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Archive for the 'Politics' Category
02
Nov
09
Old Butch
John was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called ‘pullets,’ and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs.
He kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced.
This took a lot of time, so he bought some tiny bells and attached them to his roosters.
Each bell had a different tone, so he could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing.
Now, he could sit on the porch And fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.
John’s favourite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen, but this morning he noticed old Butch’s bell hadn’t rung at all!
When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, could run for cover.
To John’s amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn’t ring.
He’d sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.
The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well. Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making… Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren’t paying attention.
Vote carefully next year, the bells are not always audible.
The truth is SO SEXY!
By Matt Cover (original here)
(CNSNews.com) – When CNSNews.com asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday where the Constitution authorized Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance–a mandate included in both the House and Senate versions of the health care bill–Pelosi dismissed the question by saying: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
Pelosi’s press secretary later responded to written follow-up questions from CNSNews.com by emailing CNSNews.com a press release on the “Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform,” that argues that Congress derives the authority to mandate that people purchase health insurance from its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.
The exchange with Speaker Pelosi on Thursday occurred as follows:
CNSNews.com: “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”
Pelosi: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
CNSNews.com: “Yes, yes I am.”
Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a ”serious question.”
“You can put this on the record,” said Elshami. “That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.”
Audio HERE.
Currently, each of the five health care overhaul proposals being considered in Congress would command every American adult to buy health insurance. Any person defying this mandate would be required to pay a penalty to the Internal Revenue Service.
In 1994, when the health care reform plan then being advanced by President Clinton called for mandating that all Americans buy health insurance, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office studed the issue and concluded:
“The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”
Later on Thursday, CNSNews.com followed up on the question, e-mailing written queries for the speaker to her Spokesman Elshami.
“Where specifically does the Constitution authorize Congress to force Americans to purchase a particular good or service such as health insurance?” CNSNews.com asked the speaker’s office.
“If it is the Speaker’s belief that there is a provision in the Constitution that does give Congress this power, does she believe the Constitution in any way limits the goods and services Congress can force an individual to purchase?” CNSNews.com asked. ”If so, what is that limit?”
Elshami responded by sending CNSNews.com a Sept. 16 press release from the Speaker’s office entitled, “Health Insurance Reform, Daily Mythbuster: ‘Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform.’” The press release states that Congress has “broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce. Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life, from labor relations to education to health care to agricultural production.”
The release further states: “On the shared responsibility requirement in the House health insurance reform bill, which operates like auto insurance in most states, individuals must either purchase coverage (and non-exempt employers must purchase coverage for their workers)—or pay a modest penalty for not doing so. The bill uses the tax code to provide a strong incentive for Americans to have insurance coverage and not pass their emergency health costs onto other Americans—but it allows them a way to pay their way out of that obligation. There is no constitutional problem with these provisions.”
So much for that damn pesky Constitution…
But there you have it, the Commerce Clause. Ha!
18
Oct
09
Once the Cat is Out of the Bag…
… you start saying stupid things like it is a basic human right to have high-speed internet.
(Original here)
Finland has become the first country in the world to declare broadband Internet access a legal right.
Starting in July, telecommunication companies in the northern European nation will be required to provide all 5.2 million citizens with Internet connection that runs at speeds of at least 1 megabit per second.The one-megabit mandate, however, is simply an intermediary step, said Laura Vilkkonen, the legislative counselor for the Ministry of Transport and Communications.
The country is aiming for speeds that are 100 times faster — 100 megabit per second — for all by 2015.
“We think it’s something you cannot live without in modern society. Like banking services or water or electricity, you need Internet connection,” Vilkkonen said.
Finland is one of the most wired in the world; about 95 percent of the population have some sort of Internet access, she said. But the law is designed to bring the Web to rural areas, where geographic challenges have limited access until now.
“Universal service is every citizen’s subjective right,” Vilkkonen said.
Should fast Internet access be everyone’s legal right?
It is a view shared by the United Nations, which is making a big push to deem Internet access a human right.
In June, France’s highest court declared such access a human right. But Finland goes a step further by legally mandating speed.
On the other hand, the United States is the only industrialized nation without a national policy to promote high-speed broadband, according to a study released in August by the Communications Workers of America, the country’s largest media union.
