79 Years Later

79 years later and only the characters have changed. And from the Chicago Tribune

This is interesting background: http://www.flickr.com/photos/53074154@N00/5740393674/

Convicted Hammer Murderer Murders Again, Liberals Blame Guns

A man brutally murdered his own grandmother in 1980, got convicted, and went to prison. After getting out of prison, he once again went on to murder people. He set a building ablaze, then proceeded to lay in wait for the firefighters to arrive so he could murder them. I’m sure you’ve already heard a little about him. He’s the man in western New York that was on the news. But did you know he was already convicted of murder?

It’s already illegal for him to have in his possession the gun he used to murder the firefighters, because he’s a convicted violent felon. He already murdered before, using a hammer and not a gun. He murdered family. And did a stint in prison for it. But the Left, always looking for ways to prevent criminals from bearing full responsibility for their actions, let the violent murderer free to murder again. And the Left, always looking for ways to prevent criminals from bearing full responsibility for their actions, blamed guns for his next bunch of murders.

The solution is very easy to understand. The solution is also Biblical. Execute the murderer and that will serve as a deterrence. No murder, once executed, has ever gone on to murder another person. But a violent hammer murderer who murdered his own family member has gone on to murder other people outside his family after being released from prison.

It wasn’t the gun that murdered those firefighters. It was a convicted violent murderer who did. But the Left refuses to lay the blame at the convicted violent murderer’s feet. To do so would be to require adults to be responsible for their actions, and the Left is apparently incapable of the basic logic necessary to come to that conclusion.

No, they want to steal our Providence-given Second Amendment rights from us law-abiding citizens.

Make it illegal to carry a gun and only criminals will have guns.
Remember, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

Cumulonimbus + AgI = ??

A dark cloud follows him wherever he goes.
Every cloud has a silver lining.

Farmers obviously need rain for their crops, so there are some who resort to cloud seeding, adding silver iodide to the clouds to try to force rain out of them. But it’s a bad idea to seed a thunderstorm cloud. Cumulonimbus clouds can produce nasty things like hail storms, massive lightning storms, micro-bursts, tornadoes.

And of course, there are those who always bring bad luck with them, like Bad Luck Schleprock, our current President.

 
So, today I am telling you about the seeding of a 3,000 mile wide thunderstorm cloud hanging over the US — and the silver lining that comes with it. It’s painfully schadenfreudig. Painfully schadenfreudig, indeed. (Multiple stacked redundancy intentional.) Barack Obama and the Democrats, very cynically aware that their grand scheme to shove the US headlong into Socialism could cause them to fall out of power, set up a series of Laws and programs that would save most of the very bad results until after the 2012 election. After having blamed Bush for all the Democrat-and-Socialist caused travails, they would have a way of avoiding responsibility for the looming mega-disaster. It works like this:

• Set up a Socialist system with all the false positives front-loaded and all the negatives back-loaded.
• Get possibly voted out of office before the negatives hit, so the Socialist-caused negatives would hit when Conservatives were in office.
• Blame the Conservatives in office for the economic disaster the Socialists caused.
• Get the Socialists re-elected to complete the evil transformation of the Free Market US into a Socialist state, with the Conservatives forever blemished by the results of Socialist actions.

But a strange thing happened along the way. The Socialists got re-elected by a completely ignorant, envious, slothful, free hand-out seeking crowd. And all the back-loaded disasters will hit while the Socialists are in power. (By the way, did you know that tornadoes are also backloaded? They are on the back end of cumulonimbus clouds, and not up front.)

ObamaCare is one such program. As most of it is set to kick in now that the election is over, total disaster is on the horizon. Businesses, who cannot pay the cost of ObamaCare and stay afloat at the same time, will be laying off massive numbers of workers nationwide. Other businesses will be cutting their low-level employees (the working poor) to under 30 hours a week so those businesses can stay in business. Very little expansion will be happening, if any at all. It’ll be full-on contraction.

