JG55

Show the evidence that Herman Cain is Obama's Mentor. Post links to articles that substantiate that statement.. Rest of you comment isn't clear on meaning..

Herman Cain was born in Memphis TN.

The IRS got red-faced trying to collect the new tanning tax, burning a hole in estimates on how much the levy would bring in to federal coffers, a new report said Thursday. But, while the agency also updated tax forms and tax return processing systems to prepare for the new levy, the IRS had difficulty determining the actual number and contacts for businesses required to collect the new tax from customers. [h=3]MORE: IRS Q-and-A on indoor tanning tax[/h] Using an April 2010 Indoor Tanning Association estimate, the IRS initially projected the tax would be due quarterly from roughly 25,000 stand-alone tanning salons, plus spas, health clubs and beauty parlors. But the inspector general report found that actual tax returns filed for the first three quarters through March 31 averaged just above 10,300. Tanning tax receipts for that nine-month period totaled $54.4 million, the report found. That was below projections by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, which had estimated the tax would raise $50 million in the last three months of fiscal year 2010 and $200 million for the full 2011 fiscal year. The report blamed the problem on the IRS' apparent use of incomplete information in its effort to identify taxpayers covered by the levy. It also said the IRS should have acted faster to collect. By the time notices were issued, tax returns had been due for three quarters. "The IRS quickly implemented the tanning tax under a tight deadline," said J. Russell George, who heads the inspector general's office. "Since this was a brand new tax imposed on a group of businesses and taxpayers with no previous experience with excise taxes, the IRS should have done more to inform taxpayers of their filing responsibilities and bring them into compliance in a timely manner." The inspector general's office recommended the IRS analyze the data sources it used for the tax, including records with incomplete address information, to determine whether some tanning businesses weren't notified about the levy. The agency should also determine whether other data sources are needed to identify tanning salons. Agreeing with the recommendations, Faris Fink, head of the IRS Small Business/Self-Employed Division, wrote in a Sept. 7 response that the tax agency has "compared the list of taxpayers who have already filed returns with the broader list that we have collected, and have sent explanatory notices to businesses who have not yet filed." "Once this analysis is complete, we will have a better sense of how many of the businesses who have not yet filed are actually subject to this new excise tax," Fink said. Underdone: Tanning tax revenue falls short of estimates

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period. 2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.†3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed†experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.†4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson. 5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned. 6. “There†is no better a place than “here.†When your “there†has become a “hereâ€, you will simply obtain another “there†that will again look better than “here.†7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself. 8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours. 9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust. 10. You will forget all this. 10 Rules For Being Human | Caveman Circus

So True

Perhaps the coach should be smart enough to design an offense that plays to Tebows strengths so that his team can be successful. Why does Tebow have to fit into everyone elses definition of what a quarterback should be or play like. Brady Quinn please what a joke!

Started busing tables at 14. Worked through High School as Sack boy and stocker for a Hg Hills Grocery store. Joined AF at 19, got 2 yr degree while in service using GI Bill to pay for it. Came Home Finished 4 yr degree using GI Bill and working fulltime. Since I was in a hurry took 21 hours a semester until finished. Worked multiple full time jobs and started several business as I aimlessly wondered around trying to find my niche. Finally found it , started a business worked harder than I ever had in my life to make it work. Many 20 hrs days and even some sleep in the back of the store. Thanks to hard work, persistence and some Luck became very successful and sold business years later. Honestly, don't work as hard now but I sorta miss those days!!\ I am the 53%..........

Good points. Watched Coach Dungy on Sunday Night praise Tebow and state he's a winner play him. Harrison looked like he was going to have a heart attack !

Could it possibly be that he is a practicing Christian. Remember how he got beat up and attacked for the prolife commericial he and his Mom made for the superbowl. NFL players were cutting ads promoting Planned Parenthood to offset his commericial. It was ridiculous..

It's more of a mindset that you are willing to work, work hard when needed to move ahead in life.