Forty-six percent of rural households do not subscribe to broadband, and usage varies based on income, the study found.
In February, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is expected to submit a national plan to Congress. The FCC says that expanding service will require subsidies and investment of as much as $350 billion — much higher than the $7.2 billion President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package has set aside for the task.
So I told my mom last night, “How are you a Democrat? You vote Democrat but you talk to me every week on the phone like a Conservative. You raised me as a Conservative by instilling in me very Conservative values. You are a Conservative, you just don’t know it.”
She laughed.
Admittedly, this is something that has long since bothered – well maybe it doesn’t bother me, it more-or-less intrigues me. How can one vote for something all their lives but on a very personal level, they are very much something else? My mother is a wonderful person. I am very much like her and this is probably due to her strong desire to raise me with all she had. She was very active in my life, maybe a little bit too much sometimes if you know what I mean. But she is a Liberal and I am a Conservative…
She is fiscally conservative. I don’t know if she is that way because she has to be or because that is who she is. We never had money growing up. The magic answer to anything new was normally “no.” After a while I didn’t even bother to ask. I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to her to deny my request, but because I understood that the family could not afford it. I don’t remember her ever specifically saying this fact, but I do remember her diligently cutting out coupons and searching for sales. I remember getting cheap shoes and hoping they lasted, but I never knew there was a difference in shoes until other kids pointed it out to me. We never went out on the town – and if it was, it was to Taco Bell off the 69 cent menu (which was a real treat). Maybe she did, but I never heard her begging for help from people either – she just went out and worked multiple jobs. Or even better, worked one job while we were at school that way she could be with us kids at home.
She believes in personal responsibility. I remember my Mother and Father sitting me down one day and telling me, “If you do something wrong, we are going to let you pay the consequences. Even if that means jail. However, if you did nothing wrong, then we will stand by you until the end.” I tested both ends of that spectrum growing up. On the negative end I decided to go out with some friends and tear someone’s bushes up by jumping on them. The neighbor called my parents and my parent’s delivered me to the owner of the bush to do whatever he wanted. Luckily for me, he was a friend of the family and he just had me apologize and clean up the mess. The other boys that tore the bush up with me, their parents were called but they never came to help or even to apologize. Maybe this is another instance where I learned that I was being raised in a special way. On the other end of that spectrum I was blamed for tearing up a school textbook on the school bus one day. They stood up for me even though the school was ready to suspend me.
She believed in competition. She always was pitting myself against my siblings in athletics and school – especially school. I remember her saying, “If you don’t keep your grades up, your brother’s and sisters are going to and then get good jobs and then they aren’t going to help you. ” It was obvious that she believed in excelling in whatever task you did to “get ahead of the competition.” It was never, nah, sit back and coast and someone will help you out or bail you out, it was always “if you don’t do it, then nobody’s going to do it for you.” It was never mean. In fact, it was kind of fun to compete. My all-star/select siblings in multiple sports always beat me in sports but I had them in academics. But they never gave up chasing my grades and I never quit chasing their sports records.
She was an individualist. It was obvious that she loved all of us but it was also obvious that she loved each of us on an individual level and most definitely not out of obligation. I remember camping and all of us were a team to set up camp and each had their own little jobs. Sometimes, the job was to just stay out of the way because you were cranky with a full diaper. Ha! But same back home. We were recognized on our own merits. I don’t think I realized it at all at the time, but I see it now. I never heard any sort of bigoted comment. If she was mad, then it was at that person, not their race or their gender or anything.
I remember little things that my mother said to me growing up all the time and I always wonder, how can a fairly dedicated Democrat say something that is so utterly Conservative in thought? I wish I could remember them so I could post them right now because some of them had a very large impact on me being who I am today.
I ended up telling her a little later in the conversation that I think she is simply a Democrat because that is what has been taught to her. For whatever reason in the past people were generally taught that Democrats are “for the people/workers” and that Republicans are “for businesses/businessmen.” Since she has always been a worker, she has also maintained that thought. Her parents (my grandparents) are also Democrats, so it seems that political affiliations run in the family (although I’d argue that my grandparents are Conservative too).
