President Obama says Jesus wants to raise taxes:

"When I talk about shared responsibility, it's because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling and at a time when we have enormous deficits, it's hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone," Obama said.

"But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus' teaching that, for unto whom much is given, much shall be required"

Ah, yes. If I remember correctly, it was at the Sermon On The Mount that Jesus said, "Blessed is the tax collector, for he shall forcibly extract hard-earned wages from the people and funnel it to power-hungry politicians in order to fund a bloated and corrupt spendthrift government that will use the money to engage in cronyism and buy votes". It was either that, or Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek". I can't be certain.

As with so many Obama statements, the one about Jesus is filled to the brim with falsehoods. Nobody is asking "seniors on a fixed income" or "middle-class families" or "young people with student loans" to "shoulder the burden alone". Everybody pays taxes, and the rich already pay the most. Actually, now that I think about it, nearly half of all Americans pay no income taxes. So much for "shared responsibility". How ironic it is that Obama lies in the same sentence in which he quotes Jesus. When I think of Obama, another biblical verse applies – “The tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. Thou lovest evil more than good; and lying rather than to speak righteousness. Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue” – (Ps.52:2-4).

When asked about Obama's comment, the President's Press Secretary, Jay Carney, whipped out his own devilish forked tongue to say Obama "wasn't campaigning" when he made the comment. Riiiight. Obama isn't campaigning about as often as fish aren't swimming.

Since our President is pulling out the 'What Would Jesus Do ?' card, I have a few questions.

When the government forcibly extracts the fruits of one's labors beyond that which is called for in the Constitution to fund the government, couldn't that be called stealing ? I seem to remember something in the Bible about "Thou Shalt Not Steal".

When the government raids the Social Security Trust Fund, couldn't that also be called stealing, and doesn't that hurt "seniors on a fixed income", as does Obama's payroll tax cut ?

And what about abortion ? I remember something in the Bible about "Thou Shalt Not Kill", yet, Obama is pro-abortion and ObamaCare forces religion-based healthcare providers to fund things like birth control, which would include the morning-after abortion pill. What would Jesus think about that, Mr. President ?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) weighed in on ObamaCare's forced religious contraception coverage issue, and in typical Pelosi fashion, she had no idea what she was talking about. Pelosi said she was "standing by her fellow Catholics" in support of ObamaCare's contraception mandate on religious groups. That's nice, except for the fact that the Catholic Church is AGAINST the ObamaCare mandate:

The Obama administration's decision requiring church-affiliated employers to cover birth control was bound to cause an uproar among Roman Catholics and members of other faiths, no matter their beliefs on contraception. "It's not about preventing women from buying anything themselves, but telling the church what it has to buy, and the potential for that to go further," said Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, representing some 600 hospitals.

Liberals are always telling me religion should stay out of state business, so it should follow that they believe the state should stay out of religious matters. After all, the First Amendment to the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]". Yet, liberals are supporting Obama's contraception mandate. Go figure.

Naturally, there will be costs to religious-based healthcare providers, and fines if they don't adhere to the ObamaCare mandate:

Employers that fail to provide health insurance coverage under the federal law could be fined $2,000 per employee per year. The bishops' domestic anti-poverty agency, Catholic Charities, says it employs 70,000 people nationwide. The fine for the University of Notre Dame, the most prominent Catholic school in the country, could be in the millions of dollars.

What effect do you suppose this will have on Catholic charities ? And why doesn't our Jesus-quoting President care about that ?

It's always the same with the big government types like Obama. They always think they can make better decisions with your money than you can. They always impose costs and burdens on the private sector and the business sector. They always infringe on liberty. Religious groups are concerned about where these liberal mandates on the public will end. I can answer that one. They DON'T end. NOT EVER.

I spent the last week in Las Vegas, where I purposely avoided television, the internet, talk radio, and newspapers. I didn't even check in on my own blog. All things political were jettisoned from my life for an entire week. It was fantastic. I'd be quite happy to remove politics from my life completely, but alas, I cannot…not while the systematic destruction of the U.S. Constitution is underway in this country…not while the fascists leading our government are hell-bent on destroying the underpinnings of American liberty…not while our so-called leaders are busy destroying our collective economic future. I can't simply sit back and ignore these things, much as I'd like to.

It seems I missed a lot in my week away. On the plus side, the Iraq War ended. Thank goodness for that. I'm happy our troops are finally coming home, even if warmongering politicians like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) are not happy. That war should never have been waged. It took the lives of 4,500 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis to get rid of the evil Saddam Hussein. There had to be a better way.

On the down side, the Bill Of Rights is about to take another big hit. The House voted in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), 283-136, which eliminates the Due Process clause from the Bill Of Rights. The NDAA would allow Americans to be detained indefinitely without trial, and President Obama made sure Americans were included in the "you don't have no stinking rights !" group:

As [Senator Carl] Levin (D-MI) said last week, it was the White House itself that demanded Section 1031 apply to American citizens.

“The language which precluded the application of Section 1031 to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved...and the administration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section,” said Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

Obama was insistent on nullifying the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, a curious position to take for a man who is allegedly an expert in Constitutional Law. Then again, Obama already has a history of ignoring the Constitution, as he did when he perverted the Commerce Clause by signing ObamaCare into law. The President is not alone in wanting to discard those quaint old rights found in our Constitution. 93 of his fellow Democrats also voted to discard them by voting for the NDAA. This is what Democrats means when they talk about a "living" or "evolving" Constitution. They mean they want to destroy it when it gets in the way of their political goals.

Even more interesting is the way the alleged limited government advocates on the Republican side of the aisle voted. The small government Constitution-adhering GOPers in the House voted FOR the NDAA by a margin of 190-43. What a bunch of phonies. Here's the money quote from Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC):

“It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next,” remarked Graham. “And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.’”

And here I thought Kim Jong Il died. Guess not. He's a Senator from South Carolina. We should build a Lindsay Graham Memorial in D.C. with the words "Shut up. You don't get a lawyer" inscribed on it to inspire future generations of fascist Americans.

The only bad thing about voting the totalitarian Obama out of office is that one of these Graham-like Republicans will probably take his place, assuming Ron Paul (R-TX) can't win the GOP nomination, which he probably can't, despite the fact that he's currently leading in Iowa.

When the Great Prevaricator, Obama, isn't eliminating our Constitutional rights, he's busy regulating us into submission. The Great Prevaricator does this while simultaneously pretending that the GOP wants to strip away all regulations and turn the country into the Wild West all over again. Obama says the Republicans want "dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance" to cover up for the fact that regulations have exploded during Obama's tenure in the Oval Office. The Wall Street Journal exposes the truth:

A lack of regulations is not the problem, despite what the Great Prevaricator would have us believe. Our problem is the control freak nature of the Obama administration.

Coming next, those skyrocketing electricity rates Obama promised us a few years ago:

In the next few days, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue another final regulation directed at electricity utilities. This rule, known as the Utility MACT, will impose an estimated $11 billion each year in new costs on our economy. It will threaten electricity-generating capacity in many parts of the country. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this administration’s runaway rulemaking.

Obama's three-step plan for our economy is 1) Regulate 2) Control 3) Repeat.

And it doesn't matter how many jobs it costs us. It doesn't matter how negative are the effects on the economy. Those like Obama will use the negative effects of their policies to call for yet more control, more regulation, and less Constitutional restrictions on their power. That's the way totalitarians roll.

Actress Daryl Hannah, co-star of the 1990 movie Crazy People, was arrested in a protest outside the White House on tuesday. Hannah and other environ-mental-ists conducted a sit-in to protest against the planned Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would transport oil from Canada to the Gulf Of Mexico. The actress told reporters she wants to be free from fossil fuels. She's a fan of biodiesel.

I'm all for alternative energy sources, but I have to say, these enviro-nuts don't seem to have two brain cells to rub together. We are nowhere near to getting off of fossil fuels, and protesting against a Canadian pipeline when we are shipping half of our oil in on boats across the ocean (wasting a lot more energy than a pipeline would) is asinine. Oil and coal provide the majority of the energy used in this country. If we did what dingbat protesters like Ms. Hannah wanted, it would destroy our economy in about a month. Ah, I can picture Daryl Hannah's fossil fuel-free "utopian" dream world now – no fuel to transport food and other goods to the stores. No fuel for you to drive to work. No electricity in most of the country. Businesses collapsing. Unemployment at about 70%. Mass starvation. Utter chaos…….wouldn't it be lov-er-ly ??? But at least we wouldn't be causing global warming !!! There's that. Here's a little song for my fair lady, Miss Daryl Hannah…

Lots of chocolate for me to eat,
Lots of coal makin' lots of heat,
Warm face, warm hands, warm feet,
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly ?

Hannah was once quoted as saying, "I've never been good in the financial and business arenas. I handle the creative side of things". I'll drink to that. Tell you what, Ms. Hannah. You stick to playing mermaids and strippers in the movies, and leave the business side of things to people who have a clue.

While I'm on the subject of "green"…Solyndra, a major manufacturer of solar technology, touted by Obama as a source of all those green jobs the President envisions, is closing it's doors and declaring bankruptcy:

"I was told by a security guard to get my [stuff] and leave," one employee said. The company employs a little more than 1,000 employees worldwide, according to its website.
Shortly after it opened a massive $700 million facility, it canceled plans for a public stock offering earlier this year and warned it would be in significant trouble if federal loan guarantees did not go through.

Solyndra was touted by the Obama administration as a prime example of how green technology could deliver jobs. The President visited the facility in May of last year and said "it is just a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism and the fact that we continue to have the best universities in the world, the best technology in the world, and most importantly the best workers in the world. And you guys all represent that. "

The federal government offered $535 million in low cost loan guarantees from the Department of Energy. NBC Bay Area has contacted the White House asking for a statement.

Some Republicans have been very critical of the loans. "I am concerned that the DOE is providing loans and loan guarantees to firms that aren't capable of competing in the global market, even with government subsidies" Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns told the New York Times.

Sounds like the taxpayers are on the hook again. The lesson here is, you can't force a company to be profitable if it can't compete in the marketplace. You can prop it up with taxpayer dollars for awhile, perhaps even indefinitely, but since when is it the responsibility of all the citizens of the country to support private businesses ??? It isn't, even though the government forces us to do it all the time. The government subsidizes so many things these days that it's hard to even keep track of them. I always thought the free market was supposed to be the place where companies succeeded or failed on their merits. That's how we improve. The best are supposed to rise to the top. I always thought we believed in freedom in this country, not centralized control of industry. We still believe in freedom here…don't we ??? I'm no longer sure.

How much do you wager that the word 'Solyndra' doesn't come up in the President's jobs address to the nation next week ? I bet we'll still hear about those "millions of green jobs" though. What Obama doesn't bother to mention is that those millions of jobs won't exist for another 20 years, or that 3/4ths of them will be overseas. While you're waiting around for those green jobs to materialize, perhaps you can fill your idle time by renting the movie My Favorite Martian, with Daryl Hannah.

It was bad enough when the government turned off the water supply of California farmers to protect a minnow. The farmers went bust as their crops rotted and died.

It was bad enough when President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) into law, with it's 150 or so new government agencies, panels, and commissions, along with possibly thousands of new regulations. That will be a new maze of bureaucracy we can all enjoy. As Rep. Pelosi infamously stated, we'll find out what in the legislation after we pass it. That's how we do things now. We pass legislation, and then try to figure out how it works. Perfectly sensible, at least to government bureaucrats.

It was bad enough when Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform bill into law, with it's 400 or so new regulations, the majority of which were not even written at the time of the bill's signing. That legislation is a blank check for unrestrained government power, but oddly, it didn't do the things that might prevent the next housing meltdown. It didn't make mortgage derivatives illegal, and it didn't stop the secondary mortgage market hustle on Wall Street. We are now supposed to believe that government "oversight" of mortgage-related risk will prevent the next mortgage crisis, when it was government policies pushing homeownership that drove the crisis in the first place. Color me extremely skeptical. The usual culprits on the Left are already pushing for more homeownership and lower lending standards again. They never learn. We'll also find out what's in Dodd-Frank after it's passage, and those regulations are supposed to be finalized and implemented this year. I can't wait to see what kind of negative effect that has on the financial sector and thus the economy and jobs.

It's somehow even more offensive that authorities are shutting down children's lemonade stands across the country. Seems the kiddies didn't have the proper government licenses and permits, don't you know. The permits would cost the little tykes far more than the few bucks they'd get from selling lemonade, not that government bureaucrats care about that. They are more interested in shutting down the all the would-be little Dillingers selling lemonade illegally. Yesterday, I heard about a kid's green tea stand being shut down. What kind of country are we becoming ?

