Choosing The Right Lane To Travel

In pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, free markets and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington

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Fox News poll: According to voters, spending cuts are a must By Dana Blanton

If Washington is looking for guidance on the fiscal cliff, voters are sending mixed signals. A majority says major spending cuts are necessary to solve the country’s budget woes -- that solely raising taxes on taxpayers earning more than $250,000 isn’t enough. Even so, the most popular proposal among voters for reducing the deficit is -- you guessed it -- raising taxes on the rich.  In addition, while a majority of Republicans (59 percent) thinks major cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare should be made now, even if it is tough on families, a majority of Democrats (52 percent) thinks those programs should continue to be funded at their current levels, even if it means passing on trillions of dollars of debt to future generations. Overall, 61 percent of voters say major spending cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit, while 33 percent think increasing taxes on high earners would be enough. Half of Democrats think taxing the rich is all that is needed. By contrast, majorities of Republicans (77 percent) and independents (62 percent) think cutting spending is also necessary. If income taxes go up, almost all voters -- 89 percent -- think President Obama should agree to make major cuts in government spending as well. That includes 83 percent of Democrats, 91 percent of independents and 95 percent of Republicans.  

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Feral Teens Ask Woman for Smoke, She says “Get a Job”; Then They Shoot Her. by Doug Giles

Police say three teens charged in the fatal shooting of a western Pennsylvania woman targeted her after she told them to “get a job” when she saw them trying to bum a cigarette off her boyfriend. Beaver Falls police have charged 14-year-olds Todavia Cleckley and Marcus Velasquez and Kyle Goosby Jr., 13, with criminal homicide and other charges in Saturday’s shooting of Kayla Peterson, 22. She was shot at about 3:30 p.m. that day and died in a Pittsburgh hospital two hours later. Goosby is in custody and his attorney says he was just “in the wrong place at the wrong time” when Velasquez — identified as the gunman by police and Peterson’s boyfriend — opened fire. Beaver Falls Police Chief Charles Jones says officers are still searching for the other two suspects

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Dem. Representative: Entitlements are “Earned”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on the house floor. “I believe it should be pronounced here today, that the reform of the entitlements based upon slipshod, reckless, deliberations or should I say actions are a non-starter. There is no way, Mr. Speaker, that we should raise the eligibility age for Medicare, that we should not think carefully about how we approach the reform of Medicaid. And that we don’t the American people that Social Security is solvent. So, I would say move quickly to pass the middle class tax cuts that would be for all Americans, 100 % up to 250,000 dollars. These are not entitlements, they are earned benefits."  Really?

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California Blue Shield Seeks Rate Increase Up to 20%

Health insurer Blue Shield of California wants to raise rates as much as 20% for some individual policyholders, prompting calls for the nonprofit to use some of its record-high reserve of $3.9 billion to hold down premiums. In filings with state regulators, Blue Shield is seeking an average rate increase of 12% for more than 300,000 customers, effective in March, with a maximum increase of 20%. Some consumer advocates and healthcare economists say Blue Shield shouldn’t be raising rates that high when it has stockpiled so much cash. The company’s surplus is nearly three times as much as the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Assn. requires its member insurers to hold to cover future claims. “Blue Shield is sitting on a huge surplus that is beyond what is required or necessary,” said Laurie Sobel, a senior attorney for Consumers Union in San Francisco. “It should be used to hold down rate increases when it hits these extraordinary levels.”

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Dems Ask for Delay to Med Device Tax They Voted For

Medical Device Tax is just one of 20 Obamacare Taxes. In a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid, 18 Democrat senators and senators-elect have asked for “a delay in the implementation” of the Obamacare medical device tax.  Like most of the significant tax increases in Obamacare, the medical device tax is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2013, conveniently after the 2012 presidential election.

Each of the 18 Democrat signatories voted for or supported Obamacare in the first place.  And now they want a sweetheart exemption from one of its most onerous provisions. Even in Washington DC, that shows a lot of gall.

