- EverVigilant.net - "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran
Some sanctimonious judge is proposing a world court to go after those who violate arbitrary environmental regulations. From the Telegraph:
Stephen Hockman QC is proposing a body similar to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to be the supreme legal authority on issues regarding the environment.
The first role of the new body would be to enforce international agreements on cutting greenhouse gas emissions set to be agreed next year.
But the court would also fine countries or companies that fail to protect endangered species or degrade the natural environment and enforce the "right to a healthy environment".
The innovative idea is being presented to an audience of politicians, scientists and public figures for the first time at a symposium at the British Library.
It took about 600,000 lives or so for Abraham Lincoln to earn the title of "Great Emancipator." When all is said and done, George W. Bush will be responsible for at least twice that, so I'm sure he'll get his wish of being remembered as a liberator.
Yet another privately owned and operated business has fallen victim to our grand socialist experiment:
Online dating service eHarmony has agreed to create a new website for gays and lesbians as part of a settlement with a gay man in New Jersey, the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General said on Wednesday.
The website will provide a dating service with "male seeking a male" or "female seeking a female" options, the Attorney General's office said in a statement.
eHarmony said it will launch the new same-sex dating site, named "Compatible Partners," by March 31.
The settlement was the result of a discrimination complaint filed by Eric McKinley against eHarmony in 2005, which will be dismissed under the settlement agreement.
eHarmony was founded in 2000 by evangelical Christian Dr. Neil Clark Warren and had ties with the influential religious conservative group Focus on the Family.
If you sincerely believe that free enterprise exists in America, you're more than a little out of touch with reality.
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has written a book entitled Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That's Bringing Common Sense Back to America. In it he lashes out at libertarians within the GOP:
In a chapter titled "Faux-Cons: Worse than Liberalism," Huckabee identifies what he calls the "real threat" to the Republican Party: "libertarianism masked as conservatism." He is not so much concerned with the libertarian candidate Ron Paul's Republican supporters as he is with a strain of mainstream fiscal-conservative thought that demands ideological purity, seeing any tax increase as apostasy and leaving little room for government-driven solutions to people's problems. "I don't take issue with what they believe, but the smugness with which they believe it," writes Huckabee, who raised some taxes as governor and cut deals with his state's Democratic legislature. "Faux-Cons aren't interested in spirited or thoughtful debate, because such an endeavor requires accountability for the logical conclusion of their argument."
But who cares what Mike Huckabee thinks? He has zero credibility.
By every measure, The United States and coalition forces have conclusively defeated all enemies in Iraq, pacified the country, deposed the previous regime, successfully helped to establish a new functioning democratic government, and suppressed any lingering insurgencies. The war has come to an end. And we won.
And here I thought we won when President Bush said we won...
If you like to build and fly model airplanes, be aware that purchasing supplies for your hobby might make you a terrorist suspect. From the South Florida Business Journal:
As part of its mission to fight terrorism, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security spin-off Businessafe has warned hobby shops that buying gyro systems with digital readouts for remote-control planes is a suspicious activity.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement in May launched Businessafe from its Tallahassee headquarters to prompt all businesses to alert police about patterns that could be indicators of terrorist activity. The program covers the entire state, but has a particular importance to South Florida, which has the state's largest concentration of residents and infrastructure like ports terrorists might target, said Scott McAllister, FDLE's assistant special agent in charge of domestic security.
The greedy, thieving executives at GM are responsible for this depressing little video:
What will WE do? If it were up to me, I'd let you go under. You don't believe in the free market. You want to manipulate it by trying to get the American taxpayers to bail you out of the financial mess you got yourselves into. Worse, you try scaring people into submission with ridiculous claims of widespread unemployment and a weakened national security.
Let the Big Three crash. It's always better for the economy in the long run to allow bad businesses to fail. Sure, they will file for bankruptcy, but they won't go away. They will simply reopen under new management. Who knows? The new executives might even be people who actually know how to run a business.
The Associated Press is reporting that paranoia is on the rise. A British psychologist is saying that nearly one in four Londoners have paranoid thoughts on a regular basis. Hmmmm. Do you think that Britain's slide toward a surveillance society has anything to do with it?
Not surprisingly, a similar rise in paranoia has been seen here in the U.S. But perhaps that's because we are living in a post-9/11 world under a government that relies on fear-mongering -- on everything from global terrorism to the economy -- to keep itself in power.
The president who whined and complained about how the market was "not functioning properly" and pushed for one of the biggest socialist bailout plans in U.S. history, now has the gall to say this: "History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, but too much."
Does this guy really expect to be taken seriously?
Without waiting for President-elect Barack Obama, Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, will unveil a detailed blueprint on Wednesday to guarantee health insurance for all Americans by facilitating sales of private insurance, expanding Medicaid and Medicare, and requiring most employers to provide or pay for health benefits.
Aides to Mr. Obama said they welcomed the Congressional efforts, had encouraged Congress to take the lead and still considered health care a top priority, despite the urgent need to address huge problems afflicting the economy.
The plan proposed by Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, would eventually require everyone to have health insurance coverage, with federal subsidies for those who could not otherwise afford it.
Other Democrats with deep experience in health care are also drafting proposals to expand coverage and slow the growth of health costs. These lawmakers include Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representatives John D. Dingell of Michigan and Pete Stark of California.
The proposals are all broadly compatible with Mr. Obama's campaign promises. But Mr. Baucus's 35,000-word plan would go further than Mr. Obama's in one respect, eventually requiring all people -- not just children -- to have coverage.
Freedom is having the government tell you how to live your life.
