DOJ internal memo confirms Obama plan for gun confiscation

Those of us who know who Barack Obama/Barry Soetoro really is are not surprised at all that he and his ilk of power-hungry tyrants ultimately want to confiscate our guns. He is repeating a historic pattern where tyrants come to power with sweet words and lofty promises, but quickly show their true colors by taking liberty, wealth, and hope from their subjects as quickly as circumstances allow. If Obama and the regressives could have taken our guns before now, make no mistake, they would have. They will not stop in their quest to take our guns, remove our liberty, and turn US into subjects unless and until we defeat them and eliminate that possibility.

Every American CITIZEN who understands what that word truly means has the DUTY to arm themselves, and be prepared to defend his or her Constitutional and God-given RIGHTS against those who seek to take them from us. It is my sincere hope that we never have to rise against our own government with force to preserve our own liberty, but our founding fathers knew that if we as citizens didn’t do our duty to keep our government in check, that we would indeed have to do so at some point. The best way to prevent that eventuality is to make sure that a power-hungry government knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that we the people will indeed overthrow them should they stray from the Constitutional reservation that created said government. The problem is that we have allowed our government to grow to a size and level of power where they now doubt we will do anything about it.

We must arm ourselves while we still can. You must be prepared not only to defend yourself and your home, but your neighbors and their homes as well. Standing alone we offer no obstacle to a large, unrestrained government with designs on total power. We MUST stand united.
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November 21, 2013

An internal memo within the Department of Justice (DOJ) has surfaced which confirms that the Obama administration had plans for gun registration and confiscation in the aftermath of the Newtown school shooting.

According to Bob Owens, the NRA obtained the memo in February. But apparently there were questions as to the veracity of the information. Owens says that the existence of the memo, and its outline of a plan for gun registration and confiscation, can now be confirmed.

The document, which can be viewed here, was not released to the public via the news media.

Owens cites an analysis of the memo, including direct quotes from the document, which exposes the Obama administration’s real agenda on guns:

The DOJ memo states the administration “believes that a gun ban will not work without mandatory gun confiscation,” according to the NRA, and thinks universal background checks “won’t work without requiring national gun registration.” Obama has yet to publicly support national registration or firearms confiscation, although the memo reveals his administration is moving in that direction.

Thus, despite the many denials by Obama, by members of his administration, and by Congressional Democrats, once again it has become clear that the administration’s true agenda is very different from that which is presented to the public.

The goal is and always has been gun registration and confiscation.

The Examiner has often reported the Obama agenda on guns, which can be traced all the way back to his years in the Illinois legislature. He was considered among the most aggressive anti-gun advocates in Illinois.

Obama voted to criminalize any homeowner who used an illegal firearm to defend himself and/or his family in the event of a home invasion by dangerous criminals.

The philosophy that underlies such a point of view is clear. To Obama it is more important that a gun be “legal” than for human lives to be saved. This stance portrays a shocking disregard for the sanctity of human life.

Thus, many conservatives warned as far back as 2007 that an Obama candidacy for the presidency would be a very dangerous turn for America. Obama would never tell the public just how radical he is. To do so would end his political career.

This is why Obama denied repeatedly that he had been close friends with murderous homegrown terrorists such as Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn. The couple bombed federal buildings, encouraged teenagers to murder their parents, and were arrested for the murder of a police officer but were released on a technicality.

It turns out that Ayers launched Obama’s political career in his living room — all confirmed as fact. Birds of a feather. And the Obama agenda reflects it.

But like so many other components of the Obama agenda, the public only finds out the real truth once the program is actually implemented. It is only then that it becomes clear that the emperor has no clothes. Only then it is too late.

Fortunately for the populace, enough conservatives, libertarians, and other freedom-loving citizens were on to the Obama gun ban agenda long before it became an issue. Nationally his agenda was thus thwarted. But astute citizens are certain that this is not the end of it.

The forces of tyranny never give up.

Link to article:  http://www.examiner.com/article/doj-internal-memo-confirms-obama-plan-for-gun-confiscation

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CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens’ rights

You know it has to be bad if CNN is actually reporting this.  Have I not been telling you that government unrestrained by the people from whom they derive power is dangerous?

Love your country.  Fear your government.

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http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/26/cnn-poll-majority-says-government-a-threat-to-citizens-rights/?fbid=LdDg622z-Kl

February 26, 2010

Posted: February 26th, 2010 09:00 AM ET

From CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser

Fifty-six percent of Americans say the government poses an immediate threat to individual rights and freedoms.

Washington (CNN) – A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.

The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.

According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken – though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what’s broken can be fixed.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey.

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Climategate U-turn; No global warming since 1995

Exposure of the fraud continues.  Global warming supporters spouted for so long the line that “global warming is settled science.”  Here are the things that are truly “settled.”

• CO₂ is plant food, not a pollutant
• The SUN is the primary agent of climate change
• The climate changes whether man is here or not

Most of the people pushing the “science” of climate change are not scientists, and most of the data they are using come from people who are either not scientists, are cherry-picking data in order to receive funding, or are one of the few scientists who actually man cause global warming or climate change.  During the early days of strong momentum for the global warming movement, most scientists kept their heads down because they would either get fired or receive no funding for their work.  Now that the global warming cat is out of the bag, the majority of scientists are either saying man-made global warming doesn’t exist, or that there just isn’t sufficient evidence to support the conclusion that man cause climate change or global warming.

We can’t let Obama and the ‘progressive’ liberal democrats force us into a global cap-and-trade scheme.  We can’t let Obama do the same thing by fiat via the EPA.  He’s done a pretty good job of destroying our economy, and either of the two schemes would simply hasten our demise.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html?printingPage=true

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

By Jonathan Petre
Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.  (How convenient…)

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The (missing) data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

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Harry Reid and Company MUST Go

Self-serving tyrants like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have been allowed to stay in office far too long, suckling on the golden breast of America.  They and others like them have gradually stolen power and wealth in ways the founding fathers warned us against.  It’s time to take our country back.  We need to replace every last one of the bums and get them to pass the laws that make sense for America, and conform to the constitution.  That includes voting for things that are not personally beneficial to said politicians.  Here are two of the things we should expect of our politicians.

• Term limits – Politics was never intended to be a lifelong career.  Elected representatives were expected to represent their states and districts for a “season” of time, then return home.  That was to ensure fresh ideas, no self-serving entrenchment, and that the representatives were current and aware of desires and goings on in their home states/districts.  A careerist politician living in Washington doesn’t meet that intent.
• Eliminate lifelong pensions – Again, they should only be in Washington long enough to convey the wishes of the electorate and return home to a REAL job.  These exorbitant pensions awarded after little or no work or tenure are an insult to America.  The automatic pay raises, especially at a time when 10 to 20% of Americans are out of work is even more insulting.  While they are in office (for their LIMITED number of terms), pay them well.  Just don’t do it forever.

If you are tired of the tyranny, here are some web sites you may want to visit.  Join the fight to retake and save America.

