Secretary Hillary Clinton: 'Delivers Remarks on Syria'

"U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivers remarks on Syria following the meeting of the Action Group on Syria in Geneva, Switzerland on June 30, 2012...  

From the U.S. Department of State

Source:U.S. Department of State- Secretary Hillary R. Clinton.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said that the Obama Administration’s strategy involving Syria, is very clear. And said in a way that almost sounded sarcastic. As if she’s shocked that no one else understands it and then she laid out why she believes this strategy (if you want to call it that) by laying out what sounded like goals: "We want to see the bloodshed in Syria to end, we want the Assad Regime to stop terrorizing its people. We want the Syrian people to be able to build a future for themselves." Well, that’s great, but unless you are part of the Syrian Regime, or some other type of authoritarian, who doesn’t believe in those goals, of course you believe in human rights for everybody.

That’s like saying you believe in democracy, the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, the American flag, apple pie and all the rest of the things that Americans tend to love. Good luck finding someone in this country who disagrees with any of those things. 

Goals aren’t the same as a strategy. Goals are what you want to accomplish. A strategy is the plan to achieve those goals. Something that Secretary Clinton understands, the Obama Administration has goals when it comes to Syria, but hasn’t shown much in any strategy to achieve those goals.

The good news is that President Obama and his national security team, seems to at least be preparing to put all options on the table, as they relate to Syria. According to CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, the Defense Department is looking into what it would cost to back the Syrian rebels. What type of military President Assad has, what type of resistance that they could put up, as far as planes, weapons, etc that they could use. Not only against the Syrian rebels, but how they could respond to a coalition force. If a coalition force was put together, if NATO and the Arab League were to get involved to protect the Syrian rebels, as they take the fight to the Assad security forces.

A no fly zone, over a country of twenty-million people, which is what Syria is, about the size of Iraq physically, not quite as big. A No Fly Zone should be the last option we go to as far as getting involved in Syria, but the fact that they are even looking at that, tells me the Pentagon is preparing to get involved. Goals are great to have: "This is what we want to accomplish." But that’s just the first step. Without a strategy to layout how your plan in accomplishing those goals, you are going to come up short. You’ll end up trying a bunch of different things, without putting much thought into them. Essentially flipping a coin to see what works and what doesn’t and end up flying in a dark and hope you don’t crash into anything. 

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American Civil Liberties Union: 'The Aging Prisoner Boom: Picturing Our Elderly Behind Bars'

Source:ACLU- an aging inmate at one of America's prisons.

"Striking photos by Tim Gruber give an inside look at our nation's growing elderly prisoner population. A new ACLU report examines the problem and offers practical solutions to address the dramatic and costly growth in the number of elderly prisoners." 

From the ACLU

Just for the record: I do support life in prison without the possibility of parole for the most serious of felonies, like murder, rape, terrorism, espionage, arson, kidnapping, etc. But even permanent life in prison needs to be humane and as cost-effective as possible, that's in life with keeping the public as safe as possible as well. 

So no, I'm not for letting serial murderers and rapists out of prison, just because they're too old and weak to ever murder and rape again. But we do need a system and program for our aging inmates who'll never legally get out of prison, but allows for them to age and die with dignity. 

Again, I'm not talking about releasing lifers just because they are old or for any other reason, other than being found innocent. But setting up a health care system in prison, senior homes for inmates, that would be financed by the prison health care system, that the inmates would pay into themselves. Saving precious tax revenue for other priorities in government that are already underfunded.

Associated Press: Raw Video- Mitt Romney: ‘To Small Businesses: ‘Add More Jobs’

Source:Associated Press- Governor Mitt Romney (Republican, Massachusetts) and Governor Rick Snyder (Republican, Michigan) campaigning in Michigan.

“Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney held a small business roundtable in Frankenmuth, Mich. Tuesday morning. The state is his final stop on a five-day, six-state Midwestern tour. Earlier he said he thinks Michigan is a state he can win.” 