It was bad enough when the federal government tried to prevent the Boeing Corporation from building a plant in South Carolina to manufacture Dreamliner jets. How that is any of the federal government's business, I have no idea. In related news, Obama's Jobs Czar, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, announced that GE will build jets in China. Those Chinese-made jets will COMPETE with Boeing. Our own government tries to stop Boeing from building jets in South Carolina, but building them in China is apparently hunky dory. Such brilliant leaders we have. I guess Obama forgot to tell Immelt that the jobs he created were supposed to be in America. Sounds like yet another "pivot to jobs" is in order after all. Obama claims he has nothing to do with the NLRB's lawsuit to prevent Boeing from putting a plant in S.C., but most of the NLRB board are Obama appointees. Obama's one degree of separation argument isn't very convincing.

And now our government gone wild has ventured into my territory. They are confiscating guitars. I learned of this when I read about the feds raiding the Gibson Guitar company in a WSJ article titled Guitar Frets: Environmental Enforcement Leaves Musicians In Fear:

Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.

It isn't the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian's ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name "United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms."

If you are an electric guitar player, you know Gibson is the gold standard, the American classic. It sounds like the feds have decided Gibson is guilty, and now Gibson must prove it's innocence. That's how it's supposed to work here, right ?

The feds also have musicians worried that they will confiscate their instruments:

It isn't just Gibson that is sweating. Musicians who play vintage guitars and other instruments made of environmentally protected materials are worried the authorities may be coming for them next.

It's not enough to know that the body of your old guitar is made of spruce and maple: What's the bridge made of? If it's ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a bridge? Is the nut holding the strings at the guitar's headstock bone, or could it be ivory? "Even if you have no knowledge—despite Herculean efforts to obtain it—that some piece of your guitar, no matter how small, was obtained illegally, you lose your guitar forever," Prof. Thomas has written. "Oh, and you'll be fined $250 for that false (or missing) information in your Lacey Act Import Declaration."

Consider the recent experience of Pascal Vieillard, whose Atlanta-area company, A-440 Pianos, imported several antique Bösendorfers. Mr. Vieillard asked officials at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species how to fill out the correct paperwork—which simply encouraged them to alert U.S. Customs to give his shipment added scrutiny.

There was never any question that the instruments were old enough to have grandfathered ivory keys. But Mr. Vieillard didn't have his paperwork straight when two-dozen federal agents came calling.

Facing criminal charges that might have put him in prison for years, Mr. Vieillard pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of violating the Lacey Act, and was handed a $17,500 fine and three years probation.

If you can't satisfy the bureaucrats that your guitar is made of the "politically correct" materials, even though it is practically impossible to provide such documentation on vintage instruments, you could be in a heap of trouble. They will take your instruments away permanently and fine you. I better start playing more blues.

Damn. Now we have guitar cops on the prowl, smashing guitars like John Belushi in Animal House. I wonder if my vintage 1959 Gibson Les Paul Special passes regulatory muster ? I love that guitar. Hopefully, no government bureaucrats are reading this, and if they are, what I meant to say was, I don't own any such instrument. Never did, and never will. And for the record, Guitar Cops, I don't own a vintage flattop Martin acoustic guitar either. I love you, Big Brother.

I have a theory that eventually everything will be illegal, and the only thing keeping you out of jail will be whether the government feels like prosecuting you or not. We'll lose our liberty gradually, bit by bit, year by year. That should keep us all in line, eh ? There's your utopian big government society. Everyone will behave because they'll be scared to death of the unlimited power of the tyrants. That's what our Founding Fathers envisioned for us, right ?

I keep hearing people talk about how the government needs to push job creation in this country. For my two cents, I'd be content if the government just stopped destroying them.

Liberals are puzzled by the way conservatives and libertarians prattle on about economic freedom. Liberals want the opposite of economic freedom. They want the iron fist of the government to exert centralized command and control over economic activity. That view is puzzling to me. I wonder how any American can accept such a view, but many apparently do. Liberals must take American wealth for granted, as if it will always be there no matter what. They couldn't be making a bigger mistake, especially these days when most countries are competing with us.

Because liberals also believe the evil Koch brothers are controlling the minds of we the people on the economic right, I now present a video from…the Charles Koch Foundation ! It is called Economic Freedom And Quality Of Life:

The relationship between economic freedom and the overall welfare of the people is very clear. The people in the most free countries earn 8 times what people earn in the least free countries. The poor in the most free countries earn 10 times what the poor earn in the least free countries. The top 20% of the countries ranking highest in economic freedom have double the per capita income of the second highest quintile, and five times the income of the bottom 20%. So, why would anyone in his right mind opt for less economic freedom ? Beats the heck out of me. You'll have to ask a liberal.

The bad news for the United States is, our ranking on the index of economic freedom has been falling over the last years. We have dropped to ninth place. The main reason for our decline is the dramatic increase in government spending. According to the 2011 index, countries with the largest increases in government spending have growth rates 4.5 points lower than the others.

One may point to China as an example of a country with little economic freedom that is doing very well, until one remembers China didn't start growing until it opened itself up to world markets. China's ascendancy, while still lagging far behind the U.S., is the result of increased economic freedom in that country.

President Obama recently urged American manufacturers and innovators to "up your game" to grow the economy and meet the challenges of the 21st century. My response to Obama would be 'fine, but first you have to LET THEM'. Continued government expansions and takeovers, with it's requisite high taxes, isn't going to help get that job done. Neither will over-regulation, another manifestation of big government overreach. When conservatives and libertarians talk about a constitutionally limited government, economic freedom, and individual liberty, it isn't merely some empty political talking point. It's what makes us free, and allows us to flourish. That's what "ups our game", not the government. The private sector isn't merely a facet of the economy. The private sector IS the economy. It's where our entire wealth comes from. Let it be free to create wealth, or we will suffer the consequences. And if this message is coming from the Koch brothers, who cares ? It's still the correct message.

As those revolution-era Tea Party flags say, 'Don't Tread On Me'. It's the best way. It should be the only way in America.

A lawless group of thugs known as Orlando Food Not Bombs has been on a crime spree, but the police finally caught up to these scofflaw marauders, arresting three of them on wednesday. Their crime ? Brace yourself, and send the kids out of the room. This ain't pretty. The Orlando Food Not Bombs group was busted for (shiver)…illegally feeding homeless people in a park. Oh, the horror ! The Orlando Sentinel has the details:

Members of Orlando Food Not Bombs were arrested Wednesday when police said they violated a city ordinance by feeding the homeless in Lake Eola Park.

Jessica Cross, 24, Benjamin Markeson, 49, and Jonathan "Keith" McHenry, 54, were arrested at 6:10 p.m. on a charge of violating the ordinance restricting group feedings in public parks. McHenry is a co-founder of the international Food Not Bombs movement, which began in the early 1980s.

The group lost a court battle in April, clearing the way for the city to enforce the ordinance. It requires groups to obtain a permit and limits each group to two permits per year for each park within a 2-mile radius of City Hall.

Arrest papers state that Cross, Markeson and McHenry helped feed 40 people Wednesday night. The ordinance applies to feedings of more than 25 people.

"They intentionally violated the statute," said Lt. Barbara Jones, an Orlando police spokeswoman.

To prevent this illegal feeding behavior from recurring in the future, Mr. Fencepost has proposed building a city zoo for the homeless, where people could throw peanuts and candy bars at them. The homeless would, of course, be walled off from the general public in the homeless zoo, for purposes of safety. The estimated cost to taxpayers to build the homeless zoo – $47 million. "It's win-win" posited Fencepost.
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If Senate Bill 978 gets passed, yours truly will become a felon. The regula-nators could put me in the pokey for 5 years because I…copy 20 second video clips from YouTube and put them on my blog.. SB978 would make embedding internet videos a copyright infringement. Since I've done this at least 100 times, I suppose they could give me five years for each offense and throw me in the hoosegow for 500 years. John Dillinger ain't got nuthin' on me. If any of you notice a 5-500 year gap between my posts, that's one possible reason. SB978 is sponsored by Senate busybodies Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Christoper Coons (D-DE), and John Cornyn (R-TX). Who knew Congress cared so much about people like little old me posting videos of Harry Reid's lies and Nancy Pelosi's ignorance ? I view the internet as being the most free remaining sector of American society. No wonder the government hates it.

Aw, what the heck do I care. I'm sure the Lady Gaga tribute band I'm putting together is illegal too (though I look pretty good dressed in meat, if I do say so myself)

Whether I'm illegally feeding people without a license, or illegally playing someone else's music on my guitar, or illegally copying YouTube videos to my blog, or illegally not wearing my seat belt, or illegally smoking a cigarette in my neighborhood bar, or illegally playing poker with my friends, or illegally taping a movie on HBO, or illegally driving 60mph in a 55mph zone, or illegally driving my car without that stupid little sticker (I already paid for a license plate, thank you), or illegally fishing without paying tribute to the government first, or illegally building a fire in my backyard, or illegally trying to smuggle a bottle of shampoo onto an airplane, or illegally skateboarding down the street at 3am in my underwear singing God Bless America (alright, that one might have been over the line), I'm constantly breaking the law in some way or another. I don't mean to (usually). It's just so hard not to. I mean, I'm probably breaking a law right now, like maybe some f*cking obscenity law or something. Who knows ? There are so many laws that's it's almost impossible NOT to break them. I probably break a law every single day without even realizing it. I have a theory that eventually everything will be illegal, and it will only be a matter of whether or not the government feels like prosecuting you. I don't think we need Congress to pass many new laws. I think we need an anti-Congress to start repealing existing ones.

But until then, whatever you do, don't go around feeding groups of hungry people, especially not the homeless ones. At least not without paying the government first. If memory serves, I believe Jesus of Nazareth was the first man to come out publicly against the unlicensed feeding of the hungry, though I admit my memory ain't what it used to be. My head is filled with trying to remember to comply with all the petty and needless regulations, like a good little sheep. Which reminds me, I have to get all those years of back tax records to my accountant. Gotta run.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. – Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

That's what it says in the Bill Of Rights, but the Indiana Supreme Court just said differently:

Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry.

"We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest."

There are so many things wrong with this Judge's statement that I barely know where to start. The Indiana Supreme Court is actually defending an "unlawful police entry into a home". What part of "unlawful" don't they understand ? The law applies to the police as well as the public. I guess "modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence" means the Fourth Amendment no longer applies. I cannot effing believe this. And I'd really like to know what "public policy" the Judge is talking about that nullifies the supreme law of the land. As for the Judge's attempted justification that resistance to an unlawful police raid "unnecessarily escalates the level of violence", what the hell is that about ? A woman who resists a rape attempt is risking an escalation of the violence level too, but that doesn't mean she should let herself be raped. This Judge is a freaking idiot. He's condoning unlawful behavior on the grounds that resisting it might lead to violence. Well, no sh*t, Sherlock, but the crime is being committed by the person(s) engaging in the unlawful behavior, not the victim(s).

The idiot Judge David continued:

David said a person arrested following an unlawful entry by police still can be released on bail and has plenty of opportunities to protest the illegal entry through the court system.

Oh, how kind of the idiot Judge David to maintain that a citizen still has a right to his day in court following his unlawful arrest from an unlawful entry by the police into his home. What a guy. I'm so glad he doesn't want to destroy ALL our civil rights in one fell swoop. Maybe Judge David won't try to get rid of that silly "day in court" thingy until next year. Then we can go full-on Gestapo.

You can read the details of the case that brought about this putrid ruling at the link above. The two dissenting judges pointed out the painfully obvious:

Justice Robert Rucker, a Gary native, and Justice Brent Dickson, a Hobart native, dissented from the ruling, saying the court's decision runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"In my view the majority sweeps with far too broad a brush by essentially telling Indiana citizens that government agents may now enter their homes illegally — that is, without the necessity of a warrant, consent or exigent circumstances," Rucker said. "I disagree."

Rucker and Dickson suggested if the court had limited its permission for police entry to domestic violence situations they would have supported the ruling.

But Dickson said, "The wholesale abrogation of the historic right of a person to reasonably resist unlawful police entry into his dwelling is unwarranted and unnecessarily broad."

Yes, the police can enter your house with probable cause, but torching the entire Fourth Amendment is most definitely an "unnecessarily broad" ruling, to put it mildly. It's like saying a policeman shooting your entire family in the head because you were caught driving 35 miles per hour in a school zone is an "unnecessarily broad" reaction to your infraction. No kidding.

This isn't the first recent Indiana Supreme Court ruling on the subject:

On Tuesday, the court said police serving a warrant may enter a home without knocking if officers decide circumstances justify it. Prior to that ruling, police serving a warrant would have to obtain a judge's permission to enter without knocking.

Let me see if I have this straight. In Indiana, the police can now enter your home without knocking at any time and arrest you, all without a warrant, probable cause, or anything.

Hmmm. Isn't that exactly what Anne Frank was worried about during the Nazi occupation ? Isn't that why she was hiding ? It's good to know we've brought that to Indiana now, right here in the alleged land of the free.

