20 Reasons I Detest The Government
1) Our own government chides those of us who pay taxes for being greedy because we don't want to give the politicians even more of our money to do things we don't want done at any price.2) Increasingly, every bill that is proposed in D.C. seems to be crafted with the hope that at least 51% of the American people are ignorant or not paying attention to what the legislation actually does.
3) When there's a slip-up and members of Congress and their staff are *** gasp *** expected to follow the same laws as the rest of us on something like Obamacare, they immediately start looking for a way out.
4) Having an unelected bureaucrat decide that your property is a "swampland" because it rained yesterday or that you didn't follow some arcane legislation can lead to your spending years of your life dealing with an army of government regulators in court and costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees; yet the bureaucrats pay no price at all for being wrong.
5) IRS employees like Lois Lerner can take the 5th Amendment when they're asked to testify about breaking the law to go after American citizens, but we're not allowed to take the 5th Amendment when the IRS demands information from us.
6) Who in the government was held responsible and punished for Fast and Furious? Benghazi? The subprime crisis caused by the government? Wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on Solyndra? Detroit going bankrupt? The IRS scandal? Giving someone as unstable as Bradley Manning access to classified data? How about allowing eight of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers to be registered to vote? The correct answer: nobody, which is exactly the problem.
7) The average government employee makes more than the people who are paying his salary.
8) If the economy goes bad, you may have to tighten your belt, but our government NEVER thinks it should have to cut back on its spending.
9) Inconvenient campaign promises by politicians are treated as almost entirely unrelated to what they do while governing.
10) There's so much stagecraft and deliberate deception in D.C. that it's impossible for the average person to understand what's going on without having someone who understands politics explaining it to him.
11) CBO scores on legislation are treated as legitimate and meaningful despite the fact that the rules have been rigged in such a way that the CBO ALMOST ALWAYS DRAMATICALLY UNDERESTIMATES the cost of government programs.
12) When Congress is in session, you won't find a more corrupt or dishonest group of human beings all gathered in any one place outside of a prison.
13) Our Congress REGULARLY votes on pork-laden bills written in legalese that NO ONE has actually read cover to cover.
14) We have so many laws and regulations that almost every American is breaking the law somehow on a daily basis.
15) When the Republican Party and Democrat Party collaborate in a bipartisan manner, it's almost always to screw the American people in order to help some influential or deep-pocketed special interest group.
16) Our politicians in D.C. are just as corrupt as those South American politicians we laugh at for taking bribes. The only difference is our politicians are smarter about it. A bribe is illegal, but giving their relative an incredibly highly paid job or slipping an earmark into a bill that will end up helping their investments to thrive is considered par for the course in D.C.
17) Our overbearing politicians and bureaucrats feel entitled to tell you how to run almost every aspect of your life. They think they know better than you what health care you should have, where your kids should be allowed to go to school, what you should be able to do with your own property, what TV, toilet or shower head you should be allowed to buy, what light bulb you should have and even what size of soda you should be able to drink.
18) The priority scale for most politicians goes campaign contributors, special interest groups, political bosses, lobbyists and then if they're in a competitive district, their constituents. Very few politicians in D.C. ever seem to give a thought to what's good for the country.
19) Almost every bill that passes is sold with lies that later turn out not to be true; yet the bills aren't repealed and the politicians who deceived the American people are rarely held accountable.
20) We have government employees whom we put into office, whose salaries we pay, telling US what to do and acting as if we work for them.
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2013/06/22/20-reasons-i-detest-the-government-n1624848/page/full
IRS Sent $46,378,040 in Refunds to 23,994 ‘Unauthorized’ Aliens at 1 Atlanta Address
IRS Sent
$46,378,040 in Refunds to 23,994 ‘Unauthorized’ Aliens at 1 Atlanta
Address - See more at:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/irs-sent-46378040-refunds-23994-unauthorized-aliens-1-atlanta-address#sthash.hulQMOce.dpuf
The Internal Revenue Service sent
23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to “unauthorized” alien workers
who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).
