The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, freedom
and individual liberty
"There
is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it
steadily." --George
Washington
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Foundation upon which we stand
"We the People of the United States, in Order to
form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the
Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish
this Constitution for the United States of America." --preamble of the Constitution of the
United States of America
Constitution Day 2013
Tomorrow,
Sept. 17, 2013, marks the 226th anniversary of the signing of our Constitution
at the Philadelphia (Constitution) Convention in 1787. The best way to
honor the day might be to read it.
It's up to "We the People" to hold our elected representatives
accountable for failing to honor their oaths.
~~~~~~
41%
Give Obama Positive Marks for Health Care, 44% Say Poor
and
questions about the new national health care law as it nears fuller
implementation, voter attitudes about President Obama's handling of the health
care issue remain unchanged. Forty-one percent (41%) of Likely U.S. Voters give
the president good or excellent marks when it comes to health care issues,
while 44% rate his performance in this area as poor, according to a new
Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Obama's positives are up from
June's low of 38% but consistent with regular surveying since February. Those
giving the president poor marks have changed very little all year.
~~~~~~
Obama Arms Muslim Terrorists With
Machine Guns But Wants U.S. Taxpayers Disarmed by Philip Hodges
The Obama administration announced recently that it would
start overtly arming the Syrian “rebels.” Overtly, as opposed to covertly. I have a hard time believing that
they’re just now starting to arm the rebellion. They’ve been doing this
for a long time under the radar. It’s just that, now, they’re making it public.
Apparently, there had been a delay in getting the arms to the rebel groups in
Syria, but it’s being reported now that those shipments are finally coming in.
The Washington Post reported last week:
“The
CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in
lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to
U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the
country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department
of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation
of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war. The arms shipments, which are limited to
light weapons and other munitions that can be tracked, began arriving in Syria
at a moment of heightened tensions over threats by President Obama to order
missile strikes to punish the regime of Bashar al-Assad for his alleged use of
chemical weapons in a deadly attack near Damascus last month.”
When
they say “light weapons,” they’re not talking about slingshots: “The CIA
has been delivering light machine guns and other small arms to Syrian rebels
for several weeks, following President Barack Obama's decision to arm the
rebels. The agency has also arranged for the Syrian opposition to receive anti-tank
weaponry like rocket-propelled grenades through a third party, presumably one
of the Gulf countries that has been arming the rebels, a senior
U.S. intelligence official and two former intelligence officials said Thursday.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to
discuss the classified program publicly.” They call them “light
weapons” when they’re talking about arming terrorists. If Americans had these
so-called “light weapons,” they’d go to jail. "Assaults rifles - they’re
illegal. (Well, essentially illegal.) Can you imagine if Obama
allowed only semi-automatic rifles with magazines with no more than a 10-round
capacity to be sent to the rebels? They’d laugh. They want real weapons. Like
real assault weapons. Machine guns. Anti-tank weapons such as RPGs. And I’m
sure that’s not all. The dark irony here is that U.S. taxpayers are
working and paying taxes to a government that is slowly but surely disarming
Americans through regulations in the name of getting guns off the streets and
out of the “wrong hands.” It’s about “public safety and security.” And the
children. All the while, this tax money is being spent on arming terrorists
overseas with machine guns and RPGs. Makes perfect sense.
~~~~~~
Utter Bankruptcy by Keynesianism:
Summers’ Opponents Written
by Gary North
On
September 16, 2013 Keynesian Lawrence Summers has submitted his resignation
from contention as the next head of the Board of Governors of the Federal
Reserve. This leaves Janet Yellen in top contention. Janet Yellen has been
Bernanke’s chief supporter on the Board. She is Vice-Chairman. She is seen as
“Bernanke lite.” This is a mistake. She is not Bernanke lite. Bernanke is
Yellen lite. Ezra Klein reminds his readers of this in the Washington Post.
Yellen saw the credit crunch coming, and she said so in 2007. You’ll also
find Yellen voicing a prescient note of pessimism. “The possibilities of a
credit crunch developing and of the economy slipping into a recession seem all
too real,” she warned. In ensuing years, Yellen pushed for the Federal Reserve
to do more to combat an employment problem that she didn’t see abating — advice
that Bernanke and the rest of the FOMC eventually followed, when their
optimistic forecasts proved terribly wrong. He says she is “insanely
qualified and widely respected.” I would reverse the adjectives.
