Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
On May 11, 2011, I emailed to this above address and I got this email back from Senator Pryor’s office:
Please note, this is not a monitored email account. Due to the sheer volume of correspondence I receive, I ask that constituents please contact me via my website with any responses or additional concerns. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact. This system ensures that I will continue to keep Arkansas First by allowing me to better organize the thousands of emails I get from Arkansans each week and ensuring that I have all the information I need to respond to your particular communication in timely manner. I appreciate you writing. I always welcome your input and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you in the future.
Therefore, I went to the website and sent this email below:
Agency/Program Funding Level Savings % Decrease Misc ——- $43.481 B ——- Collection of Delinquent Taxes: Saves $3 billion Page 36 of 37 Every year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) publishes the Federal Employee/Retiree Delinquency Initiative (FERDI). This summary report shows the amount of civilian, military, and retired federal employees who are delinquent in their federal income taxes. In 2008, the FERDI showed $3.04 billion in back taxes owed. The amount has grown to $3.31 billion in 2009. Federal Pay Freeze: Saves $2 billion During this recession, while most Americans have been forced to cut back, the amount of spending by the federal government has drastically increased. Many Americans are without jobs and many more are not receiving pay raises. Federal employees already receive generous pay and benefits, and President Obama has recently endorsed this proposal.
There is no doubt about it – Kate Middleton is a new fashion icon. She appears in public with nary a hair out of place or a fashion faux pas happening. Of course, it helps that she’s incredibly pretty and very thin, but still – lots of actresses show up to red carpets in less-than-stellar ensembles.Since returning from the honeymoon, Kate has been spied out in public in the brown Reiss dress (above, left), which she wore to meet President and First Lady Obama on their trip to the United Kingdom.
Kate has also been seen in a sparkly frock (above, middle), a Jenny Packham creation decorated with Swarovski crystals. She donned this dress for the 10th Annual Absolute Return for Kids Gala Dinner at Kensington Palace. Simply smashing.
Finally, for the annual Trooping of the Colour Parade, Kate donned a white double-breasted jacket and black straw and feather hat (above, right). The Trooping of the Colour, which historians believe dates back to the reign of King Charles II in the 1600s, is used each June to celebrate the official birthday of the reigning Monarch, regardless of when the monarch’s actual birthday falls. The birthday tradition began in 1748.
Michael Middleton lifts Catherine’s veil Michael Middleton lifts Catherine’s bridal veil at the altar of Westminster Abbey, 29 April 2011 Prince William and Kate moved in together about a year ago. In this clip above the commentator suggested that maybe Prince Charles and Princess Diana would not have divorced if they had lived together before marriage. […]
Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge leave Clarence House for Buckingham Palace on April 29, 2011 in London, England. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images) I watched the royal wedding with great interest, and I really do wish Kate and William success in their marriage. I hope they truly are committed to […]
NBC reported today: Pippa Middleton runs triathlon, is bumped by sweaty goof Rick Chandler Jun 7, 2011, 2:24 PM EDT 4 Comments As you know, Pippa Middelton is the sister of the future Queen of England and by far the most interesting feature of the recent William-Kate royal nuptials. She ran in the Blenheim Triathlon in […]
Bridesmaids and page boys Philippa Middleton arrives at Westminster Abbey with the bridesmaids and page boys ahead of the wedding service between Prince William and Catherine Middleton, 29 April 2011 Prince William and Kate moved in together about a year ago. In this clip above the commentator suggested that maybe Prince Charles and Princess Diana would […]
Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Charles, Prince of Wales leave Clarence House to travel to Buckingham Palace for the evening celebrations. (John Stillwell/WPA Pool/Getty Images) I watched the royal wedding with great interest, and I really do wish Kate and William success in their marriage. I hope they truly […]
[2011] The Royal Wedding – MARRIAGE part 2 The Official Royal Wedding photographs The Royal Wedding Group in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace on 29th April 2011 with the Bride and Groom, TRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in the centre. Front row (left to right): Miss Grace van Cutsem, Miss Eliza Lopes, […]
Britain’s Prince William, center left, and his wife Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, center right, pose for a photograph with, clockwise from bottom right, Margarita Armstrong-Jones, Eliza Lopes, Grace van Cutsem, Lady Louise Windsor, Tom Pettifer, and William Lowther-Pinkerton in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace, following their wedding at Westminster Abbey, London, on Friday, April […]
The Book of Mormon vs The Bible, Part 4 of an indepth study of Latter Day Saints Archeology
The Book of Mormon verses The Bible, Part 4 of an indepth study
With the great vast amounts of evidence we find in the Bible through archeology, why is there no evidence for anything writte in the Book of Mormon?
Tags: church false mormon christian bible book of mormon joseph smith cult LDS latter day saints
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From time to time you will read articles in the Arkansas press by such writers as John Brummett, Max Brantley and Gene Lyons that poke fun at those that actually believe the Bible is historically accurate when in fact the Bible is backed up by many archaeological facts. The Book of Mormon is blindly accepted even though archaeology has disproven many of the facts that are claimed by it. For instance, wheels and chariots did not exist in North America when they said they did.
The Book of Mormon claims to be a record of the inhabitants of the Americas during the period from 2000 B.C. to 400 A.D. It makes many claims about the history and anthropology of pre-Columbian American cultures. Unfortunately, the author of the book, Joseph Smith, had little or no knowledge of pre-Columbian American civilizations. Borrowing and adapting many stories from the Old and New Testaments, Joseph Smith was unaware that the earlier Native American peoples were part of stone-age civilizations that were significantly less advanced than Hebrew and other Middle Eastern cultures of biblical times.
