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!

Time To Grow Up!

Robert Young - "Father Knows Best"

America seems to be populated, in large portion, by adolescents.
The Collins English Dictionary defines adolescence as "the period in human development that occurs between the beginning of puberty and adulthood." And adulthood as "a person who has attained maturity; a grownup." I fear that while much of the population has reached puberty...many have still not attained maturity.

In the 1960s, the youth movement flexed it's political muscles through protests and mass rallies. They wanted their voices to be heard..."Make love, not war."..."Tune in, turn on, drop out."... "Never trust anyone over thirty."  ... and other childish drivel.  But young people can be forgiven for acting like children; they haven't experienced the harsh realities of life yet.  They don't know what it is to have real responsibility and have experienced real consequences for their actions.  In their young lives, they have been protected from this by their parents.  But since the sixties, we seem to have steadily moved toward a Neverland society where nobody wants to grow up and are looking for a Peter Pan to lead them to never-ending fun and adventure.

You see, in the previous generations...the Father Knows Best generations...adults knew that they had to be responsible for their own lives, for the care and nurturing of their children, and that actions have consequences.  They knew that "life's unfair" and that most people only get ahead through "pulling themselves up by the boot straps" with hard work and perseverance.  They understood that "a penny saved is a penny earned."  They knew the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper.  How the industrious Ant worked hard during the nice warm days of the summer to put aside food for the cold winter that she knew was coming, and the lazy Grasshopper who played and wasted time during the plenty days of summer...not caring about the future.  When the inevitable chill of winter came, the Ant was in her home, safe and secure with enough food to last the winter.   The Grasshopper...not so much.

But the post 60's generations have rejected the wisdom of the past.  It's not fair, they say, that anyone should be without...even if they have done nothing to prepare.  "Someone" needs to take care of these poor, unfortunate souls.  We are a rich country...daddy...er, I mean,  the government can afford it...right?  After all, it's just not "fair" that some people would have so much and others wouldn't.  This attitude totally ignores history and economics.  This Neverland approach has never worked in any society in history.  The more society, or government, provides for the needs of the people, the more people demand provision.  And eventually, even those who had been productive begin to lose heart...why should they work to take care of other people who won't? 

It's not only the the "unfortunate," but also the "productive" class who do not want to plan for the future or live with consequences.  If they lose their jobs, they think that "someone" should pay them until they get another job...just the right kind of job.  If they can't pay their mortgage because they bought too much of a house and never thought hard times would come...no one should be able to take their home from them.  If they can't pay their bills, they should be able to just wipe it all out and start over.  It's only fair...to them at least.  Their adolescent, self-centered thinking does not allow them to consider how unfair it is that money is being taken from others, by law and the threat of force, to pay for their lack of responsibility.

It is through this adolescence that we have allowed our country to be brought to the verge of financial collapse. We have not demanded frugality and responsibility from our elected representatives.  On the contrary, we have rewarded them for "bringing home the pork."  We have cheered them as they constantly expanded government.  We have suspended reality to believe that they could continue spending like out-of-control Hollywood debutantes with no consequences for the future. We have had warnings for decades that our government spending was on an unsustainable trajectory...but like the Grasshopper, our representatives continued to play...never thinking winter would come.  In the early eighties, as I was beginning my working career, people told me that I should not count on Social Security for retirement, because it wouldn't be there by the time I got to that age.  This seems to be rapidly coming true.

We have also allowed ourselves to be manipulated, like children, through the use of fairy tales told of impending global disaster and monsters and villains.  These stories, Global Warming, Evil Corporations,  Villainous Capitalists, and others, have scared us into turning control over to true villains who crave power and gladly exploit the fears of children.  We have not applied proper logic and analysis to the stories.  We have just believed them because they were told to us by our leaders...the adults, so to speak.

Well, the winter has come, and it looks to be a long, cold one.  We cannot push it off much longer.  We will have to fortify ourselves the best we can...but it will take hard work and sacrifice.  We can no longer rely on childish hopes and adolescent dreams of the past.  To paraphrase the bible, when we were children, we talked like children, thought like children, and reasoned like children. It's time to put childish things away.  It's time we put adults back in charge in Washington D.C. and our state houses.  Men and women who will make the hard choices.  We need true leaders and patriots, and not just power mongers.

In our personal lives, we can no longer expect to be taken care of.  We have to put on our big boy and big girl pants and act like responsible adults.  We need to plan ahead, as best we can.  If we lose our jobs, we must go back to work as quickly as we can...doing whatever we can until we can return to our chosen career path.  We can't spend beyond our means...we must control our debt...and we should act like the winter is coming, even in the the midst of glorious summer days.  This is how previous generations lived...generations of adults.  They had lived through hard times, like The Great Depression, and knew it could happen again.  They helped each other out the best they could, but did not expect the government to steal from their neighbors to give to them.

