The
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
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Fiscal Cliff”,
National Debt, Taxes & Spending put in a much better (simplified)
perspective
· U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
· Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
· New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
· National debt:
$16,271,000,000,000
· Recent
budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000
Let's now remove 8 zeros and pretend
it's a household budget:
· Annual family income: $21,700
· Money the family spent: $38,200
· New debt on the credit card: $16,271
· Outstanding balance
on your credit card: $162,710
· Total budget cuts so far: $38.50
And the talking
heads from the Administration to the House and Senate think
you do not understand and that you believe charging more on your credit card is
the smart thing to do!
~~~~~~
Best Piece of
Marriage Advice I've Ever Heard.
Some years ago, I
caught a TV interview with relationship consultant Dr. Ellen Kreidman, often
called America's Marriage Expert, who had a successful 44-year love affair and
marriage to her high school sweetheart. At the time, she cited the single
biggest piece of love/dating/marriage advice, which she reiterates still today
on her web site.
"A man falls in love because of the way he feels about himself when he's with a woman. And when he doesn't feel good any more, he's going to find another woman who does make him feel good. And that's really what an affair is about. It's not that he's in love with the other woman. What he's in love with, is the way he feels about himself when he's with the other woman. And a woman feels exactly the same way. Women say to me, 'Ellen, now that I'm in love, I feel beautiful, sexy, needed, and special.' We all have a right to feel that way for the rest of our lives, and when we don't, we'll try to find someone who does make us feel good. So we must continually ask ourselves: 'How does my mate feel about himself when he's with me. Does he feel wanted, special, needed? And what about you? How do you feel about yourself when you're with your mate?"
What an eye-opener. By her choice of words ("...feel about himself"), it's evident she believes (as do I) that, as adults, each of us is in total control of our own feelings, and no one can make us feel what we don't choose to feel. But we can certainly influence, and contribute to, our mate's self-image. If I'm constantly rude, disrespectful, put her down, ignore her, devalue her opinion, pay her no attention, make her wrong, or have an air of superiority... how could she feel good about herself when she's with me. And taken several steps further, Ellen's advice, metaphorically, applies with equal relevance to siblings, best friends, business partners, employees, co-workers, teammates, you name it. To every relationship in your life that has deep meaning for you. Have you lost a good friend recently? Is your employee attrition rate too high? At odds with your partner? Not on good terms with co-workers? Marriage on the rocks?
~~~~~~
Ted Cruz’s
Presidential Eligibility Already an Issue
Just days after he
was sworn in as a new U.S. senator, Texas Republican Ted Cruz already is making
waves in Washington — and creating another “birther” controversy. The mainstream media initially gave little
or no coverage to presidential candidate Barack Obama’s failure to produce a
birth certificate, then lambasted those who questioned his eligibility for the
White House. But the press is
already bringing up the question of Cruz’s eligibility for president — which
suggests that Democratic sympathizers are worried about his possible run for
the White House in 2016. Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother and
a Kenyan father, although some questioned his Hawaiian birth. Cruz was born in
Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father who were working in the
petroleum industry, and he lived in Canada for four years before his family
moved to Texas. The Constitution’s Article II states: “No Person except a
natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the
adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.” The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to
anyone born in the United States, but a 1937 law passed by Congress also
granted citizenship to children born to American citizens outside the country. That
would seem to clearly qualify Cruz for the presidency, but it hasn’t quieted
the controversy. Politico on Monday ran
a story headlined “Ted Cruz draws presidential buzz, but is he eligible?”
