Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
"Daily Motivations"
"Marcia's right! You have to be able to identify what you really love and what you really want before you can get it". -- Oprah Winfrey
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
Present Pomp & Puffery! The children of Ammon made war against Israel (Judg. 11:4). When we think how we were treated in the past, it's easy to have a get even attitude in the present!
"He delights in every detail of their lives." (Psalm 37:23)
"The Patriot Post"
"The freedom and happiness of man...[are] the sole objects of all legitimate government." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1810
Make your problems disappear!
Men, if you think you have problems,
just remember....
... somewhere in the world there's a
Mr. Nancy Pelosi!
"Heritage Foundation"
A Troubling Decision, a Troubling Speech, and a Troubling Nomination
Posted May 27th, 2009 at 10.08am in Rule of Law.
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/05/27/a-troubling-decision-a-troubling-speech-and-a-troubling-nomination/
Imagine if you can a situation in which a white federal judge approved the clear and obvious discrimination engaged in by a small Southern town in denying black firefighters promotion by throwing out the results of a civil service examination. Only black firefighters did well enough on the racially-neutral exam to merit promotion, but the city decided to scrap the exam and not promote the successful test takers because none of them were white.
This same white federal judge also gave a speech at a prominent Southern university in which he said: “I would hope that a wise Caucasian man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a black male who hasn’t lived that life.” In the same speech, the judge opines that white males engage in judging differently than black males “[w]hether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences.”
Does anyone doubt that if a president nominated that same federal judge to be on the U.S. Supreme Court, that his nomination would be still-born and that the president would be quickly (and rightly so) embarrassed into withdrawing the nomination?
Of course, that has not happened – or has it? Because if you simply change the races and ethnic groups being discussed, that is exactly what President Obama has done. In fact, Judge Sonia Sotomayor claimed in a speech at Berkley in 2001 that “wise” Latina women would make better decisions than white men and that those differences may be based on inherent genetic differences, something so outrageous that I still have a hard time believing that she could have said such a thing.
And in a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, Ricci v. New Haven, Judge Sotomayor approved the outright dismissal without trial of the discrimination claims of 19 white firefighters (one of whom suffers from dyslexia) and one Hispanic firefighter against the City of New Haven, Connecticut. There is no question that the city threw out the results of promotional exams because they were unsatisfied with the race of the successful exam takers – because no blacks (and seemingly not “enough” Hispanics) had scored well enough to be promoted. Judge Sotomayor also engaged in procedural trickery to try to bury the case and avoid Supreme Court review. The district court opinion was unpublished, so Sotomayor and her two fellow judges at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s opinion in a summary one paragraph order. Only after the 3-judge panel learned that the opinion would not be reviewed by the full Second Circuit did the panel withdraw that order and publish an opinion that incorporated the entire district court opinion as the operative law of the Second Circuit – using procedural shenanigans to make her views approving racial preferences the law of the entire Circuit.
Should discriminatory views of ethnicity be accepted if the individual with such a view is Hispanic? Should discriminatory treatment be accepted if it is aimed at whites (and Hispanics)? Not in our culture and our society, and certainly not in our legal system where we believe in the rule of law and the equal treatment of all individuals under the law. Judge Sotomayor’s views on race as expressed in her public speaking and her actions in the Ricci case are extremely troubling. They make it imperative that the Senate fulfill its full duty under the “Advice and Consent” clause of the Constitution to carefully and thoroughly examine Judge Sotomayor’s principles, character, and temperament before deciding whether she is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.
"The Web"
Regarding Sotomayor's chances to avoid a filibuster of her nomination, Senator Orrin Hatch told Politico, “I'll tell you one thing, I'm not very happy about judges who will substitute their own policy preferences for what the law really is; who think that they can run the country from the bench when they actually have a limited role. And that role is to interpret the laws made by those who have to stand for reelection."
Despite Hatch's misgivings, Democratic Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York sent a personal letter to President Barack Obama asking him to appoint a Latino to fill the next vacancy on the United States Supreme Court Back in April.
“It’s long overdue that a Latino sit on the United States Supreme Court. Sonia Sotomayor and Ken Salazar are two candidates who would make outstanding justices. They have top-notch legal minds, years of experience, moderate approaches to the law, and would make history by being the first Latino on the court,” Senator Schumer said.