Here
is an assessment of the reasons for Summers’ departure. In a USA TODAY survey,
56% of the 42 economists said they preferred Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen for
the top job. Conservatives who favor a good sound business administration
wanted the quiet, liberal academic Yellen because she’s closely identified with
easy-money policies that have served Wall Street well. Either camp of opponents
may not have been able to kill Summers’ candidacy. The combination of the two
made it untenable, as Summers withdrew his name Sunday. In his letter to the
president, Summers wrote of wanting to avoid a contentious confirmation fight.
Such a fight became all the more certain when three Senate Democrats (Jeff
Merkley of Oregon, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and Montana’s Jon Tester) signaled they
would vote against him. Generally, it has been thought Summers favored less
monetary accommodation than Yellen has — which cost him support that might have
offset liberal opposition. With Wall Street still nervous about the upcoming
process of weaning the economy off reliance on the Fed’s easy-money policies,
they liked Yellen because they knew Yellen. So, if we are to believe this,
Yellen is a “dove.” Summers is a “hawk.” But there is no evidence that Summers
is now, or ever has been, a hawk. He is a standard Keynesian. They both want
more fiat money. So do over half of the economists surveyed. So does Wall
Street. The economists are Keynesians. Wall Street is Keynesian. When I
say “Keynesian,” I mean defenders of the Federal Reserve’s quadrupling of the
monetary base since late 2008, a policy that would have been dismissed as
utterly crazy five years ago. Now, any hint of reducing the FED’s
creation of $1 trillion a year in counterfeit money is regarded as hawkish, and
therefore a threat to the recovery. There is no serious opposition in the
academic world or the financial world to the idea that it is sound economic
policy for the FED to create $1 trillion a year in counterfeit money in order
to buy about 75% of the federal government’s deficit, plus support the
government-owned mortgage market. Anyone who would say that there
should be no new money created by the FED and that the mortgage market should
be privatized is regarded as a kook, meaning an Austrian School economist. This
is how far acceptable economic opinion has moved toward statism since September
2008. This is economic fascism, and it would have been
recognized as such in August 2008. Now it is mainstream opinion. We
cannot expect deliverance to come from academia, Wall Street, or Washington.
Then where will it come from? When?
~~~~~~~
The Left: What is President Barack Obama doing
with his bob-and-weave Syria policy that seemingly bounces between bombing and
diplomacy in the space of 15 minutes? by David Ignatius
The answer tells us some worrying things about the breakdown of America’s old foreign-policy consensus and Obama’s difficulty creating a new one. Look behind the White House veil and here’s what you’ll see: The president correctly believes that in the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan, the country is sick of war and mistrustful of politicians. The traditional center ground on which foreign policy is made (“politics stops at the water’s edge”) has disappeared. The left and right are equally suspicious of foreign entanglements.
How does a president who wants to be a liberal internationalist rally the nation to enforce norms against chemical weapons? Obama’s answer has been to conduct a kind of public experiment: Instead of acting unilaterally as commander in chief, he has asked a divided Congress for counsel. Predictably, this has produced a cacophony, and Obama – despite a strong speech Tuesday night – is accused of playing both sides. [what strong speech - not one analyst has given a better grade than "c"]
Basically, the president is mirroring the public’s split personality. [No, the public is clear; not military involvement] He wants to lead but he wants to listen, too. He wants to end wars but also to intervene militarily. He wants to stay out of the Syrian war and also support the opposition. To resolve this confusion, he proposes an inductive kind of leadership: As he read from people’s letters Tuesday, it sounded almost like government by focus group. [Leaders lead, not equivocate; they act decisively and build confidence] Leadership as we experience it in life is usually more declarative. Leaders take action – and people follow. But Obama’s style is different. As we’ve learned after nearly five years, he’s more cautious and deliberative. [Code speak for he does not know how to lead]
The public focus on Obama’s decision- making has obscured something perhaps more important, which is the breakdown of bipartisan foreign policy. Instead of converging in the center around American leadership, the country seems to be converging at the wings, in a shared left-right rejection of the traditional interventionist role. The public overwhelmingly rejects more “wars of choice” in the Middle East to help nations and people who are seen as feckless and ungrateful. [The public is correct] You can think this new American caution is potentially dangerous (as I do), but there’s no arguing that it’s deeply felt and (given the immense cost and almost nonexistent benefits of Iraq and Afghanistan) understandable. The question is what a president should do about it. [This is the same idiot that hammered the U.S. for NOT being cautious]
Obama has been trying to reconstruct a basis for action. He took a principled and unpopular stand in favor of military intervention in Syria. He then deferred to Congress, sensing that he couldn’t take the country into conflict without more support. Some argue that he should have just rolled the dice and fired the missiles, but that’s not the way our country is supposed to work. And, even after turning to Congress, he still convinced the Russians and Syrians that he was prepared to act. [cold feet is cold feet] Obama displays such a peculiar combination of traits as president that I turned last week to an unlikely source for illumination. It’s a new book by Columbia law professor Philip Bobbitt about Machiavelli called “The Garments of Court and Palace.” Bobbitt’s argument is that for all his supposed ruthlessness and amorality, Machiavelli was actually proposing rules that would allow a prince to govern in a decisive but sustainable way – with what amounted to constitutional order. This book convinces me that to succeed, Obama must become Bobbitt’s neo-Machiavellian. [He is already a fictional character!]