From the Associated Press

Telling someone to hire people, won’t create jobs. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama says it’s time to hire new employees: “Well, just because of that alone, we are going to start hiring more people right way, because they know with their vast experience in running small business’s on how best to run our business’s, then we the people who are keeping these business’s, well in business”. It doesn’t work that way. What creates jobs in either small or big business, is the need to hire new employees. It’s as simple as that.

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama waving their magic economic wands, won’t get small business’s to hire more people right now if profits are down or flat or you are worried about just staying in business. Perhaps trying to figure out how to obtain a loan, just to stay in business. You aren’t going to look for way to increase your payroll, if anything you are going to look for ways to cut payroll, to save money.

Small business’s aren’t hiring right now, because economic growth is low, job growth is also low because of weak economic growth now three years into the economic recovery from the Great Recession of 2008-09. Economic growth is low because consumer demand is low. Consumer demand is low, because people simply aren’t spending money right now.

If reading any of this makes you dizzy, I completely understand. I’m dizzy just from writing it. Americans are spending just to meet their basic needs and are struggling just to do that. One reason why it’s a bad time to pass tax hikes. Sorry Socialists, tax hikes and tax increases are not always a good thing a cure to any disease, economic or otherwise. But all these things in the economy are linked together and are holding our economy down. So the way to create jobs and get small business’s to start hiring again, is by giving them more customers. Give them more demand so they need more employees to meet the new consumer demand.

You don’t create new jobs by making small businesses jobs tougher by taking more of their money from them to feed Uncle Sam, who needs a diet anyway. The way you create more jobs, is to create more demand and need for new workers. That is how we get the economy going again. Sounds simple, now we need policies to encourage that. So first, let’s not pass tax hikes right now, the payroll tax or anything else. Consumers need that money in their pockets and for jobs to be created, they need to spend that money.

One way to do that is to create jobs for small business like with infrastructure investment, passing an infrastructure bill out of Congress in the hundreds of billions of dollars over two years. By giving construction companies more work to do, they’ll end up needing new employees to do that work, which will create more and new jobs, hiring unemployed construction workers.

Economics 101: to create new jobs, you first need to work and business to do. These people will now have some money to spend with their new jobs and would add to our consumer spending, which will lead to new consumer demand, which will lead to new economic growth, which will lead to more job growth.

All of these things are linked together and when they are all doing well, like just as little as 5-6 years ago or in the 1990s economic and job growth are high. But when they are down, our whole economy as far as consumer demand, consumer spending, economic and job growth are all down. Which is the situation right now. So to fix these problems we need to encourage people to spend money again. You don’t fix the economy with politician’s saying: “Now it’s time to hire for the good of the country!” Business’s need good reasons to hire that will help their business’s first. 

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The Onion: Stan Kelly- 'Behind The Pen- Nanny State, Ninny State'

Source:The Onion- Big Brother is watching you (to paraphrase Sting)

Source:The Daily Press 

“What’s wrong with a young person going to the Big Brothers to find a role model? Plenty, says Cartoonist Stan Kelly in this week’s “Behind The Pen” video.”

From The Onion

The guy narrating this video sounds like a pervert. Perhaps how Jerry Sandusky sounds in private or how some of these religious fundamentalists sound in private. The people who bash homosexuals and believe homosexuality should be outlawed.

Stan Kelly (or whoever the guy in the video is) does make a valid point of what a nanny state looks like: “Don’t bother to think for yourself and to take care of yourself, because we Nanny-Statists will do that for you. And not only that, but when you do things that are considered unhealthy, we’ll punish you for hurting yourself. So you don’t do that in the future.”

This whole nanny state episode is a self-inflicted wound that Nanny-Statists on the Far-Left have done to themselves, by trying to outlaw large soda drinks in New York. And they have their brand new hero in Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who I guess has replaced Karl Marx in leading the charge and have opened up themselves to satires like this and I referring to this video by The Onion.

Whether it’s outlawing plastic bags in Los Angeles or trying to outlaw tobacco or hate speech, because Nanny-Statists are worried about people’s feelings getting hurt, (well, people who agree with them) they add to the notion that so-called and self-described Progressives (Socialists and Neo-Communists, in actuality) want to control people’s lives for them. Because in their small world, Americans who don’t have a Northeastern or West Coast education, aren’t intelligent enough to manage their own lives, so they need some left-wing, hippie Uncle Sam to do that for them.

