Is there a majority of the RNC Executive Committee membership who has the courage to clean up the Republican National Committee? This means starting with the National Chairman. The GOP Platform is the foundation of our party which starts in each community at the precinct level, and advancing through each level, to be approved with the RNC Executive Committee. Our GOP Platform is an entity which we should govern from. Hiring the Chairman to the RNC who doesn’t believe in the basics of our platform is comparable to employing a minister, whom upon leaving the pulpit, stops by the brothel to spend the afternoon with the ladies.
Ronald Reagan, in 1975, said “A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers.” When Ronald Reagan said to build a “big tent”, so many fail to understand that President Reagan was saying was to build on a firm rock based on a resolved foundation of fiscal and social values. Others mistakenly seem to believe that President Reagan was allowing anyone with any radical left-wing issues to be part of the GOP leadership. Candidates and elected officials must live by the GOP Platform if they want support from the Republican Party. The GOP as a political organization is not a social club for all to believe in, live by, or support.
There are many Conservative Republicans all across America crying out for good solid GOP leadership at the top who supports fiscal and moral issues. There are many GOP leaders across America who fit this description. Why does the RNC Executive Committee neglect to employ these? With good solid moral leadership who support the GOP Platform, the money will come in. You, as members of the Executive Committee, have a responsibility to make sure each and every contributor resources are spent on solid RNC Platform issues and/or supporting candidates with fiscal and moral issue candidates.
So often, we criticize the Democrat Party for their left-wing radical issues and doing so is justified. It often appears there are others within the RNC bureaucracies who are just as doubtful as some of the Democrat Party.
Please, for the GOP and for a sound fiscal and social America, clean up the Republican National Committee. Make all Americans proud to be a member of the GOP. American voters are depending on the GOP to compose some corrective measures in support of fiscal and moral issues. Americans are waiting! Please act now!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20100331
ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20100331
Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
This is all about "Salvation": The "Son Rising" at "Sunday Sunrise".
"Daily Motivations"
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make
them otherwise." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Failure lies not in falling down. Failure lies in not getting up." -- Chinese proverb
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. -- Napoleon Hill
People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily. -- Zig Ziglar
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. (Romans 16:20)
God is more powerful than all the rulers on earth. Do the nuclear capabilities, chemical weapons, and military strength of other countries frighten you? We do not need to fear. The prophet Isaiah writes, "All the nations of the world are nothing in comparison with Him. They are but a drop in the bucket, dust on the scales." (Isaiah 40:15)
We need not fear that any one person or nation will put God to the test. He is so far above our earthly governments that they can do nothing outside His power. No ruler or army can change any plan that God has made.
God is also infinitely more powerful than Satan and his evil legions. God is not intimidated by the devil's rebellious hatred. God is the Creator; Satan is a created being who can operate only within the prescribed limits God places on him.
The Book of Matthew records Jesus' encounter with two men who were demon-possessed. The demons immediately recognized the Son of God's power by saying, "Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?" They requested that He let them go into a nearby herd of pigs. He said one powerful word---"Go!" And they did. In response, the pigs ran over a cliff to their deaths. (Matthew 8:28-32, NIV).
As Christians, sometimes we feel that the forces of evil have the upper hand. But our almighty God fights for us. How encouraging it is to know that God is all-powerful!
Your View of God Really Matters …
What do you fear most? Where has evil touched your life? If you really believed God was all-powerful, what impact would it have in this area? Today, choose to find true freedom as you rely on God's power rather than your own.
"The Patriot Post"
"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." --Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791
"We are not to consider ourselves, while here, as at church or school, to listen to the harangues of speculative piety; we are here to talk of the political interests committed to our charge." --Fisher Ames, speech in the United States House of Representatives, 1789
"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." --Samuel Adams
Upright
"The more we come to rely on government, the fewer freedoms we will enjoy. Government will start dictating what we can own, eat and drive, how much of our money they will let us keep, how we run our businesses, how many -- if any -- guns we can own, and what we may and may not say. Oh, wait! They are already doing that. To preserve freedom we must fight for it." --columnist Cal Thomas
"True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another." --economist Walter E. Williams
"With their backs to the wall, Democratic leaders are preparing a complicated plan to pass their national health care bill. Standing in the way are Democrats who oppose the bill, whether on principle or out of fear that voting for a wildly unpopular measure will spell defeat for them in November. If you think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to let them off easy, allowing them to kill the party's top policy priority in more than a generation -- well, that's not gonna happen. Democrats who are considering voting against the bill are about to experience arm-twisting, threats, and pressure like they've never experienced." --columnist Byron York
"In my entire career, I have never been as confounded as I am over President Obama and the Democratic leadership's obsession with a piece of legislation that not one major national poll has shown to be popular. ... So I have to ask, why are the president and the leaders of Congress willing to see their entire party and a multitude of other policy proposals go down in flames over something that the public can't stand? ... Folks, this is nothing more than a power grab. It's an effort to take one of the most essential elements of every person's life -- their health -- and put it under the control of government." --columnist Matt Towery
"The president cannot show us he is looking out for our interests and our future by forcing a quick, partisan vote on an issue that will impact not only this time but generations to come. This is especially true since he was so adamant in his opposition to using this very parliamentary measure in governance during his campaign. And he cannot show us that he is listening when polls show that only 35-40 percent of Americans support this bill." --radio talk-show host Michael Reagan
Dezinformatsia
Delusions from a parallel universe: "Campaign promises are about getting elected; once there, they are quickly forgotten. Courage is not a word you hear very often in discussions about politics. Not Barack Obama. Whether or not you support or even understand his health care plan -- and the polls suggest that right now most Americans don't -- you must admit this: Obama is a man who does everything humanly possible to keep his promises. He promised health care reform, and he is risking his presidency to deliver it. If that's not courage, what is?" --political commentator Susan Estrich (Try blind ideology.)
Oh no! "Now that we have finally arrived at the do-or-die moment for Obama's signature issue, we face the alarming prospect that his presidency could be toast if he doesn't make good on a year's worth of false starts. And it won't even be the opposition's fault. If too many Democrats in the House defect, health care will be dead." --New York Times columnist Frank Rich
Propaganda FAIL: "John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings." --Christian Science Monitor staff writer Peter Grier (Oops, Bedell was a registered Democrat and an anti-Bush 9/11 "truther.")
Rather racist: "One, part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama's leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. 'Listen he just hasn't been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death.' And a version of, 'Listen he's a nice person, he's very articulate' -- this is what's been used against him -- 'but he couldn't sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.'" --HDNet's Dan Rather trying to put words in Republicans' mouths
Village Idiots
You don't say: "I have thus far failed, and our world has thus fair failed to respond adequately to this crisis." --Algore on his efforts to educate the world about climate change
Unsolicited advice: "I understand you may be looking to replace Rahm Emanuel as your chief of staff. I would like to humbly offer myself, yours truly, as his replacement. I will come to D.C. and clean up the mess that's been created around you. I will work for $1 a year. I will help the Dems on Capitol Hill find their spines and I will teach them how to nonviolently beat the Republicans to a pulp. And I will help you get done what the American people sent you there to do." --from an open letter to BO from crockumentarian Michael Moore
Useful idiot: "Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. ... [T]ruly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies." --actor Sean Penn on his buddy Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan dictator (No wonder they get along so well!)
In need of remedial history: "Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?" --actor Tom Hanks promoting his upcoming HBO miniseries "The Pacific"
Somehow not comforting: "Believe me, if we were charting this administration as a political exercise, the first thing we would have done would not have been a massive recovery act, stabilizing the banks and helping to keep the auto companies from collapsing. Those would not even be the first hundred things he would want to do." --White House adviser David Axelrod
Short Cuts
"Nancy Pelosi, the speaker and leader of the San Francisco Democrats, says her members 'are very excited about what comes next.' For many of them, that's 'excited' as in 'hysterical.'" --Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden
"So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that 'now is the hour when we must seize the moment,' the same moment he's been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats." --columnist Mark Steyn
"President Obama met with ten House Democrats opposed to the health care bill. He did all he could to get their votes. He promised to campaign for them in their districts and when that didn't work, he threatened to campaign for them in their districts." --comedian Argus Hamilton
"These self-anointed intellectuals are people who think that those who believe in God and Jesus Christ, those who 'cling to their guns and their religion,' are a lower form of animal life, while they, themselves, have no problem whatever accepting Obama as a messiah and, in the past, deifying the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Let's face it, when you kneel in a church, you're accepting that there is something greater and wiser than yourself in the universe. When, on the other hand, you kneel to a left-wing politician, you're merely emulating Monica Lewinsky." --columnist Burt Prelutsky
"ACU"
ACORN is playing dead.
Since ACU began taking on ACORN we have scored a number of victories.
We have helped expose their federal funding, to the tune of millions of taxpayer dollars. We exposed their connection to the mortgage meltdown that led our nation into financial crisis and their connection to Barack Obama's campaign - remember our ACU videos?
It didn't take long before other brave people stepped forward to expose them for what they had been up to: criminal enterprises masked as community efforts.
So when Congress finally had the will power to start removing their federal funding we cheered, and we supported their efforts.
Now our newspapers are reporting that ACORN is dead.
But, it is critical that as ACU activists you know ACORN is not gone, they are merely rolling over and playing dead like a dog in our nation's backyard.
They are trying to hide under other names so they can come back stronger than ever.
We need to keep the pressure on Congress and the liberal Democrats who supported them to not fund any ACORN spin offs. Tax dollars do not belong with ACORN related subsidiaries!
TELL CONGRESS: DO NOT FUND ANY ACORN-RELATED GROUPS. WE DO NOT WANT OUR TAX DOLLARS BEING SPENT WITH ACORN OR THEIR SPIN-OFFS. WE ARE WATCHING!
Shakespeare wrote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet..." However, every rose has its thorn we know ACORN, and their related groups, for who they are.
The Metro section of the Washington post recently wrote, "ACORN's Capitol Hill office is shutting down... National group making broad closures but it hasn't dissolved."
The story continued that, "The Capitol Hill office which had become an increasingly important location for ACORN is shutting down... after the organization was hammered by scandal." However, Michael McCray, a member of a breakaway group of ACORN leaders said, "they're looking forward to replacing ACORN with something that is an effective advocate."
The key words are "it hasn't dissolved." ACORN is claiming to some they are going away, while telling others they are staying put if even operating under a different name.
We need to nip them in the bud.
TELL CONGRESS: DO NOT FUND ANY ACORN-RELATED GROUPS. WE DO NOT WANT OUR TAX DOLLARS BEING SPENT WITH ACORN OR THEIR SPIN-OFFS. WE ARE WATCHING!
Time is of the essence.
Another election is approaching. Their leaders will try to corrupt this election process just like they did in the past. Our economy is just beginning to recover from the disastrous policies they pushed for subprime mortgages. The criminal enterprises they encouraged will look for an outlet.
As USA Today's headline recently screamed: "Vows to pick up where ACORN left off are made," and quoting critic Matthew Vadum who said he truly "believes it will re-emerge."
Call your local talk radio and tell them that ACORN isn't dead. Write on blogs to tell people that ACORN isn't dead. Send letters to the editor exposing the group's leaders and keep the pressure on to tell people that ACORN isn't dead.
And help ACU tell Congress: DO NOT FUND ANY ACORN-RELATED GROUPS. WE DO NOT WANT OUR TAX DOLLARS BEING SPENT WITH ACORN OR THEIR SPIN-OFFS. WE ARE WATCHING!
Sincerely,
Dennis Whitfield
Executive Vice President, ACU
Former Reagan Deputy Secretary of Labor
P.S. FOXNews recently reported, "The Chicago office for the community activist group, known as ACORN, seems to have disappeared. (BUT) In its place; a company called Affordable Housing Centers of America, [is] located in the same office, with apparently many of the same employees. Like we said, ACORN isn't dead. Help keep the pressure on Congress to stop any funding of ACORN or ACORN-related groups. Sign the Petition Letter effort here!
"The Web"
RecallCongressNow.org
http://www.theacru.org/acru/mark_levin_on_recallcongressnoworg_328/
Our long national ObamaCare nightmare is just beginning
Conn Carroll - Guest Columnist
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=955292
If you are tired of our nation's year-long healthcare debate and you were hoping that the passage of President Barack Obama's healthcare bill would settle anything, then Politico has some bad news for you: the real fight is just getting started.
This week, a coalition of leftist groups began to sink millions of dollars into television advertising and astroturf events selling the plan to the American people. But as a Washington Post poll conducted after passage last week shows, the Obama administration and their leftist allies face a steep climb.
The top line numbers are bad but not daunting for the pro-ObamaCare forces: 50 percent of Americans oppose the changes in the new law while 46 percent support them. But the numbers also show that most Americans believe the new law will cause "the overall healthcare system in this country" to get worse, "the quality of the healthcare you receive" to get worse, and "your health insurance coverage" to get worse. The poll also shows that most Americans believe the law will weaken Medicare and that there is "too much government involvement in the nation's healthcare system." And strong majorities of Americans believe ObamaCare will increase the federal budget deficit (65%), increase "your healthcare costs" (55%), and increase "overall costs of healthcare in this country" (60%). The American people are right on all counts. And if the events of last week are any indication, these beliefs will only harden over time.
Pitching his failed stimulus plan back in February of last year, President Obama told a factory in East Peoria, Illinois, "So what's happening at this company tells us a larger story about what's happening with our nation's economy, because, in many ways, you can measure America's bottom line by looking at Caterpillar's bottom line."
Well, Caterpillar was quick to inform the markets exactly what ObamaCare meant for its bottom line. Caterpillar announced that ObamaCare would raise its insurance costs by at least 20 percent -- or more than $100 million -- just in the first year of the healthcare overhaul program. And Caterpillar was not alone. Other Fortune 500 firms quickly followed suit announcing ObamaCare hits to their bottom line including: Deere & Co., $150 million; AK Steel, $31 million; 3M, $90 million; Valero Energy, $20 million; and AT&T, $1 billion. The consulting firm Towers Watson tells the Wall Street Journal that the total hit this year will reach nearly $14 billion. America's employers simply can't sustain losses like these, so many of these companies, including Verizon, have informed their employees to expect significant changes to their current healthcare benefits.
The leftist majorities in Congress were incensed that America's employers would dare warn their investors about the costs of ObamaCare at the same time as the Obama administration's national sales pitch was set to begin. So using the full force of the federal government to bully and harass America's job creators, House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-California) sent letters to the CEOs of Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon, and AT&T demanding all documents "from January 1, 2009, through the present" regarding "any analyses related to the projected impact of healthcare reform" and "any documents, including e-mail messages, sent to or prepared or reviewed by senior company officials related to the projected impact of healthcare reform." Waxman intends to haul these CEOs in front of the Subcommitte on Oversight and Investigations, which just happens to be chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Michigan), for a hearing on April 21.
While it is unfortunate that the left in Congress believes our nation's business leaders' time is best spent being browbeaten by congressmen for not doing more to support their policy preferences, the American public should look forward to these hearings. The more information the American public is given about ObamaCare, the more they will oppose it. The more they oppose it, the easier it will be to repeal it. We have a long road ahead of us, but eventually the ObamaCare nightmare will end.
Conn Carroll is the assistant director for The Heritage Foundation's Strategic Communications and he serves as editor of The Foundry, the think tank's rapid-response policy blog. This column is posted with permission.
Steele Takes Fire for RNC Sex Club, High-End Expenses
http://newsmax.com/Headline/sex-club-republican-expenses/2010/03/29/id/354165?s=al&promo_code=9A97-1
WASHINGTON – The Republican National Committee spent $1,946 last month at a sex-themed Hollywood club that features topless dancers and bondage outfits. Now the GOP wants its money back.
Listed in a monthly financial report, the amount is itemized as expenses for meals at Voyeur West Hollywood.
RNC spokesman Doug Heye said Monday the committee doesn't know the details of how the money was spent, all who may have attended or the nature of the outing, except to say it was an unauthorized event and that the expenditure was inappropriate.
The RNC will be reimbursed by Erik Brown of Orange, Calif., the donor-vendor who billed the committee for the club visit, Heye said.
Brown did not respond to an e-mail and phone message seeking comment.
Since November, the RNC has paid Brown's company, Dynamic Marketing Inc., about $19,000 for printing and direct-mail services, campaign spending reports show. He has contributed several thousand dollars to the party.
The most recent financial disclosure report said the RNC spent more than $17,000 for private planes in February and nearly $13,000 for car services. Heye said such services are used only when needed.
The $1,946 for meals at Voyeur West Hollywood was the most eye-catching item in the monthly report. RNC Chairman Michael Steele, whose spending decisions have angered some donors in this midterm election year, had nothing to do with the nightclub expenditure, Heye said.
The conservative group Concerned Women for America said the RNC should disclose more about the episode.
"Did they really agree to reimburse nearly $2,000 for a bondage-themed night club?" group president Penny Nance asked in a statement. "Why would a staffer believe that this is acceptable, and has this kind of thing been approved in the past?"
Much of the most lavish spending by the major political parties is associated with fundraisers, which often target wealthy people.
The RNC spent $144,549 for rooms at the Four Seasons Resort in Jackson Hole, Wyo., in 2009. On March 19, 2009, it spent $31,980 for catering by the Breakers Palm Beach in Florida.
The RNC paid $18,361 over the past several months to the "Tiny Jewel Box" in Washington for "office supplies," which may have included trinkets or gifts for big donors. It spent $13,622 at Dylan's Candy Bar in New York City.
Some Republican officials and donors have complained about Steele's spending decisions, saying the party should devote every available dollar to trying to win House and Senate races this fall. He held this year's four-day winter meeting at a beachfront hotel in Hawaii, although it often takes place in Washington.
Some donors grumbled when Steele spent more than $18,000 to redecorate his office. Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor, also has received substantial fees for making speeches, even though the RNC pays him a full-time salary.
The expenses were first brought to light by the Web site Daily Caller. The article led with Steele's expenses on charter aircraft and the suggestion by an unnamed source that he was looking for the RNC to buy an airplane to accommodate his travel.
Heye told Fox News the article was misleading because it did not distinguish Steele's expenses from finance and fundraising expenses associated with the purpose of the travel. He added that the story "willfully and erroneously suggests" that Steele was at the club.
"The chairman was never at the location in question, he had no knowledge of the expenditure, nor does he find the use of committee funds at such a location at all acceptable. ... Good reporting would make that distinction crystal clear," Heye said in his statement.
After the rebuke, Jonathan Strong, the reporter who wrote the Daily Caller article, told MSNBC that he never said Steele was at Voyeur, but "I hope to find out whether that's the case in the coming days."
Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson also offered a statement. "To be clear: We did not claim that Michael Steele personally visited Voyeur West Hollywood. In fact, and unfortunately, we still know almost nothing about that trip, including its purpose. If the RNC provides details, we’ll put them on the site immediately."
Steele's supporters say he has brought a refreshing frankness and energy to the party's leadership.
Obama Ignores Senate Republicans, Uses Recess Appointment to Place Embattled Union Lawyer Craig Becker on NLRB
By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/63503
(CNSNews.com) – Flouting Senate Republicans, President Obama used his constitutional authority to make recess appointments on Saurday and placed two Democratic nominees -- union lawyer Craig Becker and labor attorney Mark Pearce -- on the National Labor Relations Board.
Becker, the associate general counsel for both the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, had been blocked for confirmation on Feb. 9, when all 41 Senate Republicans and two Senate Democrats, Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), voted against removing a filibuster against his nomination.
The Pearce nomination was considered less controversial, and Senate Republicans had offered to approve Pearce, a former union attorney in private practice, if Becker’s name was withdrawn. A third nominee, a Republican, was not appointed.
“The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees. But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis,” Obama said in a statement released Saturday by the White House.
Becker and Pearce were two of 15 recess appointments the president made Saturday, the day after Congress left Washington for its Easter recess.
