On the Fourth of July, comedian Chris Rock tweeted: "Happy white peoples independence day the slaves weren't free but I'm sure they enjoyed fireworks." Chris Rock disowns the holiday with tongue-in-cheek.
Well right back at you Mr. Rock. My continental European ancestors weren't in the USA when colonists won their independence from England. My grandparents didn't even speak English when they arrived in the U.S., but according to this tweet, their whiteness took ownership of Independence Day from African Americans. Is there nothing those poor European immigrants didn't ruin for real Americans?
NO LAUGHING MATTER
But in Chicago, there are more reasons for tears than laughter. Unemployment is high in many poor African American communities, and crime rates are horrific. One can barely call them communities. For too many, parenting skills are woefully inadequate. Innocent young children out in late night and early morning hours with a parent nearby have been shot. The leading cause of death of young black men is lead poisoning. Jobs are scarce. Decent people are afraid of gangs in their so-called communities. While most of the negative results have fallen on the black community, as I've stated in earlier years, it's not a race war, it's a class war.
More Shooting Deaths in Chicago than in Afghanistan So Far This Year
On June 25, 2012, the New York Times ran a front page story about the 38% rise in killings in Chicago. Most of the deaths were due to black on black crime. Again, Chicago has a lot of crime, and it is not limited to black communities, but the fact is that crime is concentrated in gang dominated black communities and in non-black communities where non-black gangs have taken hold. Gang warfare has exacerbated the problem:
"That's somebody's husband, somebody's son, and they're dying right on our block," said Maya Hodari, who lives on a South Side street where two shootings have already taken place this year, one of them fatal and another as a toddler looked on. "It hurts."
Yet schools report that teachers can't discipline children, and when they speak to a parent, they are often met with denial and verbal abuse instead of cooperation and backup. Police have difficulty getting cooperation from witnesses. Budget cuts have resulted in an undermanned and demoralized police force (see the following commentary).
Criminals Are Responsible for Their Own Actions
The Chicago media has reported the upswing in "wildings" and what is often not reported is that most--but not all (we have our share of white and Latino gangs in Chicago)--are gangs of black youths. This year there seems to be a new twist. Black mobs are attacking non-blacks, and sometimes the mob is not doing it for economic gain. For example, on the Fourth of July, eleven black youths---nine of the eleven ranged in age from 14 to 17--were arrested in connection of the beating of a white man steps away from the Magnificent Mile shopping area. The man was struck, fell to the ground and hit his head. He was hospitalized in good condition.
The police were in plain view during the attack, but the gang didn't care. The police report showed that after they beat the man, "they laughed about the attack while pushing other pedestrians to the ground, and jumping on top of passing cars."
It's much too easy to let politicians divide the nation, make this about race, and ignore the underlying causes. It's true that most of the mobs in downtown Chicago are comprised of African Americans and some of this seems to rise to the level of hate crimes. But gangs of Hispanic and white youths have also caused problems. The problem isn't the race of the perpetrators; it's that the criminals lack respect for themselves, lack respect for others, and lack respect for authority.
I see the same lack of respect for others on Wall Street where I encounter a better dressed and better educated gang of--mostly white--destructive criminals thieving and mugging with fountain pens. In case Chris Rock is wondering, the perps are mostly men, but it would be too easy to let politicians and irresponsible academicians divide the nation and make this about gender. Incredibly, junk scientists in academia have tried to claim that "testosterone" is a contributing cause to rogue traders who seek thrills, suggesting women wouldn't behave this way. These professors apparently know very little about women. If women had a Wall Street gang that would let them gamble, cheat, and steal and buy off Congress, you'd have to watch women like hawks, too. There are way too many "leaders" and so-called journalists who make excuses for (mostly) non-violent criminals.
No Excuses for Criminals or for the Police Superintendent
Incredibly, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy gave a talk to black leaders wherein he seemed to be blaming Pilgrims and actions of the police for the crime in black communities. One can sympathize with the stew of social and economic conditions that can foster criminal behavior, but that doesn't absolve perpetrators of responsibility for their own actions.
What is Garry McCarthy's explanation for his cop-out? It's not racist to say there are irresponsible black people terrorizing black communities. Most of the people in these communities want a peaceful life, and they know the criminals aren't Pilgrims.
In 2010 and 2011, I wrote about Chicago's crime problems. The commentary below is adapted from my 2010 post. The problems faced by the demoralized Chicago Police Department haven't changed even though Chicago then had a different mayor and a different superintendent. In fact, the problems are even worse. The police force is critically undermanned, and they are being spat at, verbally abused, punched, kicked, stabbed, shot at and have had their cars deliberately rammed.
Third World America [2010]: 'Fast-Tracking to Anarchy' - August 25 2010
My last post about Arianna Huffington's new book, Third World America: How Our Politicians are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream talked about the Great Recession, the Great Bailout, and the Great Cover-Up of financial crimes.
Among the future consequences of not fixing our national problems will likely be an increase in social unrest and an increase in crime. A look at Chicago's problems may serve as a call to action for America's middle class. Chicago's city budget is in dire straits. That's also true of the state of Illinois, California, New York and other areas. In Chicago, the same mismanagement that deepened our fiscal crisis has caused a crisis in essential city services.
The police department provides just one example. Sunday's Chicago Tribune reported that in 31 days, there were 303 shot and 33 dead. "Crime has been holding steady in Chicago in recent years. Through July, there have been 1,089 shootings in the city, a 2.4 percent decrease over last year." [These lower numbers are 2010 figures.]:
According to the newspaper, it's a "typical" July. Yet there is nothing typical about it when you look beyond the numbers. The first problem is that the numbers are flat-out unacceptable in any year in any city in the U.S. It is inexplicable that citizens of Chicago have tolerated this situation in poorer neighborhoods for decades. The second problem is a new problem. Years of complacency by Chicago's middle and upper classes have brought the crisis to their doorstep.
In recent years, incompetent and ill-qualified people have been promoted to "leadership" positions. Hiring and exam giving has declined, and the police department is undermanned and demoralized. Even worse is the fragging officers take from politicians, unqualified people in police "administration," and from the local media.
Spiraling Out of Control: Open Season on Cops
The title of this post comes from "A City at War With Itself," a commentary written by Lt. John Andrews, a 25-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department:
Most horrific for Chicago is that in less than 60 days, Chicago has lost 3 of its police officers, killed by gunfire as victims of robberies. It seems no one is safe in our city anymore.
Chicago's homicide rate this year currently stands toe-to-toe with the total number of military forces killed in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Thugs, gangs and renegade groups run the streets and neighborhoods, intimidating and victimizing the decent citizens of this city. They go mostly unchallenged and unchecked by a totally demoralized police force that is dangerously understaffed and still out-gunned on the
streets.
Lt. Andrews describes in detail a police department demoralized by scandals and corruption. He names those who received promotions based on political pull rather than merit or suitability for responsibility. Moreover, police fear reprisals from political special interest groups when using necessary force:
When asked, most will freely tell you that they do not want to place themselves, their families and livelihoods at risk from a perceived Machiavellian police superintendent or other incompetent "bosses" that could lead them into legal trouble that would risk their liberty and freedom (jail).
[Lt. Andrews faced backlash for bringing these matters to light. See "In Third World America Expect to Be Investigated, as Lt. John Andrews Is Being Investigated, for Speaking Up," Huffington Post, August 28, 2010. The investigation cleared Lt. Andrews.]
Even during televised speeches at the recent funerals of police officers, public officials speak out of both sides of their mouths. On the one hand, they decry the apparent targeted shootings of police officers -- one of whom, Michael Bailey, was wearing his uniform after just coming off duty from a night of guarding [then Mayor Daley's] house -- and on the other hand, they say that of course, police must follow proper procedures and work within the law (and often pause for effect).
Of course, everyone agrees the police must follow proper procedures, but the subtext of the message delivered at an officer's funeral is repellant. These thinly-disguised campaign speeches suggest the police force needs to be careful not to bring these tragedies upon themselves. Perhaps they think police should round up suspects and put them in Monty Python's comfy chair.
If the goal is to help police officers follow proper procedures at all times, then politicians and the police superintendent have to staff the force with well-qualified recruits (this means creating a reasonable qualification exam), remove corrupt "leaders" by reversing ridiculous promotions, and promote qualified officers based on merit. The police force desperately needs manpower and both physical and leadership back-up. Officers confident that their authority is respected, their judgment is trusted, and their tools are equal to a dangerous and difficult job will produce better results than people who have been left hanging out to dry, while their colleagues are massacred.
Media Strafing
Local media has lost the plot. A couple of days ago, an off-duty police officer shot and killed an armed home invader who had kicked in his door. The officer reportedly lives on a block with five or six other police officers. The intruder allegedly has a history of wrongdoing and invaded a suburban home with another man. He posed as a cable worker and bound and gagged his victims. Yet, some news reports described the intruder as a "victim" and said the off-duty officer was not charged, as if charges should have even been an issue. According to comments posted at Second City Cop, WGN's televised news unwisely showed the police officer's home, identified his neighborhood, and zoomed in on his home address.
Mug Mile
Formerly "safe" and "upscale" neighborhoods have become the targets of "wildings." James Carlini, an editor for Wisconsin Technology News (Carlini lives in Illinois and grew up in Chicago), gave an eyewitness account of his experience of Chicago's "land sharks" at the premier shopping district known as the Magnificent Mile, or Mag Mile:
Coming back to the John Hancock to pick up my car at around 9PM, I noticed several little bands of four to five juveniles walking around sizing up people as they walked down the streets. Luckily we were already in our car, but I could sense that these "gangsta wannabes" were up to no good.
There were some arrests made that night but very suspicious that there was no mention in the mainstream media. There have been incidences like this before but never a mention or a caution. Why? Afraid to report on the truth or were you told not to report on the truth?
Response to Huffington Post's Readers' Comments [in August 2010] About Race:
I never mentioned race in my [August 25, 2010] post, but a few commenters brought up race and made unwarranted assumptions. Some commenters assumed "wildings" only involve black youths. Chicago is a city with a lot of diversity and gangs of every race. I mentioned a separate incident of an armed intruder being shot and killed by an off duty police officer; the armed intruder was not African American. I also mentioned three police officers were shot and killed within the past 60 days. Two were African American, one was not.
Buy Back America
If nothing else good comes out of our crisis, perhaps it will serve as a wake-up call for the entire nation. It's time to put our shoulders to the wheel to solve our problems.
Doing nothing is not an option for America. Much of poor America, especially in our major cities, has been Third World America for decades. Soon the urban middle classes and even upper classes will become better acquainted with that world.
Washington's political corruption and mismanagement has the same roots as Chicago's. As Arianna points out, on a national level, we need "the mother of all reforms:"
"That is why the first step toward stopping our relentless transformation into Third World America has to be breaking the choke hold that special interest money has on our politicians." (Third World America, 172)
On a local level, Chicago will have to fix its own problems by breaking the choke hold of special interest groups. On a national level, it will take a Constitutional amendment requiring full public financing for political campaigns (for starters). Our politicians have shown us how willing they are to be owned by special interest groups that will buy votes, buy a campaign, or just buy them off. As Arianna explains: "If someone's going to own the politicians, it might as well be the American people."
Monday, July 9, 2012
Jeremiah Wright: We need control
President Barack Obama’s former spiritual adviser spoke just a few miles from the White House on Sunday, and politics and controversy weren’t far from what Rev. Jeremiah Wright had to say..
Hospitals 'letting patients die to save money’
Hospitals may be depriving elderly patients of food and drink to hasten their deaths as part of cost-cutting measures to free up bed space, leading doctors warn..
FLASHBACK: Obama Says You Don't Raise Taxes In A Recession
In August 2009, President Obama was very clear that we shouldn't raise taxes in a recession. So why does he want to increase them now?
Taxing people on what they don’t consume creates a dangerous precedent
Talk about confusion.
First U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts decides that the Obamacare mandate is really a tax. Then the Republicans admonished the Democrats for raising taxes, followed by Democrats’ insistence — to avoid the tax-and-spend epithet — that the health mandate payment is a penalty. Then, of all people, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney sides with the Democrats, since his own Massachusetts plan had a similar levy on the uninsured population. Next, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a VP contender, claims the mandate is both a tax and a penalty...