For what it's worth, here's what I have regarding the political appointments of these Indiana Judges.

The good guys who dissented:
Judge Dickson was appointed by a Republican Governor (Robert Orr).
Judge Rucker was appointed by a Democratic Governor (Frank O'Bannon)

The bad guys who ruled to destroy the Constitution:
Judge David was appointed by a Republican Governor (Mitch Daniels)
Judge Shepard was appointed by a Republican Governor (Robert Orr).
Judge Sullivan was appointed by a Democratic Governor (Evan Bayh).

I'm not sure what this means, other than neither political party has a corner on ignorance, or wisdom. I bet Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN), who is considering running for President, isn't going to be too happy to be connected to the idiot Judge David, unless Daniels agrees with him. I sure hope he doesn't.

"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have…The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." – Thomas Jefferson

When President Obama agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts by two years, left-wingers were very irate that taxes weren't going up (what kind of people want taxes to go UP, anyway ?). Sen. Bernie Sanders of the United Soviet Socialist Republic of Vermont spoke in opposition to the Bush tax cuts for eight and a half hours on the Senate floor. Here's the gist of the feelings of both Sanders and liberals in general:

Sen. SANDERS: The folks, the Democrats in the House, are putting up a fight. And I think what they are saying very loudly and clearly is what I believe – is that it is basically absurd to be giving huge tax breaks to the richest people in this country, including many millionaires and billionaires at the same time as we have a record-breaking deficit of $13.7 trillion national debt, at the same time as we are ignoring many enormous problems facing our country, including a crumbling infrastructure, an educational system which needs a lot of support, and the fact that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth.

According to Sen. Sanders, the problems with this country are…we aren't taxed enough, and the government isn't spending enough. Those are his alleged reasons why we have huge deficits and debt, along with crumbling infrastructure, a lousy educational system, high childhood poverty, etc. If only we could tax and spend more, as the liberals and socialists desire, we could surely solve these problems, correct ???

Well, it occurs to me that we HAVE taxed and spent quite extensively to solve these problems over the years. We have many programs in place to combat childhood poverty, and we spend more money on education than any other country in the world. Unlike Sanders, I believe government taxing and spending has become so profuse that it has actually become a large part of the problem. Let's look at some historical numbers to see who is correct, Sen. Sanders or myself:

First, let's look at taxation (government revenue). Sen. Sanders thinks taxes are too low. Here is a chart depicting overall government revenue compared to GDP (the entire economy) over the years:

As you can see, taxes are anything but low. They have gone up, up, up over the years, taking an ever larger bite out of every citizen's wages and driving up the prices of every product the citizens purchase. In 2007, prior to the revenue killing recession, taxes were consuming 37.2% of the entire American economy. If that isn't more than enough to fix our infrastructure, have a good educational system, and eliminate childhood poverty, then something is seriously amiss.

Sen. Sanders thinks government spending is too low, but the truth is, even though taxes have increased enormously over the years, they weren't enough to keep up with profligate government spending. To say the government has been spending like drunken sailors is an insult to drunken sailors. The next chart shows how overall government spending has skyrocketed:

In 2010, government spending is consuming an incredible 45.65% of our entire economy, yet the government STILL can't deal with infrastructure, education, and childhood poverty ? Give me a break already. The taxpayers are being played for fools. You will notice the two spikes in government spending in 1917 and 1941. Those were spending levels during WWI and WW2, respectively. We were dedicating our entire economies to fighting those world war efforts then. Now, we are approaching WWII spending levels even though there is no World War taking place. That is simply astounding to me.

You will notice a slight dip in government spending relative to GDP in the 1990's. That's when President Clinton and his Republican Congress worked together to slow the rate of increase in government spending. That led to some balanced budgets at the end of the 90's, and also gives us a strong clue as to how to fix our current problems. Hint – We do the OPPOSITE of what Sen. Sanders proposes. We cut spending.

It is readily apparent from these two charts that government revenue is not the problem. The taxpayers already contribute more than enough for the government to perform it's functions. Taxes have never been higher. The problem is government spending. No matter how much the taxpayers contribute to our government, it is NEVER enough, and the problems NEVER get solved. Sen. Sanders wants us to believe reversing the Bush tax cuts for the rich will attenuate the problem. With all due respect to Sanders, that is insane. We have a current deficit of $1.34 trillion for 2010. The Bush tax cuts for the rich would only address $70 billion of that each year over the next 10 years. That $70 billion is about 5% of the 2010 deficit. Reversing those Bush tax cuts won't accomplish much of anything. It's a drop in the bucket. $70 billion is less than the amount of new spending President Obama signed into law in the last week. Since Obama has been President, we have accumulated well over $3.5 trillion in new debt in less than two years, and federal spending has increased by about $800 billion per year over 2008 levels, yet we're supposed to believe $70 billion from the Bush tax cuts is the problem ? What an insult to the collective intelligence of the people. I don't know how politicians say these things with a straight face, much less how some people are gullible enough to believe them.

In spite of the highest overall tax rates ever, our government institutions are broke at every level. The federal government is nearly $13.9 trillion in debt. Our states are another $1.15 trillion in debt. Our local governments are another $1.695 trillion in debt. We have paid $3.29 trillion in interest on all this debt.

As depressing as this all is, the real truth is even worse. The only reason our economic picture looks as "bright" as it does is due to an accounting trick. Our government does it's accounting using the cash accounting method. If the government used an accrual method of accounting, the picture becomes a lot bleaker. The truth is, we have accumulated $2 trillion in new government liabilities in 2010 alone, according to new Treasury reports. In reality, our deficit is a whole lot more than the $1.34 trillion reported, because we have accruals in the form of unfunded liabilities and interest on the debt that should be included. Those are growing at between $1-2 trillion every year.

In summary, suggesting we tax more and spend more, as Sen. Sanders and liberals would have us do, is sheer economic lunacy. Those recommending such a course should be confined to mental institutions. Their recommendations equate to pouring water on a drowning man. Maybe we don't have the perfect socialist utopia Sen. Sanders envisions, but bankrupting the coutry is no solution, and bankruptcy is the path we're headed down. We currently have over $55 trillion in unfunded government liabilities in the future. That's what we've accrued. Next, we'll have ObamaCare spending and taxation kicking in to drive taxes and spending even higher. If we keep heading down this same path, eventually every single citizen in the United States will be destitute, as the government sucks an ever larger portion of everyone's wages away to pay for itself. As Jefferson said, a "government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take away everything you have." That is not only what may happen if we continue along this path, that is what WILL happen if the spendathon continues. That is what will have to happen. Nothing is free. Maybe that's what Sen. Sanders wants, but it sure as hell wasn't what Thomas Jefferson wanted, and it sure as hell isn't what I want. If I wanted to live in Cuba, I'd move there. There's a real good reason why nobody does that. There's a real good reason why everyone immigrates to America instead. It's called liberty (what's left of it), and Bernie Sanders doesn't know a damn thing about it.

P.S. – The economic facts presented here are not liberal, conservative, or centrist. The facts are not ideological. They are merely the facts.

This post is for all you statists who think the government should be able to force the people to do whatever the government thinks is best, whether it is constitutional or not.

The Venezuelan Congress granted President Hugo Chavez the right to enact laws by decree, according to the Washington Post:

Chavez has argued he needs decree powers to fast-track funds to help the victims of recent floods and landslides, and also to hasten Venezuela's transition to a socialist state.

He taunted his opponents in a televised speech Friday night, saying now that he has decree powers they won't be able to block his laws.

"You won't be able to make a single law, 'pitiyanquis,'" Chavez said, using one of his favorite insults, which refers to U.S. collaborators and translates as "little Yankees." "We're going to see how you make laws now."

Great guy, that Chavez. Nothing like the voice of the people being the voice of ONE person. That always works out so well. I also have a question for the Venezuelan Congress. If you let Chavez enact laws by decree, for what does Venezuela need a Congress ? To referee soccer matches ?

Like any good Socialist, Chavez knows how dangerous free speech can be:

Another measure under discussion Friday was the revised "Social Responsibility Law," which would impose broadcast-type regulations on the Internet and ban online messages "that could incite or promote hatred," create "anxiety" in the population or "disrespect public authorities."

Questions remain about how the Internet regulations would be enforced.

Yes, we certainly wouldn't want anxiety in the population to lead to disrespect of public authorities (read: disagreement with Hugo Chavez). Better to nip dissent in the bud and shut it down.

Naturally, the diktats of Chavez will go way beyond shutting down his opposition:

The law granting Chavez decree powers – for the fourth time in his nearly 12-year presidency – also will allow him to unilaterally enact measures involving telecommunications, the banking system, information technology, the military, rural and urban land use and the country's "socio-economic system."

Among the planned decrees already announced, Chavez intends to increase the value-added tax, now 12 percent, to raise funds for coping with the disaster caused by weeks of heavy rains. The government is erecting tents to house thousands left homeless and is accelerating public housing construction.

Critics accuse Chavez of taking advantage of the disaster to tighten his grip on power, saying he is violating the constitution while trying to impose a Cuba-style system.

Lawmaker Pastora Medina, a former Chavez ally who turned against him, condemned the decree powers saying the president already "has the budget and the resources to solve the problems."

Newly elected opposition lawmaker Julio Borges said Chavez is trying to use the Christmas lull when Venezuelans are focused on other matters to push through "laws that have one single purpose: to give more power to the government and take power away from the people."

Borges said the opposition will keep fighting and that "the Cuban project is going to fail."

The opposition to Chavez must be a bunch of radical conservative wingnuts, eh liberals ? Besides, what's wrong with Cuba ? Left-wing filmmaker and noted dipstick Michael Moore LOVED it there (FYI – Even Cubans thought Moore's healthcare film Sicko was a bunch of hooey. Cuba banned the film, calling Moore's take on Cuba's medical system "mythical." Cuban authorities feared a popular backlash against Moore's blatant propaganda, according to a Wikileaks document drop. Naturally, liberal morons in America nominated the film for an Academy Award).

Because Chavez's opposition hasn't been completely stifled yet, Chavez took a page from FDR's infamous court-packing plan:

…when the new congress takes office with 67 of the 165 seats controlled by the opposition – enough to prevent Chavez from having the two-thirds majority needed to approve some types of major legislation and to confirm Supreme Court justices.

Anticipating that shift, pro-Chavez lawmakers earlier this month appointed nine new Supreme Court justices, reinforcing the dominance of judges widely seen as friendly to his government.

Chavez is making some other "improvements for the public good":

Lawmakers on Friday also approved a separate law that describes banking as a "public service" and clears the way for increased state intervention in the sector. Venezuela's private banks make up about 70 percent of the industry, while the government controls the rest.

Chavez, meanwhile, is pushing ahead with efforts to take over swaths of farmland. On Friday, officials and troops seized 47 private ranches in western Venezuela. Chavez has ordered the expropriation of a growing list of businesses, and the government says it has seized more than 5.6 million acres (2.3 million hectares) of rural land.

Whatever is good for the collective, right Socialists ??? We don't need no stinking individual rights.

This isn't Hugo Chavez's first round of royal decrees either:

The last time, he used [decrees] for 18 months to enact more than 60 laws, seizing control of privately run oil fields, changing financial regulations, imposing new taxes and nationalizing telecommunications, electricity and cement companies.

Yes, kiddies, all behold the socialist paradise. Why, they even have "free" healthcare to go along with their 25-27 percent inflation….though another Wikileaks document said Venezuela's healthcare system is falling apart:

Some of Venezuela's public hospitals are closing. Others are ridden with crime. Many physicians are quitting medicine — starting new careers in Venezuela or emigrating, upset at being paid a pittance or not at all. Medical supplies are in short supply.

A "confidential" U.S. Embassy cable from Caracas, just released by WikiLeaks, says socialist Venezuela's health care system is in "disarray" — and the poor are suffering the most.

Hmmm. Wasn't the left calling for nationalized healthcare here in America, and also for taking the profit out of our healthcare system ? I seem to recall something like that. Maybe we should rethink those ideas.

A look at Venezuela's tax structure reveals lots of what left-wingers want for America:

Corporate income is taxed according to a schedule with three brackets—15%, 22% and 34%—except for that derived from the hydrocarbons industry. The effective rate depends on the applicability of a 10% investment tax credit for investment in fixed assets. Exemptions are available for income from new industries or from agriculture, livestock, reforestation, and fishing. In 2002, corporations engaged in the hydrocarbons industry were taxed at a flat rate of 50%, down from 67.7% previously. There are also municipal business taxes ranging from 0.3% to 9.4% depending on location and business activity involved. Capital gains are considered as part of corporate income. Dividends for oil companies are taxed at 67.7% and for mining companies at 60%. Dividends from other companies are taxed at 34%. There are also corporate registration fees and a 1% business assets tax.

