Tuesday, November 29, 2011

retraction

i once thought i was wrong, but i was mistaken.

i have to retract my previous post regarding President Obama's Thanksgiving Day proclamation... apparently, i did something i often criticize others for doing; getting my facts wrong... in my self-righteous zeal at calling out a hypocrite, i became one, myself... i compared apples to oranges... both are tasty fruits, but they are not equal in all ways (otherwise, we'd call them both by the same name).

here's what i did... i read the transcript of Obama's weekly address, entitled "On Thanksgiving, Grateful for the Men and Women Who Defend Our Country" which was issued on November 24, 2011... i leaped to the conclusion that this was the same as the annual Presidential Proclamation for Thanksgiving Day.

turns out; not so much... apparently, he had previously issued the proclamation a week earlier on November 16, 2011.

egg; meet face.

plus, my over zealousness knew no bounds, so i looked up previous proclamations going back eight years, into the G.W. Bush era... i gleefully pointed out the quantitative differences between Bush and Obama.

oy vey.

after all of that, you would have thought it would have occurred to me that a weekly address is not equal to an official proclamation... but, zeal often knows no bounds... i was so pleased to see the mote in another's eye, i could not see the log within my own.

well, all i can do is apologize... i will try to do better research.

Friday, November 25, 2011

thanks for nothing

i hate to nit-pick (not really), but did anyone else notice that, in the annual Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation, President Obama did not mention God, nor did he make any religious reference whatsoever... i'm not saying Thanksgiving is a religious holiday; by no means... but Obama has made claims of his religious beliefs... how he and his family attended one church for 20 years.

if Obama would profess atheism, agnosticism, or Buddhism i would not say anything about his omission... just like i don't expect Jewish people to pray to Jesus, i wouldn't expect it... but i find it hypocritical of someone to professes Christianity on one hand, and deny it on the other.


source:
Presidential Proclamation--Thanksgiving Day 2005 (x3)
Presidential Proclamation--Thanksgiving Day 2006 (x2)
Presidential Proclamation--Thanksgiving Day 2007 (x3)
Presidential Proclamation--Thanksgiving Day 2008 (x4)

Presidential Proclamation--Thanksgiving Day 2009 (x1 quoting G.Washington)
Presidential Proclamation--Thanksgiving Day 2010 (x2)
Presidential Proclamation--Thanksgiving Day 2011 (x0)

no wonder OWS wants their debts removed

Earlier this week the liberal media reported that the Occupy protests cost taxpayers over $13,000,000.
But the actual cost is much higher.

Verum Serum updated the total cost estimates on Wednesday.

Total: $18,450,999
And, here is the latest total of Occupation costs using Verum Serum’s totals plus more recent figures:
Total: Over $21,273,499

source:
Occupy Movement’s Price Tag Tops $20 Million …Much Higher Than the $13 Million That Was Previously Reported | The Gateway Pundit by Jim Hoft, November 25, 2011

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

happy Thanksgiving

While we commiserate the cause of the unfortunate and sympathize in their distresses, let us endeavor wisely and thankfully to improve our privileges and blessings to the glory of God and the best good of our fellow-men. Let us diligently cultivate habits of “sobriety, order, morality and piety” and study to lead “quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty” [1 Timothy 2:2].

And may the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Israel – the God in Whom our fathers trusted and found deliverance – continue to be our God and to bless us. “There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, Who rideth upon the heaven in thy help and in His excellency upon the sky” [Deuteronomy 33:26]. “The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms” [Deuteronomy 33:27]. “Happy is that people that is in such a case; yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord” [Psalms 33:12].

AMEN



source:
The Response to President Washington’s 1795 Thanksgiving Proclamation: Sermon by Rev. Thomas Baldwin « The Founder's Blog

a most perfect and sublime system of morals

In a comparative view of the Ethics of the enlightened nations of antiquity, of the Jews and of Jesus, no notice should be taken of the corruptions of reason among the ancients, to wit, the idolatry & superstition of the vulgar, nor of the corruptions of Christianity by the learned among its professors.

Let a just view be taken of the moral principles inculcated by the most esteemed of the sects of ancient philosophy, or of their individuals; particularly Pythagoras, Socrates, Epicurus, Cicero, Epictetus, Seneca, Antoninus.

