You're cheating yourself if you don't absorb this post on July 31 from that genius with the word at One Cosmos. Read it all but here are some teasers:

"...What an excellent question asked by James Lewis at American Thinker, Why Isn’t the Whole Left Neoconservative? Leftism is such a discredited ideology, so intrinsically wrong, so at odds with higher human nature, so cruel and unworkable in practice, so retrograde in its results, that one can only wonder at the persistent hold it has on millions of minds around the world.

Some day Leftism will be rejoined with its twin ideology, fascism, which no one takes seriously anymore (consciously, anyway; as Goldberg demonstrates, the program of the left is indistinguishible from fascism). Why is that? In fact, fascism is not a “right wing,” much less “conservative” ideology, but a competing from of socialism. It was the communists who tried to discredit “national socialism” by labeling it “right wing” merely because it wasn’t what they wanted, which was international socialism. . ."

AtOne Cosmos Gagdad Bob goes on to offer a twelve step program:
haps we need a 12 step program for leftists, Apparatchiks Anonymous.

1. We admitted we were powerless over the intoxicating dreams of socialism, and that our lives and governments had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a power far greater than our own omnipotent little egoic fantasies of total control could restore us to true liberalism.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the Creator and Guarantor of our Liberty.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of the well-intentioned failures and frank evils of socialism.

5. Admitted to the Creator of our Liberty, to ourselves, and in a live phone call to C-SPAN, the exact nature of socialism’s wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have the Creator of Our Liberty remove all these defects of ideology.

7. Humbly asked Him to cancel our subscription to the Times.

8. Made a list of all races, genders, and classes our government programs had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all by realizing that these constructs of race and gender are irrelevant to begin with.

9. Made direct amends to such people by switching parties.

10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were again tempted to abuse ideology for the purposes of blotting out reality, promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer, meditation, and listening to Rush Limbaugh, to improve our conscious contact with the Source of our Liberty, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other Leftists, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

"Scolding Americans for our various sins is proving popular among an elite group of self-appointed moralists.
Take well-meaning environmentalists who warn us that our plush lifestyles heat up and pollute the planet. To listen to former Vice President Al Gore or New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, we must immediately curtail our carbon emissions - or face planetary destruction..."
RealClearPolitics - Our Angry Aristocracy
and after you have read Hanson (or before), check out Vanderleun's take with pictures at"The gall of these non-elected, self-selected nattering flatulators is without limit."
Thomas Friedman: Fatter Footprint Than Al Gore @ AMERICAN DIGEST:

"The gall of these non-elected, self-selected nattering flatulators is without limit."

Thomas Friedman: Fatter Footprint Than Al Gore @ AMERICAN DIGEST:

iowahawk: Cambridge Police Profiling Still A Grim Reality for Harvard Faculty Assholes

American Thinker: Impersonating a Victim

"...The Gates arrest fiasco has put into sharp focus the difference between class and race in America. It has also contrasted the pseudo victimhood of Gates with the legitimate victims of Jim Crow. His defenders try playing the tattered race card but it doesn't work this time. "Black men are arrested in greater proportion than whites", they squawk. If Gates is indicative, now we know why.

We have now all heard the verbal abuse Gates hurled at the officer -- who was called to protect his property. Gates theatrical reaction to the situation: "This is what happens to a black man in America!" What? Returning to your posh residence from your trip to China and having a neighbor look out for you by reporting suspicious behavior in your upper-crusty neighborhood and having a white public servant come check on your place for you -- is that what "happens" to you in America, Dr. Gates? Swing low sweet chariot..."

Billions To Stimulate Criminality

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, July 23, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Corruption: A nonprofit group committing a crime conjures up images of terrorist fundraising. But $8.5 billion in taxpayer money may go to specialists in political terror: the tax-exempt scam artists of Acorn.