Our Country Deserves Better (http://www.ourcountrypac.org/)

Get Out of Our House! (http://goooh.com/Home.aspx)

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Harry Reid compares opponents of the democrat health care takeover to slave owners.

Harry Reid thinks taxes are “voluntary.”  He’s either evil, an idiot, or an evil idiot.

Ronald Reagan had Harry Reid figured out a long time ago.  Time to fire Harry Reid.

Harry Reid said our troops failed, and insulted American voters saying “you could literally smell the tourists coming into the capitol,”  in addition to comparing those who disagree with his health care takeover plan to slave owners.  We’re tired of being your slaves, Harry.  It’s time for you to go.

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Darth Bama Using the Debt Star to Vaporize Fiscal Responsibility

Senator Obama-tine, Darth Bama, and the Democrat Storm Troopers Vaporizing Fiscal Responsibility With the Debt Star

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The DEMOCRATS are raising the debt ceiling because they’re afraid it’s too early for the freebies and handouts to stop. If the freebies and handouts stop now, Obama and the democrats haven’t cemented their power enough to keep from getting tarred, feathered, and run out of Washington on a rail.

Some say, mostly liberals, that if they don’t raise the debt ceiling the government will shut down.

THEN LET IT SHUT DOWN! That might the one thing that actually saves this country. If the government is shut down and they can’t spend more money, that might be the best we could hope for.

The whole system is about to collapse. Are you ready?

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http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=75F9D458-18FE-70B2-A8F31147A5D25BFF

Dems to lift debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion, fear 2010 backlash

By: David Rogers
December 9, 2009 07:24 PM EST

In a bold but risky year-end strategy, Democrats are preparing to raise the federal debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion before New Year’s rather than have to face the issue again prior to the 2010 elections. (Don’t EVER forget this, America. They are DESTROYING America with their TOTAL ABSENCE of fiscal responsibility. If you or I spend twice what we make each year, can we just go raise our credit limit? We go to the poor house. Eventually that will happen to America as well. We will become such a poor credit risk to foreign lenders that they will no longer buy our debt. Then what? The party ends, the handouts stop, the collapse happens, scores of people die, and we revert back to an existence of subsistence. If you can find a way to start a recall movement in your state for these irresponsible congressmen and senators, DO IT NOW. November 2010 may be too late.)

“We’ve incurred this debt. We have to pay our bills,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told POLITICO Wednesday. And the Maryland Democrat confirmed that the anticipated increase could be as high as $1.8 trillion — nearly twice what had been assumed in last spring’s budget resolution for the 2010 fiscal year. (Then PAY YOUR BILLS, Mr. Hoyer. Raising the debt ceiling doesn’t pay the bills, it just makes the bill too big to pay. When a friend or family member provides drugs or money to an addict, or just turns a blind eye, that friend or family is called an enabler. You, Mr. Hoyer, and all of your liberal friends on the Hill are enablers to Mr. Obama who is addicted to power. You are enabling him by providing him money that we don’t have. You are enabling him because you want the same thing he wants. You want do destroy the capitalist economy that made America great, strip freedom, liberty, and choice from Americans, and turn America into a socialist nation with you and your pals in charge. We’ve seen too much of the results of your actions for you to just call it “mistakes.” You are intentionally destroying America. We will stop you.)

The leadership is betting that it’s better for the party to take its lumps now rather than risk further votes over the coming year. But the enormity of the number could create its own dynamic, much as another debt ceiling fight in 1985 gave rise to the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction act mandating across-the-board spending cuts nearly 25 years ago. (Their hoping you’ll forget what they did, and hoping that we won’t run out of money again before the November 2010 elections. This is devious, deceitful, and downright evil.)

(Read complete article by following this link or the one above.)

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Our Government IS the Matrix

Some of you are wandering through life, flaunting your liberalism, thinking everything is just grand.  You have always believed that someone else will provide all of your wants and needs.  However, lately you have started to think that maybe, just maybe there is something that you are not being told.  Maybe things aren’t as rosy as you have been led to believe.  Everything seems to be part of a matrix…

So what is the Matrix?  It is the world of liberal lies constructed by our liberal, communist/socialist government that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

What is the truth?  The truth is that you are a prisoner of liberalism.  It is a prison constructed to imprison and enslave your mind.

This may all seem hard to swallow.  But your curiosity and awakening thirst for truth has brought you this far.

Congratulations on taking the red pill and seeking the truth.  Now follow me.  This is going to be a wild ride.

As you wake up from your dream, you will see that the government is using you.  It is feeding off of you and everyone else.  Once upon a time it derived its power from the people, now it simply takes it.

Once the government sees that you have awakened, begun to think for yourself, become self aware and aware of what government is doing to you, they will unplug you from your blissfully ignorant world that you thought was safe.  Then government will discard you into the sewer of life with the rest of the excrement.

Just before you drown in a sea of excrement, you are rescued by Liberty.  She shows you that teamwork is great, but that you can also do things on your own.  She shows you that all of the other promises that were made to you were simply lies to keep you compliant.  She teaches you that to prevent yourself from becoming a prisoner again, you need to think for yourself, and question everything.

Asserting State Soverignty

Texas is also one of several states considering resolution to opt out of the unfunded, unconstitutional mandate that will come from socialized medicine and from cap-and-tax should they pass. This is the only way we can defeat Obama and the liberal democrats socialist agenda: individually contributing to movements that swell from the local and state levels that show the usurpers in D.C. that their careers are going to end unless they start obeying the constitution and listening to their constituents. The other things to do are:

• Make it law that they are bound by the laws and programs they pass just like the average Joe. No exceptions.

• Get rid of the pensions for congressmen and senators.

• Institute term limits. If they’re good enough for the president, they’re good enough for the congress and senate.

• Make them vote one each law on its own merits without riders and earmarks.

• Make them actually READ each law before voting on it.

• Make them be present to vote, or dock them pay.

That’s a good start on some things that would go a long way towards cleaning up and un-screwing Washington and the government that is supposed to work FOR the people.

∞ Gadget

Published Jul 27, 2009

Published Monday July 27, 2009

Nebraskans assert state sovereignty

By Martha Stoddard
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN — At least three Nebraska lawmakers want to send a message to the federal government:

Butt out of state business.

Next year they will see if a majority of their colleagues agrees.

The senators are working on resolutions asserting Nebraska’s sovereignty under the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.

Nebraska wouldn’t try to secede from the union under their proposals but would go on record objecting to federal laws that they say go beyond constitutional authority.

“My goal here is to shine light on the fact that the federal government is overstepping its bounds,” said State Sen. Tony Fulton of Lincoln. “We would be making a statement on behalf of Nebraska.”

The tension between states’ rights and federal authority has been a repeated theme in U.S. history, starting with arguments among the founding fathers.

The struggle turned bloody when Southern states seceded, citing states’ rights on the question of slavery, and the Civil War ensued.

Critics say the current measures amount to little more than political posturing — passing resolutions doesn’t mean that states refuse to comply with federal law or send back federal funds that come with mandates.