I. PHILOSOPHERS. 1. Their precepts related chiefly to ourselves, and the government of those passions which, unrestrained, would disturb our tranquillity of mind. In this branch of philosophy they were really great.

2. In developing our duties to others, they were short and defective. They embraced, indeed, the circles of kindred & friends, and inculcated patriotism, or the love of our country in the aggregate, as a primary obligation: toward our neighbors & countrymen they taught justice, but scarcely viewed them as within the circle of benevolence. Still less have they inculcated peace, charity & love to our fellow men, or embraced with benevolence the whole family of mankind.

II. JEWS. 1. Their system was Deism; that is, the belief of one only God. But their ideas of him & of his attributes were degrading & injurious.

2. Their Ethics were not only imperfect, but often irreconcilable with the sound dictates of reason & morality, as they respect intercourse with those around us; & repulsive & anti-social, as respecting other nations. They needed reformation, therefore, in an eminent degree.

III. JESUS. In this state of things among the Jews, Jesus appeared. His parentage was obscure; his condition poor; his education null; his natural endowments great; his life correct and innocent: he was meek, benevolent, patient, firm, disinterested, & of the sublimest eloquence.

The disadvantages under which his doctrines appear are remarkable.

1. Like Socrates & Epictetus, he wrote nothing himself.

2. But he had not, like them, a Xenophon or an Arrian to write for him. On the contrary, all the learned of his country, entrenched in its power and riches, were opposed to him, lest his labors should undermine their advantages; and the committing to writing his life & doctrines fell on the most unlettered & ignorant men; who wrote, too, from memory, & not till long after the transactions had passed.

3. According to the ordinary fate of those who attempt to enlighten and reform mankind, he fell an early victim to the jealousy & combination of the altar and the throne, at about 33. years of age, his reason having not yet attained the maximum of its energy, nor the course of his preaching, which was but of 3. years at most, presented occasions for developing a complete system of morals.

4. Hence the doctrines which he really delivered were defective as a whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have come to us mutilated, misstated, & often unintelligible.

5. They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of schismatising followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating & perverting the simple doctrines he taught by engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties, & obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust, & to view Jesus himself as an impostor.

Notwithstanding these disadvantages, a system of morals is presented to us, which, if filled up in the true style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man.

The question of his being a member of the Godhead, or in direct communication with it, claimed for him by some of his followers, and denied by others, is foreign to the present view, which is merely an estimate of the intrinsic merit of his doctrines.

1. He corrected the Deism of the Jews, confirming them in their belief of one only God, and giving them juster notions of his attributes and government.

2. His moral doctrines, relating to kindred & friends, were more pure & perfect than those of the most correct of the philosophers, and greatly more so than those of the Jews; and they went far beyond both in inculcating universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one family, under the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants and common aids. A development of this head will evince the peculiar superiority of the system of Jesus over all others.

3. The precepts of philosophy, & of the Hebrew code, laid hold of actions only. He pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man; erected his tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head.

4. He taught, emphatically, the doctrines of a future state, which was either doubted, or disbelieved by the Jews; and wielded it with efficacy, as an important incentive, supplementary to the other motives to moral conduct.

source:
From Thomas Jefferson: Letters: SYLLABUS OF AN ESTIMATE OF THE MERIT OF THE DOCTRINES OF JESUS, COMPARED WITH THOSE OF OTHERS - April 1803

Monday, November 21, 2011

crazy discount prices!

there are so many things wrong with this, but do you laugh or cry?... here is an abortion clinic giving discount abortions... as if that isn't scary enough, they are giving out $50 coupons... hawking like a used car salesman, they also offer "Free Deep IV Sedation"... in a somewhat creepy fashion, the coupon is good for "Sundays only", as if they are losing their sunday business and need a few more walk-in customers.
Well, I was going to go to church this morning, but I saw this Sunday-Only sale going on at the Abortion Clinic.
makes me wonder what they're going to do for Black Friday!

and can i get an "OMG" for the last line of the 'sale advert'?... "One Coupon Per Patient"... as if someone is coming in every sunday to have one... anyone who wants to use a $50-off abortion coupon should be getting counselling, not an abortion... but anyone using TWO coupons, needs to have their head examined.

