iran's 'world without America'

COMMENTARY:

Which world leader is on record musing about "a world without America" - a goal he calls "attainable"? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Until recently, it was possible to believe that whatever Mr. Ahmadinejad's intentions, Iran was a long way from acquiring the capabilities it needs to achieve its goals. But a blue-ribbon commission has reported to Congress on what appears to be an Iranian drive to obtain the means to carry out an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) attack.

An EMP attack is produced by launching a ballistic missile with a nuclear weapon attached -- and detonating it high above the Earth. This produces a massive pulse of ionized particles that could damage or even wipe out many electrical and information systems. Such an attack would disrupt telecommunications, banking and finance, fuel and energy, food and water supplies, emergency and government services and much more, threatening millions of lives.

We've seen a blacked-out South Texas in the wake of Hurricane Ike. We've seen New Orleans after Katrina. Now imagine that scenario over most of the continental United States. There would be a "world without America" - at least as we know it.

No one disputes that Iran is developing a robust long-range missile force. Few question that Mr. Ahmadinejad's regime is working on nuclear weapons development. Less well-known is that Iran has conducted missile tests from sea-based platforms, detonating warheads at the high-point of the missile trajectory, rather at the aim point over the target. These facts have now been documented in official government reports.

Connect the dots, and you find the picture of a workable research program for developing a covert means to deliver an EMP attack against the United States.

A short-range ballistic missile could be carried on one of the thousands of commercial freighters sailing under "flags of convenience" that sail around U.S. waters every day. Without ever piquing the interest of the Navy, the Coast Guard, or the Customs and Border Protection, that ship could sail within range and deliver its payload over American territory. Even a modest warhead placed at the right spot over the East Coast could take down 75 percent of the electrical grid.

The genius of such a covert attack is that it doesn't come with an obvious "return address." The ship might be registered in Liberia. The crew might be Lebanese. The ship might disappear into the night - or be scuttled quietly.

Another advantage for a would-be attacker is the bang that can be achieved for the buck. An EMP attack would allow an enemy to wreak an enormous amount of destruction for a modest investment. It would mean no electricity, no food on the shelves, no phone, no fuel deliveries. Life would look more like the barter system of the 19th century, not to mention the millions that would die from traffic accidents, fires, failed hospital equipment, disease and the other chaos that would result from such an attack.

A lot can be done to deal with this terrible threat. For starters, we need to build comprehensive missile defenses that can shoot missiles down fired anywhere shortly after they lift off. We also need to develop national plans to mitigate vulnerabilities to an EMP attack and recover quickly from a strike if one does occur.

America, however, also needs to dust off its nuclear deterrent. Of all the nations that could pull off an EMP attack or hand that capacity to a transnational terrorist group, Iran is the only country that has directly threatened to destroy the United States. While much America's infrastructure is vulnerable to EMP, the nuclear strike force is not. We need to inform Iran that if an EMP attack were unleashed on America, Iran could well be held responsible and suffer massive nuclear retaliation.

Perhaps deterrence won't work. Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis argues that to a devout believer in Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's apocalyptic ideology, mutually assured destruction may be "more an inducement than a deterrent." Still, it's worth making it clear that a steep price will be paid for such an attack.

In the end, President Reagan was right: Massive retaliation is not a morally supportable option when there are real alternatives. Comprehensive missile defenses, vigorous counterproliferation programs, and making U.S. infrastructure more resilient are really the best ways to protect and defend the nation. The next president needs to make these a priority.

Indeed, demonstrating that America takes the threat seriously is perhaps the best message we could send to Mr. Ahmadinejad and those he represents.

Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. James Jay Carafano, a senior research fellow for National Security at the Heritage Foundation (heritage.org), is the author of the books "G.I. Ingenuity" and "Private Sector, Public Wars."
Iran

The Reds May be Taking Control

The Russian Revolution of 1917 refers to a series of popular revolutions in Russia, and the events surrounding them. These revolutions had the effect of completely changing the nature of society within the Russian Empire and transforming the Russian state, which ultimately led to the replacement of the old Tsarist autocracy with the Soviet Union.

The Provisional Government held state power and the national network of Soviets, led by socialists, had the allegiance of the lower-class citizens and the political left. the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions was to abandon the war effort. The Bolsheviks formed workers militias into the Red Guards (later the Red Army) over which they exerted substantial control.

The October Revolution (November of the Gregorian calendar), in which the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the workers' Soviets, overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to ruthlessly quash dissent. The Bolsheviks, were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[4] The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and founded the Soviet Union.