First U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts decides that the Obamacare mandate is really a tax. Then the Republicans admonished the Democrats for raising taxes, followed by Democrats’ insistence — to avoid the tax-and-spend epithet — that the health mandate payment is a penalty. Then, of all people, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney sides with the Democrats, since his own Massachusetts plan had a similar levy on the uninsured population. Next, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a VP contender, claims the mandate is both a tax and a penalty...
Obama to seek one-year extension for some of Bush tax cuts
(Reuters) - President Barack Obama will call on Monday for a one-year extension of Bush-era tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 a year, according to a White House official, seeking to spare the economy the impact of taxes going up on January 1...
Ungrateful Mexico condemns fatal shooting over border by U.S. agent
(Reuters) - The Mexican government on Sunday condemned the fatal shooting of a Mexican citizen over the U.S. border by a U.S. agent...
IDF video of Hezbullah collecting intelligence at the Lebanese border
The IDF has released a video of Hezbullah collecting intelligence at Lebanon's border with Israel.
The video was presented during a debriefing by Brigadier General Hartzi Halevi, Commander of the 91st Division (Galilee Formation), which is responsible for the Lebanese border sector.
Let's go to the videotape.
As you can see, the terror operatives drive right up to the border and look across, knowing that the IDF will not fire at them.
During the debriefing, Halevi said, “The IDF sees the connection between the ongoing events in Syria and the terror activity at the northern border, and is preparing accordingly. The chances of hostile activity in the border region are continuously increasing, and therefore, we are required to be prepared. There is more than just one way to violate the calm at the northern border, but the IDF will know to provide a clear and keen response against any possible scenario.
“The challenges we face are numerous. We will have to see how we face the complex challenge that includes an enemy with multiple capabilities. However, we will be able to operate on Lebanese soil, should it be required, and inflict considerable damage to the terror centers present there.”
That day seems to be coming soon.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:04
The video was presented during a debriefing by Brigadier General Hartzi Halevi, Commander of the 91st Division (Galilee Formation), which is responsible for the Lebanese border sector.
Let's go to the videotape.
As you can see, the terror operatives drive right up to the border and look across, knowing that the IDF will not fire at them.
During the debriefing, Halevi said, “The IDF sees the connection between the ongoing events in Syria and the terror activity at the northern border, and is preparing accordingly. The chances of hostile activity in the border region are continuously increasing, and therefore, we are required to be prepared. There is more than just one way to violate the calm at the northern border, but the IDF will know to provide a clear and keen response against any possible scenario.
“The challenges we face are numerous. We will have to see how we face the complex challenge that includes an enemy with multiple capabilities. However, we will be able to operate on Lebanese soil, should it be required, and inflict considerable damage to the terror centers present there.”
That day seems to be coming soon.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:04
Apple Ditches Green Standard, Cuts Off Federal Agencies from Apple Products
Federal agencies can no longer buy Apple products for their offices. According to a recent announcement, Apple will be pulling all of their products from the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), the leading green consumer electronics standard. EPEAT is designed to mitigate the negative environmental and social impacts of electronics manufacturing by requiring that products meet eight environmental “performance categories,” including product lifetime, toxic materials, and recyclability of components and packaging materials...
4GW: "Know Your Enemy." Fourth Generation Warfare Messaging As Practiced by the Collectivists and Exemplified by "The Little Blue Book."
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Conservatives make it rough for business
WASHINGTON – Conservative Republicans have roughed up the business community this year — and it's not over yet.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and major companies like Boeing Co. and Caterpillar Inc. all wanted quick reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance American companies' overseas sales. Congress had reaffirmed the independent federal agency some two dozen times since its creation in 1934. But this year it took months of pleas, briefings and negotiations to overcome conservative opposition...
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and major companies like Boeing Co. and Caterpillar Inc. all wanted quick reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance American companies' overseas sales. Congress had reaffirmed the independent federal agency some two dozen times since its creation in 1934. But this year it took months of pleas, briefings and negotiations to overcome conservative opposition...
Neo-Soviet Russia Is Another Obama Legacy
Just as America was celebrating the birth of a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, Russia was doing the opposite. As the current American president continued to turn his back on American values, Russia's ruler was embarking upon a massive new crackdown, hoping to eradicate them entirely..
'Happy Dependence Day'
Who coined the mortifyingly apt greeting, "Happy Dependence Day"? The earliest use I have found in a by-no-means exhaustive search was in 2010 by cartoonist A.F. Branco marking President Obama's giant spending programs. Recycling the slogan this week, Branco came up with a far more potent image. In his one-frame cartoon, star-spangled letters spell out Happy Independence Day as a gavel labeled SCOTUS whacks the "In" off of "Independence." Happy Dependence Day..
The New Leviathan
David Horowitz contends that tax-exemptorganizations of the political left,who present themselves are more aligned with the concerns of the poor andworking class than conservative groups and the Republican Party, have assets over 100 hundred billion dollars and outspend conservatives seven to one. The author argues that the Left has used their finances to promote a progressive agenda that has transformed the political landscape. David Horowitz speaks at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles.
‘I,’ ‘Me’—Obama Uses First-Person Pronoun 117 Times in 1 Speech
Man Who Introduced Obama At Rally Owes $500G To Former Employer
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (CBS Cleveland/AP) — An Ohio man who says he once lost his job and introduced President Barack Obama at a rally on Friday had been accused of stealing trade secrets by a former boss..
Family slugged with 'carbon tax fee' for funeral
A Melbourne family who claim they were slugged an extra $55 "carbon tax charge" when burying a relative were told "even the dead don't escape the carbon tax".
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Second Obama cabinet official faces contempt of Congress charge
Could a second Obama cabinet member be found in contempt of Congress? The possibility arose on Friday when House investigators escalated their efforts to make Interior Secretary Ken Salazar comply with a subpoena pertaining to the drilling moratorium that he imposed after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill...
Must See Video – How Obama steals elections one at a time – The Chicago Way
In 1996 Obama and a team of lawyers eliminated all his rivals from the ballot including incumbent Alice Palmer – allowing him to run unopposed. He also had opponent Jack Ryan’s divorce unsealed and leaked out to the press which caused Ryan to remove himself from the campaign. Obama is not a nice guy no matter what the media says….he plays by his own rules, the Chicago gangster way and that can lead to bad Karma…..Ask Al Capone!
Obama filed objections to all four of his Democratic rivals. He was the first one to ever do so. Here is a video of what happened when Obama had Ryan’s divorce records unsealed.
Dirty tactics is what Obama is all about – race baiting, organized caucus intimidation, and lies about everything from Nafta to what he knows about his own church and his own close friends.
Obama filed objections to all four of his Democratic rivals. He was the first one to ever do so. Here is a video of what happened when Obama had Ryan’s divorce records unsealed.
Dirty tactics is what Obama is all about – race baiting, organized caucus intimidation, and lies about everything from Nafta to what he knows about his own church and his own close friends.
Paul’s U-7 Unemployment is actually at 16.91 for Country, includes Gov’t Numbers
U-7 includes everyone in the government’s U-3: everyone who said they wanted a job and had looked for one in the past 4 weeks. It also adds everyone who said they wanted one, hadn’t looked in the past 4 weeks, but had in the past year. (These people are included in the government’s most inclusive statistic, U-6). But we also add people who hadn’t looked in the past year but still said they wanted a job and would take one. Finally, we add people working part-time, but say they are looking for full-time work, like “consultants” I know, who may have worked only one hour in the week the government survey taker came calling, but are still tallied as officially “employed.”
Unfortunately, the more inclusive measure of un- and underemployment that we follow — and have dubbed “U-7″ — rose. That is, the number of Americans who said they “want a job” but haven’t looked for work in more than 4 weeks swelled by some 200,000. These are the discouraged – including, I suppose, some folks who may be lying about their intentions. But in any case, they’re out of work and yet not counted in the official unemployment number. I devised U-7 to count them back in.
Unfortunately, the more inclusive measure of un- and underemployment that we follow — and have dubbed “U-7″ — rose. That is, the number of Americans who said they “want a job” but haven’t looked for work in more than 4 weeks swelled by some 200,000. These are the discouraged – including, I suppose, some folks who may be lying about their intentions. But in any case, they’re out of work and yet not counted in the official unemployment number. I devised U-7 to count them back in.
Barack Obama surrendered his Law license in 2008 to escape charges he lied on his bar application
Barack Obama allegedly surrendered his Law license in 2008 to escape charges he lied on his bar application -- and Michelle Obama "voluntarily surrendered" her law license in 1993 after a Federal Judge gave her the choice between surrendering her license or standing trial for Insurance fraud! MORE
Obama Spends Record $12 Billion To Keep Documents Secret
President Barack Obama has said his administration is the most most transparent administration in the modern era.
But a new report by the Information Security Oversight Committee found that in 2011, the Obama Administration spent a record $12 billion to keep documents secret, a 12 percent increase over last year's classification costs.
As Asawin Suebsaeng of the liberal Mother Jones publication puts it, "It's safe to say that it is long past due to officially declare the Obama era a transparency #fail."
‘If I were the devil’: the 1965 warning from Paul Harvey that’s chilling
In 1965, Paul Harvey issued a grim warning in the form of a hypothetical: if I were the devil. It will send chills up your spine:
Slap the S**t Out of Him’: Wayne Brady Calls Out Bill Maher for Racial Comments
Bill Maher’s tortured attempts at being funny have long since stopped being a source of entertainment for us at the Blaze, and have devolved into objects of pity. Still, Maher, who infamously has thrown every accusation of bigotry he can at the GOP while simultaneously calling harmless daughters of politicians he disagrees with “c**ts,” has to be given some credit for retaining his show while simultaneously behaving like Keith Olbermann without filters. It can’t be easy maintaining such a low level of quality while still retaining your own show.
Nevertheless, Maher has gone so far over the line recently that he’s begun catching flak from his own side. We can‘t say we’re surprised by this – being the less funny, less incisive, pay-per-view equivalent of Jon Stewart should have its problems. Unfortunately for Maher, one of those problems is his inability to talk about President Obama without invoking the very racist caricatures that he himself would slam Republicans for using. And at least one of Maher’s reference points, comedian Wayne Brady, is apparently sick of it.
Confused? Let us explain. One of Maher’s complaints about President Obama is, apparently, that he’s not aggressive enough as President. Fair enough – that’s a common complaint among liberals. However, Maher phrases this complaint in a (to put it charitably) risque way – specifically, by complaining that Obama doesn’t act enough like a stereotypical scary black man, instead acting more like a “Wayne Brady” figure. Never mind that these are both stereotypes, and that if any of Obama’s conservative critics said this, they’d be vilified to the ends of the earth. Right now, that‘s the least of Maher’s problems.
You see, Wayne Brady has heard this complaint from Maher, and understandably doesn’t like being turned into a synonym for emasculation. This led Brady, in an interview on a podcast today, to launch into the following hilarious rant and, we suspect, quite cathartic rant against Maher:
But even Bill Maher — like, I’ve had Bill Maher twice now, when referencing Obama, he’s like, ‘Yeah, you know, with your Wayne Brady.’ So, that means it’s a diss to Obama to be called me because he wants a brother-brother, or what he perceives. Just because you fuck black hookers, just because you have that particular black experience, and I have to stop myself from getting into it, Bill, because I realize the thing is that if I were to go on his show, or even do it online, I’m not going to win because as soon as you back off, he still has his platform to say whatever he wants to.
If he once said I want to know how black Wayne Brady is — that chip on my shoulder says that rarely do you threaten a man and you should not fear anyone. Now, I’m not saying I’m Billy Badass, but if Bill Maher has his perception of what’s black wrapped up, I would gladly slap the shit out of Bill Maher in the middle of the street, and then I want to see what Bill Maher would do.
Now, Bill Maher would call the cops and he would have his lawyer — I’d get sued and lose my house and it’s not worth it for me, but the black man part of me would be so satisfied to slap the shit out of him in front of Cocoa and Ebony and Fox, the three ladies of the night that he has hired … and Fancy, who also happened to be named Tyrique at one point.
