"A man may deal with theory, and miss the whole impact of the truth." - G. Campbell Morgan
With tensions already rising due to the Chinese navy becoming more aggressive in asserting its territorial claims in the South China Sea, the U.S. Navy seems to have yet another reason to be deeply concerned.
After years of conjecture, details have begun to emerge of a "kill weapon" developed by the Chinese to target and destroy U.S. aircraft carriers.
JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq.
Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh.
President Obama has nominated Koh -- until last week the dean of Yale Law School -- to be the State Department's legal adviser. In that job, Koh would forge a wide range of international agreements on issues from trade to arms control, and help represent our country in such places as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice.
It's a job where you want a strong defender of America's sovereignty. But that's not Koh. He's a fan of "transnational legal process," arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish.
And Jehovah said to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Exodus 32:9
Appearing on "FOX News Sunday," Gates said North Korea "probably will" fire the missile, prompting host Chris Wallace to ask: "And there's nothing we can do about it?"
"No," Gates answered, adding, "I would say we're not prepared to do anything about it."
A prison work crew baby-sat a 2½-year-old boy who was spotted Friday running along the center lines of a rural Maryland highway, with trucks loaded with gravel rumbling by, police and correctional officials said.
In the end, we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate. Only by confronting such poisonous claims with irrefutable facts can we understand what really happened on a day that is forever seared into world history.
AMERICA'S enemies smell blood and it's type "O."
All new administrations stumble a bit as they seek their footing. But President Obama's foreign-policy botches have set new records for instant incompetence.
Contrary to left-wing myths, I wasn't a fan of the Bush administration. (I called for Donald Rumsfeld to get the boot in mid-2001.) But fair's fair. Despite his many faults, Bush sought to do good. Obama just wants to look good.
Vice President Dick Cheney was arrogant. Vice President Joe Biden is arrogant and stupid. Take your pick.
Don't worry about the new administration's ideology. Worry about its terrifying naivete.
Consider a sampling of the goofs O and his crew have made in just two months:
President Barack Obama's intelligence chief confirmed Thursday that some Guantanamo inmates may be released on US soil and receive assistance to return to society.
"If we are to release them in the United States, we need some sort of assistance for them to start a new life," said National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair at his first press conference.
Before we can change external stimuli like the economy, societal morality, Wall Street, the Supreme Court, Congress, the president, Social Security, Medicare, abortion, or any part of our leviathan government apparatus, we have got to change our heart. Since this is in the metaphysical domain, this "change" cannot occur by media propaganda, political sloganeering, positive thinking or some other artifice of man. This is a job for God. We have got to allow God to change our thinking, repent and return to following the Ten Commandments, beginning with the last commandment – Thou shalt not covet.
By obeying this profound aphorism, I believe that American society could comprehensively improve on an exponential level. JFK once said, "A rising tide lifts all boats." This means that through free-market capitalism the rich can become richer, the poor can become middle-class and if they work hard enough, eventually become rich themselves. The only barrier to what Jefferson called "the pursuit of happiness" would be the limits placed on our own selves. Obama's socialist remedies are rooted in coveting the possessions of another and are therefore antithetical to the pursuit of happiness.
A hedge fund manager who predicted the global credit crunch has said the financial crisis has been 'stimulating' and the culmination of his life's work.
George Soros, who predicted the global financial crisis twice before, was one of the few people to anticipate and prepare for the current economic collapse.
Mr Soros said his prediction meant he was better able to brace his Quantum investment fund against the global storm.
After Bush's reelection in 2004, Soros and other wealthy liberal political donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance which aims to support the goals of the U.S. Democratic Party.
'It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work,' --George Soros
The head of the European Union slammed President Barack Obama's plan to spend nearly $2 trillion to push the U.S. economy out of recession as "the road to hell" that EU governments must avoid.
"I get e-mails from people all the time: 'Rush, what would you suggest as a reading list so that I can understand conservatism?' You don't need a reading list. You need just one book, and I would recommend you getting this book for yourself and buying extra copies to give away: Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny." --Rush Limbaugh
I don't carry a gun to kill people.
I carry a gun to keep from being killed.
I don't carry a gun to scare people.