A nice little poisonberry in ObamaCare — that “make health care cheaper for all” lie — is a 2.3 percent excise tax on all medical devices, such as crutches, wheelchairs, heart stents, etc, etc. And an excise tax is far worse than a profit tax or income tax. It hits the gross revenue and not the after-expenses cost. For example, suppose it costs a business 5,000 dollars for the raw materials to make a single product. Add in the labor costs, the health insurance costs, the retirement costs, the social security tax, the medicare tax, the property tax for the building itself, the electricity cost, the property insurance cost, the transportation cost, the bookkeeping cost, and all other costs associated with getting the already developed product to market and the final cost to the business is 6,800 dollars. The business sells the product for 7,000 dollars because that’s what the market will bear. The business gets a profit of 200 dollars per sale.

In comes the 2.3 percent excise tax. Another 161 dollars off the top. The new profit for the 7,000 dollar item falls from 200 dollars to a whopping 39 dollars (an effective tax rate of 80.5 percent of the profit). Not enough to make the company a going concern. Kill the Research and Development department of the company — the life-blood of all businesses that want to survive, for if a business is not growing and moving forward it is necessarily dying.

But it doesn’t stop there. No, not at all. That same company also has to pay the new, higher costs involved in providing ObamaCare to all its employees (instead of the less expensive insurance plans which were optional, which fair portions of employees did not opt into). That 39 dollars per product, which used to be 200 dollars per product goes negative. It costs more to produce than it can be sold for.

But, again, it doesn’t stop there. Obama’s declaration that electricity costs must necessarily skyrocket and he’ll bankrupt coal-fired electric plants necessarily means the energy-intensive manufacturing industry will get hit hard with skyrocketing overhead costs. Costs that cannot be reduced merely by laying people off. So instead, the companies will shutter its doors and either go off-shore or cease to exist, providing a double-whammy of forcing the products to become far more expensive than they are now and far more difficult to obtain.

Small businesses will collapse. The middle class will become working poor. The working poor will become the unemployable destitute. Products the middle class used to be able to afford will become luxury items. Items that were luxuries for the working poor will become nothing but unreachable pipe-dreams. Inflation will go into hyper-drive. Interest rates will climb, making the cost of borrowing prohibitive. And deficit spending, which has been kept artificially low (yeah, I said it), will explode.

How is 1.2 trillion dollars (or more) in deficit spending “artificially low”? That’s a good question. And I have a good answer for that. Two words: “debt” and “service”. Debt service.

Historical view of the Prime Rate from Forecast Chart.com (8 percent line added).

Above is a chart showing the historic levels for the Prime Rate, from Forecast Chart.com. I added a red line at 8 percent for reference. Below is a chart showing the historic levels for the Discount Rate, from a 2009 article on Apin Talisayon’s Weblog (data obtained from the Financial Forecast Center). I added a red line at 6 percent for reference.

US Discount Rate From 1950 as found on Apin Talisayon’s Weblog (6 percent red line added).

From Apin Talisayon:

As I said, central banks had recently been dropping interest rates, and so we cannot use the abnormally low prevailing interest rates (0.5%). I plotted the historical data of discount rates set by the US Federal Reserve since January 1950 from the Financial Forecast Center[.]

As you can see in the above two charts, the Prime Rate and the Discount Rate differ in levels, but mirror each other. And they’re not only at historic lows; they’re far below historic norms. That means the future necessarily will provide much higher rates on borrowing than today. And the Federal Government’s debt service costs absolutely must skyrocket. Couple that with the US credit rating crumbling — and will continue to crumble — and the interest on the debt will become astronomical. Even a fairly normal rate of 6 percent with our current 16,000,000,000,000 dollar deficit means 960 BILLION DOLLARS in interest payments alone. By 2015, our national debt will be 20 TRILLION DOLLARS and the interest on that debt will be 1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS. That’s before paying for roads, bridges, high speed trains to nowhere, free birth control pills for Sandra Fluck (phonetic spelling), free abortion pills for Sandra Fluck (phonetic spelling), free ObamaPhones, free health care, free foodstamps, free college tuition, free housing for the poor and forever pregnant single mothers, free Big Bird, free NPR propaganda, bailing out California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, free cowboy poetry, and oh yeah, paying for our national defense.