Here’s a famous passage that Bobbitt quotes from “The Prince,” which Obama should commit to memory: “Because ... a prince must sometimes practice the ways of beasts, he should choose from among them the fox and the lion, for while the lion cannot defend himself from traps, the fox cannot protect himself from wolves. It is therefore necessary to be a fox in order to recognize traps, and a lion in order to frighten wolves.” [And this makes sense in the real world? Laughable] Obama does the fox thing pretty well. He recognizes traps and generally avoids them. But he needs more lion. This means bold policy – diplomacy backed by threat of military force. To succeed in reframing U.S. power, Obama will need to frighten the wolves on Capitol Hill and the Kremlin. Otherwise, they will devour what’s left of his presidency. [He cannot blame congress, he failed of his own doing]
Obama’s penchant for avoiding big, risky bets in uncertain situations may also be neo-Machiavellian, in Bobbitt’s terms. The phrase “the end justifies the means” is often attributed incorrectly to Machiavelli. Properly translated, argues Bobbitt, the advice to the prince is: “One must consider the outcome.”
The answer tells us some worrying things about the breakdown of America’s old foreign-policy consensus and Obama’s difficulty creating a new one. Look behind the White House veil and here’s what you’ll see: The president correctly believes that in the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan, the country is sick of war and mistrustful of politicians. The traditional center ground on which foreign policy is made (“politics stops at the water’s edge”) has disappeared. The left and right are equally suspicious of foreign entanglements.
How does a president who wants to be a liberal internationalist rally the nation to enforce norms against chemical weapons? Obama’s answer has been to conduct a kind of public experiment: Instead of acting unilaterally as commander in chief, he has asked a divided Congress for counsel. Predictably, this has produced a cacophony, and Obama – despite a strong speech Tuesday night – is accused of playing both sides. [what strong speech - not one analyst has given a better grade than "c"]
Basically, the president is mirroring the public’s split personality. [No, the public is clear; not military involvement] He wants to lead but he wants to listen, too. He wants to end wars but also to intervene militarily. He wants to stay out of the Syrian war and also support the opposition. To resolve this confusion, he proposes an inductive kind of leadership: As he read from people’s letters Tuesday, it sounded almost like government by focus group. [Leaders lead, not equivocate; they act decisively and build confidence] Leadership as we experience it in life is usually more declarative. Leaders take action – and people follow. But Obama’s style is different. As we’ve learned after nearly five years, he’s more cautious and deliberative. [Code speak for he does not know how to lead]
The public focus on Obama’s decision- making has obscured something perhaps more important, which is the breakdown of bipartisan foreign policy. Instead of converging in the center around American leadership, the country seems to be converging at the wings, in a shared left-right rejection of the traditional interventionist role. The public overwhelmingly rejects more “wars of choice” in the Middle East to help nations and people who are seen as feckless and ungrateful. [The public is correct] You can think this new American caution is potentially dangerous (as I do), but there’s no arguing that it’s deeply felt and (given the immense cost and almost nonexistent benefits of Iraq and Afghanistan) understandable. The question is what a president should do about it. [This is the same idiot that hammered the U.S. for NOT being cautious]
Obama has been trying to reconstruct a basis for action. He took a principled and unpopular stand in favor of military intervention in Syria. He then deferred to Congress, sensing that he couldn’t take the country into conflict without more support. Some argue that he should have just rolled the dice and fired the missiles, but that’s not the way our country is supposed to work. And, even after turning to Congress, he still convinced the Russians and Syrians that he was prepared to act. [cold feet is cold feet] Obama displays such a peculiar combination of traits as president that I turned last week to an unlikely source for illumination. It’s a new book by Columbia law professor Philip Bobbitt about Machiavelli called “The Garments of Court and Palace.” Bobbitt’s argument is that for all his supposed ruthlessness and amorality, Machiavelli was actually proposing rules that would allow a prince to govern in a decisive but sustainable way – with what amounted to constitutional order. This book convinces me that to succeed, Obama must become Bobbitt’s neo-Machiavellian. [He is already a fictional character!]