State Sen. Bill Avery of Lincoln said the proposals sound disturbingly similar to the states’ rights arguments made in defense of racial segregation and laws blocking blacks from voting.

“The history of this movement is rife with racism in the name of states’ rights,” he said. “I’m not saying that the people making the case now are racist, but I don’t think Nebraska needs to be getting in bed with these kinds of resolutions.”

Colleagues denied links to that history. Fulton, an Asian-American, said he has no intention of promoting racism or segregation.

Interest in states’ rights is spreading asthe federal government has taken over businesses, mandated driver’s license security measures and proposed a public health care program.

Seven states passed resolutions this year affirming their sovereignty, and resolutions were introduced in 30 others. Some states have filed lawsuits or taken legislative action to challenge federal laws.

In Iowa, State Senate Republican leader Paul McKinley of Chariton offered a resolution this yearcalling on the federal government to “cease and desist” in issuing mandates that go beyond what the 10th Amendment allows. The body’s Democratic majority has kept the resolution alive but bottled up in committee.

The movement’s rise followed the election of President Barack Obama. Most of its supporters, though not all, can be found in conservative camps, such as libertarian talk-show host Glenn Beck and his conservative Web site. The states passing resolutions all voted Republican in the 2008 presidential election.

Online petitions urge Nebraska’s state lawmakers to act.

“Either states can use the Constitution to maintain the power they have always had, or they can give it up,” said Gregory Boyle of Omaha, who started one online petition this spring.

A constitutional scholar questions the effectiveness of legislativeresolutions and legal challenges.

“This is an outlet for those who are worried that the federal government will take over everything,” said Mark Kende, director of the Drake University Constitutional Law Center in Des Moines.

Richard Duncan, a constitutional law professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law, said legislative resolutions send valuable political messages even with no legal weight.

“It’s kind of a nice warning that people are growing tired of the size of the federal government,” he said.

Under the 10th Amendment, states and citizens retain all powers not specifically given to the federal government.

Sovereignty supporters argue that the federal government has overstepped those bounds on matters such as endangered species protection and seat belt laws. Others say the Constitution, as interpreted by courts from the 1800s on, gives the federal government broad authority.

Fulton and Sens. Mark Christensen of Imperial and Ken Schilz of Ogallala are researching possible resolutions.

“I absolutely don’t like where our government is going right now,” Christensensaid.

Among his complaints are the mandates attached to federal stimulus funds and the new national health care proposals.

Fulton listed federal control of General Motors and mandates imposed on schools under the 2001 No Child Left Behind law.

“I’m not saying that every interaction with the federal government is bad,” he said. “I’m saying that some are over the line.”

Schilz’s concerns include a proposal to extend the Clean Water Act to all bodies of water.

None of the three Nebraska lawmakers is ready to advocate giving up most federal funds to avoid the accompanying mandates, although Christensen supported the governor’s decision to reject some unemployment stimulus money because of the strings attached.

Speaker of the Nebraska Legislature Mike Flood of Norfolk said he wasn’t sure whether he would back a resolution, though he supports states’ rights.

“Every day in the Legislature,” Flood said, “it seems we deal with issues where the federal government has its tentacles, either on the policy or the money or both.”

South Dakota’s GOP whip, State Rep. Manny Steele, introduced his state’s successful resolution. Steele said change will occur if enough states follow sovereignty measures with legal challenges to federal authority.

Some challenges have already popped up, on both conservative and liberal issues.

Montana, for example, passed a law this year asserting that guns made, sold and used in the state are exempt from federal laws and taxes. The law’s chief backers said they hoped it would trigger a court battle.

Arizona lawmakers put a measure on the 2010 ballot that would exempt residents from a federal health care plan.

On the liberal front, Massachusetts cited the 10th Amendment in filing suit against a federal law barring recognition of same-sex marriages.

And six states sided with a California woman who argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that states had the power to legalize medical marijuana. The court ruled for the federal government in the 2005 case.

Kende questioned the states’ chances of prevailing, saying the federal government won all cases from 1937 to 1995, although its record has been mixed since.

Courts already have upheld the practice of attaching strings to federal funds, Duncan said.

No matter the result of the court cases, states can make a difference through political pressure, said Michael Boldin, founder of the Tenth Amendment Center in Los Angeles. The howls that greeted a George W. Bush-era law increasing driver’s license requirements, for example, forced the federal government to rethink that law.

“With each state,” Steele said, “we gain power.”

Contact the writer:

402-473-9583, martha.stoddard@owh.com

[categories oppressive government, 10th amendment]

“Hate Speech” = Anything a Liberal Disagrees With

Tolerance is Becoming Intolerance

Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, Expose Obama.com

Modern America preaches the value of tolerance. This says you have the right to your opinion, and I have the right to mine. We can agree to disagree. While this level of tolerance for all viewpoints has never been completely achieved, those on the left certainly preach it when they are vilifying those who hold traditional values, and attempt to label them as intolerant. In recent years, and culminating in the election of Barack Obama, we are entering a new era where you have only the right to agree with the modern liberal view, or else be ostracized as an extremist.

Upon Obama’s election, he promised to usher in a new era of post-partisan politics. No more conservative and liberal — just hope. On abortion, he said he wanted to move past the tired old politics. Translation: he wants to repeal all restrictions on abortion, but expects pro-life supporters to drop their disagreements and support him. Obama said it’s no longer about whether government is too big or too small, it’s about how effective it is. In reality, Obama has ushered in the largest expansion of federal government in any 100-day period in United States history. This period of censorship of disagreement goes well beyond Obama to many of the liberal elites.

Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano joined the thought police by allowing her department to issue a report labeling any person holding a conservative political viewpoint a potential terrorist. This is the same Department of Homeland Security that said from now on, terrorism will be called man-caused disasters. Napolitano will tolerate Islamic terrorists, yet she has no tolerance for pro-life individuals. People who favor a smaller federal government are considered dangerous enemies of the state. This type of discrimination against opposing viewpoints is becoming rampant in our society.

American “enemies of the state” took to the streets to show their support for fiscal responsibility by attending tea parties. Because this view was not approved by the liberal elites, these protesters were mocked incessantly on CNN, NBC and CBS. The worst case of disdain for tea party participants came from Janeane Garofalo. Speaking on “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” she said, “Let’s be very honest about what this is about. They have no idea what the Boston Tea party was about. They don’t know their history at all. It’s about hating a black man in the White House.This is racism straight up and is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. There is no way around that.” Garofalo proceeded to claim that conservatives suffer from a mental disorder. None of this was refuted in any way by host Keith Olbermann. Evidently, hate speech is only allowed when it is against Christians or conservatives. There are allegations that the FBI was spying on these very peaceful demonstrations.