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Is Santa a Democrat?

o, most Americans think Santa Claus is a Democrat? A new survey found that 44 percent believe the jolly man of heft is of the left, versus 28 percent think St. Nick is more like Mitt. It makes sense at least when it comes to the whole handing out freebies things. Democrats are the party of giving, except unlike Santa, the giving isn’t link to any worthwhile behavior. Santa rewards you for being good, liberal reward you for towing the line. Anyway, that’s where the similarities end. Santa’s toy is made in a work shop. Whereas a Dem doesn’t make them, he just takes them. Then he spreads them around, but only after melting them down to drab coins. After all, equality of outcome means there’s no ceiling on goodness, leaving you with sad trinkets that cost four times more. But, hey, in the war of who is naughty or nice, the Dems will always win. They will be Santa and we’ll be Satan, a stereotype perpetuated in pop culture that deems anything rooted in common sense must be mean. And this lets the left run the give-away. And that’s the whole point, to win people over with the free crud that in the end isn’t really free at all.

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Soldiers Ordered Not To Offend Radical Islamists by Frank Camp

Well, strap in for this news: a new military handbook has been issued that orders soldiers to avoid engaging in topics that would offend radical Islamists. So, if you thought that the United States couldn’t get any more politically correct, you were dead wrong. According to Pamela Gellar of atlasshrugs.com: “The draft leaked to the newspaper offers a list of “taboo conversation topics” that soldiers should avoid, including “making derogatory comments about the Taliban,” “advocating women’s rights,” “any criticism of pedophilia,” “directing any criticism towards Afghans,” “mentioning homosexuality and homosexual conduct” or “anything related to Islam.” In addition to this madness, the manual also claims that it is not the Taliban that is causing the rise in attacks by Afghan soldiers, but a lack of understanding on the part of the West.

I’m sorry–What? Soldiers are not allowed to criticize pedophilia and cannot advocate for women’s rights? In summary:  This is the backwards logic of the deranged Left. We are fighting an enemy, but we are not allowed to hurt their feelings. This defies human reasoning, but it fits right in with the Liberal world view. They believe that it is our fault that we were attacked on 9/11; that it is our support of Israel and our actions in the Middle-East that stirred the hatred of radical Islamists. In essence, we are the provocateurs, and they are the victims. Well, you can’t provoke the Devil. Radical Islam is an evil beast, and we are feeding it. When it grows strong, it will be our fault.

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Belafonte’s Advice to Obama: Imprison Opposition “Like a Third World Dictator” (Video)

Enlightened Marxist Harry Belafonte was on with pal Al Sharpton this week. His advice for Obama was to imprison opposition like a “third world dictator.” Previously, Belefonte called President Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world” while praising Marxist tyrant Hugo Chavez. Since he is dear friends with third world dictators, such as Hugo Chavez, it is not surprising that he would admire the dictatorial regimes that jail dissenters.

Unfortunately, what Belafonte, and other Marxists residing in the US fail to understand, is that the US is not designed as a dictatorship. Ironically, someone who made music and films as a source of presumably high income, wishes to have the very culture that squashes creativity, art forms, freedom and the pursuit of happiness and one's own destiny. Much like Sharpton and Chavez, Belafonte has elevated himself over all other citizens, by believing that this form of government would establish that he is above the very treatment he prescribes for all in the name of Social justice and redistribution of wealth and forced compliance.

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Nancy Pelosi: This Fiscal Cliff Stuff Is Getting Boring

Words of wisdom from another elected moron! Watch....

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Detroit’s Decline: 34.5% on Food Stamps, 45.7% Not in Labor Force

President Barack Obama travelled to Michigan this week and made his case for class war in defense of the welfare state. We need to take more money from the rich, he said, or schools will not be able to afford books, students will not be able to afford college, and disabled children will not get health care. “Our economic success has never come from the top down,” said Obama. “It comes from the middle out. It comes from the bottom up.” Obama spoke these words a few miles from Detroit — the reductio ad absurdum of his argument. If America continues down the road to Obama’s America — a road that began when President Franklin Roosevelt started building a welfare state here — our entire nation will become Detroit. Obama’s economic and moral vision has played out in that city. What he seeks has been achieved there.  The results speak for themselves!