Here’s a famous passage that Bobbitt quotes from “The Prince,” which Obama should commit to memory: “Because ... a prince must sometimes practice the ways of beasts, he should choose from among them the fox and the lion, for while the lion cannot defend himself from traps, the fox cannot protect himself from wolves. It is therefore necessary to be a fox in order to recognize traps, and a lion in order to frighten wolves.” [And this makes sense in the real world? Laughable] Obama does the fox thing pretty well. He recognizes traps and generally avoids them. But he needs more lion. This means bold policy – diplomacy backed by threat of military force. To succeed in reframing U.S. power, Obama will need to frighten the wolves on Capitol Hill and the Kremlin. Otherwise, they will devour what’s left of his presidency. [He cannot blame congress, he failed of his own doing]
Obama’s penchant for avoiding big, risky bets in uncertain situations may also be neo-Machiavellian, in Bobbitt’s terms. The phrase “the end justifies the means” is often attributed incorrectly to Machiavelli. Properly translated, argues Bobbitt, the advice to the prince is: “One must consider the outcome.”
Final Note: this blabbering idiot writings are near
delusional and his "coming to the defense of Obama" is egregious and
disingenuous.
~~~~~~
Lawmakers ask if Syria outfoxed US By Libby Quaid Associated Press
But some Democrats say deal proves threat of military strike worked. Yet, the facts demonstrate Obama was outfoxed not by Syria, but Russia.
Lawmakers assessing the agreement on Syria’s chemical weapons argued Sunday about whether President Barack Obama was outfoxed by the Russians and had lost leverage in trying to end the civil war, or whether his threat of military action had propelled the breakthrough.
Republican lawmakers said that committing to remove or destroy Syria’s chemical weapons was laudable, but the agreement fell short by not mandating military action should Assad fail to comply. Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the U.S. is “being led by the nose by” Russian President Vladimir Putin. “So, if we wanted a transition with Assad, we just fired our last round, and we have taken our ability to negotiate a settlement from the White House, and we’ve sent it with Russia to the United Nations,” Rogers said. “That’s a dangerous place for us to be if you want an overall settlement to the problems.” Russia, which already has rejected three Security Council resolutions on Syria, would be sure to veto a U.N. move toward military action, and U.S. officials said they did not contemplate seeking such an authorization.
Obama said Saturday that “if diplomacy fails, the United States remains prepared to act,” and Secretary of State John Kerry warned during a visit to Israel on Sunday that “the threat of force is real” if Assad fails to live up to the terms of the agreement.
Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the threat of force “is still very much in Russian hands.”
“That’s the most important element, is the veto piece,” Corker said. “So in many ways, our credibility in the region, and certainly relative to the chemical warfare, is very much driven by Russia, which has its hands firmly on the steering wheel. “ Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who are among Obama’s sharpest foreign policy critics and support greater U.S. assistance for Syria’s rebels, said the agreement will embolden enemies such as Iran.
Democrats insisted that while the agreement itself doesn’t commit the U.S. to using force, the option of acting independently of the U.N. remains. Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Russia’s primary aim has been to force the U.S. to give up that option. “Russia has failed in that goal,” Levin said. Levin ignores the lack of approval from the congress, which Obama is unlikely to receive.
Obama said in an interview with ABC television’s “This Week” that if Syria can be stopped from using chemical weapons, “then we may also have a foundation” to begin the process of reaching a political settlement to the civil war. Obama said Putin is “protecting” Assad and doesn’t share American “values” in Syria. “He has a different attitude about the Assad regime,” Obama said. “But what I’ve also said to him directly is that we both have an interest in preventing chaos, we both have an interest in preventing terrorism. The situation in Syria right now is untenable. As long as Mr. Assad’s in power, there is going be some sort of conflict there.” This, from the president that has done nothing for the past two years while Assad has killed over 100,00 people.
But some Democrats say deal proves threat of military strike worked. Yet, the facts demonstrate Obama was outfoxed not by Syria, but Russia.
Lawmakers assessing the agreement on Syria’s chemical weapons argued Sunday about whether President Barack Obama was outfoxed by the Russians and had lost leverage in trying to end the civil war, or whether his threat of military action had propelled the breakthrough.