"We are fortunate in New York State to have jurists of the caliber and intellect that Judge Sotomayor has exhibited during a lifelong career of service to the bench. As an accomplished jurists, as a woman, and as a Latina she would bring to the United States Supreme Court a much needed voice. We must be committed to diversity on our nation’s highest bench. These candidates will restore the balance that we so desperately need on the Court,” Senator Gillibrand said.
The Video CNN Doesnot Want You To See.
http://www.conservativenc.com/index.php/home/The-video-CNN-doesnt-want-you-to-see-.....html
What Thomas Jefferson learned from the Muslim book of jihad
By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
http://www.usvetdsp.com/jan07/jeff_quran.htm
Democrat Keith Ellison is now officially the first Muslim United States congressman. True to his pledge, he placed his hand on the Quran, the Muslim book of jihad and pledged his allegiance to the United States during his ceremonial swearing-in.
Capitol Hill staff said Ellison's swearing-in photo opportunity drew more media than they had ever seen in the history of the U.S. House. Ellison represents the 5th Congressional District of Minnesota.
The Quran Ellison used was no ordinary book. It once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and one of America's founding fathers. Ellison borrowed it from the Rare Book Section of the Library of Congress. It was one of the 6,500 Jefferson books archived in the library.
Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam while in college, said he chose to use Jefferson's Quran because it showed that "a visionary like Jefferson" believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources.
There is no doubt Ellison was right about Jefferson believing wisdom could be "gleaned" from the Muslim Quran. At the time Jefferson owned the book, he needed to know everything possible about Muslims because he was about to advocate war against the Islamic "Barbary" states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli.
Ellison's use of Jefferson's Quran as a prop illuminates a subject once well-known in the history of the United States, but, which today, is mostly forgotten - the Muslim pirate slavers who over many centuries enslaved millions of Africans and tens of thousands of Christian Europeans and Americans in the Islamic "Barbary" states.
Over the course of 10 centuries, Muslim pirates cruised the African and Mediterranean coastline, pillaging villages and seizing slaves.
The taking of slaves in pre-dawn raids on unsuspecting coastal villages had a high casualty rate. It was typical of Muslim raiders to kill off as many of the "non-Muslim" older men and women as possible so the preferred "booty" of only young women and children could be collected.
Young non-Muslim women were targeted because of their value as concubines in Islamic markets. Islamic law provides for the sexual interests of Muslim men by allowing them to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as their fortunes allow.
Boys, as young as 9 or 10 years old, were often mutilated to create eunuchs who would bring higher prices in the slave markets of the Middle East. Muslim slave traders created "eunuch stations" along major African slave routes so the necessary surgery could be performed. It was estimated that only a small number of the boys subjected to the mutilation survived after the surgery.
When American colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776, American merchant ships lost Royal Navy protection. With no American Navy for protection, American ships were attacked and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the "Dey of Algiers"--an Islamist warlord ruling Algeria.
Because American commerce in the Mediterranean was being destroyed by the pirates, the Continental Congress agreed in 1784 to negotiate treaties with the four Barbary States. Congress appointed a special commission consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, to oversee the negotiations.
Lacking the ability to protect its merchant ships in the Mediterranean, the new America government tried to appease the Muslim slavers by agreeing to pay tribute and ransoms in order to retrieve seized American ships and buy the freedom of enslaved sailors.
Adams argued in favor of paying tribute as the cheapest way to get American commerce in the Mediterranean moving again. Jefferson was opposed. He believed there would be no end to the demands for tribute and wanted matters settled "through the medium of war." He proposed a league of trading nations to force an end to Muslim piracy.
In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the "Dey of Algiers" ambassador to Britain.
The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress' vote to appease.
During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the Dey's ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.
In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."
For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800.
Not long after Jefferson's inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress.
Declaring that America was going to spend "millions for defense but not one cent for tribute," Jefferson pressed the issue by deploying American Marines and many of America's best warships to the Muslim Barbary Coast.
The USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, USS Chesapeake, USS Argus, USS Syren and USS Intrepid all saw action.