The Onion: 'High Unemployment- Linked to One Man With 42,000 Jobs'

Source:The Onion- the man with too many jobs, while millions of Americans are unemployed. Well, according to The Onion.

Source:The Daily Press

“High Unemployment Rate Linked To One Man With 42,000 Jobs. A recent report finds that one man is selfishly working thousands of jobs while other Americans go without even one. (Aired 10/25/11)” 

From The Onion 

Maybe if we didn’t have so many damn workaholics like the Jim Richmond’s of the world who work in three difference cities on the same say, doing three different jobs at once, we wouldn’t have the high unemployment that we have. Just throwing a stupid thought out there.

Source:The Daily Press- the three men along with Jim Richmond who are responsible for the high unemployment in America?

No wonder we have so much unemployment in this country. Jim Smith lets call him (for lack of a last name) has 42K jobs. You know to be honest with you, I have a hard time believing that one person could manage 42K jobs. I mean he would have to be Superman on steroids. A man with 14-21 thousand clones to pull this off, even making Mitt Romney jealous of all the clones he has. Perhaps Jim borrowed some of his clones from Mitt. He would have to be the worst workaholic imaginable. Someone who never sleeps, perhaps always on caffeine picking up a caffeine addiction while working at Starbucks and running another Starbucks.

Jim Smith with that caffeine addiction, to be able to fly planes on the weekend, while he’s air traffic controlling other planes in another city, at the same time. Flying from New York to St. Louis, while landing planes in Miami. His kids probably don’t remember the last time they’ve seen him. His wife or several of his wives (perhaps he’s Mormon) and ladies he’s met on 2000 of his jobs, have already filed missing person reports. But the problem that police have, no not that they ran out of coffee and doughnuts, Jim gave them a new supply, while working at Dunkin Doughnuts. The problem that police have is that they don’t know which Jim Smith to look for.

How do you track someone down with 42K jobs? Not only that, but how do you track down someone with 42K jobs named Jim Smith? You look up that name in a phonebook and you see 1K guys with that name and then maybe you say: “Well, how many guys named Jim Smith with 42K jobs?” Well, only one if any, but I’m skeptical that one guy could have all of those jobs. I know what you are thinking to be skeptical of that there is a guy with 42K jobs, would be like trying to believe that Mitt Romney is unemployed, or Barack Obama is a Socialist or Santa Clause doesn’t really exist.

Well, call me crazy then, but I don’t believe it to begin with. I have this weird suspicion that this story was made up by Onion News and I know what you are thinking. That Onion News reports more facts than Fox News. Well thats true, but if Mitt Romney is unemployed, then anything is possible. I mean who says that President Obama’s economic policies aren’t working: 42K jobs were created for one man alone.

With that type of job growth, we can create so many jobs, that we won’t have enough unemployed workers and then we won’t need as big as a safety net. Which of course would drive so-called Progressives (hyper active Socialists, really ) crazy to the point where they would come up with policies to layoff more workers, but wouldn’t that be a nice problem to have. 

President Barack Obama: 'Mitt Romney's Economic Plan: It Didn't Work Then, It Won't Work Now'

Source:President Barack Obama- Governor Mitt Romney (Republican, Massachusetts) presidential campaign rally.

"Mitt Romney's Economic Plan? He wants to cut jobs for firefighters, police, and teachers. It's the same thing he did in Massachusetts. The plan didn't work then and it won't work now." 

From President Barack Obama 

I think the strategy that the Obama Campaign is using against Mitt Romney is pretty obvious. Governor Romney is running as a successful businessman and job creator, not as the former Governor of Massachusetts, a job that he had from 2003-07. 

The reason for that is because the job that he did as Governor, is not something that a Republican wants to run on, at least nationally. The biggest accomplishments that Governor Romney had are accomplishments that a Progressive Democrat would run on: universal health insurance and same-sex-marriage. And his job as a job creator is not much to brag about either, being in the 40s when it comes to economic and job growth in his state.

