On this Veteran’s Day 2011, our thoughts should turn once again toward our military, who find themselves busier than they have been in recent memory. Despite the tempo of current operations, our president appears determined to govern a peacetime force by way of withdrawal and drawback.

If the budget committee fails to reach an agreement, the military stands to be cut by epic proportions, which they seem poised to do, barring any eleventh-hour deal. These cuts should come as no surprise to anyone considering that this is what usually happens when a liberal Democrat is in the Oval Office.

With dollar signs in their eyes, liberals ignore the federal government’s core responsibility of defending its citizens, and instead salivate over the opportunity to get their hands on what they perceive as the Pentagon’s “pot of gold.”

Military recruitment requirement numbers are already down, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has been given a deadline from on high to slash defense spending by $450 billion. According to the New York Times, Panetta described “the president as closely involved” in the discussions to reduce Pentagon spending, which may include a reduction in military medical and retirement benefits, additional base closings, pulling troops out of Europe, cutting the nuclear arsenal, reducing the overall troop force, and reducing weapon purchases.

It is customary to reduce defense spending between wars. Budget hawks from both sides of the isle would agree that trimming excess fat is necessary, but, when it comes to defense spending, cuts should be painstakingly executed, considering that the War on Terror is ongoing, and defense spending is not the reason for America’s current economic predicament.

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 Read More at Floyd Reports By Susan Stamper Brown, Floyd Reports

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Tea party favorite U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint says he won’t endorse a candidate in the 2012 presidential race, taking what could have been a huge bump in popularity off the table for candidates in early voting South Carolina.

DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton on Monday confirmed a report that the senator would stay on the sidelines of the first nominating contest in the South.

“He’s not going to be endorsing in the presidential race,” Denton said. “He will be focusing on electing conservatives to the United States Senate.”

The Washington Post first reported that DeMint is staying out of the primary.

In January 2007, DeMint’s early endorsement of Mitt Romney gave the former Massachusetts governor a bigger presence in a crowded political field that included former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the eventual nominee, Sen. John McCain.

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Read More at The Daily Caller By Associated Press

Today November 8 the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee will grill AG Eric Holder on Operation Fast and Furious amid the sounds of a salivating public lapping at the latest lurid suggestions about Herman Cain. Will another convenient sex scandal overshadow Holder’s appearance before a Justice Department oversight hearing?

Border patrol Agent Brian Terry’s death on December 14, 2010 is part and parcel of an ATF/DOJ mass murder catastrophe. Big media has so far chosen to ignore the fiasco and the cover-up. Too bad Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) can’t ask Attorney General Eric Holder whether he sexually harassed young women 15 years ago; he’d have a huge audience.

While the mainstream media is busy destroying Cain’s reputation, Grassley should capitalize on their lack of interest and turn up the heat. Here are some questions he may want to ask the heinous Mr. Holder.

1) What U.S. laws were broken by the Department of Justice in this 18-month operation?

2) Who came up with the Fast and Furious scheme to supply weapons to the Mexican cartel Sinaloa?

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 Read More at American Thinker By M Catharine Evans, American Thinker

The United Nations launched the 2011 Human Development Report, entitled Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All, with great fanfare on November 2, 2011. Helen Clark, Administrator of the largest and perhaps the most unaccountable, ethically-challenged of all UN bureaucratic agencies, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), presided over the ceremonies held in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was joined by Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Prime Minister of Denmark.

The annual UNDP report follows the customary left-wing approach to most problems: Bash industry. Redistribute wealth through more taxes. And throw in a dig at Western free market capitalism for good measure.

In its latest version, the report downplays the importance of economic growth, as reflected in rising national incomes, to the achievement of better living standards. It links much of the world’s ills to “environmental hazards” and “deep inequalities within and among nations.”

To support their conclusions, the authors of the report created out of whole cloth what they call an “Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index,” which is supposed to somehow adjust the UNDP’s more traditional development index measuring economic prosperity, education levels and life expectancy to take account of “internal inequalities in health, education and income.”

The United States, which had ranked #4 (out of 187 countries measured) in the UNDP’s more traditional human development index, dropped to #23 in the “Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index,” behind such economic heavyweights as Slovenia and Iceland.

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 Read More at Canada Free Press By Joseph A. Klein, Canada Free Press

When Barack Obama was a senator, he proposed a Global Poverty Act to fulfill the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals. The cost in additional foreign aid: $845 billion. On Thursday, as part of the G20 summit, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, delivered a report on “financing for development” that proposes global taxes on America and other “rich” nations to make the Global Poverty Act a reality.

“I am honored to have been given this important opportunity,” said Gates, founder of Microsoft. “My report will address the financing needed to achieve maximum progress on the Millennium Development Goals, and to make faster progress on development over the next decade.”

The report, available on the website of the Gates Foundation, proposes a financial transaction tax (FTT) as well as taxes on tobacco, aviation and bunker fuel, and carbon (energy), by G20 countries and other members of the European Union. The G20 are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Republic of Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

On Wednesday, as part of the coordinated campaign to pass such a tax in the U.S., Democratic Senator Tom Harkin (Iowa) and Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio (Oregon) introduced legislation to put a tax on “certain trading activities undertaken by banking and financial firms.” What they didn’t say was that it would affect stocks and bonds bought and sold by the average American investor.

Kenneth Bentsen Jr., executive vice president for public policy and advocacy at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, said, “A financial transaction tax is essentially a sales tax on investors. At a time when we face a slow economic recovery, such a tax will impede the efficiency of markets and impair depth and liquidity as well as raise costs to the issuers, pensions and investors who help drive economic growth. Major economies that have adopted such taxes have had overwhelmingly negative results, including reduced asset prices, trading moving to other venues, market dislocation and decreased liquidity. We encourage Congress and the Administration to continue to resist efforts to implement such a tax.”

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 Read More at aim.org By Cliff Kincaid, aim.org