Unemployed, and Likely to Stay That Way

The official unemployment rate has been above 9% starting in May 2009. This last month’s rate was at 9.8%. Most people say that the real unemployment rate is 18%.

The longer people stay out of work, the more trouble they have finding new work. Recently 60 Minutes featured a story of people in Silicon Valley (that is the San Jose California area) that have been out of work for 99 weeks or are approaching that number. All had at least a Bachelors degree and many had advanced degrees. They were at least 40 years old. Over 40 percent of the unemployed — more than 6 million Americans — have been out of work for than six months or longer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At the age of 60 I landed the best job of my life. The president of the company asked me in an interview if I had any grandchildren. I thought hum what kind of question is this. I answered “NO”, which is still an accurate answer, but in my mind I thought this is one job I am not going to get.

I was fortunate that time but obtaining that job occurred after 15 months of unemployment. The fact is that there is age discrimination. Many older people will either take a much lower paying job or they will remain unemployed indefinitely. The United States has now created a new class of people and no one knows how to prevent them from standing in bread lines. This is a sad tale for what was the world’s economic power house.

Based upon what I have heard and read, no one knows how to fix this problem.

Perhaps the Republicans do know how to solve this problem. Clearly the Democrats do not. If the economy does not improve significantly by November 2012, I will not be voting for Barack Obama and it is a good bet that most of America won’t either.

Land of the Free, Home of the Greedy

Perhaps the title of this piece should be “Land of the Free, Home of the Politician.” The United States is in a manner of speaking killing The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg. Our problem is that too many people want to kill the goose. The moral of the story is Too much greed results in nothing.

Today all Republican members of the Senate have signed a letter saying they will block virtually all legislation until expiring tax cuts are extended and a bill is passed to fund the federal government. Essentially they have decided to shut down the legislative branch of government.

Our problem is a large portion of the elected officials want to destroy the system that was created in 1789 because politics are more important than success of the nation.

A deficit commission has prescribed the medicine that we must feed the goose. The greedy, and they are in both political parties, have lost sight of protecting this nation.

11 Million Jobs

The number of jobs the American economy needs to create in order to return to the pre-recession unemployment rate of 5 percent. The source of this data is the Economic Policy Institute and reported in Newsweek dated 11/29/10.

Last week’s Bureau of Labor Statistics weekly report indicated that Weekly Initial Job Claims were 407,000. Weekly claims were in the 360,000 to 380,000 range when unemployment was last at 5 percent.

Why are Jews so powerful?

I thought of writing this column myself. I never imagined a Pakistani based author could do it so well. It is well researched.

The author did not include the many others in the arts that are also Jewish. They include George Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess, etc.) , Leonard Bernstein (Westside Story), Richard Rogers (Damn Yankees, etc.), and Irving Berlin (Easter Parade, White Christmas and Kate Smith’s feature song God Bless America).

By: Dr Farrukh Saleem

There are only 14 million Jews in the world; seven million in the Americas , five million in Asia, two million in Europe and 100,000 in Africa . For every single Jew in the world there are 100 Muslims. Yet, Jews are more than a hundred times more powerful than all the Muslims put together. Ever wondered why ?

Jesus of Nazareth was Jewish. Albert Einstein, the most influential scientist of all time and TIME magazine’s ‘Person of the Century’ was a Jew; Sigmund Freud — id, ego, and super-ego, the father of psychoanalysis was a Jew; So were Karl Marx, Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman.

Here are a few other Jews whose intellectual output has enriched the whole humanity:

Benjamin Rubin gave humanity the vaccinating needle.
Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine.
Alert Sab in developed the improved live polio vaccine.
Gertrude Elion gave us a leukaemia fighting drug.
Baruch Blumberg developed the vaccination for Hepatitis B.
Paul Ehrlich discovered a treatment for syphilis.
Elie Metchnikoff won a Nobel Prize in infectious diseases.
Bernard Katz won a Nobel Prize in neuromuscular transmission.
Andrew Schally won a Nobel in endocrinology (disorders of the endocrine system; diabetes, hyperthyroidism. Aaron Beck founded Cognitive Therapy (psychotherapy to treat mental disorders, depression and phobias).
Gregory Pincus developed the first oral contraceptive pill.
George Wald won a Nobel for furthering our understanding of the human eye.
Stanley Cohen won a Nobel in embryology (study of embryos and their development) .
Willem Kolff came up with the kidney dialysis machine.