Naturally enough, we at the Blaze do not condone violence, and hope that Mr. Brady will not take it upon himself to “slap the s**t” out of Maher. Nevertheless, we do wonder, purely as an academic matter, whether it would work to drive the point home about Maher’s own failings as a pundit.
Nevertheless, Maher has gone so far over the line recently that he’s begun catching flak from his own side. We can‘t say we’re surprised by this – being the less funny, less incisive, pay-per-view equivalent of Jon Stewart should have its problems. Unfortunately for Maher, one of those problems is his inability to talk about President Obama without invoking the very racist caricatures that he himself would slam Republicans for using. And at least one of Maher’s reference points, comedian Wayne Brady, is apparently sick of it.
Confused? Let us explain. One of Maher’s complaints about President Obama is, apparently, that he’s not aggressive enough as President. Fair enough – that’s a common complaint among liberals. However, Maher phrases this complaint in a (to put it charitably) risque way – specifically, by complaining that Obama doesn’t act enough like a stereotypical scary black man, instead acting more like a “Wayne Brady” figure. Never mind that these are both stereotypes, and that if any of Obama’s conservative critics said this, they’d be vilified to the ends of the earth. Right now, that‘s the least of Maher’s problems.
You see, Wayne Brady has heard this complaint from Maher, and understandably doesn’t like being turned into a synonym for emasculation. This led Brady, in an interview on a podcast today, to launch into the following hilarious rant and, we suspect, quite cathartic rant against Maher:
But even Bill Maher — like, I’ve had Bill Maher twice now, when referencing Obama, he’s like, ‘Yeah, you know, with your Wayne Brady.’ So, that means it’s a diss to Obama to be called me because he wants a brother-brother, or what he perceives. Just because you fuck black hookers, just because you have that particular black experience, and I have to stop myself from getting into it, Bill, because I realize the thing is that if I were to go on his show, or even do it online, I’m not going to win because as soon as you back off, he still has his platform to say whatever he wants to.
If he once said I want to know how black Wayne Brady is — that chip on my shoulder says that rarely do you threaten a man and you should not fear anyone. Now, I’m not saying I’m Billy Badass, but if Bill Maher has his perception of what’s black wrapped up, I would gladly slap the shit out of Bill Maher in the middle of the street, and then I want to see what Bill Maher would do.
Now, Bill Maher would call the cops and he would have his lawyer — I’d get sued and lose my house and it’s not worth it for me, but the black man part of me would be so satisfied to slap the shit out of him in front of Cocoa and Ebony and Fox, the three ladies of the night that he has hired … and Fancy, who also happened to be named Tyrique at one point.
Naturally enough, we at the Blaze do not condone violence, and hope that Mr. Brady will not take it upon himself to “slap the s**t” out of Maher. Nevertheless, we do wonder, purely as an academic matter, whether it would work to drive the point home about Maher’s own failings as a pundit.
Republicans Must Stop Ignoring Substance Of Unconstitutional ObamaTax
If this keeps going this way, we’re going to lose it all, folks. Unless some people get their heads in the game and focus on what really happened here and what really is happening, we’re going to go down the tubes. (interruption) No, no, no! This silly debate about whether it’s a penalty or a tax. Looking for silver linings. What the heck does it matter? All that is irrelevant! And you’ve got Romney’s guy going on MSNBC saying, “No, no, no, no, no! We don’t think what the court said is a tax. It’s a penalty.”
This is the guy who made the statement about, “Well, you know, our policies are Etch-A-Sketch. We got an Etch-A-Sketch for the campaign and we erase it.” Eric Fehrnstrom is his name. The RNC chairman just put this out. The individual mandate is not a tax ’cause he’s gotta stay in sync with Romney. I don’t know why people are so upset. We warned everybody that Romney’s vulnerability is Romneycare. And Romney and Fehrnstrom were out there saying they disagree with the court. This isn’t a tax. It’s a penalty because Romney doesn’t want it said about Romneycare that what he imposed is a tax. So the RNC has to go along with the individual mandate is not a tax, but we’re gonna call it that anyway he says. The chairman of the Republican National Committee said the individual mandate is not a tax but the Republicans are gonna call it that anyway. You’re wasting your time talking about whether it’s a penalty or a tax.
The bottom line is that most of you are getting a little annoyed and fed up at this Republican argument over whether it’s a tax or whether it’s a penalty, or, wow, there’s some silver linings in this. We are gonna have to get focused on the disaster that this Supreme Court ruling is and we’re gonna have to admit it, and the sooner the better because this is ball game. This changes this country forever and for the worse. There is nothing positive or good in Obamacare. There’s nothing in it. I don’t care if you want to keep your kid on your policy ’til 26, preexisting condition, those two things are not worth the accompanying transformation and destruction of what has been known as the United States of America. “Well, then what you would you do, Mr. Limbaugh, if you don’t want people focusing on whether it’s a penalty or a tax?”
Continue Reading on www.rushlimbaugh.com
This is the guy who made the statement about, “Well, you know, our policies are Etch-A-Sketch. We got an Etch-A-Sketch for the campaign and we erase it.” Eric Fehrnstrom is his name. The RNC chairman just put this out. The individual mandate is not a tax ’cause he’s gotta stay in sync with Romney. I don’t know why people are so upset. We warned everybody that Romney’s vulnerability is Romneycare. And Romney and Fehrnstrom were out there saying they disagree with the court. This isn’t a tax. It’s a penalty because Romney doesn’t want it said about Romneycare that what he imposed is a tax. So the RNC has to go along with the individual mandate is not a tax, but we’re gonna call it that anyway he says. The chairman of the Republican National Committee said the individual mandate is not a tax but the Republicans are gonna call it that anyway. You’re wasting your time talking about whether it’s a penalty or a tax.
The bottom line is that most of you are getting a little annoyed and fed up at this Republican argument over whether it’s a tax or whether it’s a penalty, or, wow, there’s some silver linings in this. We are gonna have to get focused on the disaster that this Supreme Court ruling is and we’re gonna have to admit it, and the sooner the better because this is ball game. This changes this country forever and for the worse. There is nothing positive or good in Obamacare. There’s nothing in it. I don’t care if you want to keep your kid on your policy ’til 26, preexisting condition, those two things are not worth the accompanying transformation and destruction of what has been known as the United States of America. “Well, then what you would you do, Mr. Limbaugh, if you don’t want people focusing on whether it’s a penalty or a tax?”
Continue Reading on www.rushlimbaugh.com
Communism Documentary Part 4: The Great Leap Forward
Here is more of the Communism Documentary. Just when you thought Marxists couldn’t kill more people, they kicked it up a notch.
Communism - 4 of 6 - Great Leap Forward by VladimirLenin
Get all 6 segments HERE>>
Communism - 4 of 6 - Great Leap Forward by VladimirLenin
Get all 6 segments HERE>>
The United States — a nation of takers?
In a post about the inability of the German national soccer team to win tournaments recently, I wondered whether this failure had something to do with a change in the German ethos. But what about the American ethos? Has it changed?
The Economics of Planned Global Failure
Debt is the surest and shortest path to a global economy. Punishing all actors in local economies but those who are “too big to fail” empowers “too big to fail” systems and “too big to fail” economies. Encouraging debt and the eventual assumption of debt passed on and commodified by increasingly larger political and economic entities creates supraentities built on debt and dedicated to economic regulation...
Have a Gay-Only Blood Bank For 5 Years and Let’s See Who Agrees To Accept It
Check out this bit of contradiction in this Quigley guy’s statement. I swear these people are either idiots or they think we’re idiots.
Quigley says that the ban on gay blood donors should be lifted because we have sophisticated screening for AIDS, hepatitis, etc etc.. Then he says that straights that lead risky lifestyles pose a bigger threat to the blood supply than monogamous gays.
Huh?
WTF happened to our sophisticated screening that makes it completely safe for gays to donate blood? And the dunderheaded woman doesn’t even blink...
Quigley says that the ban on gay blood donors should be lifted because we have sophisticated screening for AIDS, hepatitis, etc etc.. Then he says that straights that lead risky lifestyles pose a bigger threat to the blood supply than monogamous gays.
Huh?
WTF happened to our sophisticated screening that makes it completely safe for gays to donate blood? And the dunderheaded woman doesn’t even blink...
When States Turn Evil
One can tell that a state is becoming evil when there is a moral separation of means and ends. If evil acts are advocated by a major party to accomplish the utopian good, and there is insufficient political opposition, then events are put into motion that lead inexorably to misery and even bloodshed on a massive scale.
The historical examples of ruthless parties attaining dominant power through the use of genuinely benevolent slogans are legion. The Bolsheviks, who murdered tens of millions of people, came to power touting “Bread, Land, and Peace.”
Instead of Bread, the Russians would experience famine in the 1930s, and the Ukrainians would even be purposefully starved under Stalin, leading to millions of deaths.
Instead of Land, farmland was stolen from the people and made state property through collectivization, expropriation, and arbitrary redistribution, along with the extermination of kulaks or petty landholders.
Instead of Peace, the ending of the war with Germany, on unfavorable terms at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, commenced a new war against the Russian people themselves to force them under the Soviet yoke.
Instead of “Freedom for oppressed nationalities,” as was promised to the Soviet people, the Georgians, Ukrainians and other minorities were slaughtered by the former Commissar of Nationalities Joseph Stalin.
All the while, the Soviet people were indoctrinated into the Bolshevik version of “class warfare,” presumably justifying such massive bloodshed. It should be noted that the United Nations allows no definition of genocide for such mass slaughter if it is carried out on class warfare grounds.
The Maoists also had their fair share of blowing sunshine up people’s rears before sticking a boot in them. The slogan “Serve the People” or “Service for the People” (more accurately, “Service the People”) became popular in China prior to the “Great Leap Forward” (off a cliff). The Serve the People slogan would later become adopted by The Black Panthers and aspiring yuppiecrats across America’s fruited plain during the 1960s and 1970s.
The Nazis, for their part, even had their kindler, gentler side, when they weren’t deriding the evils of “the Jews.” The slogan “Strength through Joy” was adapted by the Hitler Youth, a vigorous expression of the “Let’s Move!” variety.
The Nazis were also staunch anti-smokers and health nuts, following the arbitrary preferences of the Germans’ eccentric diktator Adolph Hitler. The Nazis had universal healthcare, following the practice of Otto von Bismarck; and though it is not being alleged that the institution of universal healthcare causes unfettered warfare and genocide, it cannot be denied that it is an institution of state-collective control.
The Italian fascist ruler Benito Mussolini once wrote, “For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism, it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and, hence, the century of the State.”
The connection between the state and collectivism is inextricable; as the State uses collectivism to achieve its ends, collectivism feeds a warped logic that sees human beings as disposable – that is collectivism’s ultimate and most radical conclusion. It can be summed up no better than the Leninist regime Khmer Rouge: “To keep you is no gain, to destroy you is no loss.”
Socialism, communism, fascism — the only substantive difference between these ideologies is the scope of their purveyors’ collectivist ambitions. Communism is fascism taken worldwide. The end of socialism is communism.
It’s all evil, no matter what you call it. And there’s no justification for it.
The antidote to state-sanctioned evil is two-fold. The first is individualism, which is the creed that every human being has the right to defend himself, to support his own life, and to act and speak in accordance with his own conscience, provided he does not infringe on the rights of others.
The second is a code of conduct holding that moral means are commensurate with moral ends. There is no “higher cause” that calls one to commit an act of evil against his fellow man. The way to spread good is by being good.
It should be noted here that the ideology guiding the current administration is, tacitly albeit obviously, Alinskyite. Both President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are self-admitted Alinsky disciples. Why is this important? Because Alinsky taught the ends justify the means; and even more disturbingly, that the end is power.
Education Waivers Highlight Obama's Executive Agenda
During the hailstorm of legislation that passed through Congress in the first "Hundred Days" of the New Deal, humorist Will Rogers observed that Congress doesn't make laws anymore, "they just wave at the bills as they go by." Now that the Supreme Court has effectively rewritten the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) to find the mandate to purchase health insurance constitutional and President Obama has been implementing some of his legislative agenda with executive orders, members of Congress might wonder if they really are the nation's lawmakers.
