Friday, August 30, 2013

An Unseemly Occupation »

An Unseemly Occupation »:
By far, the profession that attracts into its ranks the highest proportion of two-faced shameless unprincipled and often buffoonish egomaniacs is politics.  This reality is explained, in part, by the fact that politics – compared to other professions, legal and illegal – disproportionately rewards with success and garish ‘honors’ two-faced shameless unprincipled and often buffoonish egomaniacs.  I reflect on politicians in my most recent column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.  Here’s my closing paragraph:
Far from acting heroically by resisting interest groups’ pleas for special privileges – and by being mindful of the welfare of countless people, such as future taxpayers, who aren’t organized into clamorous political lobbies – the typical politician spinelessly promotes his or her own career by picking the pockets of others.

Horowitz: Conservatives Must 'Fight Fire With Fire' »

Horowitz: Conservatives Must 'Fight Fire With Fire' »:

Speaking at the Americans for Prosperity Defending the American Dream Summit in Orlando, Florida, conservative icon David Horowitz, head of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, took to the microphone to encourage conservatives to “fight fire with fire.”
Horowitz, who grew up in a Communist family and then spent his youth as a Marxist leader of the New Left, gradually became a conservative after recognizing that all of the measures he had fought for were wildly counterproductive – and recognizing that the leftist movement he supported was not a movement of the people, but of the elites. “Historically the upper classes have been movers of radical change,” Horowitz said. “The French Revolution was initiated by French aristocrats; Karl Marx was funded and promoted by a capitalist factory owner. And the Obama socialists who today threaten our way of life are swimming in wealth up to their eyeballs. The purpose of my making these observations is first to underscore how important the creators of wealth are to the battle facing us; they have to be active on the side of freedom and ready to support a grass roots army to fight in the trenches.”
How can conservatives fight back against a well-entrenched opposition? Horowitz explained: “character attacks can have a crucial impact on electoral outcomes; well-designed attacks on an opponent’s credibility can overpower well-crafted messages.” And Horowitz encouraged conservatives to argue on the basis of character: “Obama is the most brazen and compulsive liar ever to occupy the White House. He is a commander-in-chief missing in action -- invisible at the budget negotiations in Washington and the withdrawal negotiations in Iraq, hidden from view in crisis after crisis. While Egypt and Syria burn, he golfs. His endless dithering and wrong-headed interventions to support the Muslim Brotherhood have set the Middle East aflame. Meanwhile, he and his wife carry on like French royalty, lavishing tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on their family and dog while tens of millions of Americans suffer historic levels of deprivation because of policies he put in place. This is a leader who just doesn’t care. That’s how he was able to leave four brave Americans to die in Benghazi. He just doesn’t care.”
So why haven’t conservatives attacked Obama on character? Horowitz suggests:
The reason why we have not attacked him is obvious to everyone, but no one will say it out loud. I will. The reason no one is willing to confront Obama the way he deserves to be confronted is because the color of his skin is black. Actually he is half black, raised by whites and one Indonesian. But no matter, since racist liberals have made the color of one’s skin all that matters. It is because Obama is a minority that no one will hold him to a common standard; or confront him with what he has actually done. Any political consultant will tell you that you can’t. This is how race conscious and race-prejudiced our country has become. This is why we lose elections. Because what is true of Obama is true of the Democratic Party and the liberals and socialists generally. They present themselves as the defenders of minorities. Whenever they are attacked, they use minorities as human shields, so they can call their opponents racist. If we can’t hold Obama accountable, how can we hold any Democrat, any liberal or any socialist accountable? Because this is how they fight, and will do so until we have a counter-strategy to neutralize their attacks.
Horowitz continued, “How can we turn the tables on them? It’s not rocket science. We can beat back their attacks by turning their guns around. We can neutralize them by fighting fire with fire. In the real world, Democrat socialists have made the lives of poor Americans worse, much worse. We need to shove this fact in their faces every time we speak…. This is a social atrocity committed by liberals and democrat socialists against African Americans. If we spoke like they do, we would call this racism -- the most appalling racist atrocity committed against African Americans since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts.”
“So here’s the strategy to beat them, remembering that the best defense is a good offense: Attack the democrat socialists for their wars against minorities and the poor,” Horowitz concluded. “Expose their empty promises and question their character and undermine their message by portraying them as hypocrites whose words cannot be trusted.”


    






Thursday, August 29, 2013

A Truly Great Phony | RealClearPolitics

A Truly Great Phony | RealClearPolitics: "This episode came back to me recently, as I read an incisive column by Charles Krauthammer, citing some of the many gaffes in public statements by the President of the United States.

"

'via Blog this'

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Krauthammer – The Civil Rights Movement Is Intellectually Bankrupt

iOwnTheWorld.com » Blog Archive » Krauthammer – The Civil Rights Movement Is Intellectually Bankrupt: "Krauthammer makes an excellent point. There’s nothing wrong with having to present an ID to vote.

"

'via Blog this'

The New Yorker Admits Fox News is More Balanced than MSNBC »

The New Yorker Admits Fox News is More Balanced than MSNBC »: Hmmm, based on what the left preaches isn’t it supposed to be Fox News that is the biased news station? Well even the liberals over at The New...

American Credibility Is At Stake As U.S. Nears Red Line »

American Credibility Is At Stake As U.S. Nears Red Line »: What does the world look like when people begin to doubt the credibility of American power? Unfortunately, we're finding that out in Syria and other nations where leaders have concluded they can defy a war-weary America without paying a price. Using military power to maintain a nation's credibility may sound like an antiquated idea, but it's all too relevant in the real world we inhabit. It has become obvious in recent weeks that President Obama,

Global warming is ‘no longer a planetary emergency’ »

Global warming is ‘no longer a planetary emergency’ »: By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, reporting from Erice, Sicily ERICE, SICILY – It’s official. The scare is over. The World Federation of Scientists, at its annual seminars on planetary emergencies, has been advised by its own climate monitoring panel that global warming is no longer a planetary emergency. The President of the Italian Senate, Judge […]

Ben Carson: MLK would be alarmed by black-on-back violence, lack of family values »

Ben Carson: MLK would be alarmed by black-on-back violence, lack of family values »:
If King could be resurrected and see what was going on in America today, I suspect he would be extraordinarily pleased by many of the things he observed and disappointed by others. He, like almost everyone else, would be thrilled to know that there was a two-term black president of the United States of America and a black attorney general, as well as many other high government officials, business executives and university presidents.
Perhaps just as thrilling would be the sight of black doctors, lawyers, airline pilots, construction foremen, news anchors, school superintendents and almost any other position imaginable in America. The fact that seeing blacks in such positions no longer raises eyebrows is a testimony to the tremendous progress that has been made in America over the last 50 years.
There are some areas, however, where I suspect he might be less than thrilled. The epidemic of black-on-black violent crime indicates that there has been a significant deterioration of values in the black community. Not only are the lives of their fellow blacks and others being devalued by street thugs, but the lives of unborn babies are being destroyed in disproportionate numbers in the black community.
There was a time when blacks were justifiably angry that the larger community discounted their value, but now, ironically, many members of the black community themselves place little or no value on these precious lives that are snuffed out without thought. I think King would be waging a crusade against the marginalization of black lives in America.
Full story.

