Sinking Into The Abyss Of Tastelessness

Two Sisters From The Right extend a warm welcome to Mr. Barnard L. Sackett who returns to our pages today with an insightful analysis of a world he knows all too well.  Mr. Sackett's experience in Hollywood, Broadway, and the entertainment field gives him expertise in a world which we customarily see  only from afar. 

 

Two Sisters have frequently expressed our dislike for the influence that so called celebrities have on our politics.  However, we do need to acknowledge that they also influence, not only our society, but our younger generations as well.  We have indeed become too accepting of the often bizarre and unconventional behavior of people who simply are not worth the adulation.

TWO SISTERS 

NO TASTE FOR THE TASTELESS

 by BARNARD L. SACKETT

And so, while Beyonce publicly and emphatically announces she separates her private life from her music, that what goes on between she and her husband is not for the eyes or ears of the media, she still announced her pregnancy at the Video Media Awards. 

Was she hinting for an anticipated baby shower thrown by her fans and followers? Or does such a pronouncement state that it has been ordained that this child is pre-destined to become the next Dr. Martin Luther King or Morgan Freeman or George Washington Carver? Or perhaps becoming this year’s millennium’s Madame Curie, Margaret Thatcher or Halle Berry?

Was it tasteful to announce to the world there was the savoring of a past romantic evening? We all know it takes two to tango. So where’s the surprise? I imagine it did bring smiles to those faces who relish memories of personal climaxing moments with their loved ones. But does such an announcement require an audience exploding with a cacophony of whistles and cheers and wild slapping of the hands? Is this a required homage to an entertainer for giving in to hormonal instincts?

What about the millions of other developing mothers, should they, too, not be honored by a round of adulation, too. These mothers could be the bearers of another Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein or Steve Jobs.

The madness of celebrity adoration continues unabated. Especially teenage girls over loosing their gushing cookies, their sense of pride and good taste salivating over an androgynous Bieber, a chameleon Gaga or reincarnation of Brittney Spears. I wonder what memories will be retained of their infantile madness that added nothing to their emotional growth or intellect. Apparently, it’s a conscionable thing to vocally explode for the spirit of the moment becoming part of an over enthusiastic maddening crowd.  

It certainly didn’t hurt the start of Frank Sinatra when he initially appeared at the Paramount Theatre back in the early 40’s. Around 500 impressionable young girls were paid $1 each to scream, yell and faint the moment Sinatra opened his mouth on the stage. Press played up the purported spontaneity of sheer rapture. The readers believed, especially the non-thinking pubescent girls who didn’t want to be left behind and Sinatra became the singer for whom one fainted. At least Sinatra became a great entertainer and you clearly heard every sung word

What I cannot understand or comprehend, where are the public relations on things that truly matter? Where is the shouting, screaming, yelling and applauding over scientists who have found new vaccines to avoid dreaded ailments? Over inventors who have developed dynamic new products that makes life more pleasurable and comfortable. Why is there no fawning over farmers who slave many hours to bring varied crops to the supermarkets?

Do we simply take the real movers and shakers of this world for granted. They have skills that rarely hit the front pages. Though there are the Nobel prizes. These are the people who nurture a better life for us all. These people, never gain the respect, the accolades, the media coverage they truly deserve. Without piano makers there would not be the musical instruments for Jerry Lee Lewis to destroy, the background instruments that support the singers and dancers, the designer and colorists of fabrics that keep Lady Gaga making kookier costumes.

What it boils down to is either being part of the crowd or being honest with who we are, and having no fear to being challenged for standing up for what you personally believe. For too many, it is easier to say nothing rather than risk be shunned by friends, neighbors and politicians.

So it is with the crazy madness that erupts when an organized press assault our senses and purportedly announces a new teen throb of the moment. It doesn’t really matter if the new idol can really stay in tune, as long as the idol of the moment dresses well, has properly coiffed hair, sports a teen friend, forever smiles, and has a retentive memory to belch out rehearsed kind words and dares not to be touched by another human being, unless bombarded by those who pay for the privilege of mauling you. Major profits from perfumes, jewelry and clothing lines or any other product that handlers and managers can imagine being profitable for their charge.

And to what pulsating sound do these young ones listen. Do they truly understand the mumbled words being sung? How many times must they replay the record to make sure they hear every syllable? I gave up thinking my hearing is going bad when a rapper momentarily appears in some news event, or I accidentally tune into a music award show. They should all be enrolled in a speech class.

Whatever happened to the pulsating music and clever lyrics of Rogers and Hart. Gershwin. Frank Loesser. Cole Porter. Motown. The Golden Age of Music. Are these uplifting melodies the dinosaurs of music past? Or must we accept these new troubling sounds because this is the Now of Today! Frightening. And most discouraging.

