Archive for September, 2009

A concept called “incorporation” — why not the Second Amendment as well?

September 24, 2009

Your fundamental rights are about to be evaluated by no less than the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals. Granted, a three Judge panel ruled in your favor from that very court earlier. This particular full court though is well known to follow populist political correctness rather than the Constitution more often than not.

Some enterprising Congress – person or Senator that wants to be President some day should shove through legislation that forces “incorporation” of the entire Bill of Rights to be the law of the land.

Until that day your unalienable rights are subject to some person that may not have your best interest’s at heart. Indeed, why should someone else  even be allowed to make those types of decisions for you? Are you so incompetent that you are unable to do that for yourself?

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Czar Wars: FCC promotes racism

September 23, 2009

Remember, you heard it here that the new FCC Comisar was, and is, a clear and present threat to the American way of life. Not only does he have a completely warped understanding of the First Amendment he is solidly in the left’s corner when it comes to racism. Only whites can be racist…At least that is what his ilk appear to believe.

Mark Lloyd is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s Chief Diversity Officer, a.k.a. the Diversity Czar. And he has in a recently discovered bit of archive audio goodness detailed his rather disturbing perspective on race, power and the American system.

(Audio located below the fold, courtesy of Breitbart.tv and Naked Emperor News)

This is of course in addition to Lloyd’s rather disturbing perspective on the First Amendment.

“It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.

“[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance.”

And Lloyd’s rather disturbing perspective on Venezuelan Communist dictator Hugo Chavez’s “incredible…democratic revolution.” To go with Lloyd’s bizarre admiration for the thuggishly fascistic manner in which “Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country.”

We have said repeatedly that Lloyd is a man myopically focused on race. What is revealed here is more than just that. Listening to excerpts of his offerings at a May 2005 Conference on Media Reform: Racial Justice reveals a man that finds great fault with our nation’s power structure – as he defines and sees it. And in his racially-warped, finite pie worldview, too many white people sit alone in the too few spots atop the heap. They’re “good white people,” mind you, but …

SOURCE

Canada leads the way; Where is obama?

September 23, 2009

The maniac that runs the Islamic republic of Iran will be speaking at the U.N. Canada will boycott the blood thirsty fool while the Americans apparently will twiddle their thumbs.

More obama foreign policy failure? Read on…

Canada will reportedly boycott Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the United Nations Wednesday in protest of his anti-Israel comments and repeated Holocaust denials.

Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon and other Canadian delegates will vacate their seats at the U.N. General Assembly’s annual debate in New York when the Iranian president approaches the podium, the National Post said, citing an unidentified Canadian official.

“President Ahmadinejad’s repeated denial of the Holocaust and his anti-Israel comments run counter to the values of the U.N. General Assembly, and they’re shameful,” the official told the newspaper. “He uses his public appearances to provoke the international community, and that is why Canada’s seats will be empty.”

U.S. State Department Noel Clay told FOXNews.com he knew of no plans to boycott Ahmadinejad’s speech before the 192-member chamber.

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An American? The answer is yes! obamacare and more…

September 23, 2009

“Obama and his commissars are labeling Americans who just happen to oppose Cap & Trade, billions for clunkers and to the havoc the leftists are trying to wreak on our health care system, as brainless sheep. Large groups of citizens rise up to voice their grievances and he calls them mobs, claims that grass roots are really made of Astroturf and tells his minions to ape the Soviets and rat out their friends and neighbors. Some people I know refer to what Obama is doing as social engineering. I think it’s something even worse: socialist engineering. I wonder if anyone else has noticed that whenever a black conservative voices an opinion, the liberal claque insists that he’s not an authentic black, and when a white conservative voices an opinion, Obama’s sycophants insist he’s not an authentic American. When Obama was running for the presidency, a few of us Paul Revere wannabes were warning you: ‘The reds are coming! The reds are coming!’ Naturally, Obama, a born and bred race hustler who learned his lessons well from Jeremiah Wright, wanted you to believe that the only reason people could possibly have for opposing him was his race. But it was never about the color of his skin. It was always about the color of his politics.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

