Independents

One definition of an Independent might be is that they have no compass. If the Democrats ever ran a conservative, that definition would not hold water. But, they have not, so the idea of being a Independent is just silly; their compass is meaningless. They have lost their way, because they are not getting their way. Let’s explain.

In 1976, Ford and Regan fought a brutal delegate battle. Regan refused to get behind Ford and really campaign for the GOP. As a result, we got the liberal Carter.

In 2008, McCain ran a lackluster campaign  I said at the time I would vote for a barking dog over a liberal. Not many people agreed with me as Republicans stayed home in droves.

In 2012, after Romney was the nominee, not a single other candidate really backed him. Gary Johnson even ran as a Libertarian. Where were Rick Santorum, Bachmann, Perry, etc? Romney would have won with one or two more states. But, Republicans stayed home in droves and we got another four years of Obama.

Today Jeb Bush said he might run. Already I read that Republicans will vote Independent or stay home if Bush were to become the nominee. Are they fucking insane? Did they learn nothing on the playground. Half a loaf is better than starving. If this attitude of if I can’t have my candidate I will ensure a liberal is elected continues, there really is no need for the GOP or any other party.

Wake Up!

Modernist’s Snobbery

“Somebody who reads only newspapers and at best the books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely nearsighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.”

Albert Einstein

More From The Religion Of Peace

Ibn Khjaldun one of Islamic thinkers of the Middle Ages has an essay arguing that looting, not trade, is a morally preferable way to acquire wealth. Why? Because trade is based own exploitation of the needs of others and is therefore base and shameful. Looting, by contrast, is courageous and manly since you have to defeat a rival in open combat and take his stuff.

Not at all compatible with any democratic system of government that protects property right is it?

Read more horrors.

As Dictator

I don’t think we can get the country back on track without drastic action. The liberals have been screwing things up since TDR. So here is my first day plan as dictator. I would like to get the laws back to pre 1901. Is there a reset button for that?

Day One:

Shut down all of the alphabet agencies. If any prove to be actually needed, we can open the doors again.

No federal taxes will be collected to fund state or local projects. Those projects deemed necessary can be done by the local governments. Need a bridge, fund it and pay for it locally. No more of the nonsense of sending money to DC and writing a grant to get it back.

The only federal tax shall be a percentage of current individual income. There will be no corporate, cap gains, dividend, death, excise, duties, etc. States will be encouraged to do the same.

Public pensions shall be in line with private pensions for both payout and years of service.

The VA will be closed. All care will be done by private providers. The VA is nothing but a bureaucracy with a lot of incompetents waiting on their pensions.

Pensions will be provided to service personal injured in combat, without respect to years of service.

Public unions are banned. Top public union leaders will be exiled to Kyrgyzstan.

No private union can mandate membership/dues as a employment condition.

Give the UN one month to pack and get out of the country. No more funding.

End funding to the IMF or World Bank.

No impediments to free trade.

Term limits on all federal elective offices - 12 years max.

The publishers of the NYT will have all their assets seized and the entire clan will be shipped to Dem Rep of the Congo.

 

Is There An End To Government

The Facts:

Cynthia and Robert Gifford have owned and operated Liberty Ridge Farm in Schaghticoke, New York for over 25 years. Like many small farm families, they open the farm to the public for events like berry picking, fall festivals, and pig racing.

They also host weddings and receptions. When the Giffords host weddings, they are involved in every aspect of the wedding planning and celebration: they greet and drive guests in their farm trolley, decorate the barn, set up floral arrangements, arrange fireworks displays, and provide catering.  The only wedding-related service Liberty Ridge Farm does not offer is providing the official for the wedding ceremony.

Melissa Erwin and Jennie McCarthy contacted the Giffords to rent the family’s barn for their same-sex wedding ceremony and reception. Cynthia Gifford responded that she and her husband would have to decline their request as they felt they could not in good conscience host a same-sex wedding ceremony at their home.

Unfortunately, New York’s Human Right’s law (Executive Law, art. 15) creates special privileges based on sexual orientation that trump the rights of business owners. Because the Giffords’ family farm is open to the public for business, New York classifies it as a “public accommodation” and then mandates that it not “discriminate” on the basis of sexual orientation.

The Giffords must pay a $1,500 mental anguish fine to each of the women and pay $10,000 in civil damages penalty to New York State. If they can’t pay in 60 days, a nine percent interest rate will be added to that total. The Giffords must also institute anti-discrimination re-education classes and procedures for their staff.