I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place.
I don't carry a gun because I'm paranoid.
I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world.
I don't carry a gun because I'm evil.
I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.
I don't carry a gun because I hate the government.
I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.
I don't carry a gun because I'm angry.
I carry a gun so that I don't have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared.
I don't carry a gun because I want to shoot someone.
I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed, and
not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.
I don't carry a gun to make me feel like a man.
I carry a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the ones they love.
I don't carry a gun because I feel inadequate.
I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three armed thugs, I am inadequate.
I don't carry a gun because I love it.
I carry a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful to me.
Police Protection is an oxymoron. Free citizens must protect themselves.
Police do not protect you from crime, they usually just investigate the
crime after it happens and then call someone in to clean up the mess.
A 911 operator is under investigation for lecturing a kidnapping victim who was later found slain.
While operator Alan Ballard was on the phone with victim Loyta Stoley, he told her, "You are making us do a lot of work that we don't need to be doing," a tape of the 911 call reveals.
Until the left and all the institutions influenced by the left acknowledge how evil communism has been, we will continue to live in a morally confused world. Conversely, the day the left does come to grips with communism's legacy of human destruction, it will be a very positive sign that the world's moral compass has begun to correct itself.
Seattle Mariners star Ichiro Suzuki hit a two-out, two-run single in the top of the 10th, and Japan beat reigning Olympic champion South Korea 5-3 Monday night to win its second straight WBC title before a boisterous crowd of 54,846 at Dodger Stadium.
Reform of health care, environmental policy, education, energy, banking, regulation -- every nook and cranny of the U. S. economy has been put on alert for major change. Expansion of government spending, plunging the U. S. into unprecedented deficits, is without parallel. In economic policy, through regulation and control of energy output, financial services and monetary expansion, the U. S. government has embarked on a fundamental reshaping of America. It is designed, in short, to bring on the end of America.
"You're sitting here. And you're— you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, 'I mean, he's sitting there just making jokes about money—' How do you deal with— I mean: explain. . ." Kroft asked at one point.
"Are you punch-drunk?" Kroft said.
An elderly woman found herself repeatedly dialing 911 after the emergency calls rang with no answer and an intruder roamed around her Parker County home.
On a February night, Laverne Hokett awoke to the sound of a man breaking down her back door.
"It's a thousand wonders I haven't had a heart attack," she said with tears welling up in her eye. "I was so afraid."
A college student apparently called 911 from her cell phone shortly before she was killed but a dispatcher hung up, failed to call back and never sent police to investigate, authorities say.
Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said it was too early to know whether a better response could have prevented the April 2 slaying of Wisconsin-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann or helped police capture her killer.
Sheesh, the guy is Jimmy Carter.
That homespun bowling crap on Jay Leno, followed by the turgid, teachy fiscal policy lecture, together with the hurt defensiveness (and bad script for it) that everybody in Washington "is Simon Cowell... Everybody's got an opinion," is pure I'm-in-over-my-head stuff. Even the idea of having to go on Jay Leno to rescue yourself from the AIG mess is lame. Be a man, man.
The guy just doesn't know what to say. He can't connect. Emotions are here, he's over there. He can’t get the words to match the situation.
Yes, modern liberalism is, with the possible exception of Islam, the most intolerant and most deceptive ideology on the face of God's earth. And we should always expose the fact that liberals, while claiming to strictly adhere to their fallacious rule that "we can't legislate morality," are themselves the biggest advocates of legislating morality in the world, with, again, the possible exception of Muslims.
After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.
Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.
The real disaster hanging over us lies in all those astronomically costly measures proposed by politicians, to meet a crisis which in reality never existed.
"But if we don't understand what is natural, I don't think we can say much about what the humans are doing. So our interest is to understand -- first the natural variability of climate -- and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,"
Environmentalists, scientists who advance the warming theory, politicians and reporters never shy away from hyping those weather stories that support their beliefs. But they tend to ignore or explain away stories that might cast doubt.
There are a lot of people in every age who think they know better than everyone else and, therefore, have a right to tell everyone how to live. In the 1950s, it was country-club and parish council busybodies with their strict moral codes. In the 1970s, it was social democrats with their fanciful economic theories. Today, it's environmentalists.