“I traveled on the Tea Party Express tour bus as a singer/songwriter, entertainer and spokesperson; 16 states, 34 rallies in two weeks. I experienced vicious racial verbal attacks, not from the tea party protesters. The racial hate expressed against me all came from the left, people who support President Obama’s radial socialist agenda. … These racists are outraged by my opening lines I boldly proclaimed at each rally. ‘Hello my fellow patriots! I am NOT an African-American! I am Lloyd Marcus, AMERCIAN!‘ … The tea party audience’s passionate response to my proclamation was a surprise to me. I did not know so many Americans disapproved of hyphenating pushed on us via political correctness. … Liberals’ response to my YouTube videos, columns and performances on the Tea Party Express have been extremely racist, vicious and hate-filled. In their incredible arrogance, they vilify me for loving my country and not viewing myself as a victim of white America. In the sick minds of liberals, as a black man in America, I must support President Obama regardless of his policies. I must resent white America. I must feel entitled to the earnings of other Americans. My belief that my success or failure is totally in the hands of myself and my God is anathema to them. As to the claim that the tea party protesters are racist, they are not. Quite the opposite. At every rally, with thousands in attendance, I was overwhelmingly showered with affection and thanks for standing up for America. … These protesters are not racist. They are decent hard working ordinary Americans who love their country and disapprove of the radical changes planned by the Obama administration.” –singer, songwriter and columnist Lloyd Marcus

“Hospitals across the country are going bankrupt because the federal government forces them to provide free services to illegals. This situation appears to have angered some segment of the population, in particular, American citizens who pay taxes to support the hospitals, but then are forced to spend hours writhing in pain in hospital waiting rooms. With Americans in a boiling cauldron of rage about the government’s impotent response to the tsunami of illegal immigrants, last year, both political parties ran candidates for president who favor amnesty for illegal immigrants. And now Democrats have the audacity to tell us to our faces that national health care won’t cover illegals. Not only that, but they tell us we must not be able to read if we think it does. … [S]ection [246 of the bill], which liberals keep brandishing like a DNA-stained dress, states: ‘Nothing in this subtitle shall allow federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.’ In other words, illegal aliens are excluded from precisely one section of the thousand-page, goodie-laden health care bill: Section 246, which distributes taxpayer-funded ‘affordability credits’ to people who can’t afford to pay for their own health care. Even this minor restriction on taxpayer largesse to illegals will immediately be overturned by the courts. But the point is: Except for vouchers, the bill does not even pretend to exclude illegals from any part of national health care — including the taxpayer-funded health insurance plan. Moreover, liberals won’t have to wait for some court to find that the words ‘nothing in this subtitle shall allow’ means ‘this bill allows,’ because the bill contains no mechanism to ensure that the health care vouchers aren’t going to illegal aliens. Nor does the bill prohibit the states from providing taxpayer-funded health care vouchers to illegals. Democrats keep voting down Republican amendments that would insert these restrictions — just before dashing to a TV studio to denounce anyone who says the health care bill covers illegal aliens.” –columnist Ann Coulter

And then we have…

“On Thursday, the administration scrapped its missile defense plans for Eastern Europe. The ‘courageous’ Czechs and Poles will have to take their chances. Did the ‘threat from Iran’ go away? Not so’s you’d notice. The dawn of the nuclear Ayatollahs is perhaps only months away, and, just in case the Zionists or (please, no tittering) the formerly Great Satan is minded to take ’em out, Tehran will shortly be taking delivery of a bunch of S-300 anti-aircraft batteries from (ta-da!) Russia. Fancy that. Joe Klein, the geostrategic thinker of Time magazine, concluded his analysis thus: ‘This is just speculation on my part. But I do hope that this anti-missile move has a Russian concession attached to it, perhaps not publicly (just as the U.S. agreement to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey was not make public during the Cuban Missile Crisis). The Obama administration’s diplomatic strategy is, I believe, wise and comprehensive — but it needs to show more than public concessions over time. A few diplomatic victories wouldn’t hurt.’ Golly. We know, thanks to Jimmy Carter, Joe Klein and many others, that we critics of President Obama’s health care policy are, by definition, racist. Has criticism of Obama’s foreign policy also been deemed racist? Because one can certainly detect the first faint seeds of doubt germinating in dear old Joe’s soon-to-be-racist breast: The Obama administration ‘needs to show more than public concessions over time’ — because otherwise the entire planet may get the vague impression that that’s all there is. Especially if your pre-emptive capitulations are as felicitously timed as the missile-defense announcement, stiffing the Poles on the 70th anniversary of their invasion by the Red Army. As for the Czechs, well, dust off your Neville Chamberlain’s Greatest Hits LP: Like he said, they’re a faraway country of which we know little. So who cares? Everything old is new again.” –columnist Mark Steyn

