Local News | Community Calendar | Classifieds | Business Directory | Real Estate | Weather | Home Commercial messages, profane language or allusions, libelous comments, excessive or continuous negative comments about any person or business, racially derogatory remarks, license plate numbers, prominent use of all capital letters, empty message body, use of anothers or similar screen name as your own, reference or clues to another users identity, use of your own real name, consecutive or repetitive messages from the same person, classified ads, and lost/found notices are not permitted. See Guidelines. Messages are removed at the webmasters sole discretion. Correspondence with site administrators may be posted to this forum. ©1995-2010 Sweet Pea Communications. Contents may not be reproduced without permission. http://topangaonline.com/forums/list.php?6 Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:00:11 -0700 Phorum 5.2.9a http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4714#msg-4714 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4714#msg-4714 Edenite Topanga Talk Fri, 10 Sep 2010 09:42:22 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4713,4713#msg-4713 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4713,4713#msg-4713 from Margaret and Helen by Helen Philpot

Margaret did we really expect anything less? Religious intolerance has defined the Republican Party for almost 30 years now. A culture of life. Family values. America’s Christian Heritage. The sanctity of marriage. Gays in the military. Prayer in school. A mosque in Manhattan. For goodness sakes, the current leaders of the Republican Party (Palin, Limbaugh, and Beck) have been screaming about a Muslim family in the White House for months now. It was only a matter of time before someone called for a good ‘ole fashion book burning. Does it really matter if that book is the Quran instead of The Catcher in the Rye?

There is just one thing I haven’t been able to figure out yet. How many more groups of people does the Republican Party have to hate before its members finally call for a new platform? Those signs they carry at their rallies are getting pretty full. The print will have to be pretty small at the next Beck rally to fit God Hates Gays, Jews, Blacks, Muslims, Clinton, the Liberal Media, Obama, Pelosi, France, Activists Judges, Environmentalists, Feminists, Mexicans, and small puppies. Maybe they can just print up a sign that simply says God Hates Everyone Who Isn’t Like Me.

And trust me Margaret. The minute Matthew puts this on that web page blog of ours, a bunch of jack-@#$%& are going to tell us that God hates us too and we shouldn’t generalize all Republicans like that. Well all I have to say is if it quacks like a Duck and sets a Quran on fire then it must be a Republican.

If you vote Republican today, what exactly are you voting for? It’s certainly not smaller government. If you vote Republican today you are telling “Pastor” Terry Jones that fifty religious fanatics are more important than any chance for world peace. You are telling Sarah Palin that when it comes to the presidency - pretty is more important than smart. You are telling Glenn Beck that honesty isn’t really necessary if you have your own cable news show on Fox. You are telling Michele Bachmann that hearing voices in your head isn’t cause for alarm. Hell, if you vote Republican today you might as well just shove a few more dollars in Rush Limbaugh’s pockets and a few more pills in his mouth. It’s all very entertaining, I’ll give you that. But considering what they did when we gave them the keys to the car the last time, are you really ready to put them behind the wheel again so soon? I’m just not sure there are that many more countries we can bomb, world religions we can vilify and oil wells we can drill before the rest of the world calls us on our @#$%&.

Here’s a thought. If Pastor Jones is so dead set on burning a book he should just wait until The George Bush Memoirs come out. After all, everyone knows the only thing God loves more than a good book burning is a burning Bush.

If the Democrats can’t muster enough votes to beat this bunch of yahoos then we deserve what we get on November 3rd. Besides, Harold said we could move to Canada and you know how much I love Anne Murray.

Vote Republican and burn a Quran. Same difference. I mean it really.]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Fri, 10 Sep 2010 11:52:20 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4712,4712#msg-4712 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4712,4712#msg-4712 10 Republican Lies About the Bush Tax Cuts

So it's come down to this. On Saturday, David Stockman, the legendary Reagan budget chief who presided over the Gipper's supply-side tax cuts, announced that the "debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts." The next day, the former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, who famously helped sell the 2001 Bush tax cuts to Congress, declared them simply "disastrous."

Sadly, Stockman and Greenspan are just about the only voices in the Republican Party speaking the truth about the fiscal devastation wrought by the expiring Bush tax cuts. After all, the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan, only to double again during the tenure of George W. Bush. And as it turns out, the Bush tax cut windfall for the wealthy accounted for almost half the budget deficits during his presidency and, if made permanent, would contribute more to the U.S. budget deficit than the Obama stimulus, the TARP program, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and revenue lost to the recession - combined. Of course, you'd never know it listening to the leaders of GOP.

And that's just the beginning. Here, then, are 10 Republican Lies about the Bush tax cuts:

* Lie #1: Democrats Plan Across the Board Tax Hikes on January 1st
* Lie #2: Democrats Want a $3.8 Trillion Tax Increase
* Lie #3: Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves
* Lie #4: The Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Add to the Deficit
* Lie #5: Expiring High Income Tax Cuts Will Hurt Small Business
* Lie #6: The Estate Tax Devastates Small Businesses and Family Farms
* Lie #7: The Bush Tax Cuts Helped All Americans
* Lie #8. Extending Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy is the Best Way to Stimulate the Economy
* Lie #9. Bush Tax Cuts Produced 52 Straight Months of Job Growth
* Lie #10: The Rich Pay Too Much in Taxes Already

Lie #1: Democrats Plan Across the Board Tax Hikes on January 1st

On July 19, Michigan Republican Dave Camp sent out an email blast warning of the "Democrats' ticking tax time bomb" claiming "Americans to pay higher taxes starting January 1, 2011." On July 20, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) declared, "Should Democrats get their way, every income tax bracket will increase on Jan. 1, 2011. Every single one."

It's no wonder Politifact deemed the charge "False." As the fact checking site put it:

"For many months, Democratic officials have consistently said that they intend to let only the tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals lapse. The cutoff they usually suggest is $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly. President Obama campaigned on just such a plan."

Which is exactly right. During the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama pledged to roll back the Bush tax cuts for couples earning over $250,000 a year while delivering tax relief for 95% of working households. President Obama has already delivered on the second promise. (Ironically, and despite the Tea Party's rage, total federal, state and local taxes hit their lowest level since 1950.) Last week, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner confirmed Obama's intent to make good the first:

"We believe it is appropriate to let those tax cuts that go to the most fortunate expire."

The shrill voices of the GOP aren't merely lying on this point. The expiring Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, were after all, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican President. As Ezra Klein recently put it, "Republicans now blaming Democrats for Bush tax cuts."

Lie #2: Democrats Want a $3.8 Trillion Tax Increase

If nothing else, Republicans like Sarah Palin deserve a hand for having the chutzpah to pretend Democrats want a $3.8 trillion tax increase over the next decade.

On Sunday, Palin literally wrote that talking point on her hand in an appearance with Chris Wallace of Fox News:

"My palm isn't large enough to have written all my notes down on what this tax increase, what it will result in.... Democrats are poised to cause the largest tax increase in U.S. history, it's a tax increase of $3.8 trillion in the next ten years and it will have an effect on every single American who pays an income tax."

Of course, this second Republican fraud is merely the flip-side of the first. Restoring upper bracket tax rates to their Clinton-era levels will impact only a sliver of American taxpayers. As ThinkProgress noted:

For one thing, according to the Pew Economic Policy Group, an extension of all of the Bush tax cuts will cost $3.1 trillion over ten years, once the costs of servicing the debt are factored in. But no one has proposed allowing them all expire, and it's incredibly disingenuous of Republicans to claim otherwise, especially since it was a budget gimmick by former President George W. Bush to include the ten-year sunset at all.

Extending just the cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans will cost $830 billion over ten years.

Lie #3: Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves

But even that cost is one Republicans refuse to pay. As Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Senate Republican, told Chris Wallace three weeks ago:

"[Y]ou should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes," Jon Kyl said on Fox News Sunday. "Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to -- if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that's what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans."

Three days later, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) explained how his party miraculously turns bulls**t into gold:

"There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."

It's no wonder, as Ezra Klein joked, that If a Democrat said something like that, "He'd be laughed out of the room."

But how about the Congressional Budget Office's estimations? "The new CBO data show that changes in law enacted since January 2001 increased the deficit by $539 billion in 2005. In the absence of such legislation, the nation would have a surplus this year. Tax cuts account for almost half -- 48 percent -- of this $539 billion in increased costs." How about the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget? Their budget calculator shows that the tax cuts will cost $3.28 trillion between 2011 and 2018. How about George W. Bush's CEA chair, Greg Mankiw, who used the term "charlatans and cranks" for people who believed that "broad-based income tax cuts would have such large supply-side effects that the tax cuts would raise tax revenue." He continued: "I did not find such a claim credible, based on the available evidence. I never have, and I still don't."

Lie #4: The Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Add to the Deficit

Of course, McConnell and Kyl were simply joining Judd Gregg, Tom Coburn, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Kay Bailey Hutchison and the rest of the new Republican alchemists selling Arthur Laffer's supply-side snake oil. Even John McCain, who voted against the 2001 Bush tax cuts, got the religion just in time for the 2008 Republican primaries, arguing "Tax cuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues."

But it was House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) who offered the purest expression of that fantasy in defending the Bush tax cuts:

"It's not the marginal tax rates ... that's not what led to the budget deficit. The revenue problem we have today is a result of what happened in the economic collapse some 18 months ago."

"We've seen over the last 30 years that lower marginal tax rates have led to a growing economy, more employment and more people paying taxes."

As it turned out, not so much.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities demolished the mythology promoted by President Bush ("You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase") and the usual suspects on the right. CBPP found that Bush tax cuts accounted for almost half of the mushrooming deficits during his tenure:

And as another recent CBPP analysis revealed, over the next 10 years, the Bush tax cuts if made permanent will contribute more to the U.S. budget deficit than the Obama stimulus, the TARP program, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and revenue lost to the recession put together.

The Bush tax cuts didn't come anywhere close to paying for themselves. And making them permanent is the very worst thing the so-called deficit hawks could do to reduce the U.S. debt.

Lie #5: Expiring High Income Tax Cuts Will Hurt Small Business

As Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) complained, allowing the Bush cuts to lapse for the wealthiest Americans would amount to "a job-killing tax hike on small business during tough economic times." Mike Pence echoed that argument, fretting "the idea that you would raise taxes on small businesses owners and job creators in the middle of this recession doesn't make any sense."

As it turns out, very few small business owners would be impacted.

John McCain introduced this fraud along with Joe the Plumber during the 2008 campaign. McCain proclaimed Obama's plan to restore Clinton-era tax rates for taxpayers making over $250,000 meant "the small businesses that we're talking about would receive an increase in their taxes right now." In February 2009, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) regurgitated the long-debunked talking point:

"I don't think raising taxes is a great idea, and when our good friends on the other side of the aisle say raising the taxes on the wealthy, what they are really talking about is small business."

Of course, they're not talking about small business. As CNN concluded in October 2008, "fewer than 2% of small business owners would pay more under Obama's plan." But in case there was any doubt about the Republicans' deception on the point, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center quickly put it to rest:

Out of 34.7 million filers with business income on Schedules C, E or F, 479,000 filers fall into the top two brackets, according to an analysis of projected 2009 filings by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

The other 34.3 million - or 98.6% - would be unaffected by Obama's proposed rate hike.

Lie #6: The Estate Tax Devastates Small Businesses and Family Farms

In June, Florida Republican Senator George Lemieux summed up the impact of his party's successful effort to temporarily kill the estate tax in 2010. "The joke is don't go hunting with your children because right now there's no estate tax in this country this year." But the billions lost to the U.S. Treasury so that the heirs of billionaires could reap a staggering one-year windfall is no laughing matter.

The Republican scam over the so-called "death tax" is as bogus now as it was when President Bush first perpetrated it ten years ago. The "alternative" House GOP budget, fittingly unveiled by Rep. Paul Ryan on April Fool's Day 2009, would eliminate the estate tax altogether. While Nevada Senator John Ensign griped, "It destroys a lot of small businesses and a lot of family farms and ranches in America," House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) groused:

"People who aren't wealthy, who may have built up value in land over generations and many family farms find themselves in situations where they've got to sell the farm in order the pay the taxes."

Sadly for conservative myth-makers, that claim, too, is completely false.

As the Washington Post explained, under President Obama's proposal (exempting couples with estates under $7 million with a 45 percent rate for amounts beyond that) 99.76% of estates would pay no taxes whatsoever. While CBPP estimated that only 1 in 500 estates is impacted by the current law, in 2009 the Tax Policy Center quantified just how few family farms or small businesses are actually impacted by the estate tax proposals under consideration:

We estimate that under the Obama proposal, 100 family farms and businesses would owe tax. (We define such estates as those where farm or business assets are valued at under $5 million and comprise the majority of estate assets.) The Lincoln-Kyl proposal would cut the number to 40. Even under current law, fewer than 2,700 family farms and businesses would owe tax.

And that wasn't good enough for Arizona's Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate. Thanks to his obstructionism in December, the estate tax temporarily expired for one year as of January 1, 2010. (Barring new legislation in Congress, in 2011 the rate will jump back up to its pre-2001 Bush tax cut level of 55%, starting at $2 million per couple.) That could cost the U.S. Treasury billions this year. In the mean time, the message from the GOP to the wealthiest Americans is "die here, die now, pay less."

Lie #7: The Bush Tax Cuts Helped All Americans

In February 2004, President Bush proclaimed, "we cut taxes, which basically meant people had more money in their pocket." Of course, some people are more equal than others.

As the Center for American Progress noted at the time, "for the majority of Americans, the tax cuts meant very little," adding, "By next year, for instance, 88% of all Americans will receive $100 or less from the Administration's latest tax cuts."

But that's just the beginning of the story. As the CAP also reported, the Bush tax cuts delivered a third of their total benefits to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. And to be sure, their @#$%& was staggering. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities detailed that by 2007, millionaires on average pocketed $120,000 from the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Those in the top 1% stashed an extra $45,000 a year. As a result, millionaires saw their after-tax incomes rise by 7.6%, while the gains for the middle quintile and bottom 20% of Americans were a paltry 2.3% and 0.4%, respectively.

And as the New York Times uncovered in 2006, the 2003 Bush dividend and capital gains tax cuts offered almost nothing to taxpayers earning below $100,000 a year. Instead, those windfalls reduced taxes "on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000." As the Times revealed in a jaw-dropping chart:

"The top 2 percent of taxpayers, those making more than $200,000, received more than 70% of the increased tax savings from those cuts in investment income."

So it should come as no surprise, as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders lamented last week, that under President Bush the 400 richest taxpayers saw their tax rates halved - and their incomes double.

Lie #8. Extending Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy is the Best Way to Stimulate the Economy

In 1993, Senator Phil Gramm (yes, that Phil Gramm) said of President Clinton's proposal to raise top-bracket tax rates to help erase the Reagan-Bush deficits, "I believe hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their jobs...I believe Bill Clinton will be one of those people." He was wrong on both counts.