Today is set aside to honor those who have served and are serving in our nation's military. But does this mean that we should honor all veterans?
In every conflict throughout our nation's history we have been told to "support the troops," and the veterans of each of those conflicts are praised as heroes. Are we to believe that every soldier in every operation has contributed to our freedom? What about those who take part in wars that have absolutely nothing to do with defending these United States? For example, I have yet to hear it argued that those who were sent to bomb Bosnian Serbs in the mid-1990s were safeguarding the safety and freedom of Americans.
So, I ask again, in all seriousness: Should we honor all veterans, or just those who have actually defended our freedom? Someone please help me out here. I really want to know.
Today used to be known as Armistice Day in commemoration of the formal ending of hostilities in World War I at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. But for the last 54 years it has been known as Veterans Day. As a result, we have forgotten the harsh lessons of November 11, 1918.
Joseph E. Persico, in an article that appeared in the Winter 2005 edition of Military History Quarterly, writes of the proud and stubborn commanders and politicians that led thousands of men to their deaths on a day that should not have seen any fighting. He also relates the story of Henry N. Gunther, the last American to die in the war...at 10:59 a.m. Read the full article here.
First, the chicken hawks in Washington used erroneous intelligence reports, false testimonies, and forged documents to lie us into war with Iraq -- and they're apparently at it again. From The Raw Story:
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has obtained evidence suggesting that documents which have been described as technical studies for a secret Iranian nuclear weapons-related research program may have been fabricated.
The documents in question were acquired by U.S. intelligence in 2004 from a still unknown source -- most of them in the form of electronic files allegedly stolen from a laptop computer belonging to an Iranian researcher. The US has based much of its push for sanctions against Iran on these documents.
The new evidence of possible fraud has increased pressure within the IAEA secretariat to distance the agency from the laptop documents, according to a Vienna-based diplomatic source close to the IAEA, who spoke to RAW STORY on condition of anonymity.
Folks, don't expect things to change simply because America elected a new president. You can put lipstick on a pig...
Over the weekend President-elect Barack Obama scrubbed Change.gov, his transition Web site, deleting most of what had been a massive agenda copied directly from his campaign Web site.
Gone are the promises on how an Obama administration would handle 25 different agenda items -- everything from Iraq and immigration to taxes and urban policy -- all items laid out on his campaign Web site, www.BarackObama.com.
Instead, the official agenda on Change.gov has been boiled down to one vague paragraph proclaiming a plan "to revive the economy, to fix our health care, education, and social security systems, to define a clear path to energy independence, to end the war in Iraq responsibly and finish our mission in Afghanistan, and to work with our allies to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, among many other domestic and foreign policy objectives."
The president-elect is already looking forward to 2012. It's much easier to claim to have "changed" something when people forget what your promises were in the first place.
...according to Chuck Baldwin, "is not how Barack Obama defeated John McCain. The real story is how John McCain defeated America's conservatives." The question is, will they learn from this experience? If history is any indication, no, they won't.
You might want to try this the next time you go out to eat:
Last Thursday while walking to lunch on the corner of Market and East Bay, I passed what appeared to be a homeless man standing on the corner of Wentworth and East Bay holding a hand-made sign that read, "Vote Obama, I need the money.", I laughed to myself and admired the man for his misplaced, albeit blatant honesty.
Once inside one of my favorite restaurants, I noticed that my waiter was wearing a bright blue ,"Obama 08" tie; again I laughed to myself as he boldly and proudly advertised his political preference for all the world, and his customers, to see -- just imagine the odds of encountering two such 1st Amendment harbingers of change in less than 10-minutes.
When the check finally came I decided not to tip my waiter and explained to him that I was going to implement a practical application of Obama's Redistribution of Wealth concept as my own personal socialistic experiment. He stood there in stoic disbelief as I explained to him that I was going to redistribute his rightfully earned $10 tip to someone who I deemed more in need...a homeless fellow standing a few blocks north in front of the Harris Teeter parking lot. The waiter stammered a few "Why practice on me? I'm just a local college student!" retorts and then angrily stormed away from the table in a steaming huff of progressive self-righteous indignation.
Apparently, after experiencing firsthand the application of such socialistic governance from the perspective of the rightful wage earner, my young liberal-minded waiter was quickly convinced that income redistribution was much easier to support as a noble, magnanimous social policy than when his own hard-earned income was about to be redistributed, against his will, to another I deemed more needy.
Republicans, you had your chance to nominate a man who truly stood for change. But you decided, as you did in 1996, that an aging "war hero" was the winning ticket against a young, dynamic liberal.
Seriously? You honestly thought this guy...
...had a better chance of beating Obama than this guy?
Well, now you have four years to think about the mess you created.
As the father of three daughters, I owe Senator Clinton a debt for inspiring them and millions of other women to believe nothing in this great country is beyond their reach.
Everywhere I go, I see that Senator Clinton inspired a whole generation of young Americans in this country. With my running mate, Governor Sarah Palin, I will make sure that Hillary's efforts are not forgotten.
As if I really needed another reason to not vote for McCain.
You have to hand it to John McCain. He knows exactly what to say to his conservative constituents to convince them that he is pro-life. The facts, however, speak for themselves:
Another thing to remember is that John McCain has received the enthusiastic endorsement of Republicans for Choice, a political action committee which praised McCain for inserting language into the GOP platform "that talked about the need to work with those in the Party who disagree on this issue to find common ground." According to RFC, "This is the first time ever that any Presidential contender tried to tinker with that plank to add in language that recognized us."