1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS SPENT TO PAY FOR ALREADY SPENT MONEY WE DIDN’T HAVE BEFORE PAYING FOR ANY CURRENT PROGRAMS AND EXPENSES!!!

The Socialist who ascended the throne in DC, along with the Socialists in the US Senate who have adamantly refused to produce a Federal Budget since April, 2009, in direct violation of Federal Law and the US Constitution, have successfully Cloward-Pivened the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. The most prosperous nation this world has ever seen has been successfully brought to financial ruin by the Leftists in power who have no use for a document that is “over 100 years old”. The aim? Destroy the Free Market and implement Socialism worldwide.

The silver lining? Conservatives have not been responsible for any of it. Conservatives have not been in charge for any of it. I know, little solace for the loss of a once great and mighty and FREE nation. Will there be anything left to save by 2016? And will there be any conceivable way to save it and return to prosperity from the Abyss of Destitution Obama and the Socialist Democrats have created? Or will it already be too late? I, for one, am not looking forward to the disaster these next 10 years will provide us. (UPDATE: Nice Deb performed her Karnac impression and answered my questions before seeing them. Go to her site to read her answers.)

RELATED
This medical device tax is just not going to end well
Economics 101: Schadenfreude!
Video: What free-market medicine looks like
2013: A Century Of Progress
Gee, why do you think the Obama administration waited until after November 6th to mail these letters?

How Did The Weimar Republic Collapse?

Weimar Germany had an economic crisis.
The Germans elected a bunch of politicians who scapegoated large groups of Germans, pitting Germans against each other.
German political leaders turned their backs on their Constitution, and the German people followed along, like sheep, out of a sense of expediency and crisis.
Free Germany then collapsed into a totalitarian state, which soon crumbled into total devastation, but only after tens of millions of lives were lost.

We are repeating history. But this time, there’s no gleaming beacon on the hill to come to the rescue. We are the last bastion of Freedom left in the world. And We The People are willfully letting that freedom vanish.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

What Our Future Holds

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

• From bondage to spiritual faith;
• from spiritual faith to great courage;
• from courage to liberty;
• from liberty to abundance;
• from abundance to selfishness;
• from selfishness to apathy;
• from apathy to dependence;
• from dependency back again into bondage.

–Dr Alexander Tytler, Scotsman, history professor at the University of Edinborough on The Fall of The Athenian Republic around the time of the birth of the US

Having reelected a Socialist who has vowed vengeance on us and to bypass Congress and maintained a Leftist Senate which has refused to obey the US Constitution and Federal Law by refusing to write a Budget since April 2009, here are a few things I see in our future:

1. Energy inflation and food inflation (two items left off the “official” inflation rate) will continue to far outstrip the inflation rate, as the Obama administration bankrupts electricity producers and rolling black-outs become commonplace in this land of plentiful natural resources we will not be permitted to use. The inflation rate itself will necessarily heat up heavily.

2. Businesses will continue to downsize due to the undue burdens of catastrophic regulations and taxes, reducing the number of employees and turning many full-time positions into part-time positions, causing the official unemployment numbers to climb and the real unemployment numbers to skyrocket.

3. The poverty rate and dependency rate will climb higher, as fewer people work and more people hold their hands out for “ObamaMoney”, causing even greater harm to those who are the producers. The US will further cannibalize itself.

4. The National Debt will continue to skyrocket and deficit spending will once again increase year-over-year instead of decreasing, causing two more reductions in US credit ratings. The Fed, which has caused the absolutely inevitable skyrocketing inflation rate, will no longer be able to keep interest rates artificially low. The interest rates will jump 7 to 15 points in the next 4 years, causing the US debt service portion of the (unwritten) Budget to explode.

5. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare expenses will reach half the (unwritten) Federal Budget, and beyond, as each work to bankrupt themselves and the US.

6. Religious Liberty will be curtailed as Government forces Christians to either fund that which is immoral or dissolve their outreach programs. Churches will learn they cannot preach on certain subjects without fear of criminal sanctions.

7. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom to peaceably protest the Government will be restricted. Our Second Amendment rights will be severely cut. Our rights against illegal searches and seizures will be infringed upon. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments, largely ignored now, will be blatantly curtailed.