The question is whether this law just. Should the government be able to force family businesses to betray their consciences and participate in ceremonies that violate their beliefs? Should the government be in the business of “rehabilitating” consciences or “re-educating” its citizens to change their moral beliefs about the definition of marriage?

Or more to the point, should the government dictate who a private business does business with?

I sent the above to friend who is lesbian and involved in seeing that same sex marriages are accorded all the rights of conventional marriages. She replied:

I would need to agree with the government.  I don't believe the fine is okay, as it does appear a bit high. 

However, I do feel that if any business is offering services to the public then gay or straight, black or white and all the colors of the rainbow in-between, shall be served.

It is not religious belief, it is a frickin' barn.  And if these folks serve the public, that is what a public business does. 

The part about 'having gays come for hay rides, picking fruit (wow-did they think that one out!!),' and so forth, their personal feelings are out of line, from my way of looking at it.  You just can't have it both ways.   This appears to be their way of thinking.

Phooee.  I don't think they need the 're-training' but if they have a public business license then the rules are clear.

 

You might suspect that I would take a different tack on this.

You’re either on the right side of history and humanity, or you’re not. But, it’s not a proper function of government to coerce people into playing nice.

First, a business license does not require you to do business with anyone. But this goes way beyond that. This is coercive big government run amok. A government that believes it should be able to interfere in even the most intimate affairs of its citizens. Where is the line on what rights the business owners have and the “rights” of potential customers? The definition of Fascism is government control of privately owned capital.

Is the next step a requirement that any one that can sign a marriage license, be required to marry anyone?

I am a rule of law type. Laws are made a legislature, a group of people elected to make laws. Here we have regulations, not laws, made by one elected person, a governor. The entire world had this form of government until modern times. The King made the rules and his judgment could not be over ruled. This is still the way most countries operate.

The proper function of the executive is to see that the laws are faithfully administered. The executive does not make laws.

Courts operate under the law. They do not makes law.

I understand the couple had their feelings hurt. [or cynically, they suspected the response of the owners and went after them] There is no law they could have sued under. So, a progressive governor created an unelected commission to dispense “justice”.

This incident shows a system without legal protection for free speech or the right of association, rights that evolved in Western law, that are being reined in for political correctness. Perhaps I should be relived they were not burned at the stake.

Lone Survivor

I read the book when it came out. We watched the film this year. I favor the book. There is one scene in film that I don’t recall in the book. Luttrell and Murphy are having their final conversation. Both have been shot multiple times and they are assuring each other that they “Are always in the fight”. Now think about this for a second. You have been shot with 7.62 rounds more than once. Have frag wounds from mortar and RPG’s and you are still ready to fight. Same as in BUD/S you never give in. You sit in the cold water with your swim buddy, your boat team all the time being offered hot chocolate and a warm blanket to quit.

Greed

Greed, why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned—never to those wanting to take other people's money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largess dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described by the anointed as "greed" on the part of government or the clientele of government.

Thomas Sowell

Just A Silly Post

Remember the SNL skits where Chevy Chase as a land shark would try to get the woman to open the door by saying Candygram or Flowers? I still chuckle when I think of it. This image of a happy seal delivering SEAL’s approximates the same thing for me. I can hear Chevy saying SEAL delivery.

 

The door opens and mayhem ensues.

 

Want more excitement in your life. Go to SEAL bar, not one where they take their wives and kids, but one of the others where the First and Second Class Petty Officers socialize. Just stand in the middle of the bar and inquire if any pussy squids want to take it outside.

The Grand Child Syndrome

I think I have figured out why no one wants to join me in revolution. They are too involved with their grand kids. It seems to make no difference to them that their grand kids, at best, will be faceless wards of the state, more probably under Sharia Law or slaves for the Chinese. They have thrown in the towel on making any effort to keep the wheels from coming off this country. They just can not be bothered with politics. It’s easier to just look the other way.

Just as well that I can not find the revolution as I can’t hit shit anymore, so the ill-trained Homeland Security would pick me off pretty quick.

No Matter What You Read, Know This

Jihad is the theological imperative to “fight all men until they say there is no god but Allah,” as Mohammed himself commanded.

“Allahu Akbar” is the traditional Muslim battle cry.

