Happy July 4th! (compliments of skitguys.com)
Monthly Archives: July 2012
As We Celebrate Our Independence…
Something from YouTube to think about on July 4th:
Happy Fourth Of July!
I will be marching in the July 4th Parade in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, in support of the Marty Lamb for State Representative campaign. Look for the Mustang convertible!
I Am Not A Terrorist
I am a conservative. I believe in limited government. I agree with most of the ideas of the Tea Party. I am not, nor am I in danger of becoming, a terrorist. I am a little old lady who remembers when autumn meant the smell of burning leaves, gasoline was $.30 a gallon, and we sang patriotic songs and prayed in school. (I went to elementary school in the south, and we sang Dixie a lot!)
However, the Department of Homeland Security sees people who believe what I believe as a threat.
The Department of Homeland Security publication, LaFree, Gary, and Bianca Bersani. “Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970 to 2008,” Final Report to Human Factors/Behavioral Sciences Division, Science and Technology Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. College Park, MD: START, 2012., includes the following statement about potential terrorists:
Extreme Right-Wing: groups that believe that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and believe in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism. Groups may also be fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty, and believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty.
…Religious: groups that seek to smite the purported enemies of God and other evildoers, impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists), forcibly insert religion into the political sphere (e.g., those who seek to politicize religion, such as Christian Reconstructionists and Islamists), and/or bring about Armageddon (apocalyptic millenarian cults; 2010: 17). For example, Jewish Direct Action, Mormon extremist, Jamaat-al-Fuqra, and Covenant, Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) are included in this category.
I don’t mean to be difficult, but there is only one religion on that list that has been consistently involved in terrorism. My experience with Christian fundamentalists has been that when someone commits violence in the name of Jesus, he is condemned by the Christian community–not lauded. Bible-believing Christians may practice civil disobedience (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s freedom marches), but violence against authority is not Biblical (e.g. Dietrich Bonhoeffer felt that he needed to ask God’s forgiveness for plotting against Hitler).
The report is approximately 37 pages long. It reminds me of the story (previously related in this blog) about the man walking around under a streetlight seemingly looking for something. When someone asks him what he is doing, he explains that he is looking for his car keys, which he dropped on the other side of the street. When asked why he is looking under the streetlight when he dropped the keys on the other side of the street, he replies. “Because the light is better over here.” Obviously, as long as he is looking on the wrong side of the street, he has no hope of finding his keys.
So why would the Department of Homeland Security rather see Christians as a threat than Muslims? Christians in America don’t fight back. Muslim radicals have learned to use the American court system to their advantage. We have seen that particularly in the Midwest with regard to foot washing basins in airports and taxi drivers who refuse to transport blind people because Muslims regard dogs as unclean.
It’s much easier to search for your keys under the streetlight! You may never find them, but the search is easier!
Every American’s Favorite Sheriff Has Died
TMZ.com is reporting that Andy Griffith has died at the age of 86.
The article reports:
Griffith, who became famous for “The Andy Griffith Show,” passed away at his home in Manteo, North Carolina this morning.
He was part of an era of television that has never been duplicated. His movie career included the movie “No Time For Sergeants” which is still as funny today as it was made in 1958.
Andy Griffith will be missed.
Illegal Is Now Legal
Breitbart.com is reporting today that the Obama Administration is already granting amnesty to illegal aliens who were to be deported even if they don’t meet the standards announced last month.
The article reports:
According to ICE documents Smith {Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX)} reviewed, ICE officers are encouraged to search for those who are “apparently eligible” to not be deported, under the directive, and grant them tentative status, according to the report.
“President Obama is granting amnesty to illegal immigrants behind Americans’ backs,” Smith said, per the Times. “Although administration officials told congressional offices that it would take 60 days to implement the president’s amnesty plan, internal ICE documents show that illegal immigrants have already benefited from it, even though there are no standards in place.”
This administration can’t even follow the policies they put in place!
The Secretary Of State In A Second Term Of Obama
The Weekly Standard posted a story on Monday about the choice of Secretary of State if President Obama wins a second term. Evidently, the conventional wisdom is that Hillary Clinton will step down in order to run for President in 2016. Senator John Kerry is the expected replacement.
An editorial in the Globe and Mail by Yossi Klein Halevi related the following story:
Last year, I was part of a group of Israelis who met in Jerusalem with Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. Mr. Kerry had just come from Damascus with excellent news: Bashar al-Assad was ready for peace with Israel. When one of the participants mentioned that demonstrations had begun to challenge Mr. Assad’s legitimacy, Mr. Kerry’s response was: All the more reason to negotiate while he’s still in power. In other words: Israel had the golden opportunity to give up the strategic Golan Heights to a dictator who might be deposed by a popular revolution, which might or might not recognize whatever peace agreement he signed.
That kind of wishful thinking has resulted in Western policy toward the Middle East that is strategically incoherent.
A second term of President Obama would be a nightmare both domestically and internationally. Keep this in mind when you vote.
Another Taxpayer Subsidized Solar Energy Company Goes Under
Today’s Daily Caller posted an article about Abound Solar, a Colorado green-energy firm that has filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy.
The article reports:
The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Abound Solar a $400 million loan guarantee in December 2010, funds that the then-three-year-old startup said it would use to compete with solar panel industry leader First Solar.
The company spent $535 million in loans guaranteed by the federal government before it failed. The article goes on to explain that Abound Solar was technically behind its competitors in the solar industry. Subsidizing inferior technology does not improve its quality, and it interferes with the ability of the free market to let the best technology prevail.
The best stimulus program would have been to give all taxpayers half of their income tax back! That would have stimulated the economy.
