Federally Sanctioned Molestation

When is enough, ENOUGH?  How much more must our privacy be violated?  The systems and procedures used by the TSA for airport screening have just gone too far.  If you want, or need, to travel by air today, you are given the choice of either submitting to a full-body scan of your naked body, or to a good groping by a TSA employee.  Not much of a choice, in my book.

There seems to have been no good reason for this increased violation of our privacy....no escalating threats, that we were made aware of, that would necessitate these tactics.  They just said, "Hey, we have these machines that can take a picture of your body through your clothes...so we're going to use them."

Former Miss U.S.A., Susie Castillo, went through a particularly invasive groping in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport on April 21st.  After choosing the line that was not going through the full-body scanner, because she travels a lot and does not want all of the radiation, she was told that she either had to go through the machine or get a pat down. She opted for the pat down, which turned out to be so invasive that it brought her to tears, feeling as if she had been molested.  Castillo made a video in the airport after the incident (below).  "I completely feel violated," she said. "This woman, she touched my vagina four times."

The Fourth Amendment says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated."  This is certainly unreasonable.  We must put an end to this violation.  We must not be made to choose between the ability to freely travel and being molested.

"I'm crying", said Castillo, "because, I'm just really, really upset that as an American, I have to go through this...and I do feel violated." 




Thanks to The Tenth Amendment Center.

Obama Releases Long Form Birth Certificate - Finally!

The Wall Street Journal reports that Barack Obama has FINALLY released his long form birth certificate.  If he would have just done this two years ago, we wouldn't have had all of this non-sense.  I have said all along that he brought all of this on himself by not just releasing it.

Now maybe we can stop having to hear from Donald Trump.  Of course he is taking credit:

"I'm taking great credit and you have to ask the president, 'why didn't he do this a long time ago? Why didn't he do it a long time ago?' When Hillary Clinton was asking, when everybody was asking, why didn't he do it? It's shocking. It's shocking," 

Let's not have this issue again in the future.  We need laws in place that specifically details what we mean by "natural born" and requires proof of that status.  I posted on this in a previous post. 

The End of the "Age of America"

From MarketWatch.com

Brett Arends of MarketWatch.com reports that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently released a forecast that China's economy will overtake the U.S. economy by 2016 ending the"Age of America."  Only a short five years ago.

Arends states that, "According to the IMF forecast, which was quietly posted on the Fund’s website just two weeks ago, whoever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy."

Attempting to put this in perspective, Arends says., "The rise of China, and the relative decline of America, is the biggest story of our time. You can see its implications everywhere, from shuttered factories in the Midwest to soaring costs of oil and other commodities."   He adds, "What the rise of China means for defense, and international affairs, has barely been touched on. The U.S. is now spending gigantic sums — from a beleaguered economy — to try to maintain its place in the sun."

Responding to Arend's article, the IMF said that it disagreed with his analysis of their data and that the U.S. economy “is currently 130% bigger than China, and will still be 70% larger by 2016.”  But regardless of the exact time...we're losing ground very quickly.

Stephen Green, however, see the whole thing a little more optimistically and actually calls Arends article "ghoulish." In an article for Pajamas Media, Green points out that while "the yuan is weak because China wants it to be, fueling an export-driving boom that has taken China from a backwater to a major power in 30 years." And that, "the U.S. dollar plummets because nobody in D.C. can implement a policy to make it do anything else — and the resulting inflation threatens us with a double-dip recession." He believes that "America enjoys other strengths China lacks."

Some of the strengths that Green points to are who each country count as friends: China - basically North Korea and Burma.  The U.S. - India, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia, the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.  He also points out that China's "economy still suffers from faux-communist distortions. From uninhabited, brand-spanking-new 'ghost cities,' to a financial sector that would make Tim Geithner blush." I recently watched this telling video documentary by SBS Dateline (Australian TV) that shows the ghost cities of China and the obvious results of socialist, centralized planning run amok.

So while China may not be as strong as some might make it out to be, it is rather disheartening  that we have allowed ourselves to fall back so badly that we are now being compared in this way with communist China.  Socialism never works in the long term...whether it's done in China or in America.

Gas Prices

$2.03/gallon! That was the average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline in April of 2009...$2.03.  Yesterday, the national average cost was $3.84/gallon...with no end in sight for the cost increases.  Many are talking about $5 or $6 dollars a gallon coming THIS SUMMER!  This will cause an increase in cost of all other goods and services across the economy.

There are, of course, many reasons for these hikes...trouble in the Middle East, OPECs control over world-wide gas prices, and maybe even some small amount of oil company greed.  But, the biggest single cause of this crisis...and it is a crisis...is government!  Under pressure from so-called environmental lobbyists, our federal government has made it nearly impossible to explore or drill for new sources of oil in our own country.  What other country cuts themselves off from their own natural resources?  And abundant natural resources was a major factor in the growth and greatness of our country, since before it's beginning.  Now we cut ourselves off from these vital resources and ransom ourselves to foreign powers who would like to see our destruction...INSANITY!

