Say “No” to a National Sales Tax!

 

Like Dracula, the Undead, these tax-and-spend, bend-over-so-we-can-better-scr_w-you liberals just don’t give up. Now it’s a NATIONAL sales tax.

Don’t be fooled by their euphemism of “value added tax” or VAT. The only “value” that’s added is to the already bloated Big Government.

We must shoot down this trial balloon before the idea gets traction.

h/t to ingenious Giovanni’s World member Steve!

~Eowyn

………………….

 

 

Liberals are vampires

Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look

Levy Viewed as Way to Reduce Deficits, Fund Health Reform

 By Lori Montgomery Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/26/AR2009052602909.html?hpid=topnews

 

 With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.

Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax — called a value-added tax, or VAT — has not been seriously considered in the United States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity.

At a White House conference earlier this year on the government’s budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama’s policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.

“There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said in an interview. “I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table.”

A VAT is a tax on the transfer of goods and services that ultimately is borne by the consumer. Highly visible, it would increase the cost of just about everything, from a carton of eggs to a visit with a lawyer. It is also hugely regressive, falling heavily on the poor. But VAT advocates say those negatives could be offset by using the proceeds to pay for health care for every American — a tangible benefit that would be highly valuable to low-income families.

Liberals dispute that notion. “You could pay for it regressively and have people at the bottom come out better off — maybe. Or you could pay for it progressively and they’d come out a lot better off,” said Bob McIntyre, director of the nonprofit Citizens for Tax Justice, which has a health financing plan that targets corporations and the rich.

A White House official said a VAT is “unlikely to be in the mix” as a means to pay for health-care reform. “While we do not want to rule any credible idea in or out as we discuss the way forward with Congress, the VAT tax, in particular, is popular with academics but highly controversial with policymakers,” said Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for White House Budget Director Peter Orszag.

Still, Orszag has hired a prominent VAT advocate to advise him on health care: Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and author of the 2008 book “Health Care, Guaranteed.” Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, chairman of a task force Obama assigned to study the tax system, has expressed at least tentative support for a VAT.

“Everybody who understands our long-term budget problems understands we’re going to need a new source of revenue, and a VAT is an obvious candidate,” said Leonard Burman, co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, who testified on Capitol Hill this month about his own VAT plan. “It’s common to the rest of the world, and we don’t have it.”

Seeking New Revenue

The surge of interest in a VAT is testament to the extraordinary depth of the nation’s money troubles. While some conservatives have long argued that a consumption tax would provide a simpler and more efficient alternative to the byzantine U.S. income tax code, this time it’s all about the money.

The federal budget deficit is projected to approach $1.3 trillion next year, the highest ever except for this year, when the deficit is forecast to exceed $1.8 trillion. The Treasury is borrowing 46 cents of every dollar it spends, largely from China and other foreign creditors, who are growing increasingly uneasy about the security of their investments. Unless Congress comes up with some serious cash, expanding the nation’s health-care system will only add to the problem.

Obama wants to raise income taxes for high earners and impose new levies on business, but those moves would not generate enough cash to cover the cost of health care, much less balance the budget, and they have not been fully embraced by Congress. Obama’s plan to tax greenhouse-gas emissions could raise trillions of dollars, but again, Congress is balking.

Key lawmakers are considering other ways to pay for health reform, including new taxes on sugary soda, alcohol and employer-provided health insurance. The last proposal could raise a lot of money — nearly $1 trillion over the next five years, according to White House budget documents. But options on the table would raise a fraction of that sum. And while it might pay for health care, it would barely dent deficits projected to total nearly $4 trillion over the next five years and to grow rapidly in the future, as baby boomers draw on Social Security and Medicare.

Enter the VAT, one of the world’s most popular taxes, in use in more than 130 countries. Among industrialized nations, rates range from 5 percent in Japan to 25 percent in Hungary and in parts of Scandinavia. A 21 percent VAT has permitted Ireland to attract investment by lowering its corporate tax rate.

The VAT has advantages: Because producers, wholesalers and retailers are each required to record their transactions and pay a portion of the VAT, the tax is hard to dodge. It punishes spending rather than savings, which the administration hopes to encourage. And the threat of a VAT could pull the country out of recession, some economists argue, by hurrying consumers to the mall before the tax hits.

A VAT’s Bottom Line

What would it cost? Emanuel argues in his book that a 10 percent VAT would pay for every American not entitled to Medicare or Medicaid to enroll in a health plan with no deductibles and minimal copayments. In his 2008 book, “100 Million Unnecessary Returns,” Yale law professor Michael J. Graetz estimates that a VAT of 10 to 14 percent would raise enough money to exempt families earning less than $100,000 — about 90 percent of households — from the income tax and would lower rates for everyone else.

And in a paper published last month in the Virginia Tax Review, Burman suggests that a 25 percent VAT could do it all: Pay for health-care reform, balance the federal budget and exempt millions of families from the income tax while slashing the top rate to 25 percent. A gallon of milk would jump from $3.69 to $4.61, and a $5,000 bathroom renovation would suddenly cost $6,250, but the nation’s debt would stabilize and everybody could see a doctor.

Sales Tax Gains Momentum

Burman, who helped House Democrats craft an unsuccessful 2007 plan to repeal the alternative minimum tax, said he’s received a number of phone calls from lawmakers interested in his idea, though “they can’t quite imagine how to make it happen politically.” Burman said the 25 percent rate has caused some sticker shock, and he’s trying to figure out how to bring it down.

Graetz’s proposal drew an endorsement from Volcker, who last year called it “a sensible plan for reform.” (Volcker did not respond to a request for comment.) It also has piqued the interest of Conrad, the Senate Budget Committee chairman who argues that it could be modified to accommodate Obama’s pledge not to raise taxes on families who make less than $200,000 a year.

“I think interest is quietly picking up,” Graetz said. “People are beginning to recognize that the mathematics of the current system are just unsustainable. You have to do something. And a VAT has got to be on the table if you want to do something big and serious.”

Still, the Senate Finance Committee declined to include a VAT among the options it is considering to pay for health reform. And even VAT supporters doubt the tax will find a place among the tax-reform proposals the Volcker panel has been asked to produce by Dec. 4.

Though the nation’s fiscal outlook is grim, Burman said “the situation will have to get more desperate” before lawmakers are likely to consider a new levy aimed directly at the pocketbooks of every one of their constituents.

Most lawmakers are still looking for “a painless source of revenue” to overhaul the health-care system and dig the nation out of debt, Burman said. “Who knows?” he added. “Maybe the tooth fairy will bring that to them.”

American Flag Is “Offensive”

 

This news just gets me mad.

Now it’s “offensive” to fly the American flag? And this took place in Texas? What next, as we sink further into the abyss?

h/t to loyal Giovanni’s World member Steve!

~Eowyn

……………….

May 26, 2009 10:07 pm US/Central

Supervisor Asks Woman To Take Down American Flag

http://cbs11tv.com/local/patriotism.at.office.2.1020415.html

MANSFIELD (CBS 11 News) – Is it okay to show your patriotism at the office?

For one Arlington woman, the answer was “no” after she hung an American flag in her office just before the Memorial Day weekend.

Debbie McLucas is one of four hospital supervisors at Kindred Hospital in Mansfield. Last week, she hung a three-by-five foot American flag in the office she shares with the other supervisors.

When McLucas came to work Friday, her boss told her another supervisor had found her flag offensive. “I was just totally speechless. I was like, ‘You’re kidding me,’” McLucas said.

McLucas’ husband and sons are former military men. Her daughter is currently serving in Iraq as a combat medic.

Stifling a cry, McLucas said, “I just wonder if all those young men and women over there are really doing this for nothing.”

McLucas said the supervisor who complained has been in the United States for 14 years and is formerly from Africa. McLucas said the supervisor took down Debbie’s flag herself.

“The flag and the pole had been placed on the floor,” McLucas said. But McLucas also said hospital higher ups had told her some patients’ families and visitors had also complained.

“I was told it wouldn’t matter if it was only one person,” she said. “It would have to come down.”

McLucas said hospital bosses told her as far as patriotism was concerned, the flag flying outside the hospital building would have to suffice.

Kindred Hospital Corporate Headquarters are located in Kentucky. They have yet to make a final decision on the matter. They have not returned our phone calls for comment.

The Kindred Hospital Corporation was chosen as Fortune’s most admired for 2009. McLucas hopes they’ll back her patriotism.

“I find it very frightening because if I can’t display my flag, what other freedoms will I lose before all is said and done,” McLucas asked.

Former Berkeley Liberal Repents

 

Hallelujah! There is hope for America.

If this self-described lifelong liberal-lefty – who lives in the People’s Republic of Berkeley, California — can change and become a conservative, then there is hope!

I just wish she’d tell us how we can de-program the rest of the pod-people!

~Eowyn

…………………

Liberals are pod people!

May 11, 2009

Letter of Amends from a Recovering Liberal in Berkeley

by Robin of Berkeley

Dear friends, family, loved ones, conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, my brother in law, Sam, and my cousin Joe: I am sorry and you were right.

These are not easy words for anyone to utter, much less a leftist from Berkeley, or a recovering leftist, that is. Even though I’ve been in recovery for 14 months, 2 weeks, and 3 days, leftists are always right in your face, in an I-hate-you-if-you-disagree sort of way. Hence, this letter of amends to all the people I’ve lectured, scolded, ranted and raved at, and otherwise annoyed during my 30 plus years of “progressive” politics.

My recovery program urges a fierce moral inventory, a cleansing of heart and mind (kind of like a “forgiveness tour” but without the scary dictators), so here goes:

To my brother in law, Sam, for blasting you in that Chinese restaurant for voting for Reagan, mea culpa.

To my cousin Joe for calling you a traitor when you became an MBA, started holding a real job (as opposed to most of us Berkeley types who are psychotherapists, massage therapists and aromatherapists), and became a conservative, my bad.

To my goddaughter whom I told when she was l0 years old that Republicans were bad, Democrats were good (yes I really did say this), and who got confused and tearful because she lives in a suburb where most people are Republicans, kid, what in the world was I thinking?

To my leftist friends, with whom I agreed that 9/ll was the US’s fault, you and I were all such jerks.

To those potential friends whom I dumped when I found out you were conservative, your gain is my loss.

To all those columnists and editors whom I harangued with angry letters and e mails, sorry, sorry, sorry.

And finally to me, Robin, for installing you for the last 27 years in the far left cult of the People’s Republic of Berkeley, where Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the SLA, where the Black Panthers had their violent beginnings and the heads of the Black Muslims are jailed for murder and rape, my apologies, girl.