But the Becker appointment was widely seen as a slap in the face to the entire Senate Republican Conference, which sent a letter last week to the president calling on him not to circumvent the Senate by making an appointment while Congress was away on Easter recess.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who, with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), led Senate opposition to Becker, said he was “very disappointed” that the president chose to appoint Becker to the NLRB post while Congress was in recess.
“The U.S. Senate rejected this highly controversial and partisan nominee, and once again the administration showed that it had little respect for the time-honored constitutional roles and procedures of Congress,” McCain said in a statement issued Saturday. “This is clear payback by the administration to organized labor.”
Organized labor lauded the president for doing an end-run around the Senate.
“The appointment of Becker and Pearce to the NLRB is a major step towards renewing access to justice for America's workers,” AFL-CIO spokesman Josh Goldstein told CNSNews.com.
“For more than two years, the NLRB has been crippled by its unnecessary vacancies, leaving working families at a major disadvantage. The hardworking people who make this country run deserve better.”
Employers groups, who opposed Becker’s nomination, warned of the repercussions.
“This recess appointment disregards the Senate’s bipartisan rejection of Craig Becker’s nomination to the NLRB,” Katie Packer, president of the Workforce Fairness Institute, told CNSNews.com.
“Overriding the will of the Senate and providing this special interest payback contradicts the President’s claim to change the tone in Washington. The business community should be on red alert for radical changes that could significantly impair the ability of America’s job creators to compete.”
Biased or Well-Qualified?
Becker is the first attorney to be appointed to the board while still working directly for a union. He currently serves as associate general counsel to both the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
A summa cum laude graduate of Yale, Becker has practiced and taught labor law for 27 years, serving as a law professor at UCLA, University of Chicago and Georgetown law schools.
But in their letter, the GOP senators said Becker never sufficiently answered questions posed to him by Republican members of the Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee – especially Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah.)
“Time and again questions have been raised over Mr. Becker's ability to serve in an honest and impartial manner on the NLRB, yet this administration chose to ignore the questions and concerns and instead forced their will on the American people," McCain said.
McCain and Hatch say that Becker won’t give clear answers about whether, as a member of the president’s transition team, he helped draft President Obama’s pro-union executive orders shortly after the inauguration -- even though he was still an employee of the SEIU.
When asked by Sen. Hatch during his confirmation hearing if he was “involved or responsible in any way” for the executive orders, Becker responded: “As a member of the Presidential Transition Team, I was asked to provide advice and information concerning a possible executive order of the sort described. I was involved in researching, analyzing, preliminary drafting, and consulting with other members of the Transition team.”
Becker is also known for writing that employers should be barred from placing observers at the polls to challenge union ballots -- and should have no right to be heard in unfair labor practices cases.
In a 1993 article in the University of Minnesota Law Review, “Democracy In The Workplace: Union Representation. Elections And Federal Labor Law,” the then-UCLA professor wrote (pages 451-453): “On these latter issues employers should have no right to be heard in either a representation case or an unfair labor practices case, even though Board rulings might indirectly affect their duty to bargain.”
He also wrote. “(E)mployers should neither have legal standing as parties to the representation proceeding nor have rights tantamount to those of candidates in union elections”
The abstract for the article states: "(T)his Article illuminates fundamental differences between the systems of political and labor representation. In light of these differences, it concludes that employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees' election of representatives."
Becker has also stated that his opinion that the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers to form a union, simply by signing a union card -- could be implemented as an administrative matter by the NLRB.
“Craig Becker stands far outside the mainstream of NLRB nominees,” Hatch said. “There is no place on this powerful board for someone who believes that card-check legislation – getting rid of the secret union ballot – can be enacted surreptitiously through regulation.”
The AFL-CIO’s Goldstein dismissed the Senate Republican response.
“Cynical attempts to paint them as biased or radical could not be more dishonest. They are both highly qualified and respected experts,” Goldstein said.
“For eight months the Republican minority blocked these nominations and hypocritically condemned the use of recess appointments ignoring the fact that Bush did so seven times to the NLRB. Putting the NLRB back on track to being a fully functioning Board is a big win for working families,” he added.
Meanwhile, attorneys for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Council say they are filing motions in 12 pending cases they are involved in seeking Becker to step aside and "recuse" himself from participating in the decisions because of his public advocacy of union positions on those issues.
The Vat Cometh
by Charles Krauthammer
http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2010/03/26/the_vat_cometh?page=full&comments=true
WASHINGTON -- As the night follows the day, the VAT cometh.
With the passage of Obamacare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable.
We are now $8 trillion in debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that another $12 trillion will be added over the next decade. Obamacare, when stripped of its budgetary gimmicks -- the unfunded $200 billion-plus doctor fix, the double counting of Medicare cuts, the 10-6 sleight-of-hand (counting 10 years of revenue and only 6 years of outflows) -- is at minimum a $2 trillion new entitlement.
It will vastly increase the debt. But even if it were revenue-neutral, Obamacare pre-empts and appropriates for itself the best and easiest means of reducing the existing deficit. Obamacare's $500 billion of cuts in Medicare and $600 billion in tax hikes are no longer available for deficit reduction. They are siphoned off for the new entitlement of insuring the uninsured.
This is fiscally disastrous because, as President Obama himself explained last year in unveiling his grand transformational policies, our unsustainable fiscal path requires control of entitlement spending, the most ruinous of which is out-of-control health care costs.
Obamacare was sold on the premise that, as Nancy Pelosi put it, "health care reform is entitlement reform. Our budget cannot take this upward spiral of cost." But the bill enacted on Tuesday accelerates the spiral: It radically expands Medicaid (adding 15 million new recipients/dependents) and shamelessly raids Medicare by spending on a new entitlement the $500 billion in cuts and the yield from the Medicare tax hikes.
Obama knows that the debt bomb is looming, that Moody's is warning that the Treasury's AAA rating is in jeopardy, that we are headed for a run on the dollar and/or hyperinflation if nothing is done.
Hence his deficit reduction commission. It will report (surprise!) after the November elections.
What will it recommend? What can it recommend? Sure, Social Security can be trimmed by raising the retirement age, introducing means testing and changing the indexing formula from wage growth to price inflation.
But this won't be nearly enough. As Obama has repeatedly insisted, the real money is in health care costs -- which are now locked in place by the new Obamacare mandates.
That's where the value-added tax comes in. For the politician, it has the virtue of expediency: People are used to sales taxes, and this one produces a river of revenue. Every 1 percent of VAT would yield up to $1 trillion a decade (depending on what you exclude -- if you exempt food, for example, the yield would be more like $900 billion).
It's the ultimate cash cow. Obama will need it. By introducing universal health care, he has pulled off the largest expansion of the welfare state in four decades. And the most expensive. Which is why all of the European Union has the VAT. Huge VATs. Germany: 19 percent. France and Italy: 20 percent. Most of Scandinavia: 25 percent.
American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care. Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation.
Obama set out to be a consequential president, on the order of Ronald Reagan. With the VAT, Obama's triumph will be complete. He will have succeeded in reversing Reaganism. Liberals have long complained that Reagan's strategy was to starve the (governmental) beast in order to shrink it: First, cut taxes -- then ultimately you have to reduce government spending.
Obama's strategy is exactly the opposite: Expand the beast, and then feed it. Spend first -- which then forces taxation. Now that, with the institution of universal health care, we are becoming the full entitlement state, the beast will have to be fed.
And the VAT is the only trough in creation large enough.
As a substitute for the income tax, the VAT would be a splendid idea. Taxing consumption makes infinitely more sense than taxing work. But to feed the liberal social-democratic project, the VAT must be added on top of the income tax.
Ultimately, even that won't be enough. As the population ages and health care becomes increasingly expensive, the only way to avoid fiscal ruin (as Britain, for example, has discovered) is health care rationing.
It will take a while to break the American populace to that idea. In the meantime, get ready for the VAT. Or start fighting it.
Vote Democrats out of Congress
Lisa Miller
545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=25403709686&topic=6590
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, *if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?*
Have you ever wondered why, *if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes,
WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?*
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices, 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi.
She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ .
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them
con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.
Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you.
The e-mail Bag"
You Might Be A Redneck
Thank you Jeff Foxworthy!
You've ever stolen toilet paper.
You think a hot tub is a stolen bathroom fixture.
People hear your car a long time before they see it.
The gas pedal on your car is shaped like a bare foot.
You prefer car keys to Q-tips.
Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
This is all about "Salvation": The "Son Rising" at "Sunday Sunrise".
"Daily Motivations"
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make
them otherwise." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Failure lies not in falling down. Failure lies in not getting up." -- Chinese proverb
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. -- Napoleon Hill
People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily. -- Zig Ziglar
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. (Romans 16:20)
God is more powerful than all the rulers on earth. Do the nuclear capabilities, chemical weapons, and military strength of other countries frighten you? We do not need to fear. The prophet Isaiah writes, "All the nations of the world are nothing in comparison with Him. They are but a drop in the bucket, dust on the scales." (Isaiah 40:15)
We need not fear that any one person or nation will put God to the test. He is so far above our earthly governments that they can do nothing outside His power. No ruler or army can change any plan that God has made.
God is also infinitely more powerful than Satan and his evil legions. God is not intimidated by the devil's rebellious hatred. God is the Creator; Satan is a created being who can operate only within the prescribed limits God places on him.
The Book of Matthew records Jesus' encounter with two men who were demon-possessed. The demons immediately recognized the Son of God's power by saying, "Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?" They requested that He let them go into a nearby herd of pigs. He said one powerful word---"Go!" And they did. In response, the pigs ran over a cliff to their deaths. (Matthew 8:28-32, NIV).
As Christians, sometimes we feel that the forces of evil have the upper hand. But our almighty God fights for us. How encouraging it is to know that God is all-powerful!
Your View of God Really Matters …
What do you fear most? Where has evil touched your life? If you really believed God was all-powerful, what impact would it have in this area? Today, choose to find true freedom as you rely on God's power rather than your own.
"The Patriot Post"
"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." --Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791
"We are not to consider ourselves, while here, as at church or school, to listen to the harangues of speculative piety; we are here to talk of the political interests committed to our charge." --Fisher Ames, speech in the United States House of Representatives, 1789
"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." --Samuel Adams
Upright
"The more we come to rely on government, the fewer freedoms we will enjoy. Government will start dictating what we can own, eat and drive, how much of our money they will let us keep, how we run our businesses, how many -- if any -- guns we can own, and what we may and may not say. Oh, wait! They are already doing that. To preserve freedom we must fight for it." --columnist Cal Thomas
"True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another." --economist Walter E. Williams
"With their backs to the wall, Democratic leaders are preparing a complicated plan to pass their national health care bill. Standing in the way are Democrats who oppose the bill, whether on principle or out of fear that voting for a wildly unpopular measure will spell defeat for them in November. If you think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to let them off easy, allowing them to kill the party's top policy priority in more than a generation -- well, that's not gonna happen. Democrats who are considering voting against the bill are about to experience arm-twisting, threats, and pressure like they've never experienced." --columnist Byron York
"In my entire career, I have never been as confounded as I am over President Obama and the Democratic leadership's obsession with a piece of legislation that not one major national poll has shown to be popular. ... So I have to ask, why are the president and the leaders of Congress willing to see their entire party and a multitude of other policy proposals go down in flames over something that the public can't stand? ... Folks, this is nothing more than a power grab. It's an effort to take one of the most essential elements of every person's life -- their health -- and put it under the control of government." --columnist Matt Towery
"The president cannot show us he is looking out for our interests and our future by forcing a quick, partisan vote on an issue that will impact not only this time but generations to come. This is especially true since he was so adamant in his opposition to using this very parliamentary measure in governance during his campaign. And he cannot show us that he is listening when polls show that only 35-40 percent of Americans support this bill." --radio talk-show host Michael Reagan
Dezinformatsia
Delusions from a parallel universe: "Campaign promises are about getting elected; once there, they are quickly forgotten. Courage is not a word you hear very often in discussions about politics. Not Barack Obama. Whether or not you support or even understand his health care plan -- and the polls suggest that right now most Americans don't -- you must admit this: Obama is a man who does everything humanly possible to keep his promises. He promised health care reform, and he is risking his presidency to deliver it. If that's not courage, what is?" --political commentator Susan Estrich (Try blind ideology.)
Oh no! "Now that we have finally arrived at the do-or-die moment for Obama's signature issue, we face the alarming prospect that his presidency could be toast if he doesn't make good on a year's worth of false starts. And it won't even be the opposition's fault. If too many Democrats in the House defect, health care will be dead." --New York Times columnist Frank Rich
Propaganda FAIL: "John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings." --Christian Science Monitor staff writer Peter Grier (Oops, Bedell was a registered Democrat and an anti-Bush 9/11 "truther.")
Rather racist: "One, part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama's leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. 'Listen he just hasn't been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death.' And a version of, 'Listen he's a nice person, he's very articulate' -- this is what's been used against him -- 'but he couldn't sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.'" --HDNet's Dan Rather trying to put words in Republicans' mouths
Village Idiots
You don't say: "I have thus far failed, and our world has thus fair failed to respond adequately to this crisis." --Algore on his efforts to educate the world about climate change
Unsolicited advice: "I understand you may be looking to replace Rahm Emanuel as your chief of staff. I would like to humbly offer myself, yours truly, as his replacement. I will come to D.C. and clean up the mess that's been created around you. I will work for $1 a year. I will help the Dems on Capitol Hill find their spines and I will teach them how to nonviolently beat the Republicans to a pulp. And I will help you get done what the American people sent you there to do." --from an open letter to BO from crockumentarian Michael Moore
Useful idiot: "Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. ... [T]ruly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies." --actor Sean Penn on his buddy Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan dictator (No wonder they get along so well!)
In need of remedial history: "Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?" --actor Tom Hanks promoting his upcoming HBO miniseries "The Pacific"
Somehow not comforting: "Believe me, if we were charting this administration as a political exercise, the first thing we would have done would not have been a massive recovery act, stabilizing the banks and helping to keep the auto companies from collapsing. Those would not even be the first hundred things he would want to do." --White House adviser David Axelrod
Short Cuts
"Nancy Pelosi, the speaker and leader of the San Francisco Democrats, says her members 'are very excited about what comes next.' For many of them, that's 'excited' as in 'hysterical.'" --Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden
"So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that 'now is the hour when we must seize the moment,' the same moment he's been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats." --columnist Mark Steyn
"President Obama met with ten House Democrats opposed to the health care bill. He did all he could to get their votes. He promised to campaign for them in their districts and when that didn't work, he threatened to campaign for them in their districts." --comedian Argus Hamilton
"These self-anointed intellectuals are people who think that those who believe in God and Jesus Christ, those who 'cling to their guns and their religion,' are a lower form of animal life, while they, themselves, have no problem whatever accepting Obama as a messiah and, in the past, deifying the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Let's face it, when you kneel in a church, you're accepting that there is something greater and wiser than yourself in the universe. When, on the other hand, you kneel to a left-wing politician, you're merely emulating Monica Lewinsky." --columnist Burt Prelutsky
"ACU"
ACORN is playing dead.
Since ACU began taking on ACORN we have scored a number of victories.
We have helped expose their federal funding, to the tune of millions of taxpayer dollars. We exposed their connection to the mortgage meltdown that led our nation into financial crisis and their connection to Barack Obama's campaign - remember our ACU videos?
It didn't take long before other brave people stepped forward to expose them for what they had been up to: criminal enterprises masked as community efforts.
So when Congress finally had the will power to start removing their federal funding we cheered, and we supported their efforts.
Now our newspapers are reporting that ACORN is dead.
But, it is critical that as ACU activists you know ACORN is not gone, they are merely rolling over and playing dead like a dog in our nation's backyard.
They are trying to hide under other names so they can come back stronger than ever.
We need to keep the pressure on Congress and the liberal Democrats who supported them to not fund any ACORN spin offs. Tax dollars do not belong with ACORN related subsidiaries!
TELL CONGRESS: DO NOT FUND ANY ACORN-RELATED GROUPS. WE DO NOT WANT OUR TAX DOLLARS BEING SPENT WITH ACORN OR THEIR SPIN-OFFS. WE ARE WATCHING!
Shakespeare wrote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet..." However, every rose has its thorn we know ACORN, and their related groups, for who they are.
The Metro section of the Washington post recently wrote, "ACORN's Capitol Hill office is shutting down... National group making broad closures but it hasn't dissolved."
The story continued that, "The Capitol Hill office which had become an increasingly important location for ACORN is shutting down... after the organization was hammered by scandal." However, Michael McCray, a member of a breakaway group of ACORN leaders said, "they're looking forward to replacing ACORN with something that is an effective advocate."
The key words are "it hasn't dissolved." ACORN is claiming to some they are going away, while telling others they are staying put if even operating under a different name.
We need to nip them in the bud.
TELL CONGRESS: DO NOT FUND ANY ACORN-RELATED GROUPS. WE DO NOT WANT OUR TAX DOLLARS BEING SPENT WITH ACORN OR THEIR SPIN-OFFS. WE ARE WATCHING!
Time is of the essence.
Another election is approaching. Their leaders will try to corrupt this election process just like they did in the past. Our economy is just beginning to recover from the disastrous policies they pushed for subprime mortgages. The criminal enterprises they encouraged will look for an outlet.
As USA Today's headline recently screamed: "Vows to pick up where ACORN left off are made," and quoting critic Matthew Vadum who said he truly "believes it will re-emerge."
Call your local talk radio and tell them that ACORN isn't dead. Write on blogs to tell people that ACORN isn't dead. Send letters to the editor exposing the group's leaders and keep the pressure on to tell people that ACORN isn't dead.
And help ACU tell Congress: DO NOT FUND ANY ACORN-RELATED GROUPS. WE DO NOT WANT OUR TAX DOLLARS BEING SPENT WITH ACORN OR THEIR SPIN-OFFS. WE ARE WATCHING!
Sincerely,
Dennis Whitfield
Executive Vice President, ACU
Former Reagan Deputy Secretary of Labor
P.S. FOXNews recently reported, "The Chicago office for the community activist group, known as ACORN, seems to have disappeared. (BUT) In its place; a company called Affordable Housing Centers of America, [is] located in the same office, with apparently many of the same employees. Like we said, ACORN isn't dead. Help keep the pressure on Congress to stop any funding of ACORN or ACORN-related groups. Sign the Petition Letter effort here!
"The Web"
RecallCongressNow.org
http://www.theacru.org/acru/mark_levin_on_recallcongressnoworg_328/
Our long national ObamaCare nightmare is just beginning
Conn Carroll - Guest Columnist
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=955292
If you are tired of our nation's year-long healthcare debate and you were hoping that the passage of President Barack Obama's healthcare bill would settle anything, then Politico has some bad news for you: the real fight is just getting started.
This week, a coalition of leftist groups began to sink millions of dollars into television advertising and astroturf events selling the plan to the American people. But as a Washington Post poll conducted after passage last week shows, the Obama administration and their leftist allies face a steep climb.
The top line numbers are bad but not daunting for the pro-ObamaCare forces: 50 percent of Americans oppose the changes in the new law while 46 percent support them. But the numbers also show that most Americans believe the new law will cause "the overall healthcare system in this country" to get worse, "the quality of the healthcare you receive" to get worse, and "your health insurance coverage" to get worse. The poll also shows that most Americans believe the law will weaken Medicare and that there is "too much government involvement in the nation's healthcare system." And strong majorities of Americans believe ObamaCare will increase the federal budget deficit (65%), increase "your healthcare costs" (55%), and increase "overall costs of healthcare in this country" (60%). The American people are right on all counts. And if the events of last week are any indication, these beliefs will only harden over time.
Pitching his failed stimulus plan back in February of last year, President Obama told a factory in East Peoria, Illinois, "So what's happening at this company tells us a larger story about what's happening with our nation's economy, because, in many ways, you can measure America's bottom line by looking at Caterpillar's bottom line."