adding that he has “the aura” of a future contender. “The problem is, no
one knows what a natural born citizen is,” said University of California, Davis
law professor Gabriel Chin, who argued in 2008 that John McCain was not
eligible to be president because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. “There’s
nothing definitive legally.” Harvard Law School law professor Laurence Tribe,
an adviser to Obama, said Cruz should prepare a thorough explanation of his
eligibility to put the issue at rest: “I’d need to know more, but it certainly
doesn’t sound like a sufficient explanation.” And University of Pennsylvania
law professor Kermit Roosevelt told Politico that Cruz’s “birthright
citizenship derives from his parents, and the question is, does that fit with
the definition of natural born citizen?” Cruz’s primary opponent in the
Senate race last year, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, brought up Cruz’s Canadian
birthplace in a campaign ad, and his Democratic opponent Paul Sadler said in an
interview: “Rafael Cruz — ‘Ted,’ that’s what he goes by, his real name is
Rafael — was born in Canada.” Cruz spokesman Sean Rushton stated that Cruz is
“a U.S. citizen by birth,” but declined to elaborate on the issue, saying the
new senator is concentrating on his work ahead in Congress. And Cruz has
already made a splash as senator, trumpeting his opposition to gun control and
Obama’s choice of Chuck Hagel as Defense secretary, charging that Obama is
“high on re-election.” The non-ending
hypocrisy of the left MSM.
~~~~~~~
Fact Checker Destroys Bill Clinton’s Gun Whopper
“Half of all mass killings in the United States have
occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in
the history of the country.” — Former president
Bill Clinton, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 9, 2013. So
let’s dig into the data and see what we find. The Pinocchio Test; In the highly charged debate over guns, it is important for politicians on both
sides to get their facts straight. In this case, the available data show that
Clinton was way off base in his assertion, making an exaggerated claim — which
his office would not even defend. Ordinarily, this might have been a Four
Pinocchio claim. Given the fuzziness of the data and questions about
definitions, we are going to cut Clinton a bit of slack in the final ruling.
But such uncertainty in the data means politicians need to be very careful in
making claims about gun violence. The Facts: With gun shootings,
you immediately get into some definitional issues. Depending on how one defines
a “mass public shooting,” the answers might turn out to be different. There is
also surprisingly little historical data about mass murder in the United States
to go back all the way to the nation’s founding. Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation at the
Minnesota Department of Corrections, assembled a data set going back 100 years
for a 2007 book titled, “Mass Murder in the United States: A History.” He used the
FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports, which date from 1976, and then supplemented
the FBI reports with news reports (principally The New York Times) dating from
1900. According to his
research, he has identified 156 mass public shootings in the United States in
the past 100 years. Duwe defines a mass public shooting as an incident in which four or more
victims are killed publicly with guns within 24 hours — in the workplace, schools,
restaurants and other public places — excluding shootings in connection with
crimes such as robbery, drugs or gangs. (Note that this would exclude a
number of “mass murders” that sometimes get lumped into the data, such as the
Beltway sniper who killed 10 people over a three-week period in 2002.) Since 2005, when the assault ban expired,
there have been 32 such mass public shootings, including seven in 2012,
Duwe said. So that’s just over 20
percent of all mass public shootings, which is much less than Clinton’s 50
percent.
~~~~~~
Obama News Conference: demands debt ceiling hike, rejects
negotiating cuts with GOP
President Obama
warned congressional Republicans that he will not negotiate with them over the
debt ceiling, saying that Washington must increase the limit to pay its bills
and such brinksmanship would be “absurd”
and “irresponsible.” “The issue here is whether Washington will pay its bills,”
Obama said. “We are not a deadbeat nation.” The president’s comments opened
the White House event that included a range of questions, including the topic
of likely gun-control legislation. Obama, who vowed following the fatal Dec. 14
shootings at a Connecticut elementary school to try to curb gun violence,
repeated his promise. “If there’s only one step to take to save a child’s life,
I’ll take that step,” said the president, who is expected to get strong
opposition from gun-rights advocacy groups should he submit legislation to
Congress, as expected. He said the
publicity about strong turnouts at gun shows is “an effective way of ginning up
fear that the federal government is about to take all of your guns.”