WE ARE THE 53%!!! What's your story? Take a Pic and Post it ....

Buffalo Trace

While in the the Air Force responded to a shooting victim at the er room. Guy Had been shot in the right calf with a 38 special. Just a hole all the way through. Asked What happened. He says, He was in the Bathroom brushing his teeth and his wife comes to the door and points his gun at hims and Says "I am going to shoot you." He says she has threatened him many times before and never done anything. He turns back to continue brushing his teeth and BANG!. She shot him..

[h=1]America's Enduring Ideal [/h][h=2]Jeffrey Sachs is only the latest in a long line of thinkers to reject the values of our commercial republic.[/h] [h=3]By PAUL RYAN[/h]Free enterprise has never lacked for moral critics. In the mid-18th century, for instance, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau rejected the proposition that the free exchange of goods and services, and the competitive pursuit of self-interest by economic actors, result in general prosperity—ideas then emanating from Great Britain. In a commercial society, according to Rousseau, the people are "scheming, violent, greedy, ambitious, servile, and knavish . . . and all of it at one extreme or the other of misery and opulence." Only a people with "simple customs [and] wholesome tastes" can be virtuous. In "The Price of Civilization," Jeffrey Sachs carries Rousseau's argument into the 21st century. Mr. Sachs, a development economist at Columbia University, believes that "at the root of America's economic crisis lies a moral crisis: the decline of civic virtue among America's political and economic elite." The book's veneer of economic analysis cannot conceal what is essentially a crusade against the free enterprise ethic of our republic. Only through a reshaping of our principles and a reordering of the American economy, Mr. Sachs believes, can we become "a mindful society." We must abandon a culture that is defined by hard work and the striving for upward mobility and an economy that has unleashed unparalleled prosperity. Hard work impedes leisure. Ambition is a vice. Economic growth hurts the planet. The corporation is the antagonist in this morality play. Mr. Sachs refers early and often to widespread "suffering from the decline in corporate tax rates" and properly identifies a pernicious trend that both political parties have fallen victim to over the years: crony capitalism. But it is not just the rapaciousness of corporate interests that disturbs the author. He sees a deeper conspiracy at play. The marketing industry is referred to as the "dark arts of manipulation," and television has been dangerously left "almost entirely to the private sector." Our commitment to limited government and free enterprise has allowed "market values [to] trump social values." We are scolded time and again for letting business interests encourage our faults and fallibilities. "Through clearer thinking," Mr. Sachs writes, "we can become more effective both as individuals, and as citizens, reclaiming power from corporations." This reclamation will come primarily from punitive tax and regulatory measures. Mr. Sachs is undaunted by any thought that such a regime might worsen unemployment. The trained economist assures us: "Economic theory indeed supports the view that high tax rates can actually spur, rather than hinder, work effort." He argues that financial incentives ought not to matter in a mindful society and is confident that well-intentioned social engineers can suspend the laws of economics. Enlarge Image CloseCorbis Text of the Declaration of Independence [h=3]The Price of Civilization[/h] By Jeffrey Sachs Random House, 324 pages, $27 One need not look far to find the inspiration for the America that Mr. Sachs seeks. He is explicit about his ideal, and it is Europe. America should match the high tax and "active labor market policies" found in the German and Scandinavian economies. The Constitution imposes too many restrictions on government interference for Mr. Sachs, and we'd be better served if we moved toward a "French-style" constitution that consolidated the executive and legislative branches and empowered experts to help us manage the "complexity of our economy." On the most effective means of petitioning one's government, Mr. Sachs sounds eerily Greek (A.D. 2011, not 500 B.C.): "A new political party can be combined with other forms of political agitation—consumer boycotts, protests, media