Perhaps if there was some considered quality restraint by publicists to feed the press with less impressionable garbage, and be more uplifting in their approval of accepting well-healed clients, we wouldn’t be sliding into a tone deaf period and questionable thought-provoking citizens of the future. We must voice our discontent.

 Otherwise, society as we would like it, will slowly sink into an abyss. We must maintain good manners, a touch of class and professionalism and remember the importance of respect and responsibility . We will have no one to blame but our own indifference to on-going acceptance in lack of taste, culture and demoralizing indifferences towards others. I hope that God remains in our hearts, and that he will bless us all and Tiny Tim.

 © COPYRIGHT 2011 - Barnard L. Sackett

Obama's Economic Plan

Resources For Lawmakers

The post below is an extremely informative article which appeared in the Washington Times opinion section.  This is a simple example of how resources for new ideas and solutions are available at our legislators' fingertips, if only they would bother to read.  Perhaps however, reading about successful ways to manage the economy is not what is needed in Washington.  We can make a few suggestions which we feel would help in addition to reading this excellent review. American legislators should:

• Put country first
• Listen to constituents
• Loyalty to the benefit of the people should come before loyalty to party.
• Renounce greed and corruption
• Embrace fiscal conservatism
• Become informed individually and independently instead of waiting for the president's minions to put forth political ideas

How many of our representatives and senators do you, our readers, believe are following the above, or would you agree that they are willing to change their ways?  How tragic that we have lost faith in those whom we elect to represent us.  How sad, that most voters utter such phrases as "Politicians are some of the biggest crooks out there."!

We at Two Sisters From The Right agree with Richard Rahn, author of this review.  If all our congressmen would read these books and attempt to implement some of the workable solutions, our economic recovery would begin.

TWO SISTERS

RAHN: Growing the economy for dummies

New books put answers right at our policymakers fingertips.



by Richard W. Rahn - The Washington Times



Protesters gather Saturday near the
 Capitol in Washington during a rally
 against the president’s health care plan
 and out-of-control spending.
 (Associated Press)

Did you know that in Denmark, the poorest 30 percent pay 14.1 percent of all taxes and the richest pay 48.7 percent, while in the United States, the poorest 30 percent pay just 6.1 percent of all taxes and the richest 30 percent pay a whopping 65.3 percent? The surprising thing is not that the richest pay most of the taxes but that the U.S. has nearly the most progressive tax system in the world, while the Scandinavian countries have about the least progressive tax systems, contrary to commonly held belief.

The above facts, along with hundreds of other useful tidbits, are found in a compelling new book, “Government Versus Markets: The Changing Economic Role of the State” (Cambridge University Press, 2011), by Vito Tanzi. Mr. Tanzi is one of the world’s most highly regarded economists, and for good reason. As a senior economic official of the International Monetary Fund for two decades, an undersecretary for economics and finance in the Italian government and author of 14 books, he does not let his biases get in the way of empirical evidence.

In his new book, Mr. Tanzi clearly shows how governments in most developed countries have grown over the past century. The many tables are a delight for us data hounds. Some advocates of higher taxes argue that tax rates on labor do not have much impact on the willingness to work, but Mr. Tanzi gives us a very clear chart plotting the tax rate on labor versus the number of hours worked per year in many countries. It shows that there is a strong inverse relationship between tax rates on labor and hours worked. Such facts are inconvenient for the big-government, high-tax crowd. Mr. Tanzi is far from being anti-government, but the facts and data he presents show how most governments have grown far beyond the optimum point, and he is a bit pessimistic about the ability of democracies to rein in excessive and destructive government.

Near the end of the book, Mr. Tanzi observes: “Once the population of a country (or, more often, groups within it) come to see the government as a potential cow that can be milked, there is no longer a limit to the demands for more public spending. There are literally infinite ‘needs’ of the population, and infinite groups capable of organizing politically, to press for more government spending or other government actions that would benefit them.”

But despite Mr. Tanzi’s pessimism, he documents how two countries, Sweden and Canada, have changed course and reduced the size of government because the body politic came to understand that the cow was being overmilked and soon would go dry or die.

By happenstance, Peter Ferrara has written “America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb” (Broadside Books, 2011), which is almost a companion piece to Mr. Tanzi’s book. Where Mr. Tanzi primarily uses data to show the global growth of government spending, taxing and regulation, Mr. Ferrara gives us more of a historical narrative of how the United States got to this point. Mr. Ferrara served in President Reagan’s White House Office of Policy Development and, subsequently, in President George H.W. Bush’s Justice Department and has spent much of his life developing and proposing policies that would lead us back to economic sanity. His new book not only gives us the history of the various programs and how they contributed to the current debt crisis but also proposes solutions, including describing what other countries have done to deal successfully with similar problems.