Read More: General Politics

Did Democrats come to their present dominance of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington thanks in large part to a "syndicate of tax-exempt organizations" that "has coordinated and implemented a nationwide strategy of tax fraud, racketeering, money-laundering and manipulating the American electorate"?

The reams of evidence provided by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ranking Republican Darrell Issa of California and his GOP colleagues on the panel strongly suggest so.

Their more-than-80-page report charges that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) uses "a complex structure designed to conceal illegal activities" — 361 different entities in 120 cities, 43 states and the District of Columbia, amounting to a "shell game" that "diverts taxpayer and tax-exempt monies into partisan political activities."

The group has over the last 15 years received in excess of $53 million in federal funds. Moreover, as the report warns, "under the Obama administration, Acorn stands to receive a whopping $8.5 billion in available stimulus funds."

Acorn's improprieties, of course, are not news. As Issa's report notes, a third of the 1.3 million voter registration cards the organization solicited and presented in 2008 ended up being null and void; the group has been investigated for voter registration fraud in places such as Connecticut, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio.

A decade ago, an Acorn operative in Arkansas was arrested for falsification of voter registration forms. Soon after that, Philadelphia officials discovered hundreds of Acorn's falsified registration forms. In 2007, the state of Washington filed felony charges against several Acorn employees and supervisors for submitting more than 1,700 fraudulent voter cards.

Just last fall, federal agents raided Acorn's Nevada offices and in May of this year Nevada officials charged the organization and its state personnel with voter fraud. That was soon followed by seven Acorn officials in Pittsburgh being charged with voter fraud. Acorn has been accused of presenting at least 2,100 fraudulent registration forms in Lake County, Ind.

Superimposed upon these offenses are the alleged embezzlement practices of Dale Rathke, brother of the organization's founder, Wade Rathke, who apparently used a financial management company to "loan" himself over $948,600 in Acorn funds.

For eight years after the incident, Acorn kept him in its employ and failed to notify its board of the money grab. Acorn board members Marcel Reid and Karen Inman were actually kicked off for trying to investigate the Dale Rathke cover-up, and for seeking financial transparency within Acorn.

Inman's response to her removal last fall was to ask: "Why would you want us not to clean up things? Why would you not want to do your own investigation instead of bringing in the sheriff?"

Perhaps because a cleaned-up Acorn would not be able to operate effectively. Even the left-friendly National Public Radio has reported that the organization's financial sleight of hand "essentially gives them a cloak that prevents people from seeing really how they're spending money that comes, in some cases, from the taxpayers, in other cases, comes from members of their organization who pay dues."

Yet this corrupt outfit has actually been signed up as a national partner with the U.S. Census Bureau to help recruit the nearly 1.5 million workers who will count and classify our 306 million population for 2010. It's like getting a car thief to manage a parking garage.

As the Capital Research Center's Matthew Vadum has documented, $3 billion from the stimulus package, another billion dollars from HUD, and $4.5 billion in Community Development Block Grants look set to come Acorn's way for a total of $8.5 billion.

The Issa report further charges Acorn with submitting false filings to the IRS and the Labor Department, and violating the Fair Labor Standards Act and the ERISA law.

Amidst all this apparent illegality, the campaigns of President Obama, disgraced ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, are among the beneficiaries of financial contributions from Acorn and its affiliates.

"These actions are a clear violation of numerous tax and election laws," the Issa report charges.

Issa called it "outrageous that Acorn will be rewarded for its criminal acts by taxpayer money in the stimulus and is being asked to help with the U.S. census." He says the organization "cannot and should not be trusted with taxpayer dollars."

Don't hold your breath for justice. No doubt Attorney General Eric Holder will soon be too busy hounding former Vice President Dick Cheney — for his forceful effort in waging the global war on terror — to probe the shady outfit that helped elect his boss president.