Same instinct, different wrapper.
The WMD (weapon of mosquito destruction) laser works by detecting the audio frequency created by the beating of mosquito wings. A computer triggers the laser beam, the mosquito's wings are burnt off and its smoking carcass falls to the ground.
And note that Gupta — a physician who was Barack Obama's first choice as Surgeon General — never bothers to correct Clinton. Did Gupta miss that lesson in pre-med?
Imagine a child falls down a well. Now imagine I offer to lend the parents my ladder to save her, but only if they promise to paint my house. Would you applaud me for not letting a crisis go to waste? Or would you think I'm a jerk, for want of a harsher word not printable in this space?
I ask because I’m trying to come to terms with Rule No. 1 of the Obama administration.
"Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste," White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told the New York Times right after the election. "They are opportunities to do big things." Over the weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience at the European Parliament, "Never waste a good crisis." Then President Obama explained in his Saturday radio and Internet address that there is "great opportunity in the midst of" the "great crisis" befalling America.
Mark Steyn: Yeah. No, I think this is the completely…I mean basically, what they keep doing is they’re trying, as I said on this show a couple of weeks ago, I think they’re trying to re-inflate a credit bubble. And no matter how many trillions of dollars you pump into that, you can’t do it. People are still talking about it as if the problem is getting the banks to lend. Anyone who’s tried understands that the banks are actually willing to lend at the moment. It’s that people are unwilling to borrow. And I can understand that. If you look at the amount of money that the Obama administration and Congress wants to spend, we are going to have some serious tax hikes six months, a year down the road. That being the case, do you really want to take on new monthly payments for anything? It’s not that institutions aren’t lending. It’s that people quite rightly and quite rationally aren’t borrowing at the moment.
Hugh Hewitt: I also was thinking today when he said we needed another trillion for TARP II that today, the first big scandal tying Congress to TARP I came out, the New York Times reporting that Maxine Waters...
MS: Right.
HH: ...helped steer $12 million dollars to a bank in which it alleges her husband had equity.
MS: Right, and this is what is horrible about this hideous form of managed capitalism that we’re now getting in this country. There was an interesting typing error over at National Review the other day on the website. Instead of capitalism, they spelled it capitolism, and that’s basically what we’ve got. We've got capitolism, in which people like Barney Frank and Maxine Waters are picking the winners and losers. No good is going to come of that. No good is going to come of that. If they’re not actively corrupt, as a lot of the political class is in Washington, then they're incompetent. But either way, the idea that they can re-calibrate not just the U.S. economy, but also the global economy, I think, is laughable.
Prof David Deamer, from California University, said although building a new lifeform from scratch is a daunting task he is confident it can happen in five to 10 years.
A South Florida preschool is banning backpacks and bookbags after a 4-year-old pulled a bag of pot from his sack.
Yes, there’s a recession on and it’s deep. Capitalism is not perfect (though one harbors the suspicion that if government had not, in effect, subsidized risky mortgage lending we would not be in this position). But with all its defects, capitalism remains the greatest engine of prosperity the world has ever witnessed. Just in the last 25 years, hundreds of millions of people, principally residing in China and India, who had been close to destitution and starvation are driving cars, sipping lattes, and chatting on cell phones thanks to free-market reforms. Countries with few natural resources other than the brains of their people — like Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan — have become economic powerhouses by permitting the free market to work its magic.
Here at home, the U.S. has been able to dramatically improve standards of living not just for the wealthy (they do fine in every country) but for ordinary people. Hard work has been rewarded, not punished. And the free market has given us everything from computers and iPods to Prilosec and the Mayo Clinic.
It didn’t seem possible six months ago that capitalism in the United States could be in danger. If Obama/Pelosi/Reid have their way, the U.S. too will bear the prefix "once-great."
Frighteningly, the chart says, "Actual distribution patterns may be more extensive and complex than what is illustrated here."
A political operative, based inside the White House, employed by the president of the United States and receiving a salary from the American taxpayer, goes to work every day to help direct a strategy against a broadcaster whose opinions are supposed to be covered by every protection the First Amendment can provide. To quote Shakespeare, "Something is rotten."
"It never effects the bad guys. The wolves will continue to be wolves, and even if you made every gun in the world illegal today, they will always be armed, they always have been. Nothing will change that, the only thing your going to do is strip good people, good sheepdogs that preserve the safety in our society." -- Nutnfancy
1. Socialists believe in the use of force to gain their personal ends. Whether it's light bulbs or alternative energy or public schools or national health care, in the end there's always a gun at your head to get you to conform. If a man holds you up in the street, does it matter if he wants the money for drugs or to bail out someone's mortgage? It's still a gun, and it's still armed robbery.
2. Socialists believe in slavery. Their concept is not the slavery of an individual owning another individual, but of a state owning the output of the individual. We are now forced to work four months out of the year for the federal government before we see a dime of our own income, and it's getting worse. Our new administration has just indebted every family an additional $11,000 without our permission or approval. This is economic slavery. (If you don't believe me, watch what happens if you don't pay your taxes. See No. 1 above.)
3. Socialists are racists. The content of the character doesn't matter; it's all about the color of the skin. Read the e-mail I received in response to last week's column, in which the writer somehow made the extraordinary leap in logic from my premise of government fiscal irresponsibility to William Byrd whipping slaves three centuries ago. Yes, Byrd was a nasty man. But what on earth did that have to do with the topic of my column? This illustrates that socialists will always bring up the subject of race, regardless of the prevailing drift of the conversation.
Most people tend to look at the content of peoples' character rather than the color of their skin. If someone is honest, hardworking and decent, then who cares what he looks like? But if they're angry, abusive and violent … then sorry, the content of their character is demonstrating that they're not people to associate with, regardless of skin color. Conservatives – true conservatives – really don't give a diddly darn about someone's melanin content. As columnist Burt Prelutsky put it, "… most white Americans don't spend a lot of time dwelling on anyone's race. They're much too busy trying to make a living and raise their kids."
4. Socialists believe the worst in everyone. They believe that we are all racists, therefore racism must be shoved in our faces constantly. They believe we are stingy, so we must have our money forcibly removed and redistributed to others. They believe we are heartless and that the only source of compassion is the government, so compassion becomes government-mandated.
5. Socialists think religion, especially Christianity, is stupid and nothing but a prop for the unwashed masses. Why else would they forbid expressions of faith anywhere except (grudgingly) within the walls of a church? Religious people are seen as uneducated, primitive, bitterly-clinging troglodytes.
6. Socialists believe in an ignorant society. How else can we explain their slavish devotion to a public school system that is so dumbed down that students can't read their own diplomas? Socialists know an ignorant society is good. Useful idiots are more amenable to dominance than citizens who have read and understood the documents of the Founding Fathers.
7. Socialists believe you have no right of self-defense. They don't even want you to talk about it in a school assignment. They pretend to have utter faith that government agents can protect you from any and all harm. In reality, it's the government agents that are among our biggest threats. What socialists are really concerned about is your ability to defend yourself against them.
8. Socialists are intolerant. If you have a dissenting opinion, you are mocked and ridiculed for having the temerity to disagree. Socialists do not believe in freedom of speech or they wouldn't be concerned about Rush Limbaugh or what ministers say from the pulpit.
9. Socialists are hypocrites. They expect the unwashed masses to conform to their ideals while they, the lofty and elite, are exempt. How else can you explain Al Gore's energy-sucking mansion? How else can they claim conservative talk radio or Internet news is too powerful when socialists dominate the newspaper and television media?
10. Above all, socialists are in denial. No matter how much you point out the obvious – that the government is fulfilling the dictionary definition of socialism – they flat deny it. If you point out the horrors of socialized medicine, for example, a socialist will say "But this time it will be different." Socialists are unconcerned that the government holds 40 percent of Citibank and over 80 percent of AIG. Nancy Pelosi assures us that government takeovers of banks should be "transitional" but not permanent, and Steny Hoyer hesitates "to use the word nationalization." You'll notice they don't deny it's a government takeover. They merely refuse to call a duck a duck. Quack quack.
His mental health is to be evaluated within 90 days, the judge ordered. Thereafter, he may be released or confined to a secure psychiatric hospital for treatment.
