Former Godfather Pizza CEO Herman Cain won the Presidency 5 straw poll here Saturday, delivering a blow to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s frontrunner status and a victory for a candidate who has struggled to transform his grassroots popularity into strong showings in national polls.
It is a strange thing. Dozens of times I have been asked by patients or acquaintances: "Dr. Peck, why is there evil in the world?" Yet no one has ever asked me in all these years: "Why is there good in the world?" It is as if we automatically assume this is a naturally good world that has somehow been contaminated by evil. In terms of what we know of science, however, it is actually easier to explain evil. That things decay is quite explainable in accord with the natural law of physics. That life should evolve into more and more complex forms is not so easily understandable. That children generally lie and steal and cheat is routinely observable. The fact that sometimes they grow up to become truly honest adults is what seems the more remarkable. Laziness is more the rule than diligence. If we seriously think about it, it probably makes more sense to assume this is a naturally evil world that has somehow been mysteriously "contaminated" by goodness, rather than the other way around. The mystery of goodness is even greater than the mystery of evil.
--Dr. M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil
"This is about building and creating power."There are no winners in this game. Certainly not the poor or middle class. They want to use you to advance their agenda. You are the pawn and you are expendable. They don't care one wit about you. This is about them, the elites.
This is about how we are heroic. How we operate out of the highest moral place and do things we were never able to do before."
There is little question we are living in a time when there is more contempt for the law than ever before – be it God's statutes or America's creed.
While we despise and discount the most basic and fundamental commandments of God and the foundational law of America, we embrace thousands of manmade regulations and codes that do violence to both – as well as doing violence to our individual liberties.
That's true lawlessness.
After all the media hype over Governor Rick Perry's having called Social Security "a Ponzi scheme," viewers are no more informed than before as to what specifically is a Ponzi scheme, what are the objections to such schemes, and whether those same objections apply to Social Security.The above was a follow up to a previous column: The 'Ponzi' sound bite
Even if such questions were answered, we would still not have weighed the alternatives to Social Security. Serious issues like that cannot be covered in sound bites or with "gotcha" questions from the media.
Many in the media and in politics have gone ballistic over the fact that Texas Gov. Rick Perry called Social Security "a Ponzi scheme."
Although many act shocked, shocked, as if Rick Perry had said something unthinkable, Gov. Perry is not even among the first thousand people to call Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Not only conservatives, but even some liberals, have been calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme for decades.
Moreover, neither the media nor the politicians who are carrying on over the use of the words "Ponzi scheme" show the slightest interest in any hard facts that would tell us whether Social Security is or is not a Ponzi scheme. It is a "gotcha" moment, and that is apparently what some people live for.
What makes this nonsense become fraud is the insinuation that calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme means advocating that people who are depending on Social Security be abandoned and left with nothing to live on in their retirement years. That is the big scare – and the big lie.
People getting Social Security checks are going to keep on getting those checks. Nobody has advocated anything else, or would dare to cut off a financial lifeline for millions of people.
Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.
--M. Scott Peck
The householder was home alone when the two men broke in, according to Greater Manchester Police.England: Making it safer for a criminal to be a criminal.
His wife and 12-year-old son returned home during the incident, said Chief Superintendent Tim Forber, but they were able to escape unharmed.
Almost nobody seems to be hoping that the government will leave the economy alone to recover on its own. Indeed, almost nobody seems at all interested in looking at the hard facts about what happens when the government leaves the economy alone, compared to what happens when politicians intervene.When people play God, catastrophe results, things get effected that you never thought of and can't control. Our present "leaders" seem to like things going badly as it plays into their plans for more government control over your life.
The grand myth that has been taught to whole generations is that the government is "forced" to intervene in the economy when there is a downturn that leaves millions of people suffering. The classic example is the Great Depression of the 1930s.
What most people are unaware of is that there was no Great Depression until AFTER politicians started intervening in the economy.
But the bigger government gets, the less it actually does. You think a guy like Obama is going to put up a new Hoover Dam (built during the Depression and opened two years ahead of schedule)? No chance. Today’s big government crowd is more likely to put up a new regulatory agency to tell the Hoover Dam it's non-wheelchair accessible and has to close.
...So called "progressives" actively wage war on progress. They're opposed to dams, which spurred the growth of California. They're opposed to air conditioning, which led to the development of the Southwest. They're opposed to light bulbs, which expanded man's day, and they’re opposed to automobiles, which expanded man’s reach. They're still nominally in favor of mass transit, so maybe we can go back to wood-fired steam trains? No, sorry, no can do. The progressives are opposed to logging; they want a ban on foresty work in environmentally sensitive areas such as forests. Ultimately, progressives are at war with mass prosperity. — P.34
The more President Obama calls for a second stimulus spending spree to create those jobs the first spending spree failed to create, the more he sounds like the grocer in that old joke about the lady who wants her money back because the dietetic ice cream the grocer talked her into buying hasn't helped her lose weight. The grocer thinks for a moment and says, "Eat more of it."It's not that they are incapable of understanding, it's that they won't. For all their talk of having an open mind, liberals are some of the most close-minded people I've ever met. You can't learn if you already know everything.
