Reinke Faces Life

Ron Paul TV Ad: #2 for New Hampshire

Go, Ron, go! Clear concise and right on target. Opinions?

I’d be interested to hear if you disagree.

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Great Ron Paul video

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Restore the Republic!

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What Hillary Would Do As President?
AND How Much More It Will Cost You
By Dick Morris Reports <dickmorrisreports@dickmorris.com>

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TAXES

Hillary makes no secret of her intention to roll back Bush’s tax cuts on the ‘wealthy.’ But her definition of ‘rich’ is sufficiently inclusive so as to encompass everyone with a family or household income over $200,000 a year. Clearly she would include the following in the tax cuts she will repeal (or allow to sunset):

o She’d raise the top bracket of the federal income tax, restoring it to 39.6% from its current 35% level.

o She’d increase the capital gains tax, restoring it to 20% – or maybe even go higher. My bet is that she will increase it to 30% or even eliminate special treatment for capital gains altogether, taxing gains as ordinary income (at 40%).

o Hillary will almost certainly roll back much- if not all- of the estate tax reductions of recent years, lowering dramatically the size of estates subject to the levy.

o She’d restore the tax on dividends to 30% from its current 15%.

But her agenda will doubtless go further. She will be much more radical in raising taxes than Bush was in cutting them.

SOCIAL SECURITY TAXES

One of her most important steps will probably be to raise Social Security (FICA) taxes. She won’t raise the rate since that would impact her liberal base. Instead, she’ll raise the threshold of income that subject to taxation, now limited to the first $97, 500 of income.

At a recent candidate forum in Iowa, Hillary played it cute. First, she told the audience that she had nothing ‘on the table’ about Social Security taxes. Then, after the meeting, she privately told Todd Bowman, a schoolteacher who was in the audience, that she would consider imposing FICA taxes on all those who earn more than $200,000. She told Bowman that she would probably keep the current threshold at $100,000, skip the next hundred thousand of income, and then tax all income over $200,000 for Social Security.

So, look forward to some big changes there.

(Of course, she will not remove the cap on benefits, just on taxes).

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Remember history students, it was the smoot hawley tariff that caused the Great Depression and FDR had to get American into WW2 to get us out of it.

That’s the consistent model: Gooferment creates the problem and then rushes in to “save” us from it.

Personally, I think ONLY Ron Paul beats her.

If it even looks like she’s winning, look for a Stock Market crash that will make all prior look like bumps. And, if she is elected and follows the tax plan that Dick Morris is predicting (which isn’t farfetched for a socialist like Hillary!), then you’ll see a real Depression.

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http://www.mises.org/story/2752

Anatomy of the Ron Paul Nation
By Cyd Malone
Posted on 10/18/2007

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So I sobered up and came back down to earth. In the early stages of the party, before the names and conversations blurred with fun, I spoke to a gentleman from New Jersey — Jason was his name — more of my age and far more sober minded. We both agreed that Ron Paul’s chances of becoming president are slim to none, forget what the Vegas odds makers say. Recognizing him as a Four Figure fellow, I asked him why then did he hand over so much money to Mr. Paul’s campaign.

He thought about it and gave me the answer to the same question I’d been asking of myself: “I’m buying hope,” he shrugged.

As Carl Menger would agree, hope has a price, too. Water can be more costly than a diamond under the right circumstances, and so can hope. Yet, despite a wife who deserves diamond earrings but instead gave them away to the longest of long shots, despite the fact that when I mentioned his name at a business dinner a week prior every single person at the table knew who Ron Paul was, and despite the large chunk of cash I handed over to buy it, I will admit I still don’t have a lot of hope.

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ME2! I’m buying hope. If Ron Paul doesn’t win, then the situation is hopeless. The sheep are unsalvageable. The takers have outvoted us producers. We’ll next need a George Washington.

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http://purelypolitical.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/13/1022861-the-nhs-wins-when-its-patients-die-telegraph?email=html

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Were it not for bad nursing, bad medical attention and bad administration, none of these patients need have died. Indeed, they would not have contracted C. difficile at all unless they had gone into hospital. So, after 150 years’ advance of education, technology, prosperity and science, we have lost what Florence Nightingale taught.

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Here’s a real life anecdote of gooferment healthcare!

We have “our” own VA, British National healthcare, Canadian Nation heathcare that serve as warning signs. Now our current semi-socialistic healthcare system admittedly has problems!

But those problems come from the gooferment involvement in the marketplace. It’s time to try a dose of “freedom”.