I am not saying that we, as a society, should not be able to help those who truly find themselves in need.  This is something we should always do. It is not always that people find themselves in need due to irresponsibility, but what is the measure of need?  If someone has cell phones, cable TV, broadband Internet, new cars, etc., are they truly needy?  I say that if someone declares personal bankruptcy, or goes on welfare or other government programs, they should come under control of overseers, like corporations do with bankruptcy court.  All spending decisions and debt management of bankrupt corporations are scrutinized by the court.  If this were the case individuals, I believe people would be much more careful with their finances and try hard not to enter a government program.  Government is not charity. 

Our only hope is that we grow up and make the hard choices.  It will not be easy...it will not be fun.  Adulthood really stinks sometimes...but, we have no choice.  We've prolonged adolescence well past it's natural course.  I hope we haven't stolen away the adolescence of our children.

"Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest" Hebrews 6:6-9

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Syndicated talk show host Jim Quinn has a very good retelling of the Ant and the Grasshopper story for the modern, Liberal age (written during the Clinton administration).  Enjoy.

The Ant and the Grasshopper: The New Liberal Version

It starts out the same but when winter comes the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. CBS, NBC, and ABC show up and show pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to film of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be, in a country of such wealth that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Then a representative of the NAAGB (The National Association of Green Bugs) shows up on Night Line and charges the ant with "Green Bias" and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism. Kermit the frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when he sings "It's Not Easy Being Green."

Bill and Hillary Clinton make a special guest appearance on the CBS evening news and tell a concerned Dan Rather That they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the summer, or as Bill refers to it, the "Temperatures Of The 80's".

Finally the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act" RECTRO-ACTIVE to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and having nothing left to pay his Retro-Active taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he's in....which just happens to be the ant's old house.... crumbles around him since he doesn't know how to maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. And on the TV; which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, Bill Clinton is standing before a wildly applauding group of Democrats announcing that a new era of "Fairness" has dawned in America.

As Egypt goes...so goes the Middle East?

by Clay Bennett

As the world watches events unfolding in Egypt, it is very unclear as to who all the players are and what the outcome will be.  Certainly there are many different interest groups at play.  We as Americans want to believe that everyone in the world longs for some sort of democratic government that will provide for rights and liberty...but this may not be the case.

One of the groups vying for power in this struggle is the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Muslim Brotherhood began in Egypt in 1928 as a reaction to secularization in Egypt that, among other things, gave increased rights to women.  The Brotherhood's credo is “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”  The Muslim Brotherhood has ties to many Islamist organizations such as al-Qaeda and Hamas.  The number two man in al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is an Egyptian and has been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood since age 14.


Many observers wish to down play the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, claiming that they are only a  minority of the Egyptian population.  Others see them as just one of the groups who want democracy.  This, I think, is either ignorance of history in general and the stated goals of the Brotherhood in particular...or a willful distortion of the facts.  As far as general history, it does not take a majority to take over a country...the Nazi Party in Germany was only a minority of the German population.  And for stated goals, the Brotherhood's second-in-command, Rashad al-Bayumi, stated in an interview on Japanese television that the Muslim Brotherhood would participate in a transitional government with the goal of canceling the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt because it "offends the Arabs' dignity and destroys the interests of Egypt and other Arab states." 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed the Muslim Brotherhood to the talks by saying that, "Today we learned the Muslim Brotherhood decided to participate, which suggests they at least are now involved in the dialogue that we have encouraged."  She said that "The Egyptian people are looking for an orderly transition that can lead to free and fair elections. That is what the United States has consistently supported."  But, what is the goal of the Muslim Brotherhood in this regard? Jonathan D. Halevi explains:

• The Muslim Brotherhood does indeed participate in political activity and defend the democratic process. That is not, however, because it has accepted the principles of Western democracy, but rather because the democratic process can be exploited to establish an Islamic regime which will then render democracy unnecessary. 

• The Brotherhood's official website notes that jihad is Islam's most important tool in effecting a gradual takeover, beginning with the Muslim countries, moving on to reestablishing the Caliphate over three continents in preparation for a conquest of the West, and finally instituting a global Islamic state.

So, the goals are not narrowly focused on Egypt, but on world conquest.  Egypt is just one of the first to tumble.  Trouble is also being fomented in Jordan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.  The goal of the Islamists in all of these countries is to eliminate the secular governments and bring about theocracies.  And then to set their sites on the destruction of western culture.  For these reasons, the United States should not participate in any discussions with the Muslim Brotherhood.  This would be akin to sitting down to negotiate with the Nazis for control of Europe in the early 1940s.

Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, offers good insight in this CNN interview.  (sorry for the commercial at the beginning.)