In short, the “shining beacon on the hill” that was the Freedom and Liberty the US provided the world will have its 50,000 watt light removed and replaced with a half-watt red decorative light. The US has spent the last 30 years slipping from apathy into dependence. We are now sinking from dependence back into bondage. And it will take great men and women of steely resolve and moral strength to wrest this once great nation out of the entropic hands of the Socialists and the Dependent Class. And that means fighting both the Democrat leadership and the Ruling Class Republican leadership. Tooth and nail.

Are there enough of them left?

They Always End Up Showing Us What They Are

Hate-filled totalitarian Leftists who have no regard for Rule of Law. That’s what they are, and they always end up showing it. The difference between now and then? “Then”, the dinosaur Mainstream Media was fully able to cover up their actions. Now, New Media exposes them to millions of people.

For instance, most people in the blogosphere have heard about Obama calling people to vote for him out of a sense of revenge — revenge toward Obama’s American enemies. And Romney called him out on it. What did the dinosaur Mainstream Media do? They accused Romney of talking about revenge, and not Obama.

Next up, Valerie Jarrett, the brains behind the Obama frankenstein monster.

A rep from Jarrett office was in today. She gave us a finish line pep talk and then afterwards, heard her saying how Jarrett is very excited about a 2nd term agenda and a big part of that agenda is to punish everyone who opposed them during the first term and the campaign. Strange that everything was “Ms. Jarrett wants this, and Ms. Jarrett is looking forward to that”. You hardly heard Obama’s name mentioned by her which I guess reinforces what people are saying. Valerie Jarrett really is the power in the White House. I know that when her representative showed up it was like royalty was visiting. All the big dogs were lined up to meet her and acting real friendly and they gave us a heads up an hour before and told us we better “put on a good show” while she was here.

The part that really stuck out to me was when I overheard the rep say that Jarrett told them, “After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time. Everyone not with us is against us and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded, the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay. Congress won’t be a problem for us this time. No election to worry about after this is over and we have two judges ready to go.” She was talking directly to about three of them. Sr. staff. And she wasn’t trying to be quiet about it at all. And they were all listening and shaking their heads and smiling while she said it. Pretty creepy.

If that isn’t bone-chilling, you’re already completely gone. Very clear hate-filled guarantees of throwing the US Constitution and the Rule of Law out the window, in order to “punish” those who opposed their tyrannical rule. Congress won’t be a problem because Obama has already shown he’ll rule by fiat, completely ignoring the Constitutional requirements. Violating them on a whim.

This is the existential election. Obama wins and kiss America and Liberty good-bye. Obama loses and America survives its greatest existential threat.

Father of Slain SEAL: Who Made the Decision Not to Save My Son?

This is SICKENING. The Discraced House at 1600 PA Ave., NW, Washington, DC DID NOTHING to save and fight for our fellow citizens and Americanns. Anybody who votes for Obama after reading or hearing this, is BLIND!!!

Father of Slain SEAL: Who Made the Decision Not to Save My Son?
Posted on October 26, 2012 byCowboy Byte

Charles Woods, the father Tyrone Woods, who was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, reveals details of meeting Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at the publically broadcast memorial service for the slain Americans at Andrews Air Force Base only days after the attack. And, in a recent radio appearance, Woods publicly questions who made the call not to send in back-up forces to possibly save his son’s life, as well as the three other Americans killed in Benghazi (which includes the American ambassador to Libya).

When [Obama] came over to our little area” at Andrew Air Force Base, says Woods, “he kind of just mumbled, you know, ‘I’m sorry.’ His face was looking at me, but his eyes were looking over my shoulder like he could not look me in the eye. And it was not a sincere, ‘I’m really sorry, you know, that you’re son died,’ but it was totally insincere, more of whining type, ‘I’m sorry.’”

Woods says that shaking President Obama’s hands at his son’s memorial service was “like shaking hands with a dead fish.”