Now, implicit in the Republican propaganda for making the Bush tax cuts permanent at a time of record income inequality is that more windfalls for the wealthy is the best way to stimulate the economy. As Florida GOP Senate hopeful Marco Rubio defended more tax cuts for the rich, "Jobs in America are created by people that have money or access to money."

Again, the numbers tell a different story.

Analyses from the Congressional Budget Office and former McCain economic adviser Mark Zandi concluded that upper class tax breaks provide just about the lowest return on investment (32 cents on the dollar) of any federal stimulus activity. As the Washington Post summed it up:

Why? As the CBO notes, most Bush tax cut dollars go to higher-income households, and these top earners don't spend as much of their income as lower earners. In fact, of 11 potential stimulus policies the CBO recently examined, an extension of all of the Bush tax cuts ties for lowest bang for the buck. (The CBO did not examine the high-income tax cuts separately, but the logic it used suggests that extending those cuts alone would have even less value.) The government could more effectively stimulate the economy by letting the high-income tax cuts expire and using the money for aid to the states, extensions of unemployment insurance benefits and tax credits favoring job creation. Dollar for dollar, each of these measures would have about three times the impact on GDP as continuing the Bush tax cuts.

It is true, as the New York Times and AP each reported over the last several days, that the recent decline in consumer spending among the richest 5% of Americans is contributing to the slowdown of the economic recovery. But giving them more money isn't the answer.

Lie #9. Bush Tax Cuts Produced 52 Straight Months of Job Growth

One month after the start of the recession which bears his name, President Bush in January 2008 proclaimed "America has added jobs for a record 52 straight months." Now, two and a half years later, former RNC chief Ed Gillespie is still bragging:

"The fact is, under the Bush tax cuts, we did have 52 months of-in uninterrupted job creation, longest in the history of the country."

While it is technically true the U.S. experienced moderate job growth between 2003 and 2007, the claim is also irrelevant.

The verdict on President Bush's reign of ruin was pronounced even before Barack Obama took the oath of office. January 9, 2009, the Republican-friendly Wall Street Journal summed it up with an article titled simply, "Bush on Jobs: the Worst Track Record on Record." The Journal noted that "The Bush administration created about three million jobs (net) over its eight years, a fraction of the 23 million jobs created under President Bill Clinton's administration." Just days after the Washington Post documented that George W. Bush presided over the worst eight-year economic performance in the modern American presidency, the New York Times on January 24 featured an analysis ("Economic Setbacks That Define the Bush Years") comparing presidential performance going back to Eisenhower. As the Times showed, George W. Bush, the first MBA president, was a historic failure when it came to expanding GDP, producing jobs and fueling stock market growth.

But it was the release of a Census Bureau report last September ("Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008") which in 67 pages laid bare the economic devastation and human toll during the Bush presidency. As The Atlantic ("Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy") rightly noted, "It's not a record many Republicans are likely to point to with pride":

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.

Lie #10: The Rich Pay Too Much in Taxes Already

In February 2009, Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann declared, "We're running out of rich people in this country." Just in time for tax day two months later, Bush flunkie Ari Fleischer comically expanded on that Republican meta myth.

Unsurprisingly, Fleischer took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to make his plea on behalf of the nation's bedraggled wealthy. The top 10% of taxpayers, Fleischer argued, are "supporting virtually everyone and everything" and "their burden keeps getting heavier." As he put it:

"It's also what's called redistribution of income, and it is getting out of hand."

Oh, it's gotten out of hand all right. Just not, as the data make abundantly clear, in the direction Fleischer claims.

As for the richest 2% of Americans, they will pay more in income taxes if President Obama gets his way. But then again, the last time the top income tax rate was 39%, as it was under Bill Clinton, the United States enjoyed a booming economy, rising incomes, low unemployment and expanding budget surpluses. A booming economy, that is, for everyone.

UPDATE: Almost on cue, Eric Cantor on admitted the Bush tax cuts "dig the hole deeper" on the deficit, but supports making them permanent nevertheless. Meanwhile, Karl Rove doubled-down on the fraud that they led to "the largest amount of revenue being received by the government."

http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/001932.htm]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:28:51 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4708,4708#msg-4708 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4708,4708#msg-4708
The Most Fiscally Irresponsible Government in U.S. History

Current federal budget trends are capable of destroying this country

By Mortimer B. Zuckerman

August 26, 2010


There is an instinctive conclusion among the American public that President Obama's stimulus package has failed to create a sustained recovery. Unemployment has increased, not declined; consumers have retrenched; housing starts have crashed along with mortgage applications; and there is a fear that a double-dip recession may very well be in the pipeline. The public perception, reflected in Pew Research/National Journal polls, is that the measures to combat the Great Recession have mostly helped large banks and financial institutions, and that's a view common to Republicans (75 percent) and Democrats (73 percent). Only one third of either political leaning thinks government policies have done a great deal or a fair amount for the poor.

There is another instinctive conclusion among the American people. It is that the national deficit, and the debts we have accumulated, are of critical political importance. On the national debt, the money the government has spent without the tax revenues to pay for it has produced mind-numbing numbers so large as to be disconnected from reality. Zeros from here to infinity. The sums are hard to describe; it is hard to describe an elephant, but you know one when you see one. The public knows that, shuffle the numbers as you may, the level of debt is unsustainable.

Who could be surprised since millions of voters have discovered that for themselves? As one realizes the morning after the night before, there is an unavoidable penalty for excess. It is unnerving to wake up and learn that you have a mortgage on your home that exceeds the value of the property. Or, and too often both, you have a credit card line that you cannot repay and the issuer has you on the rack for ever bigger compound interest on the debt. The lesson has been well and truly learned that debt catches up with you. Millions understand that they are just going to have to find a way to live within their means—and then still eke out some savings to pay down debt. And there are well over 14 million Americans without a paying job, so the level of discontent is very high. Just how are they going to regain control of their lives?

In a usnews.com post on July 26, Jodie Allen of the Pew Research Center reported that in recent weeks more academic and market economists have been urging the government to defer budget cuts and tax increases and instead provide additional stimulus to a still-fragile economy, some by continuing the Bush tax cuts. But among the public there has been a suggestive shift of opinion the other way, reflecting worries about debt. "Deficit and government spending" has jumped from 10th or 11th place as a priority for the federal government to one that is second only to job creation and economic growth. The drift of opinion is manifest in other recent polls. For instance, a CBS poll conducted July 9-12 @#$%& the most important problem facing the country as the economy and jobs (38 percent), with concern about the budget deficit and national debt way down at 5 percent. Yet CNN (July 16-21) has 47 percent preoccupied first with the economy, and 13 percent with the federal deficit. In a recent Time magazine poll, two thirds of the respondents say they oppose a second government stimulus program and more than half say the country would have been better off without the first one.

People see the stimulus, fashioned and passed by Congress in such a hurry, as a metaphor for wasted money. They are highly critical about the lack of discipline among our political leaders. The question that naturally arises is how to forestall a long-term economic decline.

The Fed has lowered rates dramatically to keep the economy ticking and maybe continue the painfully slow recovery, but at the receiving end there is no feeling of relief at all. People know that the stimulus is about to stop stimulating. They know that money is petering out. They know that states are preparing to cut $200 billion to balance their budgets. They realize that the Great Recession has wiped out huge amounts of wealth and that, unlike other recessions, this will not be followed by the kind of economic boom when people who had sat on their money during the lean years unleash pent-up demand for all sorts of goods and services.

There is no sign of that happening this time around. Households and businesses have kept their hands in their pockets. And so while many think that the only way to revive the economy and to inject more money into it is through governmental spending, the general feeling is that we can't afford that right now. The government will be writing more IOUs on top of those we already can't afford. Why plan a second stimulus if the first stimulus couldn't prevent high unemployment?

Of course, the question remains whether public sentiment coincides with sound economics. The challenge we face as a country is how to get growing vigorously again while achieving fiscal sustainability. We are learning from the Europeans what happens when the risks that came with excessive debt become realities. There seems to be an emerging consensus that if there is to be any additional stimulus, it must be explicitly linked to credible fiscal restraint down the road. This would include a commitment to binding legislation that would change the algebra so that both programs and budget procedures get us on a benign trajectory.

There are two warning signs of a budget crisis: rising debt and the loss of confidence that the government will deal with it. This administration is on the verge of fulfilling both conditions. In fairness, there is no majority coalition in Congress for deficit reduction today. It is also true that the growth of public debt has been driven by a dramatic diminution of tax receipts due to the recession, the extra spending to avoid sinking into a self-perpetuating depression, and all those billions we invested to save the financial sectors from their sins. Voters see the politicians most vociferous about reining in the federal budget as those who are out of power and want to use it against the majority party. Too many politicians claim they are all for balanced budgets—but only by reducing the other party's priorities. Republicans want to reduce social spending. Democrats want to reduce military spending. It is Washington as usual.

Amid the clamor and counterpromises, the historic record is worth keeping in mind. We paid for World War II through growth. The national debt, as a percentage of gross domestic product, fell sharply through the postwar presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson (despite the Vietnam War) and continued edging down through most of Nixon's, rising a little with Ford's. We marked time in the stagflation of the Carter years, and then the debt percentage increased dramatically during the Reagan-Bush presidencies. It shot up again to the present dangerous levels under George W. Bush and Obama. The only good years were Clinton's.

An old saying that can apply to the deficit is called the "rule of holes" and goes as follows: "When you're in one, stop digging." But Washington politics remains the barrier. Government programs seem to live on forever. The budget becomes a perpetual-motion machine for higher spending. New programs for new needs get piled on top of old programs for old needs.

Then there are the retirees. Their numbers and their health costs will keep on rising. There were 35 million Americans over 65 in 2000 and the number of retirees is expected to double by 2030. The impending retirement of millions of baby boomers, with their claims on federal retirement programs, comes at a time when both parties seem to be willing to worsen tomorrow's problems to win more of today's votes. The result is that the federal budget is drifting into a future of huge deficits or unprecedented tax increases, or both.

Federal spending is moving toward a higher plateau—from roughly 18 percent of the GDP to almost 25 percent by 2030. We don't know how we are going to pay for this. We don't know how the economy would fare with much higher taxes. We have seen the clouds gathering for years but haven't invested in an umbrella by adjusting federal retirement programs or taking other steps to reduce entitlements. One response would have been to begin gradually phasing in eligibility ages and tying benefits more to income. No doubt we have to think about raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare, perhaps by one month for each two-month increase in average life expectancy. We will have to think of ways to reduce the cost-of-living increases on Social Security benefits for wealthy seniors by slowly increasing their Medicare premiums and leaving everybody else's untouched. We may have to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, certainly for households earning more than $250,000 (and more for the super-rich) given the concentration of wealth in the top 1 percent of the population. It is entirely appropriate that they begin to make a greater contribution to our longer-term fiscal health.

The United States simply seems to lack a system that can fund the government that the people say they want. We are good at crises, but we do not seem to be good at tackling chronic problems. If we wait until a crisis happens, it will be too late. It is simply not possible to close the gap entirely with the tax increases on the rich that Democratic liberals so desperately believe in. Nor can we close the gap with spending cuts, as the Republicans would like. The liberals will have to concede that benefits and spending ought to be reduced. Conservatives will have to concede the need for higher taxes.

Hope may lie in a new bipartisan panel headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, two unique, wise, and centrist political leaders whose characters raise some degree of confidence that they might be able to come forth with productive programs. As former President Clinton said of them, they "are free enough to disregard the polls but smart enough to take them into account."

But let's not forget, current budgetary trends are capable of destroying the country. As Bowles pointed out, according to a Washington Post report, we can't just grow our way out of this. We can't just tax our way out of this. We have to do what governors do—cut spending or increase revenues in some combination that will begin to pull us back from the cliff.

Obama must know that if he doesn't address this, he will be the president who drove us toward a debt crisis. And so too must Congress, for both have now participated in the most fiscally irresponsible government in American history.]]> Edenite Topanga Talk Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:58:40 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4706,4706#msg-4706 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4706,4706#msg-4706
Obama Added More to National Debt in First 19 Months Than All Presidents from Washington Through Reagan Combined, Says Gov’t Data

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief


In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.

The U.S. Treasury Department divides the federal debt into two categories. One is “debt held by the public,” which includes U.S. government securities owned by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments and other entities outside the federal government itself. The other is “intragovernmental” debt, which includes I.O.U.s the federal government gives to itself when, for example, the Treasury borrows money out of the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for expenses other than Social Security.

At the end of fiscal year 1989, which ended eight months after President Reagan left office, the total federal debt held by the public was $2.1907 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That means all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan had accumulated only that much publicly held debt on behalf of American taxpayers. That is $335.3 billion less than the $2.5260 trillion that was added to the federal debt held by the public just between Jan. 20, 2009, when President Obama was inaugurated, and Aug. 20, 2010, the 19-month anniversary of Obama's inauguration.

By contrast, President Reagan was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 1981 and left office eight years later on Jan. 20, 1989. At the end of fiscal 1980, four months before Reagan was inaugurated, the federal debt held by the public was $711.9 billion, according to CBO. At the end of fiscal 1989, eight months after Reagan left office, the federal debt held by the public was $2.1907 trillion. That means that in the nine-fiscal-year period of 1980-89--which included all of Reagan’s eight years in office--the federal debt held by the public increased $1.4788 trillion. That is in excess of a trillion dollars less than the $2.5260 increase in the debt held by the public during Obama’s first 19 months.

When President Barack Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, the total federal debt held by the public stood at 6.3073 trillion, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department. As of Aug. 20, 2010, after the first nineteen months of President Obama’s 48-month term, the total federal debt held by the public had grown to a total of $8.8333 trillion, an increase of $2.5260 trillion.

In just the last four months (May through August), according to the CBO, the Obama administration has run cumulative deficits of $464 billion, more than the $458 billion deficit the Bush administration ran through the entirety of fiscal 2008.

The CBO predicted this week that the annual budget deficit for fiscal 2010, which ends on the last day of this month, will exceed $1.3 trillion.

The first two fiscal years in which Obama has served will see the two biggest federal deficits as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product since the end of World War II.

“CBO currently estimates that the deficit for 2010 will be about $70 billion below last year’s total but will still exceed $1.3 trillion,” said the CBO’s monthly budget review for September, which was released yesterday. “Relative to the size of the economy, this year’s deficit is expected to be the second-largest shortfall in the past 65 years: At 9.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), that deficit will be exceeded only by last year’s deficit of 9.9 percent of GDP.”