Read all of this article here:

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Billions To Stimulate Criminality

Singer, composer, veteran and all around good guy Lloyd Marcus now writing at American Thinker:

American Thinker: At the NAACP, Obama Removes His Mask of the Great Unifier

GAGDAD'S PEARLS:
"... I repeat: even if Jesus had not lived, I would still "believe in him," because I believe man is fashioned in the image of the Absolute, and it is only this fact that allows us to stand up to tyranny in a manner that is simultaneously objective (true) and righteous (good). Yes, you might well get streamrolled like Sarah Palin in the process, but you have every cosmic right to hold up a cross in the face of His Smugness and say, "stop! That is not permitted here!" Yes, the world will do to you what it did to Him. Goes with the terrortory.

Again, our freedom is a cosmic right. It is only ratified by Jesus' saving presence. You can only not know this if you have ceased being American, and are instead a "world citizen" or some other such nonsense.

"World citizenship" (not to mention "international law") is a lie, since it is not based upon any interior reality. Rather, it is something invented by tyrants for purposes of crowd control. It is one of the pillars of the criminal organization known as the UN, which does not promote the natural law, to put it mildly. "International law" is simply "man's law" writ large, and therefore cosmic lawlessness.

This is one of the reasons why they love "global warming," as it will allow them to extend and legitimize man's law (which is tyranny) in an unprecedented manner. It's bad enough that Obama can reach into our pockets. With crap & trade, dictators from all over the world can do so as well..."

"It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed........... The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Weimar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.” - Editorial by Pravda (Russia’s largest newspaper) April 27, 2009". 

 If there was any doubt that the House Democrat Health Care plan would be anything but full-blown, single payer, socialized medicine it has now been cast aside with the release of the 1,017 page bill this week. The bill has already passed two of the three committees to which it has been referred to in the House. Not a single Republican voted for it in either committee, so any pretext of bipartisanship should also be cast aside. The bill will be debated on the House floor in about 10 days, so we will have more time when those days come to discuss just how extreme this thing is. But let me give you a few HIGHLIGHTS:

It makes it illegal to purchase your own private health insurance after the bill is enacted and will transition virtually everyone to government care within 5 years. (Found on page 16 of H.R. 3200)
The bill raises taxes on "the rich" but also creates new taxes on small businesses and individuals who do not have health insurance. After the tax increase, the top tax rate for a resident of California will be over 57%, which makes it the highest income tax rate in the industrialized world (Sweden is 56%).
It will increase the overall cost of health care in the country by trillions of dollars. Even the Democrat appointed head of the Congressional Budget Office had to admit that there is no evidence that the plan will lower the cost of health care as the President has asserted.
Current estimates project that there will be nearly 5 million additional jobs that will disappear nationwide, as a result of the plan.
As many as 114 million Americans could lose their current coverage under the bill, according to non-partisan actuaries at the Lewin Group.
Doctors, hospitals, and other medical providers will be paid even less than they are currently being paid by Medicare or Medicaid, which will bankrupt many.
A government "Institute of Comparative Effectiveness" will determine whether you are allowed to receive treatments or medicines, and sometimes, as happens in other socialized countries, whether you are allowed to live or die.
It does not deal with the bankruptcy of the Medicare system or Social Security so those problems continue, but the taxes said to balance them will have been spent on this.
And, it will not even cover everybody with insurance, so it won't even fix what it is supposed to fix.
This is without question, the single worst, and most dangerous piece of legislation I have seen in my 9 years of public service. Under this plan, prison guards in California will make far more money than doctors, and to quote one of my colleagues, we will all be forced into government health care with the compassion of the IRS and the efficiency of the Post Office. 
Patient's Choice Act: If there is bipartisan agreement on health care, it is that the current system needs reform. The reform measure that I think is best has been introduced byCongressmen Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Devin Nunes (R-CA) called the Patient's Choice Act. It is directionally opposite of the plan proposed by the Obama regime. Instead of putting government in charge of the system, this plan largely removes the failed portions of government involvement, and puts each individual in charge of their own health care plan and decisions. Here are some bullet points on this plan:

The plan eliminates the employer deduction for health insurance and the system of direct payment of health costs under Medicare and Medicaid, and replaces them with a $2,300refundable tax credit per individual which must be used for health care costs. Therefore, everyone, whether they are young, senior citizens, or indigent, will be covered under a private plan of their own choosing. And you no longer have to get the plan from your employer, but will have a number of options to get your own and keep the same plan as you move from job to job. Senior plans would be further subsidized by the Medicare system but still allowed to choose their own plan.
Currently as a Californian, you can only buy a health insurance plan approved by the state of California. Under the Patient's Choice Act, you would be free to pick from any of the over 1,300 medical insurance plans offered around the country. State based insurance exchanges will make sure that you cannot be cancelled for illness and that pre-existing conditions will not interfere with our choices in the same way that fire insurance is available to those who live in high fire risk areas today.
Basically this legislation will allow unlimited contributions to a health savings account so that Americans can save for their own health care costs on a pre-tax basis.
Litigation costs are a huge driver of medical costs. This bill would replace the court system with state based dispute resolution mechanisms for most claims thereby saving a great deal of money in the system.
Creates transparency through a public/private partnership to disclose cost, quality, and outcomes of various plans and providers.
It also instills accountability into existing federal wellness and prevention programs to encourage more disease prevention activities and thereby lower costs.
This bill will cost a grand total of $0 and will increase taxes by $0. It is revenue and cost neutral to the current system.
This is also a large bill which has many details I have not outlined here. But the difference is clear. There is an Obama/Pelosi socialized proposal that increases costs, lowers quality, raises taxes, increases the deficit, doesn't fix the problem, and literally leaves your life in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. Or there is a plan that costs nothing more, will lower costs and improve quality, and put YOU in charge of all of the decisions about YOUR health care. 
The battle lines are drawn. And this is one we have to win.
I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Member of Congress
    








 

Family Security Matters Publications Exclusive: Obama’s ‘Kill Grandma Bill’ - Will Americans tolerate the denial of health care to those 65 and older?

Do not miss Michael Yon posting (with pictures for those of you that don't read) from Afghanistan.

Sangow Bar Village

So much for the Kindle and to think I thought I wanted it." Today, Amazon removed George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from its Kindle e-book store. The company also went ahead and removed any digital trace of the books, too-striking them from both users' digital lockers and from Kindle devices. This disturbing, Orwellian move underscores how, in spite of comments otherwise, a purchase in the digital realm can't be compared to physical ownership of content." Read it all, then curl up with the real thing.


Amazon Removes E-Books From Kindle Store, Revokes Ownership - PC World

Gagdad's pearls:

"All is One, but only because One is Three. Now and always."

From Sue via email:


Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists,
Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this
latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I
know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future
generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two
ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what
is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and
chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:

Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each
taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sur e our
two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be
relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly
divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate
tastes.

We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are
welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and
war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You
can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however,
responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all
three of them).

We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical
companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved
homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot
Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles
and give you NBC and Hollywood .

You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right
to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the
peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are
under assault, we 'll help provide them security.

We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values... You are welcome to Islam,
Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N.
but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can
take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing
doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a
right. We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National
Anthem. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to
Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.

We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up
poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our
history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like
minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree,
just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you
ANWAR which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.


Sincerely,

John J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take Barbara Streisand, Jane Fonda & Nancy Pelosi

BABY KENDALL, our first grandchild, made a speedy and early arrival on 7/11 and weighs in at 2 lbs 13oz. He is 14 3/4 oz and there are clear raccoon characteristics as placed over his eyes is a mask to keep the light out which he tries to get off. He scores high on all testing so far. Perfect, and thankfully breathing on his own, he has a full head of hair and great coloring. There is new meaning to ee cummings "nobody not even the rain has such small hands." The little guy has to stay in the incubator for the next couple of months.
The parents are awesome and we are all totally and unconditionally in love with this new being.