Over the past 105 years, 14 million Jews have won 15-dozen Nobel Prizes while only three Nobel Prizes have been won by 1.4 billion Muslims (other than Peace Prizes).

Stanley Mezor invented the first micro-processing chip. Leo Szilard developed the first nuclear chain reactor. Peter Schultz, optical fibre cable; Charles Adler, traffic lights; Benno Strauss, Stainless steel; Isador Kisee, sound movies; Emile Berliner, telephone microphone and Charles Ginsburg, videotape recorder.

Famous financiers in the business world who belong to Jewish faith include Ralph Lauren (Polo), Levis Strauss (Levi’s Jeans), Howard Schultz (Starbuck’s) , Sergey Brin (Google), Michael Dell (Dell Computers), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Donna Karan (DKNY), Irv Robbins (Baskin & Robbins) and Bill Rosenberg (Dunkin Donuts).

Richard Levin, President of Yale University, is a Jew. So are Henry Kissinger (American secretary of state), Alan Greenspan (fed chairman under Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush), Joseph Lieberman, Madeleine Albright (American secretary of state), Maxim Litvinov (USSR foreign Minister), David Marshal (Singapore’s first chief minister), Isaac Isaacs (governor-general of Australia), Benjamin Disraeli (British statesman and author), Yevgeny Primakov (Russian PM), Jorge Sampaio (president of Portugal), Herb Gray (Canadian deputy PM), Pierre Mendes (French PM), Michael Howard (British home secretary), Bruno Kreisky (chancellor of Austria) and Robert Rubin (former American secretary of treasury).

In the media, famous Jews include Wolf Blitzer (CNN), Barbara Walters (ABC News), Eugene Meyer (Washington Post), Henry Grunwald (editor-in-chief Time), Katherine Graham (publisher of The Washington Post), Joseph Lelyyeld (Executive editor, The New York Times), and Max Frankel (New York Times).

Can you name the most beneficent philanthropist in the history of the world ? The name is George Soros, a Jew, who has so far donated a colossal $4 billion most of which has gone as aid to scientists and universities around the world. Second to George Soros is Walter Annenberg, another Jew, who has built a hundred libraries by donating an estimated $2 billion.

At the Olympics, Mark Spitz set a record of sorts by winning seven gold medals. Lenny Krayzelburg is a three- time Olympic gold medallist. Spitz, Krayzelburg and Boris Becker are all Jewish.

Did you know that Harrison Ford, George Burns, Tony Curtis, Charles Bronson, Sandra Bullock, Billy Crystal, Woody Allen, Paul Newman, Peter Sellers, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Douglas, Ben Kingsley, Kirk Douglas, William Shatner, Jerry Lewis and Peter Falk are all Jewish?

As a matter of fact, Hollywood itself was founded by a Jew. Among directors and producers, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Oliver Stone, Aaron Spelling (Beverly Hills 90210), Neil Simon (The Odd Couple), Andrew Vaina (Rambo 1/2/3), Michael Man (Starsky and Hutch), Milos Forman (One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Douglas Fairbanks (The thief of Baghdad) and Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) are all Jewish.

To be certain, Washington is the capital that matters and in Washington the lobby that matters is The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. Washington knows that if PM Ehud Olmert were to discover that the earth is flat, AIPAC will make the 109th Congress pass a resolution congratulating Olmert on his discovery.

William James Sidis, with an IQ of 250-300, is the brightest human who ever existed. Guess what faith did he belong to ?

So, why are Jews so powerful ?

Answer: Education.

Why are Muslims so powerless ?

There are an estimated 1,476,233,470 Muslims on the face of the planet: one billion in Asia, 400 million in Africa,44 million in Europe and six million in the Americas . Every fifth human being is a Muslim; for every single Hindu there are two Muslims, for every Buddhist there are two Muslims and for every Jew there are one hundred Muslims. Ever wondered why Muslims are so powerless ?

Here is why: There are 57 member-countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), and all of them put together have around 500 universities; one university for every three million Muslims. The United States has 5,758 universities and India has 8,407. In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an ‘Academic Ranking of World Universities’ , and intriguingly, not one university from Muslim-majority states was in the top-500.