Read more: http://cowboybyte.com/14274/father-of-slain-seal-who-made-the-decision-not-to-save-my-son/#ixzz2AQFP4hyj

Obama Needs To Grow A “Big Stick”

During the moment of silence to remember 9/11, NBC decided to interview a Kardashian instead.

Muslim Brotherhood terrorists attacked the US Embassy in Egypt. And that embassy apologized to the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists for our First Amendment!

Muslim Brotherhood terrorists attacked the US Consulate in Libya, killing our ambassador.

MSNBC went out of its way to loudly declare its desire to have a Christian pastor charged with accessory to murder due to his non-violent exercising of his First Amendment rights, which MSNBC declared responsible for Muslim Brotherhood terrorists behaving like terrorists.

Of course, Obama has decided to get tough with … Israel! By refusing to meet with the Israeli Prime Minister.

While the media has very clearly coordinated their Left-wing agenda questioning of Romney over Egypt and Libya, Barack Obama refused to take any questions after reading a statement someone else prepared for him to read, as is very typical and very habitual of Obama.

Of course, two people spoke out very clearly in defense of the US and our Constitution.

As Erika Johnsen reports:

 

I think it’s an absolutely horrible thing, because what you have to understand — here we are on 9/11, remembering the attacks… and now we have had another attack on sovereign American soil, which is what a consulate and an embassy is. Our flag was torn down, it was burned, the radical Islamists’ flag was raised, and we have an American official that lost their life. And the first thing that comes out is that we’re going to apologize for something that a Christian, Coptic individual posted in a video on his Facebook site. So now, if we’re going to start eschewing our freedom of speech rights to apologize to people for these type of attacks, Greta, you’re only get even more of this. This is rewarding bad behavior, and I think you’re going to see this dovetail into other countries. … I think it’s a horrific response that we’re apologizing. We’re accepting the blame for this which means you’re going to feel more of this response. …

Spot-on. It is insane — insane – that we should feel the need to tiptoe around the tender feelings of violent, overzealous radical Islamists (or, as some in the MSM now seem to be oh-so-subtly calling them, “ultraconservative” Islamists — really, guys?). Freedom of religion and freedom of speech are human rights, and I don’t mean that like ‘universal healthcare’ is supposed to be a human right (which, by the way, it isn’t). They are undeniable, inalienable, universal rights — absolutely no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it — and for representatives of the United States to get all sheepish and showcase their willingness to be bullied on that point makes me extremely nervous, to say the least.

Here’s what that Great American Sarah Palin had to say:

Apparently President Obama can’t see Egypt and Libya from his house. On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks ever perpetrated on America, our embassy in Cairo and our consulate in Benghazi were attacked by violent Islamic mobs. In Cairo, they scaled the walls of our embassy, destroyed our flag, and replaced it with a black Islamic banner. In Benghazi, the armed gunmen set fire to our consulate and killed an American staff member. The Islamic radicals claim that these attacks are in protest to some film criticizing Islam. In response to this, the U.S. embassy in Cairo issued a statement that was so outrageous many of us thought it must be a satire. The embassy actually apologized to the violent mob attacking us, and it even went so far as to chastise those who use free speech to “hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” (Funny, the current administration has no problem hurting the “religious feelings” of Catholics.)

But where is the president’s statement about this? These countries represent his much touted “Arab Spring.” How’s that Arab Spring working out for us now? Have we received an apology yet from our “friends” in the Muslim Brotherhood for the assault on our embassy?

It’s about time our president stood up for America and condemned these Islamic extremists. I realize there must be a lot on his mind these days – what with our economy’s abysmal jobless numbers and Moody’s new warning about yet another downgrade to our nation’s credit rating due to the current administration’s failure to come up with a credible deficit reduction plan. And, of course, he has a busy schedule – with all those rounds of golf, softball interviews with the “Pimp with the Limp,” and fundraising dinners with his corporate cronies. But our nation’s security should be of utmost importance to our Commander-in-chief. America can’t afford any more “leading from behind” in such a dangerous world. We already know that President Obama likes to “speak softly” to our enemies. If he doesn’t have a “big stick” to carry, maybe it’s time for him to grow one.

- Sarah Palin

Is there any question, any question at all, why I endorsed a Palin/West Presidential ticket last year?

