It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Sunday (link won’t work until then) when the blackout expires.

Subheadline: “What do Iran, China, and the U.S. have in common? More than you might think.”

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Related: China’s police state, with whom the members of the BizzyBlog Internet Wall of Shame have been cooperating for almost four years, wants to require that a government-developed program called “Green Dam” be installed on all new computers sold in that country.

This is “1984″ arriving with full force 25 years later. It goes far, far beyond “web filtering” (which is bad enough), an understated characterization that all too many media reports are using.

This excerpt from an Epoch Times article describes Green Dam’s functions and purposes (bolds are mine):

“Green Dam-Youth Escort” was developed by Jinhui Computer Systems Inc. and Dazheng Language Process Inc., with the former in charge of image filtration and the later keyword filtration. In 2005, Dazheng was involved in the development of a “secret files intercept system” for the Chinese army. According to its Web site, Jinhui has worked with both the Chinese army and the public security ministry.

The regime says Green Dam can block pornography, filter illicit content, control web surfing time, and check browsing records. In fact, the software is capable of blocking politically sensitive websites, filtering out content based on a list of keywords, recording keystrokes and passwords, taking screenshots every 3 minutes, and recording all of the websites visited along with all of the user’s other internet activity.

….. Computer hackers in China have cracked open Green Dam’s keyword library and administrative codes.

According to the information produced by these hackers, Green Dam has 2,700 keywords relating to pornography, and 6,500 politically sensitive keywords. While these keywords include references to the Tiananmen Square massacre and Tibet, the great majority of the keywords refer to Falun Gong, the spiritual practice the Chinese regime banned and began persecuting in 1999.

….. Analysts believe that Green Dam gives the regime the ability to tighten its control by collecting personal information and secretly sending it to a central database, while strengthening the regime’s ability to censor the internet. The collected information could then be used to persecute dissidents.

In 2003 the Chinese regime launched the Golden Shield, also known as the Great Firewall of China, an internet filtering system that cost tens of billions of yuan. The Internet Freedom Consortium believes Golden Shield is the world’s most stringent web filtering system.

….. However, Golden Shield can be circumvented by such popular anti-filtering software programs as FreeGate, UltraSurf, and Garden. Green Dam can block these programs.

Chinese users of Green Dam have found that the Green-Dam injects a dll file into Internet Explorer that prohibits the usage of FreeGate. Analysts predict that Green Dam will in its future updates add code that will prohibit the usage of proxy servers, another anti-blockage technology.

The makers of Green Dam claim that, while the software will be pre-installed, users can remove it.

A mainland Chinese computer expert discovered the truth after he installed and uninstalled the screening software. He said, “When we used its [Green Dam] uninstallation program to uninstall the software, about half of Green Dam’s 110 system files continued to reside in the computer. After restarting the computer, Green Dam’s screening program is running actively in the background. The only part of the software uninstalled is its user interface.”

The expert added, “Pre-loading the screening software and providing an uninstallation program that does not actually uninstall the software is an act of coercion. Green Dam project is a coercive software.”

Green Dam was supposed to be mandatory on all new PCs shipped in China beginning on July 1, but the government “delayed” the order. Nevertheless, many new PCs are shipping with the software either installed or on an accompanying CD (note the mischaracterization of Green Dam’s range of functions):

PC makers voluntarily supply Web filter in China

Several PC makers were including controversial Internet-filtering software with computers shipped in China on Thursday despite a government decision to postpone its plan to make such a step mandatory.

Beijing’s decision this week to delay the requirement that the filtering software — known as Green Dam — by pre-installed or supplied on disk with all computers sold in China averted a possible trade clash with the United States and Europe. But the move by some makers to include the software anyway could reignite complaints by Chinese Web users.

Also Thursday, a government newspaper said regulators will revive the plan to make Green Dam mandatory at some point, a move that would disappoint opponents who hoped the government would drop the effort.

Taiwan’s Acer Inc. — the world’s third-largest PC maker — Sony Corp. and China’s Haier Group said they were shipping Green Dam on disks with computers for sale in China. Taiwan’s Asus Inc. said it was preparing to do so. Taiwanese laptop maker BenQ Inc., said the system was on the hard drives of its computers.

Acer was supplying Green Dam because disks already were packed with PCs before the government postponed the plan, that had been due to take effect Wednesday, said a company spokeswoman, Meng Lei. Other companies did not give reasons for supplying the system.

Hewlett-Packard Inc., the world’s top PC manufacturer, said it was working with the U.S. government to get more information and declined to comment further. Dell Inc., the No. 2 producer, did not immediately respond to questions about its plans.

China’s Lenovo Group, the No. 4 producer, did not immediately respond to questions, but the official China Daily newspaper said Green Dam was included with its PCs.

If the PC makers roll over on this, membership in the BizzyBlog Wall of Shame will grow substantially. I would suggest that, absent a back-down, anyone who buys a computer from a PC maker that continues to ship units with Green Dam already installed is assisting in the oppression of over a billion fellow human beings.

Contrary to naively accepted conventional wisdom, technology in and of itself is an not an automatic freedom-enhancer. In the wrong hands, especially in the absence of a robust defense of our God-given rights to free expression, speech, and personal privacy, it’s clearly a serious threat.

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UPDATE, 5:20 p.m. — A related post is at NewsBusters.

From Afghanistan (HT Instapundit):

July 1, 2009

For several nights he has walked down an empty, wooden hallway partially lit by a mixture of moonlight and a spotlight off in the distance, stopping sporadically to observe different sections of the structure. After he moves on, he leaves the building as calm as it was when he found it.