Since the president and his advisers haven't got a clue about how our economy works -- which isn't surprising, since these people have less practical business experience than any kid with a lemonade stand -- here's an economics lesson so short and simple even a liberal can grasp it:
Six guards were held hostage for a couple of hours after 500 or more Longshoremen broke down gates about 4:30 a.m. and smashed windows in the guard shack, he said.
No one was hurt, and nobody has been arrested. Most of the protesters returned to their union hall after cutting brake lines and spilling grain from car at the EGT terminal, Duscha said.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union believes it has the right to work at the facility, but the company has hired a contractor that's staffing a workforce of other union laborers.
If God has given you prosperity, no one has a right to make you feel guilty about it. At the same time prosperity does demand some obligations.
Wealth is ultimately the only thing that can reduce poverty. The most dramatic reductions in poverty, in countries around the world, have come from increasing the amount of wealth, rather than from a redistribution of existing wealth.For all their so-called genius, liberals just don't understand the creation of wealth. They don't understand the spiritual aspect of money.
What kind of world do we want – one in which everyone works to increase wealth to whatever extent they can, or a world in which everyone will be supported by either government handouts or private philanthropy, whether they work or don't work?
It is not an abstract question. We can already see the consequences on both sides of the Atlantic. Those who have grown used to having others provide their food, shelter and other basics as "rights" are by no means grateful.
On the contrary, they are more angry, lawless and violent than in years past, whether they are lower-class whites rioting in Britain or black "flash mobs" in America. Their histories are very different, but what they have in common is being supplied with a steady drumbeat of resentments against those who are better off.
Politicians, intellectuals and whole armies of caretaker bureaucrats are among those who benefit, in one way or another, from picturing parasites as victims and their lagging behind the rest of society as reasons for anger rather than achievement.
Leading people into the blind alley of dependency and grievances may be counterproductive for them, but it can produce votes, money, power, fame and a sense of exaltation to others who portray themselves as friends of the downtrodden.
"Relationships build money, money doesn't build relationships."Redistributing the wealth will NEVER solve the problems they intend to solve, it will only make things worse.
--Rabbi Daniel Lapin
"There are just too many guns on the streets and we have to do something about it," he said, and urged for more federal control and stricter gun control laws across the country.But it's already illegal to carry guns in New York City, the only people carrying guns in New York City are police and criminals. Perhaps they should try getting the criminals off the streets? It's not the guns. If guns didn't exist the problem would be swords or knives or clubs. Getting rid of guns does not solve your criminal problem, it actually makes it worse. Ask England about that. But Mayor Bloomberg has to blame the guns because to do otherwise would admit the failure of the nanny state - if not for those pesky guns life would be perfect.
New York already has among the strictest gun control laws in the country. Currently, possession of an unlicensed handgun requires mandatory jail time (even for an NFL celebrity like Plaxico Burress).The corrupt political elites want the advantage over the peons so they can do with them what they will.
As it is, law-abiding citizens have a near-impossble time acquiring a handgun permit in the city that never sleeps. Technically a "may issue" state for firearms, some legal analysts believe New York is really more of a “no issue” state- unless you have connections.
This end-run around the 2nd Amendment in New York City began over a century ago as a result of corrupt, liberal politicians pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment.
The hundred-year-old Sullivan Law (also called the Sullivan Act) was initially a Tammany Hall patronage measure that allowed favored constituents of corrupt politicians to carry concealed handguns. Under the Sullivan Law, the police- not the Constitution- would determine who could and could not concealed carry a firearm in New York. Simple possession of more common weapons- razors, brass knuckles, or dagger, for example- was a felony, whereas possession of a firearm without license was a misdemeanor.
A series of similar gun legislation followed suit in urban areas across the country.
Fast forward a century: the current state of New York City’s handgun laws are so Byzantine, it appears almost impossible for law-abiding gun owners to comply with, or even understand them.
Perhaps that's the point.
There is no room for honest debate on the subject. The United States of America is a Christian nation with a secular government. From its inception, it has been a Christian nation with a secular government. And, as de Tocqueville correctly noted, its liberty is directly linked to its Christianity. The main reason American liberties have been systematically reduced since 1851 is because the influence of Christianity throughout the nation has declined. How can freedom possibly be said to come from the U.S. secular government when most of the constitutional protections devised by the Founding Fathers were erected to guard against that very government?The truth of the Bible has also been eroded out of Christianity as it has from the nation - "having a form of godliness, but denying the power of it;"
We are almost an entire generation of parasites that cannot create anything new and so feed on the capital and labor of the past.The irony is we believe we are better and smarter.