The Obama administration is absolutely an international disgrace to our nation. NBC is disgraceful. The mainstream media with its Left-Wing agenda — not bias but agenda — is a disgrace to our nation. MSNBC, with its anti-Constitutional, Socialist agenda, is an absolute disgrace to America, to journalism, to anything representing honorable values.

And if anyone holds any value whatsoever for the opinions or “journalism” coming out of MSNBC, that person is both a fool and an idiot, and cannot be considered to be a valuable contributing member to society.

King Obama Guts Another Law by Fiat (not the car)

Our steamed President wannabe dictator, has voided a section of the Welfare Reform Law that was hammered out through Compromise between a Republican Congress and President Clinton.  Our steamed President wannabe dictator along with the compliant HHS secretary gutted the law by Fiat.  Well, he just rewrote it to fit his desires and told Congress to go to HELL.  I lost track of how many laws Dick-Tater BO has broken so far, but he is certainly on his way to become Hugo Chavez.

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE

Obama Ends Welfare Reform As We Know It

By Robert Rector & Katherine Bradley July 12, 2012 7:00 P.M.

This afternoon, President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive undermining the welfare reform law of 1996. The new policy guts the federal work requirements that have been the foundation of that law — one of the most successful domestic policy reforms in the 20th century.
(skip)

The welfare reform law was very successful. In the four decades prior to welfare reform, the welfare caseload never experienced a significant decline. But, in the four years after welfare reform, the caseload dropped by nearly half. Employment surged and child poverty among blacks and single mothers plummeted to historic lows. What was the catalyst for these improvements? Rigorous new federal work requirements contained in TANF.

Contrary to some perceptions, the formula that made welfare reform a success was not giving state governments more flexibility in operating federally funded welfare programs. The active ingredient that made the difference was requiring state governments to implement those rigorous new federal work standards.

Today the Obama administration issued a dramatic new directive stating that the traditional TANF work requirements will be waived or overridden by a legal device called a section 1115 waiver authority under the Social Security law (42 U.S.C. 1315).

(skip)

The result is the end of welfare reform as we know it.

-Robert Rector, a leading authority on poverty and the welfare system, is senior research fellow in domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation. Katherine (Kiki) Bradley, former associate director of the federal TANF program, is research fellow in Heritage’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society.

read it all here: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/309300/obama-ends-welfare-reform-we-know-it-robert-rector

Leftwing Projection: Kimberlin Ally, Neal Raushauser Accuses Brandon Darby Of SWATting Bloggers

Reblogged from Nice Deb:

Brandon Darby, the right's "Hottest" new media star.

Psychological projection or projection bias:

According to Sigmund Freud, projection is a psychologicaldefense mechanism whereby one "projects" one's own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else. 'Emotions or excitations which the ego tries to ward off are "split out" and then felt as being outside the ego...perceived in another person'.

Read more… 1,272 more words

The Kriminal Kimberlin Krew keeps piling up the false allegations, the defamations of character, and the attempts to steal people's Constitutional rights from them. And, as a very wise man once said, all it takes for evil (the Kriminal Kimberlin Krew) to succeed is for good men (like Nice Deb and TBD) to do nothing. Well, we ain't doin' nuttin. We're keeping the spotlight on the roaches.

July 4th, 1776 – The Declaration of Independence (Which has turned into the Sheep of Dependency)

Declaration of Independence

(Here is the complete text of the Declaration of Independence. Written 236 years ago and is still relevent today. This document represents a primary resource in understanding the history of America. The original spelling and capitalization have been retained.)

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

UPDATE (John Hitchcock): An online link to the US Declaration of Independence, along with the list of signers and brief biographies on each, can be found in the left-hand sidebar. An online link to the US Constitution, annotated, and with the list of original signers, can also be found in the left-hand sidebar.

TSHTF Watergate Again – Executive Privilege on Fast & Furious

I remember all too well this same thing happened with Nixon. BO has all but said he’s involved in Fast & Furious to INVOKE EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE. I remember Watergate all too well. BO has stuck his foot into it up to his ass.