With that said, it seems that in some of the mid-generations the pseudo Communistic bourgeois (R) vs proletariat (D) is there. I wonder how many people of older generations as well as the new voters have really taken a look at both parties and realized that in reality, they are the same with very small differences – both still war (to go or to continue funding), both are still fiscally irresponsible, both take rights/liberties away, both don’t represent their constituents, and both vote on things/laws that are unConstitutional.
So how is it that a Conservative thinker was raised by a Democratic mother again? Where is the disconnect?
After recently getting banned from Democraticdiva.com’s blog for – well, I am not really sure what the exact reason is – I decided to look around to see if others have had the same problems with debating Liberals. It seems that I am not the only one. I am quite baffled at how people who claim to be intellectuals can behave in this manner. If you are going to debate, then debate! If you think my comments are genuinely wrong then let my stupidity speak for itself (aka, let me continue to debate and don’t moderate my comments).
If there is anyone out there that reads this and affiliates Left to any degree, how do you feel about this type of behavior? Do you feel that it is justified to snuff speech for whatever reason and mostly without notice or without warning?
In any case, here is an article written by Nancy Morgan of RightBias on the issue. It is over a year old, which means the problem has never changed much to this current date. Enjoy.
(Original here)
How does one debate with a liberal? Sorry, under current rules, debate is not allowed. Just as our new national conversation on race is limited exclusively to authentic blacks, so is any semblance of debate with those on the left limited to those who accept the rules of debate, as defined by liberals.
Just as Boy Clinton redefined the meaning of sex, so have liberals redefined the meaning of debate. If your view doesn’t accord with the progressive, politically correct elites, the debate is relabeled an ‘argument’, your opinion is redefined as a ‘judgment’ and both are promptly dismissed.
By controlling language, the left controls and defines the issues. Hillary didn’t lie about being under fire in Bosnia, she merely misspoke. The rules stipulate that only conservatives lie. If you’re on the left, you’re either factually incorrect, mistaken or just plain human. Liberals call this a win-win situation, which is one of the few times they are factually correct.
If the member of the vast right wing conspiracy (conservative) persists in trying to debate the original issue, liberals then revert to personal attacks. Attacking the messenger as mean-spirited usually does the trick. The indignant liberal then has carte blanche to personally vilify the messenger while touting his own moral vitas. Very effective.
By this time, the subject of the argument is long forgotten. If, however, the rude, argumentative conservative persists in addressing inconvenient facts, the liberal invariably points to ‘bad behavior’ by others, as if that excuses all bad behavior. That’s called the ‘Everyone Else Does It So It Must Be OK’ defense. Voila, the debate veers again from the original issue and turns into a catalogue of left vs. right scandals. Needless to say, if the ‘Everyone Else Does It’ defense was valid, we’d still have slavery.
If the MOTVRWC is still standing, demanding an answer to the original issue, which has yet to be addressed, the beleaguered liberal will kindly inform one and all that the debate is over. The question has been settled. Case closed. It is now time to, you guessed it, Move On.
The best scenario for liberals, however, is to avoid debate altogether. This is called the pre-emptive defense. Gore just gave us a prime example when he declared on 60 Minutes that anyone who doesn’t believe in global warming probably also believes the earth is flat. Can you spell Neanderthal? Another pre-emptive defense includes labeling any dissenting view as propaganda which, of course, is unworthy of debate.
Another neat trick the left uses to avoid debating inconvenient facts (formerly called corruption, perjury, lies, theft, adultery, etc.) is to cry foul and whine about being taken out of context. This is called a do-over, and usually leads to more media face time to explain what they really meant. Another win-win situation. If the do-over is done with panache, the offender is magically transformed into a martyr and/or victim by a complaisant media. This is called spin. Again, it only works for liberals.
The question arises, do liberals really believe their own arguments? Does Gore really believe the earth is in crisis? Does Hillary really believe there is a vast right wing conspiracy? Do 50% of Americans really believe Bush lied? I have an inquiring mind. I’d like to know. So I set out in search of a liberal I could debate.
