email from Dad

I got another e-mail from my Dad, He usually sends me some pretty cool or informative e-mails.  If I think other people will like it, I will post it on my blog.

     This one is on obummer and 2012.   I hope it is incorrect but there is a part of me that believes that it will play out as stated in the e-mail.

DR. WALTER WILLIAMS predicts that Obama can not  lose the 2012 election.

 

IN ADDITION TO THE VOTING BLOCKS HE MENTIONS, THERE IS ANOTHER HUGE GROUP:  THE NEARLY ONE-HALF OF ALL ADULTS DO NOT PAY ANY TAXES AND, IN FACT, MOST OF THEM RECEIVE MONEY FROM THE GOVERNMENT.  THESE  PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO "SHAKE THE BOAT" TO DO ANYTHING TO STOP THE FLOW OF TAXPAYER MONEY TO THEMSELVES.

 

Perhaps you have read some newspaper articles written by Dr. Williams, a conservative economist who happens to be black.  He has taught at several Universities and is currently teaching at George Mason University .

 

 

No Matter What

By Dr. Walter Williams

 

Can President Obama be defeated in 2012?  No, he can't.  I am going on record as saying that President Barak Obama will win a second term.

 

The media won't tell you this because a good election campaign means hundreds of millions (or in Obama's case billions) of dollars to them in advertising.

 

But the truth is, there simply are no conditions under which Barak Obama can be defeated in 2012.  The quality of the Republican candidate doesn't matter.  Obama gets reelected.  Nine percent unemployment?  No problem.  Obama will win.  Gas prices moving toward five dollars a gallon?  He still wins.  The economy soars or goes into the gutter.  Obama wins.  War in the  Middle East ?  He wins a second term.

 

America's role as the leading Superpower disappears?  Hurrah for Barak Obama!  The U.S. Government rushes toward bankruptcy, the  dollar continues to sink on world markets and the price of daily goods and services soars due to inflation fueled by Obama's extraordinary deficit spending?  Obama wins handily.

 

You are crazy Williams.  Don't you understand how volatile politics can be when overall economic, government, and world  conditions are declining?  Sure I do.

 

And that's why I know Obama will win.  The American people are notoriously ignorant of economics.  And economics is the key to why Obama should be defeated.

 

Even when Obama's policies lead the nation to final ruin, the majority of the American people are going to believe the bait-and-switch tactics Obama and his supporters in the media will use to explain why it isn't his fault.  After all, things were much worse than understood when he took office.

 

Obama's reelection is really a very, very simple math problem.  Consider the  following:

 

1)  Blacks will vote for Obama blindly.  Period.  Doesn't matter what he does.  It's a race thing.  He's one of us,

 

2)  College educated women will vote for Obama.  Though they will be offended by this, they swoon at his oratory.  It's really not more complex than that,

 

3)  Liberals will vote for Obama.  He is their great hope,

 

4)  Democrats will vote for Obama.  He is the leader of their party and his coat tails will carry them to victory nationwide,

 

5)  Hispanics will vote for Obama.  He is the path to citizenship for those who are illegal and Hispanic leaders recognize the political clout they carry in the Democratic Party,

 

6)  Union members will vote overwhelmingly for Obama.  He is their key to money and power in business, state and local  politics,

 

7)  Big Business will support Obama.  They already have.  He has almost $1 Billion dollars in his reelection purse gained largely from his connections with Big Business and is gaining more everyday.  Big Business loves Obama because he gives them access to taxpayer money so long as they support his social and political agenda,

 

8)  The media love him.  They may attack the people who work for him, but they love him.  After all, to not love him would be racist,

 

9)  Most other minorities and special interest groups will vote for him.  Oddly, the overwhelming majority of Jews and Muslims will support him because they won't vote Republican.  American Indians will support him.  Obviously homosexuals tend to vote  Democratic.  And lastly,

 

10)  Approximately half of independents will vote for Obama.  And he doesn't need anywhere near that number because he has all of the groups previously mentioned.  The President will win an overwhelming victory in 2012.

 

--  Dr.  Walter  Williams

 

 

 

Obituary

(Very Interesting)

 

Born 1776; Died 2008

 

It doesn't hurt to read this several times.

 

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline   University School of Law in St. Paul , Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the last Presidential election:

 

Number of States won by:  Obama:  19    McCain:  29

 

Square miles of land won by:  Obama:  580,000     McCain:  2,427,000

 

Population of counties won by:  Obama:  127million     McCain:  143 million

 

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:  Obama:  13.2    McCain:  2.1

 

Professor Olson adds:  "In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the  country.  Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income tenements and living off various forms of government  welfare..."

 

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

 

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's (and they vote) then we can say  goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

The Obummer legacy

good video and a good sound track

Last flight of the shuttle

History of Flight

obummer and 2012

 

Rodriguez Outlines ISAF’s Drawdown, Transition Plan

In-Depth Coverage

By Karen Parrish
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, July 6, 2011 – The drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan will begin this month with some 1,600 troops set to redeploy without replacement by fall, according to a senior U.S. commander there.
Army Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, commander of the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command in Afghanistan, briefed Pentagon reporters here today via video link from Kabul about the drawdown and security transition, also set to start this month.
Rodriguez, who has spent 40 months in Afghanistan since 2007, also will return to the United States this month and will assume command of U.S. Forces Command, headquartered at Fort McPherson, Ga.
The Army National Guard's 1st Squadron, 134th Cavalry Regiment in Kabul and its 1st Squadron, 113rd Cavalry Regiment in neighboring Parwan province, both part of the Iowa National Guard, are set to redeploy with a total of 800 soldiers this month. The Marine Corps’ 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment in Regional Command Southwest is set to redepoy with 800 Marines in the fall, a Pentagon official said.
Joint Command has achieved progress, Rodriguez said, with a plan that began in summer 2009 to focus on population centers and commerce nodes. The plan is aimed at strengthening the “trinity” of good governance, capable security forces and the people’s confidence in government, he said.
“When all three work together, we know Afghans can arrive at viable local solutions,” he said. “Where we have focused our efforts, we have degraded the insurgency, built the Afghan security forces, and ultimately mobilized many of the Afghan people against those who threaten their way of life.”
Afghan forces take on greater responsibility every day for preventing attacks across the country, he said.
During a recent incident in Kabul, Rodriguez said, Afghan national security forces “prevented numerous suicide bombers from killing hundreds of civilians” in the Intercontinental Hotel.
Coalition forces and their Afghan and international civilian partners work together to ensure governmental and developmental efforts quickly follow security gains, he said.
“We are no longer clearing areas again and again and again,” he noted. “We spend the bulk of our military effort on degrading or destroying insurgent infrastructure, but we also ensure that the planning for local security and good governance begins early enough to be implemented as soon as the security conditions allow.”
Coalition and Afghan forces have taken the fight to the insurgents since winter, Rodriguez said, targeting leaders, command-and-control networks, support bases and infiltration routes.
“Together, we have captured or killed [more than] 1,000 insurgents over the last six months, approximately 250 percent more than in the same period last year,” he said.
This spring, joint forces located three times more weapon caches as during spring 2010, he noted.
Coalition forces have “begun the process of working ourselves out of a job,” Rodriguez said. “We will hand over the lead to the Afghans gradually, over time, and it’s going to begin now.”
Handover will begin this month, the general said, in the first seven areas Afghan President Hamid Karzai designated as those where his nation’s forces will assume security responsibility: Herat city, Bamiyan province, Kabul province [except Surobi], Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, Mazar-e-Sharif in Balkh province, and Mehtar Lam in Laghman province.
“As we move forward with the plan, the transition will continue to be conditions-based,” Rodriguez said. “In the tougher areas, we will thin out forces and either shift [them] to other areas or send some forces home.”
The commander said he believes transition is on track, and that coalition and Afghan forces can achieve the 2014 goal of complete Afghan security responsibility along with the planned U.S. troop drawdown.
“We’ve made hard-won progress in Helmand and Kandahar, and there have been advances in a number of other areas in the east, west and north, aided by the growth of Afghan and coalition forces over the past two years,” Rodriguez said.
As the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan drops by 33,000 by the end of next summer, 70,000 more Afghan forces will enter the ranks, he noted.
“There will be over 350,000 Afghan national security forces in place to protect the people and continue the momentum,” he said.
As the “look and feel” of the international presence in Afghanistan changes, Rodriguez said, the Afghan government will need to balance the responsibilities of providing security, rule of law, essential services, and the infrastructure capacity for sustainable economic growth.
ISAF’s plan still emphasizes building Afghan forces’ capability, increasing government effectiveness in districts and provinces, and decreasing insurgent access to Afghanistan along the “porous” Pakistan border, he said.
The focus of coalition efforts in Afghanistan is likely to shift east along that border, the general said.
“We will end up thinning out [in the south] and then focusing more and more of our energy in the east,” he said. “As far as the timing of that, again, it will be conditions-based, and it’s a little bit too early to take that guess right now.”
ISAF’s Afghanistan strategy needs more help from the Pakistani military, Rodriguez said.
“We continue to coordinate and build the relationships so we can better synchronize our plans across that border, but we still need some more support in doing that,” he said.
If Pakistan’s support doesn’t improve, Rodriguez said, the alternative on the Afghan side of the border is to build strength in security forces and the government to “be able to handle the challenges they’ll see in the future.”
Provincial and district governments must ensure they’re acceptable to the people they serve, so they don’t threaten security, the general said.
“When the people become mobilized and they build a representative shura that both represents their people and holds their government accountable, then we’re on the right track,” he said. “That government of course has to first provide security, as well as justice and a representative opportunity.”
The most critical task facing the coalition, Rodriguez said, is to “support good Afghan leaders and encourage them to build depth within their ranks, and inspire other leaders to join in helping create a hopeful future.”

muslim killer of 13 troops is bound over to court martial.

Fort Hood Commander Refers Hasan to Court-Martial

In-Depth Coverage

American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, July 6, 2011 – Fort Hood Commander Army Lt. Gen. Donald M. Campbell Jr. will refer the capital murder case against Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan to a general court-martial for trial, officials at Fort Hood, Texas, said today.
Hasan is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the Nov. 5, 2009, attack on troops readying to deploy to Afghanistan.
Campbell, who also commands 3rd Corps and serves as a general court-martial convening authority, made the decision after considering all matters submitted by the defense counsel as well as the recommendations of Hasan's chain of command, the Article 32 investigating officer and his own legal advisor, Fort Hood officials said.
The court-martial in the Hasan case is authorized to consider death as an authorized punishment.
An Article 32 hearing under the Uniform Code of Military Justice is similar to a civilian grand jury hearing.
After a case is referred to trial by court-martial, a military judge receives the case and eventually sets a schedule.
Hasan’s arraignment likely is the first matter for a military judge to schedule. A military judge has yet to be named to the case.
At a military arraignment, the judge discusses the rights of the accused, including the right to counsel, and makes sure the accused understands his rights. A military judge usually calls on the accused through counsel to make motions for relief and enter pleas, which may be deferred to a later date.
The Fort Hood public affairs office will announce the arraignment date and location after the authorizes its publication.

I hope they execute this guy, he shot 13 fellow soldiers.  It was one thing to be a raghead and shoot an AK-47 at American Troops, it is another to wear the same uniform as his fellow troops and walk into a processing station with unarmed soldiers and scream "Allah Ackbar" and shoot 45 soldiers that can't defend themselves.
     I also blame his chain of command that knew of his radicalism but because of PC pressure wouldn't do anything about it.

I got this from VOA or voice of America.  Obummer decides to screw another American Ally. The Czechs believe that the resurgent Russia under Putin is a viable threat.  The Czech;s were part of the Warsaw Pact and faced off against NATO.  After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Czechoslovkia became the Czech Republic.  A person that was imprisioned by the soviets after the 1968 Prague spring later became president.
The 1970s saw the rise of the dissident movement in Czechoslovakia, represented (among others) by Vaclav Havel. The movement sought greater political participation and expression in the face of official disapproval, making itself felt by limits on work activities (up to a ban on any professional employment and refusal of higher education to the dissident's children), police harassment and even prison time.  Vaclav Havel later became the first president of a free Czech Republic.  He steered his country toward a western influence and in 1991 they helped supply troops for Desert Storm.
       the Czech Republic has no desire to fall under the sphere of Russian influence, and to have obummer screw over another ally is disgusting.  obummer wants to make nice with the muslim brotherhood and screw over a valued ally.  2012 can't come soon enough.

US Missile Defense Plan Goes Ahead Without Czech Support

In-Depth Coverage

Andre de Nesnera | Washington July 05, 2011
The Czech Republic has decided not to participate in the U.S. ballistic missile system for Europe. Our correspondent looks at the U.S. proposal and describes the reasons for the Czech withdrawal.
The United States’ plan for a ballistic missile defense system in Europe has gone through several changes over the past few years.
The original Bush administration proposal called for deploying 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar facility in the Czech Republic. That project addressed Iran’s long-range ballistic missile threat.
But the Obama administration took a different view. U.S. officials said the threat comes from Iran’s short and medium-range weapons. And so in September 2009, President Barack Obama cancelled the Bush plan, opting for what experts describe as a more adaptable approach.
The new proposal involves putting SM-3 ground-based interceptors in Poland by 2015 and in Romania by 2018. These are still being developed. Analysts say SM-3 missiles are already aboard U.S. navy ships, giving the Obama plan a flexibility the Bush proposal did not have.
Experts say officials in the Czech Republic last month reacted negatively to the Obama plan since they were looking forward to the radar facility called for in the Bush plan.
“When the Obama administration shelved plans for deploying that system, that meant that this major radar site in the Czech Republic, which was controversial within the Czech Republic, there was a lot of public opposition to this, when this system was shelved, it meant that the radar was not going to be built. Instead the Obama administration has proposed a lesser role for the Czech Republic - and in response, Czech officials were disappointed and some parliamentarians were quoted as saying they were offered a consolation prize and they didn’t want it,” said Daryl Kimball, the head of the Arms Control Association, a private research firm.
Marko Papic, analyst with STRATFOR, a private intelligence firm, describes the so-called consolation prize.
“In the revamped plan, the Czech Republic was going to receive basically a computer room - a room full of computers - whose funding would be about $2 million, instead of a giant X-band radar that cost about $100 million," said Papic."So Prague simply decided that the reward was not worth the domestic risk and decided to pull the plug.”
Papic says in essence, the United States threw a bone to Czech officials.
“It’s an early-warning system," added Papic. "And there is absolutely no reason - technological, engineering or really any reason - for it to be outside the United States. It could be in the Pentagon.”
Russia has consistently opposed U.S. plans for a ballistic missile defense system in Europe. Moscow does not believe that the goal is to defend against missile attacks from such countries as Iran. Russian officials see it as aimed against Moscow - a charge denied by the United States.
Conversely, many former Warsaw Pact nations still see Moscow as a menace. But not - says Papic - the Czech Republic.
“The Czech Republic is one of the central and east European countries that doesn’t feel the same sort of threat, same sort of existential threat from Russia that, for example, Romania and Poland may feel," continued Papic. "And this is because ultimately the Czech Republic is behind the Carpathian and Tatra mountains and doesn’t sit bordering the Russian periphery, and it has buffers of its own.
"So it has always been a little bit of an elective, a little bit of a luxury commitment to the BMD [ballistic missile defense] project. It was never really about deep core Czech national interests,” he said.
Many experts, including Daryl Kimball with the Arms Control Association, say the Czech decision was irresponsible. They say the stationing of missile defense components is not a matter of prestige, but of necessity - to make sure countries are adequately defended against potential missile attacks from rogue states.

gun control....Here we go again

I have stated on many occasions when I first heard about "operation fast and furious" that  it would be used to promote  a gun control agenda.  I believe that this program was run with the tacit approval of the justice dept and people in the obama administration.  I remember last year Hillary Clinton commenting that "90% of the guns that were in mexico came from the U.S due to the lax gun laws"  I believe that this was part of the agenda.  For more information on "gunrunner" go here

 

 

Obama’s 2nd Amendment Assault

July 6, 2011 by Bob Livingston

SENATOR CHARLES GRASSLEY'S FACEBOOK PAGE

Senator Charles Grassley has told news agencies that high-ranking Justice Department officials were briefed on Operation Fast and Furious and Operation Gunrunner as early as October 2009.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) continues to peel back the layers of the U.S. inJustice Department’s conspiracy to send arms to Mexican drug dealers and use those gun sales as a pretext to impose stricter gun laws on the American people.
Grassley has told news agencies that high-ranking Justice Department officials were briefed on Operation Fast and Furious and Operation Gunrunner as early as October 2009. The two operations led to about 2,000 weapons crossing the border while agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives watched.
The operation came to light after ATF agent John Dodson blew the whistle following the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry on Dec. 14, 2010. Guns that ATF had let “walk” across the border were found at the scene of Terry’s murder. They’ve also turned up at other crime scenes and have been used in the escalating drug wars going on in Mexico.
While his top agents were busy sitting on their hands and videotaping the sale of large quantities of weapons to Mexican drug dealers in U.S. border States that were then taken illegally into Mexico, President Barack Obama was speechifying that America needed to toughen its gun laws to prevent illegal arms from going to Mexico. And it’s growing more likely that Obama’s Attorney General, the racist and virally anti-gun Eric Holder, probably knew about the practice — and, at the very least, should have known.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find two people more anti-gun than Obama and Holder. Obama has been quoted as telling Sarah Brady of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence that he’s working behind the scenes to restrict gun ownership.
The scandal grows closer to Holder — and by extension to Obama — with every layer Grassley peels away. If it turns out that Obama knew about the operations — or endorsed them — that will be yet another impeachable offense Obama has committed that a feckless Congress can ignore.

The Re-Creation of the New American Man

I got this from Confederate Yankee, the link is here

The Re-Creation of the New American Man

July 4, 2011 is a day of celebration, and so it will be for most Americans. They will celebrate independence, the independence of the former colonies from Great Britain, the establishment of America as an independent nation, the one exceptional and indispensable nation among all nations. But most of all, they will celebrate the independence of the American spirit, for the creation of America was, in a very real sense, the creation of a new man. Marxists and Socialists are obsessed with creating the new man. Americans—as Americans tend to do—simply ignored government and did it themselves. We need to do it again.
The new American owed allegiance to a voluntary confederation of fellow Americans. He honored no king, no all-powerful nanny state. He expected to prosper on the strength of his own character and the fruits of his own labor. The truth was important to him, and the nation was built on the strength of each man’s word and sealed by handshakes. He indulged in no juvenile cults of personality and chose his leaders—men such as George Washington—based on their character and accomplishments, character and accomplishments that were well known and demonstrated and renewed day by day, just as his character and accomplishments were demonstrated and renewed day by day.
The new American—and many generations to come—lived by simple, basic principles: hard work, honesty, doing what was right, living within their means while working to increase not only their means, but the means of their children. He understood deferring pleasure to a better, more secure day and he understood self-sacrifice. He was willing to help his neighbors because he knew that they lived their lives as he did, and that they were willing to help him for the same reasons. For him, laziness and a lack of industry were debilitating character flaws, not victimhood to be embraced and rewarded.
America was born an exceptional nation by virtue of her people and their creation: The Constitution. They understood all too well what we seem to have forgotten. When we turned our backs on self-sufficiency and hard work, when we became victims instead of doers, when we began to believe that character didn’t really matter, when we came to see the truth as nothing more than slippery rhetoric in the service of individual, selfish agendas, when we stopped being willing to pay our fair share and expected instead to be given our living by others, America started on the road to becoming just another failed socialist state.
And so we elected Barack Obama to atone for the sins of our ancestors, to demonstrate enlightened, contemporary civic virtue. We elected a man who believes that America is exceptional just as the citizens of other nations believe themselves to be exceptional. As he once said, “words, just words,” for if everyone is exceptional, in truth, no one is exceptional. If everyone is above average, average has no meaning. If all are equally worthy, equality has no meaning. The Founders understood that to be equal meant to be created by God, equal in humanity, in intrinsic human worth and dignity, and deserving of equal, unbiased treatment under the law. Mr. Obama and his supporters would have us believe that equality has to do with taking from some and giving to favored others. They buy the juvenile notion that apparent equality of outcome is far more important than equality of opportunity. This is the basis of Marxism, socialism and its fellow travelers.
The causes of our downward spiral are familiar to anyone who has been paying attention. Too many of us have abandoned the principals that make us great, that make us Americans. An instructive example is home ownership.
I am tempted to say that when Democrats in the 1970s began to say that every American should have their own home, they did this with the best of intentions, but the results of this bit of rhetoric surely say otherwise. Every American should own their home. It’s a lovely--if simple-mindedly emotional--sentiment, and that’s where it should have stopped, but socialists see sentiments—emotions—as reality, and they tried to manifest an emotion.
The problem goes back to our founding, to self-sufficiency, to the notion that we must live within our means, individually and as a nation. To the simple principle that we would not only build, but would live in the house we could afford and that when we could afford bigger and better, only then would we attain that house and the house after it. Apartments are a manifestation of that simple virtue. They are recognition that not everyone can afford a house, and our system evolved in recognition of that reality. If one could not afford a house, no bank would loan money that could never be re-paid. Even if one foolish enough to try to buy what they could not afford applied for a home loan, banks would not willingly assist them in destroying themselves and their families.
Rational people know that a mortgage payment is only the beginning, basic cost of home ownership. Maintenance, tools such as lawn mowers, utility bills substantially greater than those of apartment dwellers, insurance, furnishings, and myriad other expenses greatly expand that low, convenient monthly mortgage payment. For this simple reason, generations of fiscally responsible Americans deferred home ownership until they were certain they could actually—what’s that archaic word?—oh yes, until they could actually “afford” it. Even if they could never afford it, most could live in apartments that are the envy of most of the population of the world.
But Democrats knew better. They felt that everyone should have a house. It goes without saying that such trivial factors as being able to afford the mortgage payment, to say nothing of all of the incidental but necessary expenses of home ownership, were of no concern, and lenders were pressured to loan to those they knew would default. This was seen as compassionate, as building a better, more diverse and tolerant America, for who should not own their own house? What kind of cruel Republican would stand in their way? Surely such people were discriminating! Surely they were racists! Compassionate, caring, progressive government knew best, the free market be damned! And the free market was damned; all of us were damned.
Loans were made by lenders who knew they would never be paid, but they were willing to make such loans because they were backed by Fannie Mae, backed on the assumption that the Federal Government would make good those bundled loans when they inevitably defaulted. Many of those banks are no longer in business and other teeter on the edge of insolvency. Some banks resisted the siren song of diversity and compassion and remain strong today, but enough went along, and finally, circa 2008, the bills became due. All of that debt was bundled and packaged, and deferred and rolled over until it became so large that it reached critical mass—as everyone knew it eventually must--and exploded. So many mortgages were in default, mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--and by implication, by the public—that the whole house of cards collapsed and the bailouts and stimulus and the “summer of recovery” (remember that one? Last summer?), where nothing was recovered, began.
The Revolutionary generation could have told us this would happen. In fact, they did. The founders knew that when people discovered that they could vote themselves other people’s money that would be the beginning of the end for America. Circa 2011, about half of Americans pay no income taxes, none at all and many are given tax “rebates” because they do not pay taxes. A tiny percentage of the evil, greedy rich evilly and greedily pay most income taxes, and the rest are paid by an increasingly small middle class of producers, people who still actually produce goods, services and wealth in a manner that our forefathers would recognize and of which they would approve.
We have created an enormous and growing class of consumers, of people who do not for a moment think that they must live within their means, of people who do not expect to work for what they receive, of people who expect government to provide for much—or all—of what they have. And we have elected a man who believes in all of this, and more. Our president wants everyone to attend college on the public dime. The public dime is our tax dollars and whatever money can be begged and borrowed from nations that hate us and would delight in our destruction. As this is being written, Mr. Obama and his advisors are apparently seriously considering merely ignoring the law, ignoring the debt ceiling and spending as much money—money we do not have—as he pleases. His pleasure is unlimited. The Democrats in Congress have broken the law by not producing a budget, and proudly announced their intention to continue breaking that particular law, for they know that any budget they produce would enrage even the enervated American public. Most Congressional Democrats are more than willing to spend us into oblivion. A surprising and disgusting number of Republicans have been, and are, willing to assist them, even now.
The wreckage has become so obvious that all of Mr. Obama’s primary financial advisors have, like rats, deserted the sinking ship of state. All, that is, with the exception of the tax-evading Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who has had to recently sort of deny pervasive rumors of his impending departure. Presumably, Mr. Obama will now bring in the second string team to finish an already losing game.
We know that Socialism doesn’t work. It is the opposite of what Americans once knew and believed. It is anti-democratic and anti-American. Its foundational principles depict men as vassals of the state, as simpletons and weaklings unable to understand their own needs and unable to provide for themselves and their families. This is the very opposite of America. Yet Mr. Obama and the self-appointed better classes embrace it even as it has ruined the rest of the world, even as those sad, failing and failed nations struggle to abandon it. Margaret Thatcher was right. The problem with Socialism is that you always run out of other people’s money. And so we have.
Forget that Obamacare is not yet fully implemented and that if and when it is, it will, by itself, absent any other looming financial debacle (our other bankrupt entitlements), bankrupt the nation. The idea that tens of millions of uninsured Americans could be fully insured and that our costs would be lower and our medical care improved was a blatant lie from the beginning, a lie the new Americans of 1776 would have immediately recognized and rejected, as the majority of contemporary Americans continue to reject it. Consider what revolutionary era Americans would have thought of a president who so casually lied on such a grand scale. That we find it not only unremarkable, that we have come to expect it, clearly illustrates our national dissolution and despair.
But on this 4th of July, as fireworks soar into the night sky, so too may our hopes. All is not lost, not yet anyway. Even if a surprising and disgusting portion of Americans no longer believe that America is the one exceptional and indispensable nation, billions around the world do and they would, if they could, vote in the most sincere manner possible: they would vote with their feet and move here to become what far too many of us, starting with our president, no longer appreciate. They know what it is to be an American. They have no doubt of its distinction and value.
We may yet stave off disaster and decline. Such things are a matter of choice. By embracing the simple truths by which the first Americans lived their lives, we too may restore America to what she should be, to what she must be if mankind is to have true hope rather than the ephemeral hope of teleprompter-driven political rhetoric. It will not be easy, and it will take generations, but once again, we must—as Americans and as America—learn to live within our means and to provide for ourselves. That process has, weakly, already begun. It will truly begin with the removal of Barack Obama from office in 2012. It will continue when Americans once again embrace freedom and remove from office those who would destroy it. It will continue when Americans no longer tolerate those who do not tolerate them, domestically and around the world.
So on this July 4th, celebrate, but never forget that we remain free because of the continuing sacrifice of better men and women than ourselves. If we fail to honor their sacrifice and embrace and live the values that made July 4 more than just another day on the calendar, America will soon dissipate, like a brilliantly exploding firework against the night sky, flaring briefly and brightly, but gone forever. We will end not with a bang, but a whimper. America deserves better. The world deserves better.
Only the recreation of the new American Man, not by the government, not by fiat and mandate, but by Americans themselves, can reverse our disastrous course.

Andrew Klaven

I got this from PJTV

monday music

Here is another installment of monday music( well it is tuesday but the holiday threw me off.

I have Van Halen

  "Jump"  I would listen to this song on the way to high school with my brother as he was driving his mustang.  We were seniors and we did not ride the loser cruiser to school.   Appearances you understand.

I followed it with Rick Springfield's "Don't talk to strangers" 

The man who hunted Osama bin Laden

• I pulled this from the AP

    Persistence does pay off and this was done in the risk adverse atmosphere of the CIA makes this story more fascinating.  The analyst deserves whatever props he gets.   Although I am a cynic and I wonder if this story is an attempt by the LSM(Lame stream media) to pull up obummers poll numbers again after the short lived spike from the OBL rub out.

• This is an undated file photo shows then-al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, in Afghanistan. …
• FILE - In this May 8, 2011 file photo, Pakistani children walk past the house of …

WASHINGTON (AP) — After Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, the White House released a photo of President Barack Obama and his Cabinet inside the Situation Room, watching the daring raid unfold.
Hidden from view, standing just outside the frame of that now-famous photograph was a career CIA analyst. In the hunt for the world's most-wanted terrorist, there may have been no one more important. His job for nearly a decade was finding the al-Qaida leader.
The analyst was the first to put in writing last summer that the CIA might have a legitimate lead on finding bin Laden. He oversaw the collection of clues that led the agency to a fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. His was among the most confident voices telling Obama that bin Laden was probably behind those walls.
The CIA will not permit him to speak with reporters. But interviews with former and current U.S. intelligence officials reveal a story of quiet persistence and continuity that led to the greatest counterterrorism success in the history of the CIA. Nearly all the officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters or because they did not want their names linked to the bin Laden operation.
The Associated Press has agreed to the CIA's request not to publish his full name and withhold certain biographical details so that he would not become a target for retribution.
Call him John, his middle name.
John was among the hundreds of people who poured into the CIA's Counterterrorism Center after the Sept. 11 attacks, bringing fresh eyes and energy to the fight.
He had been a standout in the agency's Russian and Balkan departments. When Vladimir Putin was coming to power in Russia, for instance, John pulled together details overlooked by others and wrote what some colleagues considered the definitive profile of Putin. He challenged some of the agency's conventional wisdom about Putin's KGB background and painted a much fuller portrait of the man who would come to dominate Russian politics.
That ability to spot the importance of seemingly insignificant details, to weave disparate strands of information into a meaningful story, gave him a particular knack for hunting terrorists.
"He could always give you the broader implications of all these details we were amassing," said John McLaughlin, who as CIA deputy director was briefed regularly by John in the mornings after the 2001 attacks.
From 2003, when he joined the counterterrorism center, through 2005, John was one of the driving forces behind the most successful string of counterterrorism captures in the fight against terrorism: Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Nashiri, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi bin Alshib, Hambali and Faraj al-Libi.
But there was no greater prize than finding bin Laden.
Bin Laden had slipped away from U.S. forces in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in 2001, and the CIA believed he had taken shelter in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. In 2006, the agency mounted Operation Cannonball, an effort to establish bases in the tribal regions and find bin Laden. Even with all its money and resources, the CIA could not locate its prime target.
By then, the agency was on its third director since Sept. 11, 2001. John had outlasted many of his direct supervisors who retired or went on to other jobs. The CIA doesn't like to keep its people in one spot for too long. They become jaded. They start missing things.
John didn't want to leave. He'd always been persistent. In college, he walked on to a Division I basketball team and hustled his way into a rotation full of scholarship players.
The CIA offered to promote him and move him somewhere else. John wanted to keep the bin Laden file.
He examined and re-examined every aspect of bin Laden's life. How did he live while hiding in Sudan? With whom did he surround himself while living in Kandahar, Afghanistan? What would a bin Laden hideout look like today?
The CIA had a list of potential leads, associates and family members who might have access to bin Laden.
"Just keep working that list bit by bit," one senior intelligence official recalls John telling his team. "He's there somewhere. We'll get there."
John rose through the ranks of the counterterrorism center, but because of his nearly unrivaled experience, he always had influence beyond his title. One former boss confessed that he didn't know exactly what John's position was.
"I knew he was the guy in the room I always listened to," the official said.
While he was shepherding the hunt for bin Laden, John also was pushing to expand the Predator program, the agency's use of unmanned airplanes to launch missiles at terrorists. The CIA largely confined those strikes to targets along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. But in late 2007 and early 2008, John said the CIA needed to carry out those attacks deeper inside Pakistan.

"We've got to act," John said, a former senior intelligence official recalls. "There's no explaining inaction."
John took the analysis to then CIA Director Michael Hayden, who agreed and took the recommendation to President George W. Bush. In the last months of the Bush administration, the CIA began striking deeper inside Pakistan. Obama immediately adopted the same strategy and stepped up the pace. Recent attacks have killed al-Qaida's No. 3 official, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, and Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
All the while, John's team was working the list of bin Laden leads. In 2007, a female colleague whom the AP has also agreed not to identify decided to zero in on a man known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, a nom de guerre. Other terrorists had identified al-Kuwaiti as an important courier for al-Qaida's upper echelon, and she believed that finding him might help lead to bin Laden.
"They had their teeth clenched on this and they weren't going to let go," McLaughlin said of John and his team. "This was an obsession."
It took three years, but in August 2010, al-Kuwaiti turned up on a National Security Agency wiretap. The female analyst, who had studied journalism at a Big Ten university, tapped out a memo for John, "Closing in on Bin Laden Courier," saying her team believed al-Kuwaiti was somewhere on the outskirts of Islamabad.
As the CIA homed in on al-Kuwaiti, John's team continually updated the memo with fresh information. Everyone knew that anything with bin Laden's name on it would shoot right to the director's desk and invite scrutiny, so the early drafts played down hopes that the courier would lead to bin Laden. But John saw the bigger picture. The hunt for al-Kuwaiti was effectively the hunt for bin Laden, and he was not afraid to say so.
The revised memo was finished in September 2010. John, by then deputy chief of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Department, emailed it to those who needed to know. The title was "Anatomy of a Lead."
As expected, the memo immediately became a hot topic inside CIA headquarters and Director Leon Panetta wanted to know more. John never overpromised, colleagues recall, but he was unafraid to say there was a good chance this might be the break the agency was looking for.
The CIA tracked al-Kuwaiti to a walled compound in Abbottabad. If bin Laden was hiding there, in a busy suburb not far from Pakistan's military academy, it challenged much of what the agency had assumed about his hideout.
But John said it wasn't that far-fetched. Drawing on what he knew about bin Laden's earlier hideouts, he said it made sense that bin Laden had surrounded himself only with his couriers and family and did not use phones or the Internet. The CIA knew that top al-Qaida operatives had lived in urban areas before.
A cautious Panetta took the information to Obama, but there was much more work to be done.
The government tried everything to figure out who was in that compound.
In a small house nearby, the CIA put people who would fit in and not draw any attention. They watched and waited but turned up nothing definitive. Satellites captured images of a tall man walking the grounds of the compound, but never got a look at his face.
Again and again, John and his team asked themselves who else might be living in that compound. They came up with five or six alternatives; bin Laden was always the best explanation.
This went on for months. By about February, John told his bosses, including Panetta, that the CIA could keep trying, but the information was unlikely to get any better. He told Panetta this might be their best chance to find bin Laden and it would not last forever. Panetta made that same point to the president
Panetta held regular meetings on the hunt, often concluding with an around-the-table poll: How sure are you that this is bin Laden?
John was always bullish, rating his confidence as high as 80 percent.
Others weren't so sure, especially those who had been in the room for operations that went bad. Not two years earlier, the CIA thought it had an informant who could lead him to bin Laden's deputy. That man blew himself up at a base in Khost, Afghanistan, killing seven CIA employees and injuring six others.
That didn't come up in the meetings with Panetta, a senior intelligence official said. But everyone knew the risk the CIA was taking if it told the president that bin Laden was in Abbottabad and was wrong.
"We all knew that if he wasn't there and this was a disaster, certainly there would be consequences," the official recalled.
John was among several CIA officials who repeatedly briefed Obama and others at the White House. Current and former officials involved in the discussions said John had a coolness and a reassuring confidence.
By April, the president had decided to send the Navy SEALs to assault the compound.
Though the plan was in motion, John went back to his team, a senior intelligence official said.
"Right up to the last hour," he told them, "if we get any piece of information that suggests it's not him, somebody has to raise their hand before we risk American lives."
Nobody did. Inside the Situation Room, the analyst who was barely known outside the close-knit intelligence world took his place alongside the nation's top security officials, the household names and well-known faces of Washington.
An agonizing 40 minutes after Navy SEALs stormed the compound, the report came back: Bin Laden was dead.
John and his team had guessed correctly, taking an intellectual risk based on incomplete information. It was a gamble that ended a decade of disappointment. Later, Champagne was uncorked back at the CIA, where those in the Counterterrorism Center who had targeted bin Laden for so long celebrated. John's team reveled in the moment.
Two days after bin Laden's death, John accompanied Panetta to Capitol Hill. The Senate Intelligence Committee wanted a full briefing on the successful mission. At one point in the private session, Panetta turned to the man whose counterterrorism resume spanned four CIA directors.
He began to speak, about the operation and about the years of intelligence it was based on. And as he spoke about the mission that had become his career, the calm, collected analyst paused, and he choked up.

The Declaration of Independance

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

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

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

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

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

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

   And if memory serves, a lot of the signers did pay for signing that document.  A bunch lost their property, and others were imprisoned at the prison  ship I think in Boston harbor and some were killed.  They did pledge to give their all including property and their lives.


   EDIT:  I found this info here

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 56 MEN WHO SIGNED THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE??

Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died.

Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.

Two lost their sons serving in the Continental Army; another had two sons captured.

Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.

They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

What Kind Of Men Were They??

Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists.

Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated.

But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.

Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.

Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.

Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.

At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.

Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.

John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste.

For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a broken heart.

Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates. Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution.

These were not wild-eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more. Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they pledged: "For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

They gave you and me a free and independent America.

The history books never told you a lot about what happened in the Revolutionary War.

We didn't fight just the British. We were British subjects at that time, and we fought our own government!!

Some of us take these liberties so much for granted, but we shouldn't.

So, take a few minutes and silently thank these patriots.

It's not much to ask for the price they paid.

REMEMBER FREEDOM IS NEVER FREE!!

It's time we get the word out that:"PATRIOTISM IS NOT A SIN!!"

ID4

No..this ain't about the movie(good one that it was).We as a nation was around for 236 years today.  Most people celebrate with BBQ's displaying the flag and hanging with family and friends.  I wonder if people today would do what is necessary for freedom, when a society is content, there is far less chance of protest, or possible revolution and other actions that the people in charge don't like. 

    Now we have over 50% of the American public getting some kind of "public assistance"  or benefits from the government.  I keep hearing those crappy commercials about "SNAP" the Supplimental  Nutrition Assistance Program trying to get more people to sign up to be dependant on government.  When you depend on government, you will do what is necessary to keep the money coming in, you will vote for who will keep promising you money from the government, to the extent of surrendering your freedoms.  There is a quote that is attributed to Ben Franklin  " Those that trade freedom for security will not have either"