I didn’t know any better. I thought the whole world lived in areas where the streets are filthy, aggressive street behavior is allowed because the perps are victims of capitalism, and where you can easily get mugged walking down a street or eating in a restaurant at noon. (By the way, with the Left in charge, expect gangs, crime, indoctrination of 5 year olds and general anarchy to be coming soon to a neighborhood near you.)

Given that the media is pretty much censored (good luck finding a conservative book in your local “independent” book store or hearing a Republican speak anywhere), you didn’t know that a party of grown ups even existed that didn’t advocate screaming at others as the preferred mode of communication. So to my dear Robin, apologies for what I put you through, what I deprived you of, and my pledge to do better.

Cousin Joe, Sam, et al, you may be wondering how I did a l80 in 1 1/2 years. How did I go from a rabid, sanctimonious liberal whom you steadfastly avoided at family gatherings to a fan of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Savage? Recovery encourages us to share our story, so here’s mine:

In February of 2008, I saw a new client, a bright and sensitive young woman who came in looking like she just escaped a war zone. In some ways she had; she had innocently shared with others at her job that she voted for Hillary rather than Obama. Immediately she was being targeted for abuse that put her in fear for not only her job, but her life.

We both suddenly became aware that something had grown really dark in the Democratic Party. I started hearing about many other incidents where loyal Democrats were being physically and emotionally threatened for supporting Hillary. A woman in Berkeley had her front window broken because it displayed a poster of Hillary. Randi Rhodes, an Air America talk show leftist, called Hillary a f______ witch. (Rhodes was recently promoted to a national talk radio show, illustrating another disturbing trend: the deafening silence about what Rush Limbaugh has dubbed the new “thug-ocracy.)

An acquaintance had her car broken into, and the only item stolen was a NoObama bumper sticker. A South Park episode featured an episode where a nuclear weapon was being aimed at Hillary’s genitals. My local greeting card store sold very flattering cards about Obama, insulting ones about Hillary, and a Hillary “nutcracker.” When I complained, the young male manager literally laughed in my face.

Things went from bad to worse when Sarah Palin entered the scene. When Geraldine Ferraro ran for Vice President, there was no debasement of her character, no sexual threats. But with Palin, a full scale “wilding” ensued that chillingly reminded me of the random sexual attacks on women by gangs of men in New York. She was called every vile name in the book by both male and female liberals.

Actress Sarah Bernhardt hoped a gang of black males would rape her. When Palin’s church was torched with children inside, the press was missing in action (somehow I imagine the press would have been all over this if Obama’s church were torched). Not only was the misogyny disgusting, but the classism was abhorrent. The Democrats, by ridiculing Palin’s voice and her education, were acting like arrogant snobs. The party had changed, I had changed, and the differences looked irreconcilable.

The final straw for me was when a close friend flew into a rage at me when she learned I wasn’t supporting Obama. The political became personal when she began impugning my character. Worse yet, she tried to intimidate me into changing my mind by threatening to dump me.

Suddenly a light went on. The peace and love and flower power of the old left was dead and gone (if it even existed to begin with except in my imagination). The Democrats had morphed into a power hungry Thought Police, and I was done with them. My new motto in life: don’t PC on me.

So this is my letter of amends, and I hope that I can be forgiven by all whom I’ve offended. I knew not what the heck I was doing. But now the problem is: how in the world does one be a conservative these days? How to stay brave and committed when conservatives are being targeted, punished, and shunned on a daily basis? How to sleep at night knowing that the country I have finally come to love may be destroyed from within by a massive Big Brother government?

I guess I’ll just have to do a step one, as we 12 stepper’s call it, and turn it all over to my Higher Power.

Love,

Robin

……………………………………………………………..

May 21, 2009

How to De-program a Liberal in One Year Or Less

by Robin of Berkeley

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/how_to_deprogram_a_liberal_in.html

So what do you do when you realize that everything you’ve ever thought and believed no longer worked for you?  Where do you go when the bubble of progressive politics bursts in your face and you’re left in the leftist place on earth?  It seems that the choices are as follows:  either you cling to your beliefs even more zealously and attack anyone who dares to disagree.  Or, if you’re like me, you embark on a journey of discovery and recovery.

I wrote another piece recently for American Thinker, a letter of amends to conservatives.  In it I described why I transformed from a Berkeley leftist to a talk radio loving conservative the last 1 1/2 years.   I realized the Democratic Party wasn’t what I thought, that it had mutated into something mean and rough, and that I had probably been living in a fantasy world all along.  I very much appreciated the outpouring of support, wisdom, and forgiveness from American Thinker readers.  

Many said something to the effect of:  Robin, congrats, but what in the world took you so long?  So let me explain.  I wasn’t just your garden variety liberal who voted Democrat and that was about it.   I was a true believer.  A zealot.  Like many leftists who had abandoned Judeo-Christian religion, I worshipped at the altar of liberalism.  For instance, I never missed watching the Democratic National Convention.  I watched every speech, with tissue box handy.   (What kind of a freak was I anyway?)  The Democratic Party symbolized hope, love, compassion, promise, everything that was good and holy in the world.   I gave money, my time, my heart, my soul.  I cried with joy when Democrats won; I was distraught when they lost.

I was programmed from birth to be a devout liberal.  My dad, a hard working first generation Russian Jew, would lecture me on a regular basis, “The Democrats are the party of the little people.  The Republicans are the party of the rich guy.”  He would also get a little weepy when he watched the DNC (so that must be where I got it from).  One of our rare moments of bonding was reading the newspapers together on opposite ends of the couch, interrupting each other with stories about the bad Republicans and the heroic Democrats.

When I was in high school in the early 70′s in New York, I wrote impassioned essays on civil rights and on feminism.  In college, in the days before universities became indoctrination factories, I searched for politically left classes, and took every one I could find.  I spent years in consciousness raising groups lambasting male oppression with other angry feminists, and yelled “Two Four Six Eight, Pornography is Woman Hate,”  at numerous marches.

When I was 26, I parked myself in the People’s Republic of Berkeley, CA, the epicenter of the far left.  I came as a liberal but soon morphed into a leftist as most people here do.  In Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland, and the outlying towns, there is no Republican Party.  Literally.  There are only Democrats running against other Democrats.  I recall years ago going to vote at a time when there were separate lines for Democrats and Republicans.  The Democrats’ line was a mile long.  The Republican’s was free and clear.  After we all stood there waiting for 45 minutes, a brave young man walked up to the Republican booth and quickly voted.  I still recall the cackles and giggles as we pointed and stared at this odd, exotic bird that had come to perch for a brief while. 

So maybe you get now how hard it was, how disorienting and destabilizing and crazy making it was, when I realized about 1 1/2 years ago that I no longer believed in liberalism.  I walked around in a confused state for weeks.  Being a Democrat, a liberal, a far left radical from Berkeley was a big part of my identity.  So who the heck was I if I weren’t a leftist?   And what in the world would I do, given that my husband, all my friends, and all my psychotherapist clients were liberal and I would be public enemy #1 if I told anyone?   Converting from Islam to Judaism, yet still hanging out in front of the old mosque in Kabul, probably would have been easier.

After weeks of shuffling around like a zombie, it was time to do something about it.  The first step, I decided, was deprogramming myself from decades of liberal propaganda.   Out went books by Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, and various 9/11 conspiracy books.  In came Mark Levin, Ben Stein, Ron Paul, and Ayn Rand.   I heard something vaguely about Talk Radio, so I scanned my AM dial, and found Michael Savage.  I was shocked and offended by his diatribes — but also oddly intrigued.  I found many others:  Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, Boortz, Medved, all of whom became my “sponsors” in recovery this last year.  I found wonderfully insightful websites like American Thinker.

To my disbelief, the more I listened and read, the more these folks made sense.  For instance, at first I couldn’t understand why so many conservatives expressed concern about morality issues, like gay marriage.  Berkeley is Lesbian Central, and I know many good hearted gay people. But the more I learned, the more I started getting the larger picture; that conservatives were not necessarily impugning the character of gay people, but they were alarmed at the breakdown of traditional values.   If the basic structure of society goes, e.g., traditional marriage, religion, patriotism, common language, what remains?   If everything becomes fluid, what is there to hold onto?  Without any moral structure and traditions, a society descends into anarchy and mob rule, as it is clearly doing today.  

As I educated myself, I started thinking and rethinking.   I’d wake up in the middle of the night with the sudden realization that deeply held beliefs made no sense.  Take the anti war stance of the left.  Noble and sanctimonious and all that.  But how easy it is to sit back and preach peace when you have an army defending you; to rail against the U.S. when you are protected by free speech laws;  to demonize Israel, when you’ve never lived through the murderous pogroms of Tsarist Russia or the Holocaust.  How hypocritical to lambast Big Business while you are making money from their stocks in your mutual fund portfolio (that is, until Obama took over).  And how ludicrous to admire Chavez, Castro and all things socialist, when the closest experience you’ve had to standing on a bread line is queuing up for goat cheese/arugula pizza at Whole Foods. 

And this love affair with Radical Islam — what’s up with that?   I had previously thought of Islam as a quaint, folksy religion.  But when I started actually reading about it, especially Dr. Phyllis Chesler’s illuminating books and web site, I realized extremist Muslims were advocating some seriously scary stuff, like destroying Israel and the West.  I had been oblivious of the horrendous treatment of women: the honor killings, beheadings, genital mutilation.   It now seemed like the height of naivety, if not masochism, to embrace with open arms people who want to kill you.  While as a liberal I was socialized to believe everyone was good, all cultures were the same, and We Are The World, We Are The Children, I began to understand that evil exists.   The emergence of evil always offers warnings signs, and we ignore them at our peril.  

Though exhausted from lack of sleep, I also started waking up.  I realized, to my utter incredulity, that conservatives made sense, and that I was one of them.   I recalled Mark Twain’s quip about his father: When Twain was a teenager, he thought his father was the stupidest man in the world; but when he became a young man in his 20′s, his father had many intelligent things to say. Twain couldn’t believe how much his father had learned in those years! Like Twain, I grew up and saw the world as it is.  Yes it would be nice to save the planet, to eliminate hunger, and to make everyone good and righteous.  But humans don’t have the power to do that. To walk around, as I did, with utopian images that didn’t match reality was to view life through the eyes of a child.  An adult understands that civility matters, people need to be held accountable for their behavior, and protecting yourself and your country are moral imperatives.