In 1805, American Marines marched across the desert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves.
During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States, crumbling as a result of intense American naval bombardment and on shore raids by Marines, finally officially agreed to abandon slavery and piracy.
Jefferson's victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine Hymn, with the line, "From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli, We fight our country's battles in the air, on land and sea."
It wasn't until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates.
Jefferson had been right. The "medium of war" was the only way to put and end to the Muslim problem. Mr. Ellison was right about Jefferson. He was a "visionary" wise enough to read and learn about the enemy from their own Muslim book of jihad.
Obama's Partisan Pentagon
by Rowan Scarborough
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=31826
Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ sweeping gag order prohibiting senior military officers from discussing the 2010 defense budget is raising fears of politicizing the Pentagon.
Six Republican House members wrote to Gates on May 5, saying his requirement that generals, admirals and senior civilians sign a non-disclosure agreement seems so broad the signers may withhold candid testimony on Capitol Hill.
The letter comes amid a disclosure of another apparent politicization of the Pentagon. Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, (D-Mi), sent a letter to Gates on February 2 asking that the Defense Department Inspector General re-do a January report that cleared the Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon of any wrongdoing in providing briefings some 70 retired military TV analysts. Gates relayed the letter to the acting inspector general, and subsequently the IG report was withdrawn.
The gag-order letter, spearheaded by Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), reveals a far-reaching agreement that could affect future testimony, not just 2010 budget deliberations inside the Pentagon. Gates announced his 2010 decisions on April 6, scaling back some of former president George W. Bush's key defense policies.
The gag-order covers information "predecisional or otherwise, concerning the administration's deliberation of the nature and amounts of the president's budget for fiscal 2010, and any supplemental budget request submitted during the current fiscal year." Military sources saying it is the first time -- at least in recent memory -- they recall a defense secretary requiring the Joint Chiefs, service secretaries and senior political appointees to sign a no-talk pledge. Usually, such requirements are done orally via the secretary office, and often ignored.
To Forbes, a House Armed Services member, and five other congressmen, the limits, in effect, censor future testimony.
"Can I expect a candid answer from a senior military official when I ask them about the process used to establish priorities, either now or after the president's detailed budget is released to the public?" the six Republicans asked Gates. "Members of Congress deserve candid answers from senior military officers that are not suppressed or censored -- either directly, or implicitly via culture of regulations that muzzle their independent professional judgment."
Noting Congress' constitutional duty to fund the military, the letter adds, "I am concerned that these restrictions on the deliberation of these tradeoffs are reflected in the president's budget this year and future years severely and unnecessarily limits the Congress in these constitutional duties."
The gag-order has sent a chill through the Pentagon. Some bureaucrats who normally talk to reporters on background, not attribution, responded to questions in recent weeks by saying they had been ordered not to talk.
Gates imposed the order to prevent leaks to the press and Congress, as he, his staff and military leaders negotiated major changes in defense policy, such as: cutting missile defense ground-based interceptors; freezing the F-22 fighter buy at 187; drastically scaling back the Army's battlefield Future Combat System; and retiring 250 Air Force fighters in one year alone.
The Pentagon denies the non-disclosure edict has chilled, or politicized, the building.
"Now that the budget is out, they can talk about anything that's other than security classification or predecisional information," said Robert Hale, the Pentagon's top budget officer.
The term "predecisional" is what rankles some in Congress. At hearings, military witnesses may give short, or incomplete answers, for fear of disclosing a pending decisions and risking Gates' anger.
"Secretary Gates' intention was to prevent leaks so that he could do this holistic rollout that you saw him do on April 6," Vice Adm. Steve Stanley, a budget director for the Joint Chiefs, told reporters. "He really wanted to make sure that he had the ability to put the whole story out before it started getting picked apart because of a specific piece of information leaking."
A chilling effect inside the building?
The service chiefs were part of all these discussions, and none of them are shrinking violets," he said. "They were not intimidated at all."
Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, told HUMAN EVENTS that the Gates’ goal was not to silence debate but to enhance it by stopping piecemeal information from becoming public, thus influencing the internal debate.