 

Tocqueville wrote in 1838, “Jihad, Holy war, is an obligation for all believers. … The state of war is the natural state with regard to infidels … These doctrines of which the practical outcome is obvious are found on every page and in almost every word of the Koran … The violent tendencies of the Koran are so striking that I cannot understand how any man with good sense could miss them.”

 

Dr. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi from 1996 to his death in 2010 Tantawi was the Grand Sheik of the most prestigious institution for Sunni Islamic theology, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, a position reserved for the highest authority in Sunni Muslim thought. The following is a representative sample of this esteemed theologian’s thinking:

“In the Qur’an the Jews are people of various bad qualities, known for their loathsome characters and contemptible behavior. The Qur’an calls them infidels and liars and ingrates; selfish, arrogant and cowardly naggers and cheaters; rebels and lawbreakers, cruel and constitutionally given to deviating from the correct path . . . Jews are prone to crime and aggression. They cheat and steal people’s money with lies. The Jews must be oppressed and humiliated.”

 

Convinced?

The Real Problem

“The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their President.”

I don’t recall where I found this

The Winds Of War

Americans are tired of their world role now. But tireless men, like Hitler, like Putin, always find advantage in other nations' fatigue.

Where will the next world war start? Kiev, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Tehran, Afghanistan, the South China Sea?

Fight To The Last Palestinian

That seems to be the tactic of Hamas. I say accommodate them. Kill every man, woman and child In Gaza. Mothers encourage their sons to martyr themselves and the children are so indoctrinated with hate, recovery is not possible.

Thane Rosenbaum puts it better.

Let's state the obvious: No one likes to see dead children. Well, that's not completely true: Hamas does. They would prefer those children to be Jewish, but there is greater value to them if they are Palestinian. Outmatched by Israel's military, handicapped by rocket launchers with the steady hands of Barney Fife, Hamas is playing the long game of moral revulsion.

The people of Gaza overwhelmingly elected Hamas, a terrorist outfit dedicated to the destruction of Israel, as their designated representatives. Almost instantly Hamas began stockpiling weapons and using them against a more powerful foe with a solid track record of retaliation.

What did Gazans think was going to happen? Surely they must have understood on election night that their lives would now be suspended in a state of utter chaos. Life expectancy would be miserably low; children would be without a future. Staying alive would be a challenge, if staying alive even mattered anymore.

To make matters worse, Gazans sheltered terrorists and their weapons in their homes, right beside ottoman sofas and dirty diapers. When Israel warned them of impending attacks, the inhabitants defiantly refused to leave.

On some basic level, you forfeit your right to be called civilians when you freely elect members of a terrorist organization as statesmen, invite them to dinner with blood on their hands and allow them to set up shop in your living room as their base of operations. At that point you begin to look a lot more like conscripted soldiers than innocent civilians. And you have wittingly made yourself targets.

The Root Of The Problem

We saw a building sign this morning in Idaho for The Health and Welfare office. The reason I comment on it, is that below it in equally large letters it was repeated in Spanish.

That, my friends, depicts the root of the problem we have with illegal's. Yes, that’s the correct word. We don’t have a problem with a fence, our problem is we failed to ensure everyone is assimilated into the American culture. The culture we had in the 50’s, before we got politically correct and started making signs in Spanish.

Missed Lessons

There is a lesson we should have drawn from Vietnam -  don’t start a war you don't intend to fight vigorously enough to win. We did not learn from Vietnam and we repeated it in Iraq and Afghanistan. We won Vietnam on the ground, but tossed it away politically. Ditto, in the recent wars.

A war must continue until the opponents will to fight is totally and completely vanquished. The Civil War is a example, Grant and Sherman pressured Lee until he could no longer resist. WWI begat WWI as we entered into an armistice, not a surrender. Germany was quick to rearm and start again.

Japan and Germany were fought to the ground in WWII and emerged as democracies.

60 years after the cease fire in Korea, North Korea remains totalitarian and belligerent.

Until we kill almost every Salafi, we will remain in danger from attack. They are just as fanatical as the Japanese were in prior to and during WWII.

Another Military Disaster

I read The Outpost by Jake Trapper. It’s about a remote Army outpost in Afghanistan that should have never been. It was located in a particularly dangerous area close to the Pakistan border. Small, difficult to defend, 45 minutes from air support, down a road that only small trucks could navigate. And the worst part, in a valley with mountains on three sides allowing direct fire into the outpost.