SOURCE

The Dog and the bone: obama…

September 23, 2009

“Many years ago, as a small child, I was told one of those old-fashioned fables for children. It was about a dog with a bone in his mouth, who was walking on a log across a stream. The dog looked down into the water and saw his reflection. He thought it was another dog with a bone in his mouth — and it seemed to him that the other dog’s bone was bigger than his. He decided that he was going to take the other dog’s bone away and opened his mouth to attack. The result was that his own bone fell into the water and was lost. At the time, I didn’t like that story and wished they hadn’t told it to me. But the passing years and decades have made me realize how important that story was, because it was not really about dogs but about people. Today we are living in a time when the President of the United States is telling us that he is going to help us take that other dog’s bone away — and the end result is likely to be very much like what it was in that children’s fable. Whether we are supposed to take that bone away from the doctors, the hospitals, the pharmaceutical companies or the insurance companies, the net result is likely to be the same — most of us will end up with worse medical care than we have available today. We will have opened our mouth and dropped a very big bone into the water.” –economist Thomas Sowell

“The dilemma … is between the democratic process of the market in which every individual has his share and the exclusive rule of a dictatorial body. Whatever people do in the market economy is the execution of their own plans. In this sense every human action means planning. What those calling themselves planners advocate is not the substitution of planned action for letting things go. It is the substitution of the planner’s own plan for the plans of his fellowmen. The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans. He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute preeminence of his own plan.” –Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)

“As the president’s approval ratings fall and rise and fall again, some of his supporters in journalism and politics are returning to days of old when the label ‘racist’ could end any discussion and force the accused either into stunned silence, or groveling repentance. I suspect the tactic won’t work this time because Obama supporters will have difficulty explaining how a mostly white country could elect a black man president last November and ten months later become a racist majority. Racism has always been a one-way street for the Left. … According to liberal doctrine, black people can never be racist because they are members of a victim class created by white liberals as a kind of modern plantation to keep blacks voting for liberal Democrats. … The president’s race would be a factor only if Americans shied away from criticizing him because of it. That they are not is a triumph of Martin Luther King Jr.’s hope that people be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Some opinion polls show that Obama’s character is being judged and found wanting by a rapidly growing number of Americans, at least a small percentage of whom are black. With Democrats controlling all three branches of government, including significantly wide margins in Congress, isn’t there a better explanation than racism for why the president is having difficulty with some of his proposals? … There is a better explanation for the growing opposition to President Obama. It has less to do with his ethnicity than it does his credibility. Character, after all, is colorless.” –columnist Cal Thomas

SOURCE

“Essential Liberty Project”

September 23, 2009

If you don’t like what is taught in today’s schools and colleges about the proper role of government then you might be interested in this.

Fellow Patriots,

Please take a moment to read about a critical Constitution education initiative.

The mission of the “Essential Liberty Project” is to support the restoration of constitutional integrity and Rule of Law. Our objective is to distribute millions of Essential Liberty booklets to high school and collegiate students. As a primer on liberty, as “endowed by our Creator” and codified by our Founders in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, these booklets have a proven record as an outstanding resource for young Patriots. That success is attributed to both its comprehensive introduction on the history of American Liberty by Mark Alexander, and its compact size — which is to say it is at hand for debate, anytime, anywhere.

Please help us launch the Essential Liberty Project in one of two ways:

First, if you are a parent or grandparent of a high school or college student, please consider providing these Essential Liberty Constitution booklets to your student’s entire class, grade or school. The booklets are available in bulk from PatriotShop.US.

Second, if you would rather sponsor the distribution of Essential Liberty booklets to student groups, organizations, clubs, military units, etc., you can do so at our Essential Liberty Project sponsorship page.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked if the delegates had formed a republic or a monarchy. “A republic,” he responded, “if you can keep it.”

We invite you to support the Essential Liberty Project, and help restore Rule of Law for our great Republic, and keep its flame of liberty bright for future generations.

Thank you,

Christy Chesterton
Director of Advancement

P.S. — For questions or comments about the “Essential Liberty Project,” contact us at EssentialLiberty@PatriotPost.US

Bloomberg Follies: Grassroots politics is alive and well in the United States

September 20, 2009

The felon that is Mayor of New York City just can’t seem to get a break from the people that he so despises. Imagine that!

Grassroots politics is alive and well in the United States, as gun owners have been making their voices heard to their mayors. In the past few weeks, gun owners have been contacting their mayors who joined New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG).

The result:  MAIG has lost over 50 members because gun owners took action to tell their mayors the truth about this organization.  Many of the mayors who have resigned from MAIG have indicated they were unaware of the full extent of their anti-gun agenda.  They now know they were mislead by MAIG’s claims that it was only concerned with “illegal” guns.