Even The New Yorker Admits 'Conservatives Are Far Less Visible on MSNBC Than Liberals Are on Fox News' »

Even The New Yorker Admits 'Conservatives Are Far Less Visible on MSNBC Than Liberals Are on Fox News' »:
Even the lefties at The New Yorker magazine know that Fox offers more space to liberals than MSNBC does to conservatives. Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple's headline was "MSNBC: Must-agree TV."
The New Yorker's Kelefa Sanneh (for eight years a music critic at The New York Times) profiled MSNBC and declared point blank that "Conservatives are far less visible on MSNBC than liberals are on Fox News." He absolutely nailed how Phil Griffin's shows prefer Republicans who trash the right-wingers as fanatics:
read more

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Fight food terrorism, support golden rice – It can save lives »

Fight food terrorism, support golden rice – It can save lives »: American Council on Science and Health

In a front-page articlein the New York Times entitled “Golden Rice: Lifesaver,” national correspondent Amy Harmon sums up the superstition and activist-generated controversy surrounding golden rice and the implications it may have for the future. She discusses how the unfounded fears of corporate control of agriculture and the alleged unknown risks of GMOs could potentially destroy a crop – biofortified rice – “whose potential to improve nutrition in developing countries, and developed ones, may otherwise go unrealized.” And she further emphasizes that genetically engineered crops have the “potential for the biggest impact for the world’s poor.” Critics of golden rice, who believe that simply encouraging fruit and vegetable consumption among these poor families will suffice to ward off vitamin deficiency, do not understand the “expense and logistical difficulties that would thwart such efforts.”
And vitamin A deficiency is a huge problem, as ACSH pointed out last week, affecting approximately 250 million preschool children worldwide, causing blindness, immunocompromise, and in some cases, death. We further emphasized the potential of this rice to help these millions of children. Remember to show your support for this technology and condemn such vigilantism: sign the petition to protest the destruction of these crops in the Philippines. We at ACSH have all signed this petition, and we encourage all readers to click the link to add your support.
Javier Delgado of Mexico, one of the petition signers, writes, “This technology can save lives, but false fears can destroy it.”….This Appeared Here…..

Nothing stopped VA's fat bonuses, not even dead vets, dirty hospitals »

Nothing stopped VA's fat bonuses, not even dead vets, dirty hospitals »: By MARK FLATTEN| AUGUST 27, 2013
Documents show six top administrators of the Veterans Health Administration received performance... Under Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, VA doctors who were disciplined for violations... Generous bonuses continued flowing to top officials at the Department of Veterans' Affairs health network last year, despite a string of patient deaths and reports of mismanagement, unsanitary conditions and unprofessional practices.
Documents obtained by the Washington Examiner show six top administrators of the Veterans Health Administration received performance bonuses in excess of $16,000 last year. In all, the top VA executives and medical professionals received more than $3.3 million in bonuses that are supposed to reward exceptional work. The figure does not include rank-and-file employees or other financial incentives not tied to job performance.
A VA spokesman issued a statement to the Examinerlate Monday saying the 2012 performance bonuses for some top agency executives “have been suspended pending further review and are not being paid at this time.” That includes some VHA officials.
The statement does not say when or why the bonuses were suspended, or who is affected. The spokesman did not respond to requests for clarification.....To Read More....

Monday, August 26, 2013

Tolerance, health and fascism »

Tolerance, health and fascism »:
I cannot count the number of times I heard liberal professors and liberal writers quote the phrase: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
The phrase is brilliant. There is actually no threat to America of fascism coming from the right. The essence of the American right, after all, is less government; and fascism, by definition, demands ever larger government.
Therefore, if there is a real fascist threat to America, it comes from the left, whose appetite for state power is essentially unlimited. But because the left has so long dominated American intellectual, academic, artistic and media life, it has succeeded in implanting fear of the right.
I have never written that there is a threat of fascism in America. I always considered the idea overwrought. But now I believe there really is such a threat – and it will come draped not in an American flag, but in the name of tolerance and health.
Before explaining what this means, let’s be clear about what this does not mean.
First, it does not mean, or have anything in common with, Nazism. Nazism may have been a form of fascism. But Nazism was a unique form of fascism and a unique evil. It was race-based and it was genocidal. No other expression of fascism was race-based. And not all fascism is genocidal. So my fear that the American left is moving America toward an expression of fascism in no way implies anything Nazi-like or genocidal.
Second, it is not liberals or liberalism that presents a threat of fascism. It is the left. Liberals of the 1940s to 1970s such as John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman, Hubert Humphrey, Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and so many others were not leftists. They were liberals.
But liberalism has been taken over by the left. There are virtually no non-left liberals.
The left now has a president who is a true leftist who is asserting unprecedented presidential power through his Cabinet and myriad other agencies (such as the Environmental Protection Agency) and through presidential decrees. The left has taken over the universities and, increasingly, high schools and elementary schools. It dominates the news and entertainment media. And many judges and courts are leftist – meaning that their decisions are guided by leftism more than by the law or the Constitution.
With all this power, the left controls more and more of the life of the American citizen. And when nothing stops the left, the left doesn’t stop.
Take tolerance.
Last week, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that an event photographer’s refusal on religious grounds to shoot the commitment ceremony of a same-sex couple amounted to illegal discrimination.
The photographer had never objected to photographing gays. She did not, however, wish to be part of a ceremony to which she religiously objected. In America today, thanks to myriad laws and progressive justices, people can go to prison for refusing to participate in an event to which they object.
This is what happened to a florist in Washington state who had always sold flowers to gay customers but refused to be the florist for a gay wedding: sued and fined.
This is what happened to a baker in Oregon who had always sold his goods to gays but refused to provide his products to a gay wedding: sued and fined.
This is what happened in Massachusetts, Illinois and elsewhere to Catholic Charities, historically the largest adoption agency in America. Their placing children with married (man-woman) couples, rather than with same-sex couples, was deemed intolerant and a violation of the law. In those and other states, Catholic Charities has left adoption work.
In the name of tolerance – and fighting sexual harassment – 5- and 6-year-old boys all over the country are brought to the police for innocently touching a girl.
In the name of tolerance, girls’ high school teams in California and elsewhere must now accept male players who feel female.
In the name of tolerance, businesses cannot fire a man who one day shows up on the sales floor dressed as a woman.
For the left, tolerance does not mean tolerance. It means first, acceptance. And second, celebration. That is totalitarianism: You not only have to live with what you may differ with, dear citizen, you have to celebrate it or pay a steep price.
Meanwhile, in the name of health, there is a similar intrusion into the life of the individual. We saw it in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s call for a law limiting the amount of soda a person can order at one time.
In the name of health, people are banned from smoking outdoors, cigar stores are prohibited from allowing customers to smoke inside, and, incredibly, California is about to ban electronic “cigarettes” as if they were real cigarettes, even though they contain no tobacco, nothing is burning, and they emit only water vapor.
In the name of health, some businesses, like the Bert Fish Medical Center in Florida and Kids II, Inc. (Baby Einstein, Disney Baby) do not hire those who smoke at home. In the name of health, for the first time in American history, what you do – legally – at home will be reason for companies not hiring or terminating employees.
In the name of safety, first-grade boys are suspended from schools for playfully aiming a pencil at another boy and “shooting” him.
And then there are the ubiquitous “re-education” and “rehabilitation” seminars that the allegedly insensitive need to take at both private and government workplaces and the speech codes at nearly all universities.
The only question is: Will Americans awaken to the increasingly rapid deprivation of their freedoms – not draped in an American flag but draped in tolerance and health?