Military history is replete with dumb ass ideas. The charge of the light brigade, charging machine guns with overlapping fire day after day in WWI. This outpost reminded me of Dien Bien Phu – the epic 1954 French decision to locate a base in valley surrounded by mountains that could only be resupplied by aircraft. The VC handed the French their heads in that battle and ended French involvement in Vietnam.

Afghanistan reminds me Vietnam in several ways. In both we were up against several forces: 1) a corrupt government, 2) no way to project permanent force to the enemy, 3) supplies from allied countries [Russia and China for Vietnam and Pakistan for Afghanistan], 4) ability to cross neighboring borders with ease, 5) an enemy willing to kill citizens to intimidate the locals against us. 6) locals who had a history of shifting sides going back centuries – the clan, the tribe, not citizenship is paramount.

If Alexander, Genghis Khan, the British and Russia could not tame the place, what the hell were we thinking? But, that is another story. Here we have Generals and Colonels deciding to put bases in indefensible positions – a place that anyone that has gone through platoon level maneuvers knows not to do – you never take the low ground by choice. Then compounding the problem by refusing to withdraw or put enough resources into play to make it work.

We have great people in our military. If only they had commanders that could make good choices.

Looking Back At Iraq

It is historically inaccurate to say the war was cooked up by Bush alone.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Army Third Division soldiers advance on Baghdad, April 2003 (Getty Images via NRO)

So who lost Iraq?

The blame game mostly fingers incompetent Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. Or isBarack Obama culpable for pulling out all American troops monitoring the success of the 2007–08 surge?

Some still blame George W. Bush for going into Iraq in 2003 in the first place to removeSaddam Hussein.

One can blame almost anyone, but one must not invent facts to support an argument.

Do we remember that Bill Clinton signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 that supported regime change in Iraq? He gave an eloquent speech on the dangers of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

In 2002, both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution authorizing the removal of Saddam Hussein by force. Senators such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Harry Reid offered moving arguments on the Senate floor why we should depose Saddam in a post-9/11 climate.

Democratic stalwarts such as Senator Jay Rockefeller and Representative Nancy Pelosi lectured us about the dangers of Saddam’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. They drew on the same classified domestic- and foreign-intelligence reports that had led Bush to call for Saddam’s forcible removal.

The Bush administration, like members of Congress, underestimated the costs of the war and erred in focusing almost exclusively on Saddam’s supposed stockpiles of weapons. But otherwise, the war was legally authorized on 23 writs. Most of them had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and were unaffected by the later mysterious absence of such weapons — which is all the more mysterious given that troves of WMD have turned up in nearby Syria and more recently in Iraqi bunkers overrun by Islamic militants.

Legally, the U.S. went to war against Saddam because he had done things such as committing genocide against the Kurds, Shiites, and the Marsh Arabs, and attacking four of his neighbors. He had tried to arrange the assassination of a former U.S. president, George H. W. Bush. He had paid bounties for suicide bombers on theWest Bank and was harboring the worst of global terrorists. Saddam also offered refuge to at least one of the architects of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and violated U.N.-authorized no-fly zones.

A number of prominent columnists, Right and Left — from George Will, David Brooks, and William F. Buckley toFareed Zakaria, David Ignatius, and Thomas Friedman — supported Saddam’s forcible removal. When his statue fell in 2003, most polls showed that over 70 percent of Americans agreed with the war.

What changed public opinion and caused radical about-faces among the war’s most ardent supporters were the subsequent postwar violence and insurgency between 2004 and 2007 and the concurrent domestic elections and rising antiwar movement. Thousands of American troops were killed or wounded in mostly failed efforts to stem the Sunni–Shiite savagery.

The 2007–08 surge engineered by General David Petraeus ended much of the violence. By Obama’s second year in office, American fatalities had been reduced to far below the monthly accident rate in the U.S. military. “An extraordinary achievement,” Obama said of the “stable” and “self-reliant” Iraq that he inherited — and left.

Prior to our invasion, the Kurds were a persecuted people who had been gassed, slaughtered, and robbed of all rights by Saddam. In contrast, today a semi-autonomous Kurdistan is a free-market, consensual society of tolerance that, along with Israel, is one of the few humane places in the Middle East.

In 2003, the New York Times estimated that Saddam Hussein had killed perhaps about 1 million of his own people. That translated into about 40,000 deaths for each year he led Iraq.