So it took about a year, but my deprogramming has been successful.  I’m comfortable in my own skin, feel more alive than I have in years, and am excited by all I’m learning and becoming.   Now when I listen to Sean Hannity’s theme song, “Let Freedom Ring,” I get a little misty eyed (some things never change).   I only hope and pray (yes I’m doing that more too) that the US survives when the Democrats are done “changing” it.  But if this lifelong left winger from Berkeley can wake up, hopefully others will also do so before it’s too late.

Robin of Berkeley is a Recovering Liberal and a psychotherapist in private practice.

Obama’s Back Door Deal For Illegals

Submitted by our west coast editor Eowyn.

Take the “I am not a racist” pledge before the illegals argument gets to a fevered pitch. Tell the world, and Obama, that this has nothing to do with ‘racism’, it’s all about ‘the law’!

Obama to Host White House Amnesty Summit
On June 8, President Barack Obama will meet with Congressional  leaders to
discuss immigration reform legislation

(_Politico_
(http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0509/Obama_sets_WH_immigration_reform_event_for_June_8_.
html) , May 20, 2009).  In the  past, President Obama has supported
“comprehensive immigration  reform,” which has included amnesty for the more than 12 million  illegal aliens who are living in the United States.  (_Luuliyo Online_ (http://www.luuliyo.com/?p=598) , May 20, 2009).

During a  meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus this past May,
President Obama promised to hold a forum on immigration  reform. 

(WSJ_Washington Wire_
(http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/03/18/obama-tells-hispanic-caucus-hes-willing-to-tackle-immigration/) , March 18,  2009).  As FAIR
previously reported, “according to senior  administration officials, Obama will speak publicly about the  immigration issue in May.” 

(FAIR’s _Legislative Update_
(http://www.fairus.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=20313&security=1601&news_iv_ctrl=1721) , April 13,  2009).  Despite President Obama’s
statement that “transparency  promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about  what their Government is doing,” and his promise to run a more  transparent government, the immigration meeting will not be  public.
(Obama _Transparency Memorandum_
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/) ).    Instead, it will be held behind closed doors, outside of the view of  the American public which has strongly opposed amnesty in the  past.  This initial closed-door meeting in June appears to be  in lieu of a public forum on the immigration issue.
The meeting will take place at the White House and will include  “a small
bipartisan group of lawmakers from the House and Senate,  including party
leaders and people who have worked on immigration  issues.”  (Luuliyo).  Among the lawmakers invited to the  meeting are two Democratic Members of the House of Representatives  from California: Zoe Lofgren of San Jose, who chairs the House  Immigration Subcommittee, and Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles, who is  regarded as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s point person on immigration matters. 

(_KPCC Radio_
(http://www.publicradio.org/columns/kpcc/kpccnewsinbrief/2009/05/obama-holding-bipartisan-immig.html) , May 21, 2009).  Both
Lofgren and Becerra are outspoken supporters of amnesty. (See _FAIR’s
Congressional Voting Report_
(http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/110thHouseVR.pdf?docID=2121)  for the  110th Congress).
The White House meeting comes at a time when nearly 14 million  American
workers are out of a job and desperately looking for work.  (Luuliyo).  The
last time that Congress considered  amnesty, in June 2007, unemployment stood at 4.6 percent and 7  million Americans were out of work.  However, today’s unemployment rate stands at 8.9 percent, and 13.7 million Americans  are out of work.  (See _FAIR’s Amnesty & Joblessness Report_
(http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/amnesty_joblessness.pdf?docID=%202701) ,  May 2009).
Amnesty would allow the estimated 8.3 million  illegal aliens who are in the
workforce to keep the jobs they never  should have had, instead of freeing those jobs up for the American  workers who need them.  In addition, amnesty would give those  8.3 million illegal aliens the ability to begin openly competing for  other jobs, in a time when America’s labor market is already demonstrating a lack of available jobs. Schumer Suggests Border Secure, American People  Ready for Amnesty
Last Wednesday, May 20, Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee  Chairman Chuck Schumer (D-NY) held a hearing entitled “Securing the  Border and America’s Points of Entry, What Remains to Be  Done.”  The hearing was the second in a series meant to lay the  groundwork for the introduction of a massive “comprehensive  immigration reform” bill meant to grant amnesty to the approximately  12 million illegal aliens residing in the United States. Schumer opened the hearing by claiming that the American people  would only accept an amnesty “if they can be convinced that their  government is serious about drastically reducing the number of  illegal immigrants entering the United States.”  The  subcommittee chairman stated that true immigration reformers opposed  to amnesty for illegal aliens “have continually promised that  they’ll engage in conversation about immigration reform once  Congress showed it was serious about securing the border.” Schumer  then attempted to argue that this “showing has clearly been made,”  and claimed that “almost the whole border fence has been built.”

  (_Senate Judiciary Committee
Subcommittee on  Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship Hearing_
(http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=3859) ,  May 20, 2009).
Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) agreed  with
Schumer that “progress has been made” on border security, but  added that “we are
not there yet.”  Sessions noted that  Congress’ original intent was that
almost 700 miles of border fence  be built, and added that the Border Patrol
had constructed two types  of fencing to count toward that total: pedestrian
fencing and  vehicle barriers.  Under questioning from Sen. Sessions, Border
Patrol Chief David Aguilar admitted that pedestrians “can get  across” the
vehicle barriers.  Sessions went on to point out  that the Border Patrol had
constructed 323 miles of single-layer  pedestrian fencing and 303 miles of
vehicle barriers, and combined  these numbers as they counted toward their
ultimate mileage goal.  (Id.).
Former Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth testified at the  hearing, as
well. Hayworth argued that it would make more sense for  Congress to pursue
“comprehensive border enforcement…[and]  comprehensive employee verification
before we take on comprehensive  immigration reform.” In his testimony, the
former representative  echoed the sentiments of Sen. Sessions, indicating that
the border  fence has not been built as Congress intended. (_Testimony of
The Honorable  J.D.Hayworth_ (http://judiciary
.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=3859&wit_id=7944) , May 20, 2009). 

Sen. Schumer —  who was absent
from the hearing when Sessions detailed the  differences between what Congress had intended to be built and what  the Border Patrol had actually built — took offense to Hayworth’s  statement about the border fence.  Schumer implied that  Hayworth was failing to “stick to the facts,” and then went on to say that their “is a fence, minimum ten foot high, for the vast  majority of the non-Rio Grande border” — a statement that directly  contradicted the statistics Sessions had presented while Schumer was  absent from the hearing.
Schumer concluded the hearing by saying that the subcommittee  intends to
hold “comprehensive hearings on…every difficult aspect of  immigration
reform.” (Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on  Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship Hearing, May 20,  2009). It is unclear yet as to what the topic of the next hearing  will be and when that hearing will be held.

……………….

Take the pledge!!! “I am not a racist”

If True – Not Good!

BREAKING NEWS: Pentagon Burns Soldiers Bibles – Military Chaplains Attacked?

The Pentagon under the Obama Administration has just acknowledged seizing and burning the privately owned Bibles of American soldiers serving in Afghanistan. The Bibles had been printed in the loc… The Pentagon under the Obama Administration has just acknowledged seizing and burning the privately owned Bibles of American soldiers serving in Afghanistan. The Bibles had been printed in the local Pashto and Dari languages, and sent by private donors to American Christian soldiers and chaplains, for distribution to American troops on overseas military bases during optionally-attended Christian worship services. Had the Bibles not been seized and destroyed, they could have legally been given as gifts during off-duty time to Afghani citizens who welcome our troops in their homes, as an expression of American gratitude for Afghani hospitality, promoting the democratic ideals of freedom of religion and freedom of the press.

But the Muslim controlled Al Jazeera television network obtained video footage of the Bibles, held by American soldiers while listening to a chaplain on the Bagram Air Base (inside the base chapel) whose sermon encouraged outreach and personal evangelism. The American values of freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of Christian speech offended some extremist Muslim groups, and angered a small group of American atheists, who demanded the chaplain be punished for “proselytizing” because he simply repeated Jesus’ words to “Go and make disciples of all nations” in church.

IT’S NOT PROSELYTIZING, IT’S EVANGELISM:

The chaplain properly explained U.S. Central Command’s General Order Number One, which prohibits “proselytizing” (forcing religious conversions using military weapons) but fully permits soldiers of any religion to engage in non-threatening “evangelism” (voluntary conversations about their faith) and legally allows giving private gifts, including books, to Afghani citizens during off-duty hours in their unofficial capacity. The Al Jazeera film-maker Brian Hughes also admitted the Bibles could have been useful in helping soldiers learn the Pashto and Dari languages of the Afghan people.

Instead, the privately owned Bibles were confiscated and destroyed. Caving in to pressure from the Muslims and Atheist groups, the U.S. military spokesman Maj. Jennifer Willis told Reuters reporters, “I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera’s clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed.” When questioned about the authenticity of the Al Jazeera video, U.S. Army Colonel Greg Julian admitted the Al Jazeera reporting was biased against the American Christians: “Most of this is taken out of context … this is irresponsible and inappropriate journalism.”

GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR ENCOURAGED EVANGELISM

After World War II, in order to carry out the democratization of Japan, Five-Star General Of The Army Douglas MacArthur brought Christian leaders to the country to meet with Emperor Hirohito and encouraged mass distribution of Bibles to the population. MacArthur later stated to a visiting American churchman, “We must have ten thousand Christian missionaries and a million Bibles to complete the occupation of this land.”

(Source: Rodger R. Venzke, Confidence In Battle – Inspiration In Peace, 1977, p.24-25.)

But today, instead of confronting Muslim and Atheist enemies of religious liberty, President Obama’s Four-Star Admiral Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen now appears to defend the destruction of the soldiers’ privately owned Bibles, stating during a Pentagon briefing that the military’s position is that it will never “push any specific religion.” He did not address the possibility that by seizing and burning privately owned Bibles, the Obama Administration is now enforcing state atheism upon our troops.

Powell & Ridge The New GOP

 Do NOT listen to these men, they are confused. We cannot fix the GOP by using the very tactics and ideology that ruined it in the first place.

 Why they both think they know better is beyond me. If the GOP wants to win elections I can give them an easy way out. First, speak and act like a Conservative. Second, fight any and all liberal bills and/or appointees. Third, get a spine. These 3 little items is all it will take!

Gio-

WASHINGTON – Moderate Republicans to conservative Republicans: Turn down the volume — especially on Rush Limbaugh — and open your minds. The party’s future might be at stake.

Such warnings about the GOP‘s right wing, along with finger wagging about a “shrill” and “judgmental” tone, marked the moderate response in the latest back-and-forth within the Republican Party.