Now, new Danish scientific research shows that small animals such as snails, worms, larvae and crustaceans emit large and worrying amounts of nitrous oxide – also known as laughing gas – into the atmosphere.
Nitrous oxide is a strongly destructive greenhouse gas some 300 times stronger than CO2.
The student was fulfilling an assignment for his Communications 140 class that required him to discuss a "relevant issue in the media" when he and two other students on a team chose to talk about school violence, including recent events such as the 2007 shootings that left nearly three dozen people dead at Virginia Tech University.
Wahlberg made the point during his Oct. 3, 2008, class presentation that if students were allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus, the violence could have been stopped earlier. He discussed the concept of college campus gun-free zones.
That evening, the Recorder said, Wahlberg got a call from campus police officers who "requested" his presence at their station. When he arrived, officers listed firearms that were registered to him and asked him where they were.
Apparently his professor, Paula Anderson, had filed a campus police department complaint about his speech. Police officers reported she said students were "scared and uncomfortable" during his presention.
Wahlberg told the newspaper he wasn't worried, "because as a law-abiding gun owner, I have a thorough understanding of state gun laws as well as unwavering safety practices."
But he said he was hit with a "general sense of disbelief" when officers listed his guns.
Windows shook, nerves were rattled, dogs barked and everyone thought, maybe, we were getting ready for the big one. More than 70 calls were logged into 911 by frightened folks thinking someone was breaking into their homes.
Experts still don't know what caused the shake and the shimmy.
Judging by the early days of his administration, I have had to re-evaluate him. He's even worse than I feared. It's been one disaster after another. His appointments have been a series of embarrassments. His hard sell of the Pelosi-Reid trillion dollar earmark makes him look like the worst sort of fear monger. And, considering the fact that he was sold to us as eloquent and a fellow who could think on his feet, his use of a teleprompter at his press conference reminded me of the Wizard of Oz, the con man behind the curtain. I guess you can take the man out of Chicago, but you can't take Chicago out of the man.
Frankly, I don't know why anybody continues to hold Obama in high esteem. Maybe it's like those women who marry charming fellows only to discover after the vows have been exchanged that he's an abuser. In spite of the black eyes and split lips, the ladies are just too embarrassed to call the cops and have their friends and relatives discover what a dunderhead they've been.
I'm fascinated by the Obama administration's mentality that the fact that violent Mexican drug cartels are raising hell just over the border doesn't justify additional border security or a fence, but it does justify making it harder for American citizens to own a gun.
Prove to me, here and now, that gun laws in this country or any other, are successful in any way shape or form in stopping criminals from getting their hands on guns, or any other weapon they choose.
"There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial." --Dave Grossman
"It's such a non-commonsense idea that you can keep dust within a property line when the wind blows,"
"All politicians," Limbaugh said, "including President Obama, are temporary stewards of this nation. It is not their task to remake the founding of this country. It is not their task to tear it apart and rebuild it in their image."
If Americans turn their backs on Obama, and at this point that looks unlikely but possible if the economy continues in its downward spiral, it will be because he tried to remake America in his own image. We didn’t sign up for a new founding father. We did not abandon our belief that despite our imperfections, America is the solution—not the problem—to every challenge facing the people in this country and, in many cases, the world. Most of us did not come to the same conclusion Obama did that America behaved badly and now we are being punished. Most of us love this country for the opportunity she provides. We love her for the decency of her people. And we believe that our president’s job is to cheer her on not talk her down.
When we turn on the television and see this gifted young leader scolding us and sending the successful and prosperous people of this country to detention, many of us scratch our heads. Who does he think is going to do the hiring and the growing and the building and the paying of the taxes? If Obama continues to paint all the job creators in this country with the same broad brush that he used last week when he condemned the greedy and the corrupt for their bad behavior, America’s recovery will be a long time coming. He seems to forget that we have a system in place for people who break the law. The people who defrauded investors and scammed unwitting homebuyers will be punished. But the vast majority of business owners and job creators are decent and honest, and their success is vital if we are to re-enter a period of economic expansion in this country.
You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat; you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.
Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.
Is this what is happening to America? The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc., while we continually lose our freedoms -- just a little at a time.
One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.