Bolsheviks (or "the Majority") were an organization of professional revolutionaries under a strict internal hierarchy governed by the principle of democratic centralism and quasi-military discipline, who considered themselves as a vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism. The party was founded by Vladimir Lenin, who also led it in the October Revolution.

On Dec. 20, 1917, shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics formed its first intelligence agency, the Cheka, an acronym for the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage. It was headed by Feliks Dzerzhinsky, who ran the organization until his death in 1926. Today, a statue of Dzerzhinsky adorns the front of KGB headquarters, the modern-day successor to the Cheka, in Moscow.

The above are just simply the facts of history yaken from various history sources.

Today if Barack Obama wins and is also given a filibuster proof congress led by Reid and Pelosi. We see the same revolution reliving itself, without firing a shot. The Bolsheviks (bureaucrats) seize control and pass laws that basically do away with capitalism.

That's the good scenario. The bad one is if Obama is like Lenin who will be his Cheka? Well consider Barack Obama's newly appointed Muslim outreach adviser is coming under fire for meeting with Islamic groups with extremist views, just two months after her predecessor resigned over links to a radical cleric.

Minha Husaini met with members of several Islamic organizations in Virginia on September 15 -- including some that terrorism experts say have ties to Hamas and the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

Among the attendees were senior members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was listed by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror-related trial.

Several people connected to CAIR have been convicted of felonies -- including on terrorism-related charges.

They sound like a perfect arm of butchers for a secrete police. We already know free speech will be ended with the Fairness Doctrine being put into place, Hell you already see dissent being shut down by the campaigns calls of racism over even what someone wares.

Power will be in the hands of those who falsely believed they were persecuted for dissent in the 60s-70s. Now these paranoid power freaks will implement the very policies the feared.

Even if none of that happens the damage by a Pelosi-Reid congress with the precedent set by this bailout to take controlling interest in banks this precedent will have set them up to seize control of any industry they choose Like say the automobile industry just for starters.

And this President will sign the bills and fill the Supreme Court with those that will uphold them.

The world is about to change if Obama wins.
Obama

U.S. to Buy Stakes in Nation's Largest Banks

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government is expected to take stakes in nine of the nation's top financial institutions as part of a new plan to restore confidence to the battered U.S. banking system, a far-reaching effort that puts the government's guarantee behind the basic plumbing of financial markets.

To kick off Tuesday's expected announcement, the government is set to buy preferred equity stakes in Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. -- including the soon-to-be acquired Merrill Lynch -- Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of New York Mellon and State Street Corp., according to people familiar with the matter.
full story and a little mood music to go with it.

Palin Speaks

Sarah Palin
Governor of Alaska

Alaska's Promise for the Nation


SARAH PALIN took office as the eleventh governor of Alaska on December 4, 2006. Prior to her election as governor, she served two terms on the Wasilla City Council and two terms as mayor of Wasilla, during which she was elected as president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors. A former chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Governor Palin is currently chair of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission and vice chair of the National Governors Association Natural Resources Committee. A resident of Alaska since 1964, she and her husband Todd have five children.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on August 2, 2008, aboard the Regent Seven Seas Mariner in Juneau, Alaska, to Hillsdale College friends and supporters during the College’s “North to Alaska” cruise from Seward to Vancouver.

NEXT YEAR IN ALASKA we are celebrating 50 years of statehood. We are still a very young state, and we’re still experiencing some growing pains, perhaps, as we seek opportunities for Alaska to become more self-sufficient and less dependent on the federal government. And the key to our becoming self-sufficient—and doing our part for our fellow Americans—is to develop further our state’s vast natural resource wealth.

Fifty years ago, this was our deal with the federal government—that we pull our own weight. And we’ve already come a long way from being known as “Seward’s Folly,” back when Alaska was purchased from the Russians for two cents an acre. We’re earning our keep, largely by tapping our energy resources such as crude oil and liquefied natural gas. In fact, Alaska has our nation’s only liquefied natural gas export facility, located in the south-central Alaska town of Nikiski. But Alaska could and should be doing much more.