That was not the only Atlanta
address theoretically used by thousands of “unauthorized” alien workers receiving
millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of
the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to
“unauthorized” aliens were in Atlanta.
The IRS sent 11,284 refunds worth a
combined $2,164,976 to unauthorized alien workers at a second Atlanta address;
3,608 worth $2,691,448 to a third; and 2,386 worth $1,232,943 to a fourth.
Other locations on the IG’s Top Ten
list for singular addresses that were theoretically used simultaneously by
thousands of unauthorized alien workers, included an address in Oxnard, Calif,
where the IRS sent 2,507 refunds worth $10,395,874; an address in Raleigh,
North Carolina, where the IRS sent 2,408 refunds worth $7,284,212; an address
in Phoenix, Ariz., where the IRS sent 2,047 refunds worth $5,558,608; an
address in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where the IRS sent 1,972 refunds worth
$2,256,302; an address in San Jose, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,942 refunds
worth $5,091,027; and an address in Arvin, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,846
refunds worth $3,298,877.
Since 1996, the IRS has issued what
it calls Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to two classes of
persons: 1) non-resident aliens who have a tax liability in the United States,
and 2) aliens living in the United States who are “not authorized to work in
the United States.”
The IRS has long known it was giving
these numbers to illegal aliens, and thus facilitating their ability to work
illegally in the United States. For example, the Treasury Inspector General’s Semiannual Report to Congress
published on Oct. 29, 1999—nearly fourteen years ago—specifically drew
attention to this problem.
“The IRS issues Individual Taxpayer
Identification Numbers (ITINs) to undocumented aliens to improve nonresident
alien compliance with tax laws. This IRS practice seems counter-productive to
the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s (INS) mission to identify
undocumented aliens and prevent unlawful alien entry,” TIGTA warned in that
long-ago report.
The inspector general’s 2012 audit
report on the IRS’s handling of ITINs was spurred by two IRS employees who went
to members of Congress "alleging that IRS management was requiring
employees to assign Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN) even when
the applications were fraudulent.”
In an August 2012 press release
accompanying the audit report, TIGTA said the report “validated” the complaints
of the IRS employees.
“TIGTA’s audit found that IRS
management has not established adequate internal controls to detect and prevent
the assignment of an ITIN to individuals submitting questionable applications,”
said Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George. “Even
more troubling, TIGTA found an environment which discourages employees from
detecting fraudulent applications.”
In addition to the 23,994 tax
refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 that the IRS sent to a single address in
Atlanta, the IG also discovered that the IRS had assigned 15,796 ITINs to
unauthorized aliens who presumably used a single Atlanta address.
The IRS, according to TIGTA, also
assigned ITINs to 15,028 unauthorized aliens presumably using a single address
in Dallas, Texas, and 10,356 to unauthorized aliens presumably living at a
single address in Atlantic City, N.J.
Perhaps the most remarkable act of
the IRS was this: It assigned 6,411 ITINs to unauthorized aliens presumably
using a single address in Morganton, North Carolina. According to the 2010
Census, there were only 16,681 people in Morganton. So, for the IRS to have
been correct in issuing 6,411 ITINS to unauthorized aliens at a single address
in Morganton it would have meant that 38 percent of the town’s total population
were unauthorized alien workers using a single address.
TIGTA said there were 154 addresses
around the country that appeared on 1,000 or more ITIN applications made to the
IRS.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/irs-sent-46378040-refunds-23994-unauthorized-aliens-1-atlanta-address
$286K
Study of Maya Politics Hopes to Promote Ecotourism in Guatemala
A team from Williams College in
Massachusetts will study the “political dynamics” of the Maya people between
600-830 AD in the ancient town of Motul de San Jose, Guatemala, located
north of Lake Petén Itzá in the northern section of the country.
The study, which officially started
on June 1st, was made possible by a $286,000 taxpayer-funded grant from the National
Science Foundation (NSF).