End the dole and allow people to be responsible for their own healthcare without gooferment interference.

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http://vtcommons.org/node/924

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Dear fellow Americans –

Instead of a nation that manufactures its own goods, the United States has become a nation of service providers, moving production “off shore” and relying on fossil fuel to transport its goods over long distances–an increasingly fragile supply line whether judged from an ecological, social, economic, or political point of view. While exporting jobs, we have also exported the skills and technologies for making the very products we depend on daily.

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Sustainable.

Don’t make me laff!

The various gangs in gooferment has made it impossible to produce anything here.

One wonders how the American experiment will end.

With a hyper-inflation? One thing is for sure, we will have to have an “industrial revolution” to bring good things to our own market. We can’t keep shipping little green pieces of papers for real stuff. That’s not going to work any more. What will?

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The Geopolitical Foundations of Blackwater
By George Friedman

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Blackwater, KBR and all the rest are the direct result of the faulty geopolitical assumptions and the force structure decisions that followed. The primary responsibility rests with the American public, which made best-case assumptions in a worst-case world. Even without Iraq, civilian contractors would have proliferated on the battlefield. With Iraq, they became an enormous force. Perhaps the single greatest strategic error of the Bush administration was not fundamentally re-examining the assumptions about the U.S. Army on Sept. 12, 2001.

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This is a very fair indictment of the Bush Administration. As is usual, the last war’s assumptions are paid for with a lot of blood and treasure. When the “leaders” are blind to the flaws in the assumptions, people perish.

Perhaps a President Ron Paul will cause a fundamental reevaluation of assumptions. No other candidate promises to do anything other than “more of the same”.

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WHY THE DEMOCRATS ARE BACKING HILLARY
By Dick Morris Reports <dickmorrisreports@dickmorris.com>
By DICK MORRIS

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When she says she can “hit the ground running,” she pretends that she is addressing her vast public policy experience. But it is irrelevant that she was in the White House for eight years. So was the pastry chef. But what is relevant, and inescapable, is that she did lead the president’s crusade to overcome the efforts of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” to bring him down, and it is that experience which endears her to the base.

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You have to like Dick’s ability to distill an indictment of Hillary’s Presidential candidacy to two words … … “pastry chef”!

Love it.

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A PLAN TO TAKE DOWN HILLARY
By Dick Morris Reports <dickmorrisreports@dickmorris.com>
HER REAL STAND ON IRAQ AND HOW IT HELPS OBAMA
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published in the New York Post on October 7, 2007.

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But Obama has an opening for a very effective challenge to Hillary over the war if he uses the half-hour interview she gave The New York Times in her Senate office on March 14th of this year. In that on-the-record session, Hillary let slip her real colors on Iraq, revealing her essentially hawkish approach to the issue.

She said that she foresees a “remaining military, as well as political, mission” in Iraq. She said she “would keep a reduced but significant military force there to fight al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.”

While noting that in public Sen. Clinton backs the goal of “bringing the troops home,” the newspaper said that she took a “more nuanced position” in the interview and spoke of the “remaining vital national security interests in Iraq” that would require an ongoing deployment of troops.

That interview, a major mistake by Clinton, provides enough of an opening to drive a truck through and gives Obama a perfect way to position himself vis-à-vis her.

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Nothing like a POed advisor to be able to show the world your flaws!

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/murphy/murphy124.html

FAQ on Ron Paul
by Bob Murphy

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But let me push the question deeper. I challenge the premise that Rudy or Mitt or Fred is a stronger GOP candidate in the general election against Hillary Clinton. Like it or not, the general public is fed up with George Bush and his war. Even though she won’t pull the troops out, Hillary Clinton will have a huge edge just on that ground alone. But she loses this edge completely against Ron Paul. Ron Paul actually voted against the Iraq invasion (and against the Patriot Act). He is the one GOP candidate who can neutralize the baggage of the war for the Republicans. On top of that, he can beat Hillary on socialized medicine because he is an actual medical doctor, and so he can credibly talk about the dangers of bringing more government into the equation.

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I think this is the cutting issue. The tipping point. The defining moment.

If the American people really do want out of Iraq, Ron Paul is the ONLY candidate anywhere on the policial radar of any ilk that will deliver it.

We’ll see if they really do.