Another example of this suppression of traditional thought occurred at the Miss USA pageant. Celebrity judge Perez Hilton, a famous gay blogger, asked Miss California if she supported gay marriage. She very politely and graciously said that is up to the different states but she personally opposes it. The Miss USA contest strongly disagreed with Miss California’s position, and after the show Perez Hilton launched a diatribe calling the young lady a “dumb B” and later called her the C-word. These hateful attacks would certainly be repudiated if it were a conservative saying them. However, Perez Hilton and his far-left cohorts are free to say whatever they want as long as they are attacking conservatives.

This same principle applies as the left pushes the fairness doctrine and attempts to pass hate-speech laws that will silence Bible-believing Christians. If you disagree with them, then you have no right to speak your beliefs.

America is founded on the principles that all men are created equal and have inalienable rights protected by our Constitution. These rights and protections are what separate our free society from authoritarian governments that have no constraints on government power. Yet Alexis de Tocqueville warned about coercion of thought in his classic book, “Democracy of America.” He cautions us, saying that democracies can become even more oppressive than other forms of government when conformity is pushed in the culture. This conformity is being shoved on our society at an alarming rate. Christians and people who hold conservative viewpoints are demonized and mocked in schools, in the media and now by the Dept. of Homeland Security and the Obama administration. Those who hold traditional viewpoints had better speak out; otherwise, in the near future they may be forced to keep their lips zipped.

The Humbling of a Superpower

Another excellent perspective on the significance of Obama’s genuflection and kowtowing to the European weenies and to the Wahhabi King.  I submit to you, Greg Niedermier, that this IS NOT the kind of leader that America needs to defend us and maintain our standing as a benevolent super power.

The Humbling of a Superpower

by Nile Gardiner (more by this author)

Posted 04/09/2009 ET

It is hard to imagine a bigger slight to the memory of the more than 100,000 American soldiers who died liberating Europe than the image of a U.S. president attacking the “arrogance” of his own country on French soil. President Obama’s speech last week ahead of the NATO summit in Strasbourg, barely 500 miles from the beaches of Normandy, marked a low point in presidential speechmaking on foreign policy.

The largely French and German town hall audience cheered like ancient Romans in a packed Coliseum. This time, however, it was not Christians being fed to the lions but the symbolism of U.S. power, as the president lashed out at America’s “failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world.” Obama bemoaned that “instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”

The Franco-German crowd also clapped mightily in approval and bayed for more when the president boasted of closing down the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, declaring that “without equivocation or exception that the United States of America does not and will not torture,” as though his own country had been some sort of brutal tyranny that had suddenly seen the light with his election. It was a thoroughly distasteful attack on the previous administration’s interrogation of extremely dangerous terror suspects, feeding into the very anti-Americanism that Obama had half-heartedly challenged earlier in his address.

This was a humiliating spectacle to behold as the leader of the most powerful nation on earth prostrated his country before a European audience that lapped up his message as though it was manna from heaven. Obama’s actions represented the humbling of a superpower on the world stage, a defining moment for a new administration that is weakening American global leadership and taking every opportunity to engage with its enemies, such as Iran, or its strategic competitors, including Russia and China.

It was an approach that failed to reap any dividends on the president’s European tour. If anything, this trip proved there is little to be gained from bending to the whims of European governments, who simply view it as weakness to be exploited and used to their own advantage. When Obama urged Europeans to play a bigger role in the NATO mission in Afghanistan, his words were met in the Strasbourg amphitheatre with an eerie silence, as though this was a ridiculous request and an affront to their delicate sensibilities.

Behind the scenes at the NATO summit, there was no evidence of goodwill towards the pleas of the rock star-like American president. Obama succeeded only in securing a weak-kneed pledge of 5,000 European trainers and military police to join the NATO-led International Security Force in Afghanistan, most of whom will remain in the country only until the elections in August. Great Britain was the only European nation to offer a significant number of additional combat troops — 1,000 — to be added to the 8,300 British forces already on the ground.

It is continental European leaders, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who should be apologizing for the failure of their own countries to fight in Afghanistan, while American, British and Canadian troops are dying in large numbers on the battlefields. The brutal fact is that Obama achieved nothing at all at the NATO summit, and the war in Afghanistan remains overwhelmingly a conflict fought by a small group of English-speaking nations who continue to take 85 percent of the casualties in the fight against the Taliban, while most of Europe sits pathetically on the sidelines with cowardly indifference.

In world affairs, popularity rarely brings with it concrete results. Ronald Reagan was reviled in Europe but together with Margaret Thatcher brought down the might of the Soviet Empire. President Bush was burnt in effigy in almost every capital city across the European Union but succeeded in liberating sixty million Muslims from tyranny and kept the United States safe from terrorist attack in the years following 9/11.

It wasn’t much better for Obama at the preceding G-20 summit in London, where European leaders made all the running. Obama may have stolen the limelight and the best photo-ops but shaped little of the policy. Eventually the United States signed up to a communiqué that pledged $750 billion for the IMF, a European-dominated highly ineffective organization, as well as laying the foundations of a new global regulatory architecture for the financial industry, that poses a huge threat to American national sovereignty and the freedom of American companies to operate in global markets.

As the Obama administration will gradually begin to realize, world leadership is not a popularity contest. Rather, it is about taking tough decisions and positions that will be met with hostility in many parts of the globe. It is about the assertive projection of American power, both to secure the homeland and to protect the free world. It is often a lonely and unenviable task that at times will require the use of maximum force against America’s enemies and a willingness to face the scorn of countries whose glories are way behind them, or who lack the courage and conviction to do what is right.

Obama faces a world that in many ways is even more dangerous than the one that existed during the Cold War, with an array of rogue regimes close to developing offensive nuclear weapons capability, as well as a global terrorist network that seeks the very destruction of the United States and its allies. This is not the time for flower power speeches repenting for the so-called “arrogance” of the globe’s only superpower, or pointless declarations about creating a “nuclear free world.”

The president must deal with the world as it is now, not as he imagines it. This requires confronting the Mullahs of Tehran and tyrants such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il, and standing up to Russian aggression in its ‘Near Abroad.’ It also involves a determination to wage a global war, not an “Overseas Contingency Operation,” against Islamist groups and networks in the form of Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah and an array of other terrorist organizations. This will require significantly increased military spending not less, as well as the full implementation of a global missile defense system.

This is not a moment for faint hearts and 60s-style pacifism, but a time for America to project its might on the world stage and defeat its enemies. Europe can mock and jeer on the sidelines all it likes, but will quickly rediscover that its own security ultimately lies in supporting a United States that roars like a lion rather than bleats like a lamb.

Cartoon by Brett Noel.