In response to NRA-ILA’s efforts to inform voters and mayors regarding the truth about MAIG and its anti-gun agenda, Bloomberg’s group has contacted mayors repeating their claim that they are only concerned with “illegal” guns, claiming that NRA is misrepresenting their agenda.  But the facts are clear.

MAIG has never taken any direct action regarding illegal guns. (Click here to read more about MAIG.)  All of their priorities, from repealing the Tiahrt amendment, to opposing interstate Right-to-Carry reciprocity, have been targeted at law-abiding gun owners.  Law enforcement groups, like the Fraternal Order of Police, have made their support for the Tiahrt amendment clear.  The Tiahrt amendment protects not only ongoing criminal investigations, but also the lives and safety of law-enforcement officers. (To read what FOP President Chuck Canterbury wrote on the Tiahrt amendment click here.)

The real reason MAIG opposes the Tiahrt amendment is because it interferes with the efforts of anti-gun mayors like Bloomberg, Boston’s Thomas Menino (a MAIG co-founder), and Chicago’s Richard Daley to bring bogus lawsuits against lawful firearm manufacturers.  These suits are designed to punish gun makers for the acts of criminals, and to use the courts to impose strict regulations on gun sales that legislatures have rejected; gun regulations that negatively impact law-abiding gun buyers, but have no impact on criminals.

MAIG opposition to Right-to-Carry reciprocity is a clear example of their opposition to legal gun ownership and self-defense.  Reciprocity would only apply to those who have permits, and then only if all local laws are followed.  Criminals and gunrunners do not undergo background checks, take training courses, and seek certification to obtain a carry permit–law-abiding gun owners do.

Gun owners must keep up the pressure on their mayors to ensure that their rights are respected.  If your mayor is a member of MAIG, contact him and let him know the truth about this anti-gun group’s real agenda. (To find if your mayor is a member of MAIG, click here.)  If your mayor is one of those who has resigned, call and thank him for his support.

SOURCE

Income Redistribution: A Tale of Two Americas

September 18, 2009

We in our humble shop have discovered that John Edwards was right after all: There are two Americas. However, we don’t believe this story was quite what he had in mind.

An analysis by Chris Edwards (no relation to the former senator) of the Cato Institute found that federal civilian employees are a group not exactly hit hard by the recession. They now have an average compensation package (wages plus benefits) that doubles the average compensation package found in the private sector. Furthermore, it’s an overall disparity that’s increased over the last eight years.

In relating his findings, Edwards notes, “The result [of a lack of fiscal restraint during the Bush administration] has been an increasingly overpaid elite of government workers, who are insulated from the economic reality of recessions and from the tough competitive climate of the private sector.” While federal employees tend to complain about their pay scale — which is “only” about 60 percent higher than the private sector’s — it’s telling that they quit their jobs much less often than do those in the private sector. Obviously few are forced out because the federal government never shrinks in size, and, as the data show, federal employees are loath to give up their gold-plated benefit packages.

It’s a trend that will only increase with the proclivity of Barack Obama to expand the highly unionized government workforce and create additional bureaucracy. After all, someone has to push pencils for the dozens of czars Obama has appointed to supplement the already burgeoning workforce in place under those Cabinet department heads.

However, there is a chance this difference may be erased soon. With the proposed addition of thousands more workers to referee cap-n-tax and ration our health care, our growing government may finally leave no private sector jobs to be compared. That seems to be the desired result of this administration’s policies.

SOURCE

Guns, Crime and Prison Population

September 18, 2009

According to new data released by the FBI, violent crime in America continued its downward trend in 2008, proving once again that criminals — not more guns — are the problem. While murder, manslaughter and rape have all been on the decline since an all-time high in the early ’90s, killings dropped 3.9 percent between 2007 and 2008 alone, even with millions of guns purchased during that time — especially those scary “assault rifles” that give liberals such heartburn. “These are rates we haven’t seen since the 1960’s, even though the change from year to year has been rather small,” said Alfred Blumstein, a criminal justice professor at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Of course, despite the drop in crime (or the fact that none of these crimes even require a gun), liberals continue to push for stricter gun control laws in the interests of our “safety,” and the Leftmedia (expectantly) points out that crime usually rises during recessions and that the bulk of this data was gathered before the height of the economic crisis.