The basic personal income tax schedule is progressive and contains eight brackets ranging from 6% to 34%. On payments due to nonresidents, technical aid is taxed at 10.2%, technical services at 17% and professional services at 30.6%. Salaries, premiums, and other sources of income for nonresidents are taxed at 34%. There are also inheritance and gift taxes, and a real estate tax.

A value-added tax (VAT) became effective in 1993 and since September 2002 has been levied at a standard rate of 16% [WaPo said the VAT was 12%. I don't know who is correct]. There are also entertainment and advertising taxes (in the Federal District), and minor excise taxes on liquor, tobacco, cigarettes, and petroleum products.

And those are just the federal taxes. As all left-wingers know, high taxes are gooood. It's the state that's important, not the individual, and corporations are the bad guys whose profits must be confiscated. A pox on free enterprise. Heck, with free enterprise, some people get richer than others (gasp!).

Maybe someone can tell me why Socialists invariably use "power to the people" as the anthem of their revolutionary efforts. I'm confused. Every time I see a socialist country arise, it seems like power is the last thing the people get. But then again, that's what all manner of statists typically do. They present the exact opposite of the truth as the truth ("ObamaCare will reduce medical costs !" "There's a huge Social Security Trust Fund !"). Socialists always say they are giving power to the people when in reality they are taking it all away. It reminds me of when Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont refers to himself as a "Democratic Socialist," an oxymoron if I ever heard one. Go figure.

Viva Le Revolucion !…suckers.

Government tyranny has been staved off for a bit longer, as Federal Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled the ObamaCare mandate is unconstitutional. The mandate would have forced all Americans to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine, a clear perversion of the Commerce Clause, which states Congress shall have the power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

Getting right to the heart of the matter:

U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson wrote that no court had expanded the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to allow the government to regulate a person's decision not to buy a product.

"At its core, this dispute is not simply about regulating the business of insurance — or crafting a scheme of universal health insurance coverage — it's about an individual's right to choose to participate," Hudson wrote.

From the Judge's actual case opinion:

Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market. In doing so, enactment of the [ObamaCare mandate] exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article I.

In another crucial part of the ruling, the Judge explains why the ObamaCare mandate was so dangerous:

Of course, the same reasoning [to require Americans to purchase health insurance] could apply to transportation, housing or nutritional decisions. This broad definition of the economic activity subject to congressional regulation lacks logical limitation.

In other words, if the ObamaCare mandate is allowed to stand, the government could force us to do almost anything it wished. There would be virtually no limitations on government power, rendering the Constitution a worthless piece of paper, and subjugating individual liberty to the whims of our government overlords….which pretty much explains why progressives LIKE the ObamaCare mandate. They're a bunch of control freaks. They WANT to subjugate individual liberty to their idea of the collective good. They want to tell the rest of us what to eat, what to drive, what to wear, what to think, what to see on television or hear on the radio, how much money we should make, how much of our own money the government should let us keep, how we should spend the money we do have, etc, etc, etc. Individual liberty is the arch enemy of the leftists.

So naturally, the White House is "disappointed" that a Federal Court has ruled Congress "exceeded it's authority" with the ObamaCare mandate (actually, only congressional Democrats exceeded their authority. Republicans correctly voted against ObamaCare). Tyrants don't like limits on their authority. Here's Obama defending his unconstitutionality in an interview with ABC last month:

"What I think is appropriate is that in the same way that everybody has to get auto insurance and if you don't, you're subject to some penalty, that in this situation, if you have the ability to buy insurance, it's affordable and you choose not to do so, forcing you and me and everybody else to subsidize you, you know, there's a thousand dollar hidden tax that families all across America are — are burdened by because of the fact that people don't have health insurance, you know, there's nothing wrong with a penalty," [Obama] said.

What a pantload. Where should I start ?

No, Obama, nobody HAS to buy car insurance. Nobody even HAS to buy a car. Nobody has to drive. Those are individual choices. What Obama is doing with his health insurance mandate would be equivalent to FORCING people to buy a car, a clear violation of liberty. It doesn't matter whether the ObamaCare mandate is convenient to Obama's agenda or not. He shouldn't have the power to force such a thing upon the people. That's why we have a Constitution limiting the government's power in the first place. Plus, Mr. President, it's the STATES that require insurance if one chooses to drive a car, not the federal government. Read the 10th Amendment if you haven't yet, Mr. Constitutional Law Professor.

Obama's reasoning that others have to pick up an uninsured person's healthcare tab is even more specious, especially when you consider that Obama is a known wealth redistributor, as are all liberals. Obama has NO problem with other people subsidizing the housing, food, and healthcare of others. Are you kidding me ? What do you think welfare, section 8, food stamps, and Medicaid are all about, not to mention liberal views on tax policy ? Obama is for subsidization EVERY time. That's how his party gets elected to office, by offering to subsidize one group at the expense of another group. Now, all of a sudden, Obama reverses course and is worried about someone else subsidizing healthcare ? Bull-Spit. What a laughable lie. He could care less about that, as all his other beliefs prove. ObamaCare itself subsidizes healthcare for others. What Obama is really interested in is power. When the Constitution gets in the way of that power, it's damn the Constitution. He's not the first politican to act this way, of course, just the latest example.

Judge Hudson also shot down the White House's revisionist argument that the ObamaCare mandate is a tax and therefore constitutional. You may remember, Obama insisted over and over that the ObamaCare mandate penalty was not a tax, until the case went to court, at which time the Obamaniacs realized arguing that it WAS a tax was better for their case. Judge Hudson writes:

Having concluded that [the ObamaCare mandate] is, in form and substance, a penalty as opposed to a tax, it must be linked to an enumerated power other than the General Welfare Clause…in order for the noncompliance penalty to survive constitutional challenge, it must serve to effectuate a valid exercise of an enumerated power – here the Commerce Clause.

And in a footnote:

If allowed to stand as a tax, [the ObamaCare mandate] would be the only tax in U.S. history to be levied directly on individuals for their failure to affirmatively engage in activity mandated by the government not speciically delineated in the Constitution.

How I love it when the Court gets it right. The Court really is the last bastion of freedom against a tyrannical government. No wonder FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court with those friendly to his unconstitutional wishes. As I said before, tyrants don't like limitations.

We can't pop the champagne corks just yet. This case is not over. The Obamaniacs will no doubt appeal this ruling all the way to the Supreme Court.

But this is a hell of a good start. Score – Freedom 1, Tyrants 0.

It's fashionable among left-wingers to degrade America and Americans. They call us imperialist warmongers, capitalist pigs, exploiters of the poor, racists, religious nuts, uneducated hicks, etc, etc. It seems there is no end to their criticism and hatred of this country. They probably started cringing when I titled this post 'American Exceptionalism,' because they simply don't believe it, in spite of all the facts to the contrary. It's really quite disgusting when you consider America's place in the world, and the contribution America has made to the world. The following video explains a few of those contributions, and explains some of the American values that brought those contributions into being:

Why aren't they teaching THESE things in our schools ? Why does it seem to me that left-wingers almost cringe when we use the word 'patriotism' ? Instead, they only seem interested in tearing down everything that made this country great. They want to tear down religious values, tear down capitalism, tear down individual responsibility, tear down patriotism, tear down the family, tear down liberty. They want to tear these things down and replace them with a centralized authoritarian government that controls everything we do. I don't understand it. I will never understand it. I was reminded today by Larry D. of the great speeches of Ronald Reagan. I'm going to reprint part of one from 1974, from Reagan's Shining City On A Hill speech. I reprint it here because it references the values that made this great country what it is, and hopefully represents how together we can keep this country great in the future:

… the signing of the document that day in Independence Hall was miracle enough. Fifty-six men, a little band so unique — we have never seen their like since — pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Sixteen gave their lives, most gave their fortunes and all of them preserved their sacred honor. What manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an unwashed, revolutionary rebel, nor were then adventurers in a heroic mood. Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, nine were farmers. They were men who would achieve security but valued freedom more.

Now we are a nation of 211 million people with a pedigree that includes blood lines from every corner of the world. We have shed that American-melting-pot blood in every corner of the world, usually in defense of someone's freedom. Those who remained of that remarkable band we call our Founding Fathers tied up some of the loose ends about a dozen years after the Revolution. It had been the first revolution in all man’s history that did not just exchange one set of rulers for another. This had been a philosophical revolution. The culmination of men's dreams for 6,000 years were formalized with the Constitution, probably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of man's relation to man. I know there have been other constitutions, new ones are being drawn today by newly emerging nations. Most of them, even the one of the Soviet Union, contains many of the same guarantees as our own Constitution, and still there is a difference. The difference is so subtle that we often overlook it, but is is so great that it tells the whole story. Those other constitutions say, “Government grants you these rights” and ours says, “You are born with these rights, they are yours by the grace of God, and no government on earth can take them from you.”

Lord Acton of England, who once said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” would say of that document, “They had solved with astonishing ease and unduplicated success two problems which had heretofore baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations. They had contrived a system of federal government which prodigiously increased national power and yet respected local liberties and authorities, and they had founded it on a principle of equality without surrendering the securities of property or freedom.” Never in any society has the preeminence of the individual been so firmly established and given such a priority.

One-third of all the students in the world who are pursuing higher education are doing so in the United States. The percentage of our young Negro community that is going to college is greater than the percentage of whites in any other country in the world.

One-half of all the economic activity in the entire history of man has taken place in this republic. We have distributed our wealth more widely among our people than any society known to man. Americans work less hours for a higher standard of living than any other people. Ninety-five percent of all our families have an adequate daily intake of nutrients — and a part of the five percent that don't are trying to lose weight! Ninety-nine percent have gas or electric refrigeration, 92 percent have televisions, and an equal number have telephones. There are 120 million cars on our streets and highways — and all of them are on the street at once when you are trying to get home at night. But isn't this just proof of our materialism — the very thing that we are charged with? Well, we also have more churches, more libraries, we support voluntarily more symphony orchestras, and opera companies, non-profit theaters, and publish more books than all the other nations of the world put together.

Somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere, as has been pointed out in that best-selling record by a Canadian journalist. We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men that set foot on the moon, or who are now circling the earth above us in the Skylab. A sick society bereft of morality and courage did not produce the men who went through those year of torture and captivity in Vietnam. Where did we find such men? They are typical of this land as the Founding Fathers were typical. We found them in our streets, in the offices, the shops and the working places of our country and on the farms.

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, “The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.”

We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth.

I believed those words then, and I believe them now. The world has changed much since 1974, but America is still the last best hope of man on earth. If not us, then who ? China ? Russia ? Africa ? The Middle East ? France ? Norway ? England ? South America ? No, it's still America that must stand up and be the beacon of freedom in this world. If we lose that, then we've lost everything, and the world will become a much darker place. And if we do lose it, it may be lost forever.

The path of the leftists is the path back toward the government tyranny under which nearly all the peoples of the earth had to suffer for millenia. It's a path away from the values that made this country great, that made this country the shining city on a hill. Do NOT fall for their rhetoric, no matter how seductive they make it sound. Do NOT be fooled for a minute. Your rights will be lost, and once they are lost, there is no easy way to get them back.

I took a break from the internet, newspapers, teevee shows, etc., for several days. Sometimes I just have to get away from all the political noise, especially when that noise gets cranked up to it's highest decibel levels just before election time. That's when my bs detector starts going off so often that I simply must take the batteries out for awhile. For instance, I know Ohio's Democratic Governor Strickland wants me to be outraged that his competitor, Republican John Kasich, worked for Lehman Brothers, but I don't find that particularly outrageous. I'm more inclined to think, "good for Kasich, he found a job." Conversely, I'm not so outraged that Ohio lost 400,000 jobs on Strickland's watch, as Kasich's political ads inform us. I'm more inclined to think "yes, there's been a recession. It caused job losses all over the country. Why would Ohio be immune ?" I don't think it says all that much about Strickland's abilities, or the lack thereof. If Ohio hadn't lost any jobs under Strickland during the recession, now THAT would have been worth looking into.

Yesterday, I started reading up on the political events of the past week, and I must say, the circus was definitely in town while I was away. A Democratic Congresswoman, Zoe Lofgren, actually thought it would be a GOOD idea to have Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert testify before Congress in character as his comedic tv persona, a liberal's caricature of an ignorant GOP bigot. At least one Democrat, John Conyers, knew what a clusterfark it would be, and asked Colbert to leave. Good for Conyers. Congress may indeed be a joke these days (it certainly is after Colbert's testimony), but it's business is serious. Colbert testified about migrant workers, after becoming an "expert" by spending ONE DAY with migrant workers filming a segment for his comedy show (I only wish I was kidding about this). Colbert's testimony was actually painful to watch. It was embarrassing and made a mockery of Congress. Maybe next we can have the guy who plays Harry Potter in the movies testify before Congress about our educational system. After all, Potter went to an illustrious school, Hogwarts. Sure, the school is fictitious, but so is Colbert's expertise on migrant workers, and that didn't deter him. I'm fairly certain that Congresswoman Lofgren thought Colbert's comedic caricature of a mean old Republican would elevate the status of the hearing and make Republicans look silly at the same time, but boy did her plan backfire. It blew up in her face. The people who looked the silliest, besides Colbert of course, were Lofgren and her fellow Democrats. Swing and a miss, Dems.

