[142857] SUNDAY MAGIC NUMBER / Washington Can't Meet the Cheerios Standard by Malkin / Courtesy de Miguel Uria

Sun May 24 15:19:23 EDT 2009

Recibido por mur
Courtesy of MB

http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2009/05/15/washington_cant_meet_the_cheerios_standard

Washington Can't Meet the Cheerios Standard 
by Michelle Malkin 

I think it's time we applied the same advertising standards to Washington's legislative products that the feds apply to breakfast foods. The Food and Drug Administration rapped General Mills this week for making misleading claims about the benefits of Cheerios. The food manufacturer says the whole-grain O's are "clinically proven to lower cholesterol." The FDA demanded packaging changes to ensure truth in labeling. 

Well, how about the bogus marketing of the fiscal "stimulus"? President Obama and the Democrats promoted the trillion-dollar package as job creation salvation. The White House claims 150,000 jobs have been "created or saved." But since February, the nation has lost more than 1.3 million jobs. The current 8.9 percent unemployment rate in the wake of the stimulus passage is worse than the 8.8 percent unemployment Obama's economists darkly predicted if Congress didn't immediately adopt their recovery plan. 

The "stimulus" was supposed to provide aid to the country's neediest areas. It's not. The Associated Press reported after reviewing 5,500 planned transportation projects that "states are planning to spend 50 percent more per person in areas with the lowest unemployment than in communities with the highest." 

Obama promised that Americans would be able to track "every dime" of the "stimulus" at one handy clearinghouse website. They won't. The Recovery.gov site data won't be fully available until next spring -- halfway through the program. 

Washington told us the "stimulus" projects were "shovel-ready" and would provide immediate relief. They're not. The New York Times notes that the program "has paid out less than 6 percent of the money, largely in the form of social service payments to states." 

Democratic leaders baldly claimed that "there are no earmarks" in the bill. But untold tens of millions of dollars are headed to pet projects such as skateboard parks, tennis and basketball court renovation, the National Zoo, the $11 million Bridge to Microsoft, and Pennsylvania King of Pork Rep. John Murtha's ghost airport to nowhere. 

More falsely labeled products in the Capitol Hill pantry: How about the "Toxic Assets Relief Program"? The trillion-dollar-plus banking bailout morphed from a toxic assets purchase plan to a capital injection plan, back to a toxic assets purchase plan, to a life insurance company bailout, to an auto supplier bailout, and may now be used to bail out the state of California. Supporters of that maneuver argue that TARP should be extended to every cash-strapped state and local government to guarantee their debts against default. 

How about "Social Security"? There's nothing secure about it. While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scoffed during the Bush years that "the so-called Social Security crisis exists in only one place -- the minds of the Republicans," the insolvency problem festered. Now, the Obama administration reports that both Social (In)security and Medicare are hurtling toward bankruptcy far sooner than previously estimated. The "trust funds" exist only in the minds of the deluded. 

And just this week, Congress collaborated with the White House to conjure up a misleading description of Obama's $108 billion bailout of the International Monetary Fund. They're advertising the expenditure as a "line of credit" with the "hope to get the money back," according to the Wall Street Journal. "So the White House argued that the budgetary impact should be calculated at zero." That's right. Capitol Hill is officially claiming that $108 billion = zero. 

If Beltway spending plans were breakfast cereals, they'd be yanked from grocery stores in a heartbeat. Their promises and premises are as full of holes as a box of persecuted Cheerios. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Loyalty above all else

PENSAMIENTOS POR SELECCION DE MIGUEL URIA QUE ESTIMAMOS APLICABLE A LA CAUSA QUE NOS UNE

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

 Cicero, 55 BC 

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. 
-Will Rogers

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. 
- George Bernard Shaw 

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.- 

G Gordon Liddy

" In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth     

 becomes an act of rebellion'. 

George Orwell“

"The russian Bolsheviks have discovered that truth does not matter so long as there is reiteration . They have no difficulty whatever in countering a fact by a lie which, if repeated often enough and loudly enough, becomes accepted by the people". - Brighton, October 4, 1947

Winston Churchill

* "Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand  by the president"  / 

Teddie Roosevelt

WE LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE, 
ONLY BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
-Thomas Jefferson

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics
doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
 Pericles

 "You may try to destroy wealth, and find that all you have done is to increase poverty" ... Commons, March 12, 1947
Winston Churchill

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. 
-Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. 
-P. J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. 
-Voltaire (1764) 

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you! 
-Pericles (430 B.C.) 

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. 
-Mark Twain (1866 )

Under this system the best incentive for work disappears, production necessarily drops and indolence and misery prevail in all of society”

Plinio Correa de Oliveira

 I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (“Carlos the Jackal”) wrote in his book, L’islam revolutionnaire (Revolutionary Islam) that “only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the United States.”  Revolutionary Islam, he argues, "attacks the ruling classes in order to achieve a more equitable redistribution of wealth" and Islam is the only "transnational force capable of standing up the enslavement of nations"“We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ7LcplfkgY&feature=related

“Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.”

Winston Churchill on private enterprise

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.cubacubana.net/pipermail/142857/attachments/20090524/d9edef6a/attachment-0001.html 