Well, sometimes a man can hate too much, Chester. It can twist him till he doesn't know the truth anymore.
--Marshall Dillon, Gunsmoke, season 4, episode 127
Bill Whittle has his truth. Pacifica Radio's Amy Goodman has her truth. Everyone has their own truth. This is the mantra of the left today, and if you think about it, it has to be the mantra of the left. Find out why.
What is more characteristic of our modern day than crazy and wholly indefensible “policies”? It seems one of the undeniable characteristics of our times that many of the West’s most common practices and theories appear the result of insane conclusions. Perhaps this did not occur by accident. Instead, many of the founders of this modern age were troubled individuals who struggled with profound emotional and mental issues.Read through this article, which really isn't very long, and reflect on how many times you've said to yourself, "This is crazy," when hearing about this or that policy, idea, or incident, especially of late. Listen to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid or any number of elected officials speak, especially leftists. Sometimes it seems like you're on another planet - bizarro Earth. The inmates are running the asylum. The ideas sound crazy because they are.
While one might assume that such an unstable background would preclude a person from being chosen as a leader, nothing could be further from the truth. Yet, there may be an explanation as to why such crippled minds were chosen as role models to the modern era.
One of the most obvious aspects of a crazy idea is that it is transparently unacceptable to the average person. And yet, if one wants to set about radically changing society they must have a model or philosophy to draw from. It would therefore help to find a mentally unwell person as a source for morally or intellectually unacceptable theories. Because these types of people would be most likely to suggest theories that were quite different and undermine traditional society. Correct? The topic of this essay is the clearly insane bent of much of our modern thinking, resultant from mentally infirm intellectuals like Nietzsche and Comte, and how this creates madness in our everyday lives.
The notion of removing God and liberty so that man may be free is more properly found in Lucifer's playbook than the Founders.And so a little more light is shed on the problem.
Solyndra was touted by the Obama administration as a prime example of how green technology could deliver jobs.That is about how green technology is delivering jobs, so I'd say he was right about this being a prime example.
There are now enough Operation Fast and Furious officials playing hide-and-seek in the Obama administration to fill a "rubber room."
That's the nickname for taxpayer-subsidized holding pens, such as the ones in the New York City public schools, where crooked employees are separated from the system and paid to do nothing. Perhaps the White House can stimulate a few construction jobs by adding an entire rubber room annex for "reassigned" scandal bureaucrats at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's getting mighty crowded.
Kenneth E. Melson, under fire in connection with the controversial Fast and Furious gun-trafficking investigation, will announce today that he is stepping down as acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.Waiting for better news. Reporting has been absolutely dismal on the Fast and Furious scandal.
The ATF isn’t the only agency to bear some responsibility for the botched operation that sent guns to Mexico. The Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Drug Enforcement Agency seem to have possessed information that could have had a material impact on Fast and Furious (i.e. info that could have eliminated or reduced the ostensible ‘need’ for the operation in the first place). Or, as the letter puts it, “We have very real indications from several sources that some of the gun trafficking ‘higher-ups’ that the ATF sought to identify were already known to other agencies and may even have been paid as informants.”The very best coverage of Fast and Furious has been from the NRA.
Taxpayer money was likely used to finance the gunrunning. “The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities.”
Senior ATF officials would have preferred to cooperate with Congressional inquiries — but “Department of Justice officials directed them not to respond and took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress.”
Melson was at no point asked to resign.
It has come out that Juszkiewicz is a Republican donor, while the CEO of one of his principal competitors, C.F. Martin & Company, is a Democratic donor. Martin reportedly uses the same wood, but DOJ hasn't raided them, leading to speculation that the Obama administration is sending a warning to Republican businessmen that they had better not oppose his re-election, lest they face criminal investigations. Normally such speculation would not be credible, but Eric Holder has politicized the Department of Justice to a point where such questions must be taken seriously.Mark Steyn relates a similar incident involving a piano maker.
They're antique pianos. They come with ivory keys. They're grandfathered in. There is no criminal intent and, in the most basic sense, no underlying crime. Yet he’s looking at being tossed in jail "for years"? Any "justice" system with such an utter lack of proportion is not justice at all. It speaks very poorly for us that we tolerate it.As Jimmy McMillan might say: The government is too damn large.
"Look! It's the dumb marshal."
"Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again; poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves."
--D. H. Lawrence
The economy has a way of commanding our attention, and it should. While it's tempting to ask what Jesus might do in times like these, it's a tough question to answer without asking more questions. Do you mean what would he do as a carpenter from Nazareth? That would elicit an entirely different answer from what he would do as the King of Kings.