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul412.html

Statement on the Tax Free Tips Act
by Ron Paul

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Madame Speaker, I rise to help millions of working Americans by introducing the Tax Free Tips Act. As the title suggests, this legislation makes tips exempt from federal income and payroll taxes. Tips often compose a substantial portion of the earnings of waiters, waitresses, and other service-sector employees. However, unlike regular wages, a service-sector employee usually has no guarantee of, or legal right to, a tip. Instead, the amount of a tip usually depends on how well an employee satisfies a client. Since the amount of taxes one pays increases along with the size of tip, taxing tips punishes workers for doing a superior job!

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End the Income Tax period! It’s theft.

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http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/Jul-11-Fri-2003/news/21707576.html

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TAX TIME: So much for the suspense. The state Supreme Court announced Thursday that the Legislature, already in triple overtime, was free to ignore the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority to pass new taxes. The court ruled that, at this late date, a simple majority is good enough for government work.

Not that it should surprise anyone who has followed the tumultuous proceedings the past seven months, but the high court’s ruling is bound to generate all manner of litigation and citizen initiative petitions. Nevada Republican Liberty Caucus official Dan Burdish, acting in his capacity as the leader of Nevadans for Tax Restraint, wasted little time in bashing the court.

“The Nevada Supreme Court in an unprecedented usurpation of the Separation of Powers today threw out the Gibbons Tax Restraint Initiative,” he wrote in a mass e-mail. “Nevadans for Tax Restraint is considering a recall of these six Justices in addition to the Referendum we will conduct to overthrow the soon to be passed $1 billion tax increase.”

You didn’t actually expect the tax-increase critics to go away, did you?

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Well, “nice try” DOWGs. The Framers of the Constitution never expected that all three branches of gooferment to be in bed with one another.

But, we know better.

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I’m tired of voting in elections where my choices never matter. If I was King, I would decree that you only vote for your block captain. (If you’re in an apartment, then your floor.) And, the block captains elect a neighborhood ElCalde. Those votes would be population weighted. The the block captain would have 22 votes representing the people on my block. I’d pay taxes to the “block captain”. And, then I’d have some one to hold accountable for the abuses. Every thing would be organized geographically summing up to the next higher level. I’m sure that would be a much better system of representative gooferment. With a lot less fuss ‘n’ muss. And campaign cost would drop dramatically.

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http://www.freemindstv.com/ronpaulinterview.html

Ron Paul wins the NH straw poll and this short video shows why. No wonder the establishment want to ignore him. Truly smaller government, a non-interventionist foreign policy, and honest money. It would be the death knell of the warfare welfare state.

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FROM DICK MORRIS’ EZINE

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The public face of Hillary Clinton’s new health care plan is sunny, filled with choices for consumers and bright with promises for better health care for all. But a close examination of the proposal alongside other initiatives of Sen. Clinton in the past few years reveals a dark side she wants to hide from public view until after the election is over.

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Hillary speaks of the importance of stopping health insurance companies from raising premiums on those who are sick. But she does not mention the inevitable flip side of her proposal — to raise premiums on those who are well. On the one hand, she would cover all those with chronic conditions with low cost health insurance and, on the other, would stop insurance companies from “cherry picking” healthy and young people for their insurance plans. The net effect would be a major increase in health insurance premiums for the vast majority of Americans.
In effect, her plan would turn “insurance” into “subsidy.” The concept of insurance is that one pays a relatively low premium to guard against catastrophic expenses that are outside of our ability to meet financially. But Hillary’s program would really be nothing more than a cash transfer from the healthy to the sick, not an insurance program at all.

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Hey, if the bull doesn’t see the sword behind the cape, then he’s dead. Just as dead the American health care system, if the voting public can’t see thru the Democratic smoke ‘n’ mirrors around “free” health care.

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http://www.smartmoney.com/thenewretirement/index.cfm?story=september2007

The New Retirement
Don’t Believe the Hype on Medicare Part D
By Peter Keating |Peter Keating Archive |Published: September 10, 2007

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Try this on for size instead. Under Medicare’s drug benefit, you pay $4,270 of the first $5,871 in prescription costs you incur.

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Part D has serious problems beyond the doughnut hole. For one thing, it requires insurers to offer just one drug per therapeutic class, which means no plan may cover all of the specific blood pressure or anti-inflammatory drugs your doctor wants to prescribe. For another, Medicaid, state insurance programs and private employers are all dumping beneficiaries into Part D. That may save those plans money, but it costs seniors. In the first half of 2006, for example, low-income retirees and their insurers paid an extra $325 million to Pfizer because they lost discounts in switching from Medicaid to Part D. Most important, after a quiet period following the prescription benefit’s enactment, insurance companies got busy hiking prices: 78% of Part D insurers increased the price of their most popular drugs at least three times last year, according to a Consumers Union study of 225 plans in the five biggest states. About a quarter of them pushed prices up by 5% or more in just the first two months of this year.