A Saddam-led Iraq over the last decade would not have been a peaceable place.

Islam Gave Us The Civil War

My view of Islam is that it was started by a guy who dreamed of being someone. He accomplished his goal by either good tactics or blind luck, but he did conquer other tribes and steal enough booty and enslave enough folks to keep his fellow thieves happy and loyal to him. He was able to recruit more to his fold with each successful conquest. If a battle went against him, he would claim that they lost because they had lost their faith in Allah.

Now if I went up on a mountain and came down telling folks what Allah had revealed to me, you would place no credence in it. Mohammed had the charisma to pull it off, but that does not make it true.

So I say that Islam is based on conquest, thievery and slavery and it was spread throughout the Mediterranean world by more conquest, thievery and slavery.

While slavery was not unique to Islam, it was the followers of the Islam faith to bring it to the places they conquered. Don’t believe in Allah? Then you are our slave.

So just who were the folks enslaving blacks and selling them to whites? The ones who say Allahu Akbar just before cutting off your head. The same ones who were grabbing Europeans in the 1700’s and  ransoming them. The same ones that Jefferson refused to pay tribute to, then known as the Barbary Pirates.

I say it was the followers of Islam that made slavery possible in North and South America. It was the followers of Islam who raided villages all over western Africa to capture humans that were sold to the redneck English who settled the southern states.  The rednecks who had little, took care of nothing and made their living off the sweat of other humans and dreamed of being the equals of titled English. It was the combination of Islam and the dregs of the English that made the Civil War.

Is this too much of a reach?

Benghazi – Security and Root Cause

This discusses two Benghazi topics, the lack of security and the root cause.

Doesn't Hillary Clinton Know the Law?

She says she didn't make security decisions on Benghazi. But that's the secretary of state's job.

By VICTORIA TOENSING
June 17, 2014

In her interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer last week, Hillary Clinton said "I was not making security decisions" about Benghazi, claiming "it would be a mistake" for "a secretary of state" to "go through all 270 posts" and "decide what should be done." And at a January 2013 Senate hearing, Mrs. Clinton said that security requests "did not come to me. I did not approve them. I did not deny them."

Does the former secretary of state not know the law? By statute, she was required to make specific security decisions for defenseless consulates like Benghazi, and was not permitted to delegate them to anyone else.

The Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999, or Secca, was passed in response to the near-simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Aug. 7, 1998. Over 220 people were killed, including 12 Americans. Thousands were injured.

Bill Clinton was president. Patrick Kennedy, now the undersecretary of state for management, was then acting assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security. Susan Rice, now the national security adviser, was then assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

As with the Benghazi terrorist attacks, an Accountability Review Board was convened for each bombing. Their reports, in January 1999, called attention to "two interconnected issues: 1) the inadequacy of resources to provide security against terrorist attacks, and 2) the relative low priority accorded security concerns throughout the U.S. government."

Just as U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens did in 2012, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, Prudence Bushnell, had made repeated requests for security upgrades in 1997 and 1998. All were denied.  

To ensure accountability in the future, the review boards recommended "[f]irst and foremost, the Secretary . . . should take a personal and active role in carrying out the responsibility of ensuring the security of U.S. diplomatic personnel abroad" and "should personally review the security situation of embassy chanceries and other official premises." And for new embassy buildings abroad, "all U.S. government agencies, with rare exceptions, should be located in the same compound."

Congress quickly agreed and passed Secca, a law implementing these (and other) recommendations. It mandated that the secretary of state make a personal security waiver under two circumstances: when the facility could not house all the personnel in one place and when there was not a 100-foot setback. The law also required that the secretary "may not delegate" the waiver decision.

Benghazi did not house all U.S. personnel in one building. There was the consulate and an annex, one of the two situations requiring a non-delegable security waiver by the secretary of state.  

Mrs. Clinton either personally waived these security provisions as required by law or she violated the law by delegating the waiver to someone else. If it was the latter, she shirked the responsibility she now disclaims: to be personally knowledgeable about and responsible for the security in a consulate as vulnerable as Benghazi.

 

Root Cause - Retaliation

This is excerpted from Benghazi: The Definitive Report by Brandon Webb and Jack Murphy. You may have heard of Brandon, an ex SEAL who as a sniper laid waste to terrorists in Iraq. They know of what they write. The ebook is available for $3 on Amazon.