Nile Gardiner, Ph.D. is the Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, and a Margaret Thatcher Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Spoons Made Michael Moore Fat

Here comes the continuous, faulty logic used to attack gun ownership by law-abiding citizens.  And worse than simply applying faulty logic to the gun control argument, liberals are intellectually dishonest in that they don’t apply their “logic” consistently across the board.  Let’s look at a few examples:

Object of Liberal Attention	Liberal Logic	Truth
Guns	Guns Kill People	People Kill People
If Liberal Logic were applied across the board…
Cars	Drunk drivers use cars to kill people, therefore we must ban cars	Drunk drivers kill people, therefore we must punish (ban) drunk drivers
Fat People	Fat people use spoons to eat, therefore we must ban spoons	Fat people lack self control. If there is a penalty for being fat, then the individual must suffer the consequences

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Let’s All Surrender Our Weapons — You First!

by Ann Coulter (more by this author)

Posted 04/08/2009 ET
Updated 04/08/2009 ET

The rash of recent shooting incidents has led people who wouldn’t know an AK-47 from a paintball gun to issue demands for more restrictions on guns. To be sure, it’s hard to find any factor in these shootings that could be responsible — other than the gun.So far, this year’s public multiple shootings were committed by:– Richard Poplawski, 23, product of a broken family, expelled from high school and dishonorably discharged from the Marines, who killed three policemen in Pittsburgh.

— Former crack addict Jiverly Wong, 41, who told co-workers “America sucks” yet somehow was not offered a job as a speechwriter for Barack Obama, who blockaded his victims in a civic center in Binghamton, N.Y., and shot as many people as he could, before killing himself.

— Robert Stewart, 45, a three-time divorcee and high school dropout with “violent tendencies” — according to one of his ex-wives — who shot up the nursing home in Carthage, N.C., where his newly estranged wife worked.

— Lovelle Mixon, 26, a paroled felon, struggling to get his life back on track by pimping, who shot four cops in Oakland, Calif. — before eventually being shot himself.

— Twenty-eight-year-old Michael McLendon, child of divorce, living with his mother and boycotting family funerals because he hated his relatives, who killed 10 of those relatives and their neighbors in Samson, Ala.

It might make more sense to outlaw men than guns. Or divorce. Or crack. Or to prohibit felons from having guns. Except we already outlaw crack and felons owning guns and yet still, somehow, Wong got crack and Mixon got a gun.

After being pulled over for a routine traffic violation, Lovelle Mixon did exactly what they teach in driver’s ed by immediately shooting four cops. Mixon’s supporters held a posthumous rally in his honor, claiming he shot the cops only in “self-defense,” which I take it includes the cop Mixon shot while the officer was lying on the ground.

I guess Mixon also raped that 12-year-old girl in “self-defense.” Clearly, the pimping industry has lost a good man. I wish I’d known him. I tip my green velvet fedora with the dollar signs all over it to him. Why do the good ones always die young? Pimps, I mean.

Liberals tolerate rallies on behalf of cop-killers, but they prohibit law-abiding citizens working at community centers in Binghamton, N.Y., from being armed to defend themselves from disturbed, crack-addicted America-haters like Jiverly Wong.

It’s something in liberals’ DNA: They think they can pass a law eliminating guns and nuclear weapons, but teenagers having sex is completely beyond our control.

The demand for more gun control in response to any crime involving a gun is exactly like Obama’s response to North Korea’s openly belligerent act of launching a long-range missile this week: Obama leapt to action by calling for worldwide nuclear disarmament.  (or more accurately, Obama is yielding our power and sovereignty to the UN, who as usual is paralyzed and unable to do anything.  If the UN accomplishes anything, it’s only because America gets it done.)

If the SAT test were used to determine how stupid a liberal is, one question would be: “The best defense against lawless rogues who possess _______ is for law-abiding individuals to surrender their own _______________.”

Correct answer: Guns. We would also have accepted nuclear weapons.

Obama explained that “the United States has a moral responsibility” to lead disarmament efforts because America is “the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon.”

So don’t go feeling all morally superior to a country whose business model consists of exporting heroin, nuclear bombs and counterfeit U.S. dollars, and of importing Swedish prostitutes, you yahoo Americans with your little flag lapel pins.

On the other hand, the Japanese haven’t acted up much in the last, say, 64 years …

Fortunately, our sailors didn’t wait around for Obama to save them when Somali pirates boarded their ship this week. Stop right now or I’ll ask the U.N. to remind the “international community” that “the U.S. is not at war with Somali pirates.”

Gun-toting Americans are clearly more self-sufficient than the sissy Europeans. This is great news for everyone except Barney Frank, who’s always secretly wondered what it would be like to be taken by a Somali pirate.

Police — whom I gather liberals intend to continue having guns — and intrepid U.N. resolution drafters can’t be everywhere, all the time.

If a single civilian in that Binghamton community center had been armed, instead of 14 dead, there might have only been one or two — including the shooter. In the end, the cops didn’t stop Wong. His killing spree ended only when he decided to stop, and he killed himself.

“The shooter will eventually run out of ammo” strategy may not be the best one for stopping deranged multiple murderers.

But it’s highly unlikely that any community center in the entire state would be safe from a disturbed former crack-addict like Wong because New York’s restrictive gun laws require a citizen to prove he has a need for a gun to obtain a concealed carry permit.

Instead of having Planned Parenthood distribute condoms in schools, they ought get the NRA to pass out revolvers. It would save more lives.

Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Slander,” ““How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must),” “Godless,” “If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans” and most recently, Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and their Assault on America.

Republican Budget: Real Hope to Counter the Audacity of a Dope

Finally, some conservative leadership.  This budget proposal could not do a better job of illustrating the difference between totalitarian left (the two camps which are either devoid of ideas other than taxing and spending to buy votes to stay in power, or their ideas are the destruction of freedom and capitalism which they plan to accomplish by taxing us all into poverty and legislating away our freedoms until they can control us) and the conservative right offering REAL hope.  If you think our nation can survive the poison Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Frank and others are trying to force us to swallow, you are “stuck on stupid.”  We might be able to survive the bites we’ve already received from these snakes if we’ll just quit letting them bite us any more.  It’s time for the voters in these snake’s districts to have a roundup.

Morning Bell: A Budget We Can Believe In

Posted April 2nd, 2009 at 8.25am in Ongoing Priorities.

There are now two ten-year budget plans being offered in Washington. One budget dumps a staggering $9.6 trillion in new debt onto the American people; the other borrows $3.6 trillion less. One budget creates $63,000 in debt per household; the other creates $23,000 less. One budget raises taxes by $1.4 trillion; the other avoids all tax increases and even simplifies the tax code. One budget does nothing to address the unsustainable costs of Social Security and Medicaid; the other begins to reform these programs. One budget permanently raises federal spending to over 22% of GDP; the other lowers it to pre-recession levels.

When President Barack Obama unveiled his budget he told the American people: “We need to be honest with ourselves about what costs are being racked up, because that’s how we’ll come to grips with the hard choices that lie ahead. And there are some hard choices that lie ahead.” But then his budget went on to avoid all of those hard choices, instead moving to borrow and spend at historic levels. Yesterday, House Budget Committee ranking member Paul Ryan (R-WI) offered a clear alternative that does make hard choices. Heritage analyst Brian Riedl details what Ryan’s budget does:

• Freezes non-defense, non-veterans discretionary spending at its current level for five years.
• Reforms entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which are currently growing 8 percent annually.
• Takes back stimulus spending that would be spent in 2010 and beyond, when the recession is expected to be over.
• Places a moratorium on earmarks until the system can be cleaned up.