Well, Caterpillar was quick to inform the markets exactly what ObamaCare meant for its bottom line. Caterpillar announced that ObamaCare would raise its insurance costs by at least 20 percent -- or more than $100 million -- just in the first year of the healthcare overhaul program. And Caterpillar was not alone. Other Fortune 500 firms quickly followed suit announcing ObamaCare hits to their bottom line including: Deere & Co., $150 million; AK Steel, $31 million; 3M, $90 million; Valero Energy, $20 million; and AT&T, $1 billion. The consulting firm Towers Watson tells the Wall Street Journal that the total hit this year will reach nearly $14 billion. America's employers simply can't sustain losses like these, so many of these companies, including Verizon, have informed their employees to expect significant changes to their current healthcare benefits.
The leftist majorities in Congress were incensed that America's employers would dare warn their investors about the costs of ObamaCare at the same time as the Obama administration's national sales pitch was set to begin. So using the full force of the federal government to bully and harass America's job creators, House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-California) sent letters to the CEOs of Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon, and AT&T demanding all documents "from January 1, 2009, through the present" regarding "any analyses related to the projected impact of healthcare reform" and "any documents, including e-mail messages, sent to or prepared or reviewed by senior company officials related to the projected impact of healthcare reform." Waxman intends to haul these CEOs in front of the Subcommitte on Oversight and Investigations, which just happens to be chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Michigan), for a hearing on April 21.
While it is unfortunate that the left in Congress believes our nation's business leaders' time is best spent being browbeaten by congressmen for not doing more to support their policy preferences, the American public should look forward to these hearings. The more information the American public is given about ObamaCare, the more they will oppose it. The more they oppose it, the easier it will be to repeal it. We have a long road ahead of us, but eventually the ObamaCare nightmare will end.
Conn Carroll is the assistant director for The Heritage Foundation's Strategic Communications and he serves as editor of The Foundry, the think tank's rapid-response policy blog. This column is posted with permission.
Steele Takes Fire for RNC Sex Club, High-End Expenses
http://newsmax.com/Headline/sex-club-republican-expenses/2010/03/29/id/354165?s=al&promo_code=9A97-1
WASHINGTON – The Republican National Committee spent $1,946 last month at a sex-themed Hollywood club that features topless dancers and bondage outfits. Now the GOP wants its money back.
Listed in a monthly financial report, the amount is itemized as expenses for meals at Voyeur West Hollywood.
RNC spokesman Doug Heye said Monday the committee doesn't know the details of how the money was spent, all who may have attended or the nature of the outing, except to say it was an unauthorized event and that the expenditure was inappropriate.
The RNC will be reimbursed by Erik Brown of Orange, Calif., the donor-vendor who billed the committee for the club visit, Heye said.
Brown did not respond to an e-mail and phone message seeking comment.
Since November, the RNC has paid Brown's company, Dynamic Marketing Inc., about $19,000 for printing and direct-mail services, campaign spending reports show. He has contributed several thousand dollars to the party.
The most recent financial disclosure report said the RNC spent more than $17,000 for private planes in February and nearly $13,000 for car services. Heye said such services are used only when needed.
The $1,946 for meals at Voyeur West Hollywood was the most eye-catching item in the monthly report. RNC Chairman Michael Steele, whose spending decisions have angered some donors in this midterm election year, had nothing to do with the nightclub expenditure, Heye said.
The conservative group Concerned Women for America said the RNC should disclose more about the episode.
"Did they really agree to reimburse nearly $2,000 for a bondage-themed night club?" group president Penny Nance asked in a statement. "Why would a staffer believe that this is acceptable, and has this kind of thing been approved in the past?"
Much of the most lavish spending by the major political parties is associated with fundraisers, which often target wealthy people.
The RNC spent $144,549 for rooms at the Four Seasons Resort in Jackson Hole, Wyo., in 2009. On March 19, 2009, it spent $31,980 for catering by the Breakers Palm Beach in Florida.
The RNC paid $18,361 over the past several months to the "Tiny Jewel Box" in Washington for "office supplies," which may have included trinkets or gifts for big donors. It spent $13,622 at Dylan's Candy Bar in New York City.
Some Republican officials and donors have complained about Steele's spending decisions, saying the party should devote every available dollar to trying to win House and Senate races this fall. He held this year's four-day winter meeting at a beachfront hotel in Hawaii, although it often takes place in Washington.
Some donors grumbled when Steele spent more than $18,000 to redecorate his office. Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor, also has received substantial fees for making speeches, even though the RNC pays him a full-time salary.
The expenses were first brought to light by the Web site Daily Caller. The article led with Steele's expenses on charter aircraft and the suggestion by an unnamed source that he was looking for the RNC to buy an airplane to accommodate his travel.
Heye told Fox News the article was misleading because it did not distinguish Steele's expenses from finance and fundraising expenses associated with the purpose of the travel. He added that the story "willfully and erroneously suggests" that Steele was at the club.
"The chairman was never at the location in question, he had no knowledge of the expenditure, nor does he find the use of committee funds at such a location at all acceptable. ... Good reporting would make that distinction crystal clear," Heye said in his statement.
After the rebuke, Jonathan Strong, the reporter who wrote the Daily Caller article, told MSNBC that he never said Steele was at Voyeur, but "I hope to find out whether that's the case in the coming days."
Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson also offered a statement. "To be clear: We did not claim that Michael Steele personally visited Voyeur West Hollywood. In fact, and unfortunately, we still know almost nothing about that trip, including its purpose. If the RNC provides details, we’ll put them on the site immediately."
Steele's supporters say he has brought a refreshing frankness and energy to the party's leadership.
Obama Ignores Senate Republicans, Uses Recess Appointment to Place Embattled Union Lawyer Craig Becker on NLRB
By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/63503
(CNSNews.com) – Flouting Senate Republicans, President Obama used his constitutional authority to make recess appointments on Saurday and placed two Democratic nominees -- union lawyer Craig Becker and labor attorney Mark Pearce -- on the National Labor Relations Board.
Becker, the associate general counsel for both the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, had been blocked for confirmation on Feb. 9, when all 41 Senate Republicans and two Senate Democrats, Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), voted against removing a filibuster against his nomination.
The Pearce nomination was considered less controversial, and Senate Republicans had offered to approve Pearce, a former union attorney in private practice, if Becker’s name was withdrawn. A third nominee, a Republican, was not appointed.
“The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees. But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis,” Obama said in a statement released Saturday by the White House.
Becker and Pearce were two of 15 recess appointments the president made Saturday, the day after Congress left Washington for its Easter recess.
But the Becker appointment was widely seen as a slap in the face to the entire Senate Republican Conference, which sent a letter last week to the president calling on him not to circumvent the Senate by making an appointment while Congress was away on Easter recess.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who, with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), led Senate opposition to Becker, said he was “very disappointed” that the president chose to appoint Becker to the NLRB post while Congress was in recess.
“The U.S. Senate rejected this highly controversial and partisan nominee, and once again the administration showed that it had little respect for the time-honored constitutional roles and procedures of Congress,” McCain said in a statement issued Saturday. “This is clear payback by the administration to organized labor.”
Organized labor lauded the president for doing an end-run around the Senate.
“The appointment of Becker and Pearce to the NLRB is a major step towards renewing access to justice for America's workers,” AFL-CIO spokesman Josh Goldstein told CNSNews.com.
“For more than two years, the NLRB has been crippled by its unnecessary vacancies, leaving working families at a major disadvantage. The hardworking people who make this country run deserve better.”
Employers groups, who opposed Becker’s nomination, warned of the repercussions.
“This recess appointment disregards the Senate’s bipartisan rejection of Craig Becker’s nomination to the NLRB,” Katie Packer, president of the Workforce Fairness Institute, told CNSNews.com.
“Overriding the will of the Senate and providing this special interest payback contradicts the President’s claim to change the tone in Washington. The business community should be on red alert for radical changes that could significantly impair the ability of America’s job creators to compete.”
Biased or Well-Qualified?
Becker is the first attorney to be appointed to the board while still working directly for a union. He currently serves as associate general counsel to both the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
A summa cum laude graduate of Yale, Becker has practiced and taught labor law for 27 years, serving as a law professor at UCLA, University of Chicago and Georgetown law schools.
But in their letter, the GOP senators said Becker never sufficiently answered questions posed to him by Republican members of the Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee – especially Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah.)
“Time and again questions have been raised over Mr. Becker's ability to serve in an honest and impartial manner on the NLRB, yet this administration chose to ignore the questions and concerns and instead forced their will on the American people," McCain said.
McCain and Hatch say that Becker won’t give clear answers about whether, as a member of the president’s transition team, he helped draft President Obama’s pro-union executive orders shortly after the inauguration -- even though he was still an employee of the SEIU.
When asked by Sen. Hatch during his confirmation hearing if he was “involved or responsible in any way” for the executive orders, Becker responded: “As a member of the Presidential Transition Team, I was asked to provide advice and information concerning a possible executive order of the sort described. I was involved in researching, analyzing, preliminary drafting, and consulting with other members of the Transition team.”
Becker is also known for writing that employers should be barred from placing observers at the polls to challenge union ballots -- and should have no right to be heard in unfair labor practices cases.
In a 1993 article in the University of Minnesota Law Review, “Democracy In The Workplace: Union Representation. Elections And Federal Labor Law,” the then-UCLA professor wrote (pages 451-453): “On these latter issues employers should have no right to be heard in either a representation case or an unfair labor practices case, even though Board rulings might indirectly affect their duty to bargain.”
He also wrote. “(E)mployers should neither have legal standing as parties to the representation proceeding nor have rights tantamount to those of candidates in union elections”
The abstract for the article states: "(T)his Article illuminates fundamental differences between the systems of political and labor representation. In light of these differences, it concludes that employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees' election of representatives."
Becker has also stated that his opinion that the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers to form a union, simply by signing a union card -- could be implemented as an administrative matter by the NLRB.
“Craig Becker stands far outside the mainstream of NLRB nominees,” Hatch said. “There is no place on this powerful board for someone who believes that card-check legislation – getting rid of the secret union ballot – can be enacted surreptitiously through regulation.”
The AFL-CIO’s Goldstein dismissed the Senate Republican response.
“Cynical attempts to paint them as biased or radical could not be more dishonest. They are both highly qualified and respected experts,” Goldstein said.
“For eight months the Republican minority blocked these nominations and hypocritically condemned the use of recess appointments ignoring the fact that Bush did so seven times to the NLRB. Putting the NLRB back on track to being a fully functioning Board is a big win for working families,” he added.
Meanwhile, attorneys for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Council say they are filing motions in 12 pending cases they are involved in seeking Becker to step aside and "recuse" himself from participating in the decisions because of his public advocacy of union positions on those issues.
The Vat Cometh
by Charles Krauthammer
http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2010/03/26/the_vat_cometh?page=full&comments=true
WASHINGTON -- As the night follows the day, the VAT cometh.
With the passage of Obamacare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable.
We are now $8 trillion in debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that another $12 trillion will be added over the next decade. Obamacare, when stripped of its budgetary gimmicks -- the unfunded $200 billion-plus doctor fix, the double counting of Medicare cuts, the 10-6 sleight-of-hand (counting 10 years of revenue and only 6 years of outflows) -- is at minimum a $2 trillion new entitlement.
It will vastly increase the debt. But even if it were revenue-neutral, Obamacare pre-empts and appropriates for itself the best and easiest means of reducing the existing deficit. Obamacare's $500 billion of cuts in Medicare and $600 billion in tax hikes are no longer available for deficit reduction. They are siphoned off for the new entitlement of insuring the uninsured.
This is fiscally disastrous because, as President Obama himself explained last year in unveiling his grand transformational policies, our unsustainable fiscal path requires control of entitlement spending, the most ruinous of which is out-of-control health care costs.
Obamacare was sold on the premise that, as Nancy Pelosi put it, "health care reform is entitlement reform. Our budget cannot take this upward spiral of cost." But the bill enacted on Tuesday accelerates the spiral: It radically expands Medicaid (adding 15 million new recipients/dependents) and shamelessly raids Medicare by spending on a new entitlement the $500 billion in cuts and the yield from the Medicare tax hikes.
Obama knows that the debt bomb is looming, that Moody's is warning that the Treasury's AAA rating is in jeopardy, that we are headed for a run on the dollar and/or hyperinflation if nothing is done.
Hence his deficit reduction commission. It will report (surprise!) after the November elections.
What will it recommend? What can it recommend? Sure, Social Security can be trimmed by raising the retirement age, introducing means testing and changing the indexing formula from wage growth to price inflation.
But this won't be nearly enough. As Obama has repeatedly insisted, the real money is in health care costs -- which are now locked in place by the new Obamacare mandates.
That's where the value-added tax comes in. For the politician, it has the virtue of expediency: People are used to sales taxes, and this one produces a river of revenue. Every 1 percent of VAT would yield up to $1 trillion a decade (depending on what you exclude -- if you exempt food, for example, the yield would be more like $900 billion).
It's the ultimate cash cow. Obama will need it. By introducing universal health care, he has pulled off the largest expansion of the welfare state in four decades. And the most expensive. Which is why all of the European Union has the VAT. Huge VATs. Germany: 19 percent. France and Italy: 20 percent. Most of Scandinavia: 25 percent.
American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care. Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation.
Obama set out to be a consequential president, on the order of Ronald Reagan. With the VAT, Obama's triumph will be complete. He will have succeeded in reversing Reaganism. Liberals have long complained that Reagan's strategy was to starve the (governmental) beast in order to shrink it: First, cut taxes -- then ultimately you have to reduce government spending.
Obama's strategy is exactly the opposite: Expand the beast, and then feed it. Spend first -- which then forces taxation. Now that, with the institution of universal health care, we are becoming the full entitlement state, the beast will have to be fed.
And the VAT is the only trough in creation large enough.
As a substitute for the income tax, the VAT would be a splendid idea. Taxing consumption makes infinitely more sense than taxing work. But to feed the liberal social-democratic project, the VAT must be added on top of the income tax.
Ultimately, even that won't be enough. As the population ages and health care becomes increasingly expensive, the only way to avoid fiscal ruin (as Britain, for example, has discovered) is health care rationing.
It will take a while to break the American populace to that idea. In the meantime, get ready for the VAT. Or start fighting it.
Vote Democrats out of Congress
Lisa Miller
545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=25403709686&topic=6590
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, *if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?*
Have you ever wondered why, *if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes,
WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?*
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices, 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi.
She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ .
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them
con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.
Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you.
The e-mail Bag"
You Might Be A Redneck
Thank you Jeff Foxworthy!
You've ever stolen toilet paper.
You think a hot tub is a stolen bathroom fixture.
People hear your car a long time before they see it.
The gas pedal on your car is shaped like a bare foot.
You prefer car keys to Q-tips.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20100330
Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
"Daily Motivations"
"The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings." -- Eric Hoffer
"The one thing all famous authors, world class athletes, business tycoons, singers, actors, and celebrated achievers in any field have in common is that they all began their journeys when they were none of these things. Yet still, they began their journeys." -- Mike Dooley
"The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose." -- Michel de Montaigne
"Success is not in having the most of everything, but in making the most of anything." -- From Chuck Sproull
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved. (John 10:9)
A Hindu man heard about Jesus, but he could not comprehend how the great Creator God of the universe could stoop to become a human being. He wondered why God would want to humble Himself to that extent. Because of his religious background, this man had a profound reverence for life. One day as he was walking in a field, he came upon an anthill. He stopped in wonder to observe the activity of these amazing creatures.
Suddenly, he heard the noise of a tractor plowing the fields. He looked up and saw that the plow would soon destroy that anthill. The ants' home would be gone and thousands would be killed. He was frantic. He wanted to save them. He thought, I could write a warning in the dirt, but they would not know how to read it. I could shout to them, but they would not know what I was saying. The only possible way I could communicate with them would be to become an ant myself!
In that moment he saw why God, the Creator of the universe, had made such an incredible sacrifice to become one of us. The God-Man, our Lord Jesus Christ, died on the cross to save us from being plowed under by sin.
Jesus is the object of our faith. He is truly worthy of our trust. By placing our faith in Christ, we received not only the blessings He has planned for us, but His very life. Paul tells us, "It is through faith that a righteous person has life." (Galatians 3:11)
Your View of God Really Matters …
Every time you see an anthill, think about that Hindu man, and thank God for His mercy in sending Jesus to rescue us from destruction.
"The Patriot Post"
"No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave." --Alexander Hamilton
Liberty
"While American politicians and intellectuals have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision. Tyrants denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are the chief supporters of reduced private property rights, reduced rights to profits, and they are anti-competition and pro-monopoly. They are pro-control and coercion, by the state. These Americans who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others. A tyrant's primary agenda calls for the elimination or attenuation of the market. Why? Markets imply voluntary exchange and tyrants do not trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, they seek to replace the market with economic planning and regulation, which is little more than the forcible superseding of other people's plans by the powerful elite. We Americans have forgotten founder Thomas Paine's warning that 'Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.'" --George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams
Insight
"Obviously there is no need of fighting to overcome this single tyrant, for he is automatically defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement: it is not necessary to deprive him of anything, but simply to give him nothing; there is no need that the country make an effort to do anything for itself provided it does nothing against itself. It is therefore the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude. A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it." --French judge, writer, political philosopher Etienne de la Boetie (1530-1563)
Re: The Left
"The abuse of federal political power to intervene in areas such as Americans' private health care could exist only in a nation that no longer holds its leaders accountable to its constitution and that has governmental leadership that regards itself as above its people and its constitution. Sadly, I was listening to an interview the other day in which President Barack Obama described the U.S. Constitution as 'an imperfect document ... a document that reflects some deep flaws ... (and) an enormous blind spot.' He also said, 'The Framers had that same blind spot.' In so doing, the president established a rationale and justification for disregarding the Constitution. Even worse, he placed himself above the Constitution and those 'blind Framers,' who just couldn't see the big picture as he does today. After all, he's the constitutional scholar, and the Framers were just, well, the creators of the document!" --columnist Chuck Norris
The Gipper
"The path we will chart is not an easy one. It demands much of those chosen to govern, but also from those who did the choosing. And let there be no mistake about this: We have come to a crossroad, a time of decision and the path we follow turns away from any idea that government and those who serve it are omnipotent. It is a path impossible to follow unless we have faith in the collective wisdom and genius of the people. Along this path government will lead but not rule, listen but not lecture. It is the path of a Creative Society." --Ronald Reagan
Opinion in Brief
"What was really going on at the [health care] summit was reflected in the persistent, obviously pre-arranged, transparently false theme among the Democrats that, hey, you know, we are not really that far apart, there is really a lot of agreement. That was meant to set the Republicans up so the Democrats could say afterward that the Republicans refused to support Obamacare simply for partisan, political reasons, or because they really were in the pocket of industry, and so the Democrats are justified in ramming it through without them, through reconciliation. That was the real point and goal of the summit. That didn't work because the Republicans were surprisingly good in articulating their reasons for opposing the legislation, and those reasons resonated strongly with the American people. By giving the Republicans such a high profile forum to express these reasons and their far more common sense alternatives, the summit backfired into yet another disastrous loss for Obamacare." --columnist Peter Ferrara
Political Futures
"America is, quite simply, a Center-Right country. Many have cited polling data showing that self-described conservatives outnumber liberals two to one. But that's not nearly so telling as the fact that self-identified conservatives have outnumbered liberals in every year since 1968; when combined with self-proclaimed moderates, the country is enduringly 65 to 75 percent moderate-to-conservative. As president, Bill Clinton initially governed as if he'd won a more Left-leaning mandate than the voters intended. Clinton admitted in a 1995 interview with the then-columnist Ben Wattenberg that he'd gone astray philosophically. With the help of Machiavellian pollster Dick Morris, Clinton recalibrated to the center and saved his presidency. No surprise that [Obama Chief of Staff Rahm] Emanuel's most politically formative years were spent as a Clinton strategist. Yet Obama has indicated that he never considered the Clinton model appropriate or appealing. He wants to be 'transformative' like Ronald Reagan. But such a transformation requires an electorate willing to be and capable of being transformed." --columnist Jonah Goldberg
For the Record
"The deficit for last year was $1.4 trillion. The deficit rose as a share of the gross domestic product from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2009, the highest deficit as a share of GDP since 1945. The projected deficit for the fiscal year that ends in September is another $1.3 trillion. So much for all that fiscal sanity blather from Team Obama in '08. How dishonest. ... [Sen. Jim] Bunning pushed the stop button on the perpetual federal spending machine by holding up a $10 billion package to extend (yet again) unemployment benefits and keep cash flowing to the highway trust fund. Mirabile dictu, he insisted that the Congress should find the money to pay for this -- for example, in unspent 'stimulus' money -- instead of just adding another multibillion-dollar layer to the deficit lasagna. Break out the smelling salts. The network nightly news crews tried to manufacture instant outrage, earning their reputation as the enablers of incessant and unrestrained deficit-building. ... Bunning was right to say if the Congress can't find any place in the federal budget to trim away a measly $10 billion, they won't stop spending anywhere. But the media on this story aren't really on the side of the taxpayers (and debt payers). They're on the side of Team Obama and the debt builders. ... Bunning [wasn't] proposing job cuts -- or even spending cuts. He's using a hold and demanding that legislators of both parties put up or shut up when they declare they're for 'pay as you go' budgeting." --columnist L. Brent Bozell
The Last Word
"Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever expanding number of government jobs will be statists -- sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily 'compassionate' statists, but always statists. The short history of the postwar welfare state is that you don't need a president-for-life if you've got a bureaucracy-for-life: The people can elect 'conservatives,' as the Germans have done and the British are about to do, and the left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who for tuppence-ha'penny or some such would agree to go and warm the seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects strolled in and took their rightful place. Republicans are good at keeping the seat warm. A big-time GOP consultant was on TV crowing that Republicans wanted the Dems to pass ObamaCare because it's so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November. Okay, then what? You'll roll it back -- like you've rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago? Like you've undone the Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel 'n' dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter? Andrew McCarthy concluded a shrewd analysis of the political realities thus: 'Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?' Indeed." --columnist Mark Steyn
"The Web"
Who is rewriting history?
Peter Heck - Guest Columnist
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=954398
As both a history teacher and a conservative, I have to admit to being quite amused by the foaming-at-the-mouth reaction liberals have had recently to the Texas Board of Education. It seems that the board has approved changes to the history curriculum adopted for use in the Texas public school system.
The New York Times, ever the beacon of objectivity and fairness, described the changes as, "put[ting] a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks."
The reason I find this situation amusing is because when you look at the actual changes approved for the curriculum, they demonstrate an effort to undo the revisionist, multicultural, politically correct garbage that has overrun American and world history texts for a generation. In other words, the left isn't worried about history being rewritten; they're worried about seeing the history they've already rewritten being restored.
Take, for example, the curriculum surrounding World War II. In history texts today, the liberal narrative is dominant: that the United States interned Japanese citizens because of fear, prejudice and inherent discrimination against a foreign race. The Texas Board of Education has now required that narrative to include the reality that in addition to Japanese, both Germans and Italians living in the United States during World War II were also interned.
Or consider the treatment of "McCarthyism." Liberal academics have long used high school and college history texts to portray this era as the lowest example of anti-communist paranoia run amuck. But the Texas Board has now passed an amendment requiring that any retelling of McCarthyism include "how the later release of the Venona papers [PDF] confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government."
Are these examples of "putting a conservative stamp on history?" No. They're simply telling the truth.
Though it may be inconvenient for the left in trying to carry forth their self-loathing, Americans-as-imperial-racists agenda, we did intern Germans and Italians (the same race) as well as Japanese.
And though it may be inconvenient for the left in trying to portray all conservatives as paranoid freaks who see communists under their beds, the Venona documents of declassified information did reveal that there were indeed multiple examples of Soviet operatives in high-ranking positions of American government.
Other examples abound. The left may prefer that free-market giants Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek be excluded from school curriculum in deference to John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx, but the reality is that the Texas Board is right to include them in American economics courses.
The left may find that teaching the violence inherent in the Black Panther movement hampers their lopsided retelling of the Civil Rights era, but the reality is that the Texas Board is right to tell students the full story.
And not just the full story, but the true story. In what I think was the most illuminating example of what's happening in textbooks today, Mavis B. Knight, a liberal Democrat from Dallas, proposed that the Texas curriculum require students to study why "the founding fathers...barred the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others."
The problem with Ms. Knight's proposal is that it's simply not true. As the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives pointed out in 1854 while studying this very subject, "At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, [just] not any one [denomination].... The object was not to substitute Judaism or Mohammedanism, or infidelity, but to prevent rivalry among [Christian denominations] to the exclusion of others....There is a great and very prevalent error on this subject in the opinion that those who organized this Government did not legislate on religion."
An error indeed. An error fabricated and perpetuated by the modern left whose allegiance to telling the truth about our past extends only to those phrases, figures, events or occurrences that fit their own ideological agenda.
Ms. Knight is indicative of what the left has been doing to the history textbooks for a generation. They see the events of the past as mere objects to be manipulated, changed, and rewritten so as to provide a catalyst for the social change they desperately desire.
But don't take my word for it. Their current opposition to the inclusion of factual history that they simply don't like, coupled with their continued insistence on trying to include blatantly false propaganda, reveals all you need to know about who is attempting to "rewrite" the pages of our history.
Rep. Burgess: Government Can Force Us to Buy General Motors Products If Obamacare Mandate Upheld in Court
By Nicholas Ballasy, Video Reporter
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=63435
(CNSNews.com) – Representative Michael Burgess (R-Texas) told CNSNews.com that if the mandate in the health care law requiring individuals to purchase health insurance or be penalized is upheld by the courts, the federal government could mandate anything, such as requiring all Americans to purchase a General Motors car.
On Capitol Hill, CNSNews.com asked Representative Burgess, “The Congressional Budget Office has said that never before in the history of the United States has the federal government mandated that any one buy a specific good or service and, of course, the bill includes the individual mandate. Is there a part of the Constitution that you think gives Congress the authority to mandate individuals to purchase health insurance?”
Representative Burgess, himself a doctor, said, “No, I personally do not, and I think that is exactly right. Never before in the history of this country have we had the ability to coerce American citizens to purchase something and then invoke the Commerce clause after we coerce that purchase.”
“It just flies in the face of what a free society should be, so I’m perfectly comfortable with the attorneys general bringing suit against this bill,” said Burgess. “I think it’s the appropriate thing to do. Plus, you also have the equal-protection business of some states being more equal than others and, really, it should be equals among equals, not some states getting special deals to buy off a vote to get the bill passed.”
CNSNews.com also asked Burgess, “If the federal government mandates that you have to purchase health insurance, is there any legal commodity that the federal government cannot require individuals to purchase?”
“That’s the next step and what else?” said Burgess. “Could the federal government require all of us to purchase a General Motors product? And the answer is yes.”
“If this mandate is ruled, upheld by the courts, it opens the door for all kinds of mischief by the federal government,” he said. “We’ll be better off not opening this door or closing it very, very quickly.”
Congressman Jason Chaffetz told CNSNews.com that he “applauds” the states that are stepping up and taking legal action against the federal government. So, 13 attorneys general have sued the federal government over the individual mandate in the health care law.
“I think the mandate is unconstitutional so I applaud the states [that] are going to step up and spend some resources and take this to the courts because I believe it’s unconstitutional,” said Chaffetz. “You have something like 37 states that are filing some sort of lawsuit or another, so, including Utah, and I applaud that.”
Chaffetz was also asked if he thinks there is a limit to what Congress can mandate individuals to do.
“Yeah, I think never before have we seen the federal government mandate that you have to actually purchase,” he said. “You know, I understand they need to tax, but to actually purchase something? I think that steps over the line and I hope the states are victorious in their suits.”
Chaffetz continued: “That’s the worry, that if they can get away with this, the federal government can get away with who knows what? And that’s where there’s got to be limits and balance on this, and clearly the Constitution, I don’t think, you know, allows this to happen. So I hope this country makes the right decision. I really do.”
On the other hand, Democratic Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.) said it is “not likely” the individual mandate will be overturned.
“I’m not a lawyer,” he told CNSNews.com. “I’m told by some pretty smart lawyers that the chances of states overturning this are not likely. The federal law will be pre-eminent but that’s why they make courts. We’ll have an opportunity to find out.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the federal government has never before mandated that Americans buy any good or service. In 1994, when Congress was considering a universal health care plan formulated by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, the CBO studied the plan’s provision that would have forced individuals to buy health insurance and determined it was an unprecedented act.
The CBO stated: “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”
How the Left fakes the hate: A primer
By Michelle Malkin
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/03/26/how-the-left-fakes-the-hate-a-primer/
I’m still on semi-vacation, but the Left never takes a break from falsely accusing the Right of fomenting hatred and violence through political speech. The MSM never takes a break from whitewashing leftist intolerance, death threats, and extremism — and engaging in selective reporting (or rather, non-reporting) of the long history of leftists’ manufacturing of hatred for political gain. My syndicated column fills in the missing context. In related developments, Glenn Reynolds takes a look at a new dubious report of rock-throwing. Erick Erickson shreds Josh Marshall’s specious incitement accusations. Patterico reports on the latest Twitter death threats against the Palin family. (Here’s a reminder about the one a Toronto Star columnist posted about me, which was laughed off by her editor and ignored by her colleagues). Here’s Mary Katharine Ham’s reminder that 7 of the 10 violent incidents during the summer town hall protests were brought to you by Obama-bots and union thugs. And in case you need a quick refresher on the routine liberal ugliness that will never be decried by the civility police, see here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here. For starters. See also: Unhinged.
How the Left fakes the hate: A primer
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010
If you can’t stand the heat, manufacture a hate crime epidemic.
After years of covering racial hoaxes on college campuses and victim sob stories in the public arena, I’ve encountered countless opportunists who live by that demented mindset. At best, the fakers are desperately seeking 15 minutes of infamy. At worst, their aim is the criminalization of political dissent.
Upon decimating the deliberative process to hand President Obama a health care “reform” victory, unpopular Beltway Democrats and their media water-carriers now claim there’s a Tea Party epidemic of racism, harassment, and violence against them. On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a tepid, obligatory statement against smearing all conservatives as national security threats. But her lieutenants had already emptied their tar buckets. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Chris Van Hollen blamed Republican leaders of “stoking the flames.” Democrat House Whip James Clyburn accused the GOP of “aiding and abetting” what he called “terrorism.”
Yet, the claims that Tea Party activists shouted “nigger” at black House Democrats remain uncorroborated. The coffin reportedly left outside Missouri Democrat Rep. Russ Carnahan’s home was used in a prayer vigil by pro-life activists in St. Louis protesting the phony Demcare abortion funding ban in President Obama’s deal-cutting executive order. Videotape of a supposed intentional spitting incident targeting Missouri Democrat Rep. Emanuel Cleaver at the Capitol shows no such thing. Cleaver himself backed off the claim a few days later. He described his heckler to the Washington Post in more passive terms as “the man who allowed his saliva to hit my face.” Slovenliness = terrorism!
The FBI is now investigating the most serious allegation – that Tea Party activists in Virginia are somehow responsible for a cut gas line at the home of Democrat Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother. But instead of waiting for the outcome of that probe, liberal pundits have enshrined the claim as conclusive evidence of the Tea Party reign of terror.
Need more reasons to treat the latest Democrat hysteria with a grain of salt the size of their gargantuan health care bill? Remember:
*In November 2009, Kentucky Census worker Bill Sparkman was found dead in a secluded rural cemetery with the word “Fed” scrawled on his chest with a rope around his neck. The Atlantic Monthly, the Huffington Post, and liberal media hosts stampeded over themselves to blame Fox News, conservative blogs, Republicans, and right-wing radio. Federal, state, and local authorities discovered that Sparkman had killed himself and deliberately concocted a hate crime hoax as part of an insurance scam to benefit his surviving son.
*In mid-October 2008, news outlets from Scranton, Pa., to ABC News, to the Associated Press and MSNBC reported that someone at a Sarah Palin rally shouted “Kill him” when Barack Obama’s name was mentioned. In fact, the Secret Service (which was at the event in full force) couldn’t find a single person to corroborate the story – other than the local reporter for the Scranton Times-Tribune who made an international incident out of the claim. Agent Bill Slavoski “said he was in the audience, along with an undisclosed number of additional secret service agents and other law enforcement officers and not one heard the comment,” the paper reported in a red-faced follow-up. Maybe the shouter is hiding with Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman’s real killer.
*In late October 2008, a gaggle of liberal blogs spread the rumor that a Republican supporter of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s had shouted that Barack Obama was “a nigger” during a campaign rally in Iowa. Video and first-hand accounts showed that the protester did not shout “he’s a nigger,” but “he’s a redistributor.” A lefty activist at the “progressive” Daily Kos blog confirmed the truth – but to this day, the crisis-manufacturing smear lies uncorrected and unretracted across the Internet.
*In September 2009, supporters of Colorado Democrat Rep. John Salazar falsely accused a town hall protester of hurling a death threat at the congressman. Liberal blogs again disseminated the angry Tea Party mob narrative. A week later, the local press quietly reported that Grand Junction police had investigated the incident – and determined the claim was “unfounded.” A police spokeswoman revealed that “[p]eople who witnessed the interaction between the man who made the complaint and the suspect confirmed they never heard any direct threats made regarding Congressman Salazar; the witnesses included a Grand Junction cop “in close proximity when the interaction took place.”
*In late August 2009, as lawmakers faced citizen revolts at health care town halls nationwide, the Colorado Democratic Party decried a vandalism attack at its Denver headquarters. A hammer-wielding thug smashed 11 windows and caused $11,000 in property damage. The perpetrator, Maurice Schwenkler, turned out to be a far Left nutball/transgender activist/single-payer anarchist who had worked for a SEIU-tied 527 group and canvassed for a Democrat candidate. Nevertheless, State Democrat Party chair Pat Waak continued to blame “people opposed to health care” for the attack.
Then, as now, being a Democrat Party official means never having to say you’re sorry for smearing conservative dissent.
Violence: the Democrats' Reichstag fire
Also...Washington talkmeister: Yes, Obamacare can be repealed (Socialized Medicine, Part 15)
By Wes Vernon
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/vernon/100329
Fake anger and indignation are the oldest weapons in the Marxist arsenal. And the Marxists now running the Washington show are following the "Reichstag fire" strategy: Seize on a momentary outrage — magnify it, blame it on the enemy even in the absence of evidence, and use it as a distraction from what you yourself are doing.
Adolf Hitler used that ploy in the early days of his regime when a man-caused fire spread through the Reichstag building that housed Germany's parliament. A lone Dutch insurrectionist was found inside the building, and that was used to conflate the arson to a massive conspiratorial plot by Hitler's enemies to overthrow the government. Thus did Hitler "rally the troops" and consolidate his power.
And always remember — as the Obama-Reid-Pelosi cabal and its fellow oppressives strive mightily to erase from our historical memories — that the real name of Hitler's Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers Party.
Reichstag 2010
87 years later, the Marxist Democrats on Capitol Hill used secrecy, backroom deals, bribery, deceit, and other tactics of Chicago-style thuggery to eke out — by the slimmest of margins — passage of legislation to take over one sixth of the American economy and use the heavy hand of buttinski government to dictate the relationship between you and your doctor.
Supposedly in reaction, some windows were broken in district offices of congressmen who voted for the bill, along with some threatening phone calls and the destruction of a propane connection to a lawmaker's gas grille. Additionally there was the lying unverified report of a racial slur hurled at a black member of Congress. Right away (after closed door strategy meetings), Congressional Democrats — smear buckets in hand — pounced in unison to blame all opponents of their Hitlerian health initiative and demanding that they take responsibility for the violence.
In other words, change the subject and ignore the outrage on the part of millions of Americans distressed by the big-government takeover — including scores of thousands who peacefully assembled on the Capitol Grounds to express their alarm at the arrogance of the elected representatives who ignore their constituents. Just jam Obamacare down our throats and holler the equivalent of "Help! Stop hitting my fist with your face!"
It's happened here
The Reichstag Fire strategy has a long history on these shores. Smaller examples have included the Muslim student complaining of anti-Muslim violence, only to be caught on video setting up the so-called "violence" herself; and the student of "protected" victimhood who had hung a noose in a campus library to spur an outpouring of speeches and demonstrations.
Enter another "Plante rant"
Christopher Plante on The Chris Plante Show (WMAL) here in Washington rhetorically drove head-on into Capitol Hill's fake anger when some brainwashed scripted puppets of the left called his show with their talking points of the day. Here is a sample of the priceless "Plante rant."
"They slime and they slander and they malign. This is part of an orchestrated campaign...to keep people at home. And you know why they're freaked out — and this is an expression of the fact that they are totally freaked out. Their rhetoric is just...it's Hugo Chavez rhetoric — it's just — I'm sorry — your Republican members of the House 'are aiding and abetting terrorism' (a charge uttered by House Democrat Whip James Clyburn). What terrorism, you hack — you sickening — and you know it's 'Well, people need to be responsible on talk radio.' ON talk radio? You're a member of Congress — you're a senior member of Congress — and you're accusing your fellow (congressmen) of aiding and abetting terrorism because of peaceful protest?
"How many arrests were there, Congressman? How many police officers were injured? How many windows were smashed upon Capitol Hill buildings? How many? How many? Tell them about this terrorism that you're so concerned about, you pathetic hack. Y'know — "why this situation is overheated" — why is this situation overheated? That's why it's overheated, because of what the congressman said right there. They're so freaked out because Middle America is waking up and they [the congressional left] mean to shut us up. They mean to make us sit back down, get back on the couch, and their strategy for doing that — and that's what this is — their strategy for doing that is to slime everyone at these protests with tar — with a broad brush saying you're all terrorists.
"Now they're aiding and abetting terrorists? So obviously Tea Party people are terrorists that the Republicans are 'aiding and abetting.' So now they're calling Middle America terrorists. Nancy Pelosi saying out there, with the swastikas and stuff.... Again, that's Lyndon LaRouche [a Democrat] — except one sign that I saw at a rally — one picture of a swastika with a circle and red slash through it — saying no national socialism. That was not an endorsement of Nazism. That was a suggestion that you're the new version of that, Nanny Pelosi.
"And you can agree or disagree with that, but if you're going to go after these people, then let's compare them with liberal protests, which the news media will not do. And they're going to show the peaceful protests of tens of thousands of Americans on the West Front of the Capitol, and then show you the video or that audio I just played of police coming in on horseback to clear out liberals who are smashing the place up? Of course not — of course they're not. The hypocrisy of the news media is staggering."
An interview with Chris Plante — nothing short of repeal
In an e-mail interview with this column, my question to Chris Plante was: Even if the Republicans win big-time in the 2010 congressional elections, how can they achieve outright repeal of the health "care" bill if President Obama is still in the White House to veto the rollback? Overriding a veto is extremely difficult.
Plante: "When the Republicans take control of Congress in January of 2011, they will be in a position to use the purse strings to slow the implementation of the myriad of bad ideas, tax increases, creation of new government bureaucracies, etcetera. Fortunately though, most of the larger really bad ideas are back-loaded and not set to kick in until 2014 and beyond. So the old 'slow roll' will be required until we get a Republican president in there in January of 2013. In the meantime, it's important to continue to highlight the flaws, failings, and corruption hiding in order to raise public awareness. This bill is so full of horrors that it ought to be a great political tool for the Republicans for years to come. It's a near perfect representation of everything that is wrong with Democrat politics. Use that. Every day."
Question: OK, but the Dems are betting that even if Obama fails to gain a second term, by January 2013 (when his current term ends), the law will be three years old. At that point, will it be so embedded in our system as to become another "third rail" entitlement that no politician dares to reverse?
Plante: "Republicans need to emphasize the cost and the fiscal responsibility in the context of the debt and deficit. A new Fox News poll is out today [Thursday] showing that 79% of Americans now believe that the economy could collapse. A truthful and straightforward approach ought to appeal to the majority of Americans. If it doesn't — if we have become an entitlement society — then we're in deep."