On a somewhat related note, The President Of The United States misquoted the most famous line in the Declaration Of Independence last week while speaking before the Hispanic Caucus, where the immigration issue is a big one. See if you can recognize the President's error:

Obama's error ? He left out the words "by their creator" when he spoke of the people being endowed with certain unalienable rights. Here's a portion of the relevant text of the Declaration Of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,…"

Watching the above video of Obama, he pauses and blinks several times right before he misquotes the Declaration Of Independence. Maybe he just had a brain fart (a big one), or maybe he was thinking he should exclude the words about the creator for some reason. I don't know. It just strikes me as very unlikely that the President Of The United States, who majored in Constitutional Law at Harvard, could not remember the most famous line from the founding document of this country. Call me what you will, but those words still choke me up after all these years. There are no more important political words ever written regarding our country. I consider them to be perfect. We have unalienable rights because we are created human beings, and the government exists to protect those rights. Everything else we are or should be extends from those words, including our own Constitution and laws.

And in case you're wondering why I left in the part about how the people retain the power to abolish any government that becomes destructive of our unalienable rights………..that was no accident. Our rights have been under attack by the government for some time, and we're approaching defcon 3. It's time to reverse the process and take them back before they're gone for good, lost in the fog of government expansion and socialist doubletalk.

P.S. – Next week I'll be going to Las Vegas to do my part to help stimulate the Nevada economy, one hand at a time. I may not be near a computer then either.

Pictured above are a "handful" of Muslims in Pakistan calling for the murder of a Danish cartoonist who drew a cartoon containing Mohammed's picture. That is punishable by death in IslamoCrazyTown. Westegard was the one who drew the cartoon with the picture of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. In response, IslamoCrazyTown thugs went on a rampage of violence (thus reinforcing Westegard's point).
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We have learned that FBI officials visited the wannabe Koran-burner, Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center. The FBI warned Jones, according to NPR:

According to officials familiar with the situation, the FBI visited Pastor Terry Jones several times. There is no law against what he wanted to do, they told him, but they were concerned about what might happen to HIM if he went ahead with his Koran Bonfire. They talked to him about being a potential target for violence and threats and told him the story of the Danish cartoonist and other people who have had their lives changed by making this kind of bold statement. They also told him they were concerned that civil rights violations and hate crimes might grow out of what he was planning to do and they wanted him to understand that.

As a result of the uproar over his planned Koran-burning, and possibly a realization of what he might be getting himself into by offending the murderous IslamoCrazyTown thugs, Pastor Jones has received a new message from God – don't burn the Koran, "not today, not ever," according to Jones.

Thank you, God, for turning down the heat on this issue. If it's not too much trouble, could you spare a minute to tell Imam Feisal Rauf to build his mosque somewhere other than Ground Zero ? That would turn down some more heat. That's my prayer. Amen.

What amazes about the Koran-burning episode is how many high-level people got involved. Hotair.com has a partial list:

…people who’ve weighed in thus far on Terry Jones’s publicity stunt turned mega-clusterfark: The U.S. Secretary of State, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, the presidents of Afghanistan and Indonesia, the prime minister of Iraq, the home minister of India, the Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., the FBI, Interpol, the Vatican — and now, inevitably, the president of the United States.

In one way or another, ALL the high-level people above reached the same conclusion – DON'T STIR UP THE RESIDENTS OF ISLAMOCRAZYTOWN. Bad things happen will happen if you do, doubly so if dirty infidels are the ones doing it. Ask Theo Van Gogh, the 9/11 victims, or Muslim women who can't go outside their homes without wearing head scarves and being escorted by a male in certain parts of IslamoCrazyTown. IslamoCrazyTown isn't big on human rights.

The IsalmoCrazyTown message of intimidation has been received again, just as it was received regarding the Danish cartoon. Most media outlets self-censored that cartoon of Mohammed, fearful of what the IslamoCrazyTown thugs might do if they didn't. We let that intimidation and fear trump our freedom of speech. Maybe it was wise, but it doesn't sit too well. I'm not in favor of Koran-burning, naturally, but I'm even less in favor of threats of violence and death. In the U.S., our rights require us to endure speech we don't like, even speech we find repulsive. I find a lot of political speech repulsive (like the phony 'Tea Party is racist' trash put out by the left), but I don't threaten to kill the people who engage in it. Instead, I defend their right to be despicable lying douchebags. I'm sure I just offended some people on the left by calling them despicable lying douchebags, but so what ? That's my right. Plus, they richly deserve it.

Because we seem to keep submitting to the intolerant IslamoCrazyTowners, I'm going to post a video that the politically correct, 'diversity and tolerance above all' types among us might call divisive. I think there are some important points being made in this video. It's from a British man named Pat Condell:

Opinions ?

Certain of my readers might think I'm a right-wing zealot, or maybe they think I'm just a mean old greedy white guy. They don't understand why I'm against so many liberal ideas. After all, liberals are the benevolent ones who only want to help people, right ? I mean, who could be against benevolent beliefs such as…..these ?:

- A better world is possible — a world where people come before profits.

- We need to build a [peace] movement that continues to organize for a complete withdrawal of troops and private contractors from Iraq and against the war in Afghanistan. A new kind of peace movement is needed to cut military spending, close US bases around the world, compel a nuclear weapons convention to eliminate all nuclear weapons and to begin to repair the damage done by US imperialism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and worldwide.

- Our collective efforts since 2001 have had a huge impact in strengthening the role of labor and communities of color in coalescing grassroots and national peace coalitions…

- Demilitarizing the economy, demilitarizing foreign policy is prerequisite for radical reform…Peace is necessary to meet human needs and sustain life on the planet.

- We need a new New Deal…united action of the peace movement, labor and social and economic justice movements on urgent issues of the day.

- We need a movement to move the money from wars to our communities. In Congress and at the grassroots, there are several new projects reflecting the reality that militarism is a roadblock to meeting human needs.

- [We have] championed the struggles for democracy, labor rights, women’s equality, racial justice and peace for ninety years….an unparalleled history in the progressive movement of the United States, from the struggle against Jim Crow segregation, the organizing of the industrial unions, from the canneries of California, to the sweatshops of New York City.

- People and nature before profits.

- Capitalism combines formal equality with economic social inequality.

- Equality before the law is not necessarily equality in fact.

- a decent and rising standard of living, peace, justice, equality, a sustainable environment, gay rights, health care, education, affordable housing, the needs of seniors, democracy, and a fulfilling life for everyone.

- The principles of democracy, equality, justice, and class self-interest require a joint fight against all expressions of racism and gender oppression. We fight for full equality for all who suffer from racial, national, and gender oppression as an essential aspect of the unity that is basic to all social progress.

- all racially and nationally oppressed groups, women, and youth—can build a movement that also includes the many streams of our working people—such as family farmers, small business owners, and the self-employed—who united together have the power to make fundamental progressive change.

- The pursuit of world domination to further enrich capitalists has resulted in destructive wars, environmental devastation, and massive poverty.

- [We strive] to build the broadest unity against global capitalist imperialism now headed by U.S. imperialism, for immediate gains and reforms that benefit working people, and for a progressive democratization of the government, the economy, and society of our country.

There you go. Good ideas one and all, am I right liberals ? All these ideas represent positive social change, correct ?

Well, maybe you think they do, but I pulled all the principles quoted above directly from the CPUSA website. CPUSA is short for Communist Party USA. Some of the quotes come from such luminaries as Marx, Engels, and Lenin. There also happen to be a few "minor" catches on the way to their utopia. The socialist paradise described above comes with a few prerequisites, namely…the subjugation of the individual to the state, the abolishment of private property, the abolishment of a free press, gulags and executions for political dissidents….minor little things like that. It worked out so well in the 20th century that 100-120 million people were slaughtered on the way to that totalitarian workers paradise, and then the remaining workers all ended up living in poverty under totalitarian regimes. That's what the Communists call "progress." That's the endgame behind their anti-capitalist, government-controlled, so-called progressive change. The "benevolent" principles outlined here by CPUSA are actually nothing more than propaganda to fool the useful idiots into following the Communists into bondage.

That's the man behind the curtain.

No thank you. I'll stick with liberty and take my chances. I'll stick with my country, one that stands against the dictators and totalitarian regimes of the world. I'll stick with free market capitalism too. I'll stick with opportunity being enough, because opportunity is non-existent under dictators and totalitarian regimes. That's why you don't see people flocking to North Korea, Cuba, etc. That's also why I'll continue to resist the trend toward a bigger, more controlling centralized government here. If we lose our freedom, it won't happen with one massive revolution, as it did elsewhere. It will happen step by step, with our liberties being gradually stripped away until one day we wake up and wonder what the hell happened to our free country. As George Washington said, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." It is our patriotic duty as a free people to resist the expansion of the government's power over us, regardless of what tricks the Communists have up their sleeves to fool us into giving up the very thing that made this country so great – individual liberty.

When Shirley Sherrod, a black woman, was fired by the government (not by Fox News or Andrew Breitbart), I thought she got a raw deal. She was fired because the cowardly government feared what was contained in Breitbart's initial video, which allegedly showed Sherrod making racist statements to an NAACP crowd. The government feared what Fox News would say about that video, coming on the heels of the NAACP's grandstanding resolution condemning alleged racism in the Tea Party movement. The NAACP's resolution was itself racist, because it attempted to paint a grassroots movement of millions of Americans seeking fiscal sanity and Constitutional liberty as nothing more than a bunch of bigots. The cowardly NAACP also condemned Sherrod initially, even though Sherrod's allegedly racist comments were made IN FRONT OF THE NAACP. Go figure that one out.

When Sherrod was fired by the government. she was forced to pull her car off the road and resign over the phone immediately, without being able to offer any defense of her actions. That conversation went as follows:

Sherrod told CNN that the White House urged her to resign Monday afternoon after the video clip surfaced.

"They harassed me," she said. "I got three calls from the White House. At one point they asked me to pull over to the side of the road and do it because you are going to be on Glenn Beck tonight."

Sherrod said the White House calls came from Cheryl Cook, USDA deputy undersecretary for rural development. "The administration was not interested in hearing the truth. They didn't want to hear the truth."

Sherrod wasn't on Glenn Beck that night. The first segment Fox News did on her was on The O'Reilly Factor at 8pm EST. By the time that segment aired (though it was taped a few hours earlier), Sherrod had already been canned. In that segment, Fox host Bill O'Reilly did say Sherrod should be fired for her racist statements. He has since apologized, after discovering the full context of Sherrod's NAACP speech, which showed Sherrod redemptively saying she came to realize she should not judge people by the color of their skin. The first segment Glenn Beck did on Sherrod was on tuesday, when Beck SUPPORTED her and came out against her being fired without being able to tell her side of the story.

So, who was to blame here ?…

Breitbart ? Yes. He aired a video without knowing the full context, which started this whole thing.

Government ? Hell yes. They are the ones who fired Sherrod without cause and without a hearing.

Fox News ? Yes. They aired the Breitbart video without properly vetting it, and some of their hosts jumped to conclusions (others, like Beck, did not).

NAACP ? Yes. They had the same knee-jerk reaction to the Breitbart video as the government and Fox News did.

Now, everybody has recanted and apologized for jumping to conclusions about Shirley Sherrod (though I'm not sure if Breitbart the instigator has apologized), and she is getting her job back, or getting a new job.

So, all is well now, correct ? The wrong has been righted.

No, it's never that simple. Not when politics is involved. When politics is involved, an edge must be gained. The nature of that edge, from the liberal perspective, is that Fox News must be cast as racists, which by extension casts all conservatives as racists in liberal minds. That edge is illustrated in the recent words of none other than Shirley Sherrod, the black woman who was fired without cause or a hearing by a DEMOCRATIC administration. Here's Sherrod talking to Media Matters:

“When you look at their reporting, this is just another way of seeing that they are (racist),” Sherrod told me about Fox in a lengthy interview Tuesday night. “But I have seen that before now. I saw their reporting as biased during the Bush Administration and the Clinton Administration.”

She said Fox showed no professionalism in continuing to bother her for an interview, but failing to correct their coverage.

“I think they should but they won’t. They intended exactly what they did. They were looking for the result they got yesterday,” she said of Fox. “I am just a pawn. I was just here. They are after a bigger thing, they would love to take us back to where we were many years ago. Back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person.”