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Boehner: Obama Seems Willing to 'Slow-Walk' over Cliff

House Speaker John Boehner accused President Barack Obama of being so resistant to curbing federal spending that he risks an agreement to avoid the "fiscal cliff" of wide-ranging tax increases and spending cuts that will be automatically triggered in less than three weeks.  "Unfortunately, the White House is so unserious about cutting spending that it appears willing to slow-walk any agreement and walk our economy right up to the fiscal cliff," Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters Thursday. "And doing that puts jobs in our country in danger."

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Norquist Offers GOP Plan to Fight Obama Fiscal Cliff Agenda By Stephen Feller

Grover Norquist said Thursday that the GOP is not only far from powerless, but actually can thwart President Barack Obama’s fiscal cliff agenda effectively if they use the tools available, reports Politico. The Americans for Tax Reform founder said Republicans in Congress have three strong weapons to deploy in the battle to prevent Obama from massively increasing government spending: the sequester of military funds in the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling debate in early 2013, and the Senate’s inability to pass a budget. “Obama will be on a very short leash, fiscally speaking, over the next four years,” he said. “He’s not going to have any fun at all, he may just have to go blow up small countries he can’t pronounce because it won’t be any fun to be here, because he won’t be able to spend the kind of cash he was hoping to.” Republicans in Congress have called it irresponsible to go over the fiscal cliff for any reason, but Norquist said one of the most powerful tools the party has available is because of it: sequestration.

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Egypt: Obama sends Muslim Brotherhood rulers more tanks and fighter jets

More tanks for Egypt this year than the entire Marine Corps has… For the new Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood dominated government, the Obama Administration is ensuring another $1.3 billion annual shipment of state-of-the-art weaponry. As reported by The Washington Times, despite Egypt’s new president Mohammed Morsi being a member of the terrorist related Muslim Brotherhood, the money and arms pipeline from Washington to Cairo will remain open and flowing. Morsi has recently granted himself virtual dictatorial power in his native land. To keep Morsi’s actions in perspective, many political pundits have described his power grab as if Barack Obama fired every Republican in the U.S. Congress and dissolved the Supreme Court.

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Understanding $16,000,000,000,000 in Debt

I don’t understand how much $16 trillion ($16T) of debt is. So, to help myself, I break it down to terms I can understand. There are about 254,000,000 registered vehicles in this country (2009 data). Big number this is. But dividing the number into $16T would give a valuation of about $69,000 for each of them. This is somewhat higher than the average cost of automobiles on the road. Another way to put it is to say the U.S. national debt could replace the entire U.S. fleet of automobiles with, for example, brand-new, fully equipped Lexus ES460s. Nice cars.  The total of state budgets in 2010 was about $666B. Dividing into $16T gives about 24. This means the $16T national debt could completely cover all state budgets for about 24 years. The total annual foreign aid budget of the U.S. is reckoned to be about $54B. Dividing this into $16T gives about 296, meaning that the national debt of the U.S. could cover all foreign aid for almost three centuries. The population of the United States is currently estimated at 312,780,968. Dividing this into $16T gives the current encumbrance to each citizen of about $51,000.