Being at a construction site before anyone else arrives is a nightly routine for Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Landon Church, an electrician from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion-5.

Church, a native of Byron, Mich., is the project lead electrician in building the combat operation centers here. Since March, his knowledge and experience have been essential in the progress made here by Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan and its subordinate elements.

“This has been the opportunity of a lifetime,” Church said. “I knew in the beginning that the MEB project was crucial to the beginning of operations here and it has been an honor to head up and manage the electrical portions of the project.”

Church, 24, has less than four years in the Navy and is in charge of planning and estimating the electrical requirements of the three buildings.

He and his team of four electricians completed the electrical portions of the brigade’s command center less than two weeks ago and installed more than 10,000 feet of wiring throughout the building that will run power to hundreds of computers, telephones and more.

“I spent many hours reviewing building codes for electrical components and making sure I had an overall knowledge of every aspect of the project, down to the very last detail,” Church said. “With that knowledge, I had the best idea of how to go about tasking, coordinating and managing my troops.”

Church was trained as an electrician in Wichita Falls, Texas, from May to July 2006. It was then where he learned about electrical distribution and interior wiring, motors and controls, and how to climb utility poles and troubleshoot electrical problems.

From Texas he was then sent to his current duty station at Port Hueneme, Calif., and deployed to Kuwait from September to November 2006, and later to eastern Afghanistan’s Camp Salerno from December 2006 to February 2007.

Nine months before coming here he was assigned to his battalion’s convoy security element. There he focused on weapons training, improvised explosive device awareness and urban combat.

Shortly after arriving here, he was handed the blue-prints for three of the largest projects he’d ever fathomed, even though he hadn’t worked as an electrician for almost a year.

“I kind of stared at the blue-prints for a while, wondering how I would ever plan this out,” Church reminisced. “I chose to push through it one item at a time, and pretty soon the plan came together and eventually evolved into one of the biggest projects the Seabees have seen in quite some time.”

Petty Officer 1st Class Garrison Hardisty, project supervisor, said he had no doubt in Church’s ability to adjust to the challenge, and proof of that is the recent completion of the MEB-Afghanistan COC.

“That’s what Seabees do, we make do with what little we have,” Hardisty said.
Church attributes his success to the hard work and commitment of the electricians in his team. He said he’s happy with the results he’s produced so far, but said that wouldn’t be the case if not for his men.

“I’ve tasked them, and they haven’t let me down yet,” Church said. “They put in the extra effort to get the mission done.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

They almost nail it (bold is mine):

Why is this job decline happening? The private sector — the real engine of economic and job growth — won’t hire because it’s scared of what it sees coming out of Washington.

On the horizon, as far as the eye can see, are higher taxes, uncontrolled spending and layers upon layers of new regulations.

Who would hire new workers faced with that?

But if you look more closely, you’ll understand see that the private sector has been scared for a full year of what Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid promised to do once in power, what they have done in 5-1/2 short months, and what they are moving swiftly to do now that they are in power. Their 12-month-plus POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, now the POR Recession As Normal People Define It, has exacted a terrible price, yet they refuse to let up.

Given that June 2009 represents the worst June on record, this is probably the point where it’s fair to ask if these people really want a recovery. Even more important, if you still believe that they do, ask yourself “what they would they be doing any differently if they didn’t?”

At the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web today, Jim Taranto noted that it took the Associated Press’s Jeannine Aversa until the 15th paragraph of her expanded dispatch on today’s Employment Situation Report to find something mildly positive to write.

Aversa, who has been one of the wire service’s chief silver lining make-up artists during the Obama presidency’s disastrous economic stewardship offered up this contention:

Even with higher pace of job cuts in June, the report indicates that the worst of the layoffs have passed.

The charts from Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics that follow show that the evidence for her claim is scant to non-existent.

First, let’s look at the most recent seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted job growth/loss figures:

The red box on the left in the NOT seasonally adjusted data shows that the situation got decidedly worse in June. From February through May, the differences in year-over-year monthly job gains and losses on the ground before seasonal adjustment narrowed in by about 60% from -680,000 to -264,000. But June’s -371,000 difference went the wrong way, causing the seasonally adjusted number (the result of smoothing results to account for seasonal variations) to move sharply upward.

How this “indicates that the worst of the layoffs have passed,” as Aversa claims, is beyond me.

How bad was June? On the ground (not seasonally adjusted), the monthly job loss of 110,000 is the worst June performance listed in 71 years of monthly data BLS has available on the web (1939-2009). Though it is subject to revisions in the next two months, it doesn’t seem likely that it will change by much in a positive direction when those revisions arrive.

Here, for the record, is the full collection of monthly changes since 1939 (it appears that monthly recordkeeping might not have begun until February 1939):

Again, how this “indicates that the worst of the layoffs have passed,” as Aversa claims, is beyond me.

One of these days, someone at AP will dig into the data and produce a report on the monthly employment situation worthy of what is supposed to be “The Essential Global News Network.” One of these days ….

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

UPDATE, 10:30 p.m. — The graph at Michael’s Comments/Innocent Bystanders has been updated:

Yikes.
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(original post)

I’m going to be in a place that may or may not have ‘Net access when today’s Employment Situation report (link won’t be current until 8:30 a.m.) comes out. If it doesn’t, notes and comments will have to wait until early afternoon.

Here are advance barometers:

• Yesterday, ADP’s private-sector report said that 473,000 jobs were lost on a seasonally adjusted basis in June.
• Reuters is carrying an estimate of -355,000 for seasonally adjusted jobs lost, and the unemployment rate increasing to 9.6% from last month’s 9.4%, with bizarre accompanying commentary — “The U.S. Labor Department’s report due on Thursday is expected to depict an economy still wallowing in recession but confirm that the pace of job loss has slowed.” Uh, -355,000 in June would be worse than May’s -345,000 (before it gets revised today).
• The AP’s Jeannine Aversa has estimates of -363,000 and 9.6%, as does Alexandra Twin at CNNMoney.
• Biz Weak is at -360,000 and 9.6%.

The news: -467,000 (ouch) and 9.5% (hmmm). This is the opposite of last month, when the jobs number was less negative than expectations and the unemployment rate was worse.

From Michigan:

July 1, 2009

Sergio Macias credits a robot with helping to save his life.

Arriving at work in October 2007, he felt pressure on his chest, followed by blurry vision, dry heaves and tingling in his face, arm and feet.

Then “it felt like someone hit me in the back of the head with a bat,” he recalled. A coworker took him to St. Mary Mercy Hospital in Livonia.

Staff checked his symptoms. But the diagnosis that he had a stroke came with the help of a robot that hooked up Macias, 46, of Livonia to a stroke team at St. Joseph Mercy/Oakland hospital in Pontiac.

Part of a project to improve stroke diagnosis and treatment started by St. Joseph Mercy in 2006, the Michigan Stroke Network uses robots and other telemedical tools to see and talk to patients.

Usually, smaller and rural hospitals that do not have specialists on site around the clock report symptoms verbally to stroke specialists at nearby hospitals. The robotic systems improve on that, by letting doctors see and talk to patients as if they were at their bedside.

“A subjective verbal report is useful, but it’s not as good as seeing the patients,” said Dr. Omar Qahwash, a St. Joseph neurosurgeon. Robots “tease out” more useful information, he said, such as which patients have the type of stroke caused by a blockage that benefits from a clot-busting drug, and which ones have strokes causing bleeding in the brain, a problem treated with surgery.

Since St. Joseph started the network, 490 patients have been evaluated with robots in the Michigan program. The system hooks up specialists at St. Joseph with patients at 31 Michigan hospitals, some as far as 220 miles away. Hospitals in Michigan’s program lease the robots for $36,000 a year, rather than buying them for $250,000.

Outside of Michigan, more than 50 medical centers use robots for the diagnosis of stroke and related problems, according to a spokeswoman for Intouch Health, a Santa Barbara, Calif., company that specializes in telemedicine.

Jack Weiner, CEO and president of St. Joseph Mercy, said the system has helped hospitals in the stroke network see 75% of patients within three hours, as previous guidelines recommended, compared with 3% of patients seen that soon nationwide.

“We know it is saving money in outlying communities” because fewer patients need to be transported by air ambulances for care, Weiner added. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

There is no way I’m going to resist the link traffic forthcoming from a howler like this ….

Movie star ALEC BALDWIN has been given the opportunity to launch his political career in Ohio by a local law firm keen to back a bid to make him the state’s next Governor.

The Cooler star has often spoken about his political aspirations and now he has gone public with his plans to retire from acting in 2012, a group of leading Ohio businessmen want him to consider running for office there.

He tells Playboy magazine, “A law firm in a liberal Democratic bastion in Ohio state politics sent me a binder with a cover letter that read: “Mr. Baldwin, here’s who we represent, the kinds of cases we handle, our credentials in Ohio state politics. We want you to move to Ohio and run for Governor. We will launch your career.’”

Lawyers at the law firm Dewey, Cheetum & Howe, apparently worn out from stealing a US Senate seat in Minnesota for Al Franken, were apparently unavailable for comment.

Gee, I wonder what Baldwin’s party of choice would be?

Baldwin’s bio at Wikipedia shows no evidence that Baldwin has any meaningful connection to Ohio (unlike other celebrity state governors Schwarzenegger and Ventura of CA and MN, respectively).

But the Wiki entry does have these nuggets, and many more:

• Ohio’s farmers will be pleased to know that “Baldwin is an animal rights activist. He is a strong supporter of PETA and has done work for the organization including narrating the video entitled Meet your Meat.” Andy at BuckeyeAg, call your office.
• “When interviewed by the New York Times, Baldwin was asked what public office he would consider running for, he replied: ‘If I ever ran for anything, the thing I would like to be is governor of New York.‘” New York, Ohio, whatev.
• “During his appearance on the comedy late night show Late Night with Conan O’Brien on December 12, 1998, eight days before President Bill Clinton was to be impeached, Baldwin said ‘if we were in another country… we would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families, for what they’re doing to this country.’ Baldwin apologized, and the network explained it was meant as a joke and promised not to rerun it.” I’ve seen it plenty of times. Dude was not joking; dude was angry. God help us if he ever got any real power.
• “(In an) editorial, Baldwin compared the ‘damage done’ by George W. Bush’s controversial victory in the 2000 election to that of the damage done by the September 11, 2001 attacks.” Because soooo many innocent people died during Florida 2000.
• “On a May 12 Late Show with David Letterman appearance in 2009, Baldwin made a joke about getting a ‘Filipino mail-order bride…or a Russian one’ in order to have more children. Baldwin was targeted by members of the Filipino community who were offended, including Senator Ramon ‘Bong’ Revilla, Jr. of the Philippines. Baldwin later apologized for the remark via his Huffington Post blog; the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs has not lifted the ban on the actor from entering the country due to his status as an ‘undesirable alien.’“

Let me suggest that Baldwin would also be an “undesirable alien” in Buckeye State politics — which would of course make him the perfect Democratic Party candidate.

Matt at WoMD and DJT at 3BP have received an interesting e-mail.

The Cliff’s notes:

• A statewide poll shows John Kasich ahead of T-Shirt Ted Strickland in the 2010 Ohio gubernatorial race 44-35.
• In the Buckeye State’s 2010 US Senate race, the poll shows Rob Portman ahead of Lugubrious Lee Fisher 39-33, and ahead of Jennifer “ACORN” Brunner 43-31.
• The results are “From a telephone poll, conducted June 23-26, 2009, included 824 registered voters statewide and carries a margin of error of +/- 3.4 percentage points.”

The pollster, “(Fritz) Wenzel Strategies” may be the same guy who worked for Steve Schuring in his unsuccessful race against John “I’m Not Really Pro-Second Amendment, Because I Support Barack Obama” Boccieri.

As to the poll’s credibility, I would suggest that perhaps Wenzel’s crew is finding Republicans and sensible conservatives the Columbus Dispatch has consistently failed to locate in polls relating to statewide races (Even in Obama-McCain, the Dispatch’s prediction of Obama by 6 erred on Obama’s side, though by a relatively small 2 points.)

OK, the news is pretty good…. But this is normally where Republicans give in to the temptation to go to the Tom Dewey prevent defense, which is only good at preventing winning, forget to articulate sensible conservatism, and just try to coast. Depending on where things stand 16 months from now, that’s a recipe for turning a close election into a rout for the other guys, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, or from missing landslide opportunities. Minimizing the influence of the hidebound Ohio Republican Party in Columbus would seem to be critical to avoiding said temptation.

Speaking of the Second Amendment, Matt at WoMD has John Kasich’s statement on the right of citizens to bear arms. This is good, because, as with Boccieri, Ted Strickland’s support of Barack Obama also renders the governor’s alleged Second Amendment credibility utterly null and void.

Yesterday, the Obama administration gave us permission (as if we need it; HT Third Base Politics) to judge the results of the mislabeled, time-delayed, historically ineffective stimulus that was rushed into law with Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown’s deciding vote, and without anyone having read it, in February:

Robert Gibbs: “We should begin to judge it now.”

ADP issued its report on June private sector employment this morning:

June, 2009

Nonfarm private employment decreased 473,000 from May to June 2009 on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the ADP National Employment Report®. The estimated change of employment from April to May was revised by 47,000, from a decline of 532,000 to a decline of 485,000.

Monthly employment losses in April, May, and June averaged 492,000. This is a notable improvement over the first three months of the year, when monthly losses averaged 691,000. Nevertheless, despite some recent indications that economic activity is stabilizing, employment, which usually trails overall economic activity, is likely to decline for at least several more months, although perhaps not as rapidly as during the last six months.

4-1/2 months after its passage, yours truly now has the mighty Robert Gibbs’s and Dear Leader’s permission to judge the legislation’s impact.

Okay, here goes.

ADP’s reported June drop of 473,000 is a whole 12,000 jobs below May’s revised 485,000.

At that steady rate of “improvement,” the economy will start adding jobs in October 2012, after having lost over 9,000,000 jobs in the meantime:

If that steady rate of “improvement” occurs, the nationwide unemployment rate will rise to something like 16% - 17%.

So what’s the problem? (/sarc)

4-1/2 months after its passage, readers also are now allowed to judge the effectiveness of the the mislabeled, time-delayed, historically ineffective stimulus that was rushed into law with Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown’s deciding vote, and without anyone having read it, for themselves.

So by all means, please do so. You have Dear Leader’s permission.

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UPDATE: The Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Index, covering about 15% of the economy, came in at 44.8%, up from 42.8% in May. It takes 50% to be in expansion mode. A full history is here.

June’s number is a nice improvement, especially from the year-end value. But remember that hitting 50% will only signify a bottom-out and the very beginning of a recovery. The stimulus-related takeaway is that 4-1/2 months after its passage, we’re not very close to that point yet.

The Non-Manufacturing Index will come out on Monday.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

Thanks to Mark Levin for bringing up my NewsBusters post (mirrored here at BizzyBlog) about the dive in federal receipts near the end of the first hour of his show last night (link to the June 30 audio is here).

___________________________________________________

I didn’t do anything with the Franken-Coleman story all these months because my instincts told me that Franken and his party would cheat to win. The Wall Street Journal confirms that this is indeed what happened — “Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election.”

For the next 5-1/2 years, yours truly will be referring to the not-funny Franken as the illegitimately selected Senator from Minnesota. Lefties who want to whine about Florida 2000 should read this first, and this second — and go somewhere else to whine.

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Robert Rector — “Welfare reform is effectively dead — and the Obama administration is driving a stake through its chest. And what we can expect to see are record ongoing increases in welfare spending for the foreseeable future.”

Gutting welfare reform is cynical, results-be-damned, country-be damned politics. The reform of traditional welfare (once known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children [AFDC], now known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF]) has been a real-world application of legitimate human compassion during the past 13 years, and remarkable personal and economic results have flowed from it. Both compassion and results are now apparently less important than creating dependent Democratic voters.

Unfortunately, other forms of welfare-type spending have ballooned in recent years, leading Rector to warn that “even though the U.S. spent more than $700 billion on (all forms of) welfare for poor and low-income people last year (not including Social Security or Medicare), equaling about $20,000 for each poor person, President Obama plans to dramatically ramp up that spending in the years to come.”

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L.E. Ikenga, a first generation born West African-American woman whose parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970’s, warns at American Thinker (”Obama, the African Colonial”) that “The tropes of America’s racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial.”

Ah yes. I’ve noted a UK Daily Mail story from February 2007 about Obama’s father (”A drunk and a bigot - what the US Presidental hopeful HASN’T said about his father”) a couple of times (here and here). Nobody has ever refuted the content of that piece.

Greg Ransom researched the father’s far, far-left politics as revealed in a 1965 article written by Barack Obama Sr. here (Ransom’s work was originally published in April 2008). Nobody has ever meaningfully refuted what Ransom wrote, but they have called him a bad guy for bringing up the topic.

___________________________________________________

At IBDeditorials.com — “During his campaign, President Obama made a big deal of criticizing leaders who are elected democratically but don’t govern democratically. He’s had a chance to show that it mattered in Honduras. He didn’t.”

Read the whole thing. Barack Obama Hearts (his kind of) Tyrants.

Update: Roger Simon — “Iran, Honduras: Is Obama ‘objectively pro-fascist’?”

Well, it’s official…whack-nut Senate liberals now have their 60th missing link (and I mean that in every sense of the expression).

A word of warning to the Republicans left on the hill…especially the wussy republicans:  From this day forward, you will determine the value, effectiveness and subsequent existence of the Republican Party.  Perhaps even more disturbing (as I stated in the link above), your actions will unarguably determine how timely and literal the next revolution gets.  You can either fight for what you know is right according to the founding principles of this country, or continue on the wide, progressive path to irrelevancy.

You see, thanks to your contributions that have been turning this country into something it was never meant to be, the people who are waking up to your foolishness no longer see things in conventional terms of ”Democrat and Republican.”  Rather, as Ayn Rand so prophetically coined, we are seeing things in terms of “looters and producers.” In your role, that means you either vote in favor of creating more looters dependent upon government (socialism) or more producers (free-markets, limited government).  Your performance to date is unacceptable…

Let’s face it, en masse, your record hasn’t been much better than progressive liberals.  In some cases, republicans have advanced liberal causes more than they could have ever hoped.  Government grew just as significantly on your watch and after several USSC appointments, we still have the atrocities of Roe v. Wade/Doe v. Bolton.  Republicans like Mitt Romney spear-headed the destruction of traditional marriage in addition to capitulating on “universal healthcare” (two words that should NEVER come out of a [true] conservatives mouth, let alone tyrannical policy chamber).  Mitt Romney, the man over whom women swoon, was a liberal’s dream.

We could go on…and on…and on…

Additionally, while this goes without saying in most circles, we no longer view most of you in a favorable way (shocker!).  How proud we are (sarcasm) that we now simply expect you to be scoundrels,  philanderers…and adultering pigs who say one thing but do another.  In fact, the disdain we have for you and the cess pool that is Washington DC is exactly what keeps many from running against you.  You consistently betray the trust of the people who put you in office and are consistently remiss with any majority we give you.  In the private sector, you would have been fired long before 2006 & 2008.  It is an understatement to say that WE, the People have become more informed (we read our bills), more involved and actively educate each other one hundred times more than any of you, period.

Tangent:

There has been a lot of “nah, nah, nah look at the hypocritical conservatives” over the Mark Sanford situation.  Let’s be clear about the liberal hypocrisy here.  Their premise is that conservatives encourage a certain way of life (pro-family values) and then break their own standards.  True enough in some cases, but make no mistake, liberals are just as guilty about telling people how they should live (preferably forced via legislation) while considering themselves exempt from the mandate or fleeting, social norm.

End of Tangent.

So what is left for the pro-producers to focus on? Only two things, really…

1. The courage to stand on principle and make the pro-looters own every destructive policy they pass until pro-producers get back into the majority.  This would entail learning and actually repeating the word “no” ad nauseum.
2. Having the basic, fundamental ability to fricking count.  Nothing too complex, the four basic mathmatical functions will do.  For example, looters think that -$11 trillion + $1 trillion equals $1 trillion that they can take in and spend…producers who work for a living know that it equals ”negative” $10 trillion).

Yep, it’s that simple, folks.  Can you grow a spine and can you count?  Both are non-negotiable lest you learn to count by calculating the number of votes by which you lose your next race.

Whether you realize it or not, you have brought a frustrated electorate to the point that puts you in the most danger… we have nothing to lose…and that should scare the hell out of you.

“Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. “  ~John Quinicy Adams

As we near the end of June, which is supposed to be one of the four biggest months for federal tax collections (January, April, and September are the others), it is clear that the serious receipts shortfalls are not only continuing, but have caused the March 20 projections of the administration and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to be outdated.

Media coverage of the ongoing receipts dive has been minimal at best. A Google News search on “federal receipts” (typed in quotes) returns on seven items, two of them originating from yours truly.

Here is where things stand as of the last Friday of June in both 2009 and 2008, per Uncle Sam’s related Daily Treasury Statements:

Comparing June 26, 2009 to June 27, 2008 is more valid than comparing the same days of both years, because each period contains the same number of Mondays, a big day for receipts, and Fridays, a big day for sending out refund checks.

As you can see, as we approach the end of the month, June 2009 receipts from economic activity are down 25% from last year. It’s clear from last year’s results that it would be unreasonable to expect a high level of receipts from other than withholdings in the final two days of this year.

Estimating on what I believe is the high side, it looks like total June 2009 receipts will come in at about $230 billion, consisting of about $198 billion in the line items identified above (i.e., another $13.2 billion will come in during the final two days) plus $32 billion in other receipts. That would be a 12% drop from last year’s official total, but a 20% drop from last year’s $287.8 billion in total receipts from economic activity.

Looking forward to the rest of the year, I estimate the following results based on how the government defines receipts:

I believe these estimates, if anything, are on the high side. July 2009 will probably come in at 90% or worse compared to July 2008, because July 2008 had over $13 billion in stimulus payments, which Uncle Sam (erroneously, in my opinion) treated as negative receipts instead of outlays. August 2009, vs. August 2008 will be worse than July, because August 2008 stimulus payments were barely $1 billion. September 2009 vs. will probably be even worse than the previous two months, because that month is heavily influenced by corporate income and non-withheld tax receipts, which as you can see above have fallen far more than the overall average.

Also note that August and September of 2009 will show year-over-year declines for the second straight year. Monthly year-over-year receipts from economic activity increased for an almost unbroken string of four years up until August of last year, when the recession as normal people define it began.

You can also see that my full-year receipts estimate is almost $60 billion, or 2.8%, below the CBO’s March 20 estimate (PDF) based on budget information supplied to it by the White House, and 4% below the White House’s own estimate based on the same underlying information CBO used.

As I mentioned in a June 20 post (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the repayments of roughly $68 billion of TARP money during June by many of the larger banks are not being treated as receipts by Uncle Sam, because the original TARP disbursements/”investments” were not treated as outlays. More on how “Net Present Value” accounting is rendering almost indecipherable federal financial information that used to be mostly understandable is here.

When federal spending is hemorrhaging in the hundreds of billions and trillions, it may seem relatively unimportant to focus on differences of less than $100 billion in receipts. But that is far from the case. First, the declines are far more than what one would expect from an economy that has contracted by about 3.2% (non-annualized) in the past three reported quarters, indicating that something beyond normal business reactions is at work here. Second, the steeper the receipts decline, the smaller the foundation on which to build an economic recovery will be, and the more likely it is that the administration will give us a fake hand-wring and push tax increases as the only answer to the shortfall — even though tax increases, based on history, would more than likely extend the economic spiral instead of stopping it.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE, 4:10 p.m.: The relevant line items just came in pretty much as expected on the June 29, 2009 Treasury Statement at about $10.8 billion, vs. about $13.4 billion on Monday, June 30 of last year.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

Doocy’s Doozy — Energy Czar Carol Browner, busted –

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TEXT –

STEVE DOOCY: “[I] know the bill is over 1,000 pages long. Have you have read it?”

CAROL BROWNER: “Oh, I’m very familiar with this bill.”

DOOCY: “Have you have read it?”

BROWNER: “We have obviously been watching this for a very long time. I am very …”

DOOCY: “I’m sure you’ve got an idea of it, but you have read it?”

BROWNER: “I’ve read major portions of it, absolutely.”

DOOCY: “So the answer no you haven’t read it. But you’ve read a big chunk of it.”

BROWNER: “No, no, no that’s not fair. That’s absolutely not fair.”

DOOCY: “No, I’m just asking you if you read the thousand pages.”

BROWNER: “I’ve read vast portions of it.”

DOOCY: “Ok.”

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No wonder the Obama admin despises Fox News. Their people ask questions normal people would ask. Obama and his peeps can’t handle it.

Doocy could have gone further and pressured Browner about what the Examiner’s David Freddoso reported last week (HT Powerline via The Corner’s Andy McCarthy), namely that “the 300-plus page managers’ amendment, added to the bill …. (the night before the vote) in the House Rules Committee” was “not even …. integrated with the official copy of the 1,090-page bill at the House Clerk’s desk.”

I am soooooo sure that in the 56 or so intervening hours between the vote and the Fox interview, Carol Browner sat down with the two docs and self-integrated them as she read the entirety of both.

Hardly. Doocy dis-integrated her disingenuousness, and then Browner whined about how “not fair” he was.

Cry me a river, babe. What’s “not fair” is that 219 Congresspersons, NOT ONE of whom deserves re-election, voted for a bill they could not possibly have read, let alone understood.

This leads me to Steve Driehaus. DirectorBlue at the Green Room writes that “We cannot afford politicians like Steve Driehaus, who vote for economy-crippling legislation, then hope their colleagues in the other house of Congress will kill it before it hardens into a tumor.” I mostly agree, but judging by what the Cincinnati Enquirer reported Sunday about Driehaus’s defense of his vote, it seems that the congressman really wants the bill to go all the way. Regardless of its ultimate success, the bill is a lengthy IQ test of fitness for office, and Driehaus has flunked.

Exit point: Michelle Malkin reminded us in December that just before Bush 43’s inauguration, Browner, then the outgoing head of the Environmental Protection Agency, “oversaw the destruction of agency computer files in brazen violation of a federal judge’s order requiring the agency to preserve its records.” Browner has no business serving in any government position of any kind, and is a walking, talking, one-person mockery of the President’s alleged high ethical standards.

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Questions for those advocating the “public plan” option in Obamacare:

1. Will the “public plan” pay income and other taxes like the companies who run private plans must? (Example: Aetna alone incurred $790 million in income tax expenses in calendar 2008, and over $3.5 billion in the past four years. The company’s most recent 10-K [PDF] indicates that this expense is almost entirely related to its Health Care and Group Insurance.)
2. What will anyone do to keep the “public plan” from taking advantage of other unfair advantages, which could at least include general government absorption of administrative costs, sales-tax exemptions, property-tax exemptions, ”public service” advertising, and much more?
3. Will the “public plan” be just as vulnerable to class-action and no-limit malpractice lawsuits as private plans currently are?
4. If the answers to Question 1, 2, or 3 are “no” or “I don’t know,” how can you possibly claim to know that the “public plan’s” competition against private plans will be conducted on a level playing field?

Related Update: On Sunday, Alo at Brain Shavings went after and properly characterized Obama’s snotty question (”Why would [the “public option”] drive private insurers out of business?”), and tore it to pieces. You can add the items ID’d in Questions 1-3 above to Alo’s cited reasons.

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The wrap at a Wall Street Journal editorial today — “Bernie Madoff is headed for a deserved personal end-game in the slammer, but until the cops catch his accomplices or explain why they can’t, the Madoff case remains open.” Surely there are others who knew that Madoff’s house was made of cards.

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At Hot Air — “Press corps now openly laughing at Obama’s backtracking on taxes.” Trouble is, the “joke,” if new taxes come to pass, will be on us.

From Lincoln, Nebraska, and New York City:

Lincoln, Neb., Jun 29, 2009 / 05:53 pm

Twelve high school and college students from southeastern Nebraska traveled to New York City early this month to spend a week doing mission work with the city’s different religious orders.

Father Jamie Hottovy of St. John Parish in Prague, Nebraska and Ss. Cyril and Methodius Parish in Plasi took the young group to the bustling city so they could experience the work that the different orders in the city do to assist the people living there.

“Every day we did something different. We spent each day with one of the groups we were helping, doing whatever they asked of us,” said one student named Jessica Sousek.

The days were long and filled with activity. Morning began around 6 or 7 a.m. and the group worked until 10 or 11 p.m. The students shared meals together, as well as daily Mass, and an afternoon Holy Hour. A few sight-seeing excursions were squeezed in between projects as well

“We prayed hard, we worked hard, and we played hard,” Father Hottovy said. “We did about a month’s worth of activities in one week.”

On the first day, the women helped the Sisters of Life cook and clean the formation house. Meanwhile, the men worked with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal (CFR) at St. Crispin Friary in the Bronx, renovating their building with new drywall and paint.

The next day, the group worked with the Missionaries of Charity, the New York division of Blessed Mother Teresa’s order. In preparation for summer catechism programs for underprivileged kids, the Nebraska students cleaned and set up the auditorium, saving the sisters a great deal of time.

Later in the week, the group returned to serve the Missionaries of Charity at one of their AIDS hospices, once again cooking and cleaning.

“That was something very powerful,” Father Hottovy said describing the seemingly mundane tasks. “By sweeping and by cleaning toilets, [the students were] working for the greater good and helping people who don’t have as many advantages as they do.”

The students also assisted the Franciscan brothers in preparing for a “Jesus Run.”

“The ‘Jesus Run’ consisted of sharing physical needs, such as food, drink, and clothing, with spiritual and emotional needs, such as sharing in prayer or just talking, for the homeless of New York City,” explained Ashley Paseka, another student.

Brother Marianon, CFR, prepared them for interaction with the homeless.

“He emphasized that, whomever we met that night, we should see Jesus in each one of those people and receive them with the love you’d receive Christ,” recalled Father Hottovy. “It brought the experience to a whole new level.”

Go here for the rest of the story.

ABC’s online “The Note” describes itself as “Washington’s Original and Most Influential Tipsheet.” ABC News’s Senior Political Reporter Richard Klein is its current content creator.

We’ll see how influential “The Note” really is if what Klein writes about the machinations behind the attempt to make us forget that the Obama stimulus plan was supposedly going to be making some kind of difference at this point gets out anywhere else. Color me skeptical.

No doubt, Klein gets in some pretty strong, accurate, and long-overdue rips (links are in original):

Moving the Stimulus GoalpostsWith public confidence in the stimulus package showing signs of ebbing, the Obama administration is continuing to sell its impact with nation-wide events and press appearances.

Today brings this explanation, from Christina Romer, the chairman of the president’s Council on Economic Advisers: Stimulus spending, Romer told the Financial Times, is “going to ramp up strongly through the summer and the fall.

“We always knew we were not going to get all that much fiscal impact during the first five to six months. The big impact starts to hit from about now onwards,” Romer said.

….. But top Obama advisers haven’t always been so cautious in predicting how long the stimulus would take to be felt.

Back in February, with Congress moving swiftly to approve President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package, White House budget director Peter Orszag said the benefits of the stimulus would “take weeks to months” to be felt.

Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council, was even more optimistic: “You’ll see the effects begin almost immediately,” Summers told CNN in February.

Just last month, Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden’s top economic adviser, joined administration officials in asserting that the stimulus was already working, despite rising unemployment rates.

….. The stimulus, of course, did pass, though the national unemployment rate is now 9.4 percent. Two weeks ago, President Obama predicted that unemployment will top 10 percent this year.

The sad thing is how many of these defenders really know better. Romer, for example, authored a 2007 paper showing that tax cuts had over twice the impact (second item at link) of the same amount of government stimulus.

Klein’s report would appear to be a way for the network to say “See, we did tough coverage of Obama,” while, barring a surprise on “Good Morning America,” “World News Tonight,” or “20/20,” letting few people see it.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Jack Cashill over at American Thinker has finished quite an extensive amount of phenomenal research that puts into question - no, pretty much nails - Barack Obama on some “originality” issues with regards to who wrote “his” book, “Dreams From My Father.”

This is old-fashioned journalism at its best…here is an excerpt.

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The experts in the field have told me to stick with old-fashioned literary detective work, and I have done just that. Mr. Midwest (anonymous to the public, but known to Cashill — Ed.) has helped.  His most recent contribution is a good example of keen-eyed detection.

Going forward, I will be referring to five books.  These include Ayers’ 1993 To Teach, his 1997 A Kind and Just Parent (shorthand: Parent), his 2001 memoir Fugitive Days, and Obama’s 1995 Dreams From My Father (Dreams). Casual critics of this research have repeated the canard that I attributed both Obama books, Dreams and the 2006 Audacity of Hope (Audacity), to Ayers.  I never have.  From the beginning, I have asserted that the two books appear to have two different authors, and so I will leave Audacity out of the equation until the end.

What Mr. Midwest noticed recently is that both Ayers in Parent and Obama in Dreams make reference to the poet Carl Sandburg.  In itself, this is not a grand revelation.  Let us call it a C-level match. Obama and Ayers seem to have shared the same library in any case.  Both talk of reading the books of Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois and Frantz Fanon among others.  In fact, each misspells “Frantz” as “Franz.”

Ayers and Obama, however, go beyond citing Sandburg.  Each quotes the opening line of his poem “Chicago.”  From Dreams:

He poured himself more hot water. “What do you know about Chicago anyway?”

I thought a moment. “Hog butcher to the world,” I said finally.

From Parent:

“At the turn of the century, Chicago had a population of a million people and was a young and muscular city - hub of commerce and industry, the first skyscraper city, home of the famous world exposition, “hog butcher to the world” - bursting with energy.”

This I would call a B-level match.  What raises it up a notch to an A-level match is the fact that both misquote “Chicago,” and they do so in exactly the same way.  The poem actually opens, “Hog butcher for the world.”

Last week, the first email I received from Mr. West had in the message box “759 striking similarities between Dreams and Ayers’ works.”  This claim seemed so outsized I did not take it seriously.  When I was unable to open the documents, I emailed Mr. West back, asked him to reformat, and then forgot about the email.  He resent his documents a few days later.

This time I was able to open them and was promptly blown away.  Mr. West’s analysis was systematic, comprehensive, and utterly, totally, damning.  Of the 759 matches, none were frivolous.  All were C-level or above, and I had no doubt of their authenticity.  I had been gathering many of them in my own reserve waiting for a book-length opportunity to make my case.  Mr. West had done the heavy lifting.  He even indexed his matches.  This represented months of works.  As I learned, he had been patiently gathering material since November when he first began building on my own research.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Read the whole thing here (and make sure to read the ongoing narrative summary where he also links to a video interview w/Ayers).

Now, anyone who has heard Obama speak without at teleprompter knows that he is FAR from an original…unless of course we’re talking about his politics in which case he gets closest to Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Marx…

So, for those who are upset that Obama can’t produce a $7 long-form birth certificate, don’t feel bad, turns out he can’t produce anything original…shocker.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies, relatively light on commentary:

Indiana Sitting On Billion Dollar Budget Reserve — “If the Governors of Ohio and Kentucky want tips on how to balance their budget, they might pick up the phone and call Mitch Daniels of Indiana.” I’ve suggested that Indiana is worth emulating at least a couple of times (here and here), not that either of them are listening.

The Honduran “coup” is really, as Ed Morrissey at Hot Air astutely notes, democracy functioning as it should when a tyrant wannabe tries to put himself above the law and his country’s constitution. Guess whose side the White House is on?

Joan Vennochi at the Boston Globe — “THE FUZZY math behind the Massachusetts universal healthcare law is starting to add up - just as Washington studies the law as a possible model for the nation.” The trouble is that the real math doesn’t add up, and that liberal commentators like Vennochi, when faced with reality, still won’t let go of the nationalization idea.

No elaboration necessary (HT Berman Post) — “The Obama administration is open to discussions with Iran over its nuclear ambitions despite protests questioning the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election, U.S. officials said Sunday.”

The Coschocton (OH) Tribune editorializes — “More Broken Promises by Strickland.” The opening: “I’ll tell you one thing, but do another. Gov. Ted Strickland should consider that as a slogan for his re-election campaign. It may not work in his favor, but at least it would be forthright.” Ouch.

At the Cincinnati Enquirer, a “let’s make this as vague as possible” headline — “Tea Partiers Protest (Cap and Trade) Bill, Driehaus (’Yes’ Vote).” I had to add what is in parens to make it comprehensible. Driehaus’s defense — “(The bill will) provide fair, measured controls to reduce carbon emissions 83 percent by 2050. I’m proud to stand with my colleagues today to do the right ting (sic) for the future of America’s economy and security.” The “ting” is, the bill will trash American’s economy and our ability to defend ourselves. His ouster from the First Congressional District is a “ting” that can’t happen soon enough.

Standing up to a wannabe tyrant who would dictate what clerics can and can’t do is a positive thing.

From Managua, Nicaragua:

Jun 17, 2009 / 08:51 pm

In response to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s recent “invitation to pray” and to refrain from giving opinions on political issues, the bishops of Nicaragua reminded that justice requires action and not just prayer. The one who prays, they said, must always speak out to defend the truth.

Ortega responded to recent criticism of his administration by “exhorting” the bishops to “pray everyday.” According to El Nuevo Diario, Archbishop Leopoldo Brenes of Managua said, “We don’t belong to any political party, but we do exercise political action at a general level, which means for the common good … .” “Generally as pastors we are always in tune with the sense of our people, and we convey that to those who have the capacity to bring about solutions to problems.”

For his part, the vice president of the bishops’ conference, Bishop Juan Abelardo Guevara, responded to Ortega’s comments by saying it was “abominable to use the word of the Lord to justify absurd positions.”

Auxiliary Bishop Silvio Jose Baez Ortega of Managua …. also reminded the president to listen to the opinions of others, to examine his own conscience and to practice self-correction.

….. “He who prays has the obligation to raise his voice in support of the truth,” he added. “Praying does not exempt one from working for justice, from being a prophet. In the Bible, the prayer and the prophet go hand in hand. He who prays, he who speaks with God, speaks also of God and also denounces the situations in which God is not present.”

Go here for the full story.