The Book of Mormon describes the following animals as living in the pre-Columbian Americas: donkey, cattle, oxen, horse, pig, and elephants. Although horses and mammoths and mastodons (related to elephants) had existed tens of thousands of years ago in the Americas, they had all disappeared by 10,000 years ago. Horses did not reappear on the American continents until the Spanish brought them after the voyage of Columbus. None of these animals existed in North, Central or South America during Book of Mormon times.
The Old and New Testaments present a rich description of biblical peoples, places and cultures. Archeology of the Middle East has revealed the cities, weapons, crops, animals, coins, writings, and references to biblical characters found in the Bible. However, none of the cities mentioned in the Book of Mormon have ever been identified by qualified archeologists. In addition, many Book of Mormon references to metals, weapons, crops, animals, articles of clothing are known to have not been present in the Americas during the time period claimed in the Book of Mormon.
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Over the years there have been many criticisms leveled against the Bible concerning its historical reliability. These criticisms are usually based on a lack of evidence from outside sources to confirm the Biblical record. Since the Bible is a religious book, many scholars take the position that it is biased and cannot be trusted unless we have corroborating evidence from extra-Biblical sources. In other words, the Bible is guilty until proven innocent, and a lack of outside evidence places the Biblical account in doubt.
This standard is far different from that applied to other ancient documents, even though many, if not most, have a religious element. They are considered to be accurate, unless there is evidence to show that they are not. Although it is not possible to verify every incident in the Bible, the discoveries of archaeology since the mid-1800s have demonstrated the reliability and plausibility of the Bible narrative.
Here are some examples:
Many thought the Biblical references to Solomon’s wealth were greatly exaggerated. Recovered records from the past show that wealth in antiquity was concentrated with the king and Solomon’s prosperity was entirely feasible.
It was once claimed there was no Assyrianking named Sargon as recorded in Isaiah 20:1, because this name was not known in any other record. Then, Sargon’s palace was discovered in Khorsabad, Iraq. The very event mentioned in Isaiah 20, his capture of Ashdod, was recorded on the palace walls. What is more, fragments of a stela memorializing the victory were found at Ashdod itself.
Another king who was in doubt was Belshazzar, king of Babylon, named in Daniel 5. The last king of Babylon was Nabonidus according to recorded history. Tablets were found showing that Belshazzar was Nabonidus’ son who served as coregent in Babylon. Thus, Belshazzar could offer to make Daniel “third highest ruler in the kingdom” (Dan. 5:16) for reading the handwriting on the wall, the highest available position. Here we see the “eye-witness” nature of the Biblical record, as is so often brought out by the discoveries of archaeology.
How does archaeology conclusively demonstrate the Bible to be reliable and unique among all the holy books of world religions? Answer
[ If this information has been helpful, please prayerfully consider a donation to help pay the expenses for making this faith-building service available to you and your family! Donations are tax-deductible. ]
On the Arkansas Times Blog on June 11, 2011 the person going by the username Jake de Snake noted,”Current empirical evidence indicates that the American welfare is successful in reducing poverty, inequality and mortality considerably. Public pensions, for instance, are estimated to keep 40% of American seniors above the poverty line.”
The conventional wisdom regarding Social Security is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system does—and does not—work. Nobel laureate and Hoover fellow Milton Friedman explains why it is time to end Social Security as we know it.
The journalist Michael Barone recently summed up the conventional wisdom about reforming Social Security: “The content of the reform is fairly clear—individual investment accounts to replace part of the government benefits financed by the payroll tax, later retirement ages, adjusted cost of living increases,” he wrote. And, he added, “suddenly the money to pay for the costs of transition is at hand, in the form of a budget surplus.”
I have italicized “part” and “costs of transition” because they epitomize key defects in conventional wisdom.
Social Security has become less and less attractive as the number of current recipients has grown relative to the number of workers paying taxes, an imbalance that will only get bigger. That explains the widespread support for individual investment accounts. Younger workers, in particular, are skeptical that they will get anything like their money’s worth for the Social Security taxes that they and their employers pay. They believe they would do much better if they could invest the money in their own 401(k) or the equivalent.
But if that is so, why replace only part and not all of government benefits? The standard explanation is that this is not feasible because payroll taxes—or part of them—are needed to pay benefits already committed to present and future retirees. That is how they are now being used, but there is nothing in the nature of things that requires a particular tax to be linked to a particular expenditure.
In 1964, Barry Goldwater was much reviled for suggesting that participation in Social Security be voluntary. I thought it was a good idea then. I still think so.
The link between the payroll tax and benefit payments is part of a confidence game to convince the public that what the Social Security Administration calls a social insurance program is equivalent to private insurance, in that, in the Administration’s words, “the workers themselves contribute to their own future retirement benefit by making regular payments into a joint fund.”
Balderdash. Taxes paid by today’s workers are used to pay today’s retirees. If money is left over, it finances other government spending—though, to maintain the insurance fiction, paper entries are created in a “trust fund” that is simultaneously an asset and a liability of the government. When the benefits that are due exceed the proceeds from payroll taxes, as they will in the not very distant future, the difference will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing, creating money, or reducing other government spending. And that is true no matter how large the “trust fund.” The assurance that workers will receive benefits when they retire does not depend on the particular tax used to finance the benefits or on any “trust fund.” It depends solely on the expectation that future Congresses will honor promises made by earlier Congresses—what supporters call “a compact between the generations” and opponents call a Ponzi scheme.
The present discounted value of the promises embedded in the Social Security law greatly exceeds the present discounted value of the expected proceeds from the payroll tax. The difference is an unfunded liability variously estimated at from $4 trillion to $11 trillion—or from slightly larger than the funded federal debt that is in the hands of the public to three times as large. For perspective, the market value of all domestic corporations in the United States at the end of 1997 was roughly $13 trillion.
To see the phoniness of “transition costs” (the supposed net cost of privatizing the current Social Security system), consider the following thought experiment: As of January 1, 2000, the current Social Security system is repealed. To meet current commitments, every participant in the system will receive a government obligation equal to his or her actuarial share of the unfunded liability.