Still, Fox continued to push for an interview with her, Sherrod said.

“It was unbelievable. I am refusing to be on there. They have been calling me and calling me. I have refused to do an interview because they are biased,” she explained. “I don’t think Fox News does it fairly. It is worse so now. I have sat and listened to the way they cover the news even before this administration and I saw what was going on.”

Sherrod said this situation has worsened her view of racism in media coverage.

“I think it is race. You think we have come a long way in terms of race relations in this country, but we keep going backwards,” she said. “We have become more racist. This was their doing, Breitbart put that together misrepresenting what I was saying and Fox carried it.”

Think about this. Sherrod says she won't talk to Fox News, who has made numerous requests to interview her, but at the same time she says Fox has it's facts wrong (which was true initially, just as the NAACP and the government had the facts wrong). Isn't that the whole reason she SHOULD have gone on Fox, to set the record straight ??? Not to mention that Sherrod did decide to talk to Media Matters, a known left-wing propaganda outfit. For Sherrod to say "we have become more racist" is obviously false, and for her to say Fox News "would love to take us back to where we were many years ago. Back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person,” is just totally, off-the-wall, batshit crazy and outrageous. It's actually far worse than anything Fox News said about her.

Thus, we've come full circle back to the left-wing agenda, which is to cast conservatives as racists, whether they be in the Tea Party movement, at Fox News, or wherever. And now Shirley Sherrod, who thinks Fox News wants to re-institute slavery, Jim Crow laws, or some other claptrap, is a part of it. Sorry Shirley, but being treated unfairly for a day or two doesn't explain away statements like this. You are now engaging in the same kind of tactics the NAACP engaged in when it cast the Tea Party movement as racist (I still haven't heard an apology for THAT yet, btw. Fox News DID apologize for their mistake).

Being a white male fiscal conservative, I have no street cred in liberal eyes, because wild-eyed liberals all suspect I'm a big fat old racist too (they don't really think that. They just have to pretend they do. It's for the greater good, you see. Alinsky outlined the strategy long ago). So, instead of offering my opinion on the race card games being played by left wingers, I'm going to defer to Tea Party speaker Katrina Pierson, a black woman. This was her response to the NAACP's lousy resolution against the Tea Party movement:

The NAACP should only propose resolutions that they have exercised themselves. The Tea Party, having only been active for a year and half, is the only group being singled out for racism in today's society. There are races committed to the destruction of our entire nation and the Tea Party is being targeted as a threat. Perhaps it is a threat. Could it be that the 2008 election served a greater purpose? The existence of the NAACP, and others like it, are threatened by the existence of the Tea Party. The reality is that we colored people no longer require the assistance from other Negros for advancement in 2010. These groups run to the rescue of distressed brown people only when the media deems it newsworthy. Meanwhile, there are inner city black children who continue to grow up fatherless while sharing a neighborhood with stray bullets, drugs and a plethora of liquor stores on every corner. To my understanding of the "I Have a Dream" speech, Dr. King's intention was far from gang-banging and gangster rap. I don't believe that the true meaning of this nation's creed was to move black people from one form of slavery to another. The NAACP has been completely ineffective in my lifetime, and the lack of leadership in the black community has contributed to the ability of these groups to speak on behalf of the rest of us. The ignored and forgotten society that lives among the projects has been abandoned by the likes of NAACP. As well as with other groups and individuals that rode in the coat-tails of MLK, they are irrelevant but continue to feed off of the codependence that they have created among blacks for validation. They are Democrats who bow to a Democrat master today as they once did two hundred years ago. Once this is realized by the forgotten society, race in this country will be as irrelevant as those who thrive off of it. -Katrina Pierson

Thanks, Katrina. I think race is irrelevant too. It's a non-issue within the Tea Party movement, but the left wants to continue playing that race card forever. We aren't a "nation of cowards" on racial matters, as Attorney General Eric Holder once said. What we are is a nation divided along lines of people who either think – A) race does not matter (all men are created equal), or B) race should be used as a political weapon for advantage. I choose option A. I'll leave it for others to decide who the racists are.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. – The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

The First Amendment couldn't be more straightforward. Congress shall make NO LAW abridging the freedom of speech. or of the press.

Simple, right ?

Not for liberals it isn't. When the Supreme Court struck down a clearly unconstitutional provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law with it's Citizens United v. FEC ruling, liberals went wild. Never mind that the McCain-Feingold law in question criminalized free speech in America. Liberals were fine with that. That's what they WANTED. Anti-freedom Democratic Congressmen like John Kerry and John Conyers even considered a constitutional amendment to "fix" the First Amendment, as if free speech is a concept that needs "fixing".

While I'm on the subject of the Citizens United ruling, here's a very interesting opinion on the ruling from Obama Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. I find Kagan's thinking to be so misguided as to call into question her fitness for the bench. Here is the political chameleon Arlen Specter talking about Kagan. From The Hill:

“She was very forthcoming in our discussion,” Specter said. “We talked about the Citizens United case and she said she thought the court was not sufficiently deferential to Congress."

Pardon me ??? The Supreme Court isn't supposed to be deferential to Congress, and I dearly hope it never becomes so. The Supreme Court is supposed to be deferential to the Constitution, period. Congress should also be deferential to the Constitution, but too often is not, as partisan fervor overrules constitutionality. The Supreme Court serves as a check against illegal congressional power grabs. Checks and balances, remember ? The Court doesn't waive the Bill Of Rights out of deference to Congress, or to the Executive branch either. Kagan should have some serious splainin' to do at her upcoming confirmation hearings.

Once the Citizens United ruling was in the books, the outraged Democrats had no choice but to accept the restoration of free speech in America, regardless of how much they dislike the idea. The Kerry-Conyers "fix" to the First Amendment was going nowhere, thankfully.

But still, the Democrats have elections to win come november, and the Dems are afraid corporate campaign ads might not cast the Democratic party in a very favorable light, seeing as how Czar Obama is prepping us for the early stages of the Russian Revolution, Part II..with government takeovers of corporations, the abandonment of due process, huge increases in government power and spending, wage mandates, talk of price controls, etc. Democrats fear America's business sector just might end up helping Republicans win some elections and remove the Dems stranglehold on power. GASP ! Something had to be done, so the Democrats have come up with a devious little plan known as the DISCLOSE Act. The DISCLOSE Act passed the House yesterday, and the White House "strongly" supports it, even though it is as unconstitutional as can be.

Here's why. On it's surface, the DISCLOSE Act appears to be a bill that will increase transparency in campaign spending, which most of us would welcome as a good thing. It requires corporations to disclose the top five donors in their political ads (that's not too bad if applied equally to ALL groups), and it requires the head of the company to appear at the end of the ad (I can't think of a reason for this provision, other than to make it a bit harder to produce a campaign ad).

But that's not why the law is bad. The DISCLOSE Act unconstitutionally exempts some groups from it's requirements and not other groups, which is as clear a violation of the Constitution as you will find. It violates equal protection under the law, and it picks and chooses who may engage in free speech and who may not. It suppresses free speech for some and not for others. As CBS reports:

…the bill exempts the NRA, AARP and the Humane Society from the requirements. It exempts 401C4 organizations with over 500,000 members.

U-N-C-O-N-S-T-I-T-U-T-I-O-N-A-L, and discriminatory. Here's more:

"The Democratic majority in the House jammed through a piece of legislation that clearly violates the Constitution, as well as basic principles of fairness and equity," U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue said in a statement. Donohue's powerful business lobby would be subject to the disclosure rules under the legislation.

Said Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence: "This bill exempting the NRA, and only a handful of other wealthy groups, from having to follow the same rules as other advocacy groups involved in political campaigns is fundamentally flawed, likely can't survive judicial scrutiny, and should be rejected by the United States Senate as currently written."

In case you're wondering why the NRA was exempted, the Constitutionally-challenged Democrats in the House needed the votes of some conservative Democrats who have actually read the Second Amendment in order to pass this farce of a bill.

Naturally, President Barack "Che" Obama supports the blatant violation of the Constitution of the United States of America. Here's Che's take on the legislation:

"The DISCLOSE Act would establish the strongest-ever disclosure requirements for election-related spending by special interests, including Wall Street and big oil companies, and it would restrict spending by foreign-controlled corporations. It would give the American public the right to see exactly who is spending money in an attempt to influence campaigns for public office. The House bill is not perfect – I would have preferred that it include no exemptions."

Ah yes, we see. Che Obama would have "preferred" that the legislation not be a blatant violation of several portions of the Bill Of Rights, but the Constitutional Law Professor supports it regardless. I wonder which class at Harvard Law taught him that constitutional principles only apply SOMETIMES. Until this question is answered, I propose a moratorium on all Harvard grads being elected to Congress (note to liberals – that was satire).

The bottom line here is this – The Democrats know the DISCLOSE Act is unconstitutional, but they don't care. If they pass the legislation into law in July, they calculate it will not be overturned by the courts in time for the november elections, and that's their endgame here. The Democrats are knowingly putting forth an unconstitutional law because they think it will help them in this one election cycle.

Thus, in addition to willfully violating the U.S. Constitution, they are committing election fraud…with the full support of the President Of The United States Of America.

"Meanwhile, you're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't rank all that high on the truth meter. With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations; information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment. All of this is not only putting new pressures on you; it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy." - President Obama, speaking at a Hampton University graduation ceremony.

Barack Obama is one brilliant guy. He knows better than the rest of us. He should not be questioned by bitter, clinging peons like me. We should just bask in the light of his profound wisdom. If Obama wants to give commencement speeches instead of dealing with the worst oil spill in history, we should just accept that he is doing the right thing (shut up liberals. If Bush was doing this, you'd be saying the exact same thing).

If The One says Playstations and iPods are threatening democracy, then, by God, Playstations and iPods are threatening democracy. This is his Word, and he saw that is was Good. Amen.

Uttered by lesser men, the President's statement might sound bufoonish, and the media would lambaste him for it (again, think Bush). I know I've never considered Xboxes and Playstations to be of particular political significance. I've also never considered the open information age to be a political threat, except to the politicians whose utterances don't, to quote Obama, "rank all that high on the truth meter." I also find it ironic that a President who was elected largely due to unexamined mainstream media adoration would turn around and bite the hand that fed him. I guess the Prez was for the ubiquitous media before he was against it.

In truth, it's really only the part of the media that questions Obama and his acolytes that Obama thinks "puts pressures…on our democracy." The President longs for the good old days, when the media consisted of three hundred Democrats and William F. Buckley. You know, the fair and balanced days before Fox News, the internet, and all those other threats to democracy. Back in those blissful times, you'd never even know that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the following yesterday:

While speaking at the Nation’s Catholic Community conference last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pleaded with religious leaders to "instruct" their followers to support immigration reform, according to Fox News.

Pelosi, who is Catholic, told the group of sisters, priests and activists that the church will play an important in shaping the future political landscape.

"The cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops that come to me … say, ‘We want you to pass immigration reform,’ and I said, I want you to speak about it from the pulpit," Pelosi told the audience.

"Some [who] oppose immigration reform are sitting in those pews, and you have to tell them that this is a manifestation of our living the gospels," she added.

Hmmm. Here I thought liberals like Pelosi were FOR the idea of separation of church and state. Now I find that belief is subjective, and should only be applied when a true threat to democracy exists, like when there's a cross that hardly anybody ever sees in the middle of nowhere on public land in the Mojave desert. And now absolutely nobody will see that cross, because it was stolen in the middle of the night after a court ruled it could remain on federal land, where it has stood for seventy years. The culprit undoubtedly resides somewhere in the Tea Party movement. Can I get a big amen on that, liberals ?

Back before the "24/7 constant media environment that bombards us with content," to quote Obama again, we also might not know that ObamaCare was passed based upon lies. ObamaCare doesn't bend down the cost curve, as the President promised time and again, and now the CBO has found it will cost another $115 billion more than estimated. But what's another $115 billion when we're talking about spending trillions ? It's not like this country has any money issues or anything. Nope. We're all rolling in clover. Pay no attention to the 9.9% unemployment rate, or the $12.8 trillion debt, or the $1.5 trillion deficit, or the tsunami of unfunded entitlement liabilities, or nearly every state in the union running in the red. Forget all that. I don't think that's too high on Obama's truth meter.

Also forget that the Democrats are looking to spend $200 billion more by Memorial Day, all of it exempted from the Dems own PayGo (lol) rules. The only thing Obama and the Dems want you to think about is that Obama appointed that debt commission, at the same time he spends more money faster than any previous administration in the history of the country. Greece ain't got nothin' on us.

If only that 24/7 media would just keep quiet.

You see, before the constant barrage of media that Obama doesn't like, that Obama thinks "pressures….democracy," we might not know about a lot of this stuff.

And that's how the President would like it, because the one being pressured is HIM.

The Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard - “Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama Bin Laden and say, ‘listen man,what is it that you’re so angry at me about that you’re willing to have people strap bombs to themselves, or get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings.’ That would be the miracle if we can get, sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us.” – Hollywood actor Matthew Modine

Alrighty then. Even though Modine is a big-time Hollywood movie star who has made such great films as…um, let's see…well, I can't think of one right now….he's an airhead. Here's an idea. Let's airdrop the airhead actor into Waziristan and have him serve as the ambassador of peace and love in dialogues with Osama Bin Laden. The later video that would surface of Modine's beheading would serve as a learning lesson to all like-minded naive liberal douchebags.

Note to Modine – it is well-documented why Bin Laden hates us. Maybe you'd know why if you didn't have your head stuck so far up your own blowhole. Btw, Matty, one of the reasons Bin Laden hates us is because of our culture, as portrayed in HOLLYWOOD MOVIES. Bin Laden would love to have YOUR head on a stick.
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Dumbest Statement Of The Week - This comes from our Treasury Secretary, Tim 'TurboTax' Geithner. From Fox News:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Thursday it's "deeply unfair" that some financial institutions that got taxpayer-paid bailouts are emerging in better shape from the recession than millions of ordinary Americans. He acknowledged public outrage over that and said people watched with disdain as Washington protected high-risk banks and investment houses, even as the national unemployment rate was soaring to double-digit levels for the first time in a generation. But in a nationally broadcast interview, Geithner also argued that President Obama had no choice when confronted with a financial crisis. "As the president has said, we had to do some very unpopular things," Geithner said. "People looked at what had happened."

"It's not fair. It's deeply unfair," he said. "He (Obama) had to decide whether he was going to act to fix it or stand back … and that would have been calamitous for the American economy."

As great as it is to have TurboTax Tim pedaling disinformation for Obama, I'd be remiss not to point out that the TARP program, which bailed out those financial institutions, came from President Bush, not President Obama. Obama's contribution to the recovery was the stimulus package. Geithner didn't mention that in his statement, but he did say the following:

The secretary agreed that the national jobless rate — now at 9.7 percent — is "still terribly high and is going to stay unacceptably high for a very long time" because of the damage caused by the recession.

Um, if unemployment is going to stay unacceptably high for a very long time, doesn't that mean Obama's contribution, the $876 billion stimulus package, didn't work ?
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Liberals vs. Conservatives - This is from an e-mail I received from a friend, original source unknown. It seems worth repeating now:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
If a liberal is down-and-out, he demands that somebody else take care of him.

If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.
If a liberal doesn't like a talk show host, he demands that the talk show host be removed from the air.

If a conservative doesn't believe in God, he doesn't go to church.
If a liberal doesn't believe in God, he demands that all mentions of God be removed from the public arena.

If a conservative decides he needs health insurance, he goes shopping
for it, or figures out what he needs to do to afford it.
If a liberal decides he needs health insurance, he demands that someone else provide it for him at their expense.

If a conservative reads this, he'll forward it to his friends so they can have a good laugh.
If a liberal reads this, he will delete it because he's offended.

It's no surprise that liberals want to be called progressives these days. There's not much about them that evokes the root meaning of the word "liberal," which is "liberty," aka, "freedom." Liberals are all about coercion. "Progressive" coercion, of course. They know they can't do it all at once, or America would rise up against them. Instead, they take incremental progressive steps towards totalitarianism, or as Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev once put it, "Oh you Americans! You're so gullible! We'll spoon feed you socialism until you're Communists and don't even know it." That's the endgame of progressivism. When we are all dependent on the government for our survival, they have won. Checkmate. Freedom gone. Friedrich Hayek called it The Road To Serfdom.
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I don't really want to write about this subject, but the media has been obsessed with it for days, so I guess I should. If you have been near a tv news program, you already know there has been some ugly language directed toward members of Congress, there have been a few instances of vandalism (broken windows) at Democratic party headquarters around the nation, and a bullet hit the window of Republican Eric Cantor's campaign headquarters.

Naturally, we all condemn this type of behavior. Democrats and Republicans both condemn it. Certainly, every member of Congress condemns it. That should go without saying, but because it appears more of the bad behavior is coming from right-wingers than from left-wingers (this time), the media and Democrats have to pretend like this is somehow representative of the entire conservative movement. The left-wingers have to pretend Republican speech is responsible for it, or the entire Tea Party movement is responsible for it, or Fox News is responsible for it, or talk radio is responsible for it. Instead of calling it what it is, a few fringe nuts acting up, which exists all across the political spectrum, we have to pretend that conservative speech is somehow inciting people to violence, and it is a huge powderkeg about to explode.

I have to note, the same narrative NEVER seems to exist when left-wingers are engaging in vandalism, violence, threats, and ugly speech. For example, at the recent G20 summit in Pittsburgh, left-wing anarchists and other left-wing protesters smashed store windows, threw bottles at the police, set trash cans on fire, etc, but you NEVER heard the media warn about the dangers of left-wing violence. You never heard anyone tell the left to tone down THEIR rhetoric, and you never heard Republicans in Congress tell Democrats to get their people under control, as Democrats are telling Republicans now. In fact, you probably didn't even know the anarchists are left-wingers, because the media never told you. As another example, when the previous President, Republican George W. Bush, was hung in effigy, had a film and a book released about assassinating him, had Air America running skits about assassinating him, and even had the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, talk about killing him, you NEVER heard any warnings about left-wing extremism from the mainstream media. Evidently, that kind of left-wing incitement to violence isn't worth reporting. It doesn't fit the mainstream media narrative. But when left-wing nuts like Janeane Garofalo or Keith Olbermann call the Tea Party movement racist, the media laps it up and repeats it ad nauseum.

Unfortunately, threats against public officials is nothing new. They are always despicable and cowardly acts, and far more common than we know, because usually, the public officials don't make them public. Such acts should be condemned whether they are coming from the left, the right, or the center. They should not be exploited to fan the flames of partisan anger, which will only raise the possibility of more threats and/or increasing violence. Republican Eric Cantor talked about those who would fan the flames, and said it best in the following video:

Even more unfortunately, I don't have to look very far to find someone who will fan the flames of partisan anger. My blogger pal, the Reverend at the Blog Of Mass Destruction, wrote about the recent threats and vandalism on his blog. The Reverend has a way of starting out with a valid point and then taking off on an extreme tangent into sheer insanity. The linked blog piece was no exception. He attempted to falsely characterize words by Republicans Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and John Boehner as calls to violence, when in reality they were nothing but calls for conservative political action. The Reverend ended his hysterical rant by saying everyone on Fox News (except Shep Smith) and the conservative radio talkers should be charged with crimes. CRIMES. I guess their crime is what most of us would call freedom of speech. I can't help but feel a little sorry for the Reverend, who is sounding more and more like Hugo Chavez as time goes on. Chavez just arrested the owner of a television station in Venezuela because the owner criticized Chavez' government. This is how the Reverend thinks we should treat conservatives in America. He thinks we should arrest them for their political opinions. Pitiful. Like most crazy people, the Reverend is unable to recognize his own craziness.

The official proclamation from the media is that President Obama is a moderate now, after word came from the White House that Obama will propose a three-year federal spending freeze in tonight's State Of The Union address. The official proclamation claims that the President got the message from the Massachusetts senatorial election, and now he's taking bold steps to deal with our disastrous deficit/debt problem, the one thing certain to destroy the economic future of this country.

Let's scrutinize the official proclamation for accuracy.

1. Obama's spending freeze would only cut non-defense discretionary spending. This is the small part of the federal budget, representing only about 20% of federal spending. It excludes nearly all the major expenditures, such as Social Security, Medicare, other entitlements, and defense. Over ten years, the White House says this spending freeze would save $250 billion, but the White House isn't proposing a ten-year freeze, it's proposing a three-year freeze, from 2011 through 2013. Estimated savings – about $15 billion per year for three years. To put this in perspective, the deficit for FY2009 was $1.5 TRILLION. The estimated deficit for FY2010 is $1.35 TRILLION. Obama's spending freeze is like taking a drop of water out of a bucket-full, it's so minor. If this is an example of Obama being a moderate, we're in trouble.

2. Obama already INCREASED non-defense discretionary spending by about $100 billion during his first year in office. In FY2009, President Bush's last budget, that spending was $589 billion. Obama jumped it to $687 billion for FY2010, and he did it during a recessionary period of no inflation. That's not moderate either. That's standard liberal big government policy.

3. Prior to announcing the three-year spending freeze, Obama had already submitted budgets to Congress for the next three years. Those budgets had called for REDUCTIONS in non-defense discretionary spending after FY 2010. As Alex Conant explains:

In the budget proposal that President Obama submitted to Congress last year, his budget office already projected actual cuts and freezes in “non-defense” discretionary spending for the next three years. That’s in part because of the huge increase in that area of spending that the President requested (and received) for the current fiscal year. To be specific: FY2009 (President Bush’s last budget) had $589 billion in non-defense discretionary spending. That number jumped to $687 billion in FY2010 (Obama’s first budget), and then drops to $641 billion in FY2011, $622 billion in FY2012 and $625 billion in FY2013. So for the White House to now boast that it will freeze non-defense discretionary spending is hardly news. If anything, it’s backtracking on its earlier plans to actually cut that area of spending.

By my math, if Obama freezes spending at the FY2010 level, he will actually be spending $173 billion more than his own previous budget proposals called for. Still sound moderate ???

4. Also excluded from Obama's spending freeze will be the rest of his stimulus package (which has now swelled from $787 billion to $862 billion, according to the CBO), the massive spending of ObamaCare if it passes (at least a trillion over ten years and most likely WAY more), and a second stimulus package that is being contemplated ($174 billion). I don't see anything moderate there either.

There's nothing at all moderate about Barack Obama. Those who say there is are playing their typical game of 'Let's Pretend.'

Still, this spending freeze that isn't…this drop in the bucket…this $15 billion pretend spending cut amidst trillions in defcits and massive federal spending and entitlement increases….has liberals in an uproar. As the Nobel-prize winning Princeton professor, NY Times columnist, and alleged economist, Paul Krugman, said of the imaginary spending freeze, "this is appalling on every level." President Clinton's former Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, actually had the audacity (of a dope) to refer to Obama's move as "fiscal austerity." These guys REALLY like to play 'Let's Pretend.' There has been nothing austere about Obama's fiscal policies to date. Nothing. The reactions of Krugman and Rubin are typical of the liberals, er, I mean progressives. You see, progressives have two fiscal scenarios:

1) During lean economic times like this, they advocate massive government spending and tax increases (like Obama's bank tax, health care taxes, carbon tax, etc, etc).

2) By contrast, during flush economic times, they advocate…um….massive government spending and tax increases.

See the difference ? I don't, but somehow progressives do. They must call them progressives because they progressively take away your income, progressively take away your liberty, progressively take away your rights, and progressively ruin America. I can't think of any other reason to call them progressives on the fiscal front.

Far from being a moderate, Obama is the biggest liberal to ever hold the office of President, by far. His little kabuki theater of fiscal responsibility shouldn't fool anyone.

P.S. – Speaking of progressives taking away your rights, I see the progressive anti-free speech crusade is continuing. They are still trying to stop groups from airing ads on television. This time they are trying to censor Tim Tebow's mother. They don't like her Super Bowl ad, where she says she's glad she didn't listen to the doctors who recommended she abort the future Heisman trophy winner. Progressives know we can't have any crazy talk like that floating around, with mothers going around saying they're glad they had their babies and stuff. With this brilliant move, progressives have now placed themselves solidly in the anti-life, anti-free speech camp. You couldn't make this stuff up, nobody would believe it. They are not only against freedom of speech now, they are against human beings as well.

After listening to President Obama whine about the Supreme Court's ruling on the Citizens United v. FEC case, where the Supremes struck down an unconstituional McCain-Feingold prohibition on campaign ads, I wondered, exactly how big of a hypocrite is Obama ? Apparently, his hypocrisy knows no bounds. Remember, Obama is the one who broke his word on taking public campaign financing so he could raise $600 million to defeat John McCain, who did take public campaign financing. LOTS of that money came from special interests, running the gamut from Wall Street to the unions. Obama also spouted quite a lot of anti-lobbyist rhetoric on the campaign trail in 2008, and then turned around and had several lobbyists on his White House team (another broken Obama campaign promise), including John Podesta, who headed Obama's transition team.

As it turns out, 2009 was a very, very good year for lobbyists, and guess which lobbying firm increased it's revenue the most ? If you said, 'John Podesta's lobbying group,' you win the grand prize. The revenue of the Podesta Group jumped 60 percent in 2009. Some grand coincidence, eh ?

Next, consider Obama's health care bill, which catered to practically every medical special interest in sight – the health insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, AARP, AMA, the unions, etc. Then consider the bribes to Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) to get their health care votes. ObamaCare has been a special interest bonanza, and partly responsible for the lobbying boom in 2009, a boom that happened in the midst of a recession, no less.