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numag (35 minutes ago) To show you just how insane some Obama supporters are, the article clearly states that the total public debt when Obama took office was 6.3 trillion dollars. But BillAdkins totally ignores that fact and boldly claims that GW Bush alone contributed 6.5 trillion dollars to the public debt. Sorry Bill, even though the mushrooms created that fantasy in your mind, it doesn't add up, now does it? Here's my prescription for you. Lay off the mushrooms, go to rehab, and then come back after November elections are over.
dennisl59 (46 minutes ago) I don't care how you slice it...we all are owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the Federal Government. And it's been downhill since July 20th, 1969.
BillAdkins (48 minutes ago) numag, I challenge you to prove my numbers wrong. Here, I'll start you out with the link to Bush's FY 2009 budget deficit. C'mon. I'm betting all I'll hear from you are crickets. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/07/AR2009010701156.html
BillAdkins (50 minutes ago) Yes, Bush's average budget deficit for every year in office was $631 billion -- that was truly nonsense.
numag (51 minutes ago) BillAdkins, LOL, you are a funny one. Just make things up as you go along. Those must be some powerful mushrooms.
signsoftimes (51 minutes ago) If President Bush's term had run a little longer, he would have done the same thing Obama has done. Bush started the bailout procedure and Obama felt it necessary to continue the scheme. Bush and the Fed. Reserve were very instrumental in building up the housing bubble and allowed the banks to run their ponzi scheme. Bush was a liberal in disguise. There's not much difference between the two parties. Bush didn't do anything to stop immigration. He talked a lot about abortions but didn't do anything about it.
roblrich (55 minutes ago) I didn't realize Obama had 2-3 supporters left. But he does and we found them hiding here posting nonsense.
BillAdkins (1 hour ago) Oh, and do not forget -- the failed policies of the Republicans in those years of our national nightmare, the Bush Administration, delivered in 2009 through today the lowest tax revenue since the first Great Depression. I say "first" because I think those same happy people who brought you that Great Depression have managed to deliver the Great Depression II. Heckuva job.
BillAdkins (1 hour ago) Chicken feed in comparison to George W. Bush who racked up more debt than all US presidents combined, including Obama. George W. Bush added almost $6.5 trillion to the national debt 2001 - through FY 2009. ALL US PRESIDENTS COMBINED!! Carter left us about $800 billion in the hole; Reagan/Bush ended in 1993 with $4.2 trillion; Clinton ended with $5.7 trillion -- but George W? George W. left us on 1/20/2009 with a $10.8 trillion national debt and a $1.2 trillion FY 2009 budget deficit already accrued as of 1/8/2009 per the CBO. Do the math, Terence, and let's see this headline. GEORGE W. BUSH RAN UP MORE NATIONAL DEBT THAN ALL US PRESIDENTS COMBINED!!
intrigued (1 hour ago) @mauibucky. Sure Bush's $4.1 trillion is much larger than Obama's "measly" $2.5 trillion. Oh wait, except when you take a moment to realize that Bush took 8 years to run it up that much, while Obama has managed it in 19 months. I wonder how high it will go with $1.3 trillion dollar deficits every year. Brother, you have to read the whole article and not just the parts you like.

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Related ArticlesObama Used ‘Invest’ or ‘Investment’ 18 Times in Press Conference to Describe Government Deficit SpendingCongressional Salaries Should Not Go Up Until Federal Spending Is Under Control, Hatch SaysObama’s First Two Years Will Boast Two Biggest Deficits Since World War II, Says CBOCongressional Budget Office Sees 2010 Budget Deficit of $1.35 TrillionObama Will Spend More on Welfare in the Next Year Than Bush Spent on Entire Iraq War, Study RevealsObama Again Uses the Word ‘Investment’ to Describe the Deficit Spending He PlansReaganomics v. Obamanomics: The MovieObama Used ‘Invest,’ ‘Investing,’ or ‘Investment’ Seven Times in Labor Day Speech to Describe Federal Spending and Special-Interest Tax LoopholesIffy Senate Outlook for State Aid PackageFederal Deficit Tops $1 Trillion through JuneRelated Videos Right Now on CNSNews.com Reid: 'Someone' Should Offer Amendment to Protect Private Financial Records President Obama On 'Investing']]> Edenite Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 06:53:37 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4705,4705#msg-4705 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4705,4705#msg-4705 TheThinker Topanga Talk Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:17:42 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4703,4703#msg-4703 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4703,4703#msg-4703

Local produce available through Community Supported Agriculture programs
By A.K. Whitney

Editor's note: This is the first of a four-part series on local Community Supported Agriculture programs, which provide consumers with locally grown produce. Part one explains the programs; the remaining segments will show how the allotted produce was used in the preparation of homemade dishes.

"I feel like a trick-or-treater," says the young man holding a large canvas bag, as a woman rummages in a large cardboard box - one of many - set on a long table in front of him.

But the treat she pulls out and puts in his bag isn't candy - it's two ears of corn.

And it's not Halloween, it's a sunny late-summer afternoon in an alley off of Main Street in Santa Monica.

The young man, as well as others in line behind him, also carrying reusable bags, are picking up their week's share of fruits and vegetables - produce they've signed up for through a Community Supported Agriculture program, or CSA.

CSA programs are not exactly new. They've been around for at least 30 years. But thanks to the growing popularity of farmers markets and the locavore movement (that encourages buying food grown in the area, not shipped across country or from overseas), CSA programs are sprouting all over the country. Southern California is no exception.

"They were very limited," said Jonathan Reinbold, executive director of the Tierra Miguel Foundation, a San Diego County-based CSA that provides produce to pickup points in San Diego,

Orange County, Long Beach, Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley and the South Bay. "Two years ago, there were four (in Southern California). There are at least 13 that I know of now."

Homegrown-food consultant Judy Frankel used to run a CSA of sorts from her small farm in Rancho Palos Verdes.

"I'm not producing enough to do a CSA now," Frankel said, adding that she will, however, supply produce to neighbors. "It does seem like people are very interested in it. People are understanding more about food security. They realize if they buy food directly from the farms they can know what the farm's practices are."

Recent E. coli and salmonella scares have made people more aware than ever of how large-scale farming practices can hurt the consumer, Frankel said. Besides, she added, locally grown tastes fresher and has a lower carbon footprint.

But how is CSA different from supporting farmers by buying produce at local farmers markets?

Prices are comparable - depending on which CSA you join, $25 will get you a nice selection of fruits, vegetables and herbs, enough for about five dinners for two. But CSAs provide a much closer relationship between farmer and consumer. Not only do you buy whatever the farm produces from week to week, you also share in any loss.

"CSA is a way for the growers and the eaters to share in production and preservation of farmland," Reinbold said. "When we have a crop loss as a farm, we are able to share that loss with our members. Right now, we have an abundance, but we don't have refunds. We try to make it clear a Tierra Miguel Foundation CSA is not buying vegetables, you are buying a membership to a farm."

That membership at Tierra Miguel Foundation costs $250, which gets you 10 weeks of shares. Such conditions, not to mention the idea of occasionally getting a fruit or vegetable you don't enjoy or know how to cook - or even learning to eat seasonally, when the nearest grocery store offers strawberries in December - can be a challenge.

"It's kind of an education," said Jenny Suter, a Long Beach resident who has been running a CSA pickup point out of her home for about a year. "It's not for some people."

Suter's pickup gets most of its produce from Tanaka Farms in Irvine.

Tanaka Farms' CSA programs are at more than 70 schools, 10 businesses and two churches in Orange County, Long Beach, Lakewood, Downey, Los Alamitos, Cerritos, Torrance and several other South Bay cities.

"We started in Long Beach three years ago," said Eileen Kato, Tanaka's CSA spokeswoman. "We had Naples Elementary. From there, it took off."

Tanaka charges between $20 and $30 for its shares, and part of the money goes back to the school or church that hosts it, which makes it a great fundraiser, Kato said.

As with the Tierra Miguel Foundation, Tanaka's CSA members help the farm absorb losses.

"If there is a crop failure, we do not lower the price," Kato said. "We will try to put more of another fruit or vegetable in the box. We also will work with other local farms or growers to make sure we have enough produce and fruits in the boxes."

The concern that just one farm will not produce enough variety for a CSA share has led some to start programs that rely on several farms at a time.

CSA California, which supplies produce to Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Echo Park, Westchester, Culver City, North Hollywood and other areas in Los Angeles County, relies on at least four farms per week.

CSA California is run by Topanga Canyon resident Sara Paul. Paul started the CSA two years ago with a partner (he has since moved on to start other programs out of state) after realizing there was a lot of demand for locally grown produce, even among kids at her daughter's school.

"My daughter Angel would bring her lunch, and the other kids would like her lunch better than the school lunch," Paul said, adding that $2 of CSA California's $25 shares help support that school.

Like Tanaka and the Tierra Miguel Foundation, CSA California members accept what they're given (though at the Santa Monica location, the recent offering was a choice between carrots and cucumbers). Members also agree to pick up produce at a predetermined place, whether it's an elementary school, a park or an alley.

But other organizations are making it even easier for customers to try a CSA.

Long Beach-based beachgreens delivers shares of locally grown fruits and vegetables - priced between $30 and $60 - to people's homes in greater Long Beach, Lakewood and Seal Beach.

"I started beachgreens in July 2007 in an effort to make organic and sustainably grown produce direct from local farmers more readily available for the average busy person in the Long Beach area," wrote owner Aliye Aydin on beachgreens' website.

Though customers are expected to eat seasonally, "it takes getting used to - if you're not used to shopping at farmers markets it's a bit of a hurdle," Aydin said, adding that participants can opt out of certain selections.

California Harvest Local Delivery, a company started just three weeks ago, provides the same service in Agoura Hills, Westlake, Burbank, Calabasas, Glendale and other cities in the San Fernando Valley. Shares run between $45 and $70.

"I got bummed with the produce choices at CSAs," said Dawn Gray, who runs the business with her sister.

Both are big fans of pick-it-yourself farms. "I love the idea of getting the produce more local," she said.

Whichever CSA you choose, a question remains: How easy is it to put the weekly shares to good use?

Over the next three weeks, we will write about the experience of being a part of Community Supported Agriculture.

Will we become converts?

Or will we resume shopping for out-of-season produce at the grocery store?

A.K. Whitney is a Los Angeles freelance writer.]]> Julie Topanga Talk Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:14:11 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4697,4697#msg-4697 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4697,4697#msg-4697
Self-Contained

Having purchased a 3.5-acre plot of land in Topanga, California, with a very rustic, 750-square-foot cabin on it several years ago, architect Christof Jantzen found himself in need of a fairly quick, low-cost house expansion for his family (wife Lauryn and three young sons). Jantzen, principal of the Venice, California, office of the firm Behnisch Architekten, soon came upon the idea that more space could be achieved by redesigning a series of recycled and modified shipping containers, which would drastically reduce the typical time-consuming process of a traditional remodel.

“Building my own house made me realize that this was doable,” says Jantzen. “Most of the prefab structures on the market are very expensive, so I tried developing these container structures that would bring the cost margin of prefab down, which I think should happen.” At a cost of around $100 to $150 per square foot, the structures can be customized, stacked and combined into one of six Jantzen designs ranging between 320 and 2,400 square feet. With builder Eric Engheben of 44 West Construction, Jantzen has completed, among other designs, a poolhouse in Brentwood, California, and is in the permit stage on a 2,400-square-foot, 18-container atrium house in Topanga.]]> Julie Topanga Talk Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:45:21 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4684,4684#msg-4684 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4684,4684#msg-4684
In the wake of President Obama's speech last, the neoconservative architects of the Iraq War predictably reemerged to claim credit for the national disaster they portray as success. But one of them, Bill Kristol, allowed that the address was, "on the whole, not a bad speech by the president," adding that it was "unrealistic for supporters of the war to expect the president to give the speech John McCain would have given."

For his part, McCain obliged by providing his own version of the speech - and history.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Obama's rival declared, "Whether they admit it or not, the administration's Afghanistan policy suggests they have learned some lessons from Iraq--some, but not all." Appearing later on Fox News, McCain sneered:

"What [Obama] should have said: 'I opposed the surge. I was wrong. I made a mistake and George W. Bush deserves credit for doing something that was very unpopular at the time.' Instead he had to say it's well known that George Bush loves the troops."

But as the record shows, it is John McCain and not Barack Obama who needs to say "I was wrong. I made a mistake." At almost every turn in the run-up to the invasion and the ensuing American occupation, McCain's judgment was almost always wrong, often disastrously so. From his predictions of a short war, claims U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators and that the U.S. would find weapons of mass destruction to his announcements of mission accomplished, his ongoing confusion over Sunni and Shiite, friend and foe in Iraq and so much more, the would-be President John McCain gets failing marks.

Here, then, is a look back at John McCain's reign of error on Iraq:

On the Run-Up to War

"Next up, Baghdad!"
John McCain, aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, January 2, 2002.

"I am very certain that this military engagement will not be very difficult."
John McCain, September 12, 2002.

"Look, we're going to send young men and women in harm's way and that's always a great danger, but I cannot believe that there is an Iraqi soldier who is going to be willing to die for Saddam Hussein, particularly since he will know that our objective is to remove Saddam Hussein from power."
John McCain, September 15, 2002.

"But the fact is, I think we could go in with much smaller numbers than we had to do in the past. But any military man worth his salt is going to have to prepare for any contingency, but I don't believe it's going to be nearly the size and scope that it was in 1991."
John McCain, September 15, 2002.

"He's a patriot who has the best interests of his country at heart."
John McCain, on Ahmed Chalabi, 2003.

On Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction

"I think we're doing fine [in Afghanistan]...I think we'll do fine. The second phase - if I could just make one, very quickly - the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don't have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may - and I emphasize may - have come from Iraq."
John McCain, on the fall 2001 anthrax attacks in the U.S., October 18, 2001.

"Proponents of containment claim that Iraq is in a "box." But it is a box with no lid, no bottom, and whose sides are falling out. Within this box are definitive footprints of germ, chemical and nuclear programs."
John McCain, February 13, 2003.

"I remain confident that we will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
John McCain, June 11, 2003.

On Being Greeted as Liberators

"Absolutely. Absolutely."
John McCain, asked by Chris Matthews, "you believe that the people of Iraq or at least a large number of them will treat us as liberators?" March 12, 2003.

"Not only that, they'll be relieved that he's not in the neighborhood because he has invaded his neighbors on several occasions."
John McCain, asked by Chris Matthews, "And you think the Arab world will come to a grudging recognition that what we did was necessary?" March 12, 2003.

"There's no doubt in my mind that we will prevail and there's no doubt in my mind, once these people are gone, that we will be welcomed as liberators."
John McCain, March 24, 2003.

On a Rapid Victory and Mission Accomplished

"I think the victory will be rapid, within about three weeks."
John McCain, January 28, 2003.

"It's clear that the end is very much in sight...It won't be long. It, it'll be a fairly short period of time."
John McCain, April 9, 2003.

"We won a massive victory in a few weeks, and we did so with very limited loss of American and allied lives."
John McCain, May 22, 2003.

"I thought it was wrong at the time. Do I blame him for that specific banner? I can't."
John McCain, on President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech, May 1, 2008.

"Well, then why was there a banner that said mission accomplished on the aircraft carrier?"
John McCain, responding to assertion by Fox News' Neil Cavuto that "many argue the conflict isn't over," June 11, 2003.

"I have said a long time that reconstruction of Iraq would be a long, long, difficult process, but the conflict -- the major conflict is over, the regime change has been accomplished, and it's very appropriate."
John McCain, June 11, 2003.

"I'm confident we're on the right course."
John McCain, March 7, 2004.

"We're either going to lose this thing or win this thing within the next several months."
John McCain, November 12, 2006.