For those already retired, that would be an obligation—a Treasury bill or bond—with a market value equal to the present actuarial value of expected future benefits minus expected future payroll taxes, if any. For everyone else, it would be an obligation due when the individual would have been eligible to receive benefits under the current system. And the maturity value would equal the present value of the benefits the person would have been entitled to, less the present value of the person’s future tax liability, both adjusted for mortality.
The result would be a complete transition to a strictly private system, with every participant receiving what the current law promises. Yet, aside from the cost of distributing the new obligations, the total funded and unfunded debt of the United States would not change by a dollar. There are no “costs of transition.” The unfunded liability would simply have become funded. The compact between the generations would have left as a legacy the newly funded debt.
How would that funded debt be paid when it comes due? By taxing, borrowing, creating money, or reducing other government spending. There are no other ways. There is no more reason to finance the repayment of this part of the funded debt by a payroll tax than any other part. Yet that is the implicit assumption of those who argue that the “costs of transition” mean there can be only partial privatization.
The payroll tax is a bad tax: a regressive tax on productive activity. It should long since have been repealed. Privatizing Social Security would be a good occasion to do so. Should a privatized system be mandatory? The present system is; it is therefore generally taken for granted that a privatized system must or should be as well.
The economist Martin Feldstein, in a 1995 article in the Public Interest, argued that contributions must be mandatory for two reasons: “First, some individuals are too shortsighted to provide for their own retirement,” he wrote. “Second, the alternative of a means-tested program for the aged might encourage some lower-income individuals to make no provision for their old age deliberately, knowing that they would receive the means-tested amount.”
The paternalism of the first reason and the reliance on extreme cases of the second are equally unattractive. More important, Professor Feldstein does not even refer to the clear injustice of a mandatory plan.
The most obvious example is a person with AIDS, who has a short life expectancy and limited financial means, yet would be required to use a significant fraction of his or her earnings to accumulate what is almost certain to prove a worthless asset.
More generally, the fraction of a person’s income that it is reasonable for her or him to set aside for retirement depends on that person’s circumstances and values. It makes no more sense to specify a minimum fraction for all people than to mandate a minimum fraction of income that must be spent on housing or transportation. Our general presumption is that individuals can best judge for themselves how to use their resources. Mr. Feldstein simply asserts that in this particular case the government knows better.
In 1964, Barry Goldwater was much reviled for suggesting that participation in Social Security be voluntary. I thought that was a good idea then; I still think it is. I find it hard to justify requiring 100 percent of the people to adopt a government-prescribed straitjacket to avoid encouraging a few “lower-income individuals to make no provision for their old age deliberately, knowing that they would receive the means-tested amount.” I suspect that, in a voluntary system, many fewer elderly people would qualify for the means-tested amount from imprudence or deliberation than from misfortune.
I have no illusions about the political feasibility of moving to a strictly voluntary system. The tyranny of the status quo and the vested interests that have been created are too strong. I believe, however, that the ongoing discussion about privatizing Social Security would benefit from paying more attention to fundamentals rather than dwelling simply on the nuts and bolts of privatization.
Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize for economic science, was a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution from 1977 to 2006. He passed away on Nov. 16, 2006. He was also the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1946 to 1976, and a member of the research staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1937 to 1981.
Reprinted with minor editorial changes from the New York Times, January 11, 1999, from an article entitled “Social Security Chimeras.” Reprinted by permission.
Available from the Hoover Press is The Essence of Friedman, a volume of essays by the Nobel laureate economist. Also available is Facing the Age Wave, David Wise, editor. To order, call 800-935-2882.
John Brummett in his latest article (Arkansas News Bureau, June 11, 2011) attacks a Republican lawmaker for running a day care that accepts government money and a Republican activist whose husband won a construction project that originated because of President Obama’s stimulus program.
John Brummett observed:
She said a person can’t simply decline to participate in the economy because he disagrees with some of the government policies affecting that economy. But I wasn’t asking her or her husband to do that. I only wanted her to think about moderating her rhetoric and her thinking in light of her experience.
This argument is easily destroyed. Back in 1980 I read the book “Free to Choose” by Milton and Rose Friedman. I noticed that Milton made it clear both in the book and in the film series of the same name that immigration was good for America in the past. However, since the USA changed to a welfare state, we could no longer have a tremendous amount of legal immigration because it was overload the welfare state!!!!
Milton Friedman in a lecture at Stanford asserted:
“I’ve always been amused by a kind of a paradox. Suppose you go around and ask people: ‘The United States before 1914, as you know, had completely free immigration. Anybody could get in a boat and come to these shores and if landed at Ellis Island he was an immigrant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?”
You will find that hardly a soul who will say that it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. ‘But what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?’ ‘Oh, no,’ they’ll say, ‘We couldn’t possibly have free immigration today. Why, that would flood us with immigrants from India, and God knows where. We’d be driven down to a bare subsistence level.’
What’s the difference? How can people be so inconsistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today? Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There’s a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before 1914 is not possible today. Why not?
Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promises a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing.
I was perplexed at the time that Friedman’s ideology had to take a backseat to the real world that liberals had taken over!!! That is exactly the case here. I do not favor all the liberal federal spending programs that accounted for 24.7 percentage of GDP while only taking in 14.8% of GDP in taxes.
I have been on record against the stimulus (I have listed the posts below where I have discussed it), but I would gladly bid on any business that I can get. We have to live in the real world that many times the liberal policies have almost destroyed. Unfortunately the liberals have done a great job of running the national deficit up to 1.6 trillion a year because they really believe that stupid ideas like the federal stimulus would work. Actually Brantley loves to mention that the stimulus may not have been enough. Can you believe that? He failed royally the first time and he wants to do it again!!!