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The betrayal of MLK's hope »

The betrayal of MLK's hope »:
The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, and of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s memorable “I Have a Dream” speech, is a time for reflections – some inspiring and some painful and ominous.
At the core of Dr. King’s speech was his dream of a world in which people would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by “the content of their character.”
Judging individuals by their individual character is at the opposite pole from judging how groups are statistically represented among employees, college students or political figures.
Yet many – if not most – of those who celebrate the “I Have a Dream” speech today promote the directly opposite approach of group preferences, especially those based on skin color.
How consistent Martin Luther King himself was as he confronted the various issues of his time is a question that can be left for historians. His legacy to us is the “I Have a Dream” speech.
What was historic about that speech was not only what was said but how powerfully its message resonated among Americans of that time, across the spectrum of race, ideology and politics. A higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted in Congress for both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
To say that that was a hopeful time would be an understatement. To say that many of those hopes have since been disappointed would also be an understatement.
There has been much documented racial progress since 1963. But there has also been much retrogression, of which the disintegration of the black family has been central, especially among those at the bottom of the social pyramid.
Many people – especially politicians and activists – want to take credit for the economic and other advancement of blacks, even though a larger proportion of blacks rose out of poverty in the 20 years before 1960 than in the 20 years afterward.
But no one wants to take responsibility for the policies and ideologies that led to the breakup of the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination.
Many hopes were disappointed because those were unrealistic hopes to begin with. Economic and other disparities between groups have been common for centuries, in countries around the world – and many of those disparities have been, and still are, larger than the disparities between blacks and whites in America.
Even when those who lagged behind have advanced, they have not always caught up, even after centuries, because others were advancing at the same time. But when blacks did not catch up with whites in America, within a matter of decades, that was treated as strange – or even a sinister sign of crafty and covert racism.
Civil rights were necessary, but far from sufficient. Education and job skills are crucial, and the government cannot give you these things. All it can do is make them available.
Race hustlers who blame all lags on the racism of others are among the obstacles to taking the fullest advantage of education and other opportunities. What does that say about the content of their character?
When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was pending in Congress, my hope was that it would pass undiluted, not because I thought it would be a panacea but, on the contrary, because “the bitter anticlimax that is sure to follow may provoke some real thought in quarters where slogans and labels hold sway at the moment.”
But the bitter anticlimax that did follow provoked no rethinking. Instead, it provoked all sorts of new demands. Judging everybody by the same standards was now regarded in some quarters as “racist” because it precluded preferences and quotas.
There are people today who talk “justice” when they really mean payback – including payback against people who were not even born when historic injustices were committed.
The nation has just been through a sensationalized murder trial in Florida, on which many people took fierce positions before a speck of evidence was introduced, basing themselves on nothing more than judging those involved by the color of their skin.
We have a long way to go to catch up to what Martin Luther King said 50 years ago. And we are moving in the opposite direction.

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Walter E. Williams Column: Progressive Policies Have Hurt Blacks in America »

Walter E. Williams Column: Progressive Policies Have Hurt Blacks in America »:
Sometimes I wonder when black people will reject the patronizing insults of white progressives and their black handmaidens. After CNN's Piers Morgan's interview with the key witness in the George Zimmerman trial, he said: "Rachel Jeantel is not uneducated. She's a smart cookie." That's a remarkable conclusion. Here's a 19-year-old young lady, still in high school, who cannot read cursive and appears to be barely literate. Morgan may have meant Jeantel is smart — for a black person.
Progressives treat blacks as victims in need of kid glove treatment and special favors, such as racial quotas and preferences. This approach has been tried in education for decades and has revealed itself a failure. I say it's time we explore other approaches. One approach is suggested by sports. Blacks excel — perhaps dominate is a better word — in sports such as basketball, football and boxing to such an extent that blacks are 80 percent of professional basketball players, are 66 percent of professional football players and, for decades, have dominated most professional boxing categories.
read more

EPA Overreach : Higher Cost, Less Energy, Greater Risk »

EPA Overreach : Higher Cost, Less Energy, Greater Risk »:
Since President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a suite of ideologically- charged regulations that collectively hamper the ability of utilities to deliver low- cost energy to American families. Under the banner of Regional Haze regulations, EPA has sought to aggressively execute the President’s environmental agenda in Oklahoma by forcibly mandating utilities to add new costly emissions control systems to coal-fired power plants.
Mon, 2013-08-26
Sub Title: 
Cost Analysis of the PSO - EPA Settlement Agreement

Obama: Worst President Ever »

Obama: Worst President Ever »:
Hugh Hewitt makes the case in a Washington Examiner op-ed that President Obama is the worst president ever. I have to say, I don’t disagree.
Obama’s tenure is a vast desert of anti-achievement, a landscape of waste and ruin on every front at home and abroad, save on the ability to mobilize voters who don’t know or don’t care about the state of the country or the world.
The president rolled to re-election on the strength of technologies that enabled his minions to tap and turn out folks who simply are clueless that that nice fellow in the White House hasn’t the foggiest idea of how to run the country.
Perhaps by the time you read this, the president will have ordered a few cruise missiles to fall on Damascus, and the anti-Sisi rhetoric will have been toned down in recognition that the general running Egypt is likely to be there far longer than the president is living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
But the prospect of 39 more months of the anti-president at the helm is daunting. No plans for anything except bus tours and college campus speeches, no idea how to invigorate a sputtering economy or trim a bloated budget.
Just miles and miles to go before we can can all sleep without the prospect of seeing him the next day, yet again, making another meaningless speech or filibustering another softball question from a kept White House press. (Read More)
As for Syria, we’re getting closer to intervention there, not that there are any good options on the table at this point. But hey, Obama’s been busy golfing, giving speeches and going on vacation.