Even though the high court invoked the doctrine of "dual sovereignty" to find ObamaCare's economic coercion of states to expand their Medicaid programs unconstitutional, the Obama administration has found other ways to encourage states to conform to White House policy. Earlier this year Rep. John Kline, the Minnesota Republican who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Work Force, accused the administration of granting states waivers from some of the requirements of the decade-old No Child Left Behind Act "in exchange for states adopting the policies he wants them to have."
The Department of Education on Friday announced waivers for Washington and Wisconsin, bringing to 26 the number of states where waivers have been granted. They are currently being considered for 10 other states. In making the announcement Friday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan expressed the administration's frustration in attempting to get Congress to amend the law:
A strong, bipartisan reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act remains the best path forward in education reform, but as 26 states have now demonstrated, our kids can't wait any longer for Congress to act.
While the law itself has been controversial, so has the granting of waivers on a scale that calls into question whether there is still a national program to reach the stated goal of the statute, making all students proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014.
"The more waivers there are, the less there really is a law, right?" said Andy Porter, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.
But the administration is using the law's requirements as a bargaining tool un exchange for the waivers, the New York Times reported, as school districts are required to set new goals for preparing students for college or careers. The evaluations of teachers must also be tied to the achievement of students on standardized tests that so far have been used to rate schools and school districts. The shift in policy and the continued emphasis on standardized tests "is another example to me of how we're not focused on the right things in the American education conversation today," Joshua Starr, superintendent of schools for Montgomery County, Maryland, told the Times. Starr, who received a waiver in May, had tepid praise for the secretary.
"I have a lot of respect for Arne Duncan," he said, "but it's just sort of moving around the chairs on the Titanic."
But states receiving waivers will evaluate teachers by other means besides the student achievement tests, Duncan said. Other indicators will include the number of graduates enrolled in college and reviews of teachers by students, principals, and other teachers, he told the Times in an interview.
"You have to look at multiple indicators and multiple measures," he said. "There's been historically a push to way oversimplify what is very complex."
The goal of holding schools and school districts responsible for the education of poor and minority students generated widespread, bipartisan support for the No Child Left Behind Act when Congress passed the law in 1981 as the priority item on the legislative agenda of President George W. Bush. Yet both the law and its implementation have drawn sharp criticism from the political left, right, and points in between. Some conservatives have opposed the program as an unconstitutional imposition of federal authority over local and state education policies, while liberals have complained of underfunding. Critics have scorned the heavy emphasis on standardized testing and a ratings system that showed nearly half of all schools in the country failed to meet their educational goals during the 2010-2011 school year. In Virginia it was 61 percent, while in Massachusetts 80 percent of the schools fell short of the goals.
The Act itself authorizes the education secretary to grant waivers from some of its requirements, and the Department of Education states on its website: "States, school districts and other educators now have greater flexibility in how they may use federal program funds to support State and local school improvement efforts." Yet the profusion of waivers has raised the question of whether the Obama administration is using the procedure to bypass Congress in the legislative promise, a charge that Republicans raised when the President announced an end to the deportation of illegal aliens who came to this country as juveniles. The administration has also taken executive action to prevent drug shortages, raise fuel-efficiency standards, and cut refinancing fees for federally insured mortgages, the Times noted. While Congress has not passed proposed cap and trade legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA has proposed achieving that end through its rule-making authority.
Indeed, the White House website boasts of President Obama's determination to accomplish through executive orders what Congress will not legislate, offering the following quotation (dated October 24, 2011), from the president:
Without a doubt, the most urgent challenge that we face right now is getting our economy to grow faster and to create more jobs.... We can't wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job. Where they won't act, I will.
According to the list of "executive actions" on the website's "We Can't Wait" page, President Obama has:
• Invested $45 million in a pilot program aimed at promoting collaboration between government and industry in order to boost innovation in manufacturing
• Helped to make an additional $50 million available for cutting-edge Alzheimer's research
• Launched new initiatives to boost travel and tourism in the United States
• Announced new resources for companies that want to hire and invest in America
• Launched Summer Jobs+ to provide employment opportunities for nearly 180,000 young people
• Awarded Race to the Top — Early Learning Challenge grants to help states build systems of high quality early education programs
And much more. It's not clear just where, amid annual deficits of $1.5 trillion or more, the president has found the millions of dollars and other "resources" to "invest" in these programs if, as the "We Can't Wait" page indicates, Congress has not approved them. Obama, who has signed 129 executive orders as of July 4, is far from the first president to bypass Congress with executive actions and orders. In 2008, George W. Bush somehow found $10 billion for the reeling auto industry right after the Senate voted down his request for the same. And Bush made a habit of issuing "signing statements" when putting his signature on legislation, declaring what parts of the statute he would neither follow nor enforce. Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency by executive order in 1972, though Congress followed the act with legislation a few months later. All presidents have issued some executive orders, and while not all are thinly disguised substitutes for legislative action, many are. The number grew dramatically in the 20th century, when Franklin Roosevelt issued a whopping 3,728 of them.
Faced with a Republican Congress opposed to much of his agenda, President Bill Clinton, who issued 363 executive orders, made a point of using executive authority to bypass the legislative branch. "Stroke of the pen," is how presidential aide Paul Begala summed up the approach. "Law of the land. Kinda cool."
Obama now faces a divided Congress with a Republican majority in the House and Democrats in control of the Senate. He is also in what polls now indicate is a close race for the White House against the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney. With his signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act, still unpopular after barely surviving a Supreme Court challenge, he is clearly eager to gain achievements to highlight in the fall campaign.
But the refusal of either house to pass the president's agenda hardly makes the Congress "dysfunctional." The first words of the Constitution after the preamble are, "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." (Article I, Section I) The president's duties require that he "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." (Article II, Section 3) To refuse to pass any piece of legislation is as much a function of legislative power as to pass it. Congress would not be a decision-making body if did not have the option of saying "nay" as often as it may say "yea."
'We will not take no for an answer," Obama said last October after Senate Republicans blocked his plan for a $447-billion jobs bill. This November he may have to.
Even though the high court invoked the doctrine of "dual sovereignty" to find ObamaCare's economic coercion of states to expand their Medicaid programs unconstitutional, the Obama administration has found other ways to encourage states to conform to White House policy. Earlier this year Rep. John Kline, the Minnesota Republican who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Work Force, accused the administration of granting states waivers from some of the requirements of the decade-old No Child Left Behind Act "in exchange for states adopting the policies he wants them to have."
The Department of Education on Friday announced waivers for Washington and Wisconsin, bringing to 26 the number of states where waivers have been granted. They are currently being considered for 10 other states. In making the announcement Friday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan expressed the administration's frustration in attempting to get Congress to amend the law:
A strong, bipartisan reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act remains the best path forward in education reform, but as 26 states have now demonstrated, our kids can't wait any longer for Congress to act.
While the law itself has been controversial, so has the granting of waivers on a scale that calls into question whether there is still a national program to reach the stated goal of the statute, making all students proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014.
"The more waivers there are, the less there really is a law, right?" said Andy Porter, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.
But the administration is using the law's requirements as a bargaining tool un exchange for the waivers, the New York Times reported, as school districts are required to set new goals for preparing students for college or careers. The evaluations of teachers must also be tied to the achievement of students on standardized tests that so far have been used to rate schools and school districts. The shift in policy and the continued emphasis on standardized tests "is another example to me of how we're not focused on the right things in the American education conversation today," Joshua Starr, superintendent of schools for Montgomery County, Maryland, told the Times. Starr, who received a waiver in May, had tepid praise for the secretary.
"I have a lot of respect for Arne Duncan," he said, "but it's just sort of moving around the chairs on the Titanic."
But states receiving waivers will evaluate teachers by other means besides the student achievement tests, Duncan said. Other indicators will include the number of graduates enrolled in college and reviews of teachers by students, principals, and other teachers, he told the Times in an interview.
"You have to look at multiple indicators and multiple measures," he said. "There's been historically a push to way oversimplify what is very complex."
The goal of holding schools and school districts responsible for the education of poor and minority students generated widespread, bipartisan support for the No Child Left Behind Act when Congress passed the law in 1981 as the priority item on the legislative agenda of President George W. Bush. Yet both the law and its implementation have drawn sharp criticism from the political left, right, and points in between. Some conservatives have opposed the program as an unconstitutional imposition of federal authority over local and state education policies, while liberals have complained of underfunding. Critics have scorned the heavy emphasis on standardized testing and a ratings system that showed nearly half of all schools in the country failed to meet their educational goals during the 2010-2011 school year. In Virginia it was 61 percent, while in Massachusetts 80 percent of the schools fell short of the goals.
The Act itself authorizes the education secretary to grant waivers from some of its requirements, and the Department of Education states on its website: "States, school districts and other educators now have greater flexibility in how they may use federal program funds to support State and local school improvement efforts." Yet the profusion of waivers has raised the question of whether the Obama administration is using the procedure to bypass Congress in the legislative promise, a charge that Republicans raised when the President announced an end to the deportation of illegal aliens who came to this country as juveniles. The administration has also taken executive action to prevent drug shortages, raise fuel-efficiency standards, and cut refinancing fees for federally insured mortgages, the Times noted. While Congress has not passed proposed cap and trade legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA has proposed achieving that end through its rule-making authority.
Indeed, the White House website boasts of President Obama's determination to accomplish through executive orders what Congress will not legislate, offering the following quotation (dated October 24, 2011), from the president:
Without a doubt, the most urgent challenge that we face right now is getting our economy to grow faster and to create more jobs.... We can't wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job. Where they won't act, I will.
According to the list of "executive actions" on the website's "We Can't Wait" page, President Obama has:
• Invested $45 million in a pilot program aimed at promoting collaboration between government and industry in order to boost innovation in manufacturing
• Helped to make an additional $50 million available for cutting-edge Alzheimer's research
• Launched new initiatives to boost travel and tourism in the United States
• Announced new resources for companies that want to hire and invest in America
• Launched Summer Jobs+ to provide employment opportunities for nearly 180,000 young people
• Awarded Race to the Top — Early Learning Challenge grants to help states build systems of high quality early education programs
And much more. It's not clear just where, amid annual deficits of $1.5 trillion or more, the president has found the millions of dollars and other "resources" to "invest" in these programs if, as the "We Can't Wait" page indicates, Congress has not approved them. Obama, who has signed 129 executive orders as of July 4, is far from the first president to bypass Congress with executive actions and orders. In 2008, George W. Bush somehow found $10 billion for the reeling auto industry right after the Senate voted down his request for the same. And Bush made a habit of issuing "signing statements" when putting his signature on legislation, declaring what parts of the statute he would neither follow nor enforce. Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency by executive order in 1972, though Congress followed the act with legislation a few months later. All presidents have issued some executive orders, and while not all are thinly disguised substitutes for legislative action, many are. The number grew dramatically in the 20th century, when Franklin Roosevelt issued a whopping 3,728 of them.
Faced with a Republican Congress opposed to much of his agenda, President Bill Clinton, who issued 363 executive orders, made a point of using executive authority to bypass the legislative branch. "Stroke of the pen," is how presidential aide Paul Begala summed up the approach. "Law of the land. Kinda cool."
Obama now faces a divided Congress with a Republican majority in the House and Democrats in control of the Senate. He is also in what polls now indicate is a close race for the White House against the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney. With his signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act, still unpopular after barely surviving a Supreme Court challenge, he is clearly eager to gain achievements to highlight in the fall campaign.
But the refusal of either house to pass the president's agenda hardly makes the Congress "dysfunctional." The first words of the Constitution after the preamble are, "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." (Article I, Section I) The president's duties require that he "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." (Article II, Section 3) To refuse to pass any piece of legislation is as much a function of legislative power as to pass it. Congress would not be a decision-making body if did not have the option of saying "nay" as often as it may say "yea."
'We will not take no for an answer," Obama said last October after Senate Republicans blocked his plan for a $447-billion jobs bill. This November he may have to.