A NSF spokeswoman told CNSNews.com
that the grant was awarded under the agency’s Division of Behavioral and
Cultural Sciences. Awards are based on merit and factors such as “broader
participation” and the project’s “broader impacts.” One example cited by
researchers in the grant application was that the study will promote
“sustainable stewardship and ecotourism in this important area of northern
Guatemala.”
The spokeswoman said NSF expects a
“project outcome report” in about a year’s time as part of the agency’s “gold
standard” peer review process.
The "capital of a small Classic
Mayan state in northern Guatemala," Motul de San Jose is located
32 km southwest of Tikal and served as a major economic and political hub
during the Late Classic period. The town is best known for its famous
"lk" style ceramics.
Archaeological Project shows a jade
piece in the tomb of a very early Mayan ruler at Tak'alik Ab'aj archaeological
site in Retalhuleu, south of Guatemala City. (AP Photo/Tak'alik Ab'aj
Archaeological Project)
The goal of the NSF study, according
to the award abstract, is to “investigate the factors governing political
dynamics by tracking how Motul de San Jose, which was conquered and ruled by
Tikal at numerous times between the 4th and 8th centuries, “controlled and/or
interacted with its periphery”.
The larger Maya civilization is
described as “a very violent, warmongering society” by Dr. Christopher Minister, who teaches Latin
America Literature and History in Ecuador.
Maya city-states fought frequently
with one another and enemy warriors taken captive were either "enslaved or
sacrificed," Minister writes. Stone carvings left behind show
"scenes of wars, massacres and human sacrifices." Researchers said
they hope to decipher whether “Motul ruled its peripheries through alliances
with local groups, or through conquest and territorial annexation.”
Dr.
Antonia E. Foias, associate professor of anthropology and department
chair at Williams College and the principal investigator of the study, has
written about Motul de San Jose in the past, including one widely cited book
entitled, "Motul de San Jose: Politics, History, and Economy in a Maya
Polity" She did not respond to multiple attempts to contact her by
CNSNews.com.
The team from Williams College will
study Mayan political life over the course of “two field seasons” and conduct a
variety of projects at sites throughout the town that include:
· “Complete mapping;”
· “Environmental surveys;”
· "Horizontally extensive
excavations in three households of varying socioeconomic status;”
· “Stratigraphic test pitting and
excavations of refuse deposits at an additional 8 households and the largest
public plaza;” and
· “Analysis of all ancient remains.”
They plan to input all data and
observations into a single, geographic information system (GIS) database in
order to “understand the changing relationships between all components through
time” in order to “contribute to our understanding of the political structure
of Classic Maya polities from the perspective of small communities which
negotiate, resist or support political domination.”
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/286k-study-maya-politics-hopes-promote-ecotourism-guatemala
Gov’t to Spend $300,000 Helping LGBTQ Domestic Violence Victims
“Many service providers throughout
the United States struggle to understand the complexities associated with
identifying, serving, and supporting LGBTQ populations,” the grant solicitation said.
“Not only are the populations
racially and ethnically diverse but the sub-populations within the LGBTQ
umbrella often do not share similar experiences as LGBTQ individuals or as
victims of intimate partner violence,” it added.
The grant seeks to “expand the
capacity of both domestic violence organizations and LGBTQ-specific
organizations to more effectively identify and address the unique needs of
LGBTQ intimate partner violence victims.”
The grant cited difficulty that gay
men may face accessing “‘mainstream’ shelter services.”
“Gay men, for example, have enormous
difficulty accessing ‘mainstream’ shelter services because domestic violence
shelters grew from the battered women’s movement. Because the battered women’s
movement was focused on sexism, patriarchy, and the abuse of male power between
non-transgender people, the historical understanding of domestic violence
largely excluded LGBTQ communities,” the grant description said.
“Men, therefore, are often not
understood to be victims within the continuum of domestic violence service
provision because they are the predominant perpetrators of domestic violence
within the violence against women philosophical framework,” it said.
The problem also extends to
transgender people who are biologically male, but identify as women, according
to the grant.