Chart by GasBuddy.com - 4/25/11

  American Solutions provides the following facts about oil and natural gas reserves within our own borders and territorial waters:

• America has about 86 billion barrels of oil and more than 400 trillion cubic feet of
natural gas located offshore in the Outer Continental Shelf, but the Obama
administration has either banned or delayed drilling for most of these resources.
• In the Green River shale formation in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, America has an
estimated 800 billion barrels of oil, which is three times the proven reserves of Saudi
Arabia. Federal law prohibits drilling for most of these resources.
• In the Bakken oil shale formation in the Dakotas, there are an estimated 20 billion
barrels of oil.
• In one small area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), there are an estimated
10 billion barrels of oil. Federal law prohibits drilling in this area.
• In the Marcellus shale formation in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, there
could be as much as 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the largest natural gas field in
the world.

And, we have a history, when allowed to explore and retrieve these types of reserves, of finding even more than first estimated.  How much better off would we be if we would only loosen ourselves from the shackles of foreign oil?  We could much better ensure our own national security.  Because we would have our own oil, we could stay out of sticky Middle Eastern entanglements.  Lower energy costs could spur growth in industry, and, therefore, jobs.  This would all help in the recovery of the economy.

Sure, in the long-run, we should develop alternate sources of energy, but we cannot stop the wheels of our society today based on the hopes of unproven, inadequate so-called green energy sources of tomorrow.  We must drill safely...we must drill cleanly...but, for our economy, security and our future, DRILL WE MUST!

And, by the way, I don't see anything in the Constitution that gives the Federal government the power to ban States from benefiting from the natural resources within their own borders.  Yet another good case for State nullification of Federal laws.


So, over the next weeks and months...as you pump more and more expensive gasoline into your vehicles...as the cost of food, clothing, services and entertainment go up, up, up...as you begin to curtail your activities due to costs...ask yourself if it wouldn't be nice to have a president who was a little friendlier with the oil companies and had some kind of clue as to what it takes to fuel our economy again.

Blindly Toward War

In this interview on Russia Today, Michael Scheuer, former CIA intelligence officer and Chief of the Bin Laden unit, offers some unique and informed opinions about U.S. and NATO dealings in the Middle East.  What he has to say is sobering and more than a little frightening.  He believes that a very realistic possibility of war with Iran will necessarily lead to reinstatement of the draft in the U.S.

The only reason that the U.S. has been able to interfere in the internal affairs of so many other countries over the years is that we have allowed the Federal government to consolidate and centralize its power and reach far beyond its Constitutional power to defend the country.  Very little of what we have done in the past 100 years has been strictly for defensive reasons.

And, contrary to what the Left and their media sycophant media drones will tell you, it is the Progressive Left who has lead us into the most wars in the past 100 years.  This is because of the power it gives them to consolidate their power even further.

"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debt and taxes and armies are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people...[There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and....degeneracy of manners and morals....No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." ~ James Madison

Will we be lead blindly to war?

Dan Rooney: A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Lose

Well, it pains me to say so since I have been a life-long Steeler fan, but it looks like Dan Rooney's choo choo has finally gone around the bend. In a recent interview with the Irish Times, Rooney said that he is thinking of resigning his post as Ambassador to Ireland to campaign for Barack Obama's re-election.

“I would probably have to resign to campaign for President Obama’s re-election,” Rooney said. “I think that would be the number one thing I can do for him, and I’d be willing to do so.”

So, okay...when Rooney first campaigned for Obama, I thought, well, he has been caught up in all the hype of electing the first black president like so many others. Then I thought that he was just blinded by his desire to be the Ambassador to Ireland, since he claimed to have such a love of his ancestral homeland, and Obama was promising him the post.

But now, after Obama's abysmal record in his first term, for Rooney to say that, Obama is "the best man for the job, without question.” Now I just say...cuckoo, cuckoo.

A Message From Your Wise Overlords:

LiveFreeRevolution.com brings you this message from your Central Banker overlords.

Liberal Arguments

I have always contended that Liberals never have any REAL arguments to back their stances on issues?  Oh, they have a few talking points, but when they've quickly exhausted those, in the first minute and a half, they either quickly change the subject, or just start hurling labels...Tea Bagger!  Tenther!  Birther! ...or worse.  But they never answer your points with reasonable, well-thought out counterpoints based in fact or history.

But, Andrew Klaven, of PJTV.com has pointed out the flaw in my contention.  Liberals do have an argument...it comes in different varieties, but it all comes down to the same basic stance...Shut Up!