The Socialist's Constitution
Progressives are at base socialists in the Marxist mode. They won't admit it, because socialism has been discredited historically; but because markets will always produce winners and losers, and because different outcomes (inequality) are inherent to capitalism, the left's ultimate goal remains the eradication of the institutional structures that give rise to those patterns of difference.
In the American experience, however, the nation's founding saw the establishment of such robust institutions of liberty that the progressives have had to work piecemeal, evolutionary rather than revolutionary, in order to erect a structure of state socialism here at home. A central part of that program, clearly, has been the delegitimation of the American regime. All the recent attacks on American exceptionalism are right in that vein, along with the deranged periodic outbursts by leftists, screaming things like "I hate this G**-damned country!" (because they have to take personal responsibility for their own health).
And now three years into the Obama interregnum, left-wing radicals are becoming more aggressive in enunciating fundamental reforms to the constitutional order, designed to limit the classical liberal vision of the Founders. (Nancy Pelosi's call to amend the Constitution to limit conservative speech is one key example.) The protection of property rights was central to the constitutional project. As James Madison warned in Federalist #10, the mischiefs of faction could work to bring a majority to power that was determined to expropriate private property in the name of the people. It's no surprise then that our republican form of government, along with the separation of powers, was designed to protect minorities from the will of an unruly mob. The Founders feared "mobocracy" in pure majority rule. The signal achievement of the founding was to elevate the notion of individual liberty above that of collective rights, and that is today what is most despised by contemporary progressives qua socialists.
This is all frankly long-established and well-known. The problem for the left is that the constitutional order stands in their way. So what's the solution? Same as it's always been: change the narrative, lie and deceive, and then leverage into power a false epistemology that functions to radicalize the pre-revolutionary cadres and bolster the vanguard leaders to "fundamentally transform" the nation in the mold of the Marxist collective.
Today's New York Times provides a particularly good example in the op-ed from William Forbath, a radical labor historian at the University of Texas School of Law. Here's a long sample from Forbarth's essay, "Workingman’s Constitution," which is the lead commentary at the top of today's New York Times op-eds (p. 21):
WORK and opportunity, poverty and dependency, material security and insecurity: for generations of reformers, the constitutional importance of these subjects was self-evident. Laissez-faire government, unchecked corporate power and the deprivations and inequalities they bred weren’t just bad public policy — they were constitutional infirmities. But liberals have largely forgotten how to think, talk and fight along these lines.
And they’ve done so at the wrong time. The Supreme Court is again putting up constitutional barriers against laws to redress want and inequity. While it handed liberals a victory on the Affordable Care Act, it also gave a boost to conservatives to revive the old laissez-faire Constitution in the polity and courts: new doctrine and dictums for their attack on the welfare and regulatory state.
But there is a silver lining for liberals as well: in much the same way that the conservative court of the 1930s forced Franklin D. Roosevelt and his allies to construct the constitutional foundations of the New Deal state, today’s court challenges the White House, the Democrats and the liberal legal community to reassert a constitutional vision of a national government empowered “to promote the general Welfare” and — in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s terse formula — “to regulate the national economy in the interest of those who labor to sustain it.”....
The majority opinion of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., along with the jointly written dissent of the other four conservatives, outlines the doctrinal and rhetorical bases for assailing much of the New Deal-Great Society constitutional order over the coming years....
Liberals have too often been complacent and purely defensive. The Constitution, they often declare, does not speak to the rights and wrongs of economic life; it leaves that to politics. Laissez-faire doctrines were buried by the New Deal.
Until last week, this response may have been understandable. But it was always misleading as history, and wrong in principle, as well. And it was bad politics, providing no clear counternarrative to support the powers of government now under attack from the right.
That’s a major failing, because there is a venerable rival to constitutional laissez-faire: a rich distributive tradition of constitutional law and politics, rooted in the framers’ generation. None other than Madison was among its prominent expounders — in his draft of the Virginia Constitution, he included rights to free education and public land.
Likewise, many framers of the Reconstruction amendments held that education and “40 acres and a mule” were constitutional essentials that Congress must provide to ex-slaves. They also held that equal rights and liberty for white workingmen required a fair distribution of initial endowments, including free homesteads and free elementary and secondary education, along with land-grant-funded state colleges.
In the wake of industrialization, turn of the century reformers declared the need for a “new economic constitutional order” to secure the old promises of individual freedom and opportunity. America was becoming a corporate oligarchy, making working people wage slaves, impoverished and ill-equipped for democratic citizenship.
The New Deal brought this progressive vision to partial fruition. In the preindustrial past, Roosevelt explained in countless speeches, the Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights “in acquiring and possessing property” joined with the ballot and the freedom to live by one’s “own lights” to ensure the Constitution’s promise of “liberty and equality.”
But the “turn of the tide” came with the closing of the frontier and the rise of great “industrial combinations.” New conditions demanded new readings. “Every man,” he said, has a “right to make a comfortable living.” Alongside education, “training and retraining,” decent work and decent pay, his Second Bill of Rights set out rights to social insurance, including health care.
The distributive tradition has evolved, but its gist is simple and durable: you can’t have a republican government, and certainly not a constitutional democracy, amid gross material inequality.
That, my friends, is a manifesto for the modern socialist agenda in the United States. I've highlighted the key sections and phrases. For example, progressives have bastardized the "General Welfare" clause of the Preamble to mean the social welfare state rather than the pursuit of general well-being and happiness (as stressed by the Declaration of Independence). We should regulate the economy in the name of labor, according to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, which in essence means to regulate for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Also, "laissez-fair died with the New Deal" and in its wake emerged a new constitutional "distributive" order based on collectivism and collective rights rather than liberty for the individual, in contrast to what the Founders had established in 1787.
And more: Not only would post-Civil War America promise 40-acres and a mule for the former slaves, white workingmen would be guaranteed "a fair distribution of initial endowments." What are those initial endowments? Land? Capital? Property? To provide those endowments would require expropriating them from those who had them, which could be done only by force and through the wholesale evisceration of the constitutional guarantees for private property. This, then, is the left's "new constitutional order," one that would bend "the Constitution's guarantee of equal rights" into the distributive guarantee of "acquiring and possessing property" in a redefined conception of what constitutes "liberty and equality" in the United States. Indeed, the call for a "Second Bill of Rights" is nothing less than the demand for economic leveling and the rape of the wealthy in the name of the masses. Only then, after "republican government" is destroyed would the progressives be able to secure their long-cherished utopia of "constitutional [mob] democracy" free from the despised "gross material inequality" of the capitalist system.
Forbath's "Workingman's Constitution" is a cheap spinoff from his Dissent essay from earlier this year, "Workers’ Rights and the Distributive Constitution." And according to his bio, Forbath is a regular contributor to the Nation, the left's pro-Soviet literary outlet throughout the Cold War and after. Indeed, Forbath's work is all about economic redistribution, but it's veiled in legalistic and political garb that is central to the stealth neo-Marxist progressive agenda. So just make a note of it. The "Workingman's Constitution" is in fact the "Socialist's Constitution." The only thing missing is the more explicitly aggressive class conflict language one finds at, say, the Trotskyite "Worker's World."
So, there you have it. The bonus being that it's no surprise that Forbath's flaming anti-Americanism finds a ready home at the New York Times editorial pages.
UPDATE: Linkmaster Smith links: "Forbath Lost Me at ‘Laws to Redress Want and Inequity’." Thanks!
In the American experience, however, the nation's founding saw the establishment of such robust institutions of liberty that the progressives have had to work piecemeal, evolutionary rather than revolutionary, in order to erect a structure of state socialism here at home. A central part of that program, clearly, has been the delegitimation of the American regime. All the recent attacks on American exceptionalism are right in that vein, along with the deranged periodic outbursts by leftists, screaming things like "I hate this G**-damned country!" (because they have to take personal responsibility for their own health).
And now three years into the Obama interregnum, left-wing radicals are becoming more aggressive in enunciating fundamental reforms to the constitutional order, designed to limit the classical liberal vision of the Founders. (Nancy Pelosi's call to amend the Constitution to limit conservative speech is one key example.) The protection of property rights was central to the constitutional project. As James Madison warned in Federalist #10, the mischiefs of faction could work to bring a majority to power that was determined to expropriate private property in the name of the people. It's no surprise then that our republican form of government, along with the separation of powers, was designed to protect minorities from the will of an unruly mob. The Founders feared "mobocracy" in pure majority rule. The signal achievement of the founding was to elevate the notion of individual liberty above that of collective rights, and that is today what is most despised by contemporary progressives qua socialists.
This is all frankly long-established and well-known. The problem for the left is that the constitutional order stands in their way. So what's the solution? Same as it's always been: change the narrative, lie and deceive, and then leverage into power a false epistemology that functions to radicalize the pre-revolutionary cadres and bolster the vanguard leaders to "fundamentally transform" the nation in the mold of the Marxist collective.
Today's New York Times provides a particularly good example in the op-ed from William Forbath, a radical labor historian at the University of Texas School of Law. Here's a long sample from Forbarth's essay, "Workingman’s Constitution," which is the lead commentary at the top of today's New York Times op-eds (p. 21):
WORK and opportunity, poverty and dependency, material security and insecurity: for generations of reformers, the constitutional importance of these subjects was self-evident. Laissez-faire government, unchecked corporate power and the deprivations and inequalities they bred weren’t just bad public policy — they were constitutional infirmities. But liberals have largely forgotten how to think, talk and fight along these lines.
And they’ve done so at the wrong time. The Supreme Court is again putting up constitutional barriers against laws to redress want and inequity. While it handed liberals a victory on the Affordable Care Act, it also gave a boost to conservatives to revive the old laissez-faire Constitution in the polity and courts: new doctrine and dictums for their attack on the welfare and regulatory state.
But there is a silver lining for liberals as well: in much the same way that the conservative court of the 1930s forced Franklin D. Roosevelt and his allies to construct the constitutional foundations of the New Deal state, today’s court challenges the White House, the Democrats and the liberal legal community to reassert a constitutional vision of a national government empowered “to promote the general Welfare” and — in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s terse formula — “to regulate the national economy in the interest of those who labor to sustain it.”....
The majority opinion of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., along with the jointly written dissent of the other four conservatives, outlines the doctrinal and rhetorical bases for assailing much of the New Deal-Great Society constitutional order over the coming years....
Liberals have too often been complacent and purely defensive. The Constitution, they often declare, does not speak to the rights and wrongs of economic life; it leaves that to politics. Laissez-faire doctrines were buried by the New Deal.
Until last week, this response may have been understandable. But it was always misleading as history, and wrong in principle, as well. And it was bad politics, providing no clear counternarrative to support the powers of government now under attack from the right.
That’s a major failing, because there is a venerable rival to constitutional laissez-faire: a rich distributive tradition of constitutional law and politics, rooted in the framers’ generation. None other than Madison was among its prominent expounders — in his draft of the Virginia Constitution, he included rights to free education and public land.
Likewise, many framers of the Reconstruction amendments held that education and “40 acres and a mule” were constitutional essentials that Congress must provide to ex-slaves. They also held that equal rights and liberty for white workingmen required a fair distribution of initial endowments, including free homesteads and free elementary and secondary education, along with land-grant-funded state colleges.
In the wake of industrialization, turn of the century reformers declared the need for a “new economic constitutional order” to secure the old promises of individual freedom and opportunity. America was becoming a corporate oligarchy, making working people wage slaves, impoverished and ill-equipped for democratic citizenship.
The New Deal brought this progressive vision to partial fruition. In the preindustrial past, Roosevelt explained in countless speeches, the Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights “in acquiring and possessing property” joined with the ballot and the freedom to live by one’s “own lights” to ensure the Constitution’s promise of “liberty and equality.”
But the “turn of the tide” came with the closing of the frontier and the rise of great “industrial combinations.” New conditions demanded new readings. “Every man,” he said, has a “right to make a comfortable living.” Alongside education, “training and retraining,” decent work and decent pay, his Second Bill of Rights set out rights to social insurance, including health care.
The distributive tradition has evolved, but its gist is simple and durable: you can’t have a republican government, and certainly not a constitutional democracy, amid gross material inequality.