Just for the fun of it, let's try to figure out what Jesus the Investment Banker might do. In fact, Jesus spoke a couple of parables that give us a strong indication of how he would approach a few challenges our economy faces.
"And as long as there are liberals, there will be some people stoking the mobs."They can't always use mobs but they do what they can.
"Mobs are always the same -- destructive, left-wing and without any clear cause"
"Liberals love mobs because rioting and anarchy is their path to power."
The U.S. government. Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell you that today the impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with. Home Depot would never have succeeded if we'd tried to start it today. Every day you see rules and regulations from a group of Washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a business. And I mean every day. It's become stifling.There is no need for another stimulus, it doesn't cost the government anything to create jobs, the government can't create jobs, just get out of the way of the American people. Let the American people do what they do without being hampered by over-regulation, micro-management from Washington and so much paperwork you can't even spend time working your business for all the time it takes to make sure it is right. And let us keep our money and spend or give it away where WE see the need. We don't need you bureaucrats in Washington, I know you hate to hear that but WE DON'T NEED YOU. We need you out of the way.
The Nazi war machine couldn't break the British, but the modern welfare state has.
I've been watching the coverage of the Philadelphia and London riots for days, and not one public official, not one reporter, no one has called the perpetrators of these acts of violence what they are – terrorists.Neal Boortz also comments on the riots: Riots in London
I honestly believe this is what happens to societies that try to bribe the disenchanted with "entitlements" and welfare. It doesn't lead to a more peaceful society. It leads to a more expectant and demanding underclass.
That's what we are seeing in London and Philadelphia today.
These riots in London have taken on a socio-economic bent, pinning the achievers in Great Britain against the moochers. The more we hear from these people who are rioting, the more we realize that many are using this as an excuse to act out and show those evil rich people that "we can do what we want." Yeah, those evil rich people .. it's all their fault that our government benefits are being cut! This is our way of showing that "we're redistributing the wealth."This is the direct result of liberal/socialist policies, this is the outcome.
When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you...you may know that your society is doomed.
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
St. Petersburg police say 50-year-old Wilfredo LaFontaine was on the phone with his girlfriend Wednesday as they were preparing to move out of their apartment. The girlfriend was in the leasing office of Tamarind Bay Apartments to return their keys when she heard a stumble and a pop over the phone.She was returning the keys so obviously they had already moved out, the apartment must have been empty and they were probably going through and making sure nothing is left behind. I've moved out of a few apartments in my time and turning in the keys is just about the last thing you do. So the man decided that was the time to start cleaning his gun? Really? Not very likely. Were there any cleaning supplies out? A table where he could work?
Police say the girlfriend and a leasing agent rushed back to the apartment, where they found LaFontaine slumped against the door with a gunshot wound to his chest. He was still alive when officers and paramedics arrived. Police say he indicated that he had been preparing to clean his revolver.I'm sorry but the story just doesn't add up. Why would he have the gun in his hand at all? The gun cleaning story makes no sense. Possibly he was holding it with his finger on the trigger and he tripped but I also think that is unlikely as the gun would most likely have been pointing away from him. It is an awkward position for your hand to be holding a pistol and pointing it at your chest. I don't even understand why he would have had the gun in his hand in the first place, I wish there were more detail in the story. The gun should have been in a holster. He was either being very, very stupid (it happens) or it was a suicide.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbor's. --Exodus 20:17
Today's shining example of "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" comes from Fredericksburg, VA, where a young girl prevented the family cat from pouncing on a lost baby woodpecker and her mom ended up with a $535 ticket (and faces the possibility of jail time) for violating the Federal Migratory Bird Act.I want to know who called the police. Who calls the police because a little girl saves a bird from a cat? Probably the same person who calls the police because a kid makes a lemonade stand.
Despite the fact that 11-year-old Skylar Capo actually saved the tiny lost woodpecker from a violent death, and then successfully released the bird back into the wild, a Virginia State Trooper was still dispatched to the Capo home where Skylar’s mom was slapped with the $535 ticket.
. . . the state enforcers won't let you make lemonade.
The law-enforcement officer, who no doubt means well, nonetheless describes a productive worker, striving to clean her car, as "in the wrong place at the wrong time." But in fact, it is the anonymous teen who is in the wrong place at the wrong time — as if civilization could possibly continue if the majority followed his wrong hours and wrong behavior. Ms. McVay, in fact, was in the right place at the right time, and she should have had every expectation that that she could go to the car wash before work without worry that a murderous gang-banger would slit her throat.Our liberal society is not doing its job to protect the innocent from the predators. It is, in fact, encouraging the exact opposite. It means well, it wants to help, but it ends up helping the wrong people. The innocent victim is all but forgotten while the predator is made out to be a victim and protected at every turn. Yes, it's a sad commentary on a sick society.