"My friends, the war will be over soon, the war for all intents and purposes although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years."
John McCain, February 25, 2008.

On the Safe Streets of Baghdad

"[There] there "are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today."
John McCain, after touring a Baghdad market wearing a bulletproof vest and guarded by "100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead, April 1, 2007.

"There's problems in America with safe neighborhoods as we well know."
John McCain, March 8, 2008.

On President Bush and His Team

"We are very fortunate that our president in these challenging days can rely on the counsel of a man who has demonstrated time and again the resolve, experience, and patriotism that will be required for success and the hard-headed clear thinking necessary to prevail in this global fight between good and evil."
John McCain, on Dick Cheney, July 16, 2004.

"I think he strengthened our national defenses. I think he has a good team around him."
John McCain, on President Bush, September 3, 2004.

"I said no. My answer is still no. No confidence."
John McCain, on whether he had confidence in Bush Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, December 15, 2004.

On the Non-Existent Alliance Between Al Qaeda and Iran

"But Al Qaeda is there, they are functioning, they are supported in many times, in many ways by the Iranians."
John McCain, February 28, 2008.

"As you know, there are al Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they're moving back into Iraq."
John McCain, March 17, 2008.

"[Iranian operatives are] "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."
John McCain, March 18, 2008.

"[It is] common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate."
John McCain, March 18, 2008.

"Al Qaeda and Shia extremists -- with support from external powers such as Iran -- are on the run but not defeated."
McCain campaign statement, March 19, 2008.

"To think that I would have some lack of knowledge about Sunni and Shia after my eighth visit and my deep involvement in this issue is a bit ludicrous."
John McCain, March 19, 2008.

"Do you still view Al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat? Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shiites overall..."
John McCain, questioning General David Petraeus, April 8, 2008.

On the Timeline of the Surge and the Sunni Awakening

"Too often the light at the tunnel has turned out to be a train, but I really believe -- I really believe that there's a strong possibility that you may see a very substantial change in Anbar province due to this new changes in our relationships with the sheiks in the region."
John McCain, January 5, 2007 (five days before President Bush announced the surge strategy and the deployment of more U.S. forces to Iraq.)

"Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history."
John McCain, July 22, 2008.

On a Permanent American Military Presence in Iraq

"We cannot keep our forces indefinitely staged in the region. Were we to attempt again to contain Saddam, we would eventually have to withdraw them. The world is full of dangers and, more likely than not, we will need some of those brave men and women to face them down."
John McCain, February 13, 2003.

"Well, if that scenario evolves, then I think it's obvious that we would have to leave because - if it was an elected government of Iraq - and we've been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government, then I think we would have other challenges, but I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people."
John McCain, April 22, 2004.

"We have had troops in South Korea for 60 years and nobody minds."
John McCain, June 7, 2007.

"Make it a hundred."
John McCain, told that President Bush had said American troops could remain in Iraq for 50 years, January 3, 2008.

"I asked McCain about his 'hundred years' comment, and he reaffirmed the remark, excitedly declaring that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for 'a thousand years' or 'a million years,' as far as he was concerned."
David Corn, January 3, 2008.

"The U.S. could have a military presence anywhere in the world for a long period of time."
John McCain, February 20, 2008.

"By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom."
John McCain, May 15, 2008.

"I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr city are quiet and it's long and it's hard and it's tough and there will be setbacks."
John McCain, on a day when Mosul was rocked by suicide bombs and U.S. troop strength remained abve pre-surge level, May 30, 2008.

"No, but that's not too important."
John McCain, asked by NBC's Matt Lauer if he had a better estimate of when American troops can come home from Iraq, June 11, 2008.]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:33:54 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4683,4683#msg-4683 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4683,4683#msg-4683
* * * * *

The True Cost of the Iraq War: $3 Trillion and Beyond

by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes

Writing in these pages in early 2008, we put the total cost to the United States of the Iraq war at $3 trillion. This price tag dwarfed previous estimates, including the Bush administration's 2003 projections of a $50 billion to $60 billion war.

But today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq, it appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war's broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low. For example, the cost of diagnosing, treating and compensating disabled veterans has proved higher than we expected.

Moreover, two years on, it has become clear to us that our estimate did not capture what may have been the conflict's most sobering expenses: those in the category of "might have beens," or what economists call opportunity costs. For instance, many have wondered aloud whether, absent the Iraq invasion, we would still be stuck in Afghanistan. And this is not the only "what if" worth contemplating. We might also ask: If not for the war in Iraq, would oil prices have risen so rapidly? Would the federal debt be so high? Would the economic crisis have been so severe?

The answer to all four of these questions is probably no. The central lesson of economics is that resources -- including both money and attention -- are scarce. What was devoted to one theater, Iraq, was not available elsewhere.

Afghanistan

The Iraq invasion diverted our attention from the Afghan war, now entering its 10th year. While "success" in Afghanistan might always have been elusive, we would probably have been able to assert more control over the Taliban, and suffered fewer casualties, if we had not been sidetracked. In 2003 -- the year we invaded Iraq -- the United States cut spending in Afghanistan to $14.7 billion (down from more than $20 billion in 2002), while we poured $53 billion into Iraq. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, we spent at least four times as much money in Iraq as in Afghanistan.

It is hard to believe that we would be embroiled in a bloody conflict in Afghanistan today if we had devoted the resources there that we instead deployed in Iraq. A troop surge in 2003 -- before the warlords and the Taliban reestablished control -- would have been much more effective than a surge in 2010.

Oil

When the United States went to war in Iraq, the price of oil was less than $25 a barrel, and futures markets expected it to remain around that level. With the war, prices started to soar, reaching $140 a barrel by 2008. We believe that the war and its impact on the Middle East, the largest supplier of oil in the world, were major factors. Not only was Iraqi production interrupted, but the instability the war brought to the Middle East dampened investment in the region.

In calculating our $3 trillion estimate two years ago, we blamed the war for a $5-per-barrel oil price increase. We now believe that a more realistic (if still conservative) estimate of the war's impact on prices works out to at least $10 per barrel. That would add at least $250 billion in direct costs to our original assessment of the war's price tag. But the cost of this increase doesn't stop there: Higher oil prices had a devastating effect on the economy.

Federal debt

There is no question that the Iraq war added substantially to the federal debt. This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war. The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to $10 trillion in 2008 (before the financial crisis); at least a quarter of that increase is directly attributable to the war. And that doesn't include future health care and disability payments for veterans, which will add another half-trillion dollars to the debt.

As a result of two costly wars funded by debt, our fiscal house was in dismal shape even before the financial crisis -- and those fiscal woes compounded the downturn.

The financial crisis

The global financial crisis was due, at least in part, to the war. Higher oil prices meant that money spent buying oil abroad was money not being spent at home. Meanwhile, war spending provided less of an economic boost than other forms of spending would have. Paying foreign contractors working in Iraq was neither an effective short-term stimulus (not compared with spending on education, infrastructure or technology) nor a basis for long-term growth.

Instead, loose monetary policy and lax regulations kept the economy going -- right up until the housing bubble burst, bringing on the economic freefall.

Saying what might have been is always difficult, especially with something as complex as the global financial crisis, which had many contributing factors. Perhaps the crisis would have happened in any case. But almost surely, with more spending at home, and without the need for such low interest rates and such soft regulation to keep the economy going in its absence, the bubble would have been smaller, and the consequences of its breaking therefore less severe. To put it more bluntly: The war contributed indirectly to disastrous monetary policy and regulations.

The Iraq war didn't just contribute to the severity of the financial crisis, though; it also kept us from responding to it effectively. Increased indebtedness meant that the government had far less room to maneuver than it otherwise would have had. More specifically, worries about the (war-inflated) debt and deficit constrained the size of the stimulus, and they continue to hamper our ability to respond to the recession. With the unemployment rate remaining stubbornly high, the country needs a second stimulus. But mounting government debt means support for this is low. The result is that the recession will be longer, output lower, unemployment higher and deficits larger than they would have been absent the war.

* * *

Reimagining history is a perilous exercise. Nonetheless, it seems clear that without this war, not only would America's standing in the world be higher, our economy would be stronger. The question today is: Can we learn from this costly mistake?

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University, was chairman of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001. Linda J. Bilmes is the Daniel Patrick Moynihan senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard University. They are co-authors of "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict."


© 2010 The Washington Post]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:54:17 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4679,4679#msg-4679 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4679,4679#msg-4679
...and are mobilizing their fat bloated bankrupt public union leech infested bureaucracy to extort more money from the American Capitalist producers to pay for their benefits entitlements insurance welfare healthcare disability student loans food stamps and retirement monthly checks.


120 Days to Go Until the Largest Tax Hikes in US History

From Ryan Ellis

Friday, September 3, 2010 11:10 AM



In just 120 days, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:

First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011:

Personal income tax rates will rise. The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:

- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%

- The 25% bracket rises to 28%

- The 28% bracket rises to 31%

- The 33% bracket rises to 36%

- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

Higher taxes on marriage and family. The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care tax credit will be cut.

The return of the Death Tax. This year, there is no death tax. For those dying on or after January 1 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.

Higher tax rates on savers and investors. The top capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011. The top dividends tax rate will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011. These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.


Second Wave: Obamacare

There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:

The Tanning Tax. This went into effect on July 1st of this year. It imposes a new, 10% excise tax on getting a tan at a tanning salon. There is no exemption for tanners making less than $250,000 per year.

The “Medicine Cabinet Tax” Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

Brand Name Drug Tax. Starting next year, there will be a multi-billion dollar tax assessment imposed on name-brand drug manufacturers. This tax, like all excise taxes, will raise the price of medicine, hurting everyone.

Economic Substance Doctrine. The IRS is now empowered to disallow perfectly-legal tax deductions and maneuvers merely because it judges that the deduction or action lacks “economic substance.” This is obviously an arbitrary empowerment of IRS agents.

Employer Reporting of Health Insurance Costs on a W-2. This will start for W-2s in the 2011 tax year. While not a tax increase in itself, it makes it very easy for Congress to tax employer-provided healthcare benefits later.


Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes

When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. The major items include:

The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.

Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear. Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases up to $250,000. This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be “depreciated.”

Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses. There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the “research and experimentation tax credit,” but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.

Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced. The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available. Tax credits for education will be limited. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut. Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed. The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.

Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed. Until this year, a retired person with an IRA could contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual “required minimum distribution.” This ability will no longer be there.]]> Edenite Topanga Talk Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:44:11 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4677,4677#msg-4677 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4677,4677#msg-4677
Inara George hosts Dolly Parton Tribute Concert
Alex Cohen | KPCC

Dolly Parton fans take note! If you are sticking around Southern California this Labor Day weekend, you can see some of the region’s finest singers perform their version of Parton tunes in Topanga this Saturday. The tribute concert was organized by acclaimed singer/songwriter Inara George to raise money for one of her favorite causes. She told KPCC’s Alex Cohen why she’s so inspired by the Queen of Country Music.

A homegrown Topangan, George finds inspiration everywhere, including in the songs of The Queen of Country Music.

On Saturday at 3:00 p.m., she'll share the stage with her band, The Living Sisters. Also performing will be Becky Stark, Eleni Mandell, Phillip Littell, Alex Lilly, Harper Simon, John Gold, Juliana Raye, Justine Kragen, James Combs, Erica Canales, Sara Melson, Charlie Wadhams, Mike Viola, Dan Bern, Wendy Wang, Mike Andrews and other special guests performing unique interpretations of the Grammy Award-winning country/folk recording artist and songwriter's tunes.

The concert is a fundraiser for The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, where Inara George played roles such as Ophelia and Juliet before becoming a full-time musician. The beginnings of the Theatricum Botanicum stretch back to the early 1950s when Will Geer, one of the many actors victimized by the McCarthy Era blacklisting, opened a theatre for blacklisted actors and folk singers on his Topanga property.

Geer also cultivated a large garden and, unable to find work in Hollywood, he and his wife, actress Herta Ware, earned a living by selling vegetables, fruit, herbs, and theatre.

With the advent of television's "The Waltons" and subsequent popularity of Will's portrayal of Grandpa, in 1973 Will Geer re-gathered his family (who were now working actors at theatres across the country) and together they formed a nonprofit corporation, The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum.

Audiences flocked to free workshop performances of Shakespeare, folk plays, and concerts featuring such well-known artists as Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Della Reese & Burl Ives, among others.


www.scpr.org]]> Julie Topanga Talk Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:08:07 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4669,4669#msg-4669 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4669,4669#msg-4669
A Black Man Goes To Glenn Beck's Rally

by Jerome Hudson

08/31/2010



To hear the mainstream media tell the story, you would have thought that I, a black man, had walked into a hornet’s nest of racists when I decided to attend Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally. In reality, my experience was the complete opposite.

Instead of hooded Klansman frothing with hate and venom, I made dozens of new Facebook friends and gained a hundred Twitter followers.

One lady from New Jersey asked me if I was "afraid" because I was one of the "few blacks in attendance?"

I looked at her square in the eye and said, "Ma'am, the only thing I'm afraid of is that if I don't hurry, I'm not going to make it to the restroom in time."

We spoke of family, laughed, shared and she wept as she embraced me with hugs and kisses while thanking me for being there. (What a complete bigot, that lady!)

Beck's rally was meant to restore faith hope and charity in America. And that was the spirit of the day.

To be sure, I was one of the few blacks there that historic day. I'm sure to many I stuck out like a sore thumb. Or, perhaps more aptly, like a chocolate chip smack dab in the middle of a giant sugar cookie.

Perhaps that's why I was interviewed by at several news outlets.

When asked how long I had been waiting for the event to begin, I turned all three interviewers' faces to stone when I replied, "about 24 hours." I'm sure they thought I was kidding, but I wasn't.

Like most Americans, I've had enough with this administration's policies. I was fed up and fired up.

I am even more so in the wake of the most moving gathering I've ever been privileged to be a part of.

At one point, some of the people attending the Rev. Al Sharpton's "counter rally," coined "Reclaiming King," stopped me. I guess they must have been judging me by the color of my skin not the content of my character, because they asked if I was going to come join them.

"No, I won't be there," I told them. "Why?" one of them asked with a grimace on his face. I looked at him and said, "I want to be where the Lord is and the Lord is in this place."

One of the older black women in the group asked me if I felt like I was "selling out" for being one of the "tokens" in the Beck rally crowd?

I laughed and said "Ma'am, Al Sharpton is a pretender. He is going to tell you to pretend that the color of your skin matters. He is going to ask you to ignore the now overwhelming proof that 50 years after the Civil Rights movement, blacks are now destroying each other faster than the KKK could have dreamed."

As I walked away, the group stood frozen, not knowing how to reply.

Later, as Sharpton preached a divisive message void of actual solutions on how to "close the education and economic gap" in the "black community," Dr. Alveda King, Martin Luther King's niece, invoked the spirit of her slain uncle proclaiming, "I too have a dream, that white privilege will become human privilege and that people of every ethnic blend will receive everyone as brothers and sisters in the love of God.”

Her comments on restoring the "foundation of the family" in America were met, not with boos, but with a thunderous applause.

(What bigots those white folks! Having the audacity to cheer Dr. King's niece like that. Racists the whole lot of them!)

I was probably the only 24-year old black college student in the crowd. It's hard to know, because we had over 300,000 people there. But that didn't matter to me. As we all stood hand-in-hand, American shoulder to American shoulder, our myriad faces streaked with tears as we sang "Amazing Grace." It was a moment I will be proud to tell my grandkids about one day.

What that moment taught me is this: Something profound is happening in America that runs far deeper than politics. The ground is shifting, and it's in freedom's direction.

As a nation at war, standing in division and debt, Beck challenged the crowd to return to God.

The message I took away is that we cannot continue to pick at the scab of America's past but must become the balm that heals it. That's the way forward—arm in arm, moving together, toward a better future.

Standing in a crowd that stretched from the Washington Monument to Lincoln Memorial what happened on 8/28 was the most inspirational thing I had ever experienced.

Standing there, unhyphenated and united, this black man has never felt more free in his life.]]> Edenite Topanga Talk Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:23:46 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4666,4666#msg-4666 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4666,4666#msg-4666 Edenite Topanga Talk Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:44:36 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4658,4658#msg-4658 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4658,4658#msg-4658 By STANLEY FISH

In the first column I ever wrote for this newspaper (“How the Right Hijacked the Magic Words”), I analyzed the shift in the rhetoric surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing once it became clear that the perpetrator was Timothy McVeigh, who at one point acknowledged that “The Turner Diaries,” a racist anti-government tract popular in Christian Identity circles, was his bible.

In the brief period between the bombing and the emergence of McVeigh, speculation had centered on Arab terrorists and the culture of violence that was said to be woven into the fabric of the religion of Islam.

But when it turned out that a white guy (with the help of a few of his friends) had done it, talk of “culture” suddenly ceased and was replaced by the vocabulary and mantras of individualism: each of us is a single, free agent; blaming something called “culture” was just a way of off-loading responsibility for the deeds we commit; in America, individuals, not groups, act; and individuals, not groups, should be held accountable. McVeigh may have looked like a whole lot of other guys who dressed up in camouflage and carried guns and marched in the woods, but, we were told by the same people who had been mouthing off about Islam earlier, he was just a lone nut, a kook, and generalizations about some “militia” culture alive and flourishing in the heartland were entirely unwarranted.

This switch from “malign culture” talk to “individual choice” talk was instantaneous and no one felt obliged to explain it. Now, in 2010, it’s happening again around the intersection of what the right wing calls the “Ground Zero mosque” (a geographical exaggeration if there ever is one) and the attack last week on a Muslim cab driver by (it is alleged) 21-year-old knife-wielding Michael Enright.

First the mosque. It is wrong, we hear, to regard the proposed mosque or community center as an ordinary exercise of free enterprise and freedom of religion by the private owners of a piece of property. It is, rather, a thumb in the eye or a slap in the face of the 9/11 victims and their families, a potential clearinghouse for international terrorist activities, a “victory mosque” memorializing a great triumph of jihad and a monument to the religion in whose name and by whose adherents the dreadful deed was done.

But according to the same folks who oppose the mosque because of what it stands for, Michael Enright’s act doesn’t stand for anything and is certainly not the product of what Time magazine calls a growing “American strain of Islamophobia.” Instead, The New York Post declares, the stabbing is “the act of a disturbed individual who is now in custody,” and across the fold of the page columnist Jonah Goldberg says that “one assault doesn’t a national trend make” and insists that “we shouldn’t let anyone suggest that this criminal reflects anybody but himself.”

The formula is simple and foolproof (although those who deploy it so facilely seem to think we are all fools): If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But if the bad act is committed by someone whose profile, interests and agendas are uncomfortably close to your own, detach the malefactor from everything that is going on or is in the air (he came from nowhere) and characterize him as a one-off, non-generalizable, sui generis phenomenon.

The only thing more breathtaking than the effrontery of the move is the ease with which so many fall in with it. I guess it’s because both those who perform it and those who eagerly consume it save themselves the trouble of serious thought.]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:19:59 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4654,4654#msg-4654 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4654,4654#msg-4654
NEWSCLIMATE CHANGE LIES ARE EXPOSED



Tuesday August 31 2010

The world’s leading climate change body has been accused of losing credibility after a damning report into its research practices.

A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was “little evidence” for its claims about global warming.

It also said the panel had emphasised the negative impacts of climate change and made “substantive findings” based on little proof.

The review by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was launched after the IPCC’s hugely embarrassing 2007 benchmark climate change report, which contained exaggerated and false claims that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

The panel was forced to admit its key claim in support of global warming was lifted from a 1999 magazine article. The report was based on an interview with a little-known Indian scientist who has since said his views were “speculation” and not backed by research.

Independent climate scientist Peter Taylor said last night: “The IPCC’s credibility has been deeply dented and something has to be done. It can’t just be a matter of adjusting the practices. They have got to look at what are the consequences of having got it wrong in terms of what the public think is going on. Admitting that it needs to reform means something has gone wrong and they really do need to look at the science.”

Climate change sceptic David Holland, who challenged leading climate change scientists at the University of East Anglia to disclose their research, said: “The panel is definitely not fit for purpose. What the IAC has said is substantial changes need to be made.”

The IAC, which comprises the world’s top science academies including the UK’s Royal Society, made recommendations to the IPCC to “enhance its credibility and independence” after the Himalayan glaciers report, which severely damaged the reputation of climate science.

It condemned the panel – set up by the UN to ensure world leaders had the best scientific advice on climate change – for its “slow and inadequate response” after the damaging errors emerged.

Among the blunders in the 2007 report were claims that 55 per cent of the Netherlands was below sea level when the figure is 26 per cent.

It also claimed that water supplies for between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa will be at risk by 2020 due to climate change, but the real range is between 90 and 220 million.

The claim that glaciers would melt by 2035 was also rejected.

Professor Julian Dowdeswell of Cambridge University said: “The average glacier is 1,000ft thick so to melt one at 15ft a year would take 60 years. That is faster than anything we are seeing now so the idea of losing it all by 2035 is unrealistic.”

In yesterday’s report, the IAC said: “The IPCC needs to reform its management structure and strengthen its procedures to handle ever larger and increasingly complex climate assessments as well as the more intense public scrutiny coming from a world grappling with how to respond to climate change.”

The review also cast doubt on the future of IPCC chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

Earlier this year, the Daily Express reported how he had no climate science qualifications but held a PhD in economics and was a former railway engineer.

Dr Pachauri has been accused of a conflict of interest, which he denies, after it emerged that he has business interests attracting millions of pounds in funding. One, the Energy Research Institute, is set to receive up to £10million in grants from taxpayers over the next five years.

Speaking after the review was released yesterday, Dr Pachauri said: “We have the highest confidence in the science behind our assessments.

“The scientific community agrees that climate change is real. Greenhouse gases have increased as a result of human activities and now far exceed pre-industrial values.”]]> Edenite Topanga Talk Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:19:53 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4653,4653#msg-4653 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4653,4653#msg-4653
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m692Tqbnbxo]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:53:32 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4651,4651#msg-4651 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4651,4651#msg-4651
http://www.therightscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/bigcrowd.jpg

...and those Americans didn't leave a scrap of trash behind when they left...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NioIQc6hA8M&feature=player_embedded

...in marked contrast to the liberal pigs at Barry's inagural who left tons of trash behind and expected the government to clean up behind them.

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j191/mikesamerica/mikesamerica2/610x-105.jpg

This is just one real life demonstration of the difference in moral values between Americans who regard that ground as sacred...

...and liberals who profane it.



(Wall Street Journal)

Glenn Beck's Happy Warriors

You probably couldn't have found a more polite crowd at the opera.

By JAMES FREEMAN

Washington, D.C.

Pundits will debate whether the crowd at Glenn Beck's Saturday rally in Washington was the largest in recent political history, but it was certainly among the most impressive.

Mr. Beck is a television host and radio broadcaster with a checkered past and a penchant for incendiary remarks. But if he's judged by the quality of people of all colors that he attracted to the Lincoln Memorial, his stock can't help but rise.

Jason Riley discusses Glenn Beck's rally at the Lincoln Memorial.
.One would not be able to find a more polite crowd at a political convention, certainly not at a professional sporting event, probably not even at an opera. In fact, judging by the behavior of the attendees following the event, you'd have a tough time finding churches in which people display more patience as others make their way to the exits.

This army of well-mannered folks that marched into Washington seemed comprised mainly of people who had once marched in the U.S. Army or other military branch, or at least had a family member who had. Perhaps that's not surprising, given that the event was a fund-raiser for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which provides scholarships to the children of elite troops killed in the performance of their duty. The day was largely devoted to expressions of gratitude for the sacrifices of U.S. soldiers, for great men of American history like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and for God.

But it didn't end there. Dave Roever, a Vietnam veteran, offered a closing prayer in which he thanked the Lord for the president and for the Congress. Despite the unpopularity of the latter two, no booing or catcalls could be heard.

Perhaps feeling defensive about how they would be portrayed in media reports, various attendees wore t-shirts noting that they were "Not violent" or "Non-violent." For other participants, there was no need for an explicit message. Relaxed young parents felt comfortable enough to push toddlers in strollers through the crowded areas along the memorial's reflecting pool.

Not only was the rally akin to a "huge church picnic" (in one Journal reporter's description), but one had to wonder if the over-achievers in this crowd actually left the area in better shape than they found it.

After the event, walking from the Lincoln Memorial's reflecting pool through Constitution Gardens, this reporter scanned 360 degrees and could not see a scrap of trash anywhere. Participants and volunteers had collected all their refuse and left it piled neatly in bags around the public garbage cans. Near Constitution Avenue, I did encounter one stray piece of paper—but too old and faded to have been left that day.

Given the huge representation of military families at the event, maybe it's not surprising the grounds were left ship-shape. A principal theme of the day was that attendees should restore the country by making improvements in their own lives—be the change you wish to see in the world, as Gandhi once put it.

Most of the participants were strictly amateurs in the business of activism. For many, it was their first appearance at a public demonstration. Their strikingly mild-mannered nature might inspire even Mr. Beck to acknowledge that in a crowd estimated at 300,000, the craziest person at the event might have been the one with the microphone. While he admits that he's part entertainer and prone to over-the-top comments, his followers appear to be sincerely responding to his message that Americans need to cling to their best traditions. (Mr. Beck's program appears on the Fox News Channel, which is owned by News Corp., which also owns this newspaper.)

The conservative Mr. Beck's ability to draw this many people to Washington may suggest enormous gains for Republicans come the fall. But the GOP shouldn't expect voters to simply hand them a congressional majority without making them earn it. If pregame chatter and off-season optimism translated into victory, the New York Jets and the Washington Redskins would meet in the Super Bowl every year.

Between Saturday's crowd in Washington and the tea partiers agitating for limited government, we may be witnessing the rebuilding of the Reagan coalition, the "fusion" of religious and economic conservatives that political theorist Frank Meyer once endorsed. Reagan always believed that the Republican Party was the natural home for this movement, but GOP leaders in Washington need to prove they are worthy of it.]]> Edenite Topanga Talk Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:00:21 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4650,4650#msg-4650 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4650,4650#msg-4650
In "Strange Feelin’ in the Air," a crooked guitar riff stalks, offering a feeling of apprehension as sure as the shifty outsider bursting through the swinging doors of the townie saloon. It’s pure Ryan Bingham, a conjurer of atmosphere, a gift that he put to good use for "The Weary Kind," his Oscar-winning song featured in "Crazy Heart."

The Topanga Canyon troubadour wrote the movie’s theme with roots maestro T Bone Burnett, who also lends his production skills to "Junky Star," Bingham’s third album of dirty-fingernail Americana. Unlike Bingham’s last outing, "Roadhouse Sun," in which his native windswept Texas dominated the proceedings, California creeps up in the margins. In the ragged, heartfelt "Depression," the Golden State might be an escape from a wasteland, but it’s not that simple; on the title track, he’s "sleeping on the Santa Monica Pier, with the junkies and the stars."

Whatever specter California casts, thank heavens it doesn’t add polish. Bingham’s voice still sounds like a gut-shot animal dragging itself across the road. It can bend toward a moment of relief, like when he sings "Hallelujah," or it can fold into sorrow, as it does on "Yesterday’s Blues." Burnett wisely stands back and lets Bingham, the former bull rider, bleed or buck in the spotlight.

The only quality that’s sorely missed on "Junky Star" is Bingham’s sense of adventure. There’s nothing on here that approaches the meltdown of "Change Is" or the spitfire of "Hey Hey Hurray" on "Roadhouse Sun." Bingham, no stranger now to the Hollywood circuit, might be in a new land but he shouldn’t forget his pioneer spirit.

-- Margaret Wappler

www.latimes.com]]> Julie Topanga Talk Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:56:00 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4647,4647#msg-4647 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4647,4647#msg-4647 By: David Dayen Monday August 30, 2010 2:16 pm

Pretty big news for a movement struggling to find its footing after a series of setbacks:

The world’s most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is “undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today” and “a challenge humanity must confront”, in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby.

Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled “sceptical environmentalist” once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN’s climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.

But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. “Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century,” the book concludes.

Lomborg’s “friendly skepticism” of man-made global climate change obviously made him a target in the scientific community, but he also got a lot of mainstream pickup as the kinder, gentle face of denialism. Lomborg never specifically denied the existence of climate change, but accused proponents of exaggerations and said that mitigating the effects wasn’t worth the expense. That’s what has changed.

Specifically, Lomborg favors investment in clean energy, including R&D, and geoengineering options.

The environmental community is at a crossroads after the failure of a climate bill in Congress this year, and I don’t expect Lomborg’s conversion to change that dynamic. While I don’t think they should necessarily adopt Lomborg’s platform either, they can use the messaging that investing in the clean energy future would be responsible, and far cheaper than the chaos that would result from unchecked warming. They have plenty of evidence just in the past few weeks – in China, in Pakistan, in Russia – to support this.]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:14:10 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4644,4644#msg-4644 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4644,4644#msg-4644 Chris Hondros / Getty Images

Protestors rally against a proposed Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero.

Taliban officials know it’s sacrilegious to hope a mosque will not be built, but that’s exactly what they’re wishing for: the success of the fiery campaign to block the proposed Islamic cultural center and prayer room near the site of the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan. “By preventing this mosque from being built, America is doing us a big favor,” Taliban operative Zabihullah tells NEWSWEEK. (Like many Afghans, he uses a single name.) “It’s providing us with more recruits, donations, and popular support.”

America’s enemies in Afghanistan are delighted by the vehement public opposition to the proposed “Ground Zero mosque.” The backlash against the project has drawn the heaviest e-mail response ever on jihadi Web sites, Zabihullah claims—far bigger even than France’s ban on burqas earlier this year. (That was big, he recalls: “We received many e-mails asking for advice on how Muslims should react to the hijab ban, and how they can punish France.”) This time the target is America itself. “We are getting even more messages of support and solidarity on the mosque issue and questions about how to fight back against this outrage.”

Zabihullah also claims that the issue is such a propaganda windfall—so tailor-made to show how “anti-Islamic” America is—that it now heads the list of talking points in Taliban meetings with fighters, villagers, and potential recruits. “We talk about how America tortures with waterboarding, about the cruel confinement of Muslims in wire cages in Guantánamo, about the killing of innocent women and children in air attacks—and now America gives us another gift with its street protests to prevent a mosque from being built in New York,” Zabihullah says. “Showing reality always makes the best propaganda.”

Taliban officials say they’re looking forward to a new wave of terrorist trainees from the West like this year’s Times Square car bomber. “I expect we will soon be receiving more American Muslims like Faisal Shahzad who are looking for help in how to express their rage,” says a Taliban official who was a senior minister when the group ruled Afghanistan and who remains active in the insurgency. As an indication of the anger that is growing among some Muslims in the West, this official, who requested anonymity for security reasons, mentions the arrest of three Canadian Muslims in Ontario last week on charges of plotting to build and detonate improvised explosive devices. (A fourth individual was arrested in Ottawa last Friday in connection with the case.) The Ground Zero furor will likely add to that anger. “The more mosques you stop, the more jihadis we will get,” Zabihullah predicts.]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:56:54 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4642,4642#msg-4642 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4642,4642#msg-4642
The campaign supporting Prop. 21, the Nov. 2 ballot measure that will provide a stable and adequate funding source for state parks and beaches, has announced strong support for the measure from a strong coalition of business organizations and leaders throughout the state - collectively representing more than 10,000 businesses. In deciding to support Prop. 21, these groups are citing the importance of state parks to California's economic health.

Among the business organizations and businesses that have endorsed Prop. 21 are:

-- California Travel Industry Association (CalTIA)
-- California Lodging Industry Association
-- Outdoor Industry Association
-- NTA (National Tour Association)
-- California Parks Hospitality Association
-- California Ski Industry Association
-- San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau
-- Sacramento Convention & Visitors Bureau
-- Central Valley Tourism Association
-- Newport Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau
-- Santa Barbara Conference and Visitors Bureau
-- Santa Cruz County Conference and Visitors Council
-- Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau
-- Visit Mendocino County Inc.
-- Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau
-- North Lake Tahoe Resort Association
-- Ridgecrest Area Convention and Visitors Bureau
-- Solvang Convention and Visitors Bureau
-- Cupertino Chamber of Commerce
-- Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce
-- El Dorado County Chamber of Commerce
-- Lompoc Chamber of Commerce
-- Mendocino Coast Chamber of Commerce
-- Carpinteria Valley Chamber of Commerce
-- Sonoma Valley Chamber of Commerce
-- Borrego Springs Chamber of Commerce
-- Crescent City-Del Norte Chamber of Commerce
-- Half Moon Bay Coastside Chamber of Commerce
-- Topanga Chamber of Commerce
-- Russian River Chamber of Commerce
-- Sierra Business Council
-- Patagonia
-- Adventure 16



"State parks are part of California's DNA," said John Severini, CalTIA president and CEO. "As an economic engine, state parks are responsible for providing the lifeblood for many local economies, and are essential to creating local jobs and keeping small businesses open. Without the adequate funding provided by Prop. 21, the businesses, jobs and communities that rely on the economic activity generated by state parks will suffer."

Hundreds of businesses throughout California, including travel and tourism, entertainment industry, retailers, hospitality, recreational, food services and more, rely on the economic activity generated by state parks and beaches. Annually, state parks attract approximately 80 million visits. A recent study found that state park visitors spend an average of $58 in neighboring communities each time they visit a state park or beach. In fact, state park and beach visitors generate so much local economic activity that every dollar spent on state parks creates another $2.35 for the state treasury.

"Properly maintained state parks are more than just good for the community, but they are good for California's economic bottom line," said John Mead, Adventure 16 president. "Our company - Adventure 16 - is just one example of the businesses in California that rely on state parks to keep our doors open. The funding from Prop. 21 isn't simply about protecting our state's parks and beaches, it's about investing in California's economic growth and stability."

Chronic underfunding of state parks has caused them to accumulate a $1.3 billion backlog in needed maintenance and repairs. Twice in the past two years, state parks were on the brink of being shut down.

Last year, nearly 150 state parks were shut down part-time or suffered deep service reductions because of budget cuts, and more park closure proposals and budget cuts are expected this year. Thousands of scenic acres are closed to the public because of reductions in park rangers, and crime has nearly tripled.

Approval of Prop. 21 will provide California vehicles with free, year-round day-use access to state parks and beaches, in exchange for a new $18 surcharge. This new surcharge will be @#$%& as part of California's annual vehicle registration. All California vehicles will be subject to the surcharge, except larger commercial vehicles, mobile homes and permanent trailers. Funds from the surcharge will be placed in a trust fund dedicated specifically to state parks and wildlife conservation, which cannot legally be used for other purposes.

Business support for Prop. 21 is only one part of the wide-ranging coalition of interests that are supporting the Nov. 2 ballot measure. Other supporters include The Nature Conservancy, California Teachers Association, California State Park Rangers Association, California State Lifeguard Association, Location Managers Guild of America, Heal the Bay, California Action for Healthy Kids and the California State Parks Foundation.

More information is available at www.YesForStateParks.com]]> TimBuk2 Topanga Talk Sun, 29 Aug 2010 12:20:54 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4638,4638#msg-4638 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4638,4638#msg-4638

Reinventing As An Olive Farmer
By Jenny Rough

Joyce Lukon, owner of Robinson Road Olive Ranch

Six years ago, at 60, tax accountant Joyce Lukon hit a turning point. Unmarried and childless, she recognized that she didn’t need a partner to help her pursue her dreams. “It took me a long time to realize that I should make my own plans,” she said. So she bought a stunning, sun-drenched piece of property in Topanga Canyon, near Los Angeles. Her parcel was large enough (three and a half acres) that she figured she could generate income by “filling the hillsides with something that would grow.”

That first year, she planted 200 grapevines, knowing they would take seven years to mature. Then she discovered the book Olives: The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit. She says she quickly became “besotted” with the idea of raising olives and had her soil analyzed. The verdict: Her land was perfectly suited to olives, and she immediately ordered 1,000 Spanish Arbequina trees. “They grow fast and are well suited to high-density planting,” she says. “But it never occurred to me to taste Arbequina oil before making the investment; that’s how ignorant I was.” Shortly afterward, she did taste a sample of the oil and to her relief found it was heavenly.

Lukon took out a $300,000 loan to cover the start-up costs for the newly named Robinson Road Olive Ranch (robinsonroadoliveranch.com). While workers terraced her hillsides and installed an iron gate, deer fencing and irrigation, she spent weekends attending olive seminars and festivals. In May 2007, to help defray labor costs, she invited friends and clients to a big planting party. A year and a half later, the trees were lush and heavy with fruit, so this time she threw a harvest party. Afterward, she loaded 845 pounds of olives into a friend’s SUV and dropped them off with a local olive miller. The results were soon in: Her ranch had produced an impressive 214 bottles (375 ml each) of chartreuse-colored olive oil. Delighted, Lukon sold her entire inventory to friends at $30 apiece, and she won a silver medal in the California Olive Oil Council tasting contest. “Olive oils are like wines and chocolate,” she says, in that they taste different depending on the variety of the plant. “Mine tastes like buttah,” Lukon says proudly.

Her 2009 harvest looked promising at first, with almost 2,400 pounds of olives. But Lukon didn’t realize that cooler evenings had slowed down the olives’ ripening schedule, and she picked them too early. “I should have had 600 bottles, but I ended up with only 400,” she says. “That’s just part of being an entrepreneur. I’m learning by trial and error.”

Lukon’s income tax job perfectly complements her farming season. “After April 15, it’s time to gear up for the grapes and then the olives,” she says. It fascinates her to watch the olives go from budding white blossoms to mature fruits in hues that change from green to yellowish to a rosy blush. “You can almost hear the growth surge. I really am in love with my olives.”

http://www.more.com]]> Julie Topanga Talk Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:40:24 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4635,4635#msg-4635 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4635,4635#msg-4635
It has been said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like the politicians are “fiddling while the economy burns.”

The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.

Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be “sensitive” requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from “ground zero.”

Just think of what might (not) have happened if the whole issue had been ignored and the national debate stuck with war, peace, and prosperity. There certainly would have been a lot less emotionalism on both sides. The fact that so much attention has been given the mosque debate, raises the question of just why and driven by whom?

In my opinion it has come from the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it.

They never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars. A select quote from soldiers from in Afghanistan and Iraq expressing concern over the mosque is pure propaganda and an affront to their bravery and sacrifice.

The claim is that we are in the Middle East to protect our liberties is misleading. To continue this charade, millions of Muslims are indicted and we are obligated to rescue them from their religious and political leaders. And, we’re supposed to believe that abusing our liberties here at home and pursuing unconstitutional wars overseas will solve our problems.

The nineteen suicide bombers didn’t come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran. Fifteen came from our ally Saudi Arabia, a country that harbors strong American resentment, yet we invade and occupy Iraq where no al Qaeda existed prior to 9/11.

Many fellow conservatives say they understand the property rights and 1st Amendment issues and don’t want a legal ban on building the mosque. They just want everybody to be “sensitive” and force, through public pressure, cancellation of the mosque construction.

This sentiment seems to confirm that Islam itself is to be made the issue, and radical religious Islamic views were the only reasons for 9/11. If it became known that 9/11 resulted in part from a desire to retaliate against what many Muslims saw as American aggression and occupation, the need to demonize Islam would be difficult if not impossible.

There is no doubt that a small portion of radical, angry Islamists do want to kill us but the question remains, what exactly motivates this hatred?

If Islam is further discredited by making the building of the mosque the issue, then the false justification for our wars in the Middle East will continue to be acceptable.

The justification to ban the mosque is no more rational than banning a soccer field in the same place because all the suicide bombers loved to play soccer.

Conservatives are once again, unfortunately, failing to defend private property rights, a policy we claim to cherish. In addition conservatives missed a chance to challenge the hypocrisy of the left which now claims they defend property rights of Muslims, yet rarely if ever, the property rights of American private businesses.

Defending the controversial use of property should be no more difficult than defending the 1st Amendment principle of defending controversial speech. But many conservatives and liberals do not want to diminish the hatred for Islam–the driving emotion that keeps us in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don’t want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators. Statistics of support is irrelevant when it comes to the purpose of government in a free society—protecting liberty.

The outcry over the building of the mosque, near ground zero, implies that Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to those who are condemning the building of the mosque, the nineteen suicide terrorists on 9/11 spoke for all Muslims. This is like blaming all Christians for the wars of aggression and occupation because some Christians supported the neo-conservative’s aggressive wars.

The House Speaker is now treading on a slippery slope by demanding a Congressional investigation to find out just who is funding the mosque—a bold rejection of property rights, 1st Amendment rights, and the Rule of Law—in order to look tough against Islam.

This is all about hate and Islamaphobia.

We now have an epidemic of “sunshine patriots” on both the right and the left who are all for freedom, as long as there’s no controversy and nobody is offended.

Political demagoguery rules when truth and liberty are ignored.]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:37:10 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4634,4634#msg-4634 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4634,4634#msg-4634 budlit Topanga Talk Mon, 23 Aug 2010 10:47:04 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4633,4633#msg-4633 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4633,4633#msg-4633 By ANNE BARNARD

Not everyone in the Cairo lecture hall last February was buying the imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s message. As he talked of reconciliation between America and Middle Eastern Muslims — his voice soft, almost New Agey — some questioners were so suspicious that he felt the need to declare that he was not an American agent.

Muslims need to understand and soothe Americans who fear them, the imam said; they should be conciliatory, not judgmental, toward the West and Israel.

But one young Egyptian asked: Wasn’t the United States financing the speaking tour that had brought the imam to Cairo because his message conveniently echoed United States interests?

“I’m not an agent from any government, even if some of you may not believe it,” the imam replied. “I’m not. I’m a peacemaker.”

That talk, recorded on video six months ago, was part of what now might be called Mr. Abdul Rauf’s prior life, before he became the center of an uproar over his proposal for a Muslim community center two blocks from the World Trade Center. He watched his father, an Egyptian Muslim scholar, pioneer interfaith dialogue in 1960s New York; led a mystical Sufi mosque in Lower Manhattan; and, after the Sept. 11 attacks, became a spokesman for the notion that being American and Muslim is no contradiction — and that a truly American brand of Islam could modernize and moderate the faith worldwide.

In recent weeks, Mr. Abdul Rauf has barely been heard from as a national political debate explodes over his dream project, including, somewhere in its planned 15 stories, a mosque. Opponents have called his project an act of insensitivity, even a monument to terrorism.

In his absence — he is now on another Middle East speaking tour sponsored by the State Department — a host of allegations have been floated: that he supports terrorism; that his father, who worked at the behest of the Egyptian government, was a militant; that his publicly expressed views mask stealth extremism. Some charges, the available record suggests, are unsupported. Some are simplifications of his ideas. In any case, calling him a jihadist appears even less credible than calling him a United States agent.

Growing Up in America

Mr. Abdul Rauf, 61, grew up in multiple worlds. He was raised in a conservative religious home but arrived in America as a teenager in the turbulent 1960s; his father came to New York and later Washington to run growing Islamic centers. His parents were taken hostage not once, but twice, by American Muslim splinter groups. He attended Columbia University, where, during the Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and Arab states like Egypt, he talked daily with a Jewish classmate, each seeking to understand the other’s perspective.

He consistently denounces violence. Some of his views on the interplay between terrorism and American foreign policy — or his search for commonalities between Islamic law and this country’s Constitution — have proved jarring to some American ears, but still place him as pro-American within the Muslim world. He devotes himself to befriending Christians and Jews — so much, some Muslim Americans say, that he has lost touch with their own concerns.

“To stereotype him as an extremist is just nuts,” said the Very Rev. James P. Morton, the longtime dean of the Church of St. John the Divine, in Manhattan, who has known the family for decades.

Since 9/11, Mr. Abdul Rauf, like almost any Muslim leader with a public profile, has had to navigate the fraught path between those suspicious of Muslims and eager to brand them as violent or disloyal and a Muslim constituency that believes itself more than ever in need of forceful leaders.

One critique of the imam, said Omid Safi, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, was that he had not been outspoken enough on issues “near and dear to many Muslims,” like United States policy on Israel and treatment of Muslims after 9/11, “because of the need that he has had — whether taken upon himself or thrust upon him — to be the ‘American imam,’ to be the ‘New York imam,’ to be the ‘accommodationist imam.’ ”

Akbar Ahmed, chairman of Islamic studies at American University, said Mr. Abdul Rauf’s holistic Sufi practices could make more orthodox Muslims uncomfortable, and his focus on like-minded interfaith leaders made him underestimate the uproar over his plans.

“He hurtles in, to the dead-center eye of the storm simmering around Muslims in America, expecting it to be like at his mosque — we all love each other, we all think happy thoughts,” Mr. Ahmed said.