As per data collected by the UNDP, literacy in the Christian world stands at nearly 90 per cent and 15 Christian- majority states have a literacy rate of 100 per cent. A Muslim-majority state, as a sharp contrast, has an average literacy rate of around 40 per cent and there is no Muslim-majority state with a literacy rate of 100 per cent. Some 98 per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Christian world had completed primary school, while less than 50 per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Muslim world did the same.

Around 40 per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Christian world attended university while no more than two per cent of the ‘literate s’ in the Muslim world did the same.

Muslim-majority countries have 230 scientists per one million Muslims. The US has 4,000 scientists per million and Japan has 5,000 per million. In the entire Arab world, the total number of full-time researchers is 35,000 and there are only 50 technicians per one million Arabs (in the Christian world there are up to 1,000 technicians per one million). Furthermore, the Muslim world spends 0.2 per cent of its GDP on research and development, while the Christian world spends around five per cent of its GDP.

Conclusion: The Muslim world lacks the capacity to produce knowledge.

Daily newspapers per 1,000 people and number of book titles per million are two indicators of whether knowledge is being diffused in a society. In Pakistan , there are 23 daily newspapers per 1,000 Pakistanis while the same ratio in Singapore is 360. In the UK , the number of book titles per million stands at 2,000 while the same in Egypt is 20.

Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to diffuse knowledge.

Exports of high technology products as a percentage of total exports are an important indicator of knowledge application. Pakistan ‘s exports of high technology products as a percentage of total exports stands at one per cent. The same for Saudi Arabia is 0.3 per cent; Kuwait , Morocco , and Algeria are all at 0.3 per cent while Singapore is at 58 per cent.

Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to apply knowledge.
Why are Muslims powerless? Because we aren’t producing knowledge.

Why are Muslims powerless? Because we aren’t diffusing knowledge.

Why are Muslims powerless? Because we aren’t applying knowledge.

And, the future belongs to knowledge-based societies.
Interestingly, the combined annual GDP of 57 OIC-countries is under $2 trillion. America , just by herself, produces goods and services worth $12 trillion; China $8 trillion, Japan $3.8 trillion and Germany $2.4 trillion (purchasing power parity basis).

Oil rich Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar collectively produce goods and services (mostly oil) worth $500 billion; Spain alone produces goods and services worth over $1 trillion, Catholic Poland $489 billion and Buddhist Thailand $545 billion. (Muslim GDP as a percentage of world GDP is fast declining).

So, why are Muslims so powerless ?

Answer: Lack of Education ! All we do is shout to Allah whole day and blame everyone else for our multiple failures..!

By: Dr Farrukh Saleem

Palin Shuld be Prezident

She iz smart, and we layk her. She is just layk yu and me. She makes good joke all the time and we layk her. Pliz dont be min to her. Sam time she make mistake but everione duz, so we need to help her. If america does not vote for her prezident, then canada shud make Palin prezident of canada so she can teech us mani things. Posted by Robsden on the Toronto Star web site.

Palin is famously no stranger to foreign policy blunders, having been quoted in 2008 as saying Alaska is ‘right over the border from Russia’.

From the Daily Mail in the UK: She could run for president in 2012 but Sarah Palin may want to brush up on her geography after confusing a major US adversary for an ally.

Speaking to CNN’s Larry King alongside her husband George HW Bush, Barbara Bush appeared to advise Palin to stay out of national politics. ‘I sat next to her once. Thought she was beautiful,’ Mrs Bush said. ‘And she’s very happy in Alaska, and I hope she’ll stay there.’

Palin claimed Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity showed she ‘cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat’.

—

From mediaite.com

The scrambled tongue moment–as that’s surely what Palin will say it was–does bring up a charge made in John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s book, Game Change, which portrays Palin as dangerously uninformed–a candidate for the vice presidency who didn’t understand that Korea was divided. A quote from that book:

“She knew nothing. She had to be taken through World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and Palin was not aware there was a difference between North and South Korea. She continued to insist that Iraq was behind 9/11; and when her son was being sent off to Iraq, she couldn’t describe who we were fighting.”