In truth, the teen was an opportunistic predator, on the prowl for an easy victim, which translated into profiling a woman alone. His killing was "random" only to the extent that had he encountered instead three large men washing down a truck at 5 a.m., he surely would have kept his blade sheathed and passed on by with no thought that he "simply wanted to kill somebody that night." In short, he did not want to kill just anybody that night: He wanted instead to stab an easy somebody, who might offer little resistance, and perhaps cash and car as a bonus.
"There's been a shift to crack cocaine smoking and we want to make sure the services we provide are the services they need ... if we're providing syringes and what we need are pipes, we’re not serving them," Gustafson said.There comes a time when you have to stop helping someone because all you are really doing is enabling them. People want to act without consequences and government wants to help them by taking the consequences away. Their lives are destroyed either way.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sang, danced and said he intends to stay in power for two more decades as he celebrated his 57th birthday looking ahead to months of cancer treatment.
President Obama gave a speech to La Raza the other day and admitted that "the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting" when it came to dealing with Congress over the debt deal. And while he added the caveat that our democracy doesn't work like that – the crowd was cheering the possibility of Obama side stepping Congress and doing things his own way.
The massacre on the island of Utøya is certain to lead to a security review, with particular stress on how Anders Behring Breivik obtained his weapons. Norway already has some of the toughest gun laws in the world, but they were apparently easily circumvented by the killer.That's why they call them outlaws. They don't care about your laws, only law abiding people are effected by laws. In fact, our freedoms are being taken away by the myriad of laws that criminals ignore anyway.
The bust took place over four days, and 14 people were arrested for reselling theme park tickets to unsuspecting tourists. The tickets that were sold were multi-day tickets to attractions like Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, and Universal Studios. The suspects would buy tickets that still had a few days left on them and resell them to visitors for a "discounted price."
When tourists see they can sell their unused tickets for cash, many jump at the chance, said police.Most of the tourists buying these tickets know what they are doing. I get asked all the time where these tickets can be bought and I warn them every time that it is illegal and they should buy the tickets at the park or on the official website of the park. THEY DON'T CARE. They buy them anyway. They come down here with the intention of buying cheaper tickets outside the park, illegal or not, and it's been going on for years. Sure, when they are caught they claim they had no idea, but I assure you in most cases that is not so. I have worked within earshot of some of these booths and I have heard the explanation of what to do and how. They know.
Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored.
In politics, there are not simply good things but some special Good Things -- with a capital G and capital T -- which are considered always better to have more of.
Many of the things advocated by environmental extremists, for example, are things that most of us might think of as good things. But, in politics, they become Good Things whose repercussions and costs are brushed aside as unworthy considerations.
Nobody wants to breathe dirty air or drink dirty water. But, if either becomes 98 percent pure, 99 percent pure or 99.9 percent pure, there is some point beyond which the costs skyrocket and the benefits become meager or non-existent.
...Baltimore mayoral candidate Otis Rolley has unveiled a new proposal to add a $1 bullet tax to each round sold within city limits. This would be part of Rolley's multi-pronged strategy to reduce crime in Baltimore...So a box of ammo that now costs $15.00 would, under his plan, cost $65.00. So all of us law abiding shmucks get the bill while the criminals will just steal the ammo they want - same way criminals get guns. It's getting so it doesn't pay to be honest anymore. Liberalism is a mental disorder.
"The 420 wind turbines now in use across Pennsylvania killed more than 10,000 bats last year — mostly in the late summer months, according to the state Game Commission. That's an average of 25 bats per turbine per year, and the Nature Conservancy predicts as many as 2,900 turbines will be set up across the state by 2030.They also kill a lot of birds.
This is a bad time to be a bat.
It may seem like a good thing to those who fear the flying mammals, but the wind farm mortality rate is an acute example of how harnessing natural energy can lead to disruptions in the circle of life — and the cycle of business. This chain of events mixes biology and economics: Bat populations go down, bug populations go up and farmers are left with the bill for more pesticide and crops (which accounts for those pricey tomatoes in Kansas)."
Teachers spent nights huddled in a back room, erasing wrong answers on students' test sheets and filling in the correct bubbles. At another school, struggling students were seated next to higher-performing classmates so they could copy answers.
Those and other confessions are contained in a new state report that reveals how far some Atlanta public schools went to raise test scores in the nation's largest-ever cheating scandal. Investigators concluded that nearly half the city's schools allowed the cheating to go unchecked for as long as a decade, beginning in 2001.