Colin Powell and Tom Ridge argued on television’s Sunday talk shows that conservatives are steering the GOP too far to the right and not listening to other views within the party. Newt Gingrich, seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2012, agreed about broadening the base while political guru Karl Rove challenged Powell to lay out his vision and “back it up” by helping elect Republicans.

“I believe we should build on the base because the nation needs two parties, two parties debating each other,” said Powell, the nation’s top military officer under President George H.W. Bush and secretary of state for President George W. Bush.

“But what we have to do is debate and define who we are and what we are and not just listen to dictates that come down from the right wing of the party,” he said.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and Limbaugh, the king of talk radio, have openly mocked Powell as a Republican in name only, citing his endorsement of Democrat Barack Obama over Republican John McCain in last year’s presidential race.

Powell reaffirmed that he is a solid Republican and said the GOP must be more inclusive or risk giving Democrats and independents the chance to scoop up disaffected moderate Republicans. He detailed his presidential voting history — yes to GOP nominees Ronald Reagan through the younger Bush, but yes also to Democrats John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.

“If we don’t reach out more, the party is going to be sitting on a very, very narrow base. You can only do two things with a base. You can sit on it and watch the world go by, or you can build on the base,” Powell said.

Fellow GOP moderate Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor and homeland security secretary under George W. Bush, said if the GOP wants “to restore itself, not as a regional party, but as a national party, we have to be far less judgmental about disagreements within the party and far more judgmental about our disagreement with our friends on the other side of the aisle.”

Gingrich, the former House speaker, insisted he didn’t want to pick a fight with Cheney. But he offered this advice: “I think Republicans are going to be very foolish if they run around deciding they’re going to see how much they can purge us down to the smallest possible base.”

Cheney, defense secretary when Powell was Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman during the Gulf War in 1991, has made clear that he would rather follow broadcaster Limbaugh than Powell into political battle over the GOP’s future. “I didn’t know he was still a Republican,” Cheney said in a television interview two weeks ago.

Limbaugh has called Powell “just another liberal,” said he should become a Democrat and charged that Powell endorsed Obama based on race. Powell and Obama are black.

In remarks to business leaders in Boston this past week, Powell took on such high-profile criticism, saying, “I may be out of their version of the Republican Party, but there’s another version of the Republican Party waiting to emerge once again.”

Rove, chief political strategist for the younger Bush, took the position that “if you say you’re Republican, you’re Republican.” But he wanted more than words from Powell.

“I don’t like this thing where people — and Powell is one them — who said, `Rush Limbaugh, shut up.’ We believe, as Republicans in the marketplace of ideas. Let that marketplace decide,” Rove said.

“I want Colin Powell to go out there and lay out his vision, and then I want him to back it up by finding people who share it and working like heck to get them — and that’s how you win the party.”

Like Cheney, Rove said he would pick Limbaugh over Powell, but said it’s moot. “Neither one of those are going to be people who are offering themselves for office. … This is a false debate that Washington loves.”

Intraparty squabbles would appear natural given the low standing of the Republican Party and George W. Bush’s administration in opinion polls. But Republicans who have suggested that the party moderate its views and even support some of Obama’s initiatives have been quickly targeted for criticism.

Ridge, an abortion-rights supporter who was on McCain’s short list of vice presidential picks but deemed too moderate by more conservative elements of the GOP, said he thinks “a lot of our commentators are being shrill.”

“Rush Limbaugh has an audience of 20 million people. A lot of people listen daily to him and live by every word. But words mean things and how you use words is very important,” Ridge said. “It does get the base all fired up and he’s got a strong following. But personally, if he would listen to me, and I doubt if he would, the notion is express yourselves but let’s respect others’ opinions and let’s not be divisive.”

Powell appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Ridge’s taped interview aired on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Gingrich spoke on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and Rove on “Fox News Sunday

Don’t Be Distracted

I found this on another site and copied it earlier. Now I forget where I got the darn thing. h/t to whoever wrote this…

A CALL TO ACTION AGAINST H.R. 2454(American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009)

Take time to CALL your Congressional representative NOW and express your concerns about H.R. 2454. Once you have expressed your concerns, ask for a response in writing and tell the aides in your representative’s office that you want to share this written response with family and friends.

Time to rally “We the People!” Whether you know it or not Americans, we are now engaged in a political war. It is time to issue a call to use our strength to oppose H.R. 2454. CALL your CONGRESSIONAL representative NOW! A FLOOR VOTE COULD COME AS EARLY AS TODAY!

A MESSAGE FOR CONGRESS IN WASHINGTON

If you pass H.R. 2454(American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009), we will REMEMBER ALL OF YOU who vote for this ridiculous tax next year on election day. President Obama CANNOT terminate your employment in the US Congress, but “We the People” CAN.

This mammoth tax will raise the cost of virtually everything. This equates to a money grab by government, as I see it. I shutter to think what this tax, if it passes, would do to the poor and elderly. What a minute, what is wrong with this picture? I thought the Democrats were supposed to be advocates of the poor. If the Democrats are advocates of the poor, I would hate to see what they would do to those they oppose.

A LESSON FOR SUPPORTERS OF H.R. 2454 ON CAPITOL HILL

Trees take in Carbon Dioxide(C02) and process it with the end result being the release of oxygen(02). This process is called photosynthesis and it costs the taxpayers of the United States NOTHING. In my view, this is proof that H.R. 2454 is a farce equating to a huge Democratic cash cow.

Photosythesis: pho•to•syn•the•sis (fō’tō-sĭn’thĭ-sĭs)
n. The process in green plants and certain other organisms by which carbohydrates are synthesized from carbon dioxide and water using light as an energy source. Most forms of photosynthesis release oxygen as a byproduct.

It is time now to stand up and be counted: Be counted for God, family, and country!

NOTE: DON’T BE DISTRACTED BY MR. OBAMA’S SUPREME COURT PICK-I BELIEVE THE TIMING OF THE RELEASE OF THIS INFORMATION IS DESIGNED TO DISTRACT PEOPLE FROM H.R. 2454

Cheney’s Revenge

On May 24th, a young, not-so-funny comedian by the name of Andy Borowitz tried to take a shot at our ex-vice President. Instead he shot himself in the foot. This turd wanted to make VP Cheney look bad but had the whole thing backfire on him today when Ms. Sonia Sotomayor was appointed by Obama.

This is classic!

Gio-

Andy Borowitz.BorowitzReport.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/cheney-urges-obama-to-app_b_207206.html
Cheney Urges Obama to Name Bitter Psycho to Bench

Former Vice President Dick Cheney weighed in today on President Obama’s impending choice to replace Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the President to name a bitter psycho to the bench.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Cheney said that the President’s choice to replace Justice Souter “should send a strong message to bitter psychos across the country that they will have a voice” on the nation’s highest court.

Mr. Cheney’s comments were widely interpreted as a sign that he himself was angling for a position on the Supreme Court, a charge he flatly designed.

“I have no designs on the Supreme Court,” Mr. Cheney said. “There are many other embittered psychotics out there who could do an excellent job.”

Mr. Cheney said that his own time was better spent “driving down the Republican Party’s approval rating to zero.”

For a free subscription to the Borowitz Report, click here.

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LOLOLOLOL!

Gio-

Conservatism & Racism In America

A lie told often enough becomes truth. Conservatives are called many names by the left, the worst of which is “racist.” The truth is that it is the left who are hateful and, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. counseled, “Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and . . . destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him . . . to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”

It is the left who are race-conscious and racist. Self-appointed spokesmen for African-Americans Reverends Jesse Jackson, Jeremiah Wright, and Al Sharpton use the racist label to advance their political careers and fatten their wallets. The racist label was also used successfully by the left to win the last presidential election. Race and skin color repeatedly were brought up as an issue, not by the right, but by the left.

As examples, at a fundraiser in San Francisco, Democratic self-proclaimed “post-racial” candidate Senator Barack Obama painted “the WHITE working class” in Pennsylvania and other small towns in the Midwest as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion or ANTIPATHY TO PEOPLE WHO AREN’T LIKE THEM”–the latter phrase we all know is a veiled reference to racism. Obama also called his maternal grandmother Madelyn Dunham a “typical WHITE person” who reacts in a typical white (i.e., racist) manner when she sees “somebody on the street that she doesn’t know.” This is the same grandmother who not only had raised him for nine years from ages 10 to 19, but saw to it that he received a private-school education at Honolulu’s elite and expensive Punahou High School.

At a time when the very continuation of the United States of America was in peril, President Abraham Lincoln gave encouragement and inspiration with these words: Let us not “be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us . . . . Let us have faith that right makes right, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

Today, America once again is in peril – from financial meltdown, government insolvency, cultural degradation, and political vitriol and enmity. In the interest of preserving America for our children and grandchildren, we conservatives believe it is time we confront and extinguish the left’s malicious lie, once and for all.

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If you too are sick and tired of the left calling you a racist, go here and take the pledge!

Racist Sonia Sotomayor

“Gird your loins” has always been one of those little quips that crack me up, yet it also let’s me know I should be ready for a fight. Not that fights are funny, but… “Gird your loins!”

Unless you live in a cave or you choose to stay uninformed, by now you know about Obama’s first pick to the Supreme Court, federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor. After reviewing some of her background, and hearing that Obama wants ‘empathy’ in a judge, I have come to the conclusion that this is going to be THE MOST RADICAL pick, ever!

Ms. Sotomayor is going to be a disaster for Conservatives on a few levels, and I have this sinking feeling that she will be nothing more than a judicial advocate for minorities. Reading the tea leaves, I see her as a must-have for Obama and for his plans in the future.

For the immediate future, Ms. Sotomayor’s pick will keep people sidetracked while “Obama and Pelosi will use the next few weeks to strong-arm Democrats to support the Carbon Tax bill”  (h/t  Eowyn). But for the long term, I’m afraid this is just one step closer to Obama creating a special class of people in this country, and to make minorities more equal than other citizens. This is not equality!

If you believe in real equality, I suggest you read this… I Am Not A Racist!

 

NC Take Back Our State Alert

Do you have a creative sign for our June 3rd Take Back Our State Tea party?  Statewide Take Back Our State Tea Party A Protest Against the proposed Billion Dollar State Tax Increase Wednesday June 3rd Downtown Raleigh Starring Fox News’s Mary Katharine Ham &“Joe The Plumber” Americans for Prosperity is pleased to announce the first ever “Stop the Billion Dollar Tax Increase” Sign Contest! Contest to take place at the Take Back Our State Tea Party Wednesday June 3rd A Protest Against the Billion Dollar State Tax Increase Halifax Mall, Raleigh Register Here Family-appropriate signs will be judge on creativity and message Celebrity judges include: Fox News’ Mary Katharine Ham Low Tax Advocate Joe “the plumber” Wurzelbachr Chris Farr – Americans for Prosperity Becki Gray – John Locke Foundation Francis X. Deluca - John W. Pope Civitas Institute Curtis Wright – The Big Talker FM Register today Prizes include: Free Trip for 2 to Americans for Prosperity’s Defending The American Dream Summit in Washington D.C. Oct 1-2 Sponsored By Americans for Prosperity Free Admission to 2009 Conservative Leadership Conference Sponsored by the John W. Pope Civitas Institute Free tickets to a John Locke Foundation Headliner Event Sponsored by The John Locke Foundation We are planning to bring buses from Asheville, Charlotte, Goldsboro, Greensboro, Fayetteville Jacksonville, New Bern, Pinehurst, Sanford, Statesville, Wilmington, and Winston-Salem. (departure times below) Agenda Includes 2:00-4:15 – Legislative visits &  Special Legislative briefing 4:30 – Take Back Our State Tea Party begins Register Here! For Local parking and shuttle information click here Bus Trip is Free and includes a Box dinner for the Ride Home. Space is limited. Pick up your Take Back Our State gear here. Take Back Our State Tea Party June 3, 2009 Bus Departure Point Location and Time Times are approximate. Routes could be altered or changed. Space is Limited (Food vendors at the tea party.  Cash only.  Boxed supper served on home trip.) Asheville-Statesville-Winston Salem Bus Asheville:     Depart: 10:00 am Location: Ingalls Supermarket-863 Brevard Road. Across from Biltmore Square Mall. Lunch: McDonald’s in Winston-Salem. (While Winston -Salem riders load) Return:  11:50 PM Statesville:    Depart: 11:45 am Location: Walmart-1116 Crossroads Drive. I-40- Exit 151 on US Hwy 21.  Lunch: McDonald’s in Winston-Salem. (While Winston -Salem riders load) Return:  10:00-10:30 PM Winston-Salem:  Depart 12:45 pm  Location: Hanes Mall- 3320 Silas Creek Pkwy. Load near McDonald’s Return: 9:00-9:30 pm Wilmington Bus Depart: 11:30 am  Location: Sea-Comm Media, 122 Cinema Drive Park in the Carmike 16 Lot Return: 9:15  pm)  Note: No stop for lunch. Charlotte-Greensboro Bus Charlotte:  Depart: 11:15 am Location:  South Park Mall 4325 Barclay Downs Drive. Park near Dick’s Sporting goods Return: 10:30-11:00 PM  Note: No stop for lunch. Greensboro:  Depart  1:00 pm Location: Four Seasons Town Centre, near the Outback Steakhouse/Old Nascar Café on the Belk side of the mall. Return: 9:00 PM  Note: No stop for lunch. Pinehurst-Sanford Bus Pinehurst:  Depart 1:00 pm  Location: Olmsted Village, 285 Olmsted Blvd.  Lowe’s Foods Parking Lot Return: 9:00 PM  Note: No stop for lunch. Sanford:  Depart 1:40 pm Location:  818 Spring Lane. Park near the closed Pier One store. Return: 8:30 PM  Note: No stop for lunch. Fayetteville: Depart  1:00 PM Location: Back of Walmart Parking Lot.  4601 Ramsey Street Fayetteville, NC 28311 Return 8:30 PM Jacksonville-New Bern-Goldsboro Bus Jacksonville: Depart: 11:30 am Location: Jacksonville Mall. (off Hwy. 17 and off Hwy. 24)  Park near Starbucks  Return: 10:30 PM  Note: No stop for lunch. New Bern:  Depart: 12:15 pm Location: Twin Rivers Mall, off Hwy. 17, park right across from Walmart    Return: 10:00 PM  Note: No stop for lunch. Goldsboro:  Depart: 1:30 pm  Location: Little River Plaza, 1312 W. Grantham St. Park near the Big Lots store  Return: 8:30PM  Note: No stop for lunch. Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is the nation’s premier grassroots organization committed to advancing every individual’s right to economic freedom and opportunity. AFP believes reducing the size and scope of government is the best safeguard to ensuring individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans. AFP educates and engages citizens in support of restraining state and federal government growth, and returning government to its constitutional limits. For more information, visit www.americansforprosperity.org

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Tuesdays Open Thread

After the last few days, getting back into the swing of things is going to feel like a vacation.

I hope everyone had a safe and fun time, celebrating and remembering those that fought so we could enjoy such a laid back holiday. I spent most of my time going from one event to another, each with it’s own flavor. The one that made the biggest impression on me was the smallest. On our way to a celebration in another Mountain community, we passed through a small town that seemed to be in the middle of it’s own party. Traffic came to a stop as people were marching slowly to the center of town. You have to understand the topography of the area I live in to appreciate what happened. We had no choice but to suddenly become part of the celebration as there is only one road in this town.

As far as celebrations go this one was pretty low-key. A few balloons, a couple of flags, maybe 30 people in attendance, and an old guy in a wheel-chair. We got out of our vehicle and asked the one and ONLY police officer what was going on. He told us that the gentleman in the wheel-chair was a soldier in WWII and a very decorated Vet. He went on to tell us that every Memorial Day he led this procession through his small town so he could stand and salute the Stars & Stripes. I then fell silent and simply watched. Someone had marching music playing on a sort of boom-box while this hero of “The Big One” was slowly pushed down the center of the street towards a boulder in the center of town. The boulder has a plaque and a long flag pole embedded in it. The flag pole proudly held up the American flag, and the plaque (I found out later) had 7 names of those that died in battle while defending the USA in WWII. All 7 were from that small community and all 7 were either friends or family of the man in the wheelchair.

The whole affair took only a few minutes, only ending after the 7 names were read aloud and the elderly Veteran standing on his own (with help), saluting his flag and honoring his fallen comrades. Once he sat back down (with help), applause and cheers rang out. People crowded around him while they slowly pushed him towards the front yard where a small picnic had been turned out. We got back in our vehicle and slowly made our way past the little celebration and on to our destination.  As we went by the picnic I caught a glimpse of their war hero and gave him a quick salute. Although I was never in the military it just seemed like the right thing to do.

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Open Thread is now officially open!

Gio-

The Left’s Stealth Revolution

 

 

This guy nailed it.

While Americans were busy with their lives, the Left undertook a quiet revolution. A revolution needs not be violent. A revolution is defined by the transformative nature of the resultant changes in a society. The election of Obama to the presidency was just the culmination of a decades-long stealth revolution by the Left.

The question for conservatives and libertarians is: What do we do now?

The answer: We must fight back — beginning at the local grassroots level — by running for local offices, then state offices, eventually to reclaim Washington, DC.

~Eowyn

………………

Revolution

By Herbert E. Meyer

http://newzeal.blogspot.com/

 

During the last 30 years we Americans have been so politically divided that some of us have called this left-right, liberal-conservative split a “culture war” or even a “second Civil War.” These descriptions are no longer accurate. The precise, technical word for what is happening in the United States today is revolution.

Because of our country’s history, we tend to think of revolutions as military conflicts, and of the revolutionaries as the good guys; the image of Minutemen fighting valiantly against the British forces at Lexington and Concord lies deep within our DNA. But sometimes — quite often, actually — revolutions aren’t military conflicts, and the good guys are the ones trying to keep the revolution from happening. In January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by its elected president; he would spend the next two years consolidating his power with the legislative connivance of his political allies in the Reichstag. In October 1917, Lenin and his Bolsheviks took control of Russia from Kerensky and his Social Democrats — who had overthrown the Czar earlier that year — entirely through parliamentary maneuvering in Russia’s fledgling Duma.

What defines a revolution — and this is the crucial point to grasp — is that when it’s over a country has changed not merely its leaders and its laws, but its operating system.

Since most of us think of computers when we hear the phrase “operating system” let me use this analogy to illuminate my point: Every computer has an operating system, and most of us are using either the Microsoft or the Apple operating system. If you want to do something with your computer — send an email, watch a DVD, read an online essay like this one — you must do it the way your computer’s operating system is designed to work.

No operating system is perfect, which is why Microsoft and Apple send updates to their customers from time to time. And every so often these companies launch new versions of their operating systems that incorporate a lot of modifications at once. Can you change the operating system you use? Of course you can. Two years ago I threw out every Microsoft-based machine in our company’s office and replaced them with Apple products. Last month I met a corporate CEO who had just done the opposite, and replaced the Apple computers in his office with ones that run on the Microsoft operating system.

Democracies and Dictatorships

Now, just as computers have operating systems so too do countries. In fact, countries have dual operating systems – one political and the other economic. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of each: Politically you can be a democracy or a dictatorship, and economically you can have either a free market or a command economy. Because countries don’t buy their operating systems off the shelf, the way we buy our computer operating systems, each country develops its own versions. This is why our country’s democracy is somewhat different from Canada’s, which in turn is slightly different from Australia’s, and so forth. These countries all have free-market economies, but again they aren’t quite the same. Still, the similarities among democracies and free-market economies are more striking than the differences. Likewise, while no two dictatorships are the same, and no two command economies work in exactly the same way, the differences among them are comparatively trivial.

Since no country’s operating systems are perfect, can they be improved? Of course they can. Every time our Congress passes a new law, or enacts a new regulation — or whenever the Supreme Court issues an opinion — that’s the equivalent of an update to our political or economic operating system. Can you change a country’s operating system? Yes, you can. And the precise, technical word for replacing one political or economic operating system with another is — revolution.

When politics in a democracy is normal, the political parties all agree to preserve the operating system while they compete to improve it. This is what is actually happening when one party in Congress introduces a new piece of healthcare or education legislation and the other party opposes it or introduces its own healthcare or education bill, or when two candidates for the Senate argue over whether or not to change our immigration laws. Honorable people often will disagree about what to do — sometimes quite strongly, just as the software engineers at Microsoft and Apple will sometimes argue through the night about whether a proposed change in the operating system’s code is an improvement or just “kludge.” But in normal politics the outer limits of all these disagreements are marked by a shared commitment to preserving and improving the operating system.

In abnormal politics, the objective of one party isn’t to improve the operating system, but to overthrow it.