"This budget was gong to be one greater than the sum of its parts," he said. "It was important he be able to solicit input from all senior leaders .... their opinions, their unvarnished thoughts on this."
"He was able to bring forward a coherent budget that presented a presented a coherent strategy and that was what we were trying to achieve," he said.
The non-disclosure agreement reads in part, "I recognize that a significant factor in the successful and proper preparation and completion of the President's budget is the strict confidentiality that must be observed by all government participants in the planning, programming, and budgeting process, and that a failure to comply with these confidentiality requirements may compromise the administration's ability to formulate and submit its budget."
New York Times-Driven Do-Over of IG Report?
Then there is the case of Senate Armed Services Chairman Levin, a committed foe of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Levin pushed the Pentagon inspector general to investigate the Rumsfeld Pentagon practice of briefing some 70 retired military analysts who offer opinion/assessments on TV, radio and in print.
His request followed a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in the New York Times that accused the analysts of winning contracts and other improprieties through the contacts made as a result of the Pentagon outreach program.
Rumsfeld’s people denied the charge. One referred to the Times' stories as fiction. In January, the IG come out with a report that exonerated Rumsfeld's men and apparently the military analysts as well. It said it found no evidence that any analysts got contracts for any companies they represented. It also found the program complied with existing laws and regulations.
Levin, who as chairman will have a big say in naming the next IG, was unhappy.
In February, he went directly to Gates. He wrote a letter, first disclosed in The Washington Times, expressing displeasure at the findings. He urged Gates to have the IG office, now run by an acting director, review the report and open up a whole new area of inquiry: the analysts' personal finances.
"While the report finds insufficient evidence to determine that any contractor received a competitive advantage as a result of its ties to retired military analysts, the report fails to assess whether the retired military analysts themselves obtained financial benefits from contractors as a result of their favorable access to DoD information and officials," Levin wrote. "I would appreciate if you would task the inspector general to conduct an additional review and analysis to address these issues."
Gates complied, telling Levin in a March 3 letter, "I have forwarded your concerns to the acting inspector general and asked that he conduct the additional review and analysis that you requested."
Earlier this month, the IG took the extraordinary step of withdrawing the entire report, raising the question of whether Levin and Gates were exercising improper control of the Inspector General, established by law to be entirely independent of political manipulation.
The IG's own written standards contain this admonition:
"The Inspector General and OIG staff must be free both in fact and appearance from personal, external, and organizational impairments to independence.. External impairments to independence occur when the OIG staff is deterred from acting objectively and exercising professional skepticism by pressures, actual or perceived, from management and employees of the reviewed entity or oversight organizations."
"Presumably that includes sitting U.S. senators," an aide to former Secretary Rumsfeld told HUMAN EVENTS.
Taken separately, the gag order and the IG report do-over are troubling at least. Together, they may signal an unprecedented politicization of the Pentagon including the professional military leadership and the independent-by-law inspector general.
"The e-mail Bag"
Does Your Campground Have a BC?
http://llerrahmusic.com/viewcard.php?code=236079
Boy’s Lesson
A young boy went up to his father and asked him, 'Dad, what is the difference between 'potentially' and 'realistically'?'
The father thought for a moment, then answered, 'Go ask your mother if she would sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars.
Then ask your sister if she would sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars, and then ask your brother if he'd sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars.
Come back and tell me what you learn from that.'
So the boy went to his mother and asked, 'Would you sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars?'
The mother replied, 'Of course I would! We could really use that money to fix up the house and send you kids to a great University!'
The boy then went to his sister and asked, 'Would you sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars?'
The girl replied, 'Oh my Gawd! I LOVE Brad Pitt I would sleep with him in a heartbeat, are you nuts?'
The boy then went to his brother and asked, 'Would you sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars?'
'Of course,' the brother replied. 'Do you know what a million bucks would buy?'
The boy pondered the answers for a few days and then went back to his dad.
His father asked him, 'Did you find out the difference between 'potentially' and 'realistically'?' The boy replied,
'Yes, 'Potentially', you and I are sitting on three million dollars ...
But 'realistically', we're living with two hookers and a queer.'
In Life, you don't stop laughing because you grow old, You grow old because you stop laughing!!!
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