Canada’s Harper and Obama on Israel

This is an interesting article from the Jerusalem Post. Notice that the author’s focus in this article isn’t only that Obama has forsaken Israel as an ally of the U.S., but that he’s forsaken our neighbor and ally for 100+ years, Canada. Now that’s food for thought!

The divide between the world’s two largest Jewish Communities, the U.S. and Israel, is widening every day. All because in the overwhelming majority of U.S. Jews are only willing to tolerate the Left’s way of looking at the world. The Jewish Community of Israel actually has a balance of public opinion, with Left and Right, and even Independent voters in fairly high numbers. How refreshing! How normal!

by Isi Leibler
November 18, 2010

Having recently visited the US and Canada, I was left with a feeling of profound disquiet concerning the starkly contrasting attitudes toward Israel displayed by the leaders of these two neighboring countries.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has unquestionably emerged as Israel’s greatest friend in the world, effectively assuming the role previously occupied by former Australian prime minister John Howard.

Harper’s principled approach to Israel was demonstrated in an extraordinary address he gave in Ottawa to an interparliamentary conference for combating anti-Semitism. Courageously dismissing the traditional political correctness expressed by many liberals, who feel obliged to distance themselves from the Jewish state, Harper made it clear that under his leadership Canada would not “pretend” to be impartial on Israel even if that meant facing negative repercussions at the UN and other international organizations.

He said that the persecution of Jews had become a global phenomenon in which anti-Semitic ideologies targeted the Jewish people in their “homeland” and perversely exploited the “language of human rights to do so.” He stressed that “while Israel is the only country in the world under attack, is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand.

“I know this because I have the bruises to show for it, that whether it is at the UN or any other international forum, the correct thing to do is simply to just go along with this anti-Israeli rhetoric, to pretend it is just about being evenhanded, and to excuse oneself with the label of ‘honest broker’… There are after all, a lot more votes in being anti- Israel than taking a stand.

“But as long as I am prime minister, whether it is at the UN or anywhere else, Canada will take that stand, whatever the cost. Not just because it is the right thing to do but because history shows us that the ideology of the anti-Israeli mob tells us all too well, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are a threat to us all.”

Canada was in fact “punished” for its support of Israel when it was ignominiously defeated by Portugal, an almost bankrupt country, in its attempt to obtain a seat at the UN Security Council. All 57 seats of the Organization of the Islamic Conference opposed the Canadian nomination.

For some, Canada’s defeat under such circumstances will be viewed as a badge of honor. But what made Canada’s defeat even more outrageous was the role of the US. According to Richard Grenfell, a former press officer with the US mission to the UN, “US State Department insiders say that US Ambassador Susan Rice not only didn’t campaign for Canada’s election but instructed American diplomats to not get involved in the weekend leading up to the heated contest.”

David Frum, a speechwriter to former president George W. Bush, also noted that “the US government has kept awfully quiet about the suggestion that it went missing during the Security Council vote.”

The US betrayal of its neighbor and long-standing ally is a chilling indication of the depths to which the Obama administration has stooped in its efforts to “engage” and appease Islamic and Third World rogue states.

Having joined the appallingly misnamed UN Human Rights Council dominated by dictatorships and Islamic nations, the US is now beginning to reap the harvest from this flawed policy. This was exemplified this month during the council’s first “universal periodic review of human rights.” In a session where US representative Esther Brimmer told the group that “it is an honor to be in the chamber,” Cuba described the US blockade of Cuba as a “crime of genocide”; Iran, a country which stones women for adultery, urged the US “to combat violence against women”; and Libya complained about US “racism, racial discrimination and intolerance.”

In the midst of this and despite repeated assurances concerning the “unbreakable bond of friendship” between the US and Israel, Obama is continuing to flex his muscles by beating up on Israel. Yet, his Middle East policies, which run counter to American public opinion, have failed disastrously, with US approval levels in the Muslim world even plummeting below 2008 levels.

Obama’s most recent assault on Israel was conveyed from his childhood home, Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, the largest Islamic country in the world, which he praised as a model of tolerance worthy of global emulation.

While compared to Arab standards, Islamic Indonesia may be relatively tolerant, the president overlooked the recent opinion polls, in which 25 percent of the population expressed confidence in the leadership of Osama bin Laden, and that between 2004 and 2007, 110 Christian churches were closed due to pressure from local governments. In January of this year, 1,000 Muslims burned down two churches in Sumatra.