7/10/2009 01:18:00 PM
Blogger Gagdad Bob said...

I agree with Scipio

'The most earth shaking event in secular world history was the creation of the United States of America. It was quite literally “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Nothing like it had ever come about. From the start she presented to the world a frightening thing, the possibility that the citizens of a nation might actually control the levers of power in a state. If she succeeded she would become a “dangerous nation” and a threat to tyranny around the world. Thus the hatred that European nations had for the new nation. None of them even believed that the US could possibly survive. It was a good thing for them that she did.

'The United States did indeed become a dangerous nation—dangerous to tyrants, that is. Here is a list of nations freed by her—and some of these were freed more than once: France, Germany, Norway, Finland, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Algeria, Morocco, Romania, Kosovo, Panama, Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Denmark, Kuwait, Iraq, Egypt, Montenegro, New Guinea, Indonesia, Thailand, Greece, Tunisia, Ukraine, Albania, Hungary, Belgium, Austria, Libya, Korea, Japan, Italy.

'As a comparison, take a look at some of the players upon the stage of the world who are in the news today -- China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela. How many nations have they freed? None. And why should they free any nations? They are not in the business of freedom. They are in the business of slavery.'

*****

Bottom line -- there are really only two kinds of countries in the world: those whose asses we saved, and those whose asses we kicked. And two kinds of people: those who know it, and those who deny it for whatever crazy reason.

AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and Quotes

AMERICAN DIGEST Essays, News, Notes, and QuotesA short list. In no particular order.

"We told our children that any child could grow up to be President. And then we made it come true.

We had car shows, boat shows, beauty shows and dog shows.

We ran robots on the surface of Mars by remote control.

Our women came from all over the world in all shapes and sizes hues and scents.

We actually believed that all men are created equal and tried to make it come true.

Everybody liked our movies and loved our television shows.

We tried to educate everybody, whether they wanted it or not. Sometimes we succeeded.

We did Levis.

We held the torch high and hundreds of millions came. No matter what the cost.

We saved Europe twice and liberated it once.

We believed so deeply and so abidingly in free speech that we protected and honored and, in some cases, even elected traitors.

We let you be as freaky as you wanted to be.

We paid you not to plant crops and not to work.

We died in the hundreds of thousands to end slavery here. And when that was done continued for a century and a half around the world.

We invented Jazz.

We wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysberg address.

We went to the moon to see how far we could hit a golf ball.

We lifted a telescope into orbit that could see to the edge of the universe.

When people snuck into the country against our laws, we made parking lots and food stands off to the side of the road so they wouldn't get hurt, and we let them use our hospitals for free, and we made their children citizens.

We didn't care what God you worshipped as long as we could worship ours.

We let the People arm themselves at will. Just to make sure.

We gave everybody the vote.

We built Disneyworld. Just for fun.

We had a revolution so successful it was still going strong two and a quarter centuries later.

We had so many heroes, even at the end, that we felt free to hate them and burn them in effigy.

We electrified the guitar.

We invented a music so compelling that it rocked the world.

We had some middling novelists.

We had some interesting painters.

We had some pretty good poets.

We had better songwriters.

We ran our farms so well we fed the globe.

We made the automobile and the airplane.

We let you get rich. Really, really rich. And we didn't care who you were or what you were or where you came from or who your parents were. We just cared about what you made or what you did.

We had poor people who, even at their most wretched, were richer than any other poor people on the face of the planet.

We were the most nobel nation the world had ever known.

We had so much freedom that many of us voted to just throw it all away.

Even towards the end, as we dissolved into the petty bickering and idle entertainments that come with having far too much leisure and money, many among us were still striving to make it higher, finer, brighter, better and more beautiful.

Even towards the end, the best of us declined to give up and pressed on. "Where to? What next?"

atpeace.jpg