i know the "women's choice" people will scream and yell... but what kind of person is getting pregnant so often as to require multiple discounts on abortions?... what does this say about their moral fiber (or lack thereof)?

and what kind of doctor is giving incentives to come in on sundays to get abortions?... if they're going to give a discount, shouldn't it be all week long?... by chosing sundays, are they making a decision based on an anti-religious basis?... or is it because they know the religious zealots will be in church, and maybe they can sneak in a few more clients without having them sullied by anti-abortion propoganda?... perhaps both.




source:
Orlando Women's Clinic - Abortion Clinic, Orlando, Florida. Second-Late Term Abortion Clinic.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

99% = minority

By autumn of the year, a million people across the land had gathered in various places to protest against the politics that had led to their misery. Unemployment. Inflation. The cost of living was unbearable.The nation had borrowed an unprecedented amount of money from foreign nations, and now faced the impending threat of bankruptcy. Unrest roiled the nation. Peasants rose up by the thousands in protest against wealthy landowners. City dwellers, too, met by the thousands to protest, peacefully at first, violently later as the government cracked down on them. It was a leaderless movement driven by the people's passion for national reforms.

sounds familiar?... it's Occupy Wall Street, right?... wrong.

it's the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

here's a little history... the Bolshevik name meant "The Majority", which was a misnomer, because they represented a tiny fraction of the Russion populace... they named themselves this because they narrowly defeated members of their own party (the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party) in a decision of party leadership... but when the Menshevik ("Minority") won vote after vote regarding party membership and rules, the Bolshevik split from the party... the Bolshevik minority held on the the "Majority" title.

For at that time we were fully aware that the Soviets were not yet ours, that the peasants still trusted the Lieber-Dan-Chernov course and not the Bolshevik course (uprising), and that, consequently, we could not have the majority of the people behind us, and hence, an uprising was premature.
- Vladimir "Lenin" Illich Ulyanov (emphasis added)

and now we come full circle... we have the "99%" demanding change and revolution, yet they represent the minority of Americans... they claim to represent the laborers and workers, yet they are comprised of college students, aged "hipsters", and criminals.

there is a visible arc to history... try not to stand where it falls.


source:
Today's Thought: 11.1 A Bolshevik Look at Occupy Wall Street

ReBlog - selective prosecution

Dear Attorney General Holder:

I’m deeply concerned with the Department of Justice’s selective enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), including in my state, Louisiana. News reports indicate that valuable resources were used to send undercover investigators to my state of Louisiana to interview welfare recipients to determine if state welfare offices are urging them to register to vote. The Department later filed a lawsuit against Louisiana alleging that the state has violated its obligations under Section 7 of the NVRA.

However, at the same time, absolutely no effort is being made to enforce Section 8 of the same law. Section 8 requires states to conduct voter roll cleaning to purge ineligible felons and dead voters from corrupting the election process. The two provisions act together as counterparts, but it is evident that the Justice Department is not enforcing them equally.

Section 8 is a key component of the law, because the longer these fraudulent names remain on a registration list, the greater the chances that a fraudulent vote will be cast in their names. As we approach an important presidential election in 2012, your dedication to enforcing both sections of the law to avoid fraud is paramount.

In recent years there have been reports that the administration is not interested in enforcing the Section 8 provision of the law. Christopher Coates, former Chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, testified before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission that Julie Fernandez, who was appointed as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in 2009, told the Voting Section that the Obama administration was not interested in issues related to Section 8 and list maintenance enforcement activity.

In 2009 the administration dismissed without explanation a lawsuit filed against Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan during the Bush administration over her failure to comply with Section 8. Former Voting Section lawyer Christian Adams confirmed this in his 2010 testimony before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Since returning to private practice, Adams has sent a series of warning letters to sixteen states in obvious violation of the law. These allegations are not based on mere speculation, but on a report filed with Congress by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in June 2009 on the impact of the NVRA. The report includes voter-registration statistics for 2006-2008. According to the data, several states including Maryland, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Tennessee did not remove a single dead voter during that two-year reporting period.