“Trans-women may also be excluded
from shelter because they may biologically be male and at the same time
confound service providers’ understandings of sex and gender,” the grant said.
“Lesbians seeking refuge at a
domestic violence shelter may encounter homophobia and bias from other
residents or staff members or they may simply be confronted with the
invisibility of their experience in the form of information and educational
materials that only address heterosexual domestic violence,” it added.
“Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgendered, and Questioning (LGBTQ) victims of intimate partner, domestic,
and/or dating violence do not have consistent access to culturally competent
services to prevent and address such violence,” the grant said.
“Domestic/intimate partner violence
is a significant health problem among LGBTQ populations and has serious
physical health, mental health, and social consequences for its victims, their
families, the LGBTQ communities, and society-at-large,” it added.
The grant, which is expected to be
awarded to only one recipient, was posted on June 7, and the closing date for
applications is Aug. 6.
CNSNews.com contacted the
Administration for Children & Families last week for comment about the
grant. Calls were not returned by press time.
:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/gov-t-spend-300000-helping-lgbtq-domestic-violence-victims#sthash.4ynCuKY1.dpuf
USDA
Spending $167,650 to Lure Customers to D.C. Farmers' Markets
The U.S
Department of Agriculture has awarded $167,650 in grants to increase
participation in Washington, D.C. farmers markets.
The two grants, part of the
department's Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP), run from Sept. 2012
through September 2014. The grants include $94,150 to DC Greens Inc. and
$73,500 to the University of the District of Columbia.
According to the USDA release on the awards, The DC Greens Inc.
program received $94,150 to:
“1) increase customer participation at 4 farmers markets; and 2) reach low income and Federal nutrition benefit recipients in the market neighborhoods, with a targeted outreach into neighboring communities, direct mailings, cooking demonstrations, and improved market signage, resulting in better health for market patrons and an increase in sales for 40 farmers.”
“1) increase customer participation at 4 farmers markets; and 2) reach low income and Federal nutrition benefit recipients in the market neighborhoods, with a targeted outreach into neighboring communities, direct mailings, cooking demonstrations, and improved market signage, resulting in better health for market patrons and an increase in sales for 40 farmers.”
Pamela Stanziani of the Agricultural
Marketing Service division of the USDA told CNSNews.com in an e-mail, “Grant
programs like FMPP helps growers and producers generate additional sales
through market promotion and advertising assistance.”
“It helps make fresh, healthy produce
more accessible to consumers by supporting the establishment of new farmers
markets or enhancing the operation of existing farmers markets. FMPP also
makes it easy for consumers who participate in USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program to use their Federal benefits to buy produce at farmers
markets using EBT machines.”
Jezra Thompson, Food Access Program
Director for DC Greens, tells CNSNews.com her organization's efforts include
more than cooking demonstrations and increased signage.
“We are approaching our outreach
campaign through a grassroots effort,” Thompson said.
“We are going to meetings, we are
working with people from the community that are invested in the same projects
we are working on and the same mission that DC Greens is about; which is
connecting DC residents to more healthy, affordable food.”
“It also helps that we are letting
people know that they can spend their federal benefits at the farmer’s market,
not everyone knows that you can spend your SNAP or WIC at the farmers market.”
The University of the District of
Columbia received a grant of $73,500 under the USDA program, in order to
establish two new farmers markets in a low-income neighborhood and provide
transportation options for seniors to travel there.
“Ultimately, these activities are
designed to support farmers and producers who are engaging in direct
farm-to-consumer marketing initiatives with their efforts to effectively market
agricultural products to consumers,” Stanziani says.
“In turn, these farmers sell their
produce to consumers, and these consumers benefit by receiving access to fresh,
healthy, nutritious produce.”
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/usda-spending-167650-lure-customers-dc-farmers-markets
CASINO CRONY KICKBACK: Reid, Heller Slip Las Vegas Tourism Handout into Immigration Bill
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) have inserted a provision that amounts to little more than a handout to