Milton Friedman – Illegal Immigration – PT 2
(2 of 2) Professor Friedman fields a question on the dynamics of illegal immigration. http://LibertyPen.com
HALT: Halting Arkansas Liberals with Truth (Paul Ryan outlines what has happened since the stimulus has been passed) Senator Mark Pryor voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which was signed into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009. Both Pryor and Obama thought the economy could be jump started by […]
HALT: Halting Arkansas Liberals with Truth The Republicans have been made out to be the Grinch that stole Christmas because they did not want to extend unemployment benefits again. In fact, we have been told by the Democrats that unemployment benefits will help stimulate the economy, and we should not be trying to help the millionaires while the unemployed could […]
Chip Ingram – Two Biblical Requirements to Resolve Conflict (pt 4)
To resolve conflict effectively and Biblically there are two absolutes that both parties must agree on – do you know what they are? Without this framework, you can try all kinds of things to avoid or resolve conflict in your marriage and relationships, but you probably won’t be successful. Listen and discover the common ground that can literally transform even the most challenging points of conflict. Want to learn more? Download the full message from guest speaker Tim Lundy for free at: http://www.venturechristian.org/files/sermons2/t032011.mp3
File photo of Schwarzenegger
File photo of the Schwarzenegger family: (L-R) Maria Shriver, Christina, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Patrick(AFP/Getty Images/File/Jason Merritt)…
Arnold Schwarzenegger Fathers Love Child With Longtime Member Of Household Staff
Maria Shriver Asks – How Do You Handle Transitions in Your Life?
Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted to his wife several months ago that he had fathered a child about 10 years ago with a member of their household staff. Maria moved out, but has not filed for divorce. In the you tube clip above she comments:
“Like a lot of you I’m in transition: people come up to me all the time, asking, what are you doing next?” she said, adding: “It’s so stressful to not know what you are doing next when people ask what you are doing and they can’t believe you don’t know what you are doing.”
“I’d like to hear from other people who are in transition,” she said. “How did you find your transition: Personal, professional, emotional, spiritual, financial? How did you get through it?”
Mrs. Shriver has asked for spiritual input and I personally think that unless she gets the spiritual help that she needs then she will end up in the divorce court. I am starting a series on how a marriage can survive an infidelity. My first suggestion would be to attend a “Weekend to Remember” put on by the organization “Family Life” out of Little Rock, Arkansas. I actually posted this as a response to Mrs. Shriver’s request on you tube.
He Led a Double Lifeby Mary May Larmoyeux
Scott Jennings never dreamed he would cross the line. But somehow it happened.A Weekend to Remember®After Scott reached his mother’s house, his sister Nancy and brother-in-law Douglas (who lived nearby) came to see him. “I told them that I had come to accept Christ,” Scott says. He had started reading the Bible regularly, and they realized he was sincere. Over the next week, news of Scott’s faith reached Sherry. They began studying Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Lifetogether, discussing chapters every day by e-mail and then by phone. Scott told Sherry that he wanted to rebuild their relationship, but this time with God in control and at the center. Sherry said she wanted the same thing, realizing “This is the Christian husband that God has for me.” Sherry hoped that someday she and Scott would remarry “But we needed to do it God’s way.”Sherry had heard about FamilyLife’s marriage conference on the radio—how it helped couples understand and apply God’s blueprints for their marriage. She told Scott, “We aren’t going one more step until we find a Weekend to Remember.” A few days later, Scott registered them for one in Philadelphia.
When the Jennings began their conference weekend, Scott wanted to do everything that he could to deepen his relationship with Jesus Christ and his wife. He wanted to show Sherry that she and God were his main priorities.
The first session of the conference introduces the concept of isolation in marriage, and the common factors that contribute to it. “That session was difficult,” Sherry says, “as we listened to all the familiar ways we broke our marriage and built walls of isolation.”
During the remainder of the weekend, the Jennings heard about God’s plan for marriage, and learned about practical communication tools for improving their relationship. They saw that God had been working in their relationship in ways they didn’t dream of. “We left that weekend knowing that God was using all the trials, tribulations, and ugliness, all our bad decisions from the past 14 years,” Sherry says, “to bring us … to a place to accept each other.”
They prayed that God would lead them in reconciliation and restoration, and also that they would follow and honor Him. Eventually they remarried, on May 5, 2007.
Today, Scott and Sherry not only promote the Weekend to Remember in North Carolina as FamilyLife volunteers, but also lead a marriage ministry in their church.
Sherry says that she now knows the truth about marriage. It’s “about choosing each day, each minute, to honor God with our words and actions, and in turn, we honor our spouses.” She says that God created Scott specifically for her. “How can I not love, honor, treasure a perfect gift from my perfect God?”
Mary May Larmoyeux is a writer and editor for FamilyLife. She is the author of My Heart’s at Home: Encouragement for Working Moms, co-author of There’s No Place Like Home: Steps to Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom, and co-author of the Resurrection Eggs® Activity Book.
About two months ago Mark Pryor asked for specific ideas concerning where to cut federal spending. I have provided several dozen to him. However, my question now is DOES MARK PRYOR REALLY WANT TO PUT FORTH THESE SPENDING IDEAS I HAVE PRESENTED TO HIM? Recently he was asked about the exploding federal deficit and Paul Greenberg wrote about his response.
Paul Greenberg takes on Mark Pryor in June 7, 2011 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:
What, political games?
Our senator is shocked—shocked!
MARK PRYOR came home last week to tour a school in Little Rock. It is good for U.S. senators to get out of Washington now and then. Maybe as often as possible. The country can breathe easier when Congress isn’t in session. Besides, leaving the nation’s capital can be good for the digestion, congestion, comprehension and general well-being. Also, getting your picture taken with kids at a local school isn’t bad politics. And never let it be said that Mark Pryor isn’t good at politicking. He’s very good.