Adams has utilized the private right of action under the NVRA because the Justice Department has inexplicably refused to sue any of these states for violation of Section 8. Even worse, South Dakota, Mississippi, Texas, Kentucky, and Indiana all have more registered voters than people of voting age according to the Census. According to the EAC report, eight states appeared to be in major noncompliance with the list maintenance requirements of Section 8 of the NVRA, yet the Civil Rights Division failed to take any action. Christopher Coates has also testified that while he was Chief of the Voting Section, he actually assigned attorneys to work on this matter but was never given approval to go forward with Section 8 list maintenance investigations in any of these states.

I agree with Coates’ statement that it is an abuse of discretion to “decide not to do any enforcement of a law enacted by Congress, because political appointees determine that they are not interested in enforcing that law.” I can think of no justifiable reason why the section of the Justice Department tasked with the responsibility of enforcing the NVRA failed to do so. It’s appalling that a private citizen has to carry out the responsibility of the Justice Department. I am especially concerned that the Department appears to have refused to fulfill its duty for ideological and political reasons that have nothing to do with the impartial administration of justice.

When Tom Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, announced the lawsuit against Louisiana, he stated: “The department is committed to enforcing the National Voter Registration Act so that neither income nor disability status stands in the way of equal voter registration opportunities for all citizens.” Justice must fully enforce this law, rather than refusing to enforce the voter list integrity provisions while making the welfare agency registration law its top priority. The Civil Rights Division does not have the right to pick and choose which laws are worthy of enforcement and which ones are not. I urge you to personally ensure that the Justice Department does not enable voter fraud by neglecting to enforce Section 8 of the NVRA.

I look forward to your response, detailing exactly how the Department of Justice will ensure full enforcement of all sections of the law, including Section 8.

Sincerely,

David Vitter
United States Senator
(emphasis added)


source:
Vitter: DOJ Can’t Just Pick and Choose Which Voter Registration Laws to Enforce - Press Release - Senator David Vitter, November 15, 2011

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Tea Party and their guns

The Secret Service searched Occupy D.C. on Monday for a man suspected of firing bullets at the White House on Friday

let's ask the obvious question: "What if this was a Tea Party rally?"... the media has been very lackadaisical about the fact that bullets hit the White House... with arrests at the Occupy DC site including assault and drug possession, and now gun shots, when does the media call for the disbanding of Occupy DC?... when do they begin the disparaging remarks, like they did during the Town Hall meetings?... i'm looking for something like "clinging to their guns and drugs".

So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them... or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
- Barack Obama, April 6, 2008
all you have to do is replace "religion" with "drugs", and you have a new slander... maybe throw in some comment about their anarchist political motivations... but i'll leave the defamation to the professionals.

source:
Secret Service Searched Occupy D.C. Camp For Person Who Shot At White House - Talking Points Memo blog - Ryan J. Reilly - November 16, 2011, 6:00 AM

Monday, November 14, 2011

welfare debunked: the crisis of our time

[The welfare state] is the outcome of a three-stage development during the last one hundred years, beginning with the stage of individual relief graded according to genuine needs, passing through public social insurance, and ending up in today's stage of universal, all encompassing security.

Social demagogues use the promises of the welfare state and inflationary policy to seduce the masses, and it is hard to warn people convincingly of the price ultimately to be paid by all. All the more reason for those who take a more sober and longer view to redouble their efforts to undeceive the others, regardless of violent attacks from social demagogues, who are none too particular in their choice of means, and from the officials of the welfare state itself.

Few people can still close their eyes to the contrast between the extraordinary successes of a social and economic order relying on the regulating and stimulating forces of the market and free enterprise, on the one hand, and on the other the results of a continuous redistribution of income and wealth for the sake of equality. It is a contrast which is intolerable in the long run. One or the other will have to yield -- the free society and economy or the modern welfare state. To use the words of another distinguished British economist, Lionel Robbins, a man who weighs his words carefully, "the free society is not to be built on envy."

Government-organized relief for the masses is simply the crutch of a society crippled by proletarianism, an expedient adapted to the economic and moral immaturity of the classes which emerged from the decomposition of the old social order. This expedient was necessary as long as most factory workers were too poor to help themselves, too paralyzed by their proletarian position to be provident, and too disconnected from the old social fabric to rely on the solidarity and help of genuine small communities.