“Now he has set up, unwittingly, a symbol of this growing tension between America and Muslims: this mosque that Muslims see as a symbol of Islam under attack and the opponents as an insult to America,” he added. “So this mild-mannered guy is in the eye of a storm for which he’s not suited at all. He’s not a political leader of Muslims, yet he now somehow represents the Muslim community.”

Andrew Sinanoglou, who was married by Mr. Abdul Rauf last fall, said he was surprised that the imam had become a contentious figure. His greatest knack, Mr. Sinanoglou said, was making disparate groups comfortable. At the wedding, he brought together Mr. Sinanoglou’s family, descended from Greek Christians thrown out of Asia Minor by Muslims, and his wife’s conservative Muslim father.

“He’s an excellent schmoozer,” Mr. Sinanoglou said of the imam.

Mr. Abdul Rauf was born in Kuwait. His father, Muhammad Abdul Rauf, graduated from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the foremost center of mainstream Sunni Muslim learning. He was one of many scholars Egypt sent abroad to staff universities and mosques, a government-approved effort unlikely to have tolerated a militant. He moved his family to England, studying at Cambridge and the University of London; then to Malaysia, where he eventually became the first rector of the International Islamic University of Malaysia.

As a boy, Feisal absorbed his father’s talks with religious scholars from around the world, learning to respect theological debate, said his wife, Daisy Khan. He is also steeped in Malaysian culture, whose ethnic diversity has influenced an Islam different than that of his parents’ homeland.

In 1965, he came to New York. His father ran the Islamic Center of New York; the family lived over its small mosque in a brownstone on West 72nd Street, which served mainly Arabs and African-American converts. Like his son, the older imam announced plans for a community center for a growing Muslim population — the mosque eventually built on East 96th Street. It was financed by Muslim countries and controlled by Muslim diplomats at the United Nations — at the time a fairly noncontroversial proposition. Like his son, he joined interfaith groups, invited by Mr. Morton of St. John the Divine.

Hostage Crisis

Unlike his son, he was conservative in gender relations; he asked his wife, Buthayna, to not drive. But in 1977, he was heading the Islamic Center in Washington when he and Buthayna were taken hostage by a Muslim faction; it was his wife who challenged the gunmen on their lack of knowledge of Islam.

“My husband didn’t open his mouth, but I really gave it to them,” she told The New York Times then.

Meanwhile, the younger Mr. Abdul Rauf studied physics at Columbia. At first, he recalled in interviews last year, it was hard to adjust to American social mores. By 1967, he and a Yale student, Kurt Tolksdorf, had bonded at summer school over their shared taste in women and fast cars. But Mr. Tolksdorf said his friend never subscribed to the “free love” of the era.

When the 1967 war broke out in the Middle East, Mr. Tolksdorf said, Mr. Abdul Rauf reacted calmly when Israeli students tried to pick a fight. A classmate, Alan M. Silberstein, remembers debating each day’s news over lunch.

“He was genuinely trying to understand the interests of American Jews — what Israel’s importance was to me,” he said. “There was a genuine openness.”

In his 20s, Mr. Abdul Rauf dabbled in teaching and real estate, married an American-born woman and had three children. Studying Islam and searching for his place in it, he was asked to lead a Sufi mosque, Masjid al-Farah. It was one of few with a female prayer leader, where women and men sat together at some rituals and some women do not cover their hair. And it was 12 blocks from the World Trade Center.

Divorced, he met his second wife, Ms. Khan, when she came to the mosque looking for a gentler Islam than the politicized version she rejected after Iran’s revolution. Theirs is an equal partnership, whether Mr. Abdul Rauf is shopping and cooking a hearty soup, she said, or running organizations that promote an American-influenced Islam.

A similar idea comes up in the video of his visit to Cairo this year. Mr. Abdul Rauf, with Ms. Khan, unveiled as usual, beside him, tells a questioner not to worry so much about one issue of the moment — Switzerland’s ban on minarets — saying Islam has always adapted to and been influenced by places it spreads to. “Why not have a mosque that looks Swiss?” he joked. “Make a mosque that looks like Swiss cheese. Make a mosque that looks like a Rolex.”

In the 1990s, the couple became fixtures of the interfaith scene, even taking a cruise to Spain and Morocco with prominent rabbis and pastors.

Mr. Abdul Rauf also founded the Shariah Index Project — an effort to formally rate which governments best follow Islamic law. Critics see in it support for Taliban-style Shariah or imposing Islamic law in America.

Shariah, though, like Halakha, or Jewish law, has a spectrum of interpretations. The ratings, Ms. Kahn said, measure how well states uphold Shariah’s core principles like rights to life, dignity and education, not Taliban strong points. The imam has written that some Western states unwittingly apply Shariah better than self-styled Islamic states that kill wantonly, stone women and deny education — to him, violations of Shariah.

After 9/11, Mr. Abdul Rauf was all over the airwaves denouncing terrorism, urging Muslims to confront its presence among them, and saying that killing civilians violated Islam. He wrote a book, “What’s Right With Islam Is What’s Right With America,” asserting the congruence of American democracy and Islam.

That ample public record — interviews, writings, sermons — is now being examined by opponents of the downtown center.

Those opponents repeat often that Mr. Abdul Rauf, in one radio interview, refused to describe the Palestinian group that pioneered suicide bombings against Israel, Hamas, as a terrorist organization. In the lengthy interview, Mr. Abdul Rauf clumsily tries to say that people around the globe define terrorism differently and labeling any group would sap his ability to build bridges. He also says: “Targeting civilians is wrong. It is a sin in our religion,” and, “I am a supporter of the state of Israel.”

“If I were an imam today I would be saying, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ ” said John Esposito, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University. “ ‘Can an imam be critical of any aspect of U.S. foreign policy? Can I weigh in on things that others could weigh in on?’ Or is someone going to say, ‘He’s got to be a radical!’ ”

Reporting was contributed by Thanassis Cambanis and Mona El-Naggar in Cairo, and Kareem Fahim, Sharaf Mowjood and Jack Begg in New York.
New York Times.]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Sun, 22 Aug 2010 12:23:20 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4630,4630#msg-4630 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4630,4630#msg-4630
US News | Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 2:17:36 pm PDT

Hatemonger Pamela Geller has apparently founded an “umbrella” group called the American Freedom Defense Initiative for her anti-Muslim activities, with an attorney named David Yerushalmi, and they are going to be allowed to put their misleading anti-Cordoba billboard on MTA buses in New York. Geller and Yerushalmi are using the First Amendment to justify their demand to place this distorted advertisement — the same amendment that they deny applies to Muslim Americans. Here’s video from New York’s KPIX.

This is a good time for some background information on Pamela Geller’s associate David Yerushalmi, who is an advocate for criminalizing Islam itself and imposing 20-year sentences on practicing Muslims. Yes, really.

He’s not simply anti-Muslim, though; Yerushalmi also wrote a now-infamous article titled “On Race: A Tentative Discussion, Part II,” in which he advocated a return to a pre-Bill of Rights Constitution, and the restriction of voting rights to white male land-owners. Again … yes, really.

Here’s a lengthy article at Talk To Action on the bizarre views and causes of David Yerushalmi: Anti-Semitic White-Supremacist Orthodox Jew Tries To Ban Islam In US.

Yerushalmi has deleted as much evidence of the “On Race” article as he could; he removed it from the Internet Archive and the Google cache, and put his entire website behind a registration wall. But here’s a PDF that contains the full article, and it’s as ugly and twisted a piece of racism as anything I’ve ever seen. Yerushalmi opens by calling Islam “an evil religion,” and “blacks … the most murderous of peoples.”

A quote:

There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote. You might not agree or like the idea but this country’s founders, otherwise held in the highest esteem for their understanding of human nature and its affect on political society, certainly took it seriously. Why is that? Were they so flawed in their political reckonings that they manhandled the most important aspect of a free society - the vote? If the vote counts for so much in a free and liberal democracy as we “know” it today, why did they limit the vote so dramatically?

David Yerushalmi, however, comes off looking almost sane next to another founding board member of Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative, John Joseph Jay. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a blog post about Jay’s almost unbelievable anti-Muslim rants: Prime Islam-Basher Pam Geller Outdone by Colleague.

AFDI board member John Joseph Jay recently has posted a series of truly vicious anti-Muslim rants — apparently without the benefit of a capital letter function on his computer. “if islam kills non-believers as a matter of religious doctrine, then why should muslims expect to be free of retribution in the name of those islam kills?” he wrote. “why should muslims get a free pass? if it is right for muslims to kill non-believers, then why is it no less right for the rest of us to kill muslims?”

In another screed, the Jay wrote: “there are, friends, no ‘innocent’ muslims. they obey. and they obey the dictates of the koran on jihad. and, they obey the commands of local clerics. in this, they have no choice. because, friends, there is no ‘free will’ in islam, one obeys the dictates of allah.”

Last month, Jay expanded on his advocacy of violence against Muslims to include people in positions of power. He commented on his blog about a magazine article regarding America’s “ruling class” as follows: “friends, if you wish to retain and preserve individual virtue, you are going to have to kill in order to do so. if we are to excise the ruling class, it will be with violence. they used violence to attain their privilege, they use it nakedly in the form of the s.i.e.u. [an apparent reference to the SEIU, the Service Employees International Union] and black panther thugs in elective politics to maintain it, they contemplate relocation camps to preserve it. … buy guns. buy ammo. be jealous of your liberties. and understand, you are going to have to kill folks, your uncles, your sons and daughters, to preserve those liberties.”]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Sun, 22 Aug 2010 12:16:56 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4627,4627#msg-4627 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4627,4627#msg-4627 Jackie Houchin
August 18, 2010
---Theatre Review

The word that most often describes Alexandre Dumas's "The Three Musketeers" is swashbuckling, and indeed you'd be hard pressed to find three (no, four) more swaggering, vociferous, impetuous, and confident fellows than his Aramis, Athos, Portos and d'Artagnan; hearty fellows, all, and pledged to the death for each other with their resounding "All for one, and one for all!"

The Theatricum has captured the very essence of "swashbuckling" in their current production of "The Three Musketeers" which runs in repertory with 4 other outstanding plays. The massive outdoor stage, with its surrounding path-riddled, tree covered hillside and vale lends itself well to this play's bigger-than life action, pageantry and intrigue.

Whether it's a rowdy tavern brawl, a free-for-all sword fight, a posturing minuet at the Royal Ball, or a clandestine meeting designed for pleasure or plotting evil, the audience is drawn in and carried along by the energy and passion of this remarkable company of performers.

The play begins as d'Artagnan a young, noble-minded peasant with dreams of glory, departs for Paris to seek membership in the famed royal guard of King Louis XIII.

Instead, he finds himself in a tavern where rough men are abusing a pretty laundress. He's captivated by her beauty and tries to rescue her, only to be thrown to the floor by Rochfort the arrogant captain of the Cardinal's guard. From his position under the table he sees the captain secretly pass a box and a message to a mysterious woman in black (Abby Craden).

Humiliated, d'Artagnan vows vengeance on Rochfort and starts after him, only to be drawn aside by a trio of Musketeers who wisely advise him to reconsider. However, in his haste to restore his honor, d'Artagnan unwittingly offends each of the Musketeers who then challenge him to private duels.

Bravely the boy meets "the three inseparables" who "undoubtedly will kill me one at a time." But he proves himself valiant with the sword, and a bond of friendship is formed. Later, when d'Artagnan is brought before the king for "illegal" dueling, the three defend him and take him on as their apprentice.

High adventure follows as together the foursome bravely battle political intrigue, deadly deceit, dastardly doings in the name of religion, and the wiles of one very unscrupulous and wicked woman. With a generous splash of humor to temper the murder and mayhem, this full-version adaptation of Dumas' play (by director Ellen Geer) is pure entertainment.


Jackson McCord Thompson performs an outstanding d'Artagnan; his youthful, fresh-from-the farm appearance and bumbling ways endearing him to the audience from the start. Jim LeFave's likable, battered & bruised (and jilted) Athos also wins hearts. Kelly C. Henton impresses as Portos. The bearded and mustachioed Melora Marshall plays the male role of Aramis with surprising machismo. Way to go, girl!

Andrew Ravani captures the narcissistic King Louis XIII in flamboyant yellow and maroon stripes and shoulder length wavy black hair. It's hard to take your eyes off him, and equally hard not to grin, except of course when he's killing Protestants!

William Dennis Hunt, as the scheming Cardinal Richelieu, oils his way convincingly through the king's courts, while handsome Aaron Hendry, as Duke of Buckingham, titillates the audience as the lover of both Queen and vixen in black. Sam Breen exudes formidable menace as the scar-faced Rochfort.

Samara Frame portrays Queen Anne with suitable style and majesty, while Abby Craden easily carries the role of the beautiful and wicked MiLady, whether in cloak, gown, or bustier. Willow Geer plays the comely, good-hearted laundress, Constance, who captures d'Artagnan's heart and loses her life in the process.

Kudos also go Aaron Hendry as Fight Choreographer and Willow Geer as Dance Choreographer.

Performances are – Fridays at 8:00 pm & Sundays at 7:30 pm through October 3rd. (The final Sunday performance is at 3:30 pm.)

On each of the Fridays in September, there will be a pre-performance French-buffet (attended by costumed swashbucklers and chambermaids) at 6:30 pm.

For information call (310) 455-3723

The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum is located at:

1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd

Topanga, CA 90290

(Between PCH and Ventura Freeway)

Dress casually (warmly for evenings) and bring cushions for bench seating.]]> TimBuk2 Topanga Talk Sat, 21 Aug 2010 21:33:53 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4622,4622#msg-4622 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4622,4622#msg-4622 Founding Drummer of Little Feat
Friday, August 20, 2010
By Jacalyn Kane

Richie Hayward, founding drummer of Little Feat, died August 12 in Comox, British Columbia, Canada, after fighting liver cancer for more than a year.

When I met Richie for the first time, I was still a college student at the University of Maryland in the spring of ’79 (shortly before Lowell George’s tragic passing) and Little Feat played a concert on the great lawn near our dorm. Nineteen years later, in Topanga Canyon, I happened to meet Richie again, this time at a party at the home of Patricia and Fred Tackett. However, it wasn’t until the following year, in the fall of 1997, when we saw each other backstage at a benefit concert in Topanga Canyon, that we started dating.

By New Year’s Eve 1997, I was happy to find myself his sweetheart. Our time together criss-crossed from Topanga Canyon to Martha’s Vineyard, where I lived during the summers presenting concerts, and even to dates “on the road” so that too much time did not pass before we could be together again. After we split up and life took us in different directions, we always remained good friends and continued to hold deep respect for each other, our lives, and our new paths.

Richie Hayward’s drum solo during “Fat Man In The Bathtub,” Westhampton Performing Arts Center

Richie had a special place in his heart for Santa Barbara, where he had lived with his family from 1987 until 1989, and where he returned often for concerts and to visit with friends. North to Santa Barbara on the Pacific Coast Highway was one of his favorite directions to point his beloved Mustang for what were often high-speed drives. When riding with him—he loved race car drivers, and often drove like he thought he was one—I’d beg him to slow down on the canyon curves and, with his sense of humor always intact, he’d teasingly say, “You know you drive like an old woman, don’t you? This car can’t drive slowly.” I remember eating at La Super Rica, his favorite restaurant, at the start of a memorable evening when Little Feat played at the Santa Barbara Bowl with Joe @#$%&. Richie loved the Bowl, with its view to the ocean, and always felt so at home on that stage.