John Brennan is running his own private war, he is not going through the normal chain of command , and operations are not deconflicted. Ambassador Stevens, for instance, was not read in to the JSOC operations in Libya. He was kept in the dark and ultimately killed in a retaliation that he never could have seen coming. Likewise, the CIA never knew what hit them. They were trying to track down fissile material in Libya and had no way of knowing what was coming.

Ambitious bureaucrats like John Brennan need to be reined in or fired if these operations are to be successful, or we will see plenty more Benghazis happen. This occurs on a fairly regular basis in Afghanistan, where JSOC will raid a terrorist compound and kill the enemy, and the conventional units who patrol the area end up paying the price. Long after JSOC takes off in their black helicopters, the conventional forces are getting IED-ed along the roads by angry jihadists who are retaliating against any Americans they can find.

This is what really happened in Benghazi, and this is why the Obama administration is more than happy to have the media fixated on red herrings like poor security at the consulate or wound up in an intellectual Gordian knot about some YouTube video.

12 Million Hard Core Liberals

In 2012, there were 211 million persons of voting age. 122 million, 57% voted. Like most recent elections, the vote was split about 50%. That means there are 60 million Democrats. Or put another way, there are about 90 million that don’t care enough to vote, 50 million that go along with the Dem line and 12 million hard core liberals.

The Eloi

Back in May of 2012, I wrote a few words comparing modern liberals with the Eloi depicted in the The Time Traveler. One of my favorite commentators picks up the comparison here.

All Lies

I will have the most transparent administration in history.
The stimulus will fund shovel-ready jobs.
I am focused like a laser on creating jobs.
The IRS is not targeting anyone.
It was a spontaneous riot about a movie.
I will put an end to the type of politics that "breeds division, conflict and cynicism".
You didn't build that!
I will restore trust in Government.
The Cambridge cops acted stupidly.
The public will have 5 days to look at every bill that lands on my desk
It's not my red line - it is the world's red line.
Whistle blowers will be protected in my administration.
We got back every dime we used to rescue the banks and auto companies, with interest.
I am not spying on American citizens.
Obama Care will be good for America.
You can keep your family doctor.
Premiums will be lowered by $2500.
If you like it, you can keep your current healthcare plan.
It's just like shopping at Amazon.
I knew nothing about "Fast and Furious" gunrunning to Mexican drug cartels.
I knew nothing about IRS targeting conservative groups.
I knew nothing about what happened in Benghazi.
I have never known my uncle from Kenya who is in the country illegally and that was arrested and told to leave the country over 20 years ago.
And, I have never lived with that uncle.  He finally admitted (12-05-2013) that he DID know his uncle and that he DID live with him.
If elected I promise not to renew the Patriot Act.
If elected I will end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan within the 1st 9 months of my term.
I will close Guantanamo within the first 6 months of my term.
I will bridge the gap between black and white and between America and other countries.

"I, Barrack Hussein Obama, pledge to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America."

Off The Cliff

Mark Steyn feels that people are going to choose to go off the cliff, progressivism’s natural end.

“I find the idea that the progressive project, which we’re in now, which for some people now is the point of life, that life becomes a sort of exercise in solipsistic kind of self-expression, and it should all be about going to college till you’re 35 and taking early retirement at 52 and you do some desultory little activity between 35 and 52, but that the purpose of life now has been utterly transformed in the course of the 20th century in a way that’s unsustainable. So how do you persuade people that you can’t have a 30-year retirement, and you can’t stay in school till 28th grade, that life…the values are not gonna work. And I’m not sure, when you say progressivism, I’m not sure that in the end it won’t want to — the way to bet is that it will want to go off the cliff and over the cliff, and the question then is, how do we pick up ourselves up after that.”

On Reading The Constitution

When reading the Constitution, most of it it straight forward. I get it. It’s almost like the 10 Commandants. There is no wiggle room in Thou shalt not kill. However, the Constitution has 225 years of interpretation. I am not aware of any formal changes to the Big 10.

However, you can not just read the Constitution and take it as written because we have 225 years of case law, precedents, that may alter the meaning that lesser mortals such as me have of any section of the Constitution.

For instance, perhaps the section most abused is the Commerce clause. (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3) The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." The first thing that grabs me is states shall not discriminate against other states. Also that states are prohibited from engaging in treaties with foreign nations and Indian Tribes or other states. This is reserved to Congress. It seems fairly straight forward to me. Read it again, can you find any thing in it that would restrict how much wheat you plant on your land for your own use? Well do you? If not it may show that your don’t have the kind of mind needed to interpret the Constitution as a Supreme Court Justice.