Mr. Ferrara’s chapter on the retirement debt bomb clearly describes how the Social Security funding solution has been well-known to U.S. policymakers for 30 years, yet many politicians have preferred to demagogue the issue rather than solve the problem. Chile was the first nation in the Americas to adopt a traditional social security system, way back in 1925 - 10 years before the United States. By the late 1970s, however, the Chilean system was running out of money despite higher and higher taxes. The young labor minister, Jose Pinera, who has a doctorate in economics from Harvard, led a fundamental reform of the system from a government-defined benefit system to a private-account defined-contribution system, which is owned by the workers.

The Chilean system has been so successful during the past 30 years that it has been copied by more than 30 countries, including Sweden and Australia. Chileans retire with far more wealth than the average American, despite the fact that Chile is just a low-middle-income country. In both Chile and the United States, employers are required to set aside a little more than 12 percent for the pension program, but in Chile, someone with the same earnings as an American will be getting $55,000 as an annual pension, while the American, working the same number of years, just gets $18,000.

The fact, as Mr. Ferrara explains so well, is that we need not have miserable retirement and government medical systems that barely serve the needs of the people while driving the country into bankruptcy. What we need instead are programs in which individuals have control over their own retirement and medical accounts and have the flexibility to design them to meet their needs. Other countries have proved it can be done.

If every member of Congress and Washington policymaker would read the books by Mr. Tanzi and Mr. Ferrara and act upon their recommendations, our fiscal and entitlement mess would soon be part of a dark past.

Richard W. Rahn is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and Chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times

OBAMA AND THE MEDIA

A few days ago we wrote on the bias of the liberal media.  Tonight we bring a variation on the theme.  Two different journalists, writing for two extremely distinguished publications give their opinion on "Obama and The Media."  Both Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, and Jim Geraghty, who writes the Campaign Spot on National Review Online have written excellent articles which we feature in this posting of Two Sisters From The Right.  The articles are incisive and eloquent.

TWO SISTERS



Obama’s Enablers
Meet the mainstream media

by Fred Barnes

As a rule, the press is the scourge of presidents. They’re expected to endure unending scrutiny, mistrust, and badgering—plus hostility if they’re Republicans—by a hectoring herd of reporters and commentators in the mainstream media. But there’s an exception to the rule: President Obama.

Illustration by Gary Locke
National Review Online

It’s counterintuitive, but Obama has been hurt by the media’s leniency. Both his presidency and reelection prospects have suffered. He’s grown lazy and complacent. The media have encouraged him to believe his speeches are irresistible political catnip, though they aren’t. His overreliance on words hasn’t helped.
The kind of media pressure that can cause a president to sharpen his game, act with urgency, or take bolder steps—that has never been applied to Obama. If it had, I suspect he’d be a more effective, disciplined, energetic, and popular president today.

Ronald Reagan is a good role model in this regard. When the media attacked him over gaffes in the 1980 campaign, “Reagan responded like all competitive men by working to improve himself,” says Reagan historian Craig Shirley. “Experience taught him to be better and try harder.” He took this lesson into the White House.

I don’t want to exaggerate the media’s baneful influence on Obama. It’s hardly the main reason for his decline. It’s a secondary reason, and it continues to have an impact.

Absent pushing and prodding by the press, the Obama presidency has atrophied. His speeches are defensive and repetitive and filled with excuses. He passes the buck. With persistently high unemployment and a weak economy, Obama recently declared, in effect, “I have a plan. See you after my vacation.” The press doesn’t goad him to lead.

On the contrary, the media have condoned Obama’s avoidance of leadership. It started when he let Nancy Pelosi draft the $800 billion stimulus and continued when congressional Democrats put together the health care, cap and trade, and financial industry reform bills...More>>

© Copyright 2011 The Weekly Standard LLC

_____________________


Expect the ‘Unexpectedly’
In the Obama years, bad news has always surprised the media.
by Jim Geraghty 

It is the most common adverb of the Obama years: “unexpectedly.”

● “Sales of U.S. previously owned homes unexpectedly dropped in July,” reported Bloomberg.

● “Manufacturing in the Philadelphia region unexpectedly contracted in August by the most in more than two years as orders plunged and factories shed workers,”reported Bloomberg Businessweek.

● “Consumer spending unexpectedly fell in June,” reported Reuters.

● “Dismal economic data on Thursday pointed to an unexpectedly abrupt slowdown in manufacturing and a pickup in inflation,” reported the New York Times’ business page.

This is just in the past week; hundreds of articles each month note that some new bit of economic data is contrary to the expectations of experts. But the term is starting to become an object of ridicule within the conservative blogosphere as the country endures its third year of hard economic times under President Obama.

Three years after a financial crisis, unemployment has hit painful highs, GDP growth has been sluggish at best, and some predict a “double dip” recession. During this period, the Obama administration and its allies have repeatedly made bold promises about imminent prosperity — from an infamous chart that projected that the stimulus would keep unemployment rate below 8 percent, to the administration’s “Recovery Summer” tour of 2010, to Nancy Pelosi’s prediction that passing Obamacare would create 400,000 jobs “almost immediately,” to the president’s prediction that we would enjoy 3.1 percent growth this year and 4.1 percent growth in 2012 and beyond....More>>

© National Review Online 2011.