campaigns, and social networking efforts—to put the most egregious leaders of the corporatocracy on notice." Advocating for the European model seems particularly ill-advised at the moment, given the current state of affairs across the Atlantic. Yet Mr. Sachs is untroubled by the contradictions between the Europe of his imagination and the crisis-ridden continent as it exists today. He writes: "The countries that failed to raise taxes adequately—such as Greece—are now paying the price in a massive fiscal crisis, as in the United States." Too many industrialized countries, in his view, have fallen victim to the "race to the bottom" mentality of lowering corporate tax rates and depriving their governments' coffers of the money needed to pay their mounting bills. The "price" of civilization, we find out, is quite steep. A "civilized" society will cost Americans roughly $12 trillion in higher taxes over the next decade. Mr. Sachs concedes that he could lower the bill if the economy were to grow fast enough to stabilize the debt, at which point a roughly $8 trillion tax hike would suffice. The proposed means by which the federal government can expand as the economy shrinks: raise corporate tax rates (and plead with our global competitors to stop reducing their business taxes); raise the top individual income tax rate; raise taxes on investment, energy, bank balance sheets and financial transactions; and impose a national sales tax. Mr. Sachs is honest enough to acknowledge that the "rich" are not nearly rich enough to pay for his ever-expansive vision of government. We're told that "each of us with an above-average income" (i.e., $50,000 per household) must "understand that if we are prudent, we can make do with a little less take-home pay." Such appeals to the citizenry to make sacrifices might be more compelling if Mr. Sachs coupled them with calls for spending restraint in Washington. Instead, his budget proposal insists on the need to "augment" government spending by trillions of dollars in the years ahead. Thus the sacrifices of citizens are to be made to increase the size and scope of a federal government that Mr. Sachs admits has demonstrated little aptitude for allocating resources efficiently or even fairly. This conundrum leads him to a conclusion that would be comical if he were not deadly serious: "Yes, the federal government is incompetent and corrupt—but we need more, not less, of it." Yet at its core "The Price of Civilization" is not about taxes or economics. It is about the "pursuit of happiness" as one academic understands it. Enshrined in the country's founding documents, "the pursuit of happiness" has long been recognized in America as a natural right to be secured by good government. As the Founders understood it, "happiness" referred to human fulfillment, to a well-lived life of virtue in this world and ultimate fulfillment in the next. In ensuring that its citizens are free to seek their happiness, government was to promote neither hedonism nor materialism. It was to secure the right to pursue happiness by not interfering with either normal commercial transactions or freedom of worship. In "The Price of Civilization," Mr. Sachs is asking the right questions. What is a life well lived? What should our government's role be in building a more virtuous society? What policies should it pursue to promote fulfilling lives for its citizens? If such questions direct us to the moral wisdom of our cultural traditions, they can indeed help to balance the excesses of capitalism and so help us to extend its benefits to all. Yet Mr. Sachs's gospel of happiness draws not on the inspired tradition of the Founders but rather on the Utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. In the 1780s, Bentham proposed that "happiness," which he equated with "pleasure," could be mathematically measured. It was not sufficient, he thought, for government to protect our rights if it was to vouchsafe our pursuit of happiness. Government must instead quantify "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" and set policies and goals accordingly. There was a science to satisfaction, Bentham claimed, and it was a puzzle that trained experts could solve. Channeling Bentham, Mr. Sachs calls for the establishment of a national metrics for life satisfaction and sets a 10-year goal to "raise America's happiness." Although the specific measures are hazy, the steps are clear: For people to be happy, their government must increasingly