NFL Films: NFL 1967- NFL Championship- Dallas Cowboys @ Green Bay Packers: Ice Bowl

Source:Pro Football Hall of Fame- the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers for the 1967 NFL Championship.

Source:The Daily Press 

“Pro football fans in Green Bay, Wisconsin have always been recognized as a loyal and hearty bunch. But one wouldn’t have faulted even the most loyal “Packer Backer” if he’d decided not to attend the 1967 NFL Championship game between the Packers and Dallas Cowboys. Played at Lambeau Field on December 31, the temperature at game time registered a frigid 13 degrees below zero. Nonetheless, more than 50,000 parka-clad fans braved the elements that New Year’s Eve and watched in awe as the Packers claimed their third consecutive NFL title, with a 21-17 victory.

From the start, Green Bay fans felt their team had a distinct advantage over the warm-weather Cowboys, After all, the Packers lived and practiced in the cold Wisconsin climate. Green Bay’s early 14-0 lead probably convinced fans that they were right. However, the severe weather affected the Packers too. Dallas scored a touchdown and a field goal after two Packer fumbles and added a second touchdown in the fourth quarter. Suddenly, with 4:50 left in the game the Packers were behind, 17-14.

The Packers literally and figuratively “kept their cool.” Behind the leadership of future Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr, they marched down field. With sixteen seconds remaining and the temperature down to eighteen below zero, the Packers found themselves about two feet away from victory. Starr called time out. The field was like a sheet of ice. The two previous running plays had gone nowhere. With no time outs left, a running play seemed totally out of the question. A completed pass surely would win it. Even an incomplete pass would at least stop the clock so the Packers could set up a field goal to tie the game and send it into overtime. After consulting with Packers coach Vince Lombardi, Starr returned to the huddle.”

From the Pro Football Hall of Fame 

“I think this is as close as you can get to the full game.”

Source:Virgil Moody- the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers for the 1967 NFL Championship.

From Virgil Moody 

When I think of great football games, I don’t think of great shootouts, like the New York Jets beating the Miami Dolphins back in 1986, something like 52-49, the shootout of shootouts with quarterbacks Dan Marino and Ken O’Brien trading touchdown passes. Good game, entertaining game, of course, but not one of the best games of all-time.

No, a great game is generally not played by two teams that can’t stop each other, where the team that has the ball last, wins or can’t score against each other. And it’s generally a mistake rather than a great play that decides the game.

Great games are generally played between two great teams, where both teams have good or great offenses and defenses. And the team that wins, is the team that executes or prepares better and perhaps gets a few more breaks. Thats what the 1967 NFL Championship, better known as the Ice Bowl represents. Two very good teams on both sides of the ball, both playing a great game. I mean think about it, the 1967 NFL Championship played in Green Bay, Wisconsin, not Milwaukee, but Green Bay.

Take football and freezing weather away from Green Bay, nobody outside of the country has ever heard of Green Bay. Actually, take the Packers out of Green Bay, nobody outside of Green Bay has ever heard of Green Bay. But they have the Packers and they have Lambeau Field, the New York Yankees of the NFL and most famous and best stadium in the NFL. There’s nothing that better represents the NFL than the Packers and Lambeau Field, with all of its Hall of Famers and championships.

The Packers won the first two Super Bowls, so there was no better place to be, to play this game and weather was part of it. The ultimate of football weather, zero degrees at halftime, windchill probably -20, a skating rink for a football field. Playing a very good and up-incoming team, from the biggest city or 2nd biggest city in the South, the Dallas Cowboys.

What made the Ice Bowl great, we’re the great players who played in, the Hall of Famers and Pro Bowlers who played for both teams. QB Don Meredith, WR Bob Hayes, DT Bob Lilly for the Cowboys. QB Bart Starr, OT Forrest Gregg, OG Jerry Kramer, DE Willy Davis and others for the Packers. I mean these teams had to be this great, just to show up to play this game and represent why this is the best bad weather football game of all time.