Golden Rice, Green Idiocy »

Golden Rice, Green Idiocy »:
800px-Golden_Rice
On August 8th, 400 protesters ripped out seedlings of a new genetically modified plant called golden rice at a testing ground in the Philippines. Genes from bacteria and corn have been added to the rice to make it a source of vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency can lead to blindness and weakens the immune system, contributing to 2 million deaths every year. (Golden rice is being developed by a non-profit organization, not Monsanto.) As the Philippine government prepares to rule on whether or not to allow farmers to grow the wonder-crop, the anti-GMO movement is digging itself in for a fight. The New York Times reports:
If the rice gains the Philippine government’s approval, it will cost no more than other rice for poor farmers, who will be free to save seeds and replant them, Dr. Barry said. It has no known allergens or toxins, and the new proteins produced by the rice have been shown to break down quickly in simulated gastric fluid, as required by World Health Organization guidelines.
But the facts haven’t deterred the misinformed from campaigning against the technology. Greenpeace flatly rejects any and all biotech advances in agriculture, a Luddite and ludicrous position that is distorting the public debate:
“There’s so much misinformation floating around about G.M.O.’s that is taken as fact by people,” said Michael D. Purugganan, a professor of genomics and biology and the dean for science at New York University, who sought to calm health-risk concerns in a primer on GMA News Online, a media outlet in the Philippines: “The genes they inserted to make the vitamin are not some weird manufactured material,” he wrote, “but are also found in squash, carrots and melons.”…
“A lot of the criticism of G.M.O.’s in the Western world suffers from a lack of understanding of how really dire the situation is in developing countries,” he said.
With golden rice, we have a real, cost-effective way to safely provide millions of people with healthier food. The anti-GMO crowd is doing its best Marie Antoinette impression, saying the world’s poor should get the vitamin A this new rice provides by eating more fruits and vegetables. A well-balanced diet is a luxury many can’t afford. Cheap, nutrient-rich golden rice can save lives.
[Golden rice image courtesy of the International Rice Research Institute]

Losing Family, Losing God, Losing the Country »

Losing Family, Losing God, Losing the Country »:
Photo Credit: Red State
Photo Credit: Red State
John Adams once said, to the chagrin of libertarians through the ages, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Indeed, many of the problems we see manifested in our nation today, from the refusal of the president and attorney general to enforce the laws of the land to the Supreme Court finding a right to sexual perversion, have their genesis in the fact that it has become déclassé among the self- described elites to look upon religion as anything other than a curious practice engaged in by proles.
How did we get to this point where we have a government that is fundamentally hostile to religion and religious expression? Where we have a president who repeatedly defines Freedom of Religion as a much more narrow Freedom of Worship?
In a new book called “How the West Really Lost God,” Hoover Institution Research Fellow Mary Eberstadt posits that we stopped becoming a religious people because we destroyed the family…
Contrary to the prevailing theory on secularization, that a decline in religion leads to a decline in family formation, presumably as we become more tolerant of alternative lifestyles. Eberstadt makes a convincing case that religion and family exist side by side in what she terms a “double helix” analogous to DNA structure: that neither can survive without the other and neither can be stronger than the other.
Read more from this story HERE.
Losing Family, Losing God, Losing the Country

Sunday, August 25, 2013

NO… wind and solar are not viable without subsidies »

NO… wind and solar are not viable without subsidies »: Posted on August 24, 2013 by Steve Milloy | 1 Comment
Past the generation-consumption distinction, U.S. wind and solar are subsidized 88 times and 1,211 times, respectively, more per megawatt-hour than coal.
From the Wall Street Journal editorial page (Aug. 17, 2012):


The Consequence of Ignoring Evil »

The Consequence of Ignoring Evil »: August 22, 2013 by John Risselada
Our society is dying. Infected by a plague that is making our once proud and God fearing nation a soulless pit; the slow decay of our collective consciousness is affecting every one of us.
Many talk of how our country is divided between liberals and conservatives. The truth is that this division represents those that are awake and aware of what is occurring and those that for whatever reason have allowed the allure of the easy path to blind them to the evils inhabiting that road. Whether an individual is clueless in his defense of evil or simply chooses to remain silent is irrelevant, failure to speak out against it is aiding in its advancement......... this inability to be able to discern right from wrong. Not because there is something wrong with an individual who can no longer make this distinction but because right and wrong have become abstract concepts with no absolute values assigned to their definitions.
Right and wrong have been erased from the collective consciousness of millions as the very idea of something being right and something being wrong has come to be viewed as offensive, and an obstacle to the quest for total equality. In short; moral relativity has destroyed us….To Read More….

Private Property Is the Essence of Liberty »

Private Property Is the Essence of Liberty »:
Ron Paul, Distinguished Counselor to the Mises Institute, and a founding member, celebrated his 78th birthday this week. In this selection from a speech in the House of Representatives in 1999, Ron Paul outlines why private property and privacy are essential to the preservation of civil liberties. It is perhaps noteworthy that this speech was delivered before the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and before the Patriot Act, FATCA , “Know Your Customer,” warrantless wiretapping, and similar ...

To Deal with Waste, Fraud, and Abuse, Cut Spending »

To Deal with Waste, Fraud, and Abuse, Cut Spending »:
Expert Commentary
When waste, fraud, and abuse in government is exposed, the first response is often that we need more oversight. For instance, when it came to light that millions in farm subsidies were paid to dead farmers, many in Washington, including the Government Accountability Office, blamed the problem on poor oversight.
But too often, the problem with these waste-ridden programs isn't that they lack a watchful steward; it's that they shouldn't exist in the first place. Lawmakers in Congress have been captured by private interests and will continue to support programs even in the face of clear evidence that they shouldn't. The latest Republican vote on the farm bill is a good example.
The GAO recently found that nearly $37 million was disbursed to deceased recipients, and that the largest portion came from the USDA's Risk Management Agency that issued $22 million in subsidies for people who have been deceased for one to two years.
None of this was fixed, yet the portion of the farm bill that included these programs passed with flying colors. Maybe more importantly, according to GAO report, "Farm Programs: The USDA needs to do more to prevent improper payments to deceased individuals," the solution to this fiasco is more and better oversight.
Regrettably, this problem is neither new nor limited to farm subsidies. It also is not the result of inadequate information or oversight. Countless reports by the GAO, government watchdog groups, inspectors' general, and even members of Congress every year identify myriad instances of overpayment, duplicity, and other waste.
Congress also holds a fair number of hearings to "root out" waste, fraud, and abuse. I have testified at several of them myself, as have many of my colleagues and numerous others who have made the case that many government agencies are extremely poor stewards of taxpayers' money.
But nothing much ever comes out of such oversight. As U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro has noted, "just 12 percent of more than 300 recommendations issued by GAO since 2011 to eliminate, combine or modify duplicative programs have been fully carried out."
One reason that oversight and reform are seldom truly improved is that — even in the face of reform-minded reports, data-driven reviews, and the monitoring of goals and priorities — appropriators are not bound to make policy changes.
In essence, the actions of legislators are less influenced by GAO reports or testimonies (oversight) than the rewards of entertaining competing special-interest groups and lobbyists.
There is a long track record of Congress appropriating funds for programs repeatedly shown to be in dire need of reform, or in many cases, elimination (think about the Ex-Im Bank, the SBA, the 1705 loan program, or any corporate subsidies.) This occurs whether the program benefits one firm at the expense of the others, whether it benefits an industry at the expense of its consumers, or whether there are 54 other programs doing the exact same thing.
The best way to avoid wasting taxpayers' money isn't to increase or improve oversight; it is to shrink the size of government and cut or eliminate programs. Many programs simply shouldn't exist at the federal level, but should fall under the purview of state and local governments or the private sector.
While there will still be waste, fraud and abuse in a smaller government (especially if the decision-making process and the incentives for politicians to be captured by special interests remain the same), it is easier to effectively oversee fewer programs.
Until then, our money will continue to go to special interests — dead or alive.