Growing up in Ames, Iowa, Richie lived on a rural route and purchased his first drum kit sight-unseen out of a Sears catalogue when he was still in grade school. Every afternoon he would run home to see if his drums had been delivered. When he told that story, and so many others, he would end with one of his favorite sayings—“That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

Richie loved his cottage in Topanga Canyon and filled it with friends, memorabilia, warmth, and children. He was a devoted parent and cared for his son Severin and his daughter Natalie for several years as a single parent. Natalie, now with a baby of her own, shared her sorrow recently, stating, “I am at a loss for words. All I can say is he made my life better in so many ways and I will always love him.” When Sev was injured in a car accident, Richie nursed him back to health, knowing from his own experience with a serious motorcycle accident, some years before, what it took to deal with such a traumatic experience. I saw him light up with pride when his older children showed up at his home for the holidays. Despite a sometimes turbulent personal life, Richie remained very grateful for his friends and for the life he had made for himself in Topanga Canyon. After a long tour he would return to his home and always say, “I live here!” as though he couldn’t quite believe his good fortune.

Richie was a talented and influential drummer’s drummer whose innovative work also made him a popular session musician among rock’s elite. He had a funky style all his own and was rightfully considered one of the best drummers in the world. He was the driving beat behind Little Feat’s jam band sound—well before the “jam band” label existed.

He recorded with Eric Clapton and Robert Plant in the early 1980s, and relished the times he traveled to Europe and the Mediterranean for those sessions, staying on in Mallorca and celebrating his success. Plant recently paid tribute to Richie, stating in the U.K. Independent that he had “been a real admirer of his work with Lowell George back in those days, so it was a real thrill to end up working alongside him, with him bringing his gift to my songs. He was a man of amazing dexterity and superb feel. He was one of the most colorful, humorous, self-effacing guys I have ever come across.”

Over the years, in addition to his work with Little Feat, Robert Plant, and Eric Clapton, he recorded and performed with many other artists including: Ella Fitzgerald, Delaney Bramlett, Jonny Lang, Ry Cooder, The Doobie Brothers, Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, Taj Mahal, Bob Seger, Stephen Stills, Tom Waits, John Cale, Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and Emmy Lou Harris. Hayward treasured those friendships, born in the classic rock era of the 1960s and 1970s, like family.

Richie was a very strong presence in the music scene in Topanga, often playing Abuelita’s with the No Name Band, a group of mostly younger musicians that formed around him. He was a great mentor to these guys, and a friend to the younger generation growing up in the canyon, including Forest and Inara George, Lowell’s children, who were always welcome at his home. He encouraged and praised up-and-coming talent openly. As one talented young friend, Amilia Spicer, recently stated, “Musicians of his caliber may think that someone new and coming up is great but they often don’t say so, but Richie gave his heart out like that.”

During his final year, hundreds of his friends, fans, and family members rallied around him. Jackson Browne and others participated in different benefits across the world to help with rising medical costs, as Richie, like many musicians, did not have health insurance.

Although in recent years we didn’t spend as much time together, having both moved away from Topanga Canyon, Richie remained a dear friend and will always be in my heart. He was sweet, funny, generous, and an authentic soul—a truly “cool guy” who I will miss daily.

And in the end, I know he was exactly where he really wanted to be, and extremely blessed to have his devoted wife Shauna come into his life. Together they shared his precious last years living at her home in Canada, on Vancouver Island, where he embraced her young children as his own. He was surrounded by their love when he passed on the morning of August 12. He will be deeply missed by his loving friends, fans, and family.]]> Julie Topanga Talk Sat, 21 Aug 2010 21:28:52 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4621,4621#msg-4621 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4621,4621#msg-4621
The Proposed Community Center Project in Lower Manhattan
FAQs

http://www.cordobainitiative.org/?q=content/frequently-asked-questions

Who is organizing this project? What is the relationship of the Cordoba Initiative to this project?

The Cordoba Initiative, of which Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is founder and chairman, is a multi-faith non-profit organization whose aim is to improve relations between different communities, and in particular between the Muslim world and the United States of America.

The proposed community center in Lower Manhattan will serve as a platform for multi-faith dialogue. It will strive to promote inter-community peace, tolerance and understanding locally in New York City, nationally in America, and globally.


Daisy Khan is a board member of Cordoba Initiative and also the Executive Director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA). ASMA is committed to helping Muslim women and youth to improving their lives within their communities through projects on contemporary issues.

Both Imam Feisal and Ms. Khan are strong advocates for multi-faith collaboration. They share a vision of a community center in which various religious leaders and civil society will work closely together to foster community cohesion and advance the shared goals of moderation, peace and understanding. Through programs offered by the Cordoba Initiative and ASMA, the community center will crystallize this shared vision of peace into bricks and mortar.

Why are you building a mosque at Ground zero?

The community center is not located at Ground Zero.

It will be a multi-floor community center open to all New Yorkers, much like a YMCA or Jewish Community Center (JCC) with a designated prayer space (mosque) in one area to serve the needs of the large existing community of American Muslims in the neighborhood.

The community center will provide a place where individuals, regardless of their culture or background, will find a place of learning, arts and culture, and, most importantly, a community center guided by the universal values of all religions in their truest form – peace, compassion, generosity, and respect for all.

Why did you choose this site so close to Ground Zero?

We were always close to the World Trade Center. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has been the Imam of a mosque twelve blocks from the Twin Towers for the last 27 years.

Who is funding the community center?

No funds for this project have been raised to date. A project of this scale will require very diverse fundraising sources, including individuals from all faiths and beliefs –who are committed to peace and understanding. We expect that our sources of funding will include individuals of different religions, charitable organizations, public funds, institutional and corporate sponsors.

You will need a lot of contributors. Who will review your donor list?

The New York Charities Bureau and the US Treasury Department will review the donor list to assure that all funding sources are vetted to their satisfaction and approved. In addition, our Trustees and Advisory Board will be comprised of a multi-faith group of distinguished individuals who will ensure that the community center stays true to its objectives of peace, tolerance and understanding between all.

How did you purchase the building?

SoHo Properties, a New York real estate development firm based in lower Manhattan, acquired the property a couple of years ago. Sharif El Gamal, owner of SoHo Properties, is a member of Imam Feisal’s lower Manhattan congregation that has been in the neighborhood for a number of years.

Why so close to Ground Zero?

We have been residents and neighbors who are deeply committed to the neighborhood for the last 27 years. American Muslims have been peacefully living, working and worshipping in this neighborhood and were also terribly affected by the horrific events of 9/11.

As Muslim New Yorkers and Americans we want to help and be part of rebuilding our neighborhood in lower Manhattan. It is important for all of us to show the world that Americans will not be frightened or deterred by the extremist forces of hatred.

Isn’t this insensitive given that the 9/11 attackers were Muslims?

The events of 9/11 were horrific. What happened that day was terrorism, and it shames us that it was cloaked in the guise of Islam. It was inhumane, un-Islamic and is indefensible regardless of one’s religious persuasion. Not only Americans but also all Muslims are threatened by the lies and actions being perpetrated by these self-serving extremists and their perverted view of Islam.

The community center will be a platform to amplify the voices of the overwhelming majority of Muslims whose love for America and commitment to peace gets drowned out by the actions of a few extremists. It will become a platform where the voices of those who resist religious extremism and terrorism can be amplified and celebrated.

But, why not build it a little bit farther away? Let’s say a mile away?

No one should be driven out of his or her own neighborhood – especially for religious reasons. It is unconstitutional and un-American. Our congregation has been peacefully worshipping in this area for almost three decades. Our neighbors have encouraged us to remain here and the City and the Community Board have encouraged our continued presence here. The community has backed up their support by approving every resolution and challenge in the community center’s favor.

What about the 9/11 families? Don’t you see their pain?

Like all New Yorkers and Americans we were too devastated by 9/11. We share and respect the incredible pain and loss suffered by the victims of 9/11. We fully recognize their legitimate concerns and sensitivity to the community center. It shames us that extremists who profess to be Muslim perpetrated murder on such a horrific scale for political and financial gain in the name of Islam.

We look forward to actively engaging with leaders of the victims of 9/11 to respond to their concerns and obtain their support for our efforts.

Will the extremists take over the Community Center once it’s built?

Extremism on both sides is the danger – it’s what we’re working against. A community center that celebrates diversity and multi-faith collaboration is antithetical to the extremists’ worldview. This center will be a blow to all extremists.

In addition, the multi-faith Trustees and Board of Advisors will also help assure that our good intentions are not hijacked by extremist elements who are against our vision of peace, tolerance and understanding.

Are you not building a project that will be one of conquest? Isn’t this a victory for the extremists?

The community center is opposed to religious extremists of all faiths. It demonstrates that Americans cannot be intimidated and will join together to promote moderation, peace and understanding when challenged.

The extremists will not find victory or comfort in a community center whose sole purpose is to bring peace through multi-faith collaboration and celebrate the diversity of views in our world.

This center is an important step towards building understanding and peace. Just as we strive to understand the faith and traditions of our neighbors, this center will invite others to learn about the true nature of Islam. A religion of peace, tolerance, and understanding.


So what will happen at this community center?

The community center will meet the needs of all New Yorkers with six programmatic areas:
1. Culture and Arts - 500-seat auditorium, exhibition)
2. Education - Lecture hall, conference rooms, library, classrooms,)
3. Social Cohesion,(cooking classes, senior citizens space, child care, banquet hall)
4. Religion + Healing - Muslim prayer space, Contemplation and reflection area, 9/11 victims memorial
5. Global Engagement - Mapping studies on trends in the Muslim world, resources on good governance and principles of liberal democracy, women’s empowerment issues, youth development, countering religious extremism.
6. Recreation - pool, gym, medical education and wellness programs

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

Clearing up false charges made against Imam Feisal:

“On 60 Minutes, the Imam said that American Foreign policy is an accessory to terrorism”

The ‘60 Minutes’ piece was completely incorrect as the statement was edited out of context. In the full interview, Imam Feisal describes the mistake the CIA made in the 1980s by financing Osama Bin Laden and strengthening the Taliban. This view is widely shared within the US and the US Government today, and Imam Feisal underlines the importance of not supporting “friends of convenience” who may in the future become our enemies. This is common sense.

Imam Feisal is an American who takes his role as a citizen-ambassador very seriously. He is frequently requested by the US State Department to tour Muslim majority and western countries to speak about the merits of American ideals and Muslim integration into Western society. At the request of the FBI after 9/11, he provided cultural training to hundreds of FBI agents.

“Imam Feisal has not condemned Hamas”

Imam Feisal has always condemned terrorism (see his 1995 book “What’s Right With Islam is What’s Right with America” and his hundreds of speeches). Hamas is both a political movement and a terrorist organization. Hamas commits atrocious acts of terror. Imam Feisal has forcefully and consistently condemned all forms of terrorism, including those committed by Hamas, as un-Islamic. In his book, he even went so far as to include a copy of the Fatwa issued after 9/11 by the most respected clerics of Egypt defining the 9/11 attack as an un-Islamic act of terror and giving permission to Muslims in the U.S. armed forces to fight against those who committed this act of terror. Imam Feisal included this in his book to prove that terrorism must be fought even if Muslims have to fight fellow Muslims to stop it.

“Imam Feisal is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood because his book was translated into Arabic by a publisher with ties to the Brotherhood.”

Both charges are false. Imam Feisal has no connection whatsoever to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Arabic translation rights to his book were arranged by the Arabic book program at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, United States of America.

“Imam Feisal is a member of the Perdana Global Peace Organization, which is a funder of the flotilla that attempted to deliver aid to residents of Gaza.”

Imam Feisal has never been a member of this group. Several years ago, Imam Feisal was invited to Malaysia, the most moderate Islamic country in the world, to participate in a Peace Conference sponsored by the Perdana Peace Group. He was one of the hundreds of speakers present. He has no political, advisory or business affiliation of any nature with the Perdana group. A photo of Imam Feisal was taken at the conference, and this has been used to “prove” his membership in the Perdana Global Peace Organization, but the allegation is false. Because of the controversy surrounding Perdana, we have requested the Perdana Group to remove the photo of him from their publicity.

“Imam Feisal wants to establish a ‘shariah state’ in America.”

Actually, quite the contrary. Imam Feisal believes that all Muslims must adhere to the laws of the land in which they reside, including in America. This is a basic tenet of Islam. He has repeatedly stated that America is already one of the most Shariah compliant countries in the world because of America’s adherence to our Bill of Rights and because it allows members of all religions, including Muslims, to practice their faith freely. In other words, Imam Feisal believes that Muslims practice Shariah when they fast, pray, give to charity and uphold the commandments of protecting life, liberty, dignity, the pursuit of happiness and the right to freedom of worship.

“ Why isn’t Imam Feisal currently in New York? Isn’t he supporting this?”

Imam Feisal travels the world in his life-long endeavor to bring the message of moderation, peace and understanding to both Western and Islamic countries.

Currently, he is in Malaysia working on projects designed to counter radical Islamist ideology within the region and the world. As the leading moderate Muslim country in the world, Malaysia is strongly interested in developing such initiatives and has requested Imam Feisal's assistance in their formulation.

Following this, Imam Feisal has been requested by the US State Department to make an extended tour, sponsored by the US Government, of Islamic countries throughout the Middle East to further his moderate Islamic message of peace and understanding with scholars, religious leaders and political leaders in the region.

His absence should not be construed in any way as a diminution of his deep commitment and concern regarding the issues surrounding the community center.

It is unfortunate that some events related to the center transpired during his extended travels but he has full confidence in his staff and and partners, including the team at SoHo Properties, and Daisy Khan, Executive Director of ASMA and one of the founders of Park51 – to carry on in his absence.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thank You!

We wish to thank the following organizations for their support:

September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, J Street, The Arab American Family Support Center, CLAL–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Auburn Seminary, American Jewish Committee, Cause New York, Chautauqua Institute, Congregation B'nai Jeshurun, Faith House Manhattan, Friends of the Arava Institute, Interfaith Youth Core, Intersections, Interfaith Center of New York, The Interfaith Alliance, Jewish Community Center in Manhattan, Lutheran Seafarers and International House, New York Buddhist Church, Odyssey Networks, New Seminary, Out of Cordoba, Averros and Miamonides, NY interfaith Disaster, One Voice, One Spirit, St. Bartholomew's Church, Same Difference Interfaith Alliance, The Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, Tanenbaum Center, The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, Trinity Wall Church, The Healing of the Nations Foundation, The Migration Policy Institute, Union Theological Seminary, St. Peters Church, UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific,

For more information, contact

info@cordobainitiative.org

link:

http://www.cordobainitiative.org/?q=content/frequently-asked-questions]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Sat, 21 Aug 2010 10:26:54 -0700