shield them from the challenges of life. The good life is thus defined as one of ever-more pleasure at the expense of work. But happiness in this world results not from avoiding challenges but from meeting them. Happiness is the recompense of real effort, whether intellectual or physical, and of earned success. It comes from achievement—from doing something of economic, artistic or emotional value. The satisfaction to be taken in producing valuable things brings with it a lasting sense of personal fulfillment. Mr. Sachs's design for paternalistic government will only impede the pursuit of happiness. Mr. Sachs is more accurate when he argues that economics is not merely about making money. It must serve the higher cause of human well-being and moral development. He is right to dislike the greed and vulgarity that can accompany bourgeois life. But he is wrong to attribute these phenomena to capitalism uniquely. Discord and imperfection arise from human nature. The question is how they can be contained and redirected. Capitalism, together with our moral traditions, has long offered a solution consistent with individual freedom. Mr. Sachs's approach does not. Mr. Sachs likely overstates Americans' enthusiasm for restrictions on work, for the denial of constitutionally protected freedoms or for government controls over media and technology. His conception of the good life could perhaps be mutually agreed to in a small, isolated and homogeneous society. But here in the United States it would have to be imposed on a diverse and globally integrated nation of more than 300 million people. That is neither possible nor desirable. The freedom and independence of the American population can best be guaranteed by allowing the people to govern themselves through their elected representatives; by keeping limits on the size of government; and by encouraging each of us to take responsibility for our own well-being. We can best be aided by our families, communities, churches and local institutions—and by the government only as a last resort. For, ultimately, Mr. Sachs's quarrel is with our founding principles of equality and liberty. Underlying the arguments in "The Price of Civilization" is a contention that the Constitution is too conducive to freedom, that it endorses an economic system too friendly to growth and the satisfaction of appetite, that it creates political institutions too inattentive to our national character. In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson defined "a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." The contrast with Mr. Sachs's idea of "good government" could not be more stark. The Founders thought of America as exceptional, but Mr. Sachs thinks that this claim is a myth and that the country's present greatness a historical aberration. Our decline is, thankfully, inevitable, he says: "America will not again dominate the world economy or geopolitics as it did in the immediate aftermath of World War II. That was a special historical moment; we can be glad that economic progress throughout the world is rapidly creating a more balanced global economy and society." It is through this prism of decline that we may better understand Mr. Sachs's calls for an overbearing government to take more earnings from you and make more decisions for you, as well as his instructions for hard-working Americans to restrain their ambitions and accept their current place in life. He seeks nothing less than to replace the vision of the Founders—the ideals of individual liberty that have enabled America to achieve the unrivaled social, material and spiritual flourishing of the past two and a quarter centuries—with one that relies almost solely on the wisdom and beneficence of an intrusive, unlimited government. The dialogue between capitalism and its critics is an old one, and it will continue. But as citizens of a self-governing nation, Americans must choose from time to time between alternative visions for our future. This book's budget proposals and economic policies are profoundly revealing. They lay bare the real agenda of those who wish us to abandon the American idea and consign our nation to the irrevocable path of decline. If only in that sense, "The Price of Civilization" is a useful contribution to the conversation we must have in order to make informed political choices in the years ahead. —Mr. Ryan represents Wisconsin's First Congressional District and is chairman of the House Budget Committee.

too go with that sentiment "Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he’s lecturing us about how America’s gone “soft”? Really? Jonah Goldberg Wait, Is Malaise French for “Soft”? - By Jonah Goldberg - The Corner - National Review Online

http://weaselzippers.us/2011/10/01/flavor-of-the-week-herman-cain-“substance-that’s-the-difference-i-got-the-substance-i’m-the-black-walnut-it-lasts-longer-than-a-week-â€/

[h=1]Turns out, the South is a pretty nice place to live[/h] Share113 [h=4]posted at 6:40 pm on September 29, 2011 by Tina Korbe printer-friendly [/h] When I first moved to Washington D.C., my dad jokingly warned me not to hype home too much. “If they find out just how nice we have it down here, all your new East Coast friends will want to move to the South and our cost of living will go up,†he teased. In my family, we like to say the South is the country’s best-kept secret. But, as it turns out, plenty of people have discovered it: During the last decade, the South was the fastest-growing region of the country. In his column today on National Review Online, Lee Habeeb, vice president of content for Salem Radio Network, chronicles his own journey south, from New Jersey to Mississippi. Habeeb cites all the usual suspects as to what makes the South appealing, from the slower pace to the lower cost of living: “Have you lost your mind?†is the refrain I heard over and over from friends up north when I told them the news. It was as if I’d just told them I was moving to Madagascar. … I then told them about the quality of life in Oxford, and how far a dollar stretches. And the ease of doing business. When I show them pictures of my house, and get around to my property taxes, things get positively somber. On a home valued at $400,000, my tax tab is $2,000. My parents in New Jersey pay $12,000. And for a whole lot less house. On no land. When I remind friends about the pension liabilities they’ll be inheriting from the state unions, things get downright gloomy. I can relate to everything Habeeb writes — but in reverse. When I moved to Silver Spring, Md., I had a hard time swallowing the price of rent — because it nearly matched my parents’ mortgage payment. And when I called the customer service departments of coast-based cable and electricity companies and got nowhere with the representatives who answered the phone, I found myself frequently saying in as kind a voice as I could muster, “I just moved here from Arkansas. And I’d really like to be able to tell my friends and family back home that y’all are just as friendly and helpful as Southerners have a reputation for being.†At every turn, in other words, I was reminded that I was a long way from where I grew up. (I was going to say, “a long way from the South,†but, technically, Maryland is still the South — it’s featured in Southern Living, after all. And wasn’t the nation’s capital situated on the Potomac precisely as a concession to the southern states?) That’s not to say I didn’t experience a new kind of camaraderie with fellow Metro riders when we all faced a broken escalator out of the subway station. Nor is it to say D.C. didn’t substantially unravel my OCD by giving me a chance to observe it in the high achievers all around me. Above all, it’s not to say I wasn’t stimulated by new ideas and engaging conversation morning, noon and night. Coastal cities have their advantages, from public transportation and easier international travel to endless restaurant options and topic-rich, thought-provoking public lectures (seriously, one of my favorite elements of the city!). Especially in what I think of as “The Big Three†(NYC, L.A. and D.C.), living in a city might mean you pass famous and powerful people on the sidewalk, have a chance to voice your ideas to someone who might actually be able to do something about them, or wake up one morning to the startling realization that the distance between your dreams and reality isn’t actually so great as you thought it was. But the point is, the magic of those “quintessential†cities has already been brought vividly to life for all of us — even those of us who’ve never lived in them — by books and TV shows, songs and movies. Hollywood and Broadway — plus all the most prominent recording and publishing companies — are located in those places. The advantages of the South — especially the advantages of the 21st century South — are less well known (and, somehow, Southern coastal cities are frequently overlooked as major cities). Oh, there are books and TV shows, songs and movies about Dixie — but, as Habeeb points out, they’re often misleading caricatures or dwell too heavily on the South’s past. Little has been done to update the popular image of the region, which is now economically inviting and culturally reassuring — perhaps because those who spin popular images, from the president to junior reporters, haven’t taken the time to really understand the South for themselves. That happens to be Habeeb’s thesis: Americans, black and white alike, are moving in record numbers to a part of the country where taxes are low, unions are irrelevant, and people love their guns and their faith. And yet we have heard hardly a peep about this great migration from our nation’s public intellectuals. Why? Because their ideological prejudices won’t permit them to admit the obvious. They’d prefer to focus their research on the pre-1970s South because they are more comfortable with — and more invested in — that old narrative, while this new one marches on right under their noses. And their keyboards. And so it is with a sense of puzzlement that this Jersey boy turned Mississippian watches the decision making of President Obama. Millions of Americans may have voted for him in 2008, but millions have been voting with their feet, and he doesn’t seem the least bit interested in understanding why. … He should ask Americans like me who’ve moved South why we did it. And he should be especially interested in understanding why African Americans are fleeing his home city of Chicago for the South, too. If he dared to ask, he’d learn that we are all fleeing liberalism and chasing economic freedom, just as our immigrant parents and grandparents did. … It turns out that white Yankee migrants like me, African American migrants from Chicago, and businessmen owners in Illinois and around the world, see something in the South that novelists, journalists, academics, and our current president cannot. The future. Truth is, all joking aside, it’s a shame to keep it secret. Personally, I would prefer to keep it a secret, Northerners and west coasters tend to want to change the South to what they just left, so what's the point of them coming here.. :dunno:

here ya go