Women and military discipline »

Women and military discipline »: As bad as this sounds, the reality is even worse:
I once asked a friend who is a retired Army command sergeant major how they disciplined the women. He replied, “You can’t. If you try, they charge you with sexual harassment.” I said, “Then how do you get them to do what you need them to do?” He said, “We don’t. We just let them do whatever they want.”
I have a friend who was forced out of the service only a few years before his scheduled retirement due to false sexual harassment charges.  The reason his female subordinate made up the charges had nothing to do with his relationship with her, she was just angry that he had disciplined one of her male friends for committing a crime.

Women in the military destroy more than unit cohesion, they destroy all military discipline across the board, from the top to the bottom.  It's exactly the same as the difference between raising a generation of children in the traditional manner, and raising a generation using only single mothers. We already have a feral black underclass and an increasingly feral white one; in another two decades we will likely have an equally feral military.

This is precisely why I support an all-female U.S. military populated by a draft.  Anything less would be sexist and fail to account for more than 200 years of unmitigated male privilege.

Posted by Vox Day.

"A Lie Gets Halfway Around the World" »

"A Lie Gets Halfway Around the World" »:
One of the biggest problems in the world of ideas today?  So much propaganda and too little of the truth being exposed.
Neo-con has the details.
We can call it “contemptible” all we want, and of course it is. But that sort of historical rewrite is one of the most commonly-used tools of liberals and the left. The reason is quite simple: it is astoundingly effective.
If one considers the historical Eugene Allen and the facts of his actual life versus the film “The Butler,” and compare the numbers who will learn the former story versus the numbers who will watch the latter fantasy and consider it history, we all know which group will win out by a mile. Multiply that by many thousands of similar messages per year (or even per day; I can’t even begin to estimate) and you have the situation we face.
Propaganda is extraordinarily powerful. It exploits hearts, it shapes minds, and it affects history. Films are just one form of propaganda, but an exceptionally popular one that often reaches people who are disinclined to dig deeper and find the historical truth, and yet still vote.
As Churchill said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Nowadays the only revision I’d make to that comment is that the lies travel even faster and further. 
No wonder so many think that conservatives and Republicans are loathsome.  You might, too, if you accepted all these falsehoods as reality.
I'm not sure of the answers here.   I only know that we are all harmed by so many accepting lies as reality.

Sultan Knish: Insane This Way

Sultan Knish: Insane This Way: "These are not all disparate elements. They are parts of the same problem. The family is at the center of a healthy society. When the family collapses, so does the society.

The left has turned dysfunction into its banner, it has made it seem trendy and progressive, but what it has really done is shattered the American family as badly as it shattered the Russian economy with its speculative theorizing and radical projects.

There is no path to restoring America, except through the restoration of the American family."

'via Blog this'

Liberalism Makes It Easier to be Bad

The Dennis Prager Show: "There is something about liberalism that is not nearly as true about conservatism. The further left one goes, the more one finds that the ideology provides moral cover for a life that is not moral. While many people left of center lead fine personal lives, many do not. And left-wing ideals enable a person to do that much more than conservative ideals do.
"

'via Blog this'

The Pervasive Evil of Communism…and the Moral Bankruptcy of Communist Apologists »

The Pervasive Evil of Communism…and the Moral Bankruptcy of Communist Apologists »:
I spoke earlier today at the 2013 Liberty Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. But I don’t think anybody is going to remember my speech about the collapse of the welfare state, even though I presented lots of powerful data from the BIS, OECD, and IMF, and also shared a very funny cartoon showing what happens when there’s nothing left for interest groups to steal.

Escaped the North Korean gulag
At a normal conference, my remarks may have resonated, but I freely admit that I was completely overshadowed by the presentation of Shin Dong-Hyuk, who is the only person to have successfully escaped from the North Korean gulag.
In the future, if I ever get discouraged and think the fight for freedom is too difficult, I will watch this video and realize that nothing in my life will ever compare to the horror of living under communism. It’s not nearly as powerful as today’s first-person presentation, but the video will give you some sense of the utter barbarity of the North Korean government.

If you want more information, here is his Wikipedia entry, but I also suggest you watch this short speech by Blaine Harden, a journalist who wrote the story of Shin’s escape.

Keep in mind, by the way, that North Korea is an awful and repressive country even for the people who aren’t in the gulags. Malnutrition is such a problem, for instance, that children are stunted and the North Korean army had to lower its requirements to allow soldiers as short as 4’8″.
So perhaps now you understand why I get so upset when people in the west glorify communist thugs such as Che Guevara, or use the Soviet hammer and sickle as a cutesy marketing gimmick.
I hope nobody would ever think to wear a Hermann Göring t-shirt or use the swastika in a value-neutral fashion, so why should it be okay to whitewash and/or rehabilitate communists?
P.S. I was never a fan of former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, but he deserves lasting applause for seeking to protect children from the anti-western, soft-on-communism crap published by the late historian Howard Zinn.
P.P.S. Since today’s post is about a very dour topic, let’s close with a bit of humor about  the communist version of efficiency.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Obama must back the army in Egypt »

Obama must back the army in Egypt »:
In the wake of the Egyptian coup — and make no mistake, unless we get into a Clintonesque “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is,” it was a coup — President Obama has been trying to skate a fine line between the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood. Neutrality is not an option, however. Both sides assume that if we are not for them, we are against them.
It is easy to be sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood. After all, they won the election and coups are always hard to stomach. It would be dangerous, however, to boil democracy down simply to a single day at the ballot box, as some self-described progressives are prone to do.
It’s worthwhile to consider how different Egypt would be if the Muslim Brotherhood wins versus if the Egyptian army wins the current fight. The Muslim Brotherhood is unrepentantly theocratic; during his year in office, ousted President Muhammad Morsi repeatedly demonstrated his disdain for democracy and democratic precepts. A Brotherhood victory would mean the end of Egypt’s millennia-old Christian community. To describe the Brotherhood demonstrators as the equivalent of Tiananmen Square protestors is wrong-headed. Brotherhood empowerment and democratization in Egypt are mutually exclusive. It says a lot that even the Saudis find the Brotherhood too radical.
The West and the moderate Arab world should not let up pressure on the Egyptian military to set a roadmap for a constitution replete with checks and balances and to hold new elections. Nor should the United States and like-minded countries cease efforts to support liberal movements as they arise. But in the meantime, it’s also important to recognize that it is the army and not the theocrats who will best fight terrorism, protect the Suez Canal, and maintain peace with Israel. Even if the army wins outright, Egypt faces a long Islamist insurgency, and it will need US support through these turbulent times.
Let us hope that President Obama recognizes that the true path to liberty and freedom sometimes demands hard interim choices. And let us hope that he and his successors in the Oval Office learn from Egypt the need for a broader strategy to roll back the Muslim Brotherhood, not only in Egypt but also in Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, and wherever else they seek to sow their intolerant and violent ideology.
At any rate, more above in my latest AEI “Top Three” video. See more AEI videos here.