While he was touring Mabelvale Elementary, shaking hands with the little ’uns, and praising tutors at the school, some smarty-pants media type asked him about the federal debt ceiling and whether Congress should raise it. Good question. “This is one of the problems we face as a nation,” the senator told reporters. “In Washington, people just can’t agree on a bipartisan basis. We need to build consensus in Washington. It’s good for the country and for its future to do that.”
Yes, yes, there are too many narrowminded partisans in Washington playing political games. It’s not good for the country. A very reasonable point. Very responsible. Very statesman. Very Mark Pryor—a platitude a minute.
Except . . . .
Where was this Mark Pryor years back when a man named Miguel Estrada was nominated to the federal bench?
YES, AGAIN with Miguel Estrada. Any time Mark Pryor starts bemoaning partisanship in Washington, D.C., any time Mark Pryor starts complaining about Congressional Bickering, any time Mark Pryor starts trying to portray his saintly self as above the political fray, think . . . Miguel Estrada. We do.
Miguel Estrada was a rising star back in 2001-2003. The president at the time, George W. Bush, nominated him for a seat on the federal bench, specifically the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit. Unfortunately for Counselor Estrada, he was too . . . well, he was “too” a lot of things.
He was too conservative. He was too Republican. He was too intelligent. He was too young—which may have meant having a conservative, intelligent Republican on the federal bench for years. Maybe even on the Supreme Court of the United States. What a frightening prospect.
Also, and this may have been Counselor Estrada’s biggest drawback, he was just too darned Hispanic.
Yes, too Hispanic. Back during the foofaraw over his nomination, internal memos to the Senate’s minority whip at the time, Dick Durbin, advised that the usual liberal lobbies wanted Miguel Estrada kept as far away from the federal judiciary as possible because quote, “he is Latino,” unquote.
That is, Mr./Senor/Counselor Estrada could have made an attractive candidate for the Supreme Court one day. And those Democratic interest groups shuddered. Because everybody knows that the only party that cares about Latinos or would appoint Hispanic Americans to important offices is the one and only Democratic Party. And it better stay that way. If word got out that a Republican president was actually an equal-opportunity appointer, the Dems’ lock on the Hispanic vote might be challenged. All those Cubans in Florida were bad enough, and now comes this Miguel Estrada. It was obvious his nomination had to be torpedoed. Mark Pryor and his happily former colleague Blanche Lincoln—Arkansas’ senators at the time—gladly cooperated. When it came to sandbagging this dangerous Republican/Hispanic nominee, they did more than their dirty share. So did various other Democratic senators. They bottled up the Estrada nomination month after month after month . . . until a digusted Miguel Estrada finally withdrew his name from consideration. He knew full well that the Congressional Bickering and all these partisan fun-and-games would never let him get a fair hearing—not from Mark Pryor, Blanche Lincoln and scheming company.
But now Mark Pryor is the senior senator from Arkansas. And adopts a very elevated tone. These days, he puts his palm to his chest and talks about all the low partisan politics in Washington. You ought to know, Mr. Pryor.
Take a memo, Mr. and Mrs. Arkansas, or anybody with an elemental sense of justice, fair play and the American way:
Every time Mark Pryor bemoans political games in Congress, just remember the name Miguel Estrada.
Every. Single. Time.
That’s spelled M-I-G-U-E-L E-S-TR-A-D-A.
The day after a controversial call annulled an apparent goal and left the United States in a 2-2 draw with Slovenia, American Coach Bob Bradley maintained his stance that Maurice Edu‘s volley should have counted and suggested that referee Koman Coulibaly might have been compensating for an earlier decision.
“I think it’s a good goal,” he said at USA headquarters in Irene, South Africa. “The only things that clearly could be called would be penalty kicks for us. You don’t expect any answer. … Typically out on the field, when things happen fast, it’s not like referees then explain every call they make.
“In my mind, this isn’t something that referees would talk about a lot, but there are times when a referee, for whatever reason, blows a foul and now thinks he either didn’t make the correct call on the foul from a previous play, and then literally as soon as the free kick is taken, he blows his whistle. So you can speculate all you want about which guy [was called for a foul], I think it’s a waste of time. There was nothing there. It’s a good goal, and that’s that.”
More…..
Bradley also addressed the nature of soccer, in which not everything is meticulously explained. In the World Cup, when a less sophisticated, mainstream audience back home is watching, such situations cause confusion.
“We’re all accustomed to the fact that, if it is an NFL playoff game and there is a call of some question, there will be a statement by the league from the referees,” he said. “But FIFA operates differently. Soccer is a different game. … There are some aspects of it that are not made 100 percent clear that seem to add to the discussion about the games. On our end, we get used to that.
“We all have friends and family who asked us the same questions most of you [in the media] asked us. You end up saying that that’s just how it is sometimes and then you move on and you get ready for the next game.”
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Everette Hatcher picks the Ghana v USA game in 2006.
In the last moments of the first half, German referee Markus Merk awarded a penalty kick to Ghana, which led to Ghana’s winning goal and qualification to the Second round, and to the elimination of the United States from the tournament. The British newspaper Financial Times described the incident as follows: “The match turned on the worst of refereeing decisions. Germany’s Markus Merk was standing in a perfect position when USA defender Oguchi Onyewu won a header against the fabulously monikered Razak Pimpong. But inexplicably Merk blew for a penalty because of a non-existent push.”[26] The BBC agreed with this view in its match report: “Merk added one more twist to the first half, with a controversial penalty award. He penalised Onyewu, who appeared to win a clean header as Pimpong collapsed dramatically”.[27]
To fill the void during the countdown to kickoff, lists of the World Cup’s greatest goals, teams and players are endlessly paraded out and debated. But while the tournament is a platform for exquisite moments of individual beauty, team perfection and general human superlatives, soccer is a sport of both high and low culture. Rogues are celebrated as much as legends, and as any longtime fan will tell you, the searing pain of a nation’s hopes being dashed in sinister circumstances lasts longer than the thrill of any crucial goal, sublime pass or plucky victory.
Disgrace and controversy have been fixtures of every World Cup from the very first tournament onward. In 1930 a Uruguayan goalkeeper went on a scandalous, Caligula-style bender to release eight weeks of isolation suffered in training camp. And in 2006, French legend Zinedine Zidane’s remaking of soccer in Vince McMahon’s image courtesy of his infamous coupe de boule was detected not by the referee but by the fourth official, despite the fact FIFA had steadfastly eschewed the use of instant replay.
Controversy plays a hallowed role in the tournament’s history. For FIFA, an audience of millions watching the game is important, but making sure that audience talks about the tournament is almost as critical. The thrill of victory makes the heart skip a beat but the joy fades and can be forgotten. The stain of scandal or the sting of being robbed and cheated sticks in the throat like a fishbone that cannot be dislodged for decades. (To test this theory under scientific conditions, wait 20 years, go into any Irish bar and raise your glass in public toast to Thierry Henry.)
Here are 10 of the most fabled controversies in World Cup history, the embers of which still burn today.
1. Back in black: Italy versus France, 1938
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With Europe on the brink of war, Mussolini’s Italian team, defending champions, reveled in their role as tournament heel. Their fixtures in France drew boisterous mobs of exiled Italian anti-fascists, up to 10,000 strong, who came to jeer their country’s every move. These protests only appeared to raise the Italians’ game. Led by the cunning play of Giuseppe Meazza, the team strolled to a second consecutive world championship.
Controversy came in the quarterfinals against the hosts. As both teams sported blue jerseys, Italy was asked to bring its alternate shirts which were traditionally white. Instead, on Mussolini’s orders, the team took to the field in black shirts, the Maglia Nera, a symbol of the feared and despised Italian fascist paramilitary. It was a gesture purposefully designed to goad the thousands of French and Italian protestors in the crowd. As an additional flourish, Il Duce ordered his players to hold the fascist salutes they effected before kickoff until the howling protestors had run out of energy. The team kept the title for the next 12 years as even the World Cup was trumped by the swirling conflict which consumed the Continent.
2. Fists of fury: Italy versus Chile, 1962
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The Italians’ reputation for Machiavellian tactics became legendary in the wake of the “Battle of Santiago,” against Chile. One of the most violent games in World Cup history, this was more martial arts demonstration than soccer match. The action was so shocking that the BBC saw fit to preface a broadcast of the game film with the following warning: “Good evening. The game you are about to see is the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football, possibly in the history of the game.”
It took just 12 seconds for the first foul to be inflicted and 12 minutes for the first player to be sent off, Italian midfielder Giorgio Ferrini, who refused to leave the field and had to be forcibly removed by police. After attempting to officiate the 90-minute riot, referee Ken Aston was inspired to invent yellow and red cards in the wake, admitting “I wasn’t reffing a football match, I was acting as an umpire in military maneuvers.”
3. War reparations: England versus West Germany, 1966
Soccer truly came home when the World Cup was played for the first time in England, the nation which invented the game. The hosts won their only championship, but the legality of their winning goal has always been hotly contested, and their beaten foe, West Germany, proceeded to become one of their greatest rivals.
The final was played at Wembley Stadium in London, a city the Luftwaffe had nearly blitzed into submission 26 years before. The 93,000 who packed the stands were bolstered by 400 million others tuning into televised broadcasts of the game — the first played between these two rivals since the war. The game was tied 2-2 at the end of regulation. Eleven minutes into overtime, English striker Geoff Hurst smashed the ball goalward from close range inside the German box. The ball cannoned off the underside of the German bar and appeared to bounce either over the line or exactly on it depending whether you are English or German. The only opinion that mattered, though, was that of Soviet linesman Tofik Bakhramov, who awarded the goal. There is an apocryphal story that when Bakhramov was on his deathbed he was asked how he was so sure it was a goal and he gave the one-word reply “Stalingrad,” referring to the bloody World War II battle in which 750,000 Soviets died.
England may have been defending champion at Mexico 1970, but the English were vehemently despised across Latin America. The entire continent was still simmering over the last World Cup, which was widely believed to have been fixed. The English further offended their hosts by flying in an arsenal of frozen meals so their squad could avoid local cuisine and the Montezuma’s revenge they associated with it.
On the way to the tournament, the English stopped off in Bogota, Colombia, and their captain and national talisman, Bobby Moore, was apprehended for allegedly stealing an emerald bracelet. The rest of the team travelled on, but the iconic defender was placed under house arrest for four days before being released.
The modern-day equivalent of the incident would be if Wayne Rooney was jailed on the way to South Africa. The temporary loss of Moore unsettled the English squad, who became further sleep-deprived thanks to the flotilla of Mexican automobiles that spent the wee hours honking its horns as it circled the Guadalajara Hilton, the poorly chosen English base camp. West Germany had its revenge for 1966 as it picked off a tired England in the quarterfinals.
5. Don’t cry for me, Netherlands: Netherlands versus Argentina, 1978
Argentina, the hosts, reached the final against the creative Dutch side in murky circumstances. The Argentineans needed a four-goal victory to qualify for the championship game, and were able to blast six past a strangely paralyzed Peruvian side that was later rumored to have been paid handsomely to fix the score.
Few games have been played in a more intimidating atmosphere than the final, held in the raucous atmosphere of Buenos Aires Estadio Monumental. The trophy was claimed with moments of technically brilliant soccer, but the hosts’ gamesmanship also had an influential role in the outcome. First, the Dutch team bus was taken on a prolonged and circuitous route to the stadium. Then the Dutch were kept on the field for nearly 10 minutes before the game began, as their hosts chose to remain in the locker room, leaving the Dutch to face a war of nerves, alone with only a hostile crowd of more than 70,000 for company.