"Big business loves big government."His store: Galco's Soda Pop Stop
It's the scene every Friday at the cafeteria of Valley Park Middle School in Toronto. That's not a private academy, it's a public school funded by taxpayers. And yet, oddly enough, what's going on is a prayer service – oh, relax, it's not Anglican or anything improper like that; it's Muslim Friday prayers, and the Toronto District School Board says don't worry, it's just for convenience: They put the cafeteria at the local imams' disposal because otherwise the kids would have to troop off to the local mosque and then they’d be late for Lesbian History class or whatever subject is scheduled for Friday afternoon.Picture at the link. You have to read this.
...as the Iranians put it a few years back:
Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview published Tuesday.If you don't let us go nuclear, we'll carry on going nuclear. That's basically the Democrat negotiating position on spending.
The Founders likely had something larger in mind when crafting the phrase "pursuit of happiness". They knew the classics, and certainly they knew of Aristotle's formulation of happiness. For Aristotle, happiness centered on the pursuit of virtue in order to reach one's potential as a human being. The right to pursue happiness becomes an interesting concept in this context.People are caught up grasping for the elusive happiness that's like sand slipping through their fingers instead of the true happiness that comes from right relationship with God and man.
It is hard to understand politics if you are hung up on reality. Politicians leave reality to others. What matters in politics is what you can get the voters to believe, whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not.We've abandoned the truth and we are reaping the consequences.
In his bizarre press conference on Wednesday, Obama made no fewer than six references to corporate jet owners. Just for the record, the tax break for corporate jets was part of the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" – i.e., the stimulus. The Obama stimulus. The Obama-Pelosi-Reid stimulus. The Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Democratic Party stimulus that every single Republican House member and all but three Republican senators voted against. The Obama-Corporate Jet stimulus that some guy called Obama ostentatiously signed into law in Denver after jetting in to host an "economic forum."
Charles Krauthammer did the math. If you eliminate the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Corporate Jet Tax Break, you would save so much dough that, after 5,000 years, you would have clawed back enough money to cover one year of Obama's debt. Five thousand years is the year 7,011. Boy, our kids'll really be safe by then. I see some leftie at MSNBC has just been suspended for characterizing the president's performance Wednesday as that of a demotic synonym for the male reproductive organ. So I shall be more circumspect and say only that even being a hollow unprincipled demagogue requires a certain lightness of touch Obama can't seem to find.
Speaking of corporate jets, did the president fly commercial to Denver? Oh, but that's different! He's in "public service." A couple of weeks before he flew Air Force One to Denver, he flew Air Force One to Williamsburg, Virginia. From the White House (well, via Andrews Air Force Base). That's 150 miles, a 30-minute flight. He took a 747, a wide-bodied jet designed to carry 500 people to the other side of the planet, for a puddle-jump across the Potomac.
Oh, but it was for another "economic forum." This time with House Democrats – the ones who voted for the Obama Corporate Jet Tax Break. "Economic forums" are what we have instead of an economy these days.
Aside from the Sultan of Brunei and one or two similar potentates, no other head of state goes around like this. In a self-governing republic, it ought to be unbecoming. But in the Brokest Nation in History it's ridiculous. And the least the beneficiary of such decadence could do is not condescendingly lecture those who pay for their own transportation. America's debt is an existential crisis, and playing shell games with shriveled peas of demonizable irrelevancies only advertises your contempt for the citizenry.
A liberal's idea of being a bad-ass is to say vicious things to a conservative public figure who can't afford to strike back. Getting in a stranger's face and hurling insults at him, knowing full well he has too much at risk to deck you, is like baiting a bear chained to a wall.She's got their number.
This time around, the U.N has appointed North Korea, with its nuclear ambitions, to chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. You read that correctly. A conference on disarmament is being chaired by a country bent on developing its own nuclear weapons arsenal. Given the U.N.'s history of dubious appointments, however, this may not come as a suprise.Who's the co-chair? Iran?
Not surprisingly, the chairmanship was praised by an Iranian delegate who assured Pyongof the Iranian delegation would give North Korea its "full support and cooperation."Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Fearful of provoking further public resistance to naked airport body scanners, the TSA has been caught covering up a surge in cases of TSA workers developing cancer as a result of their close proximity to radiation-firing devices, perhaps the most shocking revelation to emerge from the latest FOIA documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.These machines haven't even been operating very long. They're all over cell phones causing cancer and it's very difficult to determine, scanners they cover up and the connection is apparently much more obvious. Big government means big corruption. Double the size of government and you quadruple the corruption - the true ratio is probably greater.
Some clever people today ask whether the United States has really been "exceptional." You couldn't be more exceptional in the 18th century than to create your fundamental document -- the Constitution of the United States -- by opening with the momentous words, "We the people..."
Those three words were a slap in the face to those who thought themselves entitled to rule, and who regarded the people as if they were simply human livestock, destined to be herded and shepherded by their betters. Indeed, to this very day, elites who think that way -- and that includes many among the intelligentsia, as well as political messiahs -- find the Constitution of the United States a real pain because it stands in the way of their imposing their will and their presumptions on the rest of us.