The Myth of Liberal Compassion »

The Myth of Liberal Compassion »: David Limbaugh | Aug 20, 2013

What will it take for the country to wake up to the destructive ravages of liberalism -- and finally do something about them?   Liberals continue to masquerade as exclusive proprietors of compassion, but their policies stubbornly undermine their possessory claim. Indeed, Obama's "fundamental transformation" of America is nothing less than America's decline and destruction in the name of compassion and fairness.

You can't scan a day's news without seeing proof of this. Let's look at just two items in today's news digest.

The Cato Institute has released a report documenting that in Obama's America, "welfare pays better than work." Cato's Michael Tanner concludes that the federal government funds 126 programs targeted at low-income Americans, a shocking 72 of which involve the transfer of cash or in-kind benefits to individuals. This does not include the many assistance programs provided by state and local governments……To Read More…..

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Welfare Must End »

Welfare Must End »:
Two things about welfare – first off, a Cato study which shows that in some States you can “earn” more being on welfare than by working a full time, minimum wage job.  Then a sensible, liberal critique of Cato pointing out that if Cato gets its way, low wage jobs will go to hordes of immigrants, thus depressing wages even more, in turn making welfare even more appealing.  The sensible liberal – Mickey Kaus – also points out that a huge problem of getting people to get off welfare and start working is that, well, working requires work.  A lot of our senseless liberals will claim that no one wants to be on welfare – which is complete twaddle because for a lot of people it makes no sense to bust one’s hump working when you can get as much, or a little more, by doing nothing…and even if you get a little less, there’s still the compensating factor of not having to get up in the morning and go to work.  I think I can speak for everyone when I say that even those of us who wouldn’t dream of using welfare except in a crisis still wake up, from time to time, and say “good grief; do I really have to go to work today?”.  Work isn’t always fun – which is why its called work, rather than play.
The risk we have is that we’re building up a dependent class which has been on welfare so long that they lose all inclination to work and start to build up a sense of entitlement to welfare.  A nation can carry on with 10% of the population freeloading, but once you start towards 20 and 30% or more doing it, collapse stares you in the face…and I’m talking civil war, end of the country sort of collapse…because those who do work will increasingly resent having to support those who don’t.  We’re at that point – and its time to get off the welfare treadmill to destruction.
The receipt of any aid for a working-age, physically fit person must be dependent upon working, period.  We can make it so that for the first month after losing the job or suffering other catastrophic financial loss is covered without having to put back in, but once we get past that first month, the recipient better have a job, or that person will have to be put to work on something in order go give back for what is obtained.  I don’t care if its picking up trash around the city or scrubbing graffiti off of walls – something must be done by every able-bodied person.  Not full time – we do want them to have the time to seek education, training and new employment – but at least 15-20 hours a week doing the grunt work of society in return for benefits.  This is only fair; those who are paying the welfare bills will see that work is being doing and those who are getting the benefits will have the sense of pride which comes with contributing to the overall benefit of society. And those who have to do such work will have a vested interest in getting off such work and in to something which works out better in the long run.  We make a deal – if you are in a financial crisis we’ll see to it you don’t starve, you keep a roof over your head, you are clothed and have essential medical care; you’re job is to stop needing such assistance as soon as possible or, lacking that, putting your back in to it a bit for what we give.
And just in case any of you liberals out there think I’m being un-Christian, I direct your attention to 2 Thessalonians 3:10:
In fact, when we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.
Remember, it is “unwilling” to work – not “can’t find a job”; not “I’m disabled”.  You only get stuck in the “neither should that one eat”  if you can work and refuse to work.  The basic concept here it to return to the truth of the matter:  living requires working.  No one gets a free ride.

Progressives and Blacks »

Progressives and Blacks »:
Sometimes I wonder when black people will reject the patronizing insults of white progressives and their black handmaidens. After CNN’s Piers Morgan’s interview with the key witness in the George Zimmerman trial, he said: “Rachel Jeantel is not uneducated. She’s a smart cookie.” That’s a remarkable conclusion. Here’s a 19-year-old young lady, still in high school, who cannot read cursive and appears to be barely literate. Morgan may have meant Jeantel is smart — for a black person.
Progressives treat blacks as victims in need of kid glove treatment and special favors, such as racial quotas and preferences. This approach has been tried in education for decades and has revealed itself a failure. I say it’s time we explore other approaches. One approach is suggested by sports. Blacks excel — perhaps dominate is a better word — in sports such as basketball, football and boxing to such an extent that blacks are 80 percent of professional basketball players, are 66 percent of professional football players and, for decades, have dominated most professional boxing categories.
These outcomes should raise several questions. In sports, when have you heard a coach explain or excuse a black player’s poor performance by blaming it on a “legacy of slavery” or on that player’s being raised in a single-parent household? When have you heard sports standards called racist or culturally biased? I have yet to hear a player, much less a coach, speak such nonsense. In fact, the standards of performance in sports are just about the most ruthless anywhere. Excuses are not tolerated. Think about it. What happens to a player, black or white, who doesn’t come up to a college basketball or football coach’s standards? He’s off the team. Players know this, and they make every effort to excel. They do so even more if they have aspirations to be a professional player. By the way, blacks also excel in the entertainment industry — another industry in which there’s ruthless dog-eat-dog competition.
Seeing as blacks have demonstrated an ability to thrive in an environment of ruthless competition and demanding standards, there might be some gains from a similar school environment. Maybe we ought to have some schools in which youngsters are loaded up with homework, frequent tests and demanding, top-notch teachers. In such schools, there would be no excuses for anything. Youngsters cut the mustard, or they’re kicked out and put into some other school. I’m betting that a significant number of black youngsters would prosper in such an environment, just as they prosper in the highly competitive sports and entertainment environments.
Progressives’ agenda calls for not only excuse-making but also dependency. Nowhere is this more obvious than it is in their efforts to get as many Americans as they can to be dependent on food stamps; however, in this part of their agenda, they offer racial equal opportunity. During President Barack Obama’s years in office, the number of people receiving food stamps has skyrocketed by 39 percent. Professor Edward Lazear, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2006-09, wrote in a Wall Street Journal article titled “The Hidden Jobless Disaster” (June 5, 2013) that research done by University of Chicago’s Casey Mulligan suggests “that because government benefits are lost when income rises, some people forgo poor jobs in lieu of government benefits –unemployment insurance, food stamps and disability benefits among the most obvious.” Government handouts probably go a long way toward explaining the unprecedented number of Americans, close to 90 million, who are no longer looking for work.
This is all a part of the progressive agenda to hook Americans, particularly black Americans, on government handouts. In future elections, they will be able to claim that anyone who campaigns on cutting taxing and spending is a racist. That’s what Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said in denouncing the Republican 1994 call for tax cuts. He said, “It’s not ‘spic’ or ‘nigger’ anymore. (Instead,) they say, ‘Let’s cut taxes.’”
When black Americans finally recognize the harm of the progressive agenda, I’m betting they will be the nation’s most conservative people, for who else has been harmed by progressivism as much?
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. 
The post Progressives and Blacks appeared first on Human Events.