That, my friends, is a manifesto for the modern socialist agenda in the United States. I've highlighted the key sections and phrases. For example, progressives have bastardized the "General Welfare" clause of the Preamble to mean the social welfare state rather than the pursuit of general well-being and happiness (as stressed by the Declaration of Independence). We should regulate the economy in the name of labor, according to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, which in essence means to regulate for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Also, "laissez-fair died with the New Deal" and in its wake emerged a new constitutional "distributive" order based on collectivism and collective rights rather than liberty for the individual, in contrast to what the Founders had established in 1787.
And more: Not only would post-Civil War America promise 40-acres and a mule for the former slaves, white workingmen would be guaranteed "a fair distribution of initial endowments." What are those initial endowments? Land? Capital? Property? To provide those endowments would require expropriating them from those who had them, which could be done only by force and through the wholesale evisceration of the constitutional guarantees for private property. This, then, is the left's "new constitutional order," one that would bend "the Constitution's guarantee of equal rights" into the distributive guarantee of "acquiring and possessing property" in a redefined conception of what constitutes "liberty and equality" in the United States. Indeed, the call for a "Second Bill of Rights" is nothing less than the demand for economic leveling and the rape of the wealthy in the name of the masses. Only then, after "republican government" is destroyed would the progressives be able to secure their long-cherished utopia of "constitutional [mob] democracy" free from the despised "gross material inequality" of the capitalist system.
Forbath's "Workingman's Constitution" is a cheap spinoff from his Dissent essay from earlier this year, "Workers’ Rights and the Distributive Constitution." And according to his bio, Forbath is a regular contributor to the Nation, the left's pro-Soviet literary outlet throughout the Cold War and after. Indeed, Forbath's work is all about economic redistribution, but it's veiled in legalistic and political garb that is central to the stealth neo-Marxist progressive agenda. So just make a note of it. The "Workingman's Constitution" is in fact the "Socialist's Constitution." The only thing missing is the more explicitly aggressive class conflict language one finds at, say, the Trotskyite "Worker's World."
So, there you have it. The bonus being that it's no surprise that Forbath's flaming anti-Americanism finds a ready home at the New York Times editorial pages.
UPDATE: Linkmaster Smith links: "Forbath Lost Me at ‘Laws to Redress Want and Inequity’." Thanks!
Congressmen urge the UN to trample the US Constitution
Today begins the most important 26-day period for our Second Amendment freedoms in recent history.
That’s because today, representatives from many of the world’s socialist, tyrannical and dictatorial regimes will gather at United Nations headquarters in New York for a month-long meeting, in which they’ll put the finishing touches on an international Arms Trade Treaty that could seriously restrict your freedom to own, purchase and carry a firearm.
Specifically, the U.N. wants to implement international gun registration requirements, bans on commonly owned firearms, tracking and registration of ammunition purchases, and create a new U.N. gun control bureaucracy.
You might think that something so obviously menacing to one of our enumerated fundamental rights would receive a strong rebuke from our top government leaders. But you’d be wrong. This is President Barack Obama’s vision for America, and we’re expected to just go along with it.
In fact, a group of anti-gun members of the U.S. House of Representatives, led by U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), went so far as to circulate a letter last week to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, in which they “strongly urge the United States to take a leadership role in pushing for a strong, verifiable Arms Trade Treaty.”
These House members insist that the treaty include “controls on a comprehensive list of weaponry, including small arms and light weapons,” as well as controls on ammunition. For good measure, they wrap their unconstitutional demands in the mantle of advancing “human rights” and preventing international violence.
Since when did it become fashionable for sitting members of Congress to lobby international thugs, tyrants and dictators against our own U.S. Constitution?
Rep. Grijalva should consider the plight of good people in countries like the Sudan, where it’s virtually impossible for an average citizen to legally own a firearm for self-defense.
He, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should open their eyes to the unspeakable human rights atrocities that exist in their gun-ban utopia. They ought to see how far their gun-confiscation agenda resonates with hundreds of thousands of defenseless Sudanese men, women and children who live in constant fear of being beaten, raped, sold into slavery or murdered.
It’s easy for Congressmen Raul Grijalva, James McGovern, Bobby Rush, Dennis Kucinich and every other signer of this woefully ignorant letter to sit on high — surrounded by the secure walls of freedom built by our strong Second Amendment rights — and dictate to oppressed citizens in other parts of the world that their lives would be better if they only had less freedom than we do in the United States.
Thankfully, these clueless representatives don’t speak for the majority of us. The NRA has been warning Americans about this ticking time bomb at the U.N. for over 15 years. Now it’s zero hour. Wayne LaPierre and I will be at U.N. headquarters in New York this week, fighting tooth and nail to protect the same constitution that Raul Grijalva and his pals swore an oath to uphold and defend.
And I can promise you, we won’t stop fighting until our Second Amendment freedoms are safe from this international disgrace.
Chris W. Cox is the Executive Director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) and serves as the organization’s chief lobbyist.
That’s because today, representatives from many of the world’s socialist, tyrannical and dictatorial regimes will gather at United Nations headquarters in New York for a month-long meeting, in which they’ll put the finishing touches on an international Arms Trade Treaty that could seriously restrict your freedom to own, purchase and carry a firearm.
Specifically, the U.N. wants to implement international gun registration requirements, bans on commonly owned firearms, tracking and registration of ammunition purchases, and create a new U.N. gun control bureaucracy.
You might think that something so obviously menacing to one of our enumerated fundamental rights would receive a strong rebuke from our top government leaders. But you’d be wrong. This is President Barack Obama’s vision for America, and we’re expected to just go along with it.
In fact, a group of anti-gun members of the U.S. House of Representatives, led by U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), went so far as to circulate a letter last week to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, in which they “strongly urge the United States to take a leadership role in pushing for a strong, verifiable Arms Trade Treaty.”
These House members insist that the treaty include “controls on a comprehensive list of weaponry, including small arms and light weapons,” as well as controls on ammunition. For good measure, they wrap their unconstitutional demands in the mantle of advancing “human rights” and preventing international violence.
Since when did it become fashionable for sitting members of Congress to lobby international thugs, tyrants and dictators against our own U.S. Constitution?
Rep. Grijalva should consider the plight of good people in countries like the Sudan, where it’s virtually impossible for an average citizen to legally own a firearm for self-defense.
He, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should open their eyes to the unspeakable human rights atrocities that exist in their gun-ban utopia. They ought to see how far their gun-confiscation agenda resonates with hundreds of thousands of defenseless Sudanese men, women and children who live in constant fear of being beaten, raped, sold into slavery or murdered.
It’s easy for Congressmen Raul Grijalva, James McGovern, Bobby Rush, Dennis Kucinich and every other signer of this woefully ignorant letter to sit on high — surrounded by the secure walls of freedom built by our strong Second Amendment rights — and dictate to oppressed citizens in other parts of the world that their lives would be better if they only had less freedom than we do in the United States.
Thankfully, these clueless representatives don’t speak for the majority of us. The NRA has been warning Americans about this ticking time bomb at the U.N. for over 15 years. Now it’s zero hour. Wayne LaPierre and I will be at U.N. headquarters in New York this week, fighting tooth and nail to protect the same constitution that Raul Grijalva and his pals swore an oath to uphold and defend.
And I can promise you, we won’t stop fighting until our Second Amendment freedoms are safe from this international disgrace.
Chris W. Cox is the Executive Director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) and serves as the organization’s chief lobbyist.
Executive Tyranny
The use of Executive Orders (EO) goes back to the first President, George Washington. Every chief executive has issued them since then. Some have been historic, but the latest Executive Orders of President Obama are downright scary.
The Executive Order signed on June 25 is titled “Russian Highly Enriched Uranium” and offers as its justification the fact that “the accumulation of a large volume of weapons-usable fissile material in the territory of the Russian Federal continues to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”
A national emergency? Over Russian nuclear material?
Are we still in the Cold War?
Are we facing another Cuban Missile Crisis?
Are the Russians getting ready to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S.?
Are the Russians provocateurs? Yes, but what else is new?
The justification for this Executive Order is absurd.
The world is filled with nuclear weapons held by both our allies and our presumed enemies.
Having proclaimed a national emergency, why hasn’t Obama gone on television to inform Americans? Because, like everything else he does, it is done with stealth.
National Defense Resources Preparedness
A previous Executive Order issued on March 16th evoked an even stronger response from those paying attention to what the President is doing. On March 22nd, Jeffrey T. Kuhner, a columnist for The Washington Times, wrote:
“President Obama has given himself the powers to declare martial law—especially in the event of a war with Iran. It is a sweeping power grab that should worry every American.”
“On March 16th, the White House released an executive order, ‘National Defense Resources Preparedness.’ The document is stunning in its audacity and a flagrant violation of the Constitution. It states that, in the case of a war or national emergency, the federal government has the authority to take over almost every aspect of American society. “
“Food, livestock, farming equipment, manufacturing, industry, energy, transportation, hospitals, health care facilities, water resources, defense and construction—all of it could fall under the full control of Mr. Obama.”
“He now possesses the potential powers of a dictator. The order is a direct assault on individual liberties, private property rights and the rule of law. It is blatantly unconstitutional.”
Bear in mind that Article I, Section 1, of the Constitution states that “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”
“Specifically, the imposition of martial law by the national government over a state and its people, treating them as an occupied nation, is an act of war. Such an attempted suspension of the Constitution and Bill of Rights voids the compact with the state and with the people.” – Oathkeepers.org.
There has not been a peep out of Congress.
In the last decade the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq without a “national emergency” being declared. Whether or not the U.S. goes to war with Iran, Obama has granted to himself sweeping powers consistent with a dictator, not a Chief Executive. The Middle East rumor mill suggests that either he and/or Israel might do that in October.
Recall that the financial crisis of 2008 occurred conveniently before the election that put him in the Oval Office.
In point of fact, Executive Orders do not require Congressional approval to take effect, but they carry the same legal weight as laws passed by Congress. The authority for Executive Orders is found in Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution which grants the President “executive power.” The orders, however, are understood to give direction and guidance to the Executive Branch agencies and departments.
The latest Executive Orders are not “a conspiracy theory.” They are the law of the land.
In the case of the National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order, it puts the Executive Branch in total control of everything and everyone in the nation. This includes the power to arrest and detain anyone deemed a threat to the nation.
A study, “Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism”, commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security identified the following characteristics of potential “terrorists.”
Americans who believe their “way of life” is under attack;
Americans who are “fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)”;
People who consider themselves “anti-global” (presumably those who are wary of the loss of American sovereignty, opposed to the United Nations, etc.);
Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority”;
Americans who are “reverent of individual liberty”;
People who “believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty.”
This is a President who called for a “Civilian National Security Force” on July 2, 2008, one that would be “just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded as the U.S. military.”
Obama is putting in force everything a tyranny requires to replace the Republic.
© Alan Caruba, 2012
Five Ways to Kill ObamaCare Without Repealing It
Even if Romney Doesn't Have the Congress behind Him, He Can Still Kill ObamaCare..
Scientists Disprove the John Roberts Particle
DNC Scientists Disprove Existence of Roberts’ Taxon
WASHINGTON DC – Jubilant scientists at the DNC’s High Speed Word Collider (HSWC) announced today they have conclusively disproven the existence of Roberts’ Taxon, the theoretical radioactive Facton particle that some had worried would lead to the implosion of the entire Universal Health Care System.
“I think it’s time to pop the champagne corks,” said HSWC Director David Plouffe. “Then blaze some choom.”
...Continues, including graphic depiction>>>
WASHINGTON DC – Jubilant scientists at the DNC’s High Speed Word Collider (HSWC) announced today they have conclusively disproven the existence of Roberts’ Taxon, the theoretical radioactive Facton particle that some had worried would lead to the implosion of the entire Universal Health Care System.
“I think it’s time to pop the champagne corks,” said HSWC Director David Plouffe. “Then blaze some choom.”