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You really didn’t think that this was anything but WELFARE for the drug companies?

Why DO you think they make all those big campaign contributions to both political parties? It not out of principle but out of greed.

Argh!

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo128.html

Why the Military Fails To Protect Us
(And Lies About It)
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

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After five years, it is not even safe to drive to the airport from downtown Baghdad unless one is driving in an armored tank – and even that is not perfectly safe. This would suggest that the September 10 testimony before a congressional committee of General Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, should be taken with a grain of salt about the size of Texas. It would hardly be good for his career, and his legacy, to admit that the operation that he planned and executed has been a failure.

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Yup, the “perfumed princes of the pentagon” are politicians. And, to expect results from gooferment is the perfect definition of insanity.

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http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/09/10/american-poverty

September 10, 2007
American Poverty
By Lisa Fabrizio

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The Heritage Foundation’s Robert E. Rector has written a fine piece cataloging the Census Bureau’s statistics and linked to all the pertinent data. If you’re anything like me, some of the highlights might not surprise you:

* Forty-three percent of all poor households actu­ally own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.

* Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

* Only 6 percent of poor households are over­crowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

* The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

* Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.

* Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

* Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

* Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

The point being, that the depth of poverty that exists in too much of the world is basically nonexistent here. But although our poor are better off than those in most of the world — so much so that millions of impoverished foreigners are willing to risk their lives and break our laws to join them — some Americans do live in unfortunate, if not dire, circumstances. Of course, the major difference is that the poor in this country have the opportunity to improve their lot.

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Here are two reasons why we have to get the gooferment out of the “war on poverty”. (1) Poor in the USA is not the same as poor elsewhere on the globe. (2) They demotivate people from working — both the takers who could work and the makers who say why should I bother to make more.

I learned this lesson when some TV show interviewed an illegal from Africa and asked why did he want to come to America. His astute reply “here poor people are fat”.

How “fat” we don’t ever realize.

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods81.html

What the Warfare State Really Costs
by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

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Once again we are faced with opportunity costs. “The full costs of mortgaging the nation’s high technology policy to the Pentagon can be measured only by the lost opportunities to have done things differently,” writes Stuart Leslie. “No one now can go back to the beginning of the Cold War and follow those paths not taken. No one can assert with any confidence exactly where a science and technology driven by other assumptions and priorities would have taken us.”

If we are to come up with some idea of the impoverishing effects of the military establishment, it must include, at the very least, the factors we have described here. These additional costs of the warfare state help us to realize that it isn’t just war, but also the preparation for war, that is, in the words of Gen. Smedley Butler, a racket.

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So once again, we learn from Basat. What options were crowded out by the choice we made? In the Trillions of dollars spent wastefully on the Military Industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about, we can only imagine what could have been. Sigh! From Woods article, we can’t even begin to guess the miracles that could have been. Like abortion, it cuts off whole lineages of people and ideas.

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http://redstateeclectic.typepad.com/redstate_commentary/2007/09/ron-paul-rally-.html

It’s most interesting how energetic he is espousing the principles of liberty. Makes me think we are back in the Revolutionary War times. Call out the militia. It’s time to take back the high moral ground.

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FROM DICK MORRIS EMAIL

FRED THOMPSON: FIRST LOBBYIST FOR PRESIDENT
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FoxNews.com on September 10, 2007

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Thompson was a lobbyist for 20 years before he was elected to the Senate, representing the Tennessee Savings and Loan Association, the deposed Haitian President Aristed and the National Planning & Reproductive Health Association.

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You have to like when the dirt comes out. Hopefully the voters can look past the Law & Order gig and see what they are electing.

A plague on all their houses.

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http://www.survivalplus.com/philosophy/page0007.htm

THE SURVIVAL MENTALITY
By Paranoid George

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Yet, nature has a way of cleaning itself. And when our highly technological society collapses due to its incompatibility with the laws of nature, the gravy train will grind to a halt. Then the Welfare masses will simply starve. Also decimated will be the ranks of the unprepared, geared only for survival in the present artificial environment of our cities. Technology will then revert to that of the 19th Century. Morality must likewise follow.

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Interesting viewpoint. A sort of Darwin effect?

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