Obama Asserts Executive Privilege on Fast and Furious Posted on June 20, 2012 by Conservative Byte

President Obama has granted an 11th-hour request by Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents, a last-minute maneuver that appears unlikely to head off a contempt vote against the attorney general by Republicans in the House.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to forge ahead with its meeting on the contempt resolution anyway.

http://conservativebyte.com/2012/06/obama-asserts-executive-privilege-on-fast-and-furious/

Two Quick Links

In the theme of things coming to a head.

Creative Minority Report: High Noon on The Hill.

CNN: Obama Asserts Executive Privilege Over ‘Fast and Furious’ Document.
Their headline says “documents,” but their story says documents.

Bonus link: Donald has a better link and some discussion.

Is BO North America’s Hugo Chavez?

BO has demonstrated quite clearly he has a TOTAL Disdain for the US Constitution. When it fits his needs, actually wants, he will trample on any law that gets in his way. Below describes how he disregards the Defense of Marriage Act. This past week by FIAT, his spoken authority, made his own Amnesty Law. I think it’s fairly obvious Obama has a total diregard for the Constitution by saying the ordinary way of doing things are not going my way. He says the Congress is a do nothing organization. When the Constitution was writen it was set up that way. The way BO is operating is extra-constitution so BO is shredding his oath of office when he swore he would abide by it, and all the laws. Can we spell Impeachment? Can we spell Dictator. BO is still in Community Organizer mode.

Are We in Revolutionary Times?
By Victor Davis Hanson
June 15, 2012 6:51 P.M.

Legally, President Obama has reiterated the principle that he can pick and choose which U.S. laws he wishes to enforce (see his decision to reverse the order of the Chrysler creditors, his decision not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, and his administration’s contempt for national-security confidentiality and Senate and House subpoenas to the attorney general). If one individual can decide to exempt nearly a million residents from the law — when he most certainly could not get the law amended or repealed through proper legislative or judicial action — then what can he not do? Obama is turning out to be the most subversive chief executive in terms of eroding U.S. law since Richard Nixon.

More here:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/303037/are-we-revolutionary-times-victor-davis-hanson#

But it’s for our own good!

From CBS News:

Bloomberg soda ban: Board of Health eyes popcorn and milkshakes

By Michelle Castillo

(CBS News) While the New York City Board of Health approves of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to cut all large sugary drinks from New Yorker’s diets, some members are taking issue with one major point: They don’t think the plan goes far enough.

The city’s Board of Health met on June 12^th to approve the Mayor’s proposal; they scheduled a public hearing on the proposal for July 24^th, and a final vote on September 13^th. If approved, the new regulation would take effect six months later.

Certain members spoke up, however, saying that the proposal should include other items. Board member Bruce Vladeck questioned why large tubs of popcorn were not included in the ban, according to the New York Daily News. Another member, Dr. Joel Forman, pointed out that even 100 percent juice and milk-containing beverages have large amounts of calories and should not be excluded.

While Dr. Kenneth Popler, board member and president of the Staten Island Mental Health Society, recognized that it would infringe on New Yorkers’ rights, he felt that the health benefits were worth it, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL reported. Obesity has led to 5,800 deaths a year in New York City and costs taxpayers $4 billion, according to statements presented at the meeting.

Fox & Friends had a short segment on this issue this morning,¹ and a nutritionist and dietitian, Laura Cipullo, presented the “pro” side of the argument. As always in these brief segments, Mrs Cipullo didn’t have a lot of time to flesh out her arguments — pun intended — but she began by noting that the government has assumed a responsibility for the individual’s nutrition with the Food Stamp program.

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, in his skewering questioning of the hapless and hopelessly overmatched Solicitor General, Donald Virrelli,² suggested that the Obama Administration’s position on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act could extend to requiring people to buy broccoli³:

Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.