For 160 years no one saw that the Commerce Clause could not only restrict wheat growing, but a wide variety of actions. Wickard v. Filburn, was a 1942 United States Supreme Court decision that recognized the power of the federal government to regulate economic activity.

A farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat for on-farm consumption in Ohio. The U.S. government had established limits on wheat production based on acreage owned by a farmer, in order to drive up wheat prices during the Great Depression, and Filburn was growing more than the limits permitted. Filburn was ordered to destroy his crops and pay a fine, even though he was producing the excess wheat for his own use and had no intention of selling it. The Court decided that Filburn's wheat growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for chicken feed on the open market, and because wheat was traded nationally, Filburn's production of more wheat than he was allotted was affecting interstate commerce. Thus, Filburn's production could be regulated by the federal government.

Silencing Conservatives

 

Democrats are working hard to make sure conservative groups are silenced in the 2014 midterms.

By

KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Jan. 16, 2014 7:19 p.m. ET

President Obama and Democrats have been at great pains to insist they knew nothing about IRS targeting of conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofits before the 2012 election. They've been at even greater pains this week to ensure that the same conservative groups are silenced in the 2014 midterms.

That's the big, dirty secret of the omnibus negotiations. As one of the only bills destined to pass this year, the omnibus was—behind the scenes—a flurry of horse trading. One of the biggest fights was over GOP efforts to include language to stop the IRS from instituting a new round of 501(c)(4) targeting. The White House is so counting on the tax agency to muzzle its political opponents that it willingly sacrificed any manner of its own priorities to keep the muzzle in place.

The fight was sparked by a new rule that the Treasury Department and the IRS introduced during the hush of Thanksgiving recess, ostensibly to "improve" the law governing nonprofits. What the rule in fact does is recategorize as "political" all manner of educational activities that 501(c)(4) social-welfare organizations currently engage in.

Congressional sources tell me that House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R., Ky.) had two priorities in the omnibus negotiations. One was getting in protection for groups that morally oppose ObamaCare's contraception-coverage requirement. The other was language that would put a hold on the IRS rule.

The White House and Senate Democrats had their own wish list, including an increase in funding for the International Monetary Fund, the president's prekindergarten program and more ObamaCare dollars.

Yet my sources say that throughout the negotiations Democrats went all in on keeping the IRS rule, even though it meant losing their own priorities. In the final hours before the omnibus was introduced Monday night, the administration made a last push for IMF money. Asked to negotiate that demand in the context of new IRS language, it refused.

That's a lot to sacrifice for a rule that the administration has barely noted in public, and that then-acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel claimed last fall when it was introduced is simply about providing "clarity" to nonprofits. It only makes sense in a purely political context. The president's approval ratings are in the toilet, the economy is in idle, the ObamaCare debate rages on, and the White House has a Senate majority to preserve. With one little IRS rule it can shut up hundreds of groups that pose a direct threat by restricting their ability to speak freely in an election season about spending or ObamaCare or jobs. And it gets away with it by positioning this new targeting as a fix for the first round.

And an IRS rule that purports to—as Mr. Werfel explained—"improve our work in the tax-exempt area" completely ignores the biggest of political players in the tax-exempt area: unions. The guidance is directed only at 501(c)(4) social-welfare groups—the tax category that has of late been flooded by conservative groups. Mr. Obama's union foot soldiers—which file under 501(c)(5)—can continue playing in politics.

 

Alexis de Tocqueville

No one I know of understood democracy as well as Alexis de Tocqueville and had the gift to express his insights in clear concise terms.

Barry is trying to shift the focus away from the very real scandals to inequality. Here is what Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835 noticed what might be called the paradox of equality: As social conditions become more equal, the more people resent the inequalities that remain.

"Democratic institutions awaken and foster a passion for equality which they can never entirely satisfy," Tocqueville wrote. "This complete equality eludes the grasp of the people at the very moment they think they have grasped it . . . the people are excited in the pursuit of an advantage, which is more precious because it is not sufficiently remote to be unknown or sufficiently near to be enjoyed."

One result: "Democratic institutions strongly tend to promote the feeling of envy." Another: "A depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom."

Which makes a fine argument of preventing the tyranny of the majority from seeking to right perceived wrongs.