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A Black Man Has Just Left the Liberal Plantation by Gary DeMar

All of a sudden a story appears about Robert Griffin III who’s the quarterback for the Washington Redskins. Unlike the Steelers, the Redskins are winning. This makes Griffin a popular guy in DC, except with some blacks. Griffin may have made the biggest mistake in his young life by saying that he did not want “to be defined by the color of [his] skin.” To add insult to injury, he went on to say, “I am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don’t have to be defined by that.” Griffin had the audacity to hop a fast train off the liberal plantation.  Like clockwork, some fellow African-Americans were sent out to bring him back before Mr. Griffin can tell his story of self-reliance, work ethic, and character to other blacks. If the truth gets out, black liberal solidarity might be affected. ESPN analyst Rob Parker wants Griffin to return to the plantation, and he will humiliate him to do it. Parker is playing the role of a house slave. He speaks for his masters in the Democrat Party. Only another black man could say what he says. The white owners of the black vote can  sit back sipping their Mint Juleps as one of their bought “brothers” goes out and does the needed dirty work. This is from National Review: On the network’s First Take show [Thursday] morning, Parker said, “my question, which is just a straight honest question, is [Griffin] a brother, or is he a cornball brother?” Parker, a columnist at a handful of outlets over the years, has a history of stirring the pot when it comes to race issues in sports. He teeters back and forth between evaluating how “black” Griffin is – “kind of black,” “not really down with the cause” or “not one of us,” but it’s the evidence that prompted his hand wringing that’s so disturbing. “We all know he has a white fiancé. There was all this talk about he’s a Republican, which, there’s no information [about that] at all. I’m just trying to dig deeper as to why he has an issue.”

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Lying Propaganda: You Are Better Off Dead by Mark Horne

The headline says it all: “A sick world: We live longer, with more pain and illness.” Yes, poor, poor, better-fed, longer-living us. Let’s all have a pity party and then figure out how to return to the good old days. What is initially obvious simply from reading this story is that it doesn’t prove or even address the headline. There is no attempt made to prove that, in the past, we lived shorter lives with less pain and illness. There is good reason for the writer to ignore such a claim, because it is nonsense. The exact opposite is the case. The reason why we died sooner was because we suffered diseases that we couldn’t cure. And, in case you don’t already realize it, infectious sores and debilitating parasites is not painless. Living in fear of polio outbreaks every summer, and then living with partial paralysis, is not painless. Losing children to cholera epidemics is just as economically debilitating as having to avoid modern childhood health problems. “The Global Burden of Disease study, led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at Washington University, finds that countries face a wave of financial and social costs from rising numbers of people living with disease and injury.” This is eugenicist propaganda. It only makes sense if you discount the personal and economic costs involved in families losing children and in societies losing a sizable number of the next generation. Yes, there are expenses involved in living longer, but the costs are not nearly as much as the increased productivity. Of course, if one imposes a socialist economic policy on a population, then one will look for excuses to blame for the resulting poverty. That is half the motivation for pretending that “overpopulation” is causing problems—and that long life is a tragedy.

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As a Parent, Grandparent how does this make you feel - think?

Only days before the anti-marriage referendum passed in the state, a disgusting story surfaced.  “Colleen” Francis -- a 45-year-old man who claims to be a woman -- was lounging in the women’s sauna at the Evergreen State College pool when a local high school girls' swim team came in to use the facilities.  The sauna’s glass wall gave “Colleen” full view of the girls  while they were changing!  The swim coach threw the man out, but school officials quickly apologized to "Colleen" and insisted he be allowed to continue using the women’s facilities. College officials claim that his right to violate the women’s rooms is “protected” since Washington State has given homosexuals and transsexuals a superior “protected-class” status. As disturbing as this is, instances like this are becoming far too common. And President Obama’s Justice Department is doing its best to make sure this continues. Not that long ago, Public Advocate alerted pro-Family Americans to the case of “Jennifer.” This 38-year-old man actually bragged about using the women’s restrooms at the University of Arkansas. And when actual women complained about “Jennifer” using their facilities, Obama’s Department of Justice rushed to defend his “special rights.”

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Virginia Moves to Make Card-Check Unconstitutional By Matt Cover

Virginia is moving towards making card-check – the controversial union proposal to replace secret-ballot elections with simple card-signing petitions – unconstitutional in the state. The effort is led by State Sen. Bryce Reeves (R-Spotsylvania) who said that “no citizen” should be denied the ability to vote by secret ballot. “It’s really a simple bill,” Reeves told CNSNews.com in an interview Thursday. “It’s there to improve voter integrity and privacy. I personally believe that no citizen should be forced to reveal how they voted in any election be it federal, state, local, or even a union election.”