If it is within the government’s authority to require health care coverage, and if it is the government’s ultimate responsibility to see to it that everyone has sufficient food on which to live, and if obesity and diabetes are serious health care problems which place financial burdens on the government and the public in general, I fail to see why the government wouldn’t or shouldn’t have the authority not only to compel you to buy broccoli, as Justice Scalia mockingly suggested, but to require you to eat the broccoli as well. After all, broccoli is good for you, being high in nutritional value and low in calories, and the more you fill up on green vegetables, the less room you will have for soda and popcorn and milk shakes, keeping your weight down. I noted, in 2005:

There are plenty of people who seem to find themselves in the business of regulating private conduct. We see it most obviously when it comes to tobacco: several major cities have major bans on smoking in public places and even private clubs. One company, Weyco in Michigan, has not only banned smoking on its property, it has banned smoking among its employees . . . even at home.

Weyco doesn’t see any problem with banning all of its employees from smoking, even off the premises, even in the privacy of their own homes, and has enforced the policy through at least three terminations. “There’s not a liberty right or any other right to have any particular employment, and I think it’s time for people in our country to start taking personal responsibility for many aspects of their life, including health care,” said David Houston, Weyco’s general counsel.

Well, if Weyco, a private company, can regulate its employees’ liberties to the extent that they cannot both smoke and remain employees, why couldn’t the federal government, if it were responsible for all health care costs, determine that Americans (all covered by the national health insurance (Jonathan) Cohn⁴ and so many others advocate) simply couldn’t be allowed to smoke?

Or eat fatty foods?

Or make any of the other private choices Americans are wont to make that don’t necessarily have the best of consequences?

The real problem with Mr. Cohn’s logic is that it is unassailable: he’s actually right about this!

1. If government is going to be obligated for health care costs, government has a reasonable right to take steps to lower those costs; then
2. Government has a reasonable right to lower the costs for which it has assumed responsibility; and thus
3. Government has a reasonable right to regulate private behavior which contributes to higher costs.

Smoking is the most obvious case, and there are plenty of people who advocate government stepping in and making the use of tobacco illegal, period. The fat police (and the ambulance chasers who Mr. Cohn noted were now following pizza delivery boys) have declared war against fatty foods, and if lawsuits against McDonald’s haven’t been successful yet — nearly 90 percent of Americans say they oppose obesity lawsuits against the food industry — it wasn’t all that long ago that the notion that tobacco companies being responsible for smokers’ illnesses, being that smoking was a private decision, was considered ridiculous. If the current lawsuit fails, which it probably will, there will be another, and another, until some idiot jury decides that someone is too fat not because of his hand-to-mouth disease, but because McDonald’s forced him to eat that food!

Count on it: federal government action against food producers and restaurants that serve fatty foods won’t be far behind, at least not if government has a huge vested interest in health care costs.

Of course, the New York City Board of Health isn’t the federal government, but their way of thinking is becoming fairly standard liberalism these days: if your individual choices happen to go against what some official panel of experts believes is contrary to the public good, those choices will simply have to be restricted. And we really shouldn’t object, after all, because it is for our own good!

They will never admit it, of course, and many have probably not even thought about it in any depth, but for many of our friends on the left what is really harmful to our own good, and to society, is freedom. The notion that your choices should not be any of the government’s business unless those choices violate someone else’s rights seems to apply only to abortion these days.
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¹ – During the 0700-0730 segment.
² – Even The New York Times, which editorially supports the health care reform law, noted that, during verbal arguments before the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Solicitor General “got off to a rocky start and never seemed to quite find his footing during his hour at the Supreme Court lectern.“
³ – Department of Health and Human Services v Florida, Transcript of oral arguments, March 27, 2012, page 13, lines 8-12.
⁴ – The article was in response to Jonathan Cohn’s argument in The New Republic that the government had a reasonable right to punish or restrict personal behavior that costs the government money:

When you put it that way, the idea of a “Twinkie tax,” as it has come to be known, really does sound absurdly paternalistic. If you want to load up on french fries, health risks and all, why is that the government’s business? Unfortunately, fat consumption really is the government’s business in one, very literal, sense. As taxpayers, we all bear the burden of higher medical costs–either directly, by paying for Medicare and Medicaid, or indirectly, by subsidizing employer-based health insurance (which is tax deductible). So, when some people choose to eat poorly, we all end up bearing the financial burden for their decisions.

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Cross posted on THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.