Being an Alaskan today is especially exciting and historic, as the energy and fuel crisis in our nation spawns creativity and makes us reevaluate what is important and necessary. As we consider where our energy will come from in the future, Alaska can and must be a big part of the answer. In fact, Alaska has already begun to take the lead on a sorely needed national energy policy. Groundbreaking history was made just up the hill at the capitol building yesterday, as Alaska’s lawmakers voted to award TransCanada Alaska a license to proceed with fieldwork, permitting, and development of the biggest construction project in the history of North America—the building of a natural gas pipeline, a project we have been fighting to begin for three decades. Once constructed, this pipeline will supply four to four-and-one-half billion cubic feet of natural gas per day—roughly six percent of America’s demand—to our fellow countrymen in what we call “the lower 48.”

Just to provide some perspective, Alaska has tens of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas under the surface, especially on the North Slope. Alaskans have longed for the right to access our gas and more of our oil to assist in supplying the U.S. market, and now we are finally on the road to doing so. This $30-40 billion infrastructure project—which will be built by the private sector—is one of the most exciting and progressive events in Alaska’s history.

This is a good start, to be sure. But Alaska has much more to offer in the way of resources. And let me tell you clearly that we can do so in a way consistent with good environmental stewardship. Each and every Alaskan recognizes that our most precious resource is the pristine environment in which we are privileged to live and where our “First People” still subsist to this day. No one can love or care for Alaska more than Alaskans. And we who live here recognize that sound science and constantly improving technology make it possible to extract oil and gas safely and responsibly. Furthermore, with gas and fuel prices reaching record highs, oil and gas must be extracted—even as we move in the direction of renewable and alternative sources of energy.

Because of the lagging economy, Americans do not have time for “all talk and no action.” Here at home, Alaskans struggle with the highest gas prices in the nation—the cost of gas in parts of Alaska is four to five dollars more per gallon than gas in the lower 48—and many face the choice between heating their homes and putting food on the table. Now other Americans are experiencing the same challenges. And we are in this position only because Alaska’s vast resources are being warehoused underground by Congress—placing us in a ridiculous and difficult position.

The price of oil, and now gasoline, has always been sensitive and subject to events occurring outside the U.S. We have placed ourselves in the position of having to plead with Middle Eastern suppliers to increase production, when instead we could lift the development bans that are keeping us from our own resource independence—namely, the bans relating to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and offshore drilling.

Alaskans find it incredibly frustrating that others—many of whom have never even set foot in our state, much less lived here—dictate how and when we can best use our own resources. Whether over the barren tundra or in our majestic mountains, we have a strong history of responsible development. To date, Alaska has sent more than 15 billion barrels of oil, safely and efficiently, to the lower 48. One look at the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System illustrates that development and wildlife can and do coexist.

I’ve heard it said by some politicians that Alaska doesn’t have enough oil to make a difference. I can tell you honestly that we do have enough. And while consultants and experts debate the current energy crisis, Alaska is already preparing for its next role—providing American consumers with a safe and secure domestic source of crude oil and natural gas. In fact, if energy imports were curtailed completely, Alaska could provide our nation with seven years of crude oil independence and an eight-year supply of natural gas. These are numbers that reflect known and recoverable oil and gas deposits.

To repeat, Prudhoe Bay has produced 15 billion barrels of crude oil, and there’s more where that came from in ANWR, which is home to more than ten billion barrels of oil and nine trillion cubic feet of natural gas. I know this is a controversial issue. But most Americans do not realize that of the 20 million acres that make up ANWR, we are asking for the right to access just 2,000 of them—a mere 1/10,000th of the total area. Opening up just that sliver of ANWR—which would create a footprint smaller than the total area of Los Angeles International Airport—could produce enough oil (an estimated one million barrels per day) to ease America’s fuel crisis and greatly reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

It is also estimated that there are 24 billion barrels of recoverable oil and another 104 trillion cubic feet of natural gas offshore. In other words, offshore areas that are geologically promising, such as the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, hold roughly three-and-one-half years of U.S. oil consumption and four-and-one-half years of natural gas.

Congress can make it possible to take advantage of these resources right now, by streamlining access to offshore areas. As usual, outside interests are throwing up roadblocks and manipulating the legal system to achieve their agenda. But we need to bring some sanity back to the legal and permitting processes in the area of energy production.

In calling for bans to be lifted in order to get our nation out of the chokehold of high oil prices and dependence on the Middle East, I am certainly not rejecting the idea of alternative and renewable resources. I believe that we need to move in that direction, ultimately weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels. But we can’t do it overnight—or even over a decade. In Alaska, we have almost limitless opportunities for thermal, wind, solar, and hydroelectric energy. In fact, our capital city of Juneau receives 80 percent of its electricity from hydroelectric energy. Recently we have created a renewable/alternative energy fund with an initial $50 million that will build to $250 million over a five-year period. Yet until the science is fully developed, until all our vehicles are green, we must wisely and responsibly utilize known and given oil and natural gas resources so that we can provide for ourselves.