Monday, August 19, 2013

So-called “renewable energy” is not clean, renewable, reliable, affordable or sustainable. »

So-called “renewable energy” is not clean, renewable, reliable, affordable or sustainable. »:

Somewhat Reasonable

Not so bright lights

“Renewable energy” is a sexy term used to drive public policies and spending.  The Obama Administration and like-minded Green zealots have said repeatedly that they are waging a “war on coal,” intend to bankrupt coal-based power plants, and delay or block oil, natural gas and nuclear projects – while fast-tracking and subsidizing ethanol, wind and solar programs
Another apostle of the renewable energy, anti-hydrocarbon movement is Senator Harry Reid. The chief organizer of and keynote speaker at this week’s falsely named National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, Reid is a true believer in destroying conventional energy through subsidies, regulations and strong-arm tactics. He even wants to shut down every coal-fired power plant in Nevada.
Senator Reid may believe that compelling and subsidizing increased renewable energy use, while undermining and even outlawing conventional energy, is the way to economic growth and energy independence. In reality, this reckless scheme could easily cause the collapse of our energy grid, job creation, economy and living standards, just as it is already doing in Europe.
Unfortunately, Reid and his allies could get away with it, because “renewable” confers an almost Holy Grail status that ensures widespread political, media, public and corporate support (for a lot of wrong reasons). That lofty status, however, ignores two fundamental facts:
1) Wind, solar and biofuel energy are not renewable, eco-friendly, reliable, affordable or sustainable.
2) Renewable energy schemes can no longer be justified by claims that we are rapidly running out of fossil fuels or causing dangerous manmade global warming. Oil sands and hydraulic fracturing have obliterated the depletion myth, while climate change fears are belied by a 16-year hiatus from planetary warming, historic lows in hurricane and tornado activity, and the abject failure of CO2-focused climate computer models.
In other words, the craze for “renewables” is driven by religious zeal, not science or economics.
MORE
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Shocker: Global warming may simply be an artifact of clean air laws »

Shocker: Global warming may simply be an artifact of clean air laws »: Pollution controls have contributed to a more transparent atmosphere, thus allowing for “…a staggering increase in surface solar radiation of the order of ∼20% over the last decade.” A new paper (O’Dowd et al.) from the National University of Ireland presented this summer at the 19th International Conference on Nucleation and Atmospheric Aerosols suggests that […]

Thursday, August 15, 2013

As He Guts Military, Obama Is Militarizing Domestic Force »

As He Guts Military, Obama Is Militarizing Domestic Force »:
Credit where credit is due: Obama is keeping a campaign promise. Remember when he made this alarming promise in 2008?
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
Fast forward to 2013:
In a rousing confrontation at a local council meeting in Concord, NH, [former Marine colonel, Peter Martino] calls out his government for facilitating what he feels is a needless militarization of a domestic force.
And he should know, he helped build one in Iraq.
“We did everything we could to build the Iraqi Army, and I’m telling you right now, the Department of Homeland Security would kick their butts.”
“What we’re doing here, and let’s not kid about it, is we’re building a domestic army and shrinking the military because the government is afraid of its own citizens … ”
“The last time 10 terrorists were in the same place at the same time was September 11th, and all these [armored] vehicles wouldn’t have prevented it, nor would they have helped anything.”
“We’re building an Army over here and I can’t believe people aren’t seeing it, is everybody blind?”
Most everybody. Willfully blind.
Here’s video:
On tips from Artfldgr and G. Fox.

The Face of the Lawless Bureaucracy »

The Face of the Lawless Bureaucracy »: Kevin D. Williamson's "The Front Man" is a strong contender for article of the year (emphases mine).

Democracy never lasts long,” [John] Adams famously said. “It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” For liberal regimes, a very common starting point on the road to serfdom is the over-delegation of legislative powers to the executive. France very nearly ended up in a permanent dictatorship as a result of that error, and was spared that fate mostly by good luck and Charles de Gaulle’s patriotism. Long before she declared her infamous state of emergency, Indira Gandhi had been centralizing power in the prime minister’s office, and India was spared a permanent dictatorship only by her political miscalculation and her dynasty-minded son’s having gotten himself killed in a plane wreck. Salazar in Portugal, Austria under Dollfuss, similar stories...

...But the United States is not going to fall for a strongman government. Instead of delegating power to a would-be president-for-life, we delegate it to a bureaucracy-without-death. You do not need to install a dictator when you’ve already had a politically supercharged permanent bureaucracy in place for 40 years or more. As is made clear by everything from campaign donations to the IRS jihad, the bureaucracy is the Left, and the Left is the bureaucracy. Elections will be held, politicians will come and go, but if you expand the power of the bureaucracy, you expand the power of the Left, of the managers and minions who share Barack Obama’s view of the world. Barack Obama isn’t the leader of the free world; he’s the front man for the permanent bureaucracy, the smiley-face mask hiding the pitiless yawning maw of total politics...

...the president would very much like the unemployment problem to be somewhat abated by the time of the 2014 congressional elections, but he knows that this is unlikely to happen with employers struggling under an expensive health-care mandate that he has not told enough of a story about. And so he has decided — empowered to do so by precisely nothing — that the law will not be enforced until after the elections. Neither does the law empower him arbitrarily to exempt millions of his donors and allies in organized labor from the law, but he has done that too.

This is a remarkable thing. The health-care law gives the executive all sorts of powers to promulgate regulations and make judgments, but it does not give the executive the power to decide which aspects of the law will be enforced and which will not, or to establish a different timeline from the one found in the law itself. For all of the power that Congress legally has given the president in this matter, he feels it necessary to take more — illegally...

...[Obama] has a constitutional duty to enforce the law. Representative Tom Cotton says that the president’s health-care delay makes a deal on immigration less likely — if the president can simply decline to enforce the provisions of a law he fought for, why trust him to enforce provisions of a law he is accepting only as a compromise? Representative Cotton must also of course have in mind the fact that after Congress had unequivocally rejected another piece of immigration reform, the so-called DREAM Act, that the president had supported, he simply instituted it unilaterally, as though he had the authority to declare an amnesty himself. He then did away with criminal-background checks for those to be amnestied, also on his own authority. Strangely, the order to halt background checks came down on November 9, 2012, the same day that John Boehner said Republicans would seek a compromise on immigration reform...