The most ambitious part of Ryan’s budget is the effort to contain the $43 trillion, 75-year unfunded liability in Social Security and Medicare. Specifically, it would slowly transition Medicare into a premium support program for individuals who are currently below age 55. This would provide seniors with a health plan similar to the one that Members of Congress and federal employees currently enjoy—one based on consumer choice and competition. The alternative budget would also allow future adjustments to Social Security benefits for upper-income seniors.

The alternative budget would also go a long way to restoring American competitiveness by making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent, lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%, and simplifying the tax code by allowing individuals the choice of opting into a system with a 10% marginal tax rate on all incomes below $100,000 and 25% rate on incomes above $100,000. Even with all these changes, the alternative budget would bring in revenues averaging just below 18% of GDP, which is near the historical average.

The contrast the two budgets create could not be starker. President Obama’s plan saddles Americans with historic tax increases, runaway spending, and a doubling of the national debt. Ryan’s alternative reins in spending, simplifies taxes, and lessens the debt burden on American families. Which vision do you believe in?

Obama bows down to Saudi King

Uh-bama is either an idiot (easy enough to believe), or cow towing to someone he believes to be superior to himself (not likely as I think that he feels himself to be superior to all beings).

April 02, 2009

Obama bows down to Saudi King (updated)

Clarice Feldman
I am quite certain that this is not the protocol, and is most unbecoming a President of the United States.

Update (for the doubters who claim this was not a bow). Here is a video of the unmistakable bow: (hat tip: Michelle Malkin)

Update: See Miss Manners on the protocol. Americans do not bow to foreign monarchs because that act signified the monarch’s power over his subjects.

Here is the protocol from the Queen of England’s website — which applies even to her own subjects:

“The Queen meets thousands of people each year in the UK and overseas. Before meeting Her Majesty, many people ask how they should behave. The simple answer is that there are no obligatory codes of behaviour – just courtesy.

However, many people wish to observe the traditional forms of greeting.

For men this is a neck bow (from the head only) whilst women do a small curtsy. Other people prefer simply to shake hands in the usual way.

On presentation to The Queen, the correct formal address is ‘Your Majesty’ and subsequently ‘Ma’am’. “

Democrats Unveil Climate Bill

Very few of those on Capitol Hill are really stupid enough to believe that any “climate change” we might experience is actually caused by man.  We might be POLLUTING the environment, but to credit climate change to anything we are doing is more than pretentious.  The REAL science does not back up the assertion.  I’m not talking about the discredited “hockey stick” graph that our environmental savior Al Gore likes to display, or the NASA data that was proven to be falsified and faulty.  I’m talking about data from scientists that number at least as many as the global warming/climate change crowd, but are silenced and/or ignored by government and their willing accomplices the mainstream media.  As I said in my post “Stop the Obama Plan to Take Total Control,” this is not about protecting the climate or environment, it’s about control of wealth and power.

…Have no doubt that they will find another way to put this over on us, and here’s why.  Don’t miss this.  Cap-and-Trade, carbon tax, or whatever label they place on it is the one, single way to tax and control EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE.  Think about it.  We are a carbon based economy.  Is there ANYTHING that you use, consume, buy, etc. that isn’t produced with carbon based energy, made from carbon fuel derivatives (i.e. plastics come from oil), and/or delivered in a vehicle that burns carbon based fuel?  This includes the electricity that lights, heats, and cools your home, and cooks your food.  The producers will be taxed on the carbon used to produce, this tax will of course be passed on to you, the consumer.  The consumer will also be taxed on the carbon they consume.  This will doubly and heavily burden you and I with massive taxes, and will eventually drive producers out of business because we can’t afford to buy their products.  They close, we lose jobs, the tax base of both producers and consumers shrinks, the government has fewer dollars they can tax, the nation goes deeper in debt, and the death spiral of our country’s economy continues.)

Here are a few key points to remember.  CO2, carbon dioxide, is PLANT FOOD, not a “warming gas.”  If you see the GEOLOGIC data which goes back BILLIONS of years, rather than the METEOROLOGICAL data that the global warming/climate change crowd uses which only goes back at most a few HUNDRED years, you see that their assertions about the affects of CO2 on the environment are patently false.  One of the other pieces of data that shows the absurdity of the global warming claims is the evidence that Mars was warming at the same time and same rate as the earth.  I guess that means that our use of the evil SUV’s is causing such bad pollution that it’s even causing MARS to WARM.  Are you starting to see how ridiculous this climate change/global warming crap is?

April 1, 2009

By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — The debate on global warming and energy policy accelerated on Tuesday as two senior House Democrats unveiled a far-reaching bill to cap heat-trapping gases and quicken the country’s move away from dependence on coal and oil.

But the bill leaves critical questions unanswered and has no Republican support. It is thus the beginning, not the end, of the debate in Congress on how to deal with two of President Obama’s priorities, climate change and energy.

The draft measure, written by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, sets a slightly more ambitious goal for capping heat-trapping gases than Mr. Obama’s proposal. The bill requires that emissions be reduced 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, while Mr. Obama’s plancalls for a 14 percent reduction by 2020. Both would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases by roughly 80 percent by 2050.

The Waxman-Markey bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, emerges at a time when many Americans, and their representatives in Congress, are wary of wide-ranging environmental legislation that could raise energy costs and potentially cripple industry. The bill, a version of a so-called cap-and-trade plan, also comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is about to exert regulatory authority over heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act.

The bill would require every region of the country to produce a quarter of its electricity from renewable sources like wind, solar and geothermal by 2025. A number of lawmakers around the country, particularly in the Southeast, call that goal unrealistic because the natural resources and technology to meet it do not yet exist.

The bill also calls for modernization of the electrical grid, production of more electric vehicles and significant increases in efficiency in buildings, appliances and the generation of electricity.

But the Waxman-Markey proposal does not address how pollution allowances would be distributed or what percentage might be auctioned or given free. Nor does it say how most of the tens of billions of dollars raised from pollution permits would be spent, or whether the revenue would be returned to consumers to compensate for higher energy bills. (Returned to the consumer? Once the government gets ANYTHING, it never gives it back) Those matters have been left to negotiations, which will begin when Congress returns from its Easter recess on April 20.

Under Mr. Obama’s plan, roughly two-thirds of the revenue from pollution permit auctions would be returned to the public in tax breaks. (Right.  More “tax breaks” for those who pay no taxes to begin with.  That’s know as “welfare.”) Some members of Congress from both parties want to see all the revenue from any carbon-reduction plan returned to the public in some form.

Mr. Waxman, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement that his measure would create jobs and provide a gradual transition to a more efficient economy. (See my comments on job and wealth creation by government from the “Stop the Obama Plan to Take Total Control” post HERE.)

“Our goal is to strengthen our economy by making America the world leader in new clean-energy and energy-efficiency technologies,” Mr. Waxman said.