While government is trying to deprive us of our Second Amendment rights, courts are advancing the rights of criminals. When presented with a class-action suit brought by California inmates, a three-judge district court panel found that prison overcrowding is robbing them of their constitutional rights and decided to free 46,000 criminals in order to make incarceration more comfortable. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay on the ruling, arguing that the safety of Californians would be at risk if the prisoners are released, but the Supremes refused.

So, if the Left has its way, we should all turn in our firearms and pray that Big Brother will protect us from the thousands of newly released criminals prowling the streets. Another attempt to pay lip service to the Constitution while trampling it.

SOURCE

ACORN — A Tough Nut to Crack

September 18, 2009

ACORN: Organizing the community one prostitute at a timeACORN — A Tough Nut to Crack

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) bills itself as “the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people.” Its mission is typical leftist activism — anything from advocating for a higher minimum wage and the type of home loans that precipitated the housing crisis to ballot initiatives and voter registration. We know that ACORN has also submitted fraudulent voter registration forms filled out by “Mickey Mouse” and other fictional characters. But, hey, “get out the vote” knows no bounds. Also, Barack Obama worked alongside ACORN during his own “community organizing” days.

This week, news broke that the Census Bureau, which had planned to partner with ACORN in next year’s census, severed all ties with the organization. Then the U.S. House and Senate each voted to deny the group access to further federal housing funds (though who knows what will happen in Conference Committee). Even the Obama White House “distanced” itself from this taxpayer-funded organization.

So why all the fuss? If inquiring minds read only The New York Times, they might be in the same blissfully ignorant boat as ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson, who, when asked about the ACORN scandal, claimed, “I don’t even know about it.”

The story began when two young conservative activists, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, posed as a pimp and a prostitute seeking advice on obtaining a loan for a home to use as a brothel, evading income tax on the young woman’s income and claiming as dependents underage El Salvadoran girls they wanted to employ. In five different ACORN offices (Baltimore, DC, New York, and San Diego and San Bernardino, California), workers bit on the story, hooker, line and sinker, freely giving pointers without so much as batting an eye on how to get illegal loans and evade taxes. The videos are posted on Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com. None showed concern for the obvious implication of child abuse.

The Times, however, with the motto “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” didn’t find anything fit to print until days later, and then only with the laughable headline, “Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn.” As Charlie Gibson condescended, “[M]aybe this is just one you leave to the cables.”

The truly unfortunate thing is that ACORN has received more than $50 million in taxpayer dollars since 1994 and was set to receive $8.5 billion in “stimulus” cash. Most Democrats are feverishly turning off the funding spigot before this scandal drags their own political skeletons out of the closet. For the record, however, seven senators voted to continue funding this criminal enterprise, and, not surprisingly, they’re all Democrats: Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Dick Durbin (IL), Roland Burris (IL), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Bob Casey Jr. (PA), Patrick Leahy (VT) and self-proclaimed socialist independent Bernie Sanders (VT). In addition, 75 (yes, seventy-five) House Democrats voted to continue throwing our money at the group. Space doesn’t permit us to list the names of these disgraceful twits, but BigGovernment.com has them for all to see.

One of the ACORN workers did tell O’Keefe, “Honesty is not going to get you the house.” Perhaps she meant “House” with a capital “H.” In any case, O’Keefe and Giles deserve a medal.

On Cross-Examination

“Good thing I wasn’t drinking coffee when I read the Politico headline about Team Obama trying to run away from ACORN: ‘W.H. distances from activist group.’ Choking. Up. With. Laughter. Barack Obama can no more disown ACORN than he could disown his own shadow. He IS ACORN. And ACORN is him. The ‘accountability’ that White House flack Robert Gibbs says they take ‘extremely seriously’ doesn’t extend to Team Obama itself — and the accountability they have evaded for pouring more than $800,000 into an ACORN front group for campaign advance work that was mysteriously re-classified as ‘get-out-the-vote’ work. As for the ACORN ‘advisory committee’ that will ‘audit’ the group’s illicit activities, I repeat: Choking. Up. With. Laughter.” –columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin

From the ‘Non Compos Mentis’ File

“The truth remains that thousands of New Yorkers who are facing foreclosure depend on charitable organizations like Acorn for assistance.” –Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)

But as Investor’s Business Daily argues, “The fact is that this ‘charitable organization’ helped precipitate the mortgage meltdown that shattered the economy. It was Acorn, under the cover of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), that intimidated banks through mob action into making risky loans in the name of ‘fairness’ to people who could not afford them. The tactics, taken straight from the pages of Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals,’ were used by Acorn as early as 1991, when it took over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA.”

SOURCE