So that's the challenge
Americans are outraged and in no mood to throw up their hands and give up. They are "mad as hell" and not about to take it anymore. The challenge is to maintain that outrage day in and day out until this giant step toward wiping out our freedoms is rolled back — completely and forever.
No one should be fooled by this 2700-word intentionally-confusing political bomb tossed at us by these "hacks" afflicted with a jackboot compulsion. Senator Mitch McConnell's campaign challenge is apt: "Repeal and replace."
For the Marxists, this is a "Play it again, Sam" moment. First, bait the "suckers" with candy-coated garbage. Then once they're inside your lair, slam the door shut behind them. Soon, they'll be hooked. From then on, they'll demand more at every election, as their prison becomes the hell-bent angst not unlike that of a drug addict suddenly and forcibly deprived of his addiction. They're counting on a replay of that old script. Or so the oppressives hope. This time, Americans won't be sedated.
QuickNotes: 1 — Alleged "conservative" columnist Kathleen Parker took time off from her usual routine of bashing other conservatives long enough to turn to something constructive: she proves — chapter and verse — that the health "care" bill, coupled with Obama's worthless "executive order," will facilitate abortions at community health centers — thanks to the cave-in by Rep. Bart "30 Pieces of Silver" Stupak. 2 — The debate on Fox News Sunday between former Fla. State House Speaker Marco Rubio and Fla. RINO Gov. Charlie Crist was a classic showdown between principled conservatism (Rubio) and fair-weather conservatism (Crist). They're running in the U.S. Senate primary in their state. (See marcorubionews.com.) The Crist/McCain/Graham "reach across the aisle" style would gain more currency if the "reach out" were a two-way street...i.e., if liberal Dems reciprocated by "reaching out" to pass a basic conservative initiative. Take away Joe Lieberman on national security, and you're left with a "fat chance" that will ever happen. 3 — Outside the Washington area, Chris Plante can be heard at the WMAL website 9 am-noon EST — Mon-Fri.
Man Threatened To Kill Cantor In YouTube Video
Justin Elliott
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/man-threatened-to-kill-cantor-in-youtube-video.php
Rep. Eric Cantor and Norman Leboon (inset)
A 33-year-old Philadelphia man was charged today with threatening to kill Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) in a profanity-strewn Youtube video that has since been pulled down.
In the video, Norman Leboon says Cantor will "receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads. You and your children are Lucifer's abominations."
The San Francisco office of the FBI received a copy of the video on March 26, according to the affidavit in the case. You can read the press release and affidavit on the case here. http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/man-charged-with-threatening-eric-cantor.php
The affidavit paints a picture of Leboon as a deeply disturbed person. When he was visited by federal agents on Saturday, he "stated that he is the 'son of the god of Enoch' and that his father speaks through him. Leboon stated that Eric Cantor is 'pure evil'; will be dead; andthat Cantor's family is suffering because of his father's wrath."
He also told agents that "he had made over 2,000 videos in which he made threats."
Leboon allegedly told agents during their visit that he made the Cantor threat video "approximately three days" before, which would be March 24 -- last Wednesday.
The authorities have not made a connection between the Leboon video and the bullet that landed in Cantor's Richmond campaign office early in the morning last Tuesday after what police described http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/police-on-cantor-incident-were-calling-it-random-gunfire.php as an act of random gunfire.
That incident occurred the day before Leboon allegedly made the video. Cantor described http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/cantor-accuses-dems-of-using-threats-for-political-gain.php?ref=fpb the bullet incident in a press conference Thursday, March 25.
Cantor Spokesman Brad Dayspring released this statement today:
Over the weekend, Congressman Cantor was notified by law enforcement that a threat was made against his life. Law enforcement officials informed Congressman Cantor that the threat was determined as credible and they were responding accordingly. The Congressman was later notified that an arrest was made and a suspect was in custody.
At this time, the Congressman will have no further comment on this threat or the investigation, and asks that inquiries be directed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Congressman is deeply grateful for, and would like to dearly thank all local and federal law enforcement involved, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Attorney's Office in Virginia and Philadelphia, U.S. Capitol Police and the Henrico Police Department in Virginia.
Many of Leboon's videos appear to have been removed from YouTube. But in one clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkN3e13oGaI dated Aug. 23, 2009 that bears his name, he appears to be reading, shirtless, from the Koran. "That he may punish the hypocrites ... men and women who imagine an evil opinion of Allah ... the wrath of Allah is on them."
"I have been warning you all," Leboon says, citing governments and satellites. "You know who I am and what I am." The YouTube description on that clip is "You have been warned Leaders."
He seemed to warn repeatedly about some sort of end-times event to come on Sept. 19, 2009. "You will beg to have your head chopped off ... the angels are hear all of them and god is preparing his wrath. Soon very soon you will all know it and then destruction," he said to the camera in the shirtless video.
Videos tagged with his name involved everything from the stock market collapse to the kids' movie "Babe," and he seemed to have talked about politics and world leaders including President Obama. He also says in another video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_k2LqMpylU&feature=channel where he talks about child molestation, "Leaders you will perish" and " I control your jets your missiles, I control everything."
(Additional reporting by Christina Bellantoni.)
Obama birth certificate issue more urgent than ever
By Joan Swirsky
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/swirsky/100328
Now that the regime currently occupying the White House has bribed, threatened, intimidated, bullied, manipulated, and cut unconstitutional and illegal deals with Democrats in exchange for their votes for the totalitarian nightmare of socialized medicine, the subject of Obama's missing birth certificate is more timely and relevant than ever — precisely because the ugly spectacle emphasized once again the degree to which Obama has arrogantly flouted, sneered at, and spit upon the U.S. Constitution, a document he and his handlers and henchmen clearly revile and are determined to shred and destroy.
The same contempt for the bedrock foundations of our country was apparent during Obama's run for the presidency and his refusal to produce his birth certificate. It reminds me of the search I conducted in 2004 for my mother's birth certificate, a non-negotiable prerequisite for her admission into a nursing home. Although she was born in a farmhouse in 1913 to immigrants who didn't speak English, it took me only three phone calls and not more than 20 minutes to locate this valuable document. Unlike Obama, who was born — he says — in 1961, I didn't pay nearly two million dollars to lawyers to fight the nursing home's request.
To this day, Obama has failed to produce proof that he was born in the United States and that he is a natural-born American citizen, one of only three absolute requirements in the U.S. Constitution to become President of the United States. In fact, if Obama is not a natural-born American citizen, he is acting as president under false pretenses, which de facto makes every statement he has made as the usurper POTUS, every bill he has signed, every czar he has appointed, every act, proclamation, signing statement, executive order, and law, et al, fraudulent, illegal, and therefore null and void — including this unconstitutional healthcare so-called reform bill.
As I type, Mr. Hope & Change is working on granting citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants to further bankrupt the United States and thereby etch in stone a constituency that relies on free everything — and will therefore return the favor by voting Democratic in future elections. This will actualize his and the far-left's goals of turning our democratic Republic into a Communist share-the-poverty facsimile of a Russian, Cuban, or Venezuelan state!
But that is not all: Obama is putting on the fast track the Cap-and-Trade scheme to tax every person in the U.S. every time he or she flushes the toilet, turns on a light, opens the refrigerator, drives a car — the list of penalties for merely living go on and on.
When this or that writer or commentator asks, "Doesn't he realize X, Y, or Z?" — the answer is, of course he does! His entire raison d'être is to convert the country he hates — America — into the kind of socialist/communist/fascist country he clearly admires. Exhibit A is surely his serial embrace of foreign dictators and his undisguised hostility toward our most trusted allies.
How did this happen? As blogger Daniel Greenfield notes, Obama's election "was not about what the people wanted. It was about his own victory by any means necessary. Hardly surprising from the man who began his political career by betraying and destroying his own mentor, climbed into the United States Senate over two sex scandals that were a product of his opposition research, and reached the White House through voter fraud, illegal campaign donations, and an owned media corps....Each win for Obama was another loss for fair and honest elections. And each time Obama won, it was not because the public decided he was the better man, but because the sheer array of dirty tricks, fraud, and media propaganda insured that no choices would be allowed."
Today, there are few Americans, even Obama's acolytes and fans, who now think he is a natural-born American or, for that matter, a Christian, as he pretended to be as a congregant for 20 years in his Chicago pastor's Black Theology church. In short, black theology is Marxist doctrine: hate America, hate whitey, hate Jews, hate free-market capitalism, hate the U.S. Constitution. Here, he just about admits as much. From where I stand, that pretty well sums up Obama's first 14 months in office.
THE USURPER-IN-CHIEF
At this point, every honest, decent member of Congress and the media, as well as ordinary citizens, knows that there was something putridly rotten about Obama's election. Not just the billion dollars in campaign donations, most of which are still unaccounted for but known to have flowed from foreign donors, many of them enemies of America. And not just the missing mountains of qualifying data that all presidential candidates are expected to produce, including:
His Illinois law license. Is he even a lawyer? Where is his supposed Harvard Law degree? Where are the papers he wrote in law school? Why does he not correct people when they say he was a law professor when he was never a professor but only a lecturer?
His Selective Service registration, which investigative-journalist and lawyer Debbie Schlussel has reported to be falsified, an accusation that Linda Bentley quite persuasively documented just the other day.
His visa, or more probably visas. After all, he did travel to Pakistan in 1981 when Americans were forbidden into that country. Did he use the Indonesian visa he got when he was a citizen of that country?
His school records from Indonesia and Hawaii.
His college transcripts from Occidental College in CA, Columbia College in NY, and Harvard Law School in MA.
His baptism certificate.
His Illinois State Senate records.
His law practice client list.
His records from the University of Chicago, where Obama, the instructor, supposedly taught.
Just as mysterious is the question of who exactly backed this virtually unknown neophyte senator with the paper-thin résumé and almost non-existent voting record — this man who had lifelong associations with countless dubious-if-not-criminal friends and associates, as well as political radicals.
We now know that leftist billionaire financier George Soros was and is a major backer. And we've also learned that dozens of Clinton administration leftovers and elected officials, all of the hard left — as well as a number of hugely influential executives and bankers from AIG and Goldman Sachs — were part of Obama's toxic brew. But how, you may ask, could these arch capitalists be leftists? Because, like Soros, they fancy themselves Kings of the Universe, smarter than the average Joe, and therefore destined to join a new American oligarchy in which the few rule and the many are under their collective thumbs.
The motives of these megalomaniacs involve the tenacious belief — facts to the contrary — that the proven tyrannies of socialism and communism will improve the lot of the masses they consider so stupid, combined with a driving lust for absolute power — you know, the kind that corrupts absolutely. Underlying this is a worldview in which most people are perceived to be "victims" of "the system." And of course a fulminating rage.
Again, Greenfield weighs in, explaining that this rage is part of "the bargain leftists always strike: I Will Only Love You If You Kill Yourself. Leftists only love an America, he says, "in which the Constitution is wielded to protect Islamic terrorists and a man who hates the country can take office in the White House, in which the lives of Americans are worthless but the comfortable treatment of captured terrorists is worth more than gold, in which all of the country's history and values are viewed as nothing more than the brutal atrocities of greedy savages, while the brutal atrocities of newly arrived greedy savages are treated as heroic achievements worthy of celebration and praise...."
"In their more honest moments," Greenfield continues, "leftists will admit that they do not love America — only its potential...to be changed by them...moments like Michelle Obama proclaiming that she had never been proud of her country before...a chilling glimpse into the mind of the left that cannot love anything that is not an expression of their own ego...."
"They love [an] America that legalizes illegal aliens, displaces its own citizens to make way for them, and tears down all barriers against crime and terror. They love America, so long as it frees terrorists from prison — and when war is declared against it by a fanatical cult of mass murderers, it gives the murderers their day in court with lawyers and a trial....This is the America they love. I will only love you, if you kill yourself."
A CABAL OF IMMENSE PROPORTIONS
A coup d'état is never an overnight phenomenon. It takes years, often decades, of planning, and more often than not, there are thwarted attempts along the way. In America, leftists have been actively trying both to undermine and overthrow our country since at least the 1960s (actually well before then, as far back as a hundred years). They tried with Jimmy Carter, but in spite of the lasting harm he did, his stupendous incompetence ultimately did him in, relegating him to one ignominious term.
They tried again with Bill Clinton, who as a student spent years — when he might have been fighting for our country in Vietnam — hanging around England smoking pot and, oddly, "visiting" Communist Russia. Clinton lasted two terms, largely because he was too narcissistic and undisciplined to stick to the leftist party line, craving the spotlight to such a degree that when the electorate smacked him and his wife down for trying to inflict socialized medicine on our citizens, he moved ever so nimbly to the center, where he stayed until he practically had to be dragged off the stage during the most self-aggrandizing departure of a president in American history.
Through these failures, the left learned never to depend on a genuine natural-born American citizen to actualize their coup, that the real thing would somehow retain some random DNA strands of affection for our republic. They would have to find a faux American, one who looked and sounded like the real thing, but whose allegiance to America was non-existent — perhaps someone who had lived in a Muslim country, studied the Koran, subscribed to Sharia law, and had lifelong relationships with Marxists and Communists and other America-haters. Enter the man who calls himself Barack Obama.
In a stunning piece of journalism — "Who's Your Daddy? Who's Your Mama? AND WHERE IS YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE?" — a "Concerned Citizen, forced to speculate in absence of the public release of documents," considers several plausible scenarios that describe who Obama's parents might have been, where he might have been born, and how the idea to insinuate this Manchurian Candidate-Trojan Horse into America's body politic came to pass. The article poses numerous provocative questions:
What exactly happened in the Teresa Hotel in Harlem in 1960 — where a man resembling Barack Obama Sr. rubbed shoulders with Malcolm X and a Cuban journalist?
What was Fidel Castro doing at the above hotel at the same time? Khrushchev? Malcolm X?
How could Obama's "mother," Stanley Ann Dunham, have delivered him in August of 1961 in Honolulu when official University of Washington records show her 2680 miles away in Seattle attending classes that same month? (Pamela Geller: www.atlasshrugs.com).
Was Madelyn Dunham really Obama's mother, and not his grandmother?
Was he the product of an affair between his "grandfather," Stanley Armour Dunham (who he looks like) and one of the Asian, Polynesian or Indonesian girls who frequented the beaches of Hawaii in the 1950s? On the cover of Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, why is the man he claims is his father, Barack Obama Sr., not pictured, while his grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, is? Was the dark-skinned woman on the cover his real mother?
Was he really the son of his earliest mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a prominent poet, Communist political activist, and self-professed pedophile? Davis wrote about raping a 13-year-old girl. Could that girl have been Stanley Ann Dunham? Could this be why Obama wrote on his Facebook page that he was born in 1957?
Was Obama really the only son of Malcolm X and his wife Betty Shabazz? They had six daughters, but did they leave the care of their only son to surrogates to protect him from the same fate — assassination — that killed Malcolm X?
Or did Malcolm X father Obama with one of the dozens of daughters of the Communist Indonesian President Sukarno, after the older man invited him to the anti-white, anti-capitalist Bandung conference in 1955? Sukarno loathed America. Was it he who hatched the plot to take over America? Did he then share his idea with Malcolm X because he believed the American Muslim was capable of succeeding?
Where do the Rockefellers fit in? Recent speculation has it that Michael Rockefeller, the Harvard graduate who is thought to have died in Papua, New Guinea, may have fathered Obama with a Papuan woman. Here's a film of Michael's strange odyssey. Is it coincidence that Obama's "grandfather" Stanley and his stepfather Lolo Soetoro both worked for the Rockefellers' Standard Oil Company?
Is it coincidence that the Marxist-praising Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Rockefeller crony and Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, now acts as an advisor to Obama?
What are we to make of Obama's old friend from high school, Illinois Army National Guard Major L. Tammy Duckworth, telling The Honolulu Advisor on January 8, 2006, that she was "happy to point out that she and Hawaii-raised Punahou (Indonesia) high school graduate Obama have "a karma'aina connection"? Both of them, she said, were born outside the country — Obama in Indonesia, Duckworth in Thailand. Predictably, Duckworth retracted her statement a few days after the article appeared in print.
Was it just a fashion statement when we witnessed Michelle Obama on election night appear in a dress of the revolutionary and anarchic colors of red and black, with a gigantic sash in the unmistakable configuration of an X — and Obama's very young daughters also dressed in revolutionary red and black? As an observer wrote, "What if the garb worn by the Obama's was a silent tribute to Barack's real father, Malcolm X?...the red and black dress and that X that hits you between the eyes....where are the various shades of red, white, and blue?...."
Was the CIA behind Obama's attempted coup d'état? Where does the Ford Foundation fit in? If you want a much more extensive history of the Ford Foundation, the CIA, and the ghastly Indonesian coup, read David Ransom's piece here.
What is the likelihood of Obama's so-called mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, meeting two "husbands" — Barack Obama Sr. and Lolo Soetoro, both connected to "Big Oil" — at the University of Hawaii?
Obama denies he's a Muslim, but "the accumulated research from primary sources who knew Obama from his childhood indicate that he was a devout Muslim, the son of a devout Muslim, the stepson of a devout Muslim, and the grandson and namesake ('Hussein') of a devout Muslim. He was registered in school in Indonesia as a Muslim and demonstrated his ability to chant praise to Allah in impressive Arab-accented tones even as an adult. Just as he has not disavowed his 'uncle' Jeremiah, neither has he disavowed the Muslim faith that he was born into and raised in. Here, with George Stephanopoulos, Obama says as much.
Is Obama the son of "CIA spooks" and a "CIA spook" himself?
In a can't-put-down article, Deanna Spingola writes of Pastor James David Manning, who in May is holding a public trial at Columbia University in New York (just blocks from Manning's church in Harlem) that is charging Barack Obama with treason! Here is what Spingola writes:
"Obama...was recruited [at Occidental College in CA] in 1980 by the CIA [when Stansfield M. Turner was the director], which has made it a practice since its inception to recruit college students. He was, by his own admission, a 'C' student, a dope smoker, and a member of the Marxist Club at Occidental, a co-educational liberal arts college. In 1981, Obama allegedly transferred from Occidental to Columbia University....Columbia had a foreign student program, and the CIA has major connections and influence with Columbia and the nation's other educational facilities....the CIA needed Muslims or others who could easily blend into the Muslim environment in the Middle East....Obama, as an undercover agent, was the lead agent in the arms and money supply for the CIA-trained Taliban Army against the Soviet Army war machine. His actions were integral to the Taliban's success in their opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Obama, it is publicly acknowledged, went to Pakistan in 1981. There is no way of knowing how often Obama traveled between Pakistan and Russia.
"According to Dr. Manning," Spingola writes, "Obama was an interpreter for the CIA during the war in Afghanistan. When Obama completed his CIA operations in the mid 1980s and returned to the U.S., he persuaded the State Department to maneuver his entrance into Harvard Law School...."
Needless to say, Pastor Manning's life has been threatened and continues to be threatened by people who are deeply afraid of his explosive charges.
And here is yet another bizarre oddity: an article saying that Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, "voluntarily surrendered" his law license back in 2008 in order to escape charges that he lied on his bar application, and that First Lady Michelle Obama "voluntarily surrendered" her law license in 1993!
MASSIVE MEDIA MALFEASANCE
I have written at length of the many lawyers and journalists who have addressed the birth certificate issue. You can read some of their names here. But with the notable and noteworthy exceptions I've mentioned, other so-called investigative journalists who should have been asking and answering the above questions and dozens of others are an extinct species, killed off by leftist media moguls in league with the Obama regime, or too timid and pandering in their own rights to have taken up the cudgels on behalf of the public they pretend to serve.
People understand why hacks from the former, now moribund, mainstream media have avoided the subject of Obama's eligibility like the plague it is. By and large, they are liberals and leftists who shilled for him during his campaign, concealed mountains of damning evidence about his lack of experience and shady associations, and studiously avoided any mention of his still-unknown country of birth.
But harder to understand are the hacks at Fox. In a startling display of dishonesty and pretension, Bill O'Reilly, who wants to be considered intelligent and so never fails to tell his audience that he earned a master's degree at Harvard, apparently never studied coups d'état, never realized that the Marxist Castro's shining moment came only after years of agitation, rebellion, and subterfuge. But the idea of Obama being part of a conspiracy was apparently too much for the former elementary school teacher to contemplate... above his pay grade, so to speak. Never even consulted Wikipedia, as I just did, to learn of the hundreds of coups d'état that took place in the 20th century alone.
Apparently Harvard never taught Mr. "looking out for the folks" about the successful coups in Argentina in 1943, in Thailand in 1947, in Czechoslovakia in 1948, in Egypt in 1952, in Paraguay in 1954, in Pakistan in1958, in Venezuela in 1958, in Turkey in 1960, in Ecuador and Syria and Brazil and South Vietnam and Ghana and Libya and Somalia and Greece and Chile and again in Pakistan — the list is endless — and the immense and lengthy planning that went into these government overthrows. Or the more recent coups — since 1999 — in the Ivory Coast, Fiji, Peru, Mauritania, Haiti, Congo, et al.
Without acknowledging the widespread existence of coups and the years or decades of planning they entailed, O'Reilly decided to slam "the birthers" — as he pejoratively calls those who still believe in the Constitution and think presidents of the U.S. should abide by it, starting with their eligibility — and stated that he personally had seen Obama's birth certificate.
Of course he hadn't. He lied. Then in an orchestrated charade, he trotted out two women, both lawyers, he routinely disrespects by barking out their last names and in essence had them standing on their hind legs, yapping in agreement about those misguided "birthers." It didn't take long for Glenn Beck to echo their yaps. That's right, the guy who routinely looks straight in the camera and exhorts his audience to seek "the truth."
Why would O'Reilly lie? Why would Beck avoid seeking "the truth" in this one glaring instance? Were they threatened, as Douglas Hagmann — a respected journalist, director of the Northeast Intelligence Network, and longtime private investigator — and Judi McLeod, a prolific journalist and the managing editor of Canada Free Press, suggest? After a nine-month investigation, they discovered that prominent media people had indeed been threatened by the heads of major TV and radio stations and also Federal Communication Commission officials — with job losses and worse — to never raise, allude to, or mention the birth certificate issue! Or was it the huge influence the Saudis have over Fox content since they bought and then increased their shares to nearly 20 percent in Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp?
Whatever. The fact that O'Reilly and Beck caved — and continue to cave — has forever negated their credibility.
WHAT NOW?
So appalled are a majority of Americans at the hijacking of one-sixth of the American economy through the healthcare legislation, and so revolted by the hideous process it entailed, that upwards of 15 state attorneys general — and counting — are suing the federal government on grounds that key parts of the Deathcare law are unconstitutional; that the law includes taxpayer-funded abortions (smoke-and-mirrors to the contrary), kill-the-elderly cuts to Medicare seniors, huge tax increases that will wipe out the entire middle-class of our country, and a Nazi-like brown-shirt $16-billion-taxpayer-funded force of Internal Revenue Service goons to reinforce our descent into tyranny. Ordinary citizens are suing too, among them four residents of Michigan, represented by the Thomas More Law Center and attorney David Yerushalmi.
And dozens if not hundreds of groups are crying Repeal — which former speaker Newt Gingrich explained was not possible because Obama would veto such a move. What is possible, Gingrich said, is for Republicans to gain majorities in the House and Senate during the midterms in November and then cut off funding for this horrific, bankrupt-the-nation law. And if the GOP gains the presidency in 2012, they can then repeal this socialist blueprint.
But there may lie the rub. As writer J.D. Longstreet reminds us: "The democrats' lust for power is so great and their zeal for socialism so intense that I cannot see them allowing their hold on power to be placed in jeopardy by, of all things, an election where the voice of the people is actually heard....in less than eighteen months the Obama Regime has managed to take America from a constitutional republic to a socialist republic....that accomplishment alone should give you reason enough to suspect that when their power is threatened they will use the full force of the Central Government to ruthlessly crush any and all who they perceive as a threat. At this moment in history, a threat is anyone, any American, who does not agree with them."
Longstreet and others imagine Obama creating a national crisis or emergency — sort of like the phony swine flu "pandemic" last year — in which Martial Law is declared and the midterm elections are suspended. "Who decides what a national emergency is?" he asks. "You've got it — the Obama Regime!"
Longstreet then issues a warning: "The American people are a patient people. We will put up with a lot of nonsense from our government — for a while. But we draw the line when that government ignores the Constitution, as the Obama Regime and the Democrats in the Congress have done. There is a seething rage in America today....my senses tell me it is too late to avoid the 'lashing out' Americans are about to unleash. [Americans] are waiting, just waiting, for an incident that will knock the chocks from the dam wall holding back the cascade. Postponing, or suspending, the midterm election...would be the spark that ignites a firestorm that will consume all in its path."
Journalist Sher Zieve concurs. "The political party that promoted the slavery of Africans, established Jim Crow laws, created the Ku Klux Klan, refused to follow court orders barring segregation...is now is full raging power within the borders of the United States of America. Most of them — including their dictatorial leader Barack Hussein Obama — realize that the chances for their reelections to power are, at best, marginal. I have warned that any and all 'free' elections would probably soon be a thing of the past. The Marxist way is to not allow them in the first place.
"The current U.S. government is moving quickly and forcefully against the American people," Zieve continues. "I have to now wonder how close We-the-People are today toward reaching the same conclusions as did our founders....I think we may be as close to our founders' ultimate decision as we will ever be. Do we wish to be free and sovereign or submit to bondage? For a brief window of time longer, it's still our choice."
Then there is Michael Connelly's stern warning: "...I have some bad news for all of the socialists, or progressives, or whatever you choose to call yourselves this week, you have made a huge mistake. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese Admiral Yamamoto who led the attack said that: 'I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.'
"I suggest to President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid that you have awakened the giant again and that this giant, made up of freedom-loving Americans, is going to be coming at you from every direction you can imagine. Individuals and State Governments will be challenging you in the courts, and Americans will take you on in the polling places. In every city, town and village you will hear the voices of angry Americans, and despite your best efforts we will not be silenced. You will hear the outcry of Americans of every race, religion, and creed, and we will prevail."
All of this takes time, of course...time well spent. But it will take less time to revive the serious question of Obama's very suspect eligibility to be president in the first place!
"Forget the dispute over the 'natural born citizen' requirement of the U.S. Constitution for presidents," writes Bob Unruh of WorldNetDaily. "Barack Obama may not even be a 'citizen,' according to a new filing in a long-running legal challenge to his eligibility to occupy the Oval Office."
If there is even one court in our land whose judge has not been threatened, intimidated, bought off, or bribed, the case for Obama's ineligibility should be tried immediately. If found guilty, I suspect Obama would be responsible for the greatest purchase of confetti in the history of the world!
© Joan Swirsky
"The e-mail Bag"
You Might Be A Redneck
Thank you Jeff Foxworthy!
The dog catcher calls for a backup unit when visiting your house.
You've ever bought a used cap.
Your CB antenna is a danger to low-flying planes.
You pick your teeth from a catalog.
You've ever financed a tattoo.
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
"Daily Motivations"
"The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings." -- Eric Hoffer
"The one thing all famous authors, world class athletes, business tycoons, singers, actors, and celebrated achievers in any field have in common is that they all began their journeys when they were none of these things. Yet still, they began their journeys." -- Mike Dooley
"The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose." -- Michel de Montaigne
"Success is not in having the most of everything, but in making the most of anything." -- From Chuck Sproull
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved. (John 10:9)
A Hindu man heard about Jesus, but he could not comprehend how the great Creator God of the universe could stoop to become a human being. He wondered why God would want to humble Himself to that extent. Because of his religious background, this man had a profound reverence for life. One day as he was walking in a field, he came upon an anthill. He stopped in wonder to observe the activity of these amazing creatures.
Suddenly, he heard the noise of a tractor plowing the fields. He looked up and saw that the plow would soon destroy that anthill. The ants' home would be gone and thousands would be killed. He was frantic. He wanted to save them. He thought, I could write a warning in the dirt, but they would not know how to read it. I could shout to them, but they would not know what I was saying. The only possible way I could communicate with them would be to become an ant myself!
In that moment he saw why God, the Creator of the universe, had made such an incredible sacrifice to become one of us. The God-Man, our Lord Jesus Christ, died on the cross to save us from being plowed under by sin.
Jesus is the object of our faith. He is truly worthy of our trust. By placing our faith in Christ, we received not only the blessings He has planned for us, but His very life. Paul tells us, "It is through faith that a righteous person has life." (Galatians 3:11)
Your View of God Really Matters …
Every time you see an anthill, think about that Hindu man, and thank God for His mercy in sending Jesus to rescue us from destruction.
"The Patriot Post"
"No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave." --Alexander Hamilton
Liberty
"While American politicians and intellectuals have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision. Tyrants denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are the chief supporters of reduced private property rights, reduced rights to profits, and they are anti-competition and pro-monopoly. They are pro-control and coercion, by the state. These Americans who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others. A tyrant's primary agenda calls for the elimination or attenuation of the market. Why? Markets imply voluntary exchange and tyrants do not trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, they seek to replace the market with economic planning and regulation, which is little more than the forcible superseding of other people's plans by the powerful elite. We Americans have forgotten founder Thomas Paine's warning that 'Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.'" --George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams
Insight
"Obviously there is no need of fighting to overcome this single tyrant, for he is automatically defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement: it is not necessary to deprive him of anything, but simply to give him nothing; there is no need that the country make an effort to do anything for itself provided it does nothing against itself. It is therefore the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude. A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it." --French judge, writer, political philosopher Etienne de la Boetie (1530-1563)
Re: The Left
"The abuse of federal political power to intervene in areas such as Americans' private health care could exist only in a nation that no longer holds its leaders accountable to its constitution and that has governmental leadership that regards itself as above its people and its constitution. Sadly, I was listening to an interview the other day in which President Barack Obama described the U.S. Constitution as 'an imperfect document ... a document that reflects some deep flaws ... (and) an enormous blind spot.' He also said, 'The Framers had that same blind spot.' In so doing, the president established a rationale and justification for disregarding the Constitution. Even worse, he placed himself above the Constitution and those 'blind Framers,' who just couldn't see the big picture as he does today. After all, he's the constitutional scholar, and the Framers were just, well, the creators of the document!" --columnist Chuck Norris
The Gipper
"The path we will chart is not an easy one. It demands much of those chosen to govern, but also from those who did the choosing. And let there be no mistake about this: We have come to a crossroad, a time of decision and the path we follow turns away from any idea that government and those who serve it are omnipotent. It is a path impossible to follow unless we have faith in the collective wisdom and genius of the people. Along this path government will lead but not rule, listen but not lecture. It is the path of a Creative Society." --Ronald Reagan
Opinion in Brief
"What was really going on at the [health care] summit was reflected in the persistent, obviously pre-arranged, transparently false theme among the Democrats that, hey, you know, we are not really that far apart, there is really a lot of agreement. That was meant to set the Republicans up so the Democrats could say afterward that the Republicans refused to support Obamacare simply for partisan, political reasons, or because they really were in the pocket of industry, and so the Democrats are justified in ramming it through without them, through reconciliation. That was the real point and goal of the summit. That didn't work because the Republicans were surprisingly good in articulating their reasons for opposing the legislation, and those reasons resonated strongly with the American people. By giving the Republicans such a high profile forum to express these reasons and their far more common sense alternatives, the summit backfired into yet another disastrous loss for Obamacare." --columnist Peter Ferrara
Political Futures
"America is, quite simply, a Center-Right country. Many have cited polling data showing that self-described conservatives outnumber liberals two to one. But that's not nearly so telling as the fact that self-identified conservatives have outnumbered liberals in every year since 1968; when combined with self-proclaimed moderates, the country is enduringly 65 to 75 percent moderate-to-conservative. As president, Bill Clinton initially governed as if he'd won a more Left-leaning mandate than the voters intended. Clinton admitted in a 1995 interview with the then-columnist Ben Wattenberg that he'd gone astray philosophically. With the help of Machiavellian pollster Dick Morris, Clinton recalibrated to the center and saved his presidency. No surprise that [Obama Chief of Staff Rahm] Emanuel's most politically formative years were spent as a Clinton strategist. Yet Obama has indicated that he never considered the Clinton model appropriate or appealing. He wants to be 'transformative' like Ronald Reagan. But such a transformation requires an electorate willing to be and capable of being transformed." --columnist Jonah Goldberg
For the Record
"The deficit for last year was $1.4 trillion. The deficit rose as a share of the gross domestic product from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2009, the highest deficit as a share of GDP since 1945. The projected deficit for the fiscal year that ends in September is another $1.3 trillion. So much for all that fiscal sanity blather from Team Obama in '08. How dishonest. ... [Sen. Jim] Bunning pushed the stop button on the perpetual federal spending machine by holding up a $10 billion package to extend (yet again) unemployment benefits and keep cash flowing to the highway trust fund. Mirabile dictu, he insisted that the Congress should find the money to pay for this -- for example, in unspent 'stimulus' money -- instead of just adding another multibillion-dollar layer to the deficit lasagna. Break out the smelling salts. The network nightly news crews tried to manufacture instant outrage, earning their reputation as the enablers of incessant and unrestrained deficit-building. ... Bunning was right to say if the Congress can't find any place in the federal budget to trim away a measly $10 billion, they won't stop spending anywhere. But the media on this story aren't really on the side of the taxpayers (and debt payers). They're on the side of Team Obama and the debt builders. ... Bunning [wasn't] proposing job cuts -- or even spending cuts. He's using a hold and demanding that legislators of both parties put up or shut up when they declare they're for 'pay as you go' budgeting." --columnist L. Brent Bozell
The Last Word
"Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever expanding number of government jobs will be statists -- sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily 'compassionate' statists, but always statists. The short history of the postwar welfare state is that you don't need a president-for-life if you've got a bureaucracy-for-life: The people can elect 'conservatives,' as the Germans have done and the British are about to do, and the left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who for tuppence-ha'penny or some such would agree to go and warm the seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects strolled in and took their rightful place. Republicans are good at keeping the seat warm. A big-time GOP consultant was on TV crowing that Republicans wanted the Dems to pass ObamaCare because it's so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November. Okay, then what? You'll roll it back -- like you've rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago? Like you've undone the Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel 'n' dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter? Andrew McCarthy concluded a shrewd analysis of the political realities thus: 'Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?' Indeed." --columnist Mark Steyn
"The Web"
Who is rewriting history?
Peter Heck - Guest Columnist
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=954398
As both a history teacher and a conservative, I have to admit to being quite amused by the foaming-at-the-mouth reaction liberals have had recently to the Texas Board of Education. It seems that the board has approved changes to the history curriculum adopted for use in the Texas public school system.
The New York Times, ever the beacon of objectivity and fairness, described the changes as, "put[ting] a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks."
The reason I find this situation amusing is because when you look at the actual changes approved for the curriculum, they demonstrate an effort to undo the revisionist, multicultural, politically correct garbage that has overrun American and world history texts for a generation. In other words, the left isn't worried about history being rewritten; they're worried about seeing the history they've already rewritten being restored.
Take, for example, the curriculum surrounding World War II. In history texts today, the liberal narrative is dominant: that the United States interned Japanese citizens because of fear, prejudice and inherent discrimination against a foreign race. The Texas Board of Education has now required that narrative to include the reality that in addition to Japanese, both Germans and Italians living in the United States during World War II were also interned.
Or consider the treatment of "McCarthyism." Liberal academics have long used high school and college history texts to portray this era as the lowest example of anti-communist paranoia run amuck. But the Texas Board has now passed an amendment requiring that any retelling of McCarthyism include "how the later release of the Venona papers [PDF] confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government."
Are these examples of "putting a conservative stamp on history?" No. They're simply telling the truth.
Though it may be inconvenient for the left in trying to carry forth their self-loathing, Americans-as-imperial-racists agenda, we did intern Germans and Italians (the same race) as well as Japanese.
And though it may be inconvenient for the left in trying to portray all conservatives as paranoid freaks who see communists under their beds, the Venona documents of declassified information did reveal that there were indeed multiple examples of Soviet operatives in high-ranking positions of American government.
Other examples abound. The left may prefer that free-market giants Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek be excluded from school curriculum in deference to John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx, but the reality is that the Texas Board is right to include them in American economics courses.
The left may find that teaching the violence inherent in the Black Panther movement hampers their lopsided retelling of the Civil Rights era, but the reality is that the Texas Board is right to tell students the full story.
And not just the full story, but the true story. In what I think was the most illuminating example of what's happening in textbooks today, Mavis B. Knight, a liberal Democrat from Dallas, proposed that the Texas curriculum require students to study why "the founding fathers...barred the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others."
The problem with Ms. Knight's proposal is that it's simply not true. As the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives pointed out in 1854 while studying this very subject, "At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, [just] not any one [denomination].... The object was not to substitute Judaism or Mohammedanism, or infidelity, but to prevent rivalry among [Christian denominations] to the exclusion of others....There is a great and very prevalent error on this subject in the opinion that those who organized this Government did not legislate on religion."
An error indeed. An error fabricated and perpetuated by the modern left whose allegiance to telling the truth about our past extends only to those phrases, figures, events or occurrences that fit their own ideological agenda.
Ms. Knight is indicative of what the left has been doing to the history textbooks for a generation. They see the events of the past as mere objects to be manipulated, changed, and rewritten so as to provide a catalyst for the social change they desperately desire.
But don't take my word for it. Their current opposition to the inclusion of factual history that they simply don't like, coupled with their continued insistence on trying to include blatantly false propaganda, reveals all you need to know about who is attempting to "rewrite" the pages of our history.
Rep. Burgess: Government Can Force Us to Buy General Motors Products If Obamacare Mandate Upheld in Court
By Nicholas Ballasy, Video Reporter
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=63435
(CNSNews.com) – Representative Michael Burgess (R-Texas) told CNSNews.com that if the mandate in the health care law requiring individuals to purchase health insurance or be penalized is upheld by the courts, the federal government could mandate anything, such as requiring all Americans to purchase a General Motors car.
On Capitol Hill, CNSNews.com asked Representative Burgess, “The Congressional Budget Office has said that never before in the history of the United States has the federal government mandated that any one buy a specific good or service and, of course, the bill includes the individual mandate. Is there a part of the Constitution that you think gives Congress the authority to mandate individuals to purchase health insurance?”
Representative Burgess, himself a doctor, said, “No, I personally do not, and I think that is exactly right. Never before in the history of this country have we had the ability to coerce American citizens to purchase something and then invoke the Commerce clause after we coerce that purchase.”
“It just flies in the face of what a free society should be, so I’m perfectly comfortable with the attorneys general bringing suit against this bill,” said Burgess. “I think it’s the appropriate thing to do. Plus, you also have the equal-protection business of some states being more equal than others and, really, it should be equals among equals, not some states getting special deals to buy off a vote to get the bill passed.”
CNSNews.com also asked Burgess, “If the federal government mandates that you have to purchase health insurance, is there any legal commodity that the federal government cannot require individuals to purchase?”
“That’s the next step and what else?” said Burgess. “Could the federal government require all of us to purchase a General Motors product? And the answer is yes.”
“If this mandate is ruled, upheld by the courts, it opens the door for all kinds of mischief by the federal government,” he said. “We’ll be better off not opening this door or closing it very, very quickly.”
Congressman Jason Chaffetz told CNSNews.com that he “applauds” the states that are stepping up and taking legal action against the federal government. So, 13 attorneys general have sued the federal government over the individual mandate in the health care law.
“I think the mandate is unconstitutional so I applaud the states [that] are going to step up and spend some resources and take this to the courts because I believe it’s unconstitutional,” said Chaffetz. “You have something like 37 states that are filing some sort of lawsuit or another, so, including Utah, and I applaud that.”
Chaffetz was also asked if he thinks there is a limit to what Congress can mandate individuals to do.
“Yeah, I think never before have we seen the federal government mandate that you have to actually purchase,” he said. “You know, I understand they need to tax, but to actually purchase something? I think that steps over the line and I hope the states are victorious in their suits.”
Chaffetz continued: “That’s the worry, that if they can get away with this, the federal government can get away with who knows what? And that’s where there’s got to be limits and balance on this, and clearly the Constitution, I don’t think, you know, allows this to happen. So I hope this country makes the right decision. I really do.”
On the other hand, Democratic Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.) said it is “not likely” the individual mandate will be overturned.
“I’m not a lawyer,” he told CNSNews.com. “I’m told by some pretty smart lawyers that the chances of states overturning this are not likely. The federal law will be pre-eminent but that’s why they make courts. We’ll have an opportunity to find out.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the federal government has never before mandated that Americans buy any good or service. In 1994, when Congress was considering a universal health care plan formulated by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, the CBO studied the plan’s provision that would have forced individuals to buy health insurance and determined it was an unprecedented act.
The CBO stated: “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”
How the Left fakes the hate: A primer
By Michelle Malkin
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/03/26/how-the-left-fakes-the-hate-a-primer/
I’m still on semi-vacation, but the Left never takes a break from falsely accusing the Right of fomenting hatred and violence through political speech. The MSM never takes a break from whitewashing leftist intolerance, death threats, and extremism — and engaging in selective reporting (or rather, non-reporting) of the long history of leftists’ manufacturing of hatred for political gain. My syndicated column fills in the missing context. In related developments, Glenn Reynolds takes a look at a new dubious report of rock-throwing. Erick Erickson shreds Josh Marshall’s specious incitement accusations. Patterico reports on the latest Twitter death threats against the Palin family. (Here’s a reminder about the one a Toronto Star columnist posted about me, which was laughed off by her editor and ignored by her colleagues). Here’s Mary Katharine Ham’s reminder that 7 of the 10 violent incidents during the summer town hall protests were brought to you by Obama-bots and union thugs. And in case you need a quick refresher on the routine liberal ugliness that will never be decried by the civility police, see here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here. For starters. See also: Unhinged.
How the Left fakes the hate: A primer
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010
If you can’t stand the heat, manufacture a hate crime epidemic.
After years of covering racial hoaxes on college campuses and victim sob stories in the public arena, I’ve encountered countless opportunists who live by that demented mindset. At best, the fakers are desperately seeking 15 minutes of infamy. At worst, their aim is the criminalization of political dissent.
Upon decimating the deliberative process to hand President Obama a health care “reform” victory, unpopular Beltway Democrats and their media water-carriers now claim there’s a Tea Party epidemic of racism, harassment, and violence against them. On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a tepid, obligatory statement against smearing all conservatives as national security threats. But her lieutenants had already emptied their tar buckets. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Chris Van Hollen blamed Republican leaders of “stoking the flames.” Democrat House Whip James Clyburn accused the GOP of “aiding and abetting” what he called “terrorism.”
Yet, the claims that Tea Party activists shouted “nigger” at black House Democrats remain uncorroborated. The coffin reportedly left outside Missouri Democrat Rep. Russ Carnahan’s home was used in a prayer vigil by pro-life activists in St. Louis protesting the phony Demcare abortion funding ban in President Obama’s deal-cutting executive order. Videotape of a supposed intentional spitting incident targeting Missouri Democrat Rep. Emanuel Cleaver at the Capitol shows no such thing. Cleaver himself backed off the claim a few days later. He described his heckler to the Washington Post in more passive terms as “the man who allowed his saliva to hit my face.” Slovenliness = terrorism!
The FBI is now investigating the most serious allegation – that Tea Party activists in Virginia are somehow responsible for a cut gas line at the home of Democrat Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother. But instead of waiting for the outcome of that probe, liberal pundits have enshrined the claim as conclusive evidence of the Tea Party reign of terror.
Need more reasons to treat the latest Democrat hysteria with a grain of salt the size of their gargantuan health care bill? Remember:
*In November 2009, Kentucky Census worker Bill Sparkman was found dead in a secluded rural cemetery with the word “Fed” scrawled on his chest with a rope around his neck. The Atlantic Monthly, the Huffington Post, and liberal media hosts stampeded over themselves to blame Fox News, conservative blogs, Republicans, and right-wing radio. Federal, state, and local authorities discovered that Sparkman had killed himself and deliberately concocted a hate crime hoax as part of an insurance scam to benefit his surviving son.
*In mid-October 2008, news outlets from Scranton, Pa., to ABC News, to the Associated Press and MSNBC reported that someone at a Sarah Palin rally shouted “Kill him” when Barack Obama’s name was mentioned. In fact, the Secret Service (which was at the event in full force) couldn’t find a single person to corroborate the story – other than the local reporter for the Scranton Times-Tribune who made an international incident out of the claim. Agent Bill Slavoski “said he was in the audience, along with an undisclosed number of additional secret service agents and other law enforcement officers and not one heard the comment,” the paper reported in a red-faced follow-up. Maybe the shouter is hiding with Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman’s real killer.
*In late October 2008, a gaggle of liberal blogs spread the rumor that a Republican supporter of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s had shouted that Barack Obama was “a nigger” during a campaign rally in Iowa. Video and first-hand accounts showed that the protester did not shout “he’s a nigger,” but “he’s a redistributor.” A lefty activist at the “progressive” Daily Kos blog confirmed the truth – but to this day, the crisis-manufacturing smear lies uncorrected and unretracted across the Internet.
*In September 2009, supporters of Colorado Democrat Rep. John Salazar falsely accused a town hall protester of hurling a death threat at the congressman. Liberal blogs again disseminated the angry Tea Party mob narrative. A week later, the local press quietly reported that Grand Junction police had investigated the incident – and determined the claim was “unfounded.” A police spokeswoman revealed that “[p]eople who witnessed the interaction between the man who made the complaint and the suspect confirmed they never heard any direct threats made regarding Congressman Salazar; the witnesses included a Grand Junction cop “in close proximity when the interaction took place.”
*In late August 2009, as lawmakers faced citizen revolts at health care town halls nationwide, the Colorado Democratic Party decried a vandalism attack at its Denver headquarters. A hammer-wielding thug smashed 11 windows and caused $11,000 in property damage. The perpetrator, Maurice Schwenkler, turned out to be a far Left nutball/transgender activist/single-payer anarchist who had worked for a SEIU-tied 527 group and canvassed for a Democrat candidate. Nevertheless, State Democrat Party chair Pat Waak continued to blame “people opposed to health care” for the attack.
Then, as now, being a Democrat Party official means never having to say you’re sorry for smearing conservative dissent.
Violence: the Democrats' Reichstag fire
Also...Washington talkmeister: Yes, Obamacare can be repealed (Socialized Medicine, Part 15)
By Wes Vernon
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/vernon/100329
Fake anger and indignation are the oldest weapons in the Marxist arsenal. And the Marxists now running the Washington show are following the "Reichstag fire" strategy: Seize on a momentary outrage — magnify it, blame it on the enemy even in the absence of evidence, and use it as a distraction from what you yourself are doing.
Adolf Hitler used that ploy in the early days of his regime when a man-caused fire spread through the Reichstag building that housed Germany's parliament. A lone Dutch insurrectionist was found inside the building, and that was used to conflate the arson to a massive conspiratorial plot by Hitler's enemies to overthrow the government. Thus did Hitler "rally the troops" and consolidate his power.
And always remember — as the Obama-Reid-Pelosi cabal and its fellow oppressives strive mightily to erase from our historical memories — that the real name of Hitler's Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers Party.
Reichstag 2010
87 years later, the Marxist Democrats on Capitol Hill used secrecy, backroom deals, bribery, deceit, and other tactics of Chicago-style thuggery to eke out — by the slimmest of margins — passage of legislation to take over one sixth of the American economy and use the heavy hand of buttinski government to dictate the relationship between you and your doctor.
Supposedly in reaction, some windows were broken in district offices of congressmen who voted for the bill, along with some threatening phone calls and the destruction of a propane connection to a lawmaker's gas grille. Additionally there was the lying unverified report of a racial slur hurled at a black member of Congress. Right away (after closed door strategy meetings), Congressional Democrats — smear buckets in hand — pounced in unison to blame all opponents of their Hitlerian health initiative and demanding that they take responsibility for the violence.
In other words, change the subject and ignore the outrage on the part of millions of Americans distressed by the big-government takeover — including scores of thousands who peacefully assembled on the Capitol Grounds to express their alarm at the arrogance of the elected representatives who ignore their constituents. Just jam Obamacare down our throats and holler the equivalent of "Help! Stop hitting my fist with your face!"
It's happened here
The Reichstag Fire strategy has a long history on these shores. Smaller examples have included the Muslim student complaining of anti-Muslim violence, only to be caught on video setting up the so-called "violence" herself; and the student of "protected" victimhood who had hung a noose in a campus library to spur an outpouring of speeches and demonstrations.
Enter another "Plante rant"
Christopher Plante on The Chris Plante Show (WMAL) here in Washington rhetorically drove head-on into Capitol Hill's fake anger when some brainwashed scripted puppets of the left called his show with their talking points of the day. Here is a sample of the priceless "Plante rant."
"They slime and they slander and they malign. This is part of an orchestrated campaign...to keep people at home. And you know why they're freaked out — and this is an expression of the fact that they are totally freaked out. Their rhetoric is just...it's Hugo Chavez rhetoric — it's just — I'm sorry — your Republican members of the House 'are aiding and abetting terrorism' (a charge uttered by House Democrat Whip James Clyburn). What terrorism, you hack — you sickening — and you know it's 'Well, people need to be responsible on talk radio.' ON talk radio? You're a member of Congress — you're a senior member of Congress — and you're accusing your fellow (congressmen) of aiding and abetting terrorism because of peaceful protest?
"How many arrests were there, Congressman? How many police officers were injured? How many windows were smashed upon Capitol Hill buildings? How many? How many? Tell them about this terrorism that you're so concerned about, you pathetic hack. Y'know — "why this situation is overheated" — why is this situation overheated? That's why it's overheated, because of what the congressman said right there. They're so freaked out because Middle America is waking up and they [the congressional left] mean to shut us up. They mean to make us sit back down, get back on the couch, and their strategy for doing that — and that's what this is — their strategy for doing that is to slime everyone at these protests with tar — with a broad brush saying you're all terrorists.
"Now they're aiding and abetting terrorists? So obviously Tea Party people are terrorists that the Republicans are 'aiding and abetting.' So now they're calling Middle America terrorists. Nancy Pelosi saying out there, with the swastikas and stuff.... Again, that's Lyndon LaRouche [a Democrat] — except one sign that I saw at a rally — one picture of a swastika with a circle and red slash through it — saying no national socialism. That was not an endorsement of Nazism. That was a suggestion that you're the new version of that, Nanny Pelosi.
"And you can agree or disagree with that, but if you're going to go after these people, then let's compare them with liberal protests, which the news media will not do. And they're going to show the peaceful protests of tens of thousands of Americans on the West Front of the Capitol, and then show you the video or that audio I just played of police coming in on horseback to clear out liberals who are smashing the place up? Of course not — of course they're not. The hypocrisy of the news media is staggering."
An interview with Chris Plante — nothing short of repeal
In an e-mail interview with this column, my question to Chris Plante was: Even if the Republicans win big-time in the 2010 congressional elections, how can they achieve outright repeal of the health "care" bill if President Obama is still in the White House to veto the rollback? Overriding a veto is extremely difficult.
Plante: "When the Republicans take control of Congress in January of 2011, they will be in a position to use the purse strings to slow the implementation of the myriad of bad ideas, tax increases, creation of new government bureaucracies, etcetera. Fortunately though, most of the larger really bad ideas are back-loaded and not set to kick in until 2014 and beyond. So the old 'slow roll' will be required until we get a Republican president in there in January of 2013. In the meantime, it's important to continue to highlight the flaws, failings, and corruption hiding in order to raise public awareness. This bill is so full of horrors that it ought to be a great political tool for the Republicans for years to come. It's a near perfect representation of everything that is wrong with Democrat politics. Use that. Every day."
Question: OK, but the Dems are betting that even if Obama fails to gain a second term, by January 2013 (when his current term ends), the law will be three years old. At that point, will it be so embedded in our system as to become another "third rail" entitlement that no politician dares to reverse?
Plante: "Republicans need to emphasize the cost and the fiscal responsibility in the context of the debt and deficit. A new Fox News poll is out today [Thursday] showing that 79% of Americans now believe that the economy could collapse. A truthful and straightforward approach ought to appeal to the majority of Americans. If it doesn't — if we have become an entitlement society — then we're in deep."
So that's the challenge
Americans are outraged and in no mood to throw up their hands and give up. They are "mad as hell" and not about to take it anymore. The challenge is to maintain that outrage day in and day out until this giant step toward wiping out our freedoms is rolled back — completely and forever.
No one should be fooled by this 2700-word intentionally-confusing political bomb tossed at us by these "hacks" afflicted with a jackboot compulsion. Senator Mitch McConnell's campaign challenge is apt: "Repeal and replace."
For the Marxists, this is a "Play it again, Sam" moment. First, bait the "suckers" with candy-coated garbage. Then once they're inside your lair, slam the door shut behind them. Soon, they'll be hooked. From then on, they'll demand more at every election, as their prison becomes the hell-bent angst not unlike that of a drug addict suddenly and forcibly deprived of his addiction. They're counting on a replay of that old script. Or so the oppressives hope. This time, Americans won't be sedated.
QuickNotes: 1 — Alleged "conservative" columnist Kathleen Parker took time off from her usual routine of bashing other conservatives long enough to turn to something constructive: she proves — chapter and verse — that the health "care" bill, coupled with Obama's worthless "executive order," will facilitate abortions at community health centers — thanks to the cave-in by Rep. Bart "30 Pieces of Silver" Stupak. 2 — The debate on Fox News Sunday between former Fla. State House Speaker Marco Rubio and Fla. RINO Gov. Charlie Crist was a classic showdown between principled conservatism (Rubio) and fair-weather conservatism (Crist). They're running in the U.S. Senate primary in their state. (See marcorubionews.com.) The Crist/McCain/Graham "reach across the aisle" style would gain more currency if the "reach out" were a two-way street...i.e., if liberal Dems reciprocated by "reaching out" to pass a basic conservative initiative. Take away Joe Lieberman on national security, and you're left with a "fat chance" that will ever happen. 3 — Outside the Washington area, Chris Plante can be heard at the WMAL website 9 am-noon EST — Mon-Fri.
Man Threatened To Kill Cantor In YouTube Video
Justin Elliott
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/man-threatened-to-kill-cantor-in-youtube-video.php
Rep. Eric Cantor and Norman Leboon (inset)
A 33-year-old Philadelphia man was charged today with threatening to kill Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) in a profanity-strewn Youtube video that has since been pulled down.
In the video, Norman Leboon says Cantor will "receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads. You and your children are Lucifer's abominations."
The San Francisco office of the FBI received a copy of the video on March 26, according to the affidavit in the case. You can read the press release and affidavit on the case here. http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/man-charged-with-threatening-eric-cantor.php
The affidavit paints a picture of Leboon as a deeply disturbed person. When he was visited by federal agents on Saturday, he "stated that he is the 'son of the god of Enoch' and that his father speaks through him. Leboon stated that Eric Cantor is 'pure evil'; will be dead; andthat Cantor's family is suffering because of his father's wrath."
He also told agents that "he had made over 2,000 videos in which he made threats."
Leboon allegedly told agents during their visit that he made the Cantor threat video "approximately three days" before, which would be March 24 -- last Wednesday.
The authorities have not made a connection between the Leboon video and the bullet that landed in Cantor's Richmond campaign office early in the morning last Tuesday after what police described http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/police-on-cantor-incident-were-calling-it-random-gunfire.php as an act of random gunfire.
That incident occurred the day before Leboon allegedly made the video. Cantor described http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/cantor-accuses-dems-of-using-threats-for-political-gain.php?ref=fpb the bullet incident in a press conference Thursday, March 25.
Cantor Spokesman Brad Dayspring released this statement today:
Over the weekend, Congressman Cantor was notified by law enforcement that a threat was made against his life. Law enforcement officials informed Congressman Cantor that the threat was determined as credible and they were responding accordingly. The Congressman was later notified that an arrest was made and a suspect was in custody.
At this time, the Congressman will have no further comment on this threat or the investigation, and asks that inquiries be directed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Congressman is deeply grateful for, and would like to dearly thank all local and federal law enforcement involved, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Attorney's Office in Virginia and Philadelphia, U.S. Capitol Police and the Henrico Police Department in Virginia.
Many of Leboon's videos appear to have been removed from YouTube. But in one clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkN3e13oGaI dated Aug. 23, 2009 that bears his name, he appears to be reading, shirtless, from the Koran. "That he may punish the hypocrites ... men and women who imagine an evil opinion of Allah ... the wrath of Allah is on them."
"I have been warning you all," Leboon says, citing governments and satellites. "You know who I am and what I am." The YouTube description on that clip is "You have been warned Leaders."
He seemed to warn repeatedly about some sort of end-times event to come on Sept. 19, 2009. "You will beg to have your head chopped off ... the angels are hear all of them and god is preparing his wrath. Soon very soon you will all know it and then destruction," he said to the camera in the shirtless video.
Videos tagged with his name involved everything from the stock market collapse to the kids' movie "Babe," and he seemed to have talked about politics and world leaders including President Obama. He also says in another video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_k2LqMpylU&feature=channel where he talks about child molestation, "Leaders you will perish" and " I control your jets your missiles, I control everything."
(Additional reporting by Christina Bellantoni.)
Obama birth certificate issue more urgent than ever
By Joan Swirsky
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/swirsky/100328
Now that the regime currently occupying the White House has bribed, threatened, intimidated, bullied, manipulated, and cut unconstitutional and illegal deals with Democrats in exchange for their votes for the totalitarian nightmare of socialized medicine, the subject of Obama's missing birth certificate is more timely and relevant than ever — precisely because the ugly spectacle emphasized once again the degree to which Obama has arrogantly flouted, sneered at, and spit upon the U.S. Constitution, a document he and his handlers and henchmen clearly revile and are determined to shred and destroy.
The same contempt for the bedrock foundations of our country was apparent during Obama's run for the presidency and his refusal to produce his birth certificate. It reminds me of the search I conducted in 2004 for my mother's birth certificate, a non-negotiable prerequisite for her admission into a nursing home. Although she was born in a farmhouse in 1913 to immigrants who didn't speak English, it took me only three phone calls and not more than 20 minutes to locate this valuable document. Unlike Obama, who was born — he says — in 1961, I didn't pay nearly two million dollars to lawyers to fight the nursing home's request.
To this day, Obama has failed to produce proof that he was born in the United States and that he is a natural-born American citizen, one of only three absolute requirements in the U.S. Constitution to become President of the United States. In fact, if Obama is not a natural-born American citizen, he is acting as president under false pretenses, which de facto makes every statement he has made as the usurper POTUS, every bill he has signed, every czar he has appointed, every act, proclamation, signing statement, executive order, and law, et al, fraudulent, illegal, and therefore null and void — including this unconstitutional healthcare so-called reform bill.
As I type, Mr. Hope & Change is working on granting citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants to further bankrupt the United States and thereby etch in stone a constituency that relies on free everything — and will therefore return the favor by voting Democratic in future elections. This will actualize his and the far-left's goals of turning our democratic Republic into a Communist share-the-poverty facsimile of a Russian, Cuban, or Venezuelan state!
But that is not all: Obama is putting on the fast track the Cap-and-Trade scheme to tax every person in the U.S. every time he or she flushes the toilet, turns on a light, opens the refrigerator, drives a car — the list of penalties for merely living go on and on.
When this or that writer or commentator asks, "Doesn't he realize X, Y, or Z?" — the answer is, of course he does! His entire raison d'être is to convert the country he hates — America — into the kind of socialist/communist/fascist country he clearly admires. Exhibit A is surely his serial embrace of foreign dictators and his undisguised hostility toward our most trusted allies.
How did this happen? As blogger Daniel Greenfield notes, Obama's election "was not about what the people wanted. It was about his own victory by any means necessary. Hardly surprising from the man who began his political career by betraying and destroying his own mentor, climbed into the United States Senate over two sex scandals that were a product of his opposition research, and reached the White House through voter fraud, illegal campaign donations, and an owned media corps....Each win for Obama was another loss for fair and honest elections. And each time Obama won, it was not because the public decided he was the better man, but because the sheer array of dirty tricks, fraud, and media propaganda insured that no choices would be allowed."
Today, there are few Americans, even Obama's acolytes and fans, who now think he is a natural-born American or, for that matter, a Christian, as he pretended to be as a congregant for 20 years in his Chicago pastor's Black Theology church. In short, black theology is Marxist doctrine: hate America, hate whitey, hate Jews, hate free-market capitalism, hate the U.S. Constitution. Here, he just about admits as much. From where I stand, that pretty well sums up Obama's first 14 months in office.
THE USURPER-IN-CHIEF
At this point, every honest, decent member of Congress and the media, as well as ordinary citizens, knows that there was something putridly rotten about Obama's election. Not just the billion dollars in campaign donations, most of which are still unaccounted for but known to have flowed from foreign donors, many of them enemies of America. And not just the missing mountains of qualifying data that all presidential candidates are expected to produce, including:
His Illinois law license. Is he even a lawyer? Where is his supposed Harvard Law degree? Where are the papers he wrote in law school? Why does he not correct people when they say he was a law professor when he was never a professor but only a lecturer?
His Selective Service registration, which investigative-journalist and lawyer Debbie Schlussel has reported to be falsified, an accusation that Linda Bentley quite persuasively documented just the other day.
His visa, or more probably visas. After all, he did travel to Pakistan in 1981 when Americans were forbidden into that country. Did he use the Indonesian visa he got when he was a citizen of that country?
His school records from Indonesia and Hawaii.
His college transcripts from Occidental College in CA, Columbia College in NY, and Harvard Law School in MA.
His baptism certificate.
His Illinois State Senate records.
His law practice client list.
His records from the University of Chicago, where Obama, the instructor, supposedly taught.
Just as mysterious is the question of who exactly backed this virtually unknown neophyte senator with the paper-thin résumé and almost non-existent voting record — this man who had lifelong associations with countless dubious-if-not-criminal friends and associates, as well as political radicals.
We now know that leftist billionaire financier George Soros was and is a major backer. And we've also learned that dozens of Clinton administration leftovers and elected officials, all of the hard left — as well as a number of hugely influential executives and bankers from AIG and Goldman Sachs — were part of Obama's toxic brew. But how, you may ask, could these arch capitalists be leftists? Because, like Soros, they fancy themselves Kings of the Universe, smarter than the average Joe, and therefore destined to join a new American oligarchy in which the few rule and the many are under their collective thumbs.
The motives of these megalomaniacs involve the tenacious belief — facts to the contrary — that the proven tyrannies of socialism and communism will improve the lot of the masses they consider so stupid, combined with a driving lust for absolute power — you know, the kind that corrupts absolutely. Underlying this is a worldview in which most people are perceived to be "victims" of "the system." And of course a fulminating rage.
Again, Greenfield weighs in, explaining that this rage is part of "the bargain leftists always strike: I Will Only Love You If You Kill Yourself. Leftists only love an America, he says, "in which the Constitution is wielded to protect Islamic terrorists and a man who hates the country can take office in the White House, in which the lives of Americans are worthless but the comfortable treatment of captured terrorists is worth more than gold, in which all of the country's history and values are viewed as nothing more than the brutal atrocities of greedy savages, while the brutal atrocities of newly arrived greedy savages are treated as heroic achievements worthy of celebration and praise...."
"In their more honest moments," Greenfield continues, "leftists will admit that they do not love America — only its potential...to be changed by them...moments like Michelle Obama proclaiming that she had never been proud of her country before...a chilling glimpse into the mind of the left that cannot love anything that is not an expression of their own ego...."
"They love [an] America that legalizes illegal aliens, displaces its own citizens to make way for them, and tears down all barriers against crime and terror. They love America, so long as it frees terrorists from prison — and when war is declared against it by a fanatical cult of mass murderers, it gives the murderers their day in court with lawyers and a trial....This is the America they love. I will only love you, if you kill yourself."
A CABAL OF IMMENSE PROPORTIONS
A coup d'état is never an overnight phenomenon. It takes years, often decades, of planning, and more often than not, there are thwarted attempts along the way. In America, leftists have been actively trying both to undermine and overthrow our country since at least the 1960s (actually well before then, as far back as a hundred years). They tried with Jimmy Carter, but in spite of the lasting harm he did, his stupendous incompetence ultimately did him in, relegating him to one ignominious term.
They tried again with Bill Clinton, who as a student spent years — when he might have been fighting for our country in Vietnam — hanging around England smoking pot and, oddly, "visiting" Communist Russia. Clinton lasted two terms, largely because he was too narcissistic and undisciplined to stick to the leftist party line, craving the spotlight to such a degree that when the electorate smacked him and his wife down for trying to inflict socialized medicine on our citizens, he moved ever so nimbly to the center, where he stayed until he practically had to be dragged off the stage during the most self-aggrandizing departure of a president in American history.
Through these failures, the left learned never to depend on a genuine natural-born American citizen to actualize their coup, that the real thing would somehow retain some random DNA strands of affection for our republic. They would have to find a faux American, one who looked and sounded like the real thing, but whose allegiance to America was non-existent — perhaps someone who had lived in a Muslim country, studied the Koran, subscribed to Sharia law, and had lifelong relationships with Marxists and Communists and other America-haters. Enter the man who calls himself Barack Obama.
In a stunning piece of journalism — "Who's Your Daddy? Who's Your Mama? AND WHERE IS YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE?" — a "Concerned Citizen, forced to speculate in absence of the public release of documents," considers several plausible scenarios that describe who Obama's parents might have been, where he might have been born, and how the idea to insinuate this Manchurian Candidate-Trojan Horse into America's body politic came to pass. The article poses numerous provocative questions:
What exactly happened in the Teresa Hotel in Harlem in 1960 — where a man resembling Barack Obama Sr. rubbed shoulders with Malcolm X and a Cuban journalist?
What was Fidel Castro doing at the above hotel at the same time? Khrushchev? Malcolm X?
How could Obama's "mother," Stanley Ann Dunham, have delivered him in August of 1961 in Honolulu when official University of Washington records show her 2680 miles away in Seattle attending classes that same month? (Pamela Geller: www.atlasshrugs.com).
Was Madelyn Dunham really Obama's mother, and not his grandmother?
Was he the product of an affair between his "grandfather," Stanley Armour Dunham (who he looks like) and one of the Asian, Polynesian or Indonesian girls who frequented the beaches of Hawaii in the 1950s? On the cover of Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, why is the man he claims is his father, Barack Obama Sr., not pictured, while his grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, is? Was the dark-skinned woman on the cover his real mother?
Was he really the son of his earliest mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a prominent poet, Communist political activist, and self-professed pedophile? Davis wrote about raping a 13-year-old girl. Could that girl have been Stanley Ann Dunham? Could this be why Obama wrote on his Facebook page that he was born in 1957?
Was Obama really the only son of Malcolm X and his wife Betty Shabazz? They had six daughters, but did they leave the care of their only son to surrogates to protect him from the same fate — assassination — that killed Malcolm X?
Or did Malcolm X father Obama with one of the dozens of daughters of the Communist Indonesian President Sukarno, after the older man invited him to the anti-white, anti-capitalist Bandung conference in 1955? Sukarno loathed America. Was it he who hatched the plot to take over America? Did he then share his idea with Malcolm X because he believed the American Muslim was capable of succeeding?
Where do the Rockefellers fit in? Recent speculation has it that Michael Rockefeller, the Harvard graduate who is thought to have died in Papua, New Guinea, may have fathered Obama with a Papuan woman. Here's a film of Michael's strange odyssey. Is it coincidence that Obama's "grandfather" Stanley and his stepfather Lolo Soetoro both worked for the Rockefellers' Standard Oil Company?
Is it coincidence that the Marxist-praising Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Rockefeller crony and Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, now acts as an advisor to Obama?
What are we to make of Obama's old friend from high school, Illinois Army National Guard Major L. Tammy Duckworth, telling The Honolulu Advisor on January 8, 2006, that she was "happy to point out that she and Hawaii-raised Punahou (Indonesia) high school graduate Obama have "a karma'aina connection"? Both of them, she said, were born outside the country — Obama in Indonesia, Duckworth in Thailand. Predictably, Duckworth retracted her statement a few days after the article appeared in print.
Was it just a fashion statement when we witnessed Michelle Obama on election night appear in a dress of the revolutionary and anarchic colors of red and black, with a gigantic sash in the unmistakable configuration of an X — and Obama's very young daughters also dressed in revolutionary red and black? As an observer wrote, "What if the garb worn by the Obama's was a silent tribute to Barack's real father, Malcolm X?...the red and black dress and that X that hits you between the eyes....where are the various shades of red, white, and blue?...."
Was the CIA behind Obama's attempted coup d'état? Where does the Ford Foundation fit in? If you want a much more extensive history of the Ford Foundation, the CIA, and the ghastly Indonesian coup, read David Ransom's piece here.
What is the likelihood of Obama's so-called mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, meeting two "husbands" — Barack Obama Sr. and Lolo Soetoro, both connected to "Big Oil" — at the University of Hawaii?
Obama denies he's a Muslim, but "the accumulated research from primary sources who knew Obama from his childhood indicate that he was a devout Muslim, the son of a devout Muslim, the stepson of a devout Muslim, and the grandson and namesake ('Hussein') of a devout Muslim. He was registered in school in Indonesia as a Muslim and demonstrated his ability to chant praise to Allah in impressive Arab-accented tones even as an adult. Just as he has not disavowed his 'uncle' Jeremiah, neither has he disavowed the Muslim faith that he was born into and raised in. Here, with George Stephanopoulos, Obama says as much.
Is Obama the son of "CIA spooks" and a "CIA spook" himself?
In a can't-put-down article, Deanna Spingola writes of Pastor James David Manning, who in May is holding a public trial at Columbia University in New York (just blocks from Manning's church in Harlem) that is charging Barack Obama with treason! Here is what Spingola writes:
"Obama...was recruited [at Occidental College in CA] in 1980 by the CIA [when Stansfield M. Turner was the director], which has made it a practice since its inception to recruit college students. He was, by his own admission, a 'C' student, a dope smoker, and a member of the Marxist Club at Occidental, a co-educational liberal arts college. In 1981, Obama allegedly transferred from Occidental to Columbia University....Columbia had a foreign student program, and the CIA has major connections and influence with Columbia and the nation's other educational facilities....the CIA needed Muslims or others who could easily blend into the Muslim environment in the Middle East....Obama, as an undercover agent, was the lead agent in the arms and money supply for the CIA-trained Taliban Army against the Soviet Army war machine. His actions were integral to the Taliban's success in their opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Obama, it is publicly acknowledged, went to Pakistan in 1981. There is no way of knowing how often Obama traveled between Pakistan and Russia.
"According to Dr. Manning," Spingola writes, "Obama was an interpreter for the CIA during the war in Afghanistan. When Obama completed his CIA operations in the mid 1980s and returned to the U.S., he persuaded the State Department to maneuver his entrance into Harvard Law School...."
Needless to say, Pastor Manning's life has been threatened and continues to be threatened by people who are deeply afraid of his explosive charges.
And here is yet another bizarre oddity: an article saying that Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, "voluntarily surrendered" his law license back in 2008 in order to escape charges that he lied on his bar application, and that First Lady Michelle Obama "voluntarily surrendered" her law license in 1993!
MASSIVE MEDIA MALFEASANCE
I have written at length of the many lawyers and journalists who have addressed the birth certificate issue. You can read some of their names here. But with the notable and noteworthy exceptions I've mentioned, other so-called investigative journalists who should have been asking and answering the above questions and dozens of others are an extinct species, killed off by leftist media moguls in league with the Obama regime, or too timid and pandering in their own rights to have taken up the cudgels on behalf of the public they pretend to serve.
People understand why hacks from the former, now moribund, mainstream media have avoided the subject of Obama's eligibility like the plague it is. By and large, they are liberals and leftists who shilled for him during his campaign, concealed mountains of damning evidence about his lack of experience and shady associations, and studiously avoided any mention of his still-unknown country of birth.
But harder to understand are the hacks at Fox. In a startling display of dishonesty and pretension, Bill O'Reilly, who wants to be considered intelligent and so never fails to tell his audience that he earned a master's degree at Harvard, apparently never studied coups d'état, never realized that the Marxist Castro's shining moment came only after years of agitation, rebellion, and subterfuge. But the idea of Obama being part of a conspiracy was apparently too much for the former elementary school teacher to contemplate... above his pay grade, so to speak. Never even consulted Wikipedia, as I just did, to learn of the hundreds of coups d'état that took place in the 20th century alone.
Apparently Harvard never taught Mr. "looking out for the folks" about the successful coups in Argentina in 1943, in Thailand in 1947, in Czechoslovakia in 1948, in Egypt in 1952, in Paraguay in 1954, in Pakistan in1958, in Venezuela in 1958, in Turkey in 1960, in Ecuador and Syria and Brazil and South Vietnam and Ghana and Libya and Somalia and Greece and Chile and again in Pakistan — the list is endless — and the immense and lengthy planning that went into these government overthrows. Or the more recent coups — since 1999 — in the Ivory Coast, Fiji, Peru, Mauritania, Haiti, Congo, et al.
Without acknowledging the widespread existence of coups and the years or decades of planning they entailed, O'Reilly decided to slam "the birthers" — as he pejoratively calls those who still believe in the Constitution and think presidents of the U.S. should abide by it, starting with their eligibility — and stated that he personally had seen Obama's birth certificate.
Of course he hadn't. He lied. Then in an orchestrated charade, he trotted out two women, both lawyers, he routinely disrespects by barking out their last names and in essence had them standing on their hind legs, yapping in agreement about those misguided "birthers." It didn't take long for Glenn Beck to echo their yaps. That's right, the guy who routinely looks straight in the camera and exhorts his audience to seek "the truth."
Why would O'Reilly lie? Why would Beck avoid seeking "the truth" in this one glaring instance? Were they threatened, as Douglas Hagmann — a respected journalist, director of the Northeast Intelligence Network, and longtime private investigator — and Judi McLeod, a prolific journalist and the managing editor of Canada Free Press, suggest? After a nine-month investigation, they discovered that prominent media people had indeed been threatened by the heads of major TV and radio stations and also Federal Communication Commission officials — with job losses and worse — to never raise, allude to, or mention the birth certificate issue! Or was it the huge influence the Saudis have over Fox content since they bought and then increased their shares to nearly 20 percent in Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp?
Whatever. The fact that O'Reilly and Beck caved — and continue to cave — has forever negated their credibility.
WHAT NOW?
So appalled are a majority of Americans at the hijacking of one-sixth of the American economy through the healthcare legislation, and so revolted by the hideous process it entailed, that upwards of 15 state attorneys general — and counting — are suing the federal government on grounds that key parts of the Deathcare law are unconstitutional; that the law includes taxpayer-funded abortions (smoke-and-mirrors to the contrary), kill-the-elderly cuts to Medicare seniors, huge tax increases that will wipe out the entire middle-class of our country, and a Nazi-like brown-shirt $16-billion-taxpayer-funded force of Internal Revenue Service goons to reinforce our descent into tyranny. Ordinary citizens are suing too, among them four residents of Michigan, represented by the Thomas More Law Center and attorney David Yerushalmi.
And dozens if not hundreds of groups are crying Repeal — which former speaker Newt Gingrich explained was not possible because Obama would veto such a move. What is possible, Gingrich said, is for Republicans to gain majorities in the House and Senate during the midterms in November and then cut off funding for this horrific, bankrupt-the-nation law. And if the GOP gains the presidency in 2012, they can then repeal this socialist blueprint.
But there may lie the rub. As writer J.D. Longstreet reminds us: "The democrats' lust for power is so great and their zeal for socialism so intense that I cannot see them allowing their hold on power to be placed in jeopardy by, of all things, an election where the voice of the people is actually heard....in less than eighteen months the Obama Regime has managed to take America from a constitutional republic to a socialist republic....that accomplishment alone should give you reason enough to suspect that when their power is threatened they will use the full force of the Central Government to ruthlessly crush any and all who they perceive as a threat. At this moment in history, a threat is anyone, any American, who does not agree with them."
Longstreet and others imagine Obama creating a national crisis or emergency — sort of like the phony swine flu "pandemic" last year — in which Martial Law is declared and the midterm elections are suspended. "Who decides what a national emergency is?" he asks. "You've got it — the Obama Regime!"
Longstreet then issues a warning: "The American people are a patient people. We will put up with a lot of nonsense from our government — for a while. But we draw the line when that government ignores the Constitution, as the Obama Regime and the Democrats in the Congress have done. There is a seething rage in America today....my senses tell me it is too late to avoid the 'lashing out' Americans are about to unleash. [Americans] are waiting, just waiting, for an incident that will knock the chocks from the dam wall holding back the cascade. Postponing, or suspending, the midterm election...would be the spark that ignites a firestorm that will consume all in its path."
Journalist Sher Zieve concurs. "The political party that promoted the slavery of Africans, established Jim Crow laws, created the Ku Klux Klan, refused to follow court orders barring segregation...is now is full raging power within the borders of the United States of America. Most of them — including their dictatorial leader Barack Hussein Obama — realize that the chances for their reelections to power are, at best, marginal. I have warned that any and all 'free' elections would probably soon be a thing of the past. The Marxist way is to not allow them in the first place.
"The current U.S. government is moving quickly and forcefully against the American people," Zieve continues. "I have to now wonder how close We-the-People are today toward reaching the same conclusions as did our founders....I think we may be as close to our founders' ultimate decision as we will ever be. Do we wish to be free and sovereign or submit to bondage? For a brief window of time longer, it's still our choice."
Then there is Michael Connelly's stern warning: "...I have some bad news for all of the socialists, or progressives, or whatever you choose to call yourselves this week, you have made a huge mistake. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese Admiral Yamamoto who led the attack said that: 'I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.'
"I suggest to President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid that you have awakened the giant again and that this giant, made up of freedom-loving Americans, is going to be coming at you from every direction you can imagine. Individuals and State Governments will be challenging you in the courts, and Americans will take you on in the polling places. In every city, town and village you will hear the voices of angry Americans, and despite your best efforts we will not be silenced. You will hear the outcry of Americans of every race, religion, and creed, and we will prevail."
All of this takes time, of course...time well spent. But it will take less time to revive the serious question of Obama's very suspect eligibility to be president in the first place!
"Forget the dispute over the 'natural born citizen' requirement of the U.S. Constitution for presidents," writes Bob Unruh of WorldNetDaily. "Barack Obama may not even be a 'citizen,' according to a new filing in a long-running legal challenge to his eligibility to occupy the Oval Office."
If there is even one court in our land whose judge has not been threatened, intimidated, bought off, or bribed, the case for Obama's ineligibility should be tried immediately. If found guilty, I suspect Obama would be responsible for the greatest purchase of confetti in the history of the world!
© Joan Swirsky
"The e-mail Bag"
You Might Be A Redneck
Thank you Jeff Foxworthy!
The dog catcher calls for a backup unit when visiting your house.
You've ever bought a used cap.
Your CB antenna is a danger to low-flying planes.
You pick your teeth from a catalog.
You've ever financed a tattoo.
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