More than a hundred years ago, so-called "Progressives" began a campaign to undermine the Constitution's strict limitations on government, which stood in the way of self-anointed political crusaders imposing their grand schemes on all the rest of us. That effort to discredit the Constitution continues to this day, and the arguments haven't really changed much in a hundred years.
Concealed carry is about to become law in Wisconsin. That will make it the 41st right-to-carry state and leave only Illinois without any concealed carry rights. Do the people against right-to-carry even know what they're scared of anymore? What exactly has happened in the 40 states with right-to-carry that they want to avoid? Basically, the anti-gun crowd’s entire argument has been reduced to "Grr! Thundersticks scary!"
Frank J.
Congress imposed a back-door ban on horse slaughter in 2006 to try to improve humane conditions, but a new government report says it has backfired and the same horses are now being exported for slaughter in Canada and Mexico, and they likely are suffering more along the journey.If I had a nickel for every government regulation that led to disastrous "unintended consequences," I'd be a very rich man and the government would take half.
The Government Accountability Office said the policy has led to "unintended consequences" such as depressed prices for all horses and an increase in reports of animal neglect, abuse and abandonment
History has repeatedly taught humanity that nature abhors a vacuum – whether it was Greece, Rome, Weimar, Europe, Russia, China, Iran or America – and that the degree nations have departed from God, the Bible, veritas, natural law: the synthesis of legality and morality, was the degree that they embraced charismatic radicals who always led the people down the path to perdition.
The belief that the rights of the community outweigh the rights of the individual is the bedrock principle of communism. The belief that government has the inherent right to dictate the behavior of its citizens is another bedrock principle of communism. The belief that government should manage the economic affairs of its citizens is directly out of the Communist Manifesto. The more the Communist Manifesto is read and understood, the more clearly one sees the transformation that has been imposed upon a formerly free people.
The transformation began long before Barack Hussein Obama. He, unfortunately, seeks to drive the final nail into the coffin of freedom. Obama and the so-called progressives he leads are working diligently to expand government power and diminish the rights of the individual, to destroy the last vestige of a free market and to denigrate and discredit all who disagree with their communist philosophy.
The court paid special attention to Wilders' 2008 film, "Fitna," Arabic for "ordeal" – a 15-minute series of verses from the Quran juxtaposed against news video of violence and terrorism. The film prompted angry demonstrations and official protests around the Muslim world.The joke is that there is nothing in "Fitna" that is not shown being said by Muslims themselves - it's a film of Muslims inciting hate.
"Given the film in its whole and the context of societal debate, the court finds that there is no question of inciting hate with the film Fitna," the judgment said
Social justice is the only justice that interests the Left because it's the only justice that can be delivered by the political agitation of a mob.
Democratic leaders called on Wednesday for additional spending to boost the sluggish U.S. economy,
Mark Steyn on Free Speech at the IPA from Institute of Public Affairs on Vimeo.
More than two years after Obama took office vowing to banish "special interests" from his administration, nearly 200 of his biggest donors have landed plum government jobs and advisory posts, won federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests or attended numerous elite White House meetings and social events, an investigation by iWatch News has found.
Jefferson County resident Jonathan Stewart said he laughed in shock after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) claimed the house his family lost in the deadly April 27 twister was ‘not unsafe to live in’.This was after the inspector physically inspected the lack of house.
Displaced families in tornado-ravaged Alabama are outraged after being denied federal aide to rebuild their flattened homes – due to ‘insufficient damage’.
The devastating reality is the house is now a concrete slab surrounded by rubble.
"Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected," Obama said.So glad the Jobs Council thinks this is funny. And then there is this:
"How do we deal with making sure our regulations make sense, so that we start eliminating ones that don't work, aren't making consumers better off or aren't improving our quality of life?" Obama told the employees.Maybe it's me, but don't you think he should know this stuff before trying to be a president. Herman Cain wouldn't go around asking people how to do his job.
You’ll recognize those words as those coming from Moses' mouth to Pharaoh's ears. They were God's demand to free the Israelite slaves, and thus became a rallying cry for those of us who love freedom.
And yet the sentence quoted above is incomplete. "Let my people go" is a phrase closely identified with the Passover and freedom from the slavery of Egypt. For Christians, not only does it look to the freeing of the people of Israel from bondage, but also the freeing of all mankind from the bondage of sin through the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb without blemish (I Peter 1:19, I Corinthians 5:7).
But freedom from bondage is only part of the story. The rest of the story is found in the rest of Moses’ words...
America has a looming rendezvous with destiny. You can't tax your way out of it, you can’t inflate your way out of it, you can't quantitively ease your way out of it. The only door that leads anywhere is the one marked "Massive Government Cuts". There is not enough money on the planet for what the Permanent Governing Class is doing. If Americans decline to grasp that central truth, this country will die.