...Continues, including graphic depiction>>>
Supreme Court Decisions Not Sacred
The Supreme Court's decisions at the end of June 2012, regarding health care and stolen valor, illustrate what happens when Secular Authority and Sacred Authority are not kept separate, equal, and mutually supporting each other -- as our Founders intended. We need to realize that those who wrote the Declaration of Independence would be confused, and shocked, by these decisions, since the decisions so contradict the Founders' thinking.
The Founders wrote the Constitution to state their views on Secular Authority (rules, regulations, and laws of government plus the processes and procedures to enforce them). For them, the content of the Constitution, and what was constitutional, was to be determined by the sovereign -- i.e. the citizens, through their representatives. The Supreme Court was responsible for judicial power -- i.e., to determine legality of specific actions. It was to be the weakest of the three branches. Yet through the unchallenged claim of the Supreme Court as the final authority on constitutionality, that same Court has, over the years, taken on power equal to the divine right of kings -- which our Founders wanted to avoid....
The Founders wrote the Constitution to state their views on Secular Authority (rules, regulations, and laws of government plus the processes and procedures to enforce them). For them, the content of the Constitution, and what was constitutional, was to be determined by the sovereign -- i.e. the citizens, through their representatives. The Supreme Court was responsible for judicial power -- i.e., to determine legality of specific actions. It was to be the weakest of the three branches. Yet through the unchallenged claim of the Supreme Court as the final authority on constitutionality, that same Court has, over the years, taken on power equal to the divine right of kings -- which our Founders wanted to avoid....
John Roberts' Travesty, Point by Point
There is a good reason why not even most liberal commentators are applauding the actual legal reasoning Chief Justice John Roberts used to avoid striking down the ObamaCare law: The “reasoning” is thinner than unleavened bread, and crumbles to dust not just upon gentle handling, but merely under the weight of a piercing gaze.
Let us count the inanities, inconsistencies and constitutional/statutory infirmities of the key section of Roberts’ decision, which ruled that the ObamaCare mandate-and-penalty is a “tax,” and a constitutionally permissible tax at that....
Let us count the inanities, inconsistencies and constitutional/statutory infirmities of the key section of Roberts’ decision, which ruled that the ObamaCare mandate-and-penalty is a “tax,” and a constitutionally permissible tax at that....
Holder says civil rights ‘under renewed threat’
...The attorney general pledged that the civil rights advocacy group would “never have a more committed partner than the United States Department of Justice” and touted the administration’s record on those issues....
UN Billionaire Tax Hits Daylight: Taxing Skies, Oceans, Currency, Fuels, Electromagnetic Specturm
Brought out of the dark depths of the United Nations Millenium Development Goal (UNMDG), the call is out for a billionaire’s tax. It’s been on paper for years now, but few believe it.
The United Nations on Thursday called for a tax on billionaires to help raise more than $400 billion a year for poor countries.
An annual lump sum payment by the super-rich is one of a host of measures including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, currency exchanges or financial transactions proposed in a UN report that accuses wealthy nations of breaking promises to step up aid for the less fortunate. …
There are an estimated 425 billionaires in the United States, 315 in the Asia-Pacific region, 310 in Europe, 90 in other North and South American countries and 86 in Africa and the Middle East. Source: Washington Times...............
The United Nations on Thursday called for a tax on billionaires to help raise more than $400 billion a year for poor countries.
An annual lump sum payment by the super-rich is one of a host of measures including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, currency exchanges or financial transactions proposed in a UN report that accuses wealthy nations of breaking promises to step up aid for the less fortunate. …
There are an estimated 425 billionaires in the United States, 315 in the Asia-Pacific region, 310 in Europe, 90 in other North and South American countries and 86 in Africa and the Middle East. Source: Washington Times...............
Forget Obamatax. Are you ready for global taxes?
Just when you think you’ve identified and outmaneuvered the enemy in front of you, another one comes sneaking up from behind. Yes, I know… you’re all worried about the number of taxes in Obamacare and Taxmageddon coming in January. Perhaps you think that by simply electing some new people you’ll be in the clear. Guess again.
You’re living in the global economy now, so why not have some global taxes? Think I’m kidding? How about a global tax on all financial transactions?
Now a group of United Nations “independent experts” is pushing the European Union to back a global financial transaction tax ahead of the G-8 Summit “to offset the costs of the enduring economic, financial, fuel, climate and food crises, and to protect basic human rights.”
How about letting the UN tax all international air travel? Or maybe Turtle Bay should be allowed to tax us for our energy use based on carbon credits… or something?
And then there’s my new favorite. Since Americans are so willing to let all levels of government pass sin taxes on things like cigarettes without much more than a peep, why not let the international community get in on the cash bandwagon?
Another subsidiary of the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), is also looking to self-fund through global taxes. The WHO in 2010 publicly considered asking for global consumer taxes on internet activity, online bill paying, or the always popular financial transaction tax. Currently the WHO is pushing for increased excise taxes on cigarettes, but with an important condition that they get a slice of the added revenue. The so-called Solidarity Tobacco Contribution would provide billions of dollars to the WHO, but with no ability for taxpayers or national governments to monitor how the money is spent.
It’s truly a brave new world, comrades. If you’d care to light up a Marlboro or pour yourself a glass of beer, trivial things like having Washington pick your pocket are old hat. You should pay for your sins on a more global stage. Before you know it, they’ll be selling cigarettes from vending machines one at a time for five bucks a shot and bartenders will carry loan applications for when you’d like a cold one.
Welcome to the age of international peace and prosperity. Let’s all go light up a stogy, down a few shots of Jack Daniels and do some Trust Fall Down And Pass Outs.
You’re living in the global economy now, so why not have some global taxes? Think I’m kidding? How about a global tax on all financial transactions?
Now a group of United Nations “independent experts” is pushing the European Union to back a global financial transaction tax ahead of the G-8 Summit “to offset the costs of the enduring economic, financial, fuel, climate and food crises, and to protect basic human rights.”
How about letting the UN tax all international air travel? Or maybe Turtle Bay should be allowed to tax us for our energy use based on carbon credits… or something?
And then there’s my new favorite. Since Americans are so willing to let all levels of government pass sin taxes on things like cigarettes without much more than a peep, why not let the international community get in on the cash bandwagon?
Another subsidiary of the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), is also looking to self-fund through global taxes. The WHO in 2010 publicly considered asking for global consumer taxes on internet activity, online bill paying, or the always popular financial transaction tax. Currently the WHO is pushing for increased excise taxes on cigarettes, but with an important condition that they get a slice of the added revenue. The so-called Solidarity Tobacco Contribution would provide billions of dollars to the WHO, but with no ability for taxpayers or national governments to monitor how the money is spent.
It’s truly a brave new world, comrades. If you’d care to light up a Marlboro or pour yourself a glass of beer, trivial things like having Washington pick your pocket are old hat. You should pay for your sins on a more global stage. Before you know it, they’ll be selling cigarettes from vending machines one at a time for five bucks a shot and bartenders will carry loan applications for when you’d like a cold one.
Welcome to the age of international peace and prosperity. Let’s all go light up a stogy, down a few shots of Jack Daniels and do some Trust Fall Down And Pass Outs.
Obama ad calls Romney 'the problem' with job losses to China
Undeterred by independent fact-checkers that have debunked the thrust of their claims, the Obama campaign is redoubling attacks on Mitt Romney as an "outsourcer" in a new TV ad airing in eight battleground states.
"We found no evidence to support the claim that Romney — while he was still running Bain Capital — shipped American jobs overseas," FactCheck.org concluded in a report last month...
"We found no evidence to support the claim that Romney — while he was still running Bain Capital — shipped American jobs overseas," FactCheck.org concluded in a report last month...
Romania’s 20-Year Nightmare: Unraveling Socialized Health Care
In my other life in Communist Romania, I managed a large intelligence organization that, among other tasks, was charged with keeping alive a nationalized health care system which in the end bankrupted the country and generated popular contempt. That system, very similar to the Affordable Health Care for America Act, was a bureaucratic nightmare. And it still is a nightmare in the former Soviet empire.
A European Union report on post-Communist Romania’s “Health Care System in Transition” stated that this system “devastated the country,” whose infant mortality rate (20.2 per 1,000) was among the highest in Europe and whose death rate was 70% higher that the EU average.[i] The world’s leading general medical journal, The Lancet, reported that even twenty years after the Soviet Union collapsed, “life expectancy at birth is 66 years for Russians; 16 years less than for people in Japan and 14 less than the European Union average.” FULL STORY>>
A European Union report on post-Communist Romania’s “Health Care System in Transition” stated that this system “devastated the country,” whose infant mortality rate (20.2 per 1,000) was among the highest in Europe and whose death rate was 70% higher that the EU average.[i] The world’s leading general medical journal, The Lancet, reported that even twenty years after the Soviet Union collapsed, “life expectancy at birth is 66 years for Russians; 16 years less than for people in Japan and 14 less than the European Union average.” FULL STORY>>
Activists gear up to help young illegal immigrants remain here under new Obama policy
Local immigration rights advocates say they will hold a mass workshop Aug. 15 to begin processing young illegal immigrants seeking to remain in the country under the Obama Administration’s new Dream deferral policy..
Europe's Green Energy Suicide
As austerity bites into European living standards, sparking revolt at the polls, "growth" has become the politician's mantra. But to be competitive, European countries require a secure, plentiful and competitively priced energy supply. Unless Europe radically rethinks its obsession with carbon dioxide emissions and the anti-fossil fuel energy policies that flow from it, growth is likely to remain elusive, says author Rael Jean Isaac in the Wall Street Journal.
Lawmakers across the continent would do well to take to heart the conclusion of the European Commission Energy Department's Energy Roadmap for 2050, which stated frankly that "there is a trade-off between climate change policies and competitiveness."
European Union law mandates that the 27 member countries on average cut their carbon dioxide emissions 20 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels.
The goal after that is to cut emissions by between 80 percent and 95 percent by 2050.
In May 2010, a study by the European Commission's energy department estimated the 20 percent cut would cost 48 billion euros ($66.3 billion) a year.
Individual nations' energy policies are pushing for further cuts in emissions, wreaking havoc on the economies that once dominated the continent.
In the United Kingdom, a generous system of subsidies for renewable energy was found to have cost 10,000 jobs between 2009 and 2010 alone, and is estimated to raise the energy cost of vital industries (steel making, ceramics, paper, etc.) by 141 percent by 2020.
Spain's experience with subsidizing renewables has been painful, with a 2009 study at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos finding that the subsidies had led to a loss of 110,500 jobs.
Italy's subsidy system, which sets the price floor for wind energy at three times the market level, was found to sacrifice 6.9 industry jobs for every green job it created, according to a study at Italy's Instituto Bruno Leoni.
Germany's Renewable Energy Feed-in Act of 2000 requires electric utilities to buy renewables from all producers at fixed, exorbitant rates and feed it into the power grid for 20 years, raising rates and undermining industrial competitiveness.
Even France, which has remained relatively immune to energy problems because of its enormous nuclear energy capacity, is beginning to move away from that clean energy source that has served it so well..
Lawmakers across the continent would do well to take to heart the conclusion of the European Commission Energy Department's Energy Roadmap for 2050, which stated frankly that "there is a trade-off between climate change policies and competitiveness."
European Union law mandates that the 27 member countries on average cut their carbon dioxide emissions 20 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels.
The goal after that is to cut emissions by between 80 percent and 95 percent by 2050.
In May 2010, a study by the European Commission's energy department estimated the 20 percent cut would cost 48 billion euros ($66.3 billion) a year.
Individual nations' energy policies are pushing for further cuts in emissions, wreaking havoc on the economies that once dominated the continent.
In the United Kingdom, a generous system of subsidies for renewable energy was found to have cost 10,000 jobs between 2009 and 2010 alone, and is estimated to raise the energy cost of vital industries (steel making, ceramics, paper, etc.) by 141 percent by 2020.
Spain's experience with subsidizing renewables has been painful, with a 2009 study at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos finding that the subsidies had led to a loss of 110,500 jobs.
Italy's subsidy system, which sets the price floor for wind energy at three times the market level, was found to sacrifice 6.9 industry jobs for every green job it created, according to a study at Italy's Instituto Bruno Leoni.