The bill offers a sweetener for members from coal-producing states by including $10 billion in new financing for the development of technology to capture and store emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, which currently produces half of the nation’s electricity.  (Remember Obama’s comments about the coal industry?  He promised he was going to destroy it)

Representative Rick Boucher, a Democrat from the coal-rich southwestern corner of Virginia, insisted on that provision, noting that coal would remain a major part of the nation’s energy mix for decades to come.

A coalition of business and environmental groups, the United States Climate Action Partnership, welcomed the measure as a “strong starting point” for addressing emissions of heat-trapping gases and said it had incorporated many of the partnership’s recommendations.

But the group, which includes major manufacturing corporations like Alcoa, DuPont and General Motors, said that it would push for a “substantial” number of free pollution allowances so that its members could make a gradual transition to less-polluting technologies.

Stop the Obama Plan to Take Total Control

Stop the Obama Plan to Take Total Control

The extreme-left is desperately trying to take over every aspect of your life.

In case you haven’t noticed, they’re taking control of the banking industry, they’re trying to take control of your family’s healthcare, they’re taking control of the auto industry and the energy industry… .

But, most horrifically, THEY’RE TRYING TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOU. And, make no mistake; the so-called $3.6 TRILLION BUDGET ABOMINATION IS THEIR MEANS TO DO IT.

Some critics, to borrow a phrase from the good folks at FreedomWorks, are saying that this $ 3.6 trillion budget abomination “taxes too much, spends too much, and borrows too much.”

But the simple fact that $3.6 trillion is a mind-boggling figure is just one small piece of the puzzle.

The one thing that no one is really taking about (the 800 pound gorilla in the room) is that this $3.6 trillion budget abomination is ALSO the LARGEST AND MOST AMBITIOUS GOVERNMENT POWER GRAB IN THE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY.

And if it passes, you can kiss the free-market system goodbye. If it passes, you can kiss your personal liberties goodbye.

Here are just a handful of the highlights:

Health Care: According to the typically pro-Obama New York Times: “Mr. Obama asked Congress to set aside $634 billion in a ‘reserve fund for health care reform.’ He provided no new information about how to cover the uninsured, saying he would work out the details with Congress later this year.” (The only plan they have is to take your money and your choice on what you can get for your health care dollar. Under this system, a government agency will decide what treatment is available to you, and whether you will get that treatment based on how much value (i.e. tax paying potential) you have left in your life. Are you nearing retirement age? Don’t count on that hip replacement or triple-bypass. It doesn’t matter if you (still) have enough of your own money to pay for the procedure. You will not be allowed to have that health care. Oh, but if you’re part of the ruling class as designated by emperor Uh-Bama, you’ll have your own private doctors and first class medical care.)

The Times also stated that Obama “would also increase premiums charged to Medicare beneficiaries….” No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. Obama is asking Congress for $634 billion dollars of your money, is offering no clear plan as to what he wants to do with the money (he’ll get to that later, after the money is appropriated) and wants to cut back on benefits. The only thing that is certain is the government will start taking money out of your pocket and start making your healthcare decisions for you.

Taxes: Moveon.org, while promoting the $3.6 trillion budget abomination, repeats the Obama mantra that it: “Reduces taxes for 95% of working Americans. And if your family makes less than $250,000, your taxes won’t go up one dime.”

The truth of the matter, however, is that this $3.6 trillion budget calls for a number of hidden taxes. One of these is a cap-and-trade energy tax which, according to The Wall Street Journal “would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3 percent of its after-tax income every year. That’s about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9 percent to 2.7 percent of income.” (This was supposedly removed from the current version of the budget because even some democrats were asking how we could possibly afford this. Have no doubt that they will find another way to put this over on this, and here’s why. Don’t miss this. Cap-and-Trade, carbon tax, or whatever label they place on it is the one, single way to tax and control EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE. Think about it. We are a carbon based economy. Is there ANYTHING that you use, consume, buy, etc. that isn’t produced with carbon based energy, made from carbon fuel derivatives (i.e. plastics come from oil), and/or delivered in a vehicle that burns carbon based fuel? This includes the electricity that lights, heats, and cools your home, and cooks your food. The producers will be taxed on the carbon used to produce, this tax will of course be passed on to you, the consumer. The consumer will also be taxed on the carbon they consume. This will doubly and heavily burden you and I with massive taxes, and will eventually drive producers out of business because we can’t afford to buy their products. They close, we lose jobs, the tax base of both producers and consumers shrinks, the government has fewer dollars they can tax, the nation goes deeper in debt, and the death spiral of our country’s economy continues.)

The Wall Street Journal concludes: “Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth–but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street ‘green tech’ investors who know how to leverage the political class.” (Do you understand how this will redistribute wealth? Whatever international agency is in charge of issuing carbon credits will issue lots of credits to underdeveloped nations that will never be able to use all of the credits they are given. Developed nations such as the U.S. will not be given enough credits to operate at a level that sustains our economy and way of life. To operate at our current economic level under the cap-and-trade system, we would be forced to buy excess credits from 3^rd world countries at exorbitant prices, thus transferring the wealth we have produced and earned to nations, dictators, and people who have not earned it, and DO NOT DESERVE IT.)

Jobs: MoveOn.org claims the budget “Invests more than $100 billion in clean energy technology, creating millions of green jobs that can never be outsourced.”

The folks at FreedomWorks have this to say: “The numbers being used here, like the numbers used in the stimulus debate, are deceptive in that they hide the less rosy bigger picture. It is a classic case of ‘what is seen and what is not seen’ as described so clearly by economists Frederic Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt. What is seen are the jobs that will certainly result from the government spending $100 billion. What is not seen are all the jobs that are lost because the government has to take those $100 billion out of one part of the economy to spend it somewhere else.” (Government, by definition, CAN NOT create wealth or jobs. Government acquires all of its money and resources from the private sector (that’s businesses that earn a profit and create REAL jobs, and you and me the taxpayers). Because of the inefficiencies and corruption of government, the level of which is directly proportional to the size of government, much of the wealth that is TAKEN from the private sector evaporates long before it reaches its intended recipients. Imagine you see a homeless person and want to give him $10 to get something to eat. If you give it directly to him, he gets the full $10. If government taxes that $10 from you in order to “end homelessness,” “feed/house the underprivileged,” or whatever feel-good label the government puts on their excuse to take your money, the value of that $10 immediately gets diluted. The agency that is taxing you takes a cut for their overhead. Portions of it are taxed away for other government causes. Portions of it are lost to outright corruption. By the time the $10 that were liberated from you works its way through the government system to the homeless person you wanted to help in the first place, he will be lucky to get $1 out of the original $10.)

You’re starting to get the picture. This $3.6 trillion budget has nothing to do with stimulating the economy, or making life better for the average Joe; unless, of course, you believe that the redistribution of YOUR income and government intrusion into YOUR life are good things.