Needless to say, Indonesia does not recognize Israel, bans Israeli aircraft from flying over Indonesian territory and denies entry visas to Israeli citizens. It is especially galling that from such a country, Obama again saw fit to distance the US from Israel and aggressively condemn the Jewish state for building homes in the exclusively Jewish suburbs of its capital Jerusalem.

We must ask ourselves what endgame the US administration is pursuing. Obama knows that former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians everything and that they still refused to reach an accommodation because their ultimate objective remains the delegitimization of Jewish sovereignty. What they now seek is a non-demilitarized state based on the 1949 armistice lines to provide them or other Arab states with a launching pad to attack and destabilize Israel. Not surprisingly, the Europeans are more than happy to accept such a state of affairs. It would thus be catastrophic for the Obama administration to stand aside and enable this process to eventuate.

Yet, all indicators suggest that the Obama administration is determined to capitalize on Israel’s international vulnerability. Despite the absence of any response from the Palestinians or the Arab world to Israel’s 10-month settlement freeze, the US has literally bludgeoned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to breach his undertaking to the people of Israel and renew a settlement freeze, including areas that will undoubtedly remain in Israel.

Although on the surface the US appears to be offering incentives to Israel to persuade it to accede to its requests, anyone reading between the lines recognizes that nothing new is being offered. The exercise of the veto in the face of UN resolutions demonizing Israel and offering to maintain Israel’s security needs have been fundamental tenets of the relationship between Israel and the US. In reality, Obama issued an ultimatum to Netanyahu by threatening to abandon Israel unless it capitulates to his demands.

Many of us today yearn for an American president who would be more considerate of our needs than the present incumbent. It would perhaps be an impossible dream to have someone of the caliber of Stephen Harper leading the US, but alas, today, we are becoming increasingly reconciled to the reality that the US president is no friend of Israel and is paving the way for an imposed settlement with potentially disastrous long-term repercussions on the security of our nation.

ileibler@netvision.net.il

This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post

The U.S.A. Needs a Mission!

This United States needs a focus on something that will make our country thrive in the 21^st century. We need a mission. We need to be focused on the future. That is what companies do and this nation’s leaders should adopt that philosophy from private enterprise. Defeating Al-Qaeda should not be our national mission. That course would be surrendering to terrorism.

I am prompted to this idea by two occurrences and one interview. First the mass NASA layoffs at Cape Canaveral in Florida that Businessweek recently described as amounting to an astonishing 9,000 people. That layoff will disperse the people who can help this country go to new heights that only the likes of Gene Roddenberry and Ray Bradbury could imagine. Second an article in today’s Los Angeles Times titled “Astronauts send home a whole new worldview” describing “Earthlings are seeing their planet in a whole new light…”

The interview was presented by Diane Sawyer of ABC News on her trip to China this past week. She interviewed Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce website. Ma said he believes that American ingenuity is a model for the Chinese. “Innovation is a culture. When I see the American culture, the American culture is very innovative,” Ma said. “To have a culture of innovation takes about two or three generations.” Further in the interview Ma said “Always think about the mission, and the mission drives you.”

The rest of the world is advancing while the United States is arguing about budget cuts, high unemployment, airport security, and other less important issues. We need a vision. We cannot afford the loss of two or three generations. Remember it was President John F. Kennedy who enunciated the goal of putting a man on the Moon within ten years. We did it and we opened new technologies that were only dreams back on May 25, 1961.

We can and must do it again!

Sticking it to the Unemployed

The Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for denying extension of jobless benefits. They believe extending Bush tax cuts to millionaires is appropriate but too bad for the unemployed. Their idea of let them figure it out for themselves reminds me of that famous queen who said, “Let them eat cake.” Is this the “second amendment moment” Sharron Angle was talking about?

Unemployment insurance runs out on Nov. 30 for 2 million jobless Americans. There is no argument that this program is expensive but the consequence of this action will mean thousands of people with no place to turn except food pantries. Yes, the extended benefits are costly – another year’s worth would cost about $65 Billion. However, when it comes to helping the economy, unemployment benefits deliver far more bang for the buck than holding down the top marginal tax rates.