Obamanomics Has Not Worked
Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about the current state of the manufacturing segment of the American economy–it’s shrinking again. It is understood that President Obama inherited a miserable economy when he took office, but he has been in office for 3 1/2 years–it is now his economy. The annual growth of the economy this year is expected to be about 1.5%. In contrast, the annual growth of the economy during the fourth year of the Reagan Administration was 7.3%. Reagan also inherited a miserable economy, but his policies turned it around. I believe that if Mitt Romney is elected, his policies will turn the economy around.
This is how the manufacturing sector has looked for the past 10 years:
Your Tax Dollars At Work
It is no secret that one of the priorities of the Obama Administration is green energy. The problem with green energy is that we do not yet have the technology to make it cost effective. I suspect we will have that technology within the next thirty years, but we do not have it now. However, that has not stopped the government from using it when it is entirely impractical to do so.
Reuters posted a story today about the U. S. Navy‘s latest foray into the world of green energy. The “Great Green Fleet,” the first carrier strike group to be powered largely by alternative fuels, is currently headed to the central Pacific in an effort to prove that bio-fuels are as effective as conventional fuels.
There is, however, a problem. The article reports:
Some Republican lawmakers have seized on the fuel’s $26-a-gallon price, compared to $3.60 for conventional fuel. They paint the program as a waste of precious funds at a time when the U.S. government’s budget remains severely strained, the Pentagon is facing cuts and energy companies are finding big quantities of oil and gas in the United States.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, the program’s biggest public booster, calls it vital for the military’s energy security.
We need to understand that green energy will become cost effective and practical when the free market is allowed to develop an effective green fuel. Meanwhile, throwing money at solar panel manufactures that go bankrupt and rewarding political cronies who are involved in green energy simply slows down the progress toward practical and inexpensive green energy. If energy independence is so important to the Obama Administration, why did they veto the Keystone Pipeline, close down coal-powered electric plants, and slow down permits for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico?
The Future With Obamacare
From Heritage.org:
A Rational Perspective On Poverty In America
The video below was posted at Power Line yesterday. It is a six-minute video produced by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explaining the problem of poverty and the solution to poverty in America. Enjoy.
Lost In The Shuffle
There was a Supreme Court decision issued last Thursday other than the one on Obamacare. The Stolen Valor Act was declared unconstitutional. The Stolen Valor Act was passed in 2006 and signed by President Bush. It made it illegal to claim to have received any U.S. military decoration or medal. If convicted, defendants might have been imprisoned for up to six months, unless the decoration lied about is the Medal of Honor, in which case imprisonment could have been up to one year.
On Thursday, USA Today reported:
The court found that the statute violates the First Amendment.
The decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, says the law, as written, “seeks to control and suppress all false statements on this one subject in almost limitless times and settings without regard to whether the lie was made for the purpose of material gain.”
Kennedy writes that permitting the government to decree this kind of speech as a criminal offense “would endorse government authority to compile a list of subjects about which false statements are punishable.”
He notes, however, that Congress might be able to rewrite the law “to achieve the government’s objective in less burdensome ways.”
I understand why the court ruled this way, but falsely claiming military honors needs to be illegal. This is another slap in the face to the military veterans of all past wars who have earned these honors and medals.
Losing A War Because Of A Public Relations Campaign
Yesterday the U.K. Mail Online posted a story about the increase in casualties among British soldiers in Afghanistan due to the American rules of engagement in the war.
The article reports:
British soldiers in Afghanistan claim that new tactics are preventing them shooting at the Taliban until they have been fired at themselves – resulting in an alarming rise in the number of casualties.
The troops say they have had to change their procedures as part of American-led efforts to cut down on the number of civilians being wounded, but the new approach has made them more vulnerable.
In the past three months, 11 British soldiers have been killed by enemy gunfire in Helmand province, compared with just two in the same period last year.
No one is in favor of civilian casualties, but this is no way to fight a war.
The article reports one officer’s comments:
One junior non-commissioned officer said: ‘When I arrived in Helmand, my officers said our tactics were going to change.
‘They said that if I saw somebody carrying a rifle or a rocket launcher, I shouldn’t fire at him. Only if he shot at me or a member of my patrol, and I could see a muzzle flash from his rifle, could I use my weapon.
‘I was shocked and so were my mates. We are trained to close in and kill the enemy, not to let him stroll on, watch us and let him choose the best time to ambush us.
‘It has been hard to obey these orders while on patrol. There have been many occasions when we have come under fire from the Taliban, who we’ve seen following us through the green zone.
‘On previous tours, we would have engaged the enemy first to show them what we were made of. We’re up for a fight but now we always have to back off.
‘It makes me question the point of us being here.
‘Older guys like me have seen the tactics change over the years and 2012 is the hardest because we’re taking so many backward steps. I really feel for the families of the guys who’ve lost their lives, and I miss my mates who are dead.’
I don’t mean to be difficult, but would someone please explain to me what peaceful reason a member of the Taliban might have for carrying a rocket launcher? We need to get politicians out of wars and let the military do what is best for the troops and the war effort.
Why It Matters Who We Elect To Congress
On Friday Breitbart.com reported on President Obama’s attempts to raise fees military families pay for TRICARE, their medical plan. As the President claims to be trying to make heath insurance and healthcare affordable for everyone, he is attempting to raise the cost of healthcare for military families.
The article reports:
The Free Beacon notes that the bill that passed the House of Representatives, with bipartisan support, refused to incorporate the President’s request for higher TRICARE fees–and the administration has expressed displeasure.
The increased TRICARE fees were part of a defense appropriations bill. The President has threatened to veto the bill of the higher fees for TRICARE are not included in the bill.