Obama used the press conference to attempt to frame the
debt-limit issue to the American public as one about the perils of not paying
past debts – not future spending. “Raising the debt
ceiling does not authorize more spending,” he said. “These are bills that have
already been racked up.” Obama argued he has already cut more than $1 trillion
in federal spending but is willing to talk about more cuts, including some to
Medicare, but would not make that part of the debt ceiling issue. He again
suggested a potential mix of increasing taxes by closing loopholes and
more spending cuts.
· Demonized Republicans - claiming cutting spending was NOT
the issue and thereby making wrong the Republicans demand to reduce spending.
· Used old scare tactics about cutting Medicare and Schools
- never mentioned Medicaid, Food Stamps or the other entitlements that are
draining the nations resources.
· Ignored the fact the U.S. has plenty of cash flow now to
pay its debts and did not acknowledge this was more about bankrupting programs
and the Nation in the future
· Claimed the "fiscal cliff" action stuck it to
the rich while not impacting the middle class (not true or a lie depending on
your audacity of speaking).
· Positioned himself as the "Clint Eastwood" of
upcoming negotiations "...make my day....." by opposing what I want
to do!
~~~~~~
Debt Ceiling: Default Not at Issue, Federal Spending Is
President Obama
made his case for a debt ceiling increase at a press conference this morning.
The development comes as House Republicans are reportedly weighing “default”
and “government shutdown.” While it’s
encouraging that conservatives are gearing up for a fight, it’s important that
policymakers and the public keep those two terms straight. Default. The only way the federal government would default on its debt in the event
the debt ceiling remains unchanged is for the Treasury to choose to default—an utterly implausible eventuality. Suggestions to
the contrary in the press and elsewhere are simply inaccurate and shameful.
The amount of debt the federal government is allowed to issue is set by
statute. Federal spending is similarly established by law. Treasury is at once prohibited by law from issuing additional debt
above the limit and obligated by law to spend certain amounts for designated
purposes. The Treasury has certain tools it can use to muddle through once
the debt ceiling is reached, but these terms are limited and are expected to be
exhausted toward the end of February. As you have read
here before, be aware when "...experts say..." You MUST stay informed.
~~~~~~
Law Professor Says 2nd Amendment not ‘Absolute’
On January 9, 2013
the Huffington Post ran a column by Geoffrey R. Stone on the Second Amendment.
Stone is currently the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at
the University of Chicago Law School. In 2008, I wrote an extended paper (Historical Revisionism)
on Professor Stone’s misunderstanding of the First Amendment as it relates to
America’s religious history. Someone unfamiliar with America’s religious
history would more than likely find a law professor’s arguments persuasive. His
current article on the Second Amendment is equally not persuasive. In fact, I
found it muddled. But let’s take up the good professor’s argument as he takes
full advantage of the freedoms protected by the First Amendment. Here’s some of
what Professor
Stone wrote:
“Consider,
for example, the First Amendment, which provides: ‘Congress shall make no law …
abridging the freedom of speech.’ This also sounds absolute. But does the First
Amendment mean that the government cannot constitutionally regulate speech?
“Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put that possibility to rest in 1919 with a
famous hypothetical. ‘The most stringent protection of free speech,’ he
observed, ‘would not protect a man falsely
shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.’ In other words, even
though the text of the First Amendment sounds absolute, it is not.”
It’s
important to note that the First Amendment does not create the right of the
“free exercise” of “religion” or the right to speak, write (press), and
assemble, even to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.” These
are God-given rights, or as secularists like to say, “natural rights.” These
rights are not to be infringed upon by government: “Congress shall make no law
. . . prohibiting the free exercise [of religion].”
The Declaration of Independence made the same point:
“We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their Safety and Happiness.”
These rights are absolute as long as they don’t infringe on the rights of
other people. In what way does my
owning guns infringe on someone else? The infringement only comes if I use
one of my guns in an unlawful way, that is, if I injure or murder someone with
it. The courts can decide if the use of my gun was unlawful (manslaughter or
murder) or not (self-defense) in the same way that the court can decide if my
use of the provisions of the First Amendment were used in an unlawful
way. The protected freedoms found in the First Amendment aren’t taken away
because of the possibility or even the potential that I might use
them unlawfully. My freedom of speech is not taken from me when I enter a movie
theater where I or anyone else could or might yell “Fire!” Just because some people disobey the law
does not mean people who don’t should lose their freedoms.