The Argentineans finally emerged, only to question the legality of a plaster cast on Dutch midfielder Rene van der Kerkhof’s hand, which had been sanctioned by FIFA and worn in previous games. Having won the mind games, Argentina set about winning the actual game, delivering the trophy the ruling Argentinean military junta craved.
6. Teutonic stitch-up: West Germany versus Austria, 1982
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Plucky Algeria kicked off its first World Cup tournament by shocking West Germany 2-1. Back then, group games were not played at the same time, and subsequent results meant the Germans lined up for their final group game against Austria aware that a 1-0 victory would allow both teams to progress at Algeria’s expense.
The Austrians proceeded to leak a goal within the first 10 minutes before the competition drew to a screeching halt. Collusion has never been proven, but suffice it to say the ball barely made it out of midfield for the remainder of the game. Outraged Algerian fans powerlessly waved banknotes from the terraces to suggest that the fix was in. One German fan expressed his displeasure by setting fire to his own flag. The team’s hotel was besieged by its own fans, who mounted a protest back at the hotel, but the team’s coach, Jupp Derwall, dismissed his critics, arguing “we wanted to progress, not play football.” The incident’s legacy was the changing of the rule for subsequent tournaments. The final two games in each group are now played simultaneously.
7. Sheiken, not stirred: France versus Kuwait, 1982
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The fluid French delighted with their elegant and potent attacking soccer throughout the tournament. Led by the offensive creativity of the “Three Musketeers” — Michel Platini, Alain Giresse and Jean Tigana — they were almost unstoppable in the opening round. And then they met the Kuwaitis, who unleashed a novel strategy to prevent them from scoring. Sheikh Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, president of the Kuwait Football Association, left his seat and stormed the field, removing his players in protest of a French goal that he believed had been scored only after his players had heard a whistle blown from the stands and stopped playing. The match official, Ukrainian Miroslav Stupar, wilted in the spotlight and reversed his original decision, disallowing the goal, the only time a World Cup decision was vetoed by a member of the crowd. The French still won 4-1.
8. Fallen god: Maradona, 1986, 1994
England faced Argentina in the 1986 quarterfinal grudge match, the first time the two rivals had met after fighting a real war over the Falkland Islands. Logic would dictate that an experienced referee would be handed the duty. Instead, the Tunisian representative Ali Bennaceur was awarded his first World Cup game. In the 51st minute, Maradona used the “Hand of God” to punch the ball past a stunned English goalkeeper into the back of the net. Everyone in the world saw the illegal use of a fist, apart from the one guy who mattered. Bennaceur awarded the goal, and later blamed his error on a hemorrhoid treatment he was taking that affected his sight. When challenged about the legality of his goal, Maradona innocently yet poetically suggested it was scored with a “little bit of the hand of God, a little bit of Maradona’s head.”
Just eight years later, the Argentinean was the villain of the tournament, sent home for ephedrine doping. After scoring an opening-round goal, he celebrated in such a hopped-up style that a urine sample was almost unnecessary. Grabbing a sideline television camera and pressing his mug against it, Maradona was, in the words of the Guardian, “broadcast around the world, his contorted features made him look like a lunatic, flying on a cocktail of adrenalin and every recreational drug known to man.”
9. Diving is believing: South Korea versus Italy, Spain, 2002
Shaun Botterill/Getty Images
Just because you are paranoid does not mean they aren’t out to get you. When host South Korea bounced Italy from the 2002 tournament, Italian manager Giovanni Trapattoni cried conspiracy. The referee, Byron Moreno of Ecuador, seemed hell-bent on ensuring the Koreans progressed, disallowing a perfectly fine Italian goal and controversially sending off their star, Francesco Totti, for diving to draw a foul.
The Spanish newspapers belittled the Italian claims, but when Spain lost to Korea in the next round, the Spanish newspapers changed their tune, with Marca’s headline screaming “Italy was right!” Referee Gamal Ghandour disallowed two legal Spanish goals and his linesmen — one Ugandan, the other Trinidadian — judged one Spanish attack after another to be offside. Moreno returned to a hero’s welcome in Ecuador but was out of the game within a year after receiving two domestic bans for crooked refereeing. Ghandour retired shortly after Spanish newspapers accused him of accepting a Hyundai car as a “gift” on behalf of the Korean Football Association.
10. Battle of the brewskis, 2006
The most protracted argument at the last World Cup was neither the “Battle of Nuremberg” between Portugal and the Netherlands — in which a jittery Russian referee, Valentin Ivanov, awarded a startling 16 yellow cards and four reds — nor was it the performance of English referee Graham Poll, an infamously smug official who awarded Croatian Josip Simunic three yellow cards when two should have been sufficient to grant him an early bath. The most heated controversy occurred before a ball had been kicked when the German media discovered that America’s own Budweiser, King of Beers, had been granted a monopoly on sales inside World Cup stadia.
Bitburger, plucky manufacturers of a local beer known as Bit, were goaded into suing as the hometown press whipped up the conflict to a foamy head. Der Speigel demanded, “What is this U.S. beer? An amber-colored cold drink that gives you a headache without making you drunk,” furious that an American brew was the only one on sale in a country famed for its beer. Under local pressure, Bud was forced to relent, permitting its local rival to be available on tap as long as it was sold in unmarked cups.
Roger Bennett is the co-author of the forthcoming “ESPN World Cup Companion,” your guide to everything you need to know to enjoy the 2010 World Cup. E-mail him at sirfabiocapello@yahoo.com.
Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
On May 11, 2011, I emailed to this above address and I got this email back from Senator Pryor’s office:
Please note, this is not a monitored email account. Due to the sheer volume of correspondence I receive, I ask that constituents please contact me via my website with any responses or additional concerns. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact. This system ensures that I will continue to keep Arkansas First by allowing me to better organize the thousands of emails I get from Arkansans each week and ensuring that I have all the information I need to respond to your particular communication in timely manner. I appreciate you writing. I always welcome your input and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you in the future.
Therefore, I went to the website and sent this email below:
Federal Communications Commission Agency/Program Funding Level Savings % Decrease FCC $7.650 B $2.150 B 22% There is no reason for the rapid expansion of this agency, which monitors and regulates the speech of the airways. Continued funding growth will only encourage the Federal Communications Commission to continue trying to expand its power in the lives of individuals and businesses, such as its recent steps to regulate the Internet without congressional authority.
Is Mark Pryor sincere about wanting to cut the spending when he supported Obama?
In an earlier post I went into great detail about this. Today I am only going to show that the atheist and humanist has no intellectual basis for saying that one group of humans versus another group should survive at all. Of course, Christians have the Bible which teaches that all are created in God’s image and have value.
A letter written by Adolf Hitler in 1919, over a decade before he became the future Chancellor of Germany , has been revealed to the public for the first time in New York.
According to BBC, the letter was displayed briefly at the Museum of Tolerance in New York, before being purchased by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which will place it on permanent display at their Los Angeles location.
The statement by the then 30-year-old soldier is regarded as a key historical document from the period because it demonstrates how early the future Nazi leader was forming his views.
The document suggests that Hitler already believed, more than two decades before the Holocaust, that Jews should be removed from society.
“To begin with, Judaism is definitely a racial and not a religious group,” writes Hitler in the four page document that is also known as the “Gemlich letter.”
Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in LA explained that his organization purchased the letter- originally found at the end of WWII by an American soilder- for $150,000 from a private dealer.
When questioned on the reasoning behind the purchase, the Rabbi explained:
“It does not belong in private hands. It has too much to say to history. It belongs in public hands, and it has found its home at the Museum of Tolerance.”
“This is the first document of its kind that deals with the Jews exclusively and postulates the solution,” Hier went on to say. “We have 50,000 archives, and this is the most important archive I’ve ever seen.”
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I am a big Woody Allen movie fan and no other movie better demonstrates the need for an afterlife than Allen’s 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors. This film also brought up the view that Hitler believed that “might made right.” How can an atheist argue against that? Basically Woody Allen is attacking the weaknesses in his own agnostic point of view!! Take a look at the video clip below when he says in the absence of God, man has to do the right thing. What chance is there that will happen?
Crimes and Misdemeanors is about a eye doctor who hires a killer to murder his mistress because she continually threatens to blow the whistle on his past questionable, probably illegal, business activities. Afterward he is haunted by guilt. His Jewish father had taught him that God sees all and will surely punish the evildoer.
But the doctor’s crime is never discovered. Later in the film, Judah reflects on the conversation his father had with Judah’s unbelieving Aunt May during a Jewish Sedar dinner many years ago:
“Come on Sol, open your eyes. Six million Jews burned to death by the Nazi’s, and they got away with it because might makes right,” says Aunt May.
Sol replies, “May, how did they get away with it?”
Judah asks, “If a man kills, then what?”
Sol responds to his son, “Then in one way or another he will be punished.”
Aunt May comments, “I say if he can do it and get away with it and he chooses not to be bothered by the ethics, then he is home free.”
Judah’s final conclusion was that might did make right. He observed that one day, because of this conclusion, he woke up and the cloud of guilt was gone. He was, as his aunt said, “home free.”
The basic question Woody Allen is presenting to his own agnostic humanistic worldview is: If you really believe there is no God there to punish you in an afterlife, then why not murder if you can get away with it? The secular humanist worldview that modern man has adopted does not work in the real world that God has created. God “has planted eternity in the human heart…” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). This is a direct result of our God-given conscience. The apostle Paul said it best in Romans 1:19, “For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God has shown it to them” (Amplified Version).
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen – 1989) – Final scenes
It’s no wonder, then, that one of Allen’s fellow humanists would comment, “Certain moral truths — such as do not kill, do not steal, and do not lie — do have a special status of being not just ‘mere opinion’ but bulwarks of humanitarian action. I have no intention of saying, ‘I think Hitler was wrong.’ Hitler WAS wrong.” (Gloria Leitner, “A Perspective on Belief,” The Humanist, May/June 1997, pp.38-39). Here Leitner is reasoning from her God-given conscience and not from humanist philosophy. It wasn’t long before she received criticism.
Humanist Abigail Ann Martin responded, “Neither am I an advocate of Hitler; however, by whose criteria is he evil?” (The Humanist, September/October 1997, p. 2.). Humanists don’t really have an intellectual basis for saying that Hitler was wrong, but their God-given conscience tells them that they are wrong on this issue.
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There is no doubt about it – Kate Middleton is a new fashion icon. She appears in public with nary a hair out of place or a fashion faux pas happening. Of course, it helps that she’s incredibly pretty and very thin, but still – lots of actresses show up to red carpets in less-than-stellar ensembles.Since returning from the honeymoon, Kate has been spied out in public in the brown Reiss dress (above, left), which she wore to meet President and First Lady Obama on their trip to the United Kingdom.
Over the next week, news of Scott’s faith reached Sherry. They began studying Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Lifetogether, discussing chapters every day by e-mail and then by phone. Scott told Sherry that he wanted to rebuild their relationship, but this time with God in control and at the center. Sherry said she wanted the same thing, realizing “This is the Christian husband that God has for me.” Sherry hoped that someday she and Scott would remarry “But we needed to do it God’s way.”Sherry had heard about FamilyLife’s marriage conference on the radio—how it helped couples understand and apply God’s blueprints for their marriage. She told Scott, “We aren’t going one more step until we find a 
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