I started on My Space by sending a friend request to a (gorgeous) liberal guy who billed himself as open minded. He replied, questioning why I wanted to be friends with a liberal. Duh. I told him I wanted to find a liberal who could actually debate both sides of an issue. OK. He read one of my conservative articles and, to his credit, he responded with a lengthy critique. So far, so good. I wrote back, pointing out that his response dealt only with feelings, not facts. Alas, I now have one less friend on My Space. Did I mention how cute he was?
My next step: The Daily Kos, hotbed of the far left. I posted my latest article White Racism in their forum. Here’s the response:
From: kestrel9000@gmail.com
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2008 9:32 PM
To: nancy@rightbias.com
Subject: news/031508race.aspx – your garbage
I have requested your banning from Daily Kos. We have no interest in, or use for, your filth.
When I entered the Kos forum to answer the 50 some comments on my article, I found I was no longer allowed to participate in the conversation. I had been banned.
On to the Huffington Post. I again posted a conservative article, and when I logged in to join the debate, I found that I was banned, my posting privileges were revoked. No answer from the moderators as to why.
This experience was repeated on other liberal forums. To date, I have yet to find a liberal who will debate an issue on the facts. With the one exception of my lovely niece, Sarah.
This refusal to debate on the left no longer angers me. I know that no matter how flat the pancake, there are always two sides. By ignoring and censoring debate, liberals invalidate only themselves, not the opposing view. Just because the majority of them believe something is so, doesn’t make it so. They can redefine the meaning of the word ‘is’, but ultimately, reality is defined by God, not man. To liberals, that is unthinkable. Which is probably why they don’t think about it. Or acknowledge it. Or debate it.
13
Oct
09
Obama Flag
So, Obama might not ask to be a dictator, but there certainly a group of people that want him to be! Here is a flag for Obama in Kokomo, IN.
What is even worse then that are the Obama supporters on this thread here.
A few of them say they have the same flag and they challenge anyone to come get it from them. I will quote some of them here.
Marco:
By the way : You’ve already sealed the fate of the GOP… We have your asses on tape CHEERING alongside the taliban when the U.S. lost olympic bid. We have you booing along side the taliban when Obama won the nobel…
You are recorded for posterity for the backstabbing losers you are. You hate obama so bad you’d have the United States fail just to spite him, you racist inbred idiots. Well guess what, It’s going to bite you in the ass! Majority rules. We might just decide to kick your seditious asses out of our country!
What you going to do about it , ya dumb rednecks?
You make all sorts of threats (revolutionary) …. You even quote people like Bob Dylan in your blogs (someone who despises you for the lying backstabbing creeps that you are …. PROOVE THAT YOU AREN’T JUST ALL TALK…. so far you’ve just proven yourselves to be a bunch of pussies…. I SAY BRING IT ON . WE NEED TO PUT YOU IN YOUR PLACE. (which is 10 feet under if you try anything)
ender:
I didn’t threated your life you stupid fucks… I PROMISED YOU if a right wing citizen came and tried to force some “citizens” arrest over some political hatred of obama, I would fucking blow your head off!!! Now you better show me where the money is bitch…. I’m sick of you terrorists, its about time you see some of your own medicine; right between your fucking eyeballs
now come on down bitch. I have the flag waiting to shove in your fucking face(and something else waiting on you if you try to force you evil will on me)
8726 Monte Cristo Dr
Everett, WA 98208
COME ON, PUT UP OR SHUT UP…bring your pussy seal faggots with you.
Not sure if they are the same person, but I’d really like to take a camcorder to these people’s houses and see how this all plays out.
Also, people have the right to do whatever they want. That is their right in this country to do what they want with their flags. However, I think it is a scary sight to see. The flag means a lot to America and to see her altered simply means that the flag bearer doesn’t care about America – they don’t recognize people (veterans) have fought and died to keep their freedom to talk bad about the flag, to step on the flag, to burn the flag.
I’ll leave you with this.
Every Thanksgiving and religious holiday that you enjoy with family and friends, please remember that there are literally thousands of soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen far from home wishing they could be with their families. Thank God for our military and the sacrifices they make every day. Without them, our country would get it’s ass kicked..’
*’It’s the Veteran, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.’
*’It’s the Veteran, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech.’
*’It’s the Veteran, not the community organizer, who gives us the freedom to demonstrate.’
*’It’s the Military who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.’
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