Germany's Renewable Energy Feed-in Act of 2000 requires electric utilities to buy renewables from all producers at fixed, exorbitant rates and feed it into the power grid for 20 years, raising rates and undermining industrial competitiveness.
Even France, which has remained relatively immune to energy problems because of its enormous nuclear energy capacity, is beginning to move away from that clean energy source that has served it so well..
Pastors Get Political in Pulpit: Jim Garlow to Endorse From Pulpit
Portuguese court blocks key part of austerity plan
The Portuguese government might extend a pay cut for civil servants to others after a court blocked a key part of its deficit-cutting programme by saying it was unconstitutional..
Texas voter ID fight returning to federal court
The feds have no right to bar implementation, Texas will tell federal judges
No U.S. invitation to China for world's largest naval exercise;
PRC and ROC reassert claims to Spratlys to counter Vietnam
Justice Roberts Explains Justice Roberts: Politics, the Supreme Court, and Constitutional Change
For students of constitutional history, one of the eerie aspects of Chief Justice John Roberts' vote to uphold the ObamaCare individual mandate was its resonance with the vote of an earlier Justice Roberts. Chief Justice Roberts has not explained, and may never explain, his vote, but comments by that earlier Justice, Owen Roberts, may give some insight into the Chief Justice's thinking, as well as serve as a powerful warning about the relation between political considerations and the proper role of the Supreme Court.
In 1936, Justice Owen Roberts, a generally conservative justice appointed by Herbert Hoover, voted to uphold a state minimum wage law, reversing a decision of the previous year, where he had voted to overturn such laws. He then went on to support many other 5-to-4 decisions upholding various New Deal laws. Coming as it did on the heels of Franklin Roosevelt's "court-packing" scheme, Owen Roberts' initial vote has ever since been known as the "switch in time that saved nine" because it, along with other pro-New Deal votes by Roberts, took the wind out of Roosevelt's scheme and contributed to its defeat. (Actually, Roberts voted in chambers before the "court-packing" scheme was announced, but there was still huge political controversy over the Court's earlier decisions striking various New Deal laws.)
There are many parallels with Chief Justice Roberts' ObamaCare decision....
In 1936, Justice Owen Roberts, a generally conservative justice appointed by Herbert Hoover, voted to uphold a state minimum wage law, reversing a decision of the previous year, where he had voted to overturn such laws. He then went on to support many other 5-to-4 decisions upholding various New Deal laws. Coming as it did on the heels of Franklin Roosevelt's "court-packing" scheme, Owen Roberts' initial vote has ever since been known as the "switch in time that saved nine" because it, along with other pro-New Deal votes by Roberts, took the wind out of Roosevelt's scheme and contributed to its defeat. (Actually, Roberts voted in chambers before the "court-packing" scheme was announced, but there was still huge political controversy over the Court's earlier decisions striking various New Deal laws.)
There are many parallels with Chief Justice Roberts' ObamaCare decision....
Libyan liberals claim early lead in vote count
If the trend is confirmed, Libya -- unlike neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt whose strongmen were also toppled in last year's Arab Spring -- will buck the trend of electoral success for Islamist movements..
McCain Declares Libyan Election a Success
Saturday's violence — one person was killed and two wounded in the country's east — reflected fears that the country was descending into lawlessness and could face years of instability...
Draghi Gets Powers to Rival Bernanke
The spotlight in the European debt crisis has now shifted decisively toward the influential leader of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, who emerged from the recent summit meeting in Brussels with new powers and stronger backing to address the Continent’s financial woes..
German newspaper Die Welt compares Eurozone crisis with 1930s slump that ushered in Hitler
The ghosts of those times still haunt the modern generation and is illustrated by a strong aversion to debt, to stock market investing and - increasingly - a distrust in the euro.
Recently, house prices in Switzerland have begun soaring as wealthy Germans pour their money into what they hope is a safe haven. Now the country's conservative daily Die Welt has drawn the parallels between the crisis and the dark days over 80 years ago.
'The spectre of the 1930s financial crisis that culminated in the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party and the Second World War is stalking Europe,' it said, quoting a Bloomberg News story...
Rising numbers of children are going without food due to chaotic parenting, charity warns
One million children don't know where their next meal will come from..
Some children getting just ten meals a week..
Undernourished children are at risk of slow growth..
Some children getting just ten meals a week..
Undernourished children are at risk of slow growth..
Britain to have smallest Army since Napoleonic Wars
British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond confirmed in a statement to parliament today that the British Army will be slashed by 20,000 troops over the next decade as part of a new strategic plan called Army 2020. Nearly one-fifth of standing forces will be relieved of their duties as 17 major units are culled and many others shrunk in the effort to limit the army's force numbers to 82,000, its lowest level since the Napoleonic Wars.
Ewww! Hawaiian Punch has switched to using sucralose.
Hawaiian Punch has switched to using sucralose.
I’m not talking about the “diet” version – I’m talking about the regular version. Some (but not all) of the high fructose corn syrup (which is worse than sugar) has been replaced with sucralose. The result is that the drink is less thick than it used to be, and there’s also an aftertaste.
The switch a long time ago from sugar to high frucstose corn syrup was already bad enough – the introduction of sucralose is far worse.
PENSIONS WRECKED BY NEW 27% CUT
LePage calls IRS the 'new Gestapo'
The governor uses his radio address to attack President Obama's Affordable Care Act.
Militarizing Japan Frightens Allies
Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has managed to hold revanchist Japanese military aims in check while the Japanese pursued economic success. The rise of China, however, poses a threat that Japanese militarists believe requires a response. Would a military build-up be what’s needed to jumpstart the stagnating Japanese economy? South Korea and Japan might share a common cause considering China’s support for North Korea and the North’s hostile attitude toward the South. The United States supports both South Korea and Japan in military alliances that would seem to guarantee trilateral cooperation. So, why not support a super-alliance binding all three against North Korea and China?
Read Full Article ››
Read Full Article ››
Couple handcuffed, jailed for dancing on subway platform: lawsuit
First smoking, then soda — now there’s no dancing in New York City.
Caroline Stern, 55, and her boyfriend George Hess, 54, claim they were handcuffed for having happy feet on the platform of the Columbus Circle subway station — and spent 23 hours in custody as a result.
“I’m a dentist, and I’m 55, and I got arrested for dancing,” Stern told The Post. “It was absolutely ridiculous that this happened.”
Caroline Stern, 55, and her boyfriend George Hess, 54, claim they were handcuffed for having happy feet on the platform of the Columbus Circle subway station — and spent 23 hours in custody as a result.
“I’m a dentist, and I’m 55, and I got arrested for dancing,” Stern told The Post. “It was absolutely ridiculous that this happened.”
Wind Noise Dispute Pits Scientists Against State Officials
As a result, there is now no specific state recommended decibel level limit for wind turbines. This means wind turbines can operate at 55 dBA (decibels adjusted to reflect the ear's response to sound), which is the standard Michigan had followed for at least two years. The panel was promoting reducing that level to 40 dBA...
Devastating: Michael Behenna's Conviction Upheld
Lt. Michael Behenna's conviction for the unpremediated murder of a detainee and al-Qaeda-operative in Iraq named Ali Mansur. While Michael still could receive clemency, his legal appeals are now officially exhausted. Barring clemency, Michael will remain at Leavenworth military prison until 2024.
What a blow. What a disgrace...
What a blow. What a disgrace...
Obama Campaign Gears Up For Massive Voter Fraud
What a shocker: Charlie Rangel was involved in massive voter fraud and intimidation...
Where Have All the Workers Gone?
Since Barack 0bama has taken office, the population of the United States has grown by over nine million people, yet according to the United States Department of Labor, the labor force has only grown by only 1.5 million over the same period.
The fact is, the DOL's Bureau of Labor Statistics does not do accurate counting of unemployed people. It's numbers do not come from the State's unemployment offices. All of it's numbers are calculated from a sample survey conducted each month that includes less than 0.02% of our country's population. How valid are those numbers? Who is more likely to respond to the survey, a happy worker or someone who is depressed about being unemployed?
Some may argue that many of these people have retired and left the work force. No, not the case according to the Social Security Administration. The number of retired workers collecting benefits has grown by only about 3.6 million since 0bama took office, while at the same time we have had an additional 2.2 million immigrants enter our country.
The following table is compiled with data from the U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics and Social Security Administration. If you notice in the middle of the year 2009, the number of people "not in the labor force" began to rapidly increase. This number is calculated and not reported by the government. If you compare the difference between that number and the number of "retired workers", you will find that there are at least well over six million workers not being counted as unemployed over the past six years!
The fact is, we reached ten percent unemployment in mid 2009, and have been in the range of 11-13 percent ever since!
SEE CHART>>
The fact is, the DOL's Bureau of Labor Statistics does not do accurate counting of unemployed people. It's numbers do not come from the State's unemployment offices. All of it's numbers are calculated from a sample survey conducted each month that includes less than 0.02% of our country's population. How valid are those numbers? Who is more likely to respond to the survey, a happy worker or someone who is depressed about being unemployed?
Some may argue that many of these people have retired and left the work force. No, not the case according to the Social Security Administration. The number of retired workers collecting benefits has grown by only about 3.6 million since 0bama took office, while at the same time we have had an additional 2.2 million immigrants enter our country.
The following table is compiled with data from the U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics and Social Security Administration. If you notice in the middle of the year 2009, the number of people "not in the labor force" began to rapidly increase. This number is calculated and not reported by the government. If you compare the difference between that number and the number of "retired workers", you will find that there are at least well over six million workers not being counted as unemployed over the past six years!
The fact is, we reached ten percent unemployment in mid 2009, and have been in the range of 11-13 percent ever since!
SEE CHART>>
Soros Promotes UN Control Over Gun Ownership
George Soros is financing the fight to give the United Nations control of your guns.
Through his Media Matters organization, Soros is dumping pro-UN gun control propaganda into the mainstream media to coincide with the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty being held in New York July 2–27.
In a blog post published on July 3, Timothy Johnson of Media Matters describes the notion that the United Nations would ever try to take away the right of Americans to keep and bear arms “laughable.”
Johnson goes on to promote the passage of the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) as a means of “curtailing the illicit arms trade” and thus cracking down on those who use these weapons to deny others their “human rights.....”
In a blog post published on July 3, Timothy Johnson of Media Matters describes the notion that the United Nations would ever try to take away the right of Americans to keep and bear arms “laughable.”
Johnson goes on to promote the passage of the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) as a means of “curtailing the illicit arms trade” and thus cracking down on those who use these weapons to deny others their “human rights.....”
Pinching, purification and finding The Bridge to Total Freedom: Inside a very sinister induction at the Scientology HQ
Members are checked if they are 'Clear' - which costs £82,000 to achieve..
Cameras and audio monitor Clearwater site to keep a check on followers..
Newcomers must undergo 'purification of toxins' which involves sweating out in a sauna..
I look back on my visit last week to Scientology’s Florida headquarters to celebrate July 4 as one of the most unsettling experiences of my life, and yet it all started so innocently...
The invitation from the Scientologists had suggested we celebrate Independence Day at ‘the Friendliest Place in the Whole World’. Why should I refuse? The event sounded fun. There would be a barbecue, pool games, live music, a petting zoo and fireworks – just like other celebrations across America...
Cameras and audio monitor Clearwater site to keep a check on followers..
Newcomers must undergo 'purification of toxins' which involves sweating out in a sauna..
I look back on my visit last week to Scientology’s Florida headquarters to celebrate July 4 as one of the most unsettling experiences of my life, and yet it all started so innocently...
The invitation from the Scientologists had suggested we celebrate Independence Day at ‘the Friendliest Place in the Whole World’. Why should I refuse? The event sounded fun. There would be a barbecue, pool games, live music, a petting zoo and fireworks – just like other celebrations across America...
Tens of thousands march to demand national service for all; ultra-Orthodox MKs claim activists seek to incite hatred
‘We are no longer suckers,’ chorus an estimated 35,000 at draft reform rally
The tax man cometh to police you on health care non-tax
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court's decision to uphold most of President Barack Obama's health care law will come home to roost for most taxpayers in about 2 1/2 years, when they'll have to start providing proof on their tax returns that they have health insurance...
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