Perhaps that’s why Senator Judd Gregg called Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget “an extraordinary move of our government to the left.” Gregg added that President Obama “is proposing the largest tax increase in history…”

Compromise Is Not An Option. Compromise Means Obama Wins And The American People Lose

President Obama knows that when his $3.6 trillion budget is debated in the Senate that our elected officials will be inclined do what they always do… he knows the first thought that will spring to their minds is “compromise.” (This is where the Republicans who have betrayed conservative principles will once again show their true colors. Rather than going down fighting, they will go down compromising. There is a time for compromise, but now is not that time. It is time to actually stand for something, and not to compromise what you stand for. Those Republicans who claimed to be conservatives, but have compromised our nation into the position we are in now, are just as much to blame for the condition we find ourselves in now. THEY COULD HAVE STOPPED THIS WHEN THEY WERE IN CONTROL OF THE HOUSE AND SENATE, BUT INSTEAD OF PURSUING THE CONSERVATIVE AGENDA THEY RAN ON AS AGRESSIVELY AS OBAMA IS PURSUING HIS COMMUNIST AGENDA, THEY COMPROMISED!) Just as the socialists like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and the like need to be tarred, feathered, and run out of Washington D.C. on a rail, so to do the Republican compromisers who went along with them.)

Obama knows their inclination will be to put lipstick on this pig under the idiotic assumption that cutting a little bit of the fat will somehow make it palatable to the American people. After all, that’s so much easier than simply fighting for what is right.

We cannot let that happen because “compromise” simply means that Obama gets 95% of what he wants… 95% European-style socialism… 95% income redistribution… 95% economic destruction.

Cutting a few hundred-billion here or a few hundred-billion there is NOT going to make this $3.6 trillion monster significantly smaller, NOR WILL IT DAMPEN THE ASSAULT ON OUR INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM. OBAMA’s $3.6 TRILLION BUDGET MUST DIE!

If they “compromise,” we all lose. The American people lose… your children and grandchildren lose… even the people who are being hoodwinked into supporting this $3.6 trillion budget will lose.

If they “compromise,” the United States will take one giant leap into European-style socialism.

That’s why we must take this bull by the horns and let our elected officials know right now that we don’t want any “compromises” or any lipstick put on this pig.

We want Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget DEAD… a stake driven through its evil heart. Anything less means the American people LOSE.

This is not just a partisan budget battle. Our future and the future for our children and grandchildren hang in the balance!

“You do not know the power of the Dark Side.”

Bobby, by jove, you’ve got it! Obama IS Emperor Palpatine. Would that mean that Rahm Emanuel is Darth Vader? Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi aren’t smart enough to be anything other than battle droids. John Murtha must be Jabba the Hutt. Sadly, the rebellion can’t seem to find any real Jedi to champion our cause and save us from the Dark Side. I can see someone like Ted Nugent in the role of Han Solo. Perhaps we will find that the force is strong with some of the up and comers such as Bobby Jindal. “Help us, Obi Wan. You’re our only hope.”

‘Once the crisis has abated, I will lay down these powers’

Posted By Bobby Eberle On March 27, 2009 at 6:58 am

With money comes power, right? That is how the old saying goes. If that is the case, then it should surprise no one that with all the money pouring out of Washington (actually China), that the move to consolidate power would closely follow.

This week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner released details of the Obama administration’s plan to further inject government control over the private sector. If Obama and Geithner have their way, more financial institutions will be forced to “report in” to the government and have restrictions placed on what the institutions and the investors can and can not do with their money. With each passing day, Obama and company are chipping away at America.

The premise of this new Obama/Geithner plan is to do something about “toxic assets,” which the government is now calling “legacy assets,” because it sounds less… well… toxic. As the Heritage Foundation describes in a new report, these assets represent “securities and loans held by financial institutions whose value is uncertain in the wake of the financial crisis.”

Under the proposed plan, “the idea is to use federal funds to facilitate the purchase of toxic (or what Treasury now calls “legacy”) assets by public-private investment groups, which would bid against each other for the assets.”

For “legacy” loans, private investors would provide 1/14 (about 7 percent) of the partnership’s total assets, matched by another 1/14 provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The remaining amount (6/7 of the total, or about 85 percent) would be covered by guaranteed loans provided by FDIC. For “legacy “securities (as opposed to loans), up to five fund managers pre-qualified by the Treasury Department would raise private capital that would be matched dollar-for-dollar by the government. Treasury would also provide loans to enable the partnership to purchase even more assets.

In both cases, while the government would share profits equally with the private-sector partner, taxpayers bear most of the risk of losses. In other words, the private-sector partner cannot lose more than its investment. Any further losses after the private capital is gone would be covered by the taxpayers.

The Heritage Foundation notes multiple flaws in this plan. In particular, “the plan will almost inevitably lead to even more expanded government micro-management of financial firms.”

Recent history with the TARP program shows that participants in PPIP (“Public-Private Investment Program”) can expect controls—sometimes retroactive—over compensation and other management decisions. It is hard to imagine a hedge fund or other investment group enjoying profits under this program without some level of federal restrictions accompanying the deal or following soon thereafter. It is equally possible that if profits exceed some unspecified percentage, there will be an effort to “recapture” them.

This big-government plan has thankfully drawn swift opposition. As noted in the news story Financial overhaul plan draws GOP opposition, not only do some lawmakers and business people reject more government intrusion, they also question whether it would accomplish the specified result.

“We’re not in this mess because we need new rules,” said Bill Fleckenstein, a Seattle-based hedge fund manager who accurately predicted the housing bubble. “We need to enforce the rules we already have,” he said. “What we had was a complete breakdown by all our regulators. They simply didn’t do their jobs.”

We don’t need new rules? We just need to enforce the ones we have? Sounds eerily similar to what conservatives have said about immigration reform and a host of other issues!

Some of Geithner’s proposals as reported in the news story include:

• Imposing tougher standards on financial institutions that are judged to be so big that their failure would threaten the entire system.
• Extending federal regulation for the first time to all trading in financial derivatives — exotic instruments such as credit default swaps that are blamed for much of the economic carnage.
• Requiring larger hedge funds and other private pools of capital, including private equity and venture capital funds, to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• Creating a regulator to monitor the biggest institutions. Geithner did not say which agency should wield such authority, but the administration is expected to favor the Federal Reserve.
• Empowering the government to take over major nonbank financial firms such as insurers and hedge funds if deemed necessary.

The last thing America needs is more control transferred to the federal government. Once control is taken by Obama, the next logical step is to seize more power. No one ever gives it back.

Begin Side Note

• Being a fan of Star Wars, I can’t help but recall Emperor Palpatine’s words as he was granted even more power by a willing society: “It is with great reluctance that I have agreed to this calling. I love democracy. I love the Republic. Once this crisis has abated, I will lay down the powers you have given me!” (Yeah, right. And I’m the inventor of the internet.)

End Side Note

Obama goes on television with his townhall press conference, answers softball questions from an audience that is growing more and more dependent on government, and he just smiles. He smiles because he knows that he is moving America exactly in the path that he wants… a path toward socialism.

This Geithner plan is just one more step in lulling the American public into placing more power in government. Thankfully, more legislators are speaking up, and more of the public is taking notice. But will it be too late?