...The law also prohibits the president and his allies from using the instruments of government to persecute their rivals, but that is precisely what the IRS has been up to for several years, as it turns out. And not just the IRS: Tea-party activist Catherine Engelbrecht was subject to an IRS audit, two FBI visits, an OSHA investigation, and an ATF inspection of her business (which does not deal in A, T, or F). And although the IRS has no statutory power to collect Affordable Care Act–related fines in states that have not voluntarily set up health-care exchanges, Obama’s managers there have announced that they will do so anyway...

...Barack Obama’s administration is unmoored from the institutions that have long kept the imperial tendencies of the American presidency in check. That is partly the fault of Congress, which has punted too many of its legislative responsibilities to the president’s army of faceless regulators, but it is in no small part the result of an intentional strategy on the part of the administration. He has spent the past five years methodically testing the limits of what he can get away with, like one of those crafty velociraptors testing the electric fence in Jurassic Park. Barack Obama is a Harvard Law graduate, and he knows that he cannot make recess appointments when Congress is not in recess. He knows that his HHS is promulgating regulations that conflict with federal statutes. He knows that he is not constitutionally empowered to pick and choose which laws will be enforced. This is a might-makes-right presidency, and if Barack Obama has been from time to time muddled and contradictory, he has been clear on the point that he has no intention of being limited by something so trivial as the law.

The president's acts of lawlessness have become so egregious, so outre, that even the buttoned-down George Will -- pseudo-conservative columnist at The Washington Post -- just penned his own, far less cogent warning ("Obama’s unconstitutional steps worse than Nixon’s") to the Beltway elite.

And if the Republicans served as a true opposition party -- rather than a deer-like herd of feckless cowards -- they would have thrown roadblock after roadblock in front of the engine of Obama's long train of abuses and usurpations.

Instead, they watch and whimper and cower, terrified of their own shadows, interested only in preserving their tenuous grips on power rather than acting on principle.


Hat tip: Donald Sensing.

China aggressively testing advanced nukes that can hit mainland U.S. as Obama slashes missile defense »

China aggressively testing advanced nukes that can hit mainland U.S. as Obama slashes missile defense »: Guest post by Investors Business Daily


Defense: Beijing tests a mobile missile capable of hitting the continental U.S. and prepares to deploy ballistic missile submarines that can do the same, while our commander-in-chief slashes our missile defenses.

In a speech before the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Rep. Mike Rogers, R.-Ala., chairman of the House armed services subcommittee on strategic forces, warned that the Obama administration has cut $6 billion from U.S. missile defense programs at a time of growing missile threats from potential adversaries.

According to Rogers, Obama cut $1.16 billion from missile defense — a 10% reduction — in his first budget as president and has continued the reductions. "Over four fiscal years, this underfunding adds up to almost $6 billion less than President Bush planned for missile defense; this represents a 16% reduction," Rogers said.

Thanks largely to President George W. Bush and his push to fulfill President Ronald Reagan's dream, the continental U.S. and overseas allies are protected against missile attack by 30 deployed long-range Ground Based Interceptors (GBI), 32 ships armed with more than 100 SM-3 IA interceptors, and two dozen advanced SM-3 IB interceptors, dozens of Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors, and eight X-band missile defense radars deployed abroad.

However, a GBI test on July 5, the first such test in five years, failed. Our missile defense capabilities, which President Obama told the Russians he would have more "flexibility" to scuttle after his re-election, have been allowed to atrophy and deteriorate.

To placate Moscow, President Obama betrayed our allies in Poland and the Czech Republic by abandoning plans to deploy GBIs and missile defense radar there.

Other programs canceled by the Obama administration include a missile defense space sensor system; a next-generation Aegis missile, which was to replace the abandoned European GBIs; the Airborne Laser, an airborne sensor system; and a next-generation missile defense interceptor kill vehicle.


Our Chinese friends have noticed that the famous "reset" button has been replaced with one marked "easy." China's military carried out on July 24 a third test of a long-range DF-31A road-mobile ballistic missile capable of hitting the U.S. with nuclear warheads.

A recently published report by the Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center concluded, "China has the most active and diverse ballistic missile development program in the world."

The report states that China's military has "more than 15" DF-31A launchers for the solid-fueled, single-warhead ICBM that has a range greater than 6,835 miles. The July 24 test came exactly a year after the Chinese conducted what U.S. officials said was one of the first flight tests of a new longer-range ICBM called the DF-4, expected to carry 10 nuclear warheads.

Bill Gertz of the Washington Free Beacon also reports China's navy will begin the first sea patrols next year of a new class of strategic missile submarines, the Type 094, each built with 12 missile launch tubes that will hold the recently flight-tested JL-2 ballistic missile, which has an 8,000-kilometer (5,000-mile) range.

As with the GBIs, the U.S. rarely tests its missiles. A Minuteman III missile test was put off last year until after the presidential election and delayed again until May over concerns an ICBM flight test might frighten North Korea, led by its raging runt Kim Jong-un.

The 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont. , a unit responsible for 150 Minuteman 3 nuclear missiles that stand on 24/7 alert for potential launch against targets around the globe, recently failed a safety and security inspection.

Last spring the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., received grades on an inspection that were so poor that 17 officers temporarily lost their authority to operate missiles.

While we gut our military, cut back on readiness, training and weapons modernization, our adversaries are building up their arsenals of tyranny.


Read More At Investor's Business Daily

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Liberalism: Infantilizing Blacks for Over a Century »

Liberalism: Infantilizing Blacks for Over a Century »:
ATRS
I’ve never met a more divisive, racist crop of people than Liberals.
Under the guise of white guilt, Liberals are able to give full voice to their own inherent racism. They rarely hold back.
Liberals look at a black man and all they see is the color of his skin.
He could be a homeless man, a physician, a lawyer, a janitor, a cab driver, a politician, a teacher, a pastor — makes no difference. All the Liberal sees is black skin.
They tend to treat black people about how folks treat the family pet.
Isn’t he cute? Aren’t those little children just darling? Why, did you see him talking big-boy talk on television? He’s so clean and articulate! Oh, my, I just adore the way they dance!
Not much has changed in the last century.
The portrayal of Buckweat on the eighty-year-old “Little Rascals” is pretty much how Liberals see blacks today.
To Liberals, blacks are amiable dunces — there for their entertainment. Too stupid to take care of themselves, blacks must be coddled and cared for by Liberals.
They don’t know how to hold down jobs or buy their own groceries or make good financial decisions. Blacks need the Liberal to provide for them.
Much like squalling infants who cannot survive without Mommy and Daddy, Liberals believe blacks cannot get by in life without being helped by Liberals.
Problem is, Liberal policies seem to be concocted by the same kind of criminal masterminds you find in Coen Brothers’ movies. Everything Liberals attempt to do to “lift blacks up” pretty much make their circumstances even worse.
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