Nurses casually stepped over a patient as he lay dying on a hospital floor.
Peter Thompson, 41, was left in a corridor for ten hours before someone noticed he had passed away.
In a final act of indignity, hospital auxiliaries pulled his lifeless body across the floor in a manner his family described as like ‘dragging a dead animal’.
If banks try to act like they are real estate companies and hold on to a huge inventory of foreclosed homes, they are likely to lose money big time, as those homes deteriorate and cannot compete with homes marketed by real estate companies with far more experience and expertise in this field.In fact, they use their failure as an excuse to funnel even more money to schools.
But if teachers fail to educate children, they don't lose one dime, no matter how much those children and the country lose by their failure. If the schools waste precious time indoctrinating children, instead of educating them, that's the children's problem and the country's problem, but not the teachers' problem.
"In Islam, everything is conditional. For example, in the Quran, there is not one place where Allah says 'I love my people,' not once. The word love is not mentioned in the Quran," Saleem said.Interesting. There is also no love in socialism, no love in government, not one place in all the laws and regulations where it says 'I love my people.'
"I absolutely believe any pantheon of enduring, well-crafted and memorable television characters would have to include James Arness," David Bushman, then the television curator at what is now the Paley Center for Media in New York, told The Times some years ago. "He became part of the national psyche."
Read the Scripture: 1 John 5:18-21Link
Dear children, keep yourselves from idols (1 John 5:21)
He closes with this final warning. "Dear children, keep yourselves from idols." Do not go off to something else. Do not give your attention to your interests, your time, your energy, or your money so that those things become what you live for, what you get excited about, what enthuses you. That is your god. What is it with you? Is it Jesus Christ, or is it something else?
In our travels, my family and I were privileged to be in various parts of the ancient world, where we visited many temples dedicated to idols. Though these temples had fallen into ruins, in every place a certain god such as Apollo, Venus, Bacchus, or Zeus had been enthroned and worshiped there. It suddenly struck me, after returning home, that though these temples have been abandoned, the worship of the god has not ceased. We have changed the names, but the gods, the idols, are exactly the same.
There is the worship of Narcissus, the god who fell in love with himself. Is this not perhaps the supreme god of humanity: the worship of self, the exaltation of humans? The idea that we constantly hear set forth is that humans are so tremendous, so smart, so brilliant, so clever; they can do so many things. Yet we deny the continual evidence of our senses that the world is crumbling to pieces around us. Isn't it amazing how we worship humanity? The manifestations of it find expression in the worship of race or country. We have the worship of Bacchus, the god of pleasure, wine, women, and song; the worship of Venus, the goddess of love, enthroned in Hollywood and all that Hollywood stands for; Apollo, the god of physical beauty; Minerva, the goddess of science. Everywhere we have enthroned science.
John writes and says that these things will destroy you, they will rob you of what God has for you. "Little children, watch that you do not drift off into the worship that the world around you is constantly engaged in. Do not let these things become important in your life, for God has set you free that you might live as God intended people to live." No wonder His word comes "Dear children, keep yourselves from idols." What makes you enthusiastic? To what do you give your money? For what are you saving up now? What is it that you regard as supremely important? It is with this question that John closes this book.
Father, help me to identify the many gods of this age that appear to so attractive but really have nothing to offer me but death. Thank You for the truth that is in Christ and that in Him I have all that I could ever need or want.
"He can be balding and paunchy, but this is not what he sees in the mirror. He sees nothing less than trim, taut and, so he is told, terrific."Like taking a pin to a balloon. :-)
And where do we get the electricity to charge millions of vehicles? We're already having problems with the electric grid, a point that seems to come up a lot in political campaigns but not much in actual governance. Instead of deriving energy through gasoline through internal combustion, car owners will have to pay electric companies to provide the juice. Those providers will have to build new production plants to supply it. What sources will those plants use to generate electricity for the millions of new vehicles that will need a charge? Right now, the only resources that could supply that massive level of need would be coal, natural gas, and possibly nuclear power, none of which environmentalists want used for electricity now.You can't force technology. It may be a good idea some day and if it is it will naturally develop in that direction and as it develops it will be in an environment where the support is developing along with it. That is not now. Burning the bridge before we've crossed it is not going to get us across faster.
"No one spoke on my behalf, and finally everyone present (and there were about a hundred of them, including my teachers and my closest friends), yes, every last one of them raised his hand to approve my expulsion."
Limousines, the very symbol of wealth and excess, are usually the domain of corporate executives and the rich. But the number of limos owned by Uncle Sam increased by 73 percent during the first two years of the Obama administration, according to an analysis of records by iWatch News.Meanwhile, the number of Americans on food stamps has risen 39% since Obama took office. Hmmm.