Senator Marco Rubio's Conservatism

Senator Marco Rubio (R) FL

That supercilious MSNBC charlatan Ed Schultz has recently taken to calling Marco Rubio, the young Senator from Florida, a "pretty boy," insinuating that his looks and not his ability to lead and legislate, were responsible for his election.  The reality is that Senator Rubio, in spite of his youth, is much more profoundly in touch with the status of today's America, than some of his elder peers in the Senate, especially those on the other side of the aisle.    Townhall’s Erika Johnsen  has said  “I can’t believe how much truth he delivers in speeches, teleprompter-free and even off the cuff.”

Marco Rubio represents the ideal American dream.  The son of immigrant parents, he and his family have achieved America's promise to all - if one is willing to work hard, apply oneself, study and observe the values and principles that are the foundation of this great country, success is attainable. 

As is their custom, liberal Democrats are resorting to scare tactics to frighten America's seniors every time someone mentions reforms to programs such as Social Security and Medicare.   It is a fact that unless these programs are reformed, including stopping the fraud that now takes place, by the time today's younger generations reach our age there will not be any money for them to receive benefits from the programs into which they've paid all their lives.

We Two Sisters are representative of America's seniors.  Sister one, at age 65 is retired, and she and her husband live on a fixed income, receive Social Security, and were forced by law to take on and pay for Medicare.  They are also witnessing first hand what the Obama administration's disdain for American initiative and entrepeneurship is doing to their life's investments.  Sister Two is a widow who lives on a fixed income of Social Security and pension, and will too be forced to take on Medicare next year. She too is affected by the fluctuations of the stock market, and the uncertain future of our economy.  We know from whence we speak.  We are living it.  Those changes that are being proposed by responsible Republicans do, and will affect us personally, but we are in agreement that we need to have accountable reforms.

We ARE frightened by the prospect of a second term for Barack Hussein Obama.  Having attained Medicare status under Obama's watch, we've seen Medicare fraud in action, and our healthcare cost has risen considerably.  Add to that the fear of laws that will adversely affect the healthcare of America's elderly from laws contained within ObamaCare, and that is truly disconcerting.   

Senator Marco Rubio won a tight race in Florida.  He has, we believe, because of his oratorical skills, his unwavering  dedication to conservatism, and his integrity, captured the eye of the nation and the media.  Recently he was invited to speak at the Reagan Library in California.  Today we'd like to feature an excerpt from Rubio's speech at the Reagan Presidential Library, which eloquently defines America as the land of prospertity and compassion that most people still want it to be.

Two Sisters

The Miami Herald



 

 Posted on Sat, Aug. 27, 2011

Prosperity, compassion go hand-in-hand in conservative agenda.

 

by Marco Rubio

"I was raised in Ronald Reagan’s America. He was elected when I was in fourth grade and he left office when I was in high school. Those years formed so much of what today I know to be true. Reagan didn’t just believe that the Soviet Union and communism could fail, he believed it was inevitably destined to fail and that it was our obligation to accelerate that process. There was something else, though, that defined his presidency: the proper role of government. And I think the vast majority of Americans share a common vision for what they want our nation to be.

They want it to be free and prosperous, a place where your economic hopes and dreams can be accomplished. But they also want us to be a compassionate America. We are a nation that is not going to tolerate those who cannot take care of themselves being left to fend for themselves. We’re not going to tolerate our children being punished for the errors of their parents and society.
So, we are a nation that aspires to two things — prosperity and compassion.

 Now, America’s leaders during the last century set out to accomplish that. Both Republicans and Democrats established a role for government in America that said, yes, we’ll have a free economy, but we will also have a strong government that through regulations and taxes will control the free economy and through a series of government programs will take care of those in our society who are falling behind.

Though it was well intentioned, it was doomed to fail because it forgot that the strength of our nation begins with its people and that these programs actually weakened us as a people. All of the sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government’s job. For those who met misfortune, that wasn’t our obligation to take care of them, that was the government’s job. And as government crowded out the institutions in our society that did these things traditionally, it undermined our ability to maintain our prosperity.

 We built a government and programs without any account whatsoever for how we were going to pay for it. When Social Security first started, there were 16 workers for every retiree. Today there are only three for every retiree and soon there will only be two for every retiree.

Program after program was crafted without any thought as to how they would be funded in future years or the impact on future Americans. I know that it is popular in my party to blame the current president. But the truth is the only thing this president has done is accelerate policies that were already in place and were doomed to fail.

We have before us a golden opportunity to craft a proper role for government where both prosperity and compassion exist side-by-side.