People regard as progress something which surely derives its origin and meaning from the conditions of a now all but finished transition period of economic and social development. They forget that if we are to take respect for human personality seriously, we ought, on the contrary, to measure progress by the degree to which the broad masses of the people can today be expected to provide for themselves out of their own means and on their own responsibility, through saving and insurance and the manifold forms of voluntary group aid.

Are we to call it progress if we continuously increase the number of people to be treated as economic minors and therefore to remain under the tutelage of the state? Is it not, on the contrary, progress if the broad masses of the people come of age economically, thanks to their rising incomes, and become responsible for themselves so that we can cut down the welfare state instead of inflating it more and more?

A short time ago, a member of the House of Commons movingly described her father's plight in order to prove how inadequate the welfare state still is. But this is not proof of the urgency of public help; it is merely an alarming sign of the disappearance of natural feelings in the welfare state. In fact, the lady in question received the only proper answer when another member of Parliament told her that she should be ashamed if her father was not adequately looked after by his own daughter.

Today's welfare state is not simply an improved version of the old institutions of social insurance and public assistance. In an increasing number of countries it has become the tool of a social revolution aiming at the greatest possible equality of income and wealth. The dominating motive is no longer compassion but envy.

source:
Crisis of the Modern Welfare State by the US House Joint Economic Committee in July, 1994
As excerpted from the book "A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market" by Written by Wilhelm Röpke in 1960. Excerpts are from the chapter, "Welfare State and Chronic Inflation."
FULL TEXT


Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- The Life of Reason: Volume I by George Santayana, 1905


History, in par, repeats itslef.
- Mr. Kuhlman, high school history teacher

Saturday, November 12, 2011

OWS was known to the Founding Fathers

I presume that there can be no political happiness, unless industry be cherished and protected, and properly secured.

Suppose a poor man becomes rich by honest labor, and increases the public stock of wealth: shall his reward be the loss of that liberty he set out with?

Will you take away every stimulus to industry, by declaring that he shall not retain the fruits of it? The idea of the poor becoming rich by assiduity is not mere fancy.

I am old enough, and have had sufficient experience, to know the effects of it. I have often known persons, commencing in life without any other stock but industry and economy, by the mere efforts before, rise to opulence and wealth. This could not have been the case without a government to protect their industry.
Edmund Pendleton, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 12, 1788; "The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution," Vol. 3, p. 295

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

MS Amendment 26

if you think it goes too far, why don't you tell us how far is "far enough"?... at what point do you agree that a child has rights?... birth?... then why is the murder of a pregnant woman two homicides?
§ 97-3-37. Homicide; killing of an unborn child; "human being" includes unborn child at every stage of gestation from conception until live birth for purposes of offenses of assault and homicide
§ 97-3-19 (d). When done with deliberate design to effect the death of an unborn child.
§ 11-7-13. Whenever the death of any person or of any unborn quick child shall be caused by any real, wrongful or negligent act or omission...
- Mississippi Code Ann.

you argue against giving another human being the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness... does 26 go too far?

maybe.

but then again, why haven't YOU gone far enough?... draw your line in the sand... "This far, and no further"... third trimester?... at 37 weeks they are considered "full term", right?... but their lungs aren't developed... so, is it a person or a parasite?

second trimester?... they have organs, swallowing amniotic fluid and processing it out through kidneys... they can hear and react to sound outside the womb... but, it's not a person... it's okay to kill it, right?

first trimester?... they have hearts and a nervous system... its brain is already well developed... but if it doesn't know its name, it isn't a person... right?

right?

so, f@#k-it... i say we change Amendment 26 to deny personhood to children up to their 18th year of life outside the womb... that'll shut up those whiners.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

green killers

A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass, Calif., estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds—nearly all protected by the migratory bird act—are being whacked every year at Altamont.

source:
Robert Bryce: Windmills Are Killing Our Birds - WSJ.com

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

capitalism is raping the earth

and Occupy Wall Street is raping everything else...
Though we do not encourage the involvement of the police in our community, the survivor has every right, and the support of Occupy Baltimore, to report the abuse to the appropriate law enforcement. - Occupy Baltimore internal memo

source: