Economist Milton Friedman had it right: “So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.”There's an old urban legend (myth) out there that says that if you dream that you are in a free-fall, if you don't wake up in time before you reach the end of the free-fall, you won't wake up alive. If the myth was reality, it means that so far, in those kinds of dreams, I've been pretty lucky to have some type of wake-up call to get out that nightmare.
More government hasn’t been, isn’t and won’t ever be the answer. That’s California dreamin’.
~ Ted Nugent, "California nightmare" ~ May 15, 2012
Well, America, you're getting the wake up call, but apparently it isn't doing the job like pouring a bucket-full of ice water over you or slapping you in the face. While it's right in front of you, maybe it's that sleep hasn't quite left you yet. Or maybe... maybe, Robert Ringer's recent commentary about the anesthesia injected into America's soul shouldn't be overlooked.
Count on it, sporting events, dumbed-down TV shows, tabloids — anything that’s anesthetizing — will continue to be embraced by millions of Americans, no matter how much worse the economy gets. And those same Americans will never even notice that they’re sitting in a large pot of water that is slowly reaching the boiling point.If it isn't possible for the American people to see the failures of Socialism and Communism by now, there must be something blocking the view. Or could it be something that just clouds the view, like the pain-killing medication taken in a period of post-surgery misery?
Whether we're sitting in the "large pot of water that is slowly reaching the boiling point," or reaching the final moment of the free-fall in a nightmare, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee. And if that doesn't work, how about a really cold shower?
Allow me to go out on a limb for a moment: There are a few stories that I encounter too often that remind me that the freedom of speech could be a thing of the past. In this post, I include several stories I came across in the last week. Far too often, though, is the fact that we can be silenced in so many various ways, Saul Alinsky-style.
And yet, just how many people will not ever get the point? How many people, many who love this country, will sleep through what we are now facing?
Sorry, but it's true. When you wake up and see where America is headed, you may become a bit sleep-deprived. That may explain the bad day I had yesterday when I could not sleep. I may have been afraid that I would hit the "bottom" while I was in that free-fall nightmare. I needed to have the confidence that I'd get that wake-up call in time. I'm just sayin'...
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Welcome to this edition of Time 2 Escape WIFLI Briefing!
What is WIFLI?
You may be wondering what the acronym "WIFLI" means. I started out by calling these issues the Time 2 Escape Daily, but that didn't work out very well. I quickly learned that putting these issues together on a daily basis was a task I was unable to accomplish. To replace "Daily" in the title, I borrowed the acronym WIFLI, which literally means "When I Feel Like It." Putting together a post on this blog WIFLI works much better for my schedule, and for the higher quality of each issue that is eventually published!
FAIR USE NOTICE: This edition of the Time 2 Escape WIFLI Briefing may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes only. This constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law.
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Romney Donor Finds Out What it Means to Be on President Obama‘s ’Enemies List’From The BLAZE ~ By Becket Adams ~ Published on May 11, 2012 at 10:00pm
Team Obama “named and shamed” eight private citizens for donating to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, The Blaze reported two weeks ago.
Former Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Hussein Obama
Frank VanderSloot, one of the eight men detailed by the president’s “Truth Team,” is discovering what it means to be on a president’s “enemies list.”
VanderSloot has run a wellness-products company called Melaleuca Inc. out of Idaho Falls, ID, for the last 26 years, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel reports. By all accounts, it’s a healthy and prosperous company — something of a rarity in this current economy. But that doesn’t matter to certain members of “Team Obama.” VanderSloot gave $1 million to the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future and that was enough to land him a spot on the enemies list.
Frank VanderSloot
The eight donors are “wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records” and some of them have even been on the “wrong side of the law,” according to President Obama’s KeepingGOPHonest site.
And as for VanderSloot, he is a “litigious, combative and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement,” the site claims.
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Global-warming policies and the threat to U.S.
'If we use God-given resources, then we can find ways to make the Middle-East less relevant'
From WND U.S. ~ By Kevin Mooney ~ Published May 15, 2012
WASHINGTON – Contrary to what Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told an environmental organization earlier this month, the threat to America’s geopolitical standing comes not from global warming but from anti-energy global warming policies, according to free market policy analysts and national security advocates.
A Frozen Earth:
The REAL threat to America’s geopolitical standing
During an annual reception held for the Environmental Defense Fund at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., Panetta described how abrupt environmental changes could unsettle populated areas and create international tension.
Defense Secy Leon Panetta
“The area of climate change has a dramatic impact on national security,” Panetta said at the reception. “Rising sea levels, severe droughts, the melting of the polar caps, the more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.”
While it is possible for climate change to foster instability in certain areas of the world, updated scientific research indicates that the claims are greatly exaggerated and must be carefully weighed, Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has warned.
He cites a detailed study published in the official journal for the British Science Association that finds there has not been a single instance of a declared war fought over international fresh water sources over a period of five decades. Instead of fighting over water, the countries collaborate and import “virtual water” in the form of grain, the report says.
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Cyber-intelligence bill sponsor silent on FBI push to wiretap social networks
From The Daily Caller ~ By Josh Peterson, TheDC Tech Editor ~ Published May 13, 2012
The author of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) — a bill that would allow the sharing of network cyber threat information between private corporations and the federal government, particularly the NSA — is staying quiet about the prospect of the FBI’s separate push for the ability to wiretap social networks.RELATED STORIES AND LINKS:
First signed into law in 1994, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) currently gives the FBI the ability to legally conduct electronic surveillance of telecommunications networks, including traffic over broadband networks and Voice over IP (VoIP). The FBI morphed into a full-fledged intelligence agency following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
A recent CNET report revealed that the FBI was quietly pushing for a reform to the CALEA, and that the Federal Communications Commission was potentially preparing for regulatory action to amend the law, which would require Internet companies to modify their website code to make it easier to monitor persons of interest for national security purposes. The amendment would affect social networks like Facebook, video chat services like Skype, and web email providers.
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Commies storm Obama headquarters
President praised radical group founder as 'great reformer'
From WND ~ By Aaron Klein ~ Published May 15, 2012
RELATED LINK:The protest group that stormed President Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters today was founded by a communist sympathizer recently named by Obama as a “great” reformer.
AARON KLEIN
Obama has ties to several other activists plotting chaos in Chicago this week in the lead-up to the NATO summit that begins Friday.
Dozens of protesters slipped past security guards today and ran up escalators at the Obama Chicago campaign headquarters to kick off what they called a “Week Without Capitalism,” reported the Chicago Tribune.
Eight protesters, cheered by other demonstrators, reportedly were led out in handcuffs after they refused to clear the lobby.
The protest reportedly was organized by the Catholic Worker Movement, or CWM, founded by the late radical Dorothy Day, a journalist who wrote for Marxist newspapers.
CWM protests capitalism as an economic system that is “far from God’s justice” and calls for “a withdrawal from the capitalist system so far as each one is able to do so.”
CWM calls for the nonviolent destruction of capitalist society to rebuild a socialist utopia.
Discover The Networks notes that CWM recommends “a complete rejection of the present social order”; “a withdrawal from the capitalist system so far as each one is able to do so”; and “a non-violent revolution to establish an order more in accord with Christian values.”
Such measures are to be used, according to CWM, to create a “new society within the shell of the old” – “a cooperative social order” of “communitarianism” without “extremes of wealth and poverty.”
In February, Obama used the annual National Prayer Breakfast to uphold Day as a “great” reformer. [Emphasis mine]
Declared Obama: “Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Abraham Heschel – the majority of great reformers in American history did their work not just because it was sound policy, or they had done good analysis, or understood how to exercise good politics, but because their faith and their values dictated it, and called for bold action – sometimes in the face of indifference, sometimes in the face of resistance.”
Day is known for her motto: “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?”
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Greek, European woe could cause problems for US
From GOPUSA News ~ By Bradley Klapper and David McHugh ~ Published May 15, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) - Your 401(k) could sink again. A plummeting euro may make it harder for American companies to sell goods overseas. Credit could be tightened.
These are all potential complications of a European debt crisis that risks spiraling out of control. And in today's interconnected global economy, Greece's troubles could over time become a headache for all of Europe and by extension, the rest of the world.
That includes President Barack Obama as he faces an already difficult re-election bid, and voters as well, from machine tool makers in Michigan to chemical plant workers on the Gulf coast. Pensioners and home buyers also could be affected.
All this because Greece is at a crossroads, unable to form a government and decide whether it will continue on a path of harsh austerity measures or walk away from its debts and give up on the euro. That would leave many European countries holding their debts and shake the foundations of a currency used by 331 million people.
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Will U.S. follow Europe's suicidal fiscal path?
Herman Cain: 'We can and will do better. I refuse to believe otherwise'
From WND Commentaries ~ By Herman Cain ~ Published May 13, 2012
I believe in democracy and in the wisdom of ordinary people to make good decisions when they have all the information and understand the situation.
HERMAN CAIN
These are core principles for me, so I found them challenged last week when voters in France and Greece acted in a way that seemed to clearly demonstrate otherwise. With much of Europe facing massive debt crises, and having agreed to abide by strict debt limits under terms of the European Union fiscal pact, French and Greek voters elected new governments that vowed to defy planned spending cuts and reject the debt limits.
This is especially egregious in Greece, which is supposed to be adhering to terms of an EU-sponsored bailout but cannot get its spending policies under control to save its life – and let there be no doubt, that’s what’s at stake here. Greece has built up so much debt bankrolling its welfare state, and has caused so much government dependence, it endured riots when it reached the inevitable point when the government had to admit it could no longer continue its reckless spending.
France is not in as much trouble, but in some ways the French election result is even more troubling because French President Nicolas Sarkozy was one of the authors of the EU pact imposing the strict debt limits. The election of socialist Francois Hollande represents a rejection of the very idea of fiscal responsibility and leaves Germany in the precarious position of championing spending restraint and limits on debt while sentiment throughout the Eurozone seems to be moving entirely in the opposite direction.
What is going on here? Is my faith in people misplaced? And have I been wrong to express as much faith in the people of the United States – when we too face huge fiscal challenges and there seems to be little support for reform of the spending and entitlement programs that are driving the crisis?
I do not believe my faith in We the People is misplaced, but I do believe it’s important to remember the whole equation. The people will make good decisions when they have all the information and understand the situation. To the extent that people rely on politicians and the mainstream media to get their information – Houston, we have a problem.
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See Will Smith‘s Shocked Reaction to France’s Proposed 75% Tax Rate…After Just Advocating for Higher Taxes in U.S.
From The BLAZE ~ by Becket Adams ~ Published May 15, 2012 at 10:59 am
Remember when actor and comedian Jon Lovitz went off on President Barack Obama’s taxation policies? We’re sure you do. Shortly after Lovitz’ now-famous “bulls**t” rant went viral, Zombie, a blogger writing for PJ Media, posited the following theory: left-leaning celebrities are comfortable with taxation and “fair share” rhetoric — but only to certain a point.
Named after the famous “Laffer Curve,” Zombie calls it the “Lovitz Curve.”
And now Will Smith, a strong supporter of President Obama‘s call for higher taxes on the country’s top earners, may have found his “Lovitz Curve.”
[Author’s note: although it’s difficult to understand what Smith is saying because of all the crosstalk and the translation, his reaction at the 1:20 mark is unmistakable]:
Video provided by LibertarienTV on May 13, 2012
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And while we're talking about the woes of Greece, and Europe in general, I must now insert this Ted Nugent commentary in order to illustrate the fact that Socialist big government just doesn't work.
NUGENT: California nightmare
Bankrupt state serves as a warning to the rest of America
From The Washington Times Commentary ~ By Ted Nugent ~ Published May 15, 2012
Will the last American left in California please turn out the lights? And don’t let the door slam you in the behind. California isn’t going broke. It’s already broke and is $16 billion in the hole. With businesses leaving the state in record numbers because of punitive taxes and bizarre overregulation, the only way forward is to either raise taxes or severely cut benefits. Raising taxes is the mantra of liberals, and California is awash with liberal politicians.
TED NUGENT
In addition to business-killing taxes and regulations, California has the third-highest state income tax in the nation, the nation’s highest sales tax and the highest gas taxes in America.
Get this: Roughly half of California’s income taxes are paid by just 1 percent of California’s residents. It’s no wonder the most productive people are leaving the state each year as more bloodsuckers move in.
If that isn’t bad enough, California has one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates; its health care system is on the verge of collapse, with dozens of hospitals closing over the past decade; crime is rampant in California’s cities; its public employees are paid staggering amounts of money compared to ordinary Californians; and massive numbers of illegal aliens continue to invade the state.
This isn’t California dreamin’ but rather an American nightmare.
It’s a blinding statement of the obvious, but California’s financial nightmare (and the nation’s) is a terminal addiction to bloated and expensive government completely out of control, with zero accountability.
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The Marmalade - REFLECTIONS OF MY LIFE - Vietnam Vets
From Patriots For America ~ May 11, 2012 at 6:09 pm
Reflections of My Life - Vietnam Vets
Uploaded by joltinjack on Aug 22, 2008
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Don't be afraid!
ONE NATION UNDER GODYOU ARE NOT ALONE!
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