Lobbying, in and of itself, is perfectly legal and constitutional, just as is running political ads on television. Those activities are part and parcel of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Here's the text of that Amendment, which I'll repeat here because many liberals seem unaware of it, judging by their recent reactions to events:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Lobbying IS petitioning the government. The massive increases in the number of lobbyists over the past decade (they've doubled in number) isn't really the problem. It's only a symptom of the real problem, which is – the massive expansion in the size, scope, and power of the federal government itself. This has gone on regardless of which party was running things. The lobbyists grew during the Bush administration's huge expansion of government, and the lobbyists are growing during Obama's all-time record expansion of government. Btw, I heard Obama say the other day that he wasn't for big government, he was for smart government. That's another of Obama's titanic lies. He is for BIG GOVERNMENT, period. And that leads inexorably to more lobbyists, more special interest catering, and more corruption, just as it has this year. When the government is trying to remake the entire health care system, is granting subsidies to everyone and everything the government deems wise and appropriate, is disseminating $800 billion in stimulus money to whomever it deems wise and appropriate, is bailing out every industry it deems wise and appropriate, is contemplating how to raise taxes to pay for it all, what else COULD happen, other than every special interest in the country flocking to Washington D.C. to get their share of the taxpayer-funded bounty ??? There is no other possible reality.

The problem certainly is not McCain-Feingold. The problem is every big government advocate everywhere. The answer to the problem is contained in the very U.S. Constitution the left wants to blissfully ignore. The Constitution was designed with the intent of the government being limited. The founding fathers designed it that way on purpose. The founders didn't want the state to be all-powerful. They'd seen enough of that in the monarchies and dictators of their own time. The Constitution is a description of the powers and limitations on the government, and the political power brokers in Washington D.C. are shredding it article by article, page by page. Thus, the solution to all the corruption and favor-buying in Washington D.C. is the same as it's always been – limited government. This is best expressed by the Libertarian/Conservative key phrase – limited government, lower taxes, liberty. It is the ONLY way.

Obama is hardly the solution to the problem. He and those like him ARE THE PROBLEM. The only reason Obama dislikes the Citizens United v. FEC ruling is because he fears much of that corporate advertising won't be in his favor. He fears that money might favor his pro-business opponents, the very ones Obama would like to keep quiet. Obama is perfectly fine with special interests, as long as those special interests are in his corner, as long as he can use them to advance his agenda, and as long as he can use them to consolidate his power.

The bottom line is, if government weren't so all-powerful, if it wasn't handing out favors to everyone in sight, then there wouldn't be so many standing in line jostling for those favors. And if we start cutting government spending, there'd be a nice little side benefit – we could move off the path to bankruptcy that we're on now. We might start righting our financial ship.

But I'm sure our President would consider all this crazy talk. It makes too much sense, and in addition, it doesn't leave the President free to redistribute everyone's wealth (aka, thievery).

1. How can President Obama hold a jobs summit and not invite the Chamber Of Commerce ? That's like holding a football game and forgetting to invite the offense.

2. How can the unemployment rate drop from 10.2% to 10% when 11,000 more jobs were lost in november 2009 ?

3. From 1776 to 1913, the value of the dollar increased by 13%. In 1913, the Federal Reserve was implemented. Since 1913, the value of the dollar has dropped by 92%. Why do we have a Federal Reserve ?

4. Why would the President announce a withdrawal date of july 2011 from a war that is not yet won ?

5. Why would President Obama call the november 2009 jobs report "the best jobs report since december 2007" and talk about White House administration officials hugging each other in joy over the good news, when the november unemployment rate is 10% and the december 2007 unemployment rate was 4.9% ? FYI – the january 2008 unemployment rate was also 4.9%.

6. Why are the extramarital affairs of golfer Tiger Woods a big news story ?

7. If the Federal Reserve prints money out of thin air, backed by nothing, in order to, say, lend $85 billion to AIG, and then AIG pays back that money from profits, isn't the net effect nothing but a devaluation of the dollar ?

8. Isn't a devaluation of the dollar nothing but a hidden tax on the assets of all Americans ?

9. If a citizen continually spends more money than he/she makes, he/she will go bankrupt. How is it any different when the government does the same thing, except that the government will take all the citizens down along with it ?

10. Why would we hand health care over to government control when the part of health care the government does control (Medicare/Medicaid) is already so far in the red ?

11. How can the Obama stimulus possibly be working when it is based upon money borrowed or printed out of thin air, backed by nothing, and is therefore entirely artificial ? (See questions #3, #7, and #8).

12. If question #11 is too confusing, perhaps this will help simplify the matter. Does a man up to his neck in credit card debt improve his financial situation by getting more credit cards ?

13. What is wrong with asking the President of the United States to produce his original birth certificate ?

14. Is there any major Obama policy that is supported by the American people ?

15. Why don't we just put Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in front of a firing squad and save everyone a lot of time and money ?

16. How do tax increases ever help the private sector economy ?

17. Shouldn't there have to be at least one act of Tea Party-related violence (from the Tea Party side) before the media denounces the crazy, violent, extremist Tea Partiers ?

18. On the same subject, why is it considered crazy and extreme to be in favor of fiscal responsibility, liberty, and the U.S. Constitution, as the Tea Partiers are ? What does that say about the state of our country ?

19. On the jobs front, which Obama policies are pro-business ?

20. Why are Democrats now in favor of cutting Medicare, when they've been against Medicare cuts for four decades ?

If you want to know why the White House wishes to discredit Fox News, look no further than this post. Today, I'm going to post something I first heard from Glenn Beck (cue the liberal wailing and gnashing of teeth). This is from a 2008 speech by Ron Bloom, President Obama's Manufacturing Czar:

Here's are Ron Bloom's relevant words from that video again:

"Generally speaking we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system, to beat the market, or at least find someone who will pay you a lot of money because they're convinced that there is a free lunch. We know this is largely about power, that it's an adults only, no limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it that if you want a friend, you should get a dog."

Here we have Obama's Manufacturing Czar saying the free market is nonsense. This is the guy who's in charge of creating jobs in the manufacturing sector (yikes. Maybe the Associated Press is right when they say higher unemployment is "the new normal" for America). Bloom has a heavy union background, which is fine, but I'm left to wonder where Bloom thinks those union manufactured products are going to be sold, if not on that nonsensical free market. What is Bloom's alternative ? Is his alternative some type of government-controlled market ? When Bloom says in his next breath that he agrees with Mao that political power comes from the end of a gun, it does sound like government control is what he's talking about. If so, that's pretty frightening stuff, and about as unamerican as you can get.

I actually don't want to believe this. I hope there's some other explanation for Ron Bloom's words, and there could be. I hope this video is taken out of context, and he meant something else altogether, but I couldn't find anything on the internet to counter or provide more context to his statements. I really hope we don't have people in positions of authority in this country who believe such things.

Several conservatives are now running around saying, 'oh, look. Here's another Obama official endorsing Chairman Mao.' I have to take some issue with that, based upon my current knowledge. This isn't the same thing as Van Jones, Obama's former Green Jobs Czar, being an avowed communist. This isn't the same thing as Anita Dunn, Obama's communications director, saying Mao is one of her two favorite political philosophers. This is just Ron Bloom agreeing with one thing Mao said, and I actually agree with Bloom and Mao about that one thing. Political power often DOES come from the end of a gun. That's why our founding fathers designed a Constitution to limit government power. That's why I believe in that Constitution, and believe in limiting government power as much as humanly possible. The more power we cede to the government, the more powerful that government gun becomes. That's also why the free market is NOT nonsense, as Bloom would have us believe. The free market is essential to a free country. There is no acceptable alternative. As our founding documents state, our rights do not come from men, they come from a higher power. Our government exists to secure those rights, not to trample all over them.

Let's get the crazy train rolling at high speed right off the bat with this first quote…

“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.” – Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse (link).

Let me get this straight. After years and years of Democrats attempting to undermine President Bush at every turn in the War On Terror, er, I mean the Overseas Contingency Operation, including attempts to lose the Iraq war, a DNC spokesman now has the nerve to say Republicans have thrown in with the terrorists because some Republicans opined that Obama didn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize (which he most assuredly didn't, as Obama himself even said). Wow-freakedy-wow-wow. Words fail me. I literally can't think of a negative adjective strong enough to convey how wrong this remark is. I can't even think of a way to equate an opinion on the Nobel Prize with throwing in with terrorists, but evidently Brad Woodhouse can.

And Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) seems to agree. I expect this stuff from dolts like Keith Olbermann or the other lib-nuts on MSNBC, who routinely compare Republicans to jihadis, but not from Democratic Senators or the DNC.

Also, somebody better hip Woodhouse to the fact that the Obama administration has decided the Taliban isn't our enemy any longer. Or Hamas either, for that matter. I bet that'll do wonders for the morale of our troops who've been fighting against the Taliban and dying in Afghanistan for the last seven years. Acceptance of the Taliban is also a major step backwards for human rights, especially from a President who just won the Nobel Peace Prize here on Planet Orwell. Sigh. Is the world turning on it's ear, or is it just me ?
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Next up is this very conscientous Democratic Senator, who is fully committed to doing his job:

"I don't expect to actually read the legislative language [of the health care bill] because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life." –Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE)

Yes, being a Congressman is soooo hard, and now they expect Sen. Carper to read AND understand the legislation he's voting upon ? What's a poor Senator to do ? Study or something ? I presume Carper's state of confusion over the legislation won't prevent him from voting "Yea" on the health care bill. You just don't see integrity like Carper's anymore. On second thought, yes you do, all the time on Capitol Hill, and that's the problem.
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Now we move on to another patriotic Senator, John Kerry (D-NVA). Here's what Kerry said about cap-and-trade legislation:

"Let me emphasize something very strongly as we begin this discussion. The United States has already this year alone achieved a 6 percent reduction in emissions simply because of the downturn in the economy, so we are effectively saying we need to go another 14 percent."

Yeah, baby ! We're fundamentally transforming America !!! If we can only make this recession a lot worse, and make it last forever, we can help the environment ! And golly gee, if we go into a full-fledged permanent Great Depression II, maybe we can even reach the Kyoto emission standards ! Victory is at hand ! Yes We Can ! Yes We Can ! Yes We Can, Destroy The Economy !!!! C'mon, everybody sing !

"Obama ! mmmm mmmm mmmm."

I can't stand it. Where did I put that hammer ?

Our Supreme Court Justices are very learned people. They come from the finest schools and study for years and years to master the law. They work their way up through the legal system, and these "best of the best" reach the pinnacle of their profession in order to decide the most difficult and pressing legal issues of the day…

Like whether a cross should be allowed to stand on a rocky outcrop in the Mojave Desert here in the land of the free.

The ACLU says no, and lower courts have agreed. I guess one painted cross in the middle of nowhere means we are a theocratic state, like Iran. The ACLU thinks such things because they are such reasonable people.

Here's a photo of the offending cross. (Warning – the religious content may cause small children to go blind or start speaking in tongues.)

I apologize for subjecting you to such offensive imagery, and I sincerely hope it caused no permanent scars. I wish I could have shown you a Mapplethorpe crucifix in a jar of urine instead, something, you know, "artistic."

The offensive cross pictured above is so offensive that it's been covered up for the last few years. Here's what the offensive cross has looked like recently.

There, that's better. Now the cross looks more like a billboard. Nothing is more American than a billboard (which reminds me, please keep shopping to help us out of the recession.) Maybe we can get a Mapplethorpe-like "artist" to paint a picture of a cross in jar of urine on the blank billboard-cross that stands in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert here in the land of the free. The ACLU wouldn't object to that. The ACLU would defend that. That's because the ACLU is filled with very reasonable folks. They are looking out for your freedoms by, um, censoring stuff.

The problem with the offensive cross is that it is on federal land in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert. Because federal land is not like regular land, federal land has certain conditions. I know federal land looks just like regular land, consisting of dirt, rocks, bushes, and stuff, but it's not. Federal land is very special land in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert here in the land of the free. You can tell federal land is not the same as regular land because it has the word "federal" attached right to it. That makes it sacred land. Strike that. The word "sacred" is also probably offensive when speaking of federal land. Federal land is too special to be referred to as sacred.

We can't allow this one cross to remain on very special federal land in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert here in the land of the free, because it could have very serious negative consequences, like this:

The above offensive crosses are on federal land at the Arlington National Cemetery. Somebody better alert the ACLU to this outrage. Personally, I can't wait for the ACLU to try to take on Arlington. Why they are messing around with one trivial cross in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert here in the land of the free is beyond me. Why go for that one cross when the motherload is right outside of Washington D.C. ? C'mon ACLU, man up. Go after Arlington. I dare you.