With this analogy in mind, now we can see clearly what’s been happening in the United States during the last three decades. While conservatives have been working to improve our democracy and our free-market economy, liberals have been working to replace our democracy with a dictatorship, and our free-market economy with a command economy controlled by the government. The liberals couldn’t say this aloud, because if they did the American people would have tossed them out of office on their ears. So the liberals worked covertly, feigning support for democracy and for the free market while working diligently to undermine both.

This is why our politics has been so partisan, so vicious, and so deadlocked. This is why words have lost their meaning in Washington, why we can never get to the bottom of anything, why we lurch from one manufactured scandal to another. It’s all been part of a decades-long effort by the liberals to throw sand in our eyes — to keep us from seeing clearly where they really want to take us. (And this explains why, when we question their judgment on some issue, they go berserk and accuse us of questioning their patriotism. They’re afraid we’re on the verge of catching on. If you want to have some fun, the next time you’re chatting with a liberal and he goes nuts when you call him a socialist, say to him: “I’m so sorry you’re offended. Please tell me, what is there about socialism you don’t like?” You won’t get a coherent answer; he’ll just accuse you of a hate crime.)

Obama’s Two-Front Offensive

With the election of Barack Obama as president, the liberals have launched a massive, two-front offensive they believe will end in victory. They have judged that our public education system is so degraded that only a few Americans are left who even understand what a democracy is, and how the free market actually works. They are convinced that the majority of Americans are too frightened by the current recession to care about preserving the principles that made us the most powerful, productive and innovative country the world has ever known. In short, the liberals are reaching for victory because they believe that history now is on their side.

The speed and reach of their offensive is breathtaking.

At the core of democracy is the rule of law, and we have already lost it. The liberals lecture us incessantly that everything is “relative,” but that’s not true; some things are absolutes. You cannot claim to be faithful to your spouse because you never cheat on her — except when you’re in London on business. And you cannot claim to have the rule of law if the government can set aside the rule of law when it decides that “special circumstances” have arisen that warrant illegality. When the President and his aides handed ownership of Chrysler Corp. to the United Auto Workers union, they tried to avoid sending that beleaguered company into bankruptcy by muscling its bondholders into accepting less money for their assets than the law entitled them to collect. These contracts, and the law under which they were signed, were mere obstacles to a thuggish President bent on paying off his political supporters.

It’s going to get much worse, fast. President Obama has told us time and again that among his criteria for choosing Federal judges will be “empathy.” Empathy is a wonderful quality in any human being, but a judge’s job is to rule according to the law. Once our courts are presided over by judges who will reach verdicts based on how they feel about an issue — such as abortion or the right of citizens to bear arms — the law will be whatever the judges wish it to be; the rule of law will become an empty phrase rather than the architecture of our civilization.

We have lost our free-market economy as quickly as we have lost the rule of law. Money is to an economy what blood is to a body; life and death resides within the organ that controls its flow. The government already owns our country’s leading banks, which means the government now controls our economy. (And in all fairness to President Obama, it was the Bush administration that started us down this ghastly road.) One indicator of the Obama administration’s real objective: When some banks that had taken federal money attempted to repay their loans, the Treasury Department refused to accept repayment and step aside. This shows the government’s goal isn’t to prop up the banks, but rather to control them.

Here, too, things are going to get much worse, fast. The government now owns General Motors Corp., is reaching for control of insurance companies, and has launched plans to take over our country’s healthcare industry. It even wants authority to set the salaries of executives in industries that, at least for now, aren’t being subsidized or underwritten by the government.

Put all this together, and what we have in our country today isn’t a democracy and it isn’t a free-market economy. Reader, what we have now is a revolution.

This revolution won’t be stopped, and our country won’t be rescued, by the Republicans in Washington. This isn’t because they lack the votes. It’s because most of them are careerist hacks who’ve been playing footsie with the Democrats for too long; with very few exceptions they lack the intellectual firepower to articulate the present danger, and the political courage to stand up to this Administration and really fight. But for the absence of frock coats and pince-nez glasses, these Republicans in Washington remind me of those bumbling Weimar Republic politicians in Berlin who never grasped where Hitler and the Nazis were going until it was too late to stop them, or of those hapless Mensheviks in Moscow’s Duma who let themselves be tossed into history’s dustbin by Lenin and his Bolsheviks. (Yes, of course I realize it’s explosive to keep bringing up the Nazis and the Bolsheviks in an essay about the Democrats. I’m not doing this to be incendiary; I’m doing this to be accurate.)

The Future’s in Our Hands

Our country’s future now lies within our own hands — yours, mine, all of us who comprise what the Washington insiders sneeringly call the grass roots. Good, because unless I’m very much mistaken the liberals have over-estimated their strength. There still are more of us than there are of them. I mean ordinary, decent Americans from across the political spectrum who may disagree about specific issues, but who understand who we are and how we became who we are; who love our country, have a genius for self-organizing, and won’t let the United States go down without a fight.

We need to launch a counter-offensive, so to speak, and the place to start is at the local level. Working with our county and state political parties when we can — or working around them when we must — our objective will be to elect as many people as we can to public office who understand what a democracy is and how the free market works. This will include city council members, county commissioners, school board members, judges, sheriffs and even members of the local parks commission. With the strength and political momentum their elections will provide, we can surge to the state level and then — before it’s too late — take back the power in Washington DC.

I know this isn’t the kind of battle most of us want to fight; we would rather watch the talking heads slug it out on Fox News than stand on a street corner handing out campaign flyers. And given our country’s history, for a while it will be uncomfortable to find ourselves fighting against the revolution and for the status quo. But we’ll get used to this as we make our case over and over again — to our friends, our neighbors, at barbeques and PTA meetings and at public rallies like those marvelous April tea parties that drove the liberals insane. And we’ll draw strength as our ranks swell with new recruits.

The alternative to launching this kind of peaceful and political counter-attack is horrific. Right now sales of guns and ammunition are rising sharply. This reflects an intuitive grasp by grass-roots Americans of what history teaches may lie ahead. It was only after the Nazis had secured their grip on power in Germany, and only after the Bolsheviks had seized control of Russia, that they set out to disarm and destroy the vast numbers of ordinary citizens who – to the astonishment and fury of the revolutionaries — just wouldn’t go along.

That’s when the real shooting started, and when blood began flowing in the streets.

Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. He holds the U.S. National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, which is the Intelligence Community’s highest honor. He is author of The Cure for Poverty and How to Analyze Information.

“Cap & Trade” Will Cost Us Plenty

 

Okay, admittedly this bill is not sexy.

But is anyone paying attention to H.R.2454, the 932-page so-called climate change & clean energy bill sponsored by Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA)? 

More importantly, does anyone even understand this bill’s mind-numbingly dull and downright byzantine “Cap-and-Trade” provisions?

We need to pay attention because “Cap and Trade” provisions will cost us taxpayers plenty. Not only will H.R.2454 not make a substantial impact on the environment, it is a massive energy tax that will lead to huge increases in our household energy bills and more outsourcing of American jobs. The “trade” part of “Cap and Trade” promises more fraud and corruption by speculators. The bill will also further inflate our already bloated Big Government.

Below is an op/ed on H.R.2454 (h/t to resourceful Giovanni’s World member Steve!), followed by a reader-friendly fact-sheet compiled by the Heritage Foundation.

Call & urge your representative to vote against HR 2454!

To find and contact your representative in the House, go to http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd

~Eowyn

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Waxman & Markey, Dumb and Dumber

MADNESS OF CAP-AND-TRADE

PRICEY FOR CONSUMERS — AND RIPE FOR ECONOMIC CORRUPTION

By David Sokol – May 24, 2009 – http://www.nypost.com/seven/05242009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/madness_of_cap_and_trade_170800?page=0

The adage that everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die is on display again as the House considers a massive 932-page climate-change bill, introduced by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), that would establish a “cap and trade” system for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. Its sponsors say it will keep low- and middle-income consumers whole while the United States cuts emissions 83% below 2005 levels by 2050 and transitions to a clean-energy economy.

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

On paper, the Waxman-Markey bill puts a cost on carbon dioxide by imposing a ceiling, or cap, on greenhouse gas emissions and then setting up a market for regulated industries — such as the electric power sector — to buy and sell allowances to pollute under that cap. As the cap is reduced each year, market participants will exchange allowances in a complex auction market. 

If you liked what credit default swaps did to our economy, you’re going to love cap-and-trade. Just read Title VIII of the bill, which lets investment banks, hedge funds and other speculators participate in the cap-and-trade market. They don’t have emissions to cut; they have commissions to make. 

The real hidden catch of the cap-and-trade system, though, is that it will require consumers to pay twice: first for emission allowances and then for the construction of new low- and zero-carbon power plants. 

Congressional estimates of government revenue from the sale of cap-and-trade allowances range from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars. Contrary to assurances from the bill’s sponsors that utility customers wouldn’t have to pay these costs for the first decade, some coal-dependent utilities would be forced to purchase more than half of their allowances when the program is scheduled to begin in 2012. Would these allowances reduce our greenhouse gas emissions? No; that would come when consumers footed a second bill — for the cost of their utilities either to retrofit coal and gas plants to capture carbon — something that cannot be done today on a commercial scale — or to shut them down and build non-carbon-producing nuclear plants and wind farms instead. In fact, to the extent that cap-and-trade auctions increase ratepayers’ bills, they will impede utilities’ ability to develop a less carbon-intensive infrastructure. 

Markets thrive on volatility. Electricity utilities, on the other hand, are highly regulated to ensure price stability — not volatility — for their customers. The Waxman-Markey bill imposes a market-based (read: unregulated) trading program on a highly regulated industry that must make enormous long-term and least-cost capital decisions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In an unprecedented and unwise fashion, it turns American industry over to the federal Environmental Protection Agency by giving the agency the authority to change the rules on allowances every five years. Is this sound public and economic policy? I think not. If Congress wants to achieve 83% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the electricity sector can get there, but there is no need for that first cost. Get rid of auctions, speculation, trading, new Wall Street “products” (yes, the bill allows for credit default swaps and carbon derivatives) and the trillions of dollars in government revenue that may end up being spent on other programs. Get rid of the 12 new advisory boards, committees and other institutions established under the Waxman-Markey bill. Focus instead on the most efficient and inexpensive way to cut carbon dioxide emissions. 

The solution? Keep the cap and remove trading from the equation: Mandate that the industry, over the same 40-year period, simply limit its emissions to the same levels proposed in the Waxman-Markey bill. This can be accomplished with a clear plan that gives states an option: Either they participate in a cap-and-trade program or they elect an alternative compliance mechanism to reach the same greenhouse gas emission goals by working with their utilities to develop a 40-year program of shutting down aging coal plants, retrofitting plants to capture carbon dioxide if the technology becomes available, and/or building zero-carbon energy plants. More important, the carbon dioxide reductions in this proposal can be achieved while providing adequate time to plan to minimize price shock and economic dislocation. It is the states, through their public utilities commissions — not the federal government — that have both the interest and obligation to manage citizens’ costs while transitioning to a carbon-free future. 

This transformation of our entire electricity sector won’t be cheap, but it would be less expensive than the double cost of a complex cap-and-trade program followed by that same transformation. 

David Sokol is chairman of the board of Iowa-based MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. From the Washington Post.

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Waxman-Markey Global Warming Tax Kills More Jobs and Kills the Economy

by heritage.org Fact Sheet #28  May 20, 2009

http://www.heritage.org/Press/FactSheet/fs0028.cfm

Cap and Tax Top Ten List

1. Cap and Trade Is a Massive Energy Tax

2. It Will Not Make a Substantive Impact on the Environment

3. It Will Kill Jobs

4. It Will Cause Electricity Bills and Gas Prices to Sharply Increase

5. It Will Outsource Manufacturing Jobs and Hurt Free Trade

6. It Will Make You Choose Between Energy, Groceries, Clothing, and Haircuts

7. It Will Be Highly Susceptible to Fraud and Corruption

8. It Will Hurt Senior Citizens, the Poor, and the Unemployed the Worst

9. It Will Cost American Families Over $3,000 a Year

10. President Obama Admitted “Electricity Rates Would Necessarily Skyrocket” Under a Cap-and-Trade Program (January 2008)

Waxman-Markey Bill: Dumb and Dumber

• Waxman-Markey Global Warming Tax: The cap-and-trade tax proposed by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) is disguised as environmental legislation when it would have little impact on global temperatures. In fact, it is a massive energy tax that promises soaring household energy bills, major job losses, income cuts, and a sharp left turn toward big government.
  • And It Keeps Getting Worse: The original draft of Waxman-Markey was so bad for the economy that moderate Democrats demanded it be changed. The new version, believe it or not, is much worse. Compared to no cap and trade, real GDP losses increase an additional $2 trillion, from $7.4 trillion to $9.6 trillion
  • And Why Is It Getting Worse? Attempts to reduce costs to consumers in the current bill do ease some near-term economic pains, but because “pollution permits” are handed out as subsidies, debt is driven up, interest rates increase, and businesses significantly reduce the investments that drive the overall economy, resulting in a more costly bill.
  • Green Jobs Are a Myth; Real Job Losses Are Not: For every “green job” created, others are wiped out. Compared to no cap and trade, average unemployment increases in the new bill an additional 261,000 jobs, from 844,000 lost jobs to 1,105,000 lost jobs in the current version
• Your Family Will Pay: Waxman-Markey will raise electricity rates 90% after adjusting for inflation, gas prices 74%, natural gas prices 55%, and an average family’s annual energy bill by at least $1,500.

And What Do We Get After We Tax the Weather?

• The Ultimate Outsourcing: India and China have repeatedly said they would not match U.S. environmental goals in order to protect their economies. Cap and trade will merely move manufacturing jobs to China and India.
• Environmental Status Quo: All of the outrageous costs associated with this bill may at best result in 0.2 degree drop in temperature by the end of the century, and most likely even less.
• Massive Corruption: The New York Times reports that cap and trade “is almost perfectly designed for the buying and selling of political support through the granting of valuable emissions permits to favor specific industries and even specific congressional districts” (May 20, 2009).
• An Alternative That Supports American Taxpayers: Instead of appeasing a radical environmental agenda, President Obama should give us access to all energy sources, including domestic oil production, nuclear energy, coal, and new renewable fuels. Instead of new taxes, the President should aim to lower gas and electricity prices. When government impediments are lifted, America’s energy entrepreneurs can develop innovative and market-driven solutions to our energy needs.

For more information, please visit: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/05/20/the-waxman-markey-global-warming-tax/

North Carolina Protest

A message from Tish to all members of North Carolinians for the Preservation of the Constitution on Patriotic Resistance!

Americans for Prosperity-North Carolina

For Immediate Release: Thursday, May 28, 2009
Contact: Dallas Woodhouse (919) 671-1050

Americans for Prosperity-North Carolina to Protest $1 Billion Tax Increase at “Take Back Our State” Tea Party, June 3rd

Hundreds will gather in Raleigh to tell Governor Perdue “No new taxes!”

RALEIGH- Americans for Prosperity-North Carolina will host a “Take Back Our State” Tea Party with Mary Katharine Ham of FOX News and Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher to protest the proposed $1 billion increase in state taxes currently under consideration by the North Carolina General Assembly.
“Our legislators need to know that citizens are taxed enough already and will not stand for a $1 billion tax increase.”

The event is aimed at exposing the attempts by both Governor Perdue and the State Senate to increase taxes on everything from automotive repairs to downloading music. Other activities under serious consideration for dramatically increased taxation include digital properties, warranties, alcohol, cigarettes, as well as tangible personal property services such as plumbing repairs.

AFP-NC is chartering a bus for activists from all across the state to attend the rally, picking up from Asheville, Charlotte, Goldsboro, Greensboro, Jacksonville, New Bern, Pinehurst, Sanford, Statesville, Wilmington, and Winston-Salem.

What: North Carolina “Take Back Our State Tea Party”
Who: Americans for Prosperity
Mary Katharine Ham, Fox News
Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbachr
When: Wednesday, June 3rd
Time: 4:30pm-7:00pm
Where: Halifax Mall in Downtown Raleigh, Raleigh, North Carolina

For more information or to register, visit www.takebackourstate.org

“We Are Out of Money”

 

Today, in an interview with C-SPAN, Obama admitted that the U.S. has “run out of money.” In the next breath, however, he insisted that the way out of insolvency is to spend even more of the money we’ve run out of!

Obama says in the short term, the federal government has to spend lots of money bailing out banking, auto, and for unemployment benefits, etc. The short term problems are dwarfed by the long term problems of Medicare and Medicaid, the solution of which is to spend even more billions of dollars (or is it trillions?) that we already ran out of, to create a national health care system.

If this isn’t Orwellian illogic, I don’t know what is.

~Eowyn

………………..

Obama to Americans: We Are Out of Money

Saturday 23 May 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/6831/52/

In a sobering holiday interview with C-SPAN, President Obama boldly told Americans: “We are out of money.”

C-SPAN host Steve Scully broke from a meek Washington press corps with probing questions for the new president.

SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we’ve seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.

So we’ve got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it’s putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.

So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don’t reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can’t get control of the deficit.

So, one option is just to do nothing. We say, well, it’s too expensive for us to make some short-term investments in health care. We can’t afford it. We’ve got this big deficit. Let’s just keep the health care system that we’ve got now.

Along that trajectory, we will see health care cost as an overall share of our federal spending grow and grow and grow and grow until essentially it consumes everything…

SCULLY: When you see GM though as “Government Motors,” you’re reaction?

OBAMA: Well, you know – look we are trying to help an auto industry that is going through a combination of bad decision making over many years and an unprecedented crisis or at least a crisis we haven’t seen since the 1930′s. And you know the economy is going to bounce back and we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. I have got more enough to do without that. In the same way that I want to get out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries…

SCULLY: States like California in desperate financial situation, will you be forced to bail out the states?

OBAMA: No. I think that what you’re seeing in states is that anytime you got a severe recession like this, as I said before, their demands on services are higher. So, they are sending more money out. At the same time, they’re bringing less tax revenue in. And that’s a painful adjustment, what we’re going end up seeing is lot of states making very difficult choices there…

SCULLY: William Howard Taft served on the court after his presidency, would you have any interest in being on the Supreme Court?

OBAMA: You know, I am not sure that I could get through Senate confirmation…

Persecution of Christians in San Diego, CA

 

The Obama nightmare continues. Now, it is restrictions placed on private religious practice by Christians in their home. I’m not kidding.

A mark of totalitarian dictatorships is the expansion of the state so that its tentacles reach into every nook and cranny of society and the people’s lives. As the head of the (former) Soviet Union, V. I. Lenin arrogantly declared, “We recognize nothing that is private.”

With each day, America steps closer to the abyss.

h/t to faithful Giovanni’s World member Steve!

A postscript and update to this follow the news article.

~Eowyn

…………………………………..
County demands pastor spend thousands on ‘Major Use’ permit to host friends
May 22, 2009
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=98895WorldNetDaily

The Leviathan state

Home: No place for Bible study

By Drew Zahn 

A  San Diego pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a county official and warned they will face escalating fines if they continue to hold Bible studies in their home.

The couple, whose names are being withheld until a demand letter can be filed on their behalf, told their attorney a county government employee knocked on their door on Good Friday, asking a litany of questions about their Tuesday night Bible studies, which are attended by approximately 15 people.

“Do you have a regular weekly meeting in your home? Do you sing? Do you say ‘amen’?” the official reportedly asked. “Do you say, ‘Praise the Lord’?”

The pastor’s wife answered yes.

She says she was then told, however, that she must stop holding “religious assemblies” until she and her husband obtain a Major Use Permit from the county, a permit that often involves traffic and environmental studies, compliance with parking and sidewalk regulations and costs that top tens of thousands of dollars.

And if they fail to pay for the MUP, the county official reportedly warned, the couple will be charged escalating fines beginning at $100, then $200, $500, $1000, “and then it will get ugly.”

Dean Broyles of the Western Center for Law & Policy, which has been retained to represent the couple, told WND the county’s action not only violates religious land-use laws but also assaults both the First Amendment’s freedom of assembly and freedom of religion.

“The First Amendment, in part, reads, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’” Broyles said. “And that’s the key part: ‘prohibiting the free exercise.’ We believe this is a substantial government burden on the free exercise of religion.”

He continued, “If one’s home is one’s castle, certainly you would the think the free exercise of religion, of all places, could occur in the home.”

Broyles confirmed the county official followed through on his threat. The pastor and his wife received a written warning ordering the couple to “cease/stop religious assembly on parcel or obtain a major use permit.”

“The Western Center for Law and Policy is troubled by this draconian move to suppress home Bible studies,” said the law center in a statement. “If the current trends in our nation continue, churches may be forced underground. If that happens, believers will once again be forced to meet in homes. If homes are already closed by the government to assembly and worship, where then will Christians meet?”

On a personal note, Broyles added, “I’ve been leading Bible studies in my home for 13 years in San Diego County, and I personally believe that home fellowship Bible studies are the past and future of the church. … If you look at China, the church grew from home Bible studies. I’m deeply concerned that if in the U.S. we are not able to meet in our homes and freely practice our religion, then we may be worse off than China.”

Broyles also explained to WND that oppressive governments, such as communist China or Nazi Germany, worked to repress home fellowships, labeling them the “underground church” or “subversive groups,” legally compelling Christians to meet only in sanctioned, government-controlled “official” churches.

“Therein lies my concern,” Broyles said. “If people can’t practice their religious beliefs in the privacy of their own homes with a few of their friends, that’s an egregious First Amendment violation.”

WND contacted a spokeswoman for San Diego County, who acknowledged the description of the incident seemed “bizarre,” but who was unable to locate the details of the account. She simply could not provide comment yet, she said, until she could become familiar with the case.

Broyles said the WCLP is nearly ready to file a demand letter with the county to release the pastor and his wife from the requirement to obtain the expensive permit. If the county refuses, Broyles said, the WCLP will consider a lawsuit in federal court.

Broyles also told WND the pastor and his wife are continuing to hold the Bible study in their home.

………………

P.S. After I first posted this item, there were expressions of skepticism by some of my e-mail correspondents. One acquaintance was dubious because the identity of the Christian couple in this article is anonymous. Note that the article says that their names will be made known as soon as a demand letter is filed on their behalf by the Western Center for Law and Policy. Another acquaintance of mine insisted that the couple’s Bible Study group was making a public nuisance of themselves with excessive noise — singing and shouting ”Amen” and “Praise the Lord!” Note that the news article makes no mention of any shouting. 

So I did some research on the net.

To begin with, I found that there really is a Western Center for Law and Policy. You can go to their website here.

I also went on the San Diego county government’s website. Its Dept of Planning and Land Use issues  certain “Discretionary Permits.” There are 28 types of Discretionary Permits, one of which is the Major Use Permit (MUP), which the unnamed county government employee issued the Christian couple.

MUP, in turn, has 11 varieties: Administrative Deviation From an Approved PRD Plot Plan, Borrow Pit, Compliance Inspection Fee, Group Care, Minor Deviation, Modification, Planned Development, Standard Application, Threshold Decision (Mobilehome Park I-101 & I-105), Tier 4 (Wireless Telecommunications), and Time Extension. It is not clear which one of the 11 MUP forms is applicable to the Christian couple who are being harassed by the San Diego County government.

I looked at several of the MUPs, and it appears the “relevant” one is Standard Application. Take a look at it! It’s a bureaucratic nightmare – government administrative rules on steroids. Fees for “planning,” “environmental,” “engineering,” “initial study review,” “stormwater,” “septic/well,” “sewer” and “parks” come to a grand total of $15,940! Missing from this form, and from all the other MUP forms and Discretionary Permits, is a justification of the permits and forms – why they are mandatory.

It’s no wonder government is the only growth industry in the United States today. We have a political class that we have allowed to expand in size and power to become bloated and monstrous, threatening nothing less than our God-given Constitutional rights and liberties.

 UPDATE I:

San Diego’s 10News reports that the Christian pastor’s name is David Jones. What prompted the county employee’s citation was a complaint by a visitor to a neighbor’s house after a bible study member hit the visitor’s car while leaving.

Here’s 10News’ video in which the reporter asks Jones’ neighbor who says she has no problem with Jones hosting Bible study in his home. You can also see for yourself Jones’ house. It seems to be in a cul-de-sac. There also appears, at least to me, ample room for parking both in front of his house and on the street.

UPDATE II:

Victory! Hallelujah!

Under a deluge of public response and a demand letter from the Western Center for Law & Policy, the county backed off its demand and told the couple that they may resume their studies. The written notification of the county’s action was received at the law firm’s office earlier this afternoon, June 4, 2009.

“I want to offer my apology to you, your wife and your congregation for the unfortunate events of the past several weeks,” said the letter from Walter F. Ekard, chief officer of the county. “My review of the situation shows that no administrative citation warning should have been issued and that a major use permit is not required for the Bible study you have in your home.”

“Our Code Enforcement Officer incorrectly made the finding based in no small measure on unclear language in the zoning ordinance,” Ekard continued. “I have already issued several directives to county staff. First, I have asked the Department of Planning and Land Use and our county counsel to conduct a thorough review of ordinances regarding all assemblies to clarify that meetings such as you are holding in your home may continue without regulation.”

He said he also wants improved internal code enforcement procedures and a supervisor’s review of assembly related cases before any notices are issued.

For the complete article: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=100071

 

~Eowyn

Dumbest Headline This Year

Obama vows not to send people to war without cause.

Feel free to click on the headline above if you want to read the story just posted on Yahoo. I did NOT read the article myself so I will not comment on the contents. However, I will bet anyone, both of my left arms that I know what BS is written in the article.

At least an awful lot of clear-headed thinking people got a good chuckle when they read the headline. I know I did. Personally, I think this may rank as the dumbest headline so far this year, but we still have over 6 months to go so we shall see.

Just for giggles… can anyone tell me what other wars we fought without cause?

Giovanni vows not to send people to jump in front of moving Mack Trucks.

Obama Considering A New Gulag

 

Good grief. Must every day bring worse news?

None other than the “grey lady” New York Times reports that Obama is considering changing the law in such a way as to install “a preventive detention system” for terrorist suspects deemed a threat to national security but who “cannot be tried.”

This news is ominous in view of the Dept of Homeland Security’s recent report identifying Americans who are ”Christian, pro-gun rights, anti-abortion and anti-illegal immigration” as “extremists” and potential “terrorists.”

~Eowyn

…………………..

 

Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: May 20, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21obama.html?_r=1

WASHINGTON — President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.

The discussion, in a 90-minute meeting in the Cabinet Room that included Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other top administration officials, came on the eve of a much-anticipated speech Mr. Obama is to give Thursday on a number of thorny national security matters, including his promise to close the detention center at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Human rights advocates are growing deeply uneasy with Mr. Obama’s stance on these issues, especially his recent move to block the release of photographs showing abuse of detainees, and his announcement that he is willing to try terrorism suspects in military commissions — a concept he criticized bitterly as a presidential candidate.

The two participants, outsiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was intended to be off the record, said they left the meeting dismayed.

They said Mr. Obama told them he was thinking about “the long game” — how to establish a legal system that would endure for future presidents. He raised the issue of preventive detention himself, but made clear that he had not made a decision on it. Several senior White House officials did not respond to requests for comment on the outsiders’ accounts.

“He was almost ruminating over the need for statutory change to the laws so that we can deal with individuals who we can’t charge and detain,” one participant said. “We’ve known this is on the horizon for many years, but we were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning.”

The other participant said Mr. Obama did not seem to be thinking about preventive detention for terrorism suspects now held at Guantánamo Bay, but rather for those captured in the future, in settings other than a legitimate battlefield like Afghanistan. “The issue is,” the participant said, “What are the options left open to a future president?”

Mr. Obama did not specify how he intended to deal with Guantánamo detainees who posed a threat and could not be tried, nor did he share the contents of Thursday’s speech, the participants said.

He will deliver the speech at a site laden with symbolism — the National Archives, home to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Across town, his biggest Republican critic, former Vice President Dick Cheney, will deliver a speech at the American Enterprise Institute.

Mr. Cheney and other hawkish critics have sought to portray Mr. Obama as weak on terror, and their argument seems to be catching on with the public. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats, in a clear rebuke to the White House, blocked the $80 million Mr. Obama had requested in financing to close the Guantánamo prison.

The lawmakers say they want a detailed plan before releasing the money; there is deep opposition on Capitol Hill to housing terrorism suspects inside the United States.

“He needs to convince people that he’s got a game plan that will protect us as well as be fair to the detainees,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who agrees with Mr. Obama that the prison should be closed. “If he can do that, then we’re back on track. But if he doesn’t make that case, then we’ve lost control of this debate.”

But Mr. Obama will not use the speech to provide the details lawmakers want.

“What it’s not going to be is a prescriptive speech,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser. “The president wants to take some time and put this whole issue in perspective to identify what the challenges are and how he will approach dealing with them.”

Memorial Day 2009

 

Have you noticed how few heroes there are nowadays?

Today is Memorial Day — a day for Americans to remember all the soldiers who made the greatest act of love by sacrificing their lives in defense of the United States of America.

I want to publicize and recognize these recent soldier-heroes (click their names to read more):

Eric Moser and Chris Corriveau, two paratroopers who stood shoulder-to-shoulder against dozens of al-Qaeda fighters on a rooftop in Iraq, fighting for their lives and for their country’s honor.

Zach Ryner, an Air Force combat controller who saved the lives of dozens of American special forces soldiers through his quick, effective actions in the middle of an overwhelming Taliban ambush.

Michael Monsoor, a Navy SEAL who leapt onto an enemy grenade, sacrificing himself to save the lives of his teammates despite the fact he was the only person who could have escaped the blast with his life.

Michael P. Murphy, a Navy Seal who in 2007 was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for military valor. The citation read that Murphy “gallantly” gave “his life for his country and for the cause of freedom” in a remote corner of Afghanistan, exemplifying “selfless leadership, courageous actions, and extraordinary devotion to duty.”

Jason Dunham, a 23-year-old corporal in the U. S. Marines, who on April 14, 2004, heroically saved the lives of two of his fellow Marines by jumping on a grenade during an ambush in the town of Karabilah, Iraq.

US Army PFC Ross McGinnis

Ross McGinnis, a 19-year-old soldier in the U. S. Army who, on December 4, 2006, traded his life for the lives of four members of his squad when he jumped on a grenade and shielded them from the blast.

Jason Cunningham of the U. S. Air Force and a member of the elite  Pararescuemen, highly trained professionals whose job is to deploy by any means necessary — sea, air, or land — to rescue downed aircrew members and injured special operators. Deployed to Afghanistan, Cunningham was shot in the abdomen on a rescue mission. He treated patients to the end, and was credited afterward with having almost single-handedly made sure that only seven men died, rather than seventeen. Every wounded man he treated survived the encounter, and for his extraordinary heroism and gallant action in living the Pararescue motto (”That Others May Live”), he was posthumously awarded the Air Force Cross, the second-highest award that the USAF offers. According to the citation, “As a result of [Cunningham's] extraordinary heroism, his team returned 10 seriously wounded personnel to life-saving medical care.”

………

Please say a prayer for the repose of the souls of these heroes. And, when you encounter a veteran today or any day, shake his/her hand, and say “Thank You for your service to our country.”

~Eowyn