Republican lawmakers said that committing to remove or destroy Syria’s chemical weapons was laudable, but the agreement fell short by not mandating military action should Assad fail to comply. Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the U.S. is “being led by the nose by” Russian President Vladimir Putin. “So, if we wanted a transition with Assad, we just fired our last round, and we have taken our ability to negotiate a settlement from the White House, and we’ve sent it with Russia to the United Nations,” Rogers said. “That’s a dangerous place for us to be if you want an overall settlement to the problems.” Russia, which already has rejected three Security Council resolutions on Syria, would be sure to veto a U.N. move toward military action, and U.S. officials said they did not contemplate seeking such an authorization.
Obama said Saturday that “if diplomacy fails, the United States remains prepared to act,” and Secretary of State John Kerry warned during a visit to Israel on Sunday that “the threat of force is real” if Assad fails to live up to the terms of the agreement.
Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the threat of force “is still very much in Russian hands.”
“That’s the most important element, is the veto piece,” Corker said. “So in many ways, our credibility in the region, and certainly relative to the chemical warfare, is very much driven by Russia, which has its hands firmly on the steering wheel. “ Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who are among Obama’s sharpest foreign policy critics and support greater U.S. assistance for Syria’s rebels, said the agreement will embolden enemies such as Iran.
Democrats insisted that while the agreement itself doesn’t commit the U.S. to using force, the option of acting independently of the U.N. remains. Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Russia’s primary aim has been to force the U.S. to give up that option. “Russia has failed in that goal,” Levin said. Levin ignores the lack of approval from the congress, which Obama is unlikely to receive.
Obama said in an interview with ABC television’s “This Week” that if Syria can be stopped from using chemical weapons, “then we may also have a foundation” to begin the process of reaching a political settlement to the civil war. Obama said Putin is “protecting” Assad and doesn’t share American “values” in Syria. “He has a different attitude about the Assad regime,” Obama said. “But what I’ve also said to him directly is that we both have an interest in preventing chaos, we both have an interest in preventing terrorism. The situation in Syria right now is untenable. As long as Mr. Assad’s in power, there is going be some sort of conflict there.” This, from the president that has done nothing for the past two years while Assad has killed over 100,00 people.
~~~~~~
Government Gone Wild: Feds To Require
That Movie Theatres Accommodate Deaf, Blind Patrons
This might be nice, but who is going to pay for it? What
is next? The
Obama administration is nearing completion of a proposal to require that movie
theaters offer technology so blind and deaf people can go to the cinema. The
draft rule, which is part of a decades-long effort by advocates for people with
disabilities, would likely require thousands of movie theaters across the
country to offer devices that display closed captioning and provide audio
narration of what’s happening onscreen. Disability associations say
that the new regulation will make sure that blind and deaf people can
appreciate the latest blockbuster just like everyone else. But theater owners
worry that a federal mandate will force small, rural and struggling theaters to
close given the costs associated with the rule. We are truly
witnessing the age of idiots creating regulations that only idiots would agree
with. In today's worlds, these people don't need government intervention
nor do movie theaters.
~~~~~~
The Most Offensive Speech Ever By Mike Adams
There’s nothing more frightening to a liberal college
administrator than the gospel message. And I mean that literally. Twice, and only twice, since
I’ve been a professor at UNC-We’re Afraid of Jesus, hereafter UNCW, I’ve been
warned that there is about to be an exceedingly offensive message broadcast on
campus. On both of those occasions, the message was the Gospel. Here’s
the latest warning, which was sent out on September 4th to everyone in the
university community:
“I
wanted to make you aware of a freedom of expression permit that has been
approved for this Thursday. Christopher Jude Crowley from ‘Dead 2 Sin
Ministries’ will be on campus Thursday, September 5th between 12:00p-4:00p in
the Commons Amphitheater. He is not sponsored by a student organization, but he
will have a permit from the Office of the Dean of Students. His topic is ‘to
preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.’ Per our procedures, notice(s) will be
placed at appropriate locations stating who the speaker/group will be and the
duration of time they will be in the location. This will allow for people to
reroute their day if they prefer not to hear a speaker they may find offensive
or to avoid the area due to congestion.”
This
is a grand idea, isn’t it? College is the last place where we would want
students to encounter an idea that might be offensive. It would also be
insane to assume that they are adults possessed of the ability to take matters
into their own hands and divert themselves away from messages they might find
to be disagreeable. So I support these “notices at appropriate locations” just
like I support these mass emails warning in advance of these potentially
offensive situations
~~~~~~
"Without justice being freely, fully, and
impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our
property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by
no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no
certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies,
society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage
and barbarous independence." –Joseph
Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833
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