~~~~~~
Obama is an Addict That Denies His Addiction by
Giacomo
Have you ever known
anyone who has an addiction? It doesn’t have to be drugs or alcohol; it
can be pornography, clothes, eating, smoking, sports, television, computer
games and even work. There are thousands of different kinds of
addictions and they all have one thing in common, the addict generally does not
admit to having a problem. A gambler says he can stop gambling anytime, but he
knows that he’s about to get lucky and hit it big. An alcoholic or drug
user will say they have their habit under control when in reality it has them
under control. President Barack Obama
has an addiction and like other addicts, denies that it’s a problem. His
addiction was revealed more openly during the recent fiscal cliff negotiations
with House Speaker John Boehner. One of the key issues that the
Republicans wanted to see was an earnest effort to cut federal spending. However, at one point
in the negotiations, Obama told Boehner:
“We don’t have a spending problem.” Spoken like a true addict, Mr.
President.
~~~~~~
Obama To Arm Muslim Brotherhood, But You Can’t Own An AR?
by John DeMayo
Sometime in late
January, as part of a 213 million dollar foreign aid package, the U.S. government
intends to deliver 10 F-16 fighter jets and 200 Abrams tanks to Egypt. Quite a
nice gesture on the part of the United States considering back in 2010, Mohamed
Morsi, the current President of Egypt went on record labeling the U.S. an enemy
and called for driving Israel from occupied Arab lands. Sounds like the kind of
man I would allow to possess world class U.S. made weaponry. Almost daily, the U.S. media is
entertaining some Obama State Department mouthpiece attempting to publicly
re-affirm U.S. commitment to our ally Israel; and insure the American public
that our government has the terrorists on the run. I’m sure Israel is just thrilled to know that the new Muslim
Brotherhood sponsored Egyptian government will now be rolling a new shipment of
American military hardware to the Israeli border and threatening Israeli
airspace with Lockheed Martin Fighting Falcons. I wonder how this is going
to play with Israeli plans to address the growing Iranian nuclear threat. In
the past, President Morsi has made no secret of his fondness for Islamist
ideology and his anti-Semitic vitriol is well documented. Morsi
has been known to label Israel as “bloodsuckers,” “warmongers,” and
“descendants of apes and pigs.” Morsi, a former member of the
Guidance Office of the Muslim Brotherhood has also condemned— what he considers— the Israeli occupation of Palestinian
land while calling for severing ties with this “criminal entity, which is
supported by America and its weapons.” According to Morsi all the land we
recognize as Israel belongs to the Palestinian people. And the U.S. government
is going to give this guy weapons? In all fairness, the arms/foreign aid deal I
previously mentioned, was made during the Mubarak Presidency. You remember
Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian President who used to keep the peace with
Israel? A man that was as much an ally of America as any Arab nation could be,
but was deposed during the so-called Arab Spring romantically supported by
President Obama? Somehow our President, Barrack Hussein Obama is overlooking the obvious
danger (or perhaps he is not) of delivering
these weapons to the new Sharia dictatorship that has taken over Egypt under
Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
~~~~~~
HuffPo: George Washington Was Just Like The Prophet
Muhammad
Liberals at times
don’t even understand that they are being insulting…. Check out this crazy
article from the Huffington Post:
In seventh century
Arabia, a middle-aged man had a vision to create a new religious and social
order for a largely pagan and tribal society. The man, Muhammad, told his band
of followers to behave wisely and civilly. “The best among you,” he said, “are
those who have the best manners and character.” More than 1,000 years later,
Muhammad’s wisdom would be echoed again, this time in the British colony of
Virginia, by a 13-year-old schoolboy jotting down a lengthy set of behavioral
rules that would later be published as “Rules of Civility.” The schoolboy was
none other than George Washington, who would one day become the first president
of the United States of America. Muhammad and Washington may seem like an
unlikely connection, but in fact, they share strikingly similar biographies.
Muhammad and Washington were students of history, restorers of justice and
fierce warriors who led their respective nations through successful
revolutions. Both men united a large swath of political territory and served as
the founding father for two unprecedented social movements — Islam and the
United States of America — whose universal ideals would both spread throughout
the world respectively. Washington’s contemporary, Richard Henry Lee, once said
that he was “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his
countrymen.” Washington’s nemesis, Britain’s King George III, said that
Washington was “placed in a light the most distinguished of any man living” and
had “the greatest character of the age.” Similarly, Muslims worldwide see
Muhammad as the perfect human being. In “The Prophet of Islam,” Professor K.S.
Rao said we witnessed “the union of the theorist, the organizer and the leader”
in him. Even a non-Muslim, such as Mohatma Gandhi, called Muhammad “a treasure
of wisdom not only for Muslims but for all mankind.”
Theater
of the absurd! Yet, any comparison of
Obama to Hitler is met with outrage!
~~~~~~
How Keynesians Hijacked Milton Friedman’s Helicopter by
Gary North
Milton Friedman was
very smart and a great debater. I knew him. I liked him. But he was no different from other very clever fellows. When he got
something conceptually wrong, he was dangerous.
My professor of
apologetics at seminary was Cornelius Van Til. Apologetics is the philosophical defense of the Christian faith.
Van Til was every bit as smart as Friedman. He had a bunch of great metaphors
in his arsenal of rhetoric. My favorite was the buzz saw metaphor. He said
this: “You can sharpen a buzz saw all you want, but if it is set at the wrong
angle, it will never cut straight.” Milton
Friedman’s “buzz saw” on monetary theory was always set at a crooked angle. It
never cut straight. He described the distribution of fiat money in terms of
a metaphor: a helicopter full of paper money. It drops this money on the
population below. He used this metaphor in a chapter titled “The Mystery of
Money.” It is chapter 2 in his 1994 book, Money Mischief. His goal for
the chapter was to show that this free money from the sky, if it continues,
will raise prices. He introduced the metaphor on page 29. (For the moment, you
can read the chapter here.
But Web pages come and go.) What the metaphor does not show is what Austrian
School monetary theory emphasizes: the new money is introduced at specific
points in the economy. It is spent into circulation by the national
government, which sells its IOUs to the official counterfeiter: the central bank. The
national government gets first access to this money. It then spends it. The
recipients of this government spending get access to the newly created money earlier
than other citizens do. So, prices in general do not rise uniformly. They may
not rise at all if overall economic production increases. What always
rises is government spending. This fact, not the general price effects of
counterfeit money, is the heart of any accurate analysis of central bank money.
It is discussed in detail only by Austrian School economists. Friedman never admitted that this process
of sequential spending is relevant. He, like his intellectual mentor Irving
Fisher, self-consciously rejected the Austrians’ analytical approach. What is
this approach? The approach of the script of All the Presidents’ Men:
“Follow the money.” Keynesians
believe that government can and should
increase its purchase of goods and services. Friedman always said that the
government shouldn’t be allowed to do this very often, and only on an efficient
basis (e.g., school vouchers). But he ignored the obvious: fiat money lowers
the government’s cost of issuing IOUs. This means that the central bank
provides lower-cost power and influence for the government. The government
demands more of this money at artificially low interest rates, because it
expands the range of government operations. This was the heart of his
analytical error all his life. This
error has played well among Keynesians. They see the greatest benefit of the
central bank as providing “free extra money” for government spending. So folks, there you have it. Intellectual theory gone amuck. This is why liberals cling to the idea that
"free markets" are essentially flawed - it is government, not free
markets that increase economic activity.
~~~~~~
Is Another Civil War on the Horizon? by J. Matt Barber
A
pretty, young, auburn-haired woman – mid-20s – drove down a lonely country road
somewhere in Oklahoma. Appearing in her rear-view mirror, at the back
windshield, were two menacing orbs of light floating amid ashen dusk. The
guttural roar of a souped-up big block shook the tiny Volkswagen Rabbit as a
van-load of inbred thugs lurched left and drew alongside her. A ponytailed
passenger taunted inaudibly and blew foul kisses between crude hand gestures.
He pointed for her to pull over as the van repeatedly swerved dangerously
close. Inside the car a man, asleep in the reclining passenger seat, was
startled awake by the commotion. He rose and darted his head about, calmly
assessing the situation. This only spurred the evil-bent goons. As they ramped-up efforts to run the car off
the road, the man reached in the glove box, withdrew a military-grade,
semi-automatic handgun – an “assault weapon,” if you will – and, with
intentionality and great theatre, leaned across his young bride, pointing the
gun out the open bay and directly between dirt bag’s booze-flushed eyes. Van
vanished amid a plume of gray smoke as wheels locked, tires screeched and
“assault vehicle” fishtailed – jerking to a halt with taillights aglow skyward
from the ditch. Not a shot was fired.
There’s only one
way to take my guns, slick, and that’s through a constitutional amendment – an
amendment that will never happen – ever. Try it any
other way and we have a problem. And this whole “assault weapons ban” angle? Sensationalist propaganda. I prefer to call
them “defense weapons.” Contrary to left-wing revisionist pabulum, the Second
Amendment’s not about squirrel hunting. Notice a trend here? What do Sandy Hook Elementary, Aurora Colorado’s
Century 16 theatre and Columbine have in common? They’re all “gun free zones.”
Places you don’t see mass murder and mayhem? Well, there’s a reason bad guys
largely avoid shooting-up gun shows, ranges, households with signs that say:
“This home insured by Smith & Wesson” and Texas in general. It’s
because they know – even while
thick-skulled liberals don’t – that, as recently noted by the NRA’s Wayne
LaPierre, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a
gun.” Oh, that rather than “gun free zone,” Sandy Hook had a sign reading:
“Staff heavily armed and trained. Any
attempts to harm those herein will be met with deadly force.” Might some of
those beautiful babies have still died if the P.E. coach and four MP5-bearing
teachers had ended the bloodshed soon after it began? Perhaps. But how many precious lives could have been
saved? No, you won’t disarm me. You’re not going to neuter my household and
tear away my ability to defend my wife and precious babies like Dad did all
those years ago. I really, really hope this president and his authoritarian
cohorts in Congress will slow down, take a deep breath and realize that, right
now, they’re playing a very dangerous game of chicken. If they try what I think they might, but hope they don’t, I fear this
nation – already on the precipice of widespread civil unrest and economic
disaster – might finally spiral into to utter chaos, into a second civil war. But
then again, that may be exactly what they have in mind.
~~~~~
Hannity foresees states leaving union if federal
government continues ‘radicalized, abusive’ pattern
On his Friday radio
show, conservative talker and Fox News host Sean Hannity warned that the United States may fall apart if tax rates
remain high. “The states are now fighting and battling against their own federal
government,” Hannity said. ”Same thing with individuals. If you live in a state
like New York, New Jersey, California [or] one of these high-tax states [where]
60-plus cents of every dollar goes to taxes, you’ll say, ‘What the hell am I
doing this for?’” “A lot of people have told me that,” Hannity
continued. “A lot of people are moving. … I noticed that Bobby Jindal moved to
remove his state income tax. He’s not stupid. You know what’s going to happen
in Louisiana? The same thing that is happening in Texas and Florida — their
populations are soaring. They’re doing a
lot better. State governments are fine. They’re surviving. They don’t have the
property taxes they do in New York, which is obscene. In New York, you just pay
and pay and pay and pay.”
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