We must begin by embracing certain principles that are absolutely true. Number one — the free enterprise system does not create poverty. Every nation that embraces market economics and the free enterprise system is pulling millions of its people out of poverty. The free enterprise system creates prosperity.

The second truism is that poverty does not create our social problems, our social problems create our poverty.

The singular objective of our economic policy from a government perspective is simple — it’s growth. Growth in our economy, the creation of jobs, and equality of opportunity through our governmental policies. We don’t have to reinvent this. Like a tax code that’s fair, predictable, easy to comply with. Like a regulatory framework that doesn’t exist to justify the existence of the regulators.

And it is the proper role of government to invest in infrastructure. Yes, government should build roads and bridges, but it should do so as part of economic development. Not as a jobs program. And government should invest in our people at the state level. Education is critically important to compete with kids in India, and China, all over the world.

Conservatism is not about leaving people behind. Conservatism is about empowering people to catch up. We do need a safety net, but it cannot be a way of life. It must be there to help those who have fallen, to stand up and try again.

I believe in America’s retirement programs. But I recognize that these programs as they are currently structured are not sustainable for future generations. Now, I personally believe that you cannot make changes to these programs for the people that are currently in them right now. My generation must fully accept that if we want there to be Social Security and Medicare when we retire, and if we want America as we know it to continue when we retire, then we must begin to make changes to those programs now, for us.

Every generation of Americans has been called to do their part to ensure that the American promise continues. We’re not alone, we’re not unique, we’re not the only ones. I would argue that we have it pretty good. And yet I think it’s fully appropriate that those of us raised in Ronald Reagan’s America are actually the ones who are being asked to stand up and respond to the issues of the day. For we, perhaps better than any other people who have ever lived in this nation, should understand how special and unique America truly is."

Copyright Miami Herald 8/27/2011

Combating Liberal Media Bias

Do you ever ask yourself, “Why do people blog?”  We do.  We started blogging out of concern and frustration over the direction our country was taking.  At the time we began our joint venture, the presidential elections of 2008 loomed in the not so distant future.  We had read a great deal about the front runner for the Democratic Party, an it was a frightening prospect. We, being the opinionated sisters we are, wanted to make our views known to a larger audience.  Having both majored in education, we felt compelled to “educate” our audience on the conservative point of view.

Our reason for presenting the conservative view point was inspired by the continued bias we saw in the mainstream media.  Their selectiveness in showing only the liberals' position on issues as being the proper one for Americans to follow, and their ridiculing of conservative views and conservatives in general was more than we could tolerate. Even those who took a moderate political stance were a target for them.

Sadly, we Americans have become a nation of non-thinkers.  Some of us at least are, and yet others of us think entirely too much.  We sisters fall in the latter category.  If we were concerned in 2007 and 2008, one can imagine how we feel about the direction of our country since Barack Hussein Obama was elected president.  He was elected in great part because he was the darling of the mainstream media who elevated him to deity status.  Worst of all, the non-thinking Americans took the bait, hook, line and sinker, and voted as told.

Now, we often hear our fellow citizens, even some of the celebrities who used their influence and clout to help elect Obama, express regret for their vote. It's been called "Buyers' Remorse."   To us that is like asking to be excused for their poor judgment and the answer to that has to be a resounding, “No!”  No, we won’t excuse you for casting a vote for this man who cannot take responsibility for his actions.  No, we won’t give you a walk for saddling the American people with a man who promised Hope and Change and the only thing that has come out of his administration is the vile, unsustainable Obama Care which was pushed down the voters’ throats in spite of their protestations.

You Obamanites  want us to excuse you for being so gullible that you followed the lead of such political experts as Oprah Winfrey, Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, and Janine Garofalo to name a few?  Hell, No!  Americans are still some of the few people left on the planet who are endowed with the ability to exercise their free will, and rather than to pick a book up, or read BOTH sides of the issues presented in the campaign, you became sheep, following the lead of others.  Those who were unable to discern when they were being conned and indoctrinated by the print and electronic media, without seeing  the bias, are to blame for putting this unknown, inexperienced, community organizer in the White House and in the seat normally occupied by the leader of the free world. 

We are now facing the same situation as we did in 2007, only this time Barack Hussein Obama’s so called “charisma” is non-existent.  His numbers are down in the polls.  The American economy is in a downward spiral, our national debt is astronomical, the unemployment and housing market rates  are not anywhere near recovery.  The American dollar, once the standard for the entire world’s currency, has lost its value.  The pacifist president who lured votes by arguing against the war in Iraq has now spent billions of our defense budget in a war in Libya, a country not vital to our national interest, and one with whom he had a peaceful understanding.  We’re not excusing Gadhafi; we are refuting the expense of that needless "non-war" when we need that money here at home.