Alaskans are a very unique kind of people. We hear this on a regular basis from our visitors from the lower 48. One thing that makes us so unique is that we are at once fiercely independent and incredibly community-minded. It may seem as though these two qualities would be in conflict, but I believe they are the complementary qualities which, in tandem, drove the American Revolution. Our forefathers fought and died for liberty and independence, but they did so together. Today, as we seek freedom from dependence on foreign oil—and freedom from having to send our presidents to plead with the Saudis for more oil production—we must join together again, in the spirit of freedom and independence, to gain access to our own energy resources.

I say this to you not just as Alaska’s governor, but as the mother of a soldier—my son, Track, will soon be deploying overseas in service to his country and to a war that is certainly complicated by our dependence on foreign resources.

We must open ANWR and lift the ban on offshore drilling. The science and technology to harvest our resources responsibly and safely are in hand. The time for congressional action and leadership is now.

***
Palin

Wall Street tumbles amid global sell-off

NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street suffered through another traumatic session Monday, with the Dow Jones industrials plunging as much as 800 points and setting a new record for a one-day point drop as investors despaired that the credit crisis would take a heavy toll around the world. The Dow also fell below 10,000 for the first time since 2004, and all the major indexes fell about 5 percent.


There are two reasons for this. The first it was Congress that caused the crises in the first place, and the same people are now going to be the ones to fix it! Ha HA and Two Barrack Obama is ahead in the polls.

The second reson is even more significant. Obamma has promised over 1 Trillion Dollars of new spending, he has promised to end all tax cuts and close all tax loopholes. The market is simply reacting to the prospect of an Obama WIN.

If he remains strong in the polls and actually wins you will see a collapse of the market like none in history as all the real money is moved to shelters.

Buying the Death of the Constitution

PIGGY POLS IN HOG HEAVEN WITH PORK-PACKED PACT

By DAPHNE RETTER, Post Correspondent

WASHINGTON - Here, little piggies!

Congressional deal-brookers yesterday slopped a mess of pork into the $700 billion financial rescue bill passed by the Senate last night - including a tax break for makers of kids' wooden arrows - in a bid to lure reluctant lawmakers into voting for the package

Stuffed into the 451- page bill are more than $1.7 billion worth of targeted tax breaks to be doled out for a sty full of eyebrow-raising purposes over the next decade.

MORE: Di$aster Plan B Wins Senate OK

EDITORIAL: Porking Up The Rescue Bill

"This is how Washington works," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington research group. "A big pot of pork is their recipe for final passage."


The special provisions include tax breaks for:

* Manufacturers of kids' wooden arrows - $6 million.

* Puerto Rican and Virgin Is- lands rum producers - $192 million.

* Wool research.

* Auto-racing tracks - $128 million.

* Corporations operating in American Samoa - $33 million.

* Small- to medium-budget film and television productions - $10 million.

Another measure inserted into the bill appears to be a bald-faced bid aimed at winning the support of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who voted against the original version when it went down in flames in the House on Monday.

That provision - a $223 million package of tax benefits for fishermen and others whose livelihoods suffered as a result of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill - has been the subject of fervent lobbying by Alaska's congressional delegation.

Some of the pork-barrel measures buried in the financial rescue package had been contained in a bill that previously passed the Senate, but died in the House.

The Congressional Budget Office said the package of breaks - including obvious pork and some more defensible tax-relief measures - will add about $112 billion to budget deficits over the next five years because the bill doesn't contain enough offsetting revenue hikes to keep the budget balanced.

The legislative lard annoyed Tom Schatz, president of the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste.

"There's always something that goes on at the end where the last dozen members are trying to get something for themselves or for a special interest rather than what might be good for the country," Schatz said.

Some of the other measures added to win approval include a $3.8 billion health-care provision that forces insurance companies to provide coverage for mental-health treatment equivalent to the coverage they provide for physical illness.

Other add-ons will increase individual tax credits and help shield more than 20 million Americans from the painful alternative minimum tax, and offer breaks for businesses that invest in alternative fuels.

Also, several federal income-tax breaks due to expire will now be extended through 2009.

daphne.retter@nypost.com
Bailout