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Carney: 'Unconscionable' for GOP to Demand Spending Cuts for Increasing Debt Limit By Fred Lucas

The White House defended its demand Thursday to grant President Barack Obama unilateral authority to raise the debt ceiling at will, unless two-thirds of Congress votes to prevent it. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney even called the Republican move in 2011 to demand cuts before raising the debt ceiling “unconscionable.” House Speaker John Bohner (R-Ohio) has argued that Obama’s proposal for a $1.6 trillion tax hike, $50 billion in new stimulus spending and unilateral control of the debt ceiling was “unserious.” Boehner countered with an offer of $800 billion in new taxes by limiting deductions. “In the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was president, Washington was able to erase deficits for the first time in decades and create surpluses for the first time in decades. Did Congress then flirt with default when the debt ceiling was raised? The answer is no,” Carney said.

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Marine Held in Mexican Prison, State Department Does Nothing

Jon Hammar, a former Marine who served in Afghanistan and Afghanistan, is being held in a notorious Mexican prison where Zetas gang members hold power. His crime? Declaring an antique shotgun to Mexican officials after registering the gun with U.S. Customs Agents on his way to Costa Rice. Hammar has been in a prison in Mexico for months now and this week, his parents got an extortion call demanding they wire thousands of dollars to the prison. Hammar spoke to his parents on the phone, saying he thought he was going to be killed. Hammar has been tortured during his time in the prison. He’s been beaten and chained to a bed. Mexican officials have justified Hammar’s arrest, saying it came in accordance with gun laws in the country, have no plans to release him and the State Department has done nothing to get Hammar released. He could face as many as 15 years in prison.  Hammer was told as long as he declared his shot gun to Mexican customs authorities that carrying the gun to Costa Rice was legal. Apparently that wasn’t the case however considering Mexican authorities, including Mexican President Felipe Calderon, encourage their citizens to break U.S. law on a daily basis with illegal immigration and rock throwing at U.S. Border Patrol Agents, Hammer should be released immediately.

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45% Think Right-to-Work Laws Good for a State’s Economy

Michigan’s sudden legislative decision to declare itself a right-to-work state has prompted angry protests from President Obama and organized labor, but voters by a two-to-one margin think right-to-work laws are good for a state economically.

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"I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary for the public good, become honorable by being necessary."

--Nathan Hale, remark to Captain William Hull, who had attempted to dissuade him from volunteering for a spy mission for General Washington, 1776

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Wimpy Christians Are the Reason We're Losing the Culture War Watch here

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“I Will Fight Back”: Notice to Harry Reid from Sen. Rand Paul By SEN. RAND PAUL

"In our dealings with the Soviet Union in the latter half of the 20th century, a theory of how to stop a nuclear war was known as “mutually assured destruction.” The theory went that the Soviets would not launch a first strike knowing that a counterstrike would inflict similar or worse damage. Even on a smaller scale, the fallout from a nuclear blast is severe — and it is nearly impossible to tell which way the winds will blow and who will be affected by the fallout. While obviously hyperbole, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is currently threatening to launch what congressional observers refer to as the “nuclear option” — that is, breaking the current Senate rules to permanently curtail the rights of the minority party by ending the possibility of extended debate and amendments on vital pieces of legislation. Much like any nuclear alternative, deterrents are available if one is willing to exercise them, and the possible dangers of unforeseen fallout exist. Today, I caution the majority leader that I will not simply stand by and witness his destruction of the rights of senators, nor his power grab through clear breaking of Senate rules and precedents. I will fight back. Currently, the Senate requires 67 votes, a two-thirds majority, to shut down debate to change its rules. The Senate should be consistent and not changed at the whim of 51 of its members. Sen. Reid knows this, but is insisting that debate on Senate rules can be shut down with 51, and plans to use this tactic to impose his will on the body."