The summer of 2011 has come and gone.  American children are now back in school, and many of them were not even able to afford a weekend away, yet America’s First Lady has luxuriously vacationed in the last three years. The cost for those vacations has been an estimated $10 million dollars, paid for by the American taxpayer. In fact the president himself is presently vacationing in the elite New England town of Martha’s Vineyard. 

In Barack Obama we have a president who has always sided with the Muslims who invaded our homeland and who have openly expressed to destroy us.  However he has offended and ignored Israel, our only ally in the Middle East for over 60 years.

The purpose of this writing is not really to enumerate all of Obama’s  many faults and errors, none of which, by the way he claims as his own.  Rather it is to encourage our fellow citizens not to be hoodwinked this second time around.  We beseech our American brothers and sisters, regardless of race, color, creed, ideology or philosophy to become independent thinkers.  Analyze the facts, think ahead – think about future generations of Americans.  We need to oust Barack Hussein Obama from office.  We need to defeat him in 2012. 

If the United States of America is to survive as the great nation that it has always been, we must return to America’s founding principles.  Read the Constitution and our country’s Declaration of Independence every now and then, it will restore your pride in your country and your will to make her great once again.

How do we combat media bias and propaganda?  Challenge the media  to regain their integrity and to return to honest, unbiased, objective journalism.  Their job is to inform us of the facts, not to sway our opinion.  Our duty is to analyze the facts and put our country before the one issue vote.  Never has the question that John F. Kennedy asked during his Inaugural Address been so easily answered.  He said: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” We leave the answer up to you.

Two Sisters

Two Sisters Best Reads

                                                                      

Editorial: It Really Was The Spending, Stupid  - IBD Editorials

08/23/2011 06:32 PM ET - Big Government: The Tea Party has so influenced the national discourse that the question is no longer, "Is spending really the problem?" Now it's: "Which kind of government spending is worst?" Washington may just have felt a taste of what life on the Left Coast is like, with a 5.9 earthquake ... More »


Russian cargo flight to space station crashes: report - Reuters

(Reuters) - A Russian spacecraft supplying six astronauts aboard the International Space Station failed to reach orbit on Wednesday and burned up in the atmosphere, its debris crashing in Siberia, Interfax news reported...More>>


America's Green Quagmire - NRO
Obama’s energy agenda has been a very expensive failure.

by Jonah Goldberg
It was a massive flatbed truck, flanked by smaller vehicles brandishing “oversized load” banners, carrying a huge white thing.  I think the first one I saw was in Ohio. But I know that by the time I passed Grand Island, Neb., I’d lost count.
What was it? At first, it looked like it could be a replacement for the Swords of Qādisīyah — that giant crossed-blades sculpture in central Baghdad...More>>



Black Pols’ Anger at Tea Party Should Be Refocused on Obama - Hot Air Green Room

by Howard Portnoy
It’s a feeling sports fans know well. Your team has just had its head handed to it by its fiercest rival. You leave the stadium or arena tasting bile. If you’re an adult, you turn the page, vowing that your team (and you) will live to fight another day. If you’re not, you irrationally lash out at your opponent for having played a better game and stoop to name calling...More>>



Could Libya’s next rulers be worse than Gaddafi? - National Post

by George Jonas
Even allowing for the uneasy relationship between reporting and reality from both sides in Libya’s civil war, Muammar Gaddafi’s regime seems on its last legs. Feeling jubilant over the downfall of Libya’s tyrant wouldn’t be a hard task as a rule. A particularly loathsome specimen even by Middle East standards, Gaddafi’s departure would have felt like a net gain for humanity as well as for his own country in 1969, when he seized power; in the 1970s, when he was murdering his rivals and opponents; in the 1980s, when he was sponsoring and facilitating terrorism all over the world; and in the 1990s and 2000s, when he was merely assassinating dissidents while pretending to turn over a new leaf...More>>

Where is Gadhafi And Who Are The Libyan Rebels?

This post comes from The American Thinker's morning edition.  As we watch reports of the Libyan rebels take over of Tripoli and loot Gadhafi's holdings, we have to wonder what their motives really are, who their leaders really are?  We still don't know Gadhafi's fate, but our government has spent millions of dollars on a war in which we have no interests and we have no answers.
Two Sisters 

Have we fallen for rebel propaganda in Libya?

by Rick Moran

I sincerely hope that Gadhafi will soon be captured and the first phase of the Libyan civil war can come to an end.

But he isn't in the bag yet. And his "captured" sons are apparently free and urging resistance to the rebels in Tripoli.

Wall Street Journal:

Fresh fighting has broken out in Tripoli hours after Col. Moammar Gadhafi's son resurfaced to thwart rebel claims he had been captured and rally supporters.
Rebels and forces loyal to the Libyan leader waged fierce street battles Tuesday, the Associated Press reported, a day after opposition fighters swept into the capital with relative ease and claimed to have most of it under their control.
Thick clouds of gray and white smoke filled the sky as heavy gunfire and explosions shook several districts of the city of two million people, AP said. Some of the heaviest fighting was around Col. Gadhafi's Bab al-Aziziya main compound and military barracks.
The compound, which has been heavily damaged by North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrikes, has emerged as one of the centers of government resistance since tanks rolled out Monday and began firing at rebels trying to get in, AP reported.
A NATO spokesman said what is left of Col. Gadhafi's forces has shown "no sign of giving up their aggressive actions."
"The tensions are far from being over. The situation is dynamic and complex," said Col. Roland Lavoie.

It should also be pointed out that Gaddafi has forces loyal to him fighting other battles in towns and cities across western Libya. They appear to be holding their own and show no signs of giving up. 

In short, a "complex and dynamic" situation in Tripoli is a far cry from Obama declaring victory and the left doing a sack dance ostensibly because they think the president's "lead from behind" policy has worked. And then there is that little matter of the rebels announcing the capture of Gaddafi's son only to have the dictator's progeny show up on TV calling for continued resistance:

The surprise appearance of Seif el-Islam Gadhafi, seen as a possible successor to Col. Gadhafi and thought to have been captured by the rebels a day earlier, punctured early hopes of a rapid regime collapse. Seif el-Islam showed up at a Tripoli hotel early Tuesday morning local time and in a defiant move invited foreign journalists on a tour of the city, claiming the regime is winning the fight against the rebels.
"My father is safe and in Tripoli... They (rebels) said they control Libya, they can't. Tripoli is under our control," he told reporters.

What if there is still fighting in Tripoli and other parts of Libya in a couple of weeks? A month? Gaddafi still commands the loyalty of his tribe and still has heavy weapons that the rebels can't counter. This fight is not over yet and the premature celebrations by Democrats and the left may come back to haunt them if the war drags on.

Copyright 2011 - The American Thinker

The Arab Spring Becomes An Islamist Winter

As the media reported and encouraged the insurrection against Mubarak in Egypt, this past Spring, we watched with a wary eyed.  There were several things that came to mind, and the first was that we never once believed that the protesters were prompted by a desire for democracy in their government. 

Muslim Brotherhood Leader
Muhammad Basdie

Once the Muslim Brotherhood reared its ugly head, we knew that all claims for a less stringent form of government were purely fiction.  We actually pitied the women who were out demonstrating.  Under the previous Egyptian government they enjoyed a much more liberated life style than that under a Muslim cleric led regime.  With the Brotherhood come the Mullahs and the laws restricting women's activities and relegating them to slave status, quite similar to the status of women in Saudi Arabia.




Caged former Egyptian President
an ailing Hosni Mubarak

The Obama administration encouraged Mubarak to leave Egypt, but the aging Mubarak decided to remain in his native land.  It is upsetting to see the ailing Mubarak being brought to trial in a hospital bed, receiving medical assistance, and housed in a cage like a dying tiger.  Could that scenario ever repeat itself in a country like the United States?  We can't answer that question with certainty because since January 2009, we've seen events in our country than few of us thought possible.


Egypt is now seen as Islamist Egypt, and the country many Westerners once loved to visit for its history, it's ancient relics and sights will be much more difficult to tour and see with the same freedom as before.


Most of all, we are Two Sisters From The Right are very concerned by the attacks on Israel coming from Egypt.  Israel and Egypt have enjoyed a peaceful relationship since the Camp David accords of 19   .
What we are seeing now is an Escalation of the Arab Israeli conflict that will assuredly please the Palestinians, but which deeply disturb those of us who support Israel's right to exist as an independent state. 


Below is an excerpt from an article in the National Review Online which details the events presently occurring in Israel.  A link is provided to the entire article as well.
Two Sisters.

Annals of the Arab Spring: Al-Qaeda Launches from Egypt to Attack Israel

By Andrew C. McCarthy

Tension is mounting as Israel comes to grips with the new reality of Islamist Egypt.

On Thursday, a team of 15 to 20 armed al-Qaeda terrorists (members of the Palestinian Popular Committees, an al-Qaeda affiliate) snaked through tunnels from Gaza to Sinai. From there, they hiked 200 kilometers over land, either ignored or facilitated by Egyptian army forces. They were thus able to sneak into Israel through the porous border at Eilat — porous because Israel has not needed to worry much about its Egyptian border for the last 30 years.

At around noon, the terrorists took up positions along the highway and opened fire at buses and cars. One detonated a suicide belt. In all, eight Israelis were killed and 30 more wounded. The terrorists shot to death a family of four who were just out driving in their car — father, mother, and their 6- and 4-year-old kids (“resistance” against the “occupiers,” as Islamists like to say). Barry Rubin counts this as al-Qaeda’s first successful terrorist attack against Israel.

From here, the story gets more frightful. Israeli police and defense forces killed several of the terrorists. They pursued at least two of the terrorists into Egyptian territory. At that point, some Egyptian soldiers either joined in the firefight or got caught in it accidentally — the facts are not yet clear, though a least one eyewitness says a terrorist was firing from an Egyptian army position. Five Egyptian soldiers were killed.

 

In Egypt, where the public has always been predominantly ant-Israeli — in contrast to the Mubarak regime, which was pro-American and maintained the peace with Israel — demonstrations against Israel have broken out.   Read more

© National Review Online 2011.

Two Sisters' Best Weekend Reads

It's the end of summer, and the beginning of school.  Many of you are as busy as bees getting your youngsters ready for school, or to make the major leap to college.  Few have time to read journals or online articles.

Two Sisters have put together a compilation of some interesting articles on the web this weekend.  When you have the time, grab a cup of coffee and sit down to read an article or two.  We've done the research, just point and click.  These are troubling times for our nation.  As we face what might be the most important presidential election of our time, we are dedicated to bringing you some interesting reads which will hopefully make us all more informed and educate voters. 

This is one time in our history that we cannot afford to make a mistake in judgement.  At Two Sisters From The Right we believe that the future of America's younger generations is at stake.  We need to take our country back to its rightful place in the world, and we are in dire need of political leaders who will help guide us in the uncertain future. 

TWO SISTERS

Let the Perry Hatred Begin - National Review Online
by Rich Lowry
Perry should work to belie the image of Texas.

Texas governor Rick Perry is about to stride purposefully through every cultural tripwire in the country.

He may not become as despised as Sarah Palin, but that’s because he’ll never be a pro-life woman — the accelerant for the conflagration of Palin-hatred. The disdain for Perry won’t burn as hot, but it’ll burn just as true. He’ll become a byword for Red State simplemindedness in the New York Times and an object of derision for self-appointed cultural sophisticates everywhere....Read more



Bad luck? Bad faith? - Washington Post
by Charles Krauthammer
“We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, got the economy moving again. . . . But over the last six months, we’ve had a run of bad luck.”— President Obama

A troubled nation wonders: How did we get mired in 9.1 percent unemployment, 0.9 percent growth and an economic outlook so bad that the Federal Reserve pledges to keep interest rates at zero through mid-2013 — an admission that it sees little hope on the horizon?

Bad luck, explains our president. Out of nowhere came Japan and its supply-chain disruptions, Europe and its debt problems, the Arab Spring and those oil spikes. Kicked off, presumably, by various acts of God (should He not be held accountable too?): earthquake and tsunami. ...Read more

The Predisent's Island Retreat - Wall Street Journal

by  Peggy Noonan
Is his visit to Martha's Vineyard a sign that he's giving up?

The phrase of the day is "new lows."  It blares from every screen.  The number of Americans satisfies with  the ways things are going hits new lows—11%. President Obama's popularity: new lows. The Dow Jones Industrial Average this year: new lows. Maybe it will enter ordinary language. "Charlie, it's been ages. How are you, how's Betty?" "I'm experiencing some volatility, but she's inching toward new lows."

The market is dispirited. I'm wondering if the president is, too, and if that won't carry implications for the 2012 race. You can imagine him having lunch with political advisers, hearing some unwanted advice—"Don't go to Martha's Vineyard!"—putting his napkin by his plate, pushing back from the table, rising, and saying in a clipped, well-modulated voice: "I'm tired. I'm going. If they want this job so much let them have it."...Read more



Where Have All The Millionaires Gone? - Washington Examiner
by Barbara Hollingsworth

Newsalert has posted a chart from a Wall Street Journal blog titled “Recession and the Rich.” The chart, based on 2009 IRS figures, shows that the number of taxpayers reporting annual income over $1 million fell 39 percent between 2007 and 2009; the number of super-wealthy individuals making over $10 million annually plunged 55 percent...Read more


The Imperial Presidency - National Review Online
by Mark Steyn
European royals make do with a less lavish lifestyle than the supposed citizen-executive of a so-called republic.
Rick Perry, governor of Texas, has only been in the presidential race for 20 minutes, but he’s already delivered one of the best lines in the campaign:

“I’ll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.”

This will be grand news to Schylar Capo, eleven years old, of Virginia, who made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days, and for her pains, was visited by a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter (with accompanying state troopers) who charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species and issued her a $535 fine.... Read more

Straying From Reality - The Weekly Standard
by Phillip Terzian
Full marks to Jay Cost for his deft evisceration of Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman, and their resurrection of Dwight D. Eisenhower as a liberal Democrat. What Fineman and Matthews don't know about American history could fill a book—and in each instance, has done so.

My subject, however, is the recurring Democratic complaint—or, more properly, talking point—that the Republican Party has now ‘strayed’ so far to the right that its onetime standard bearers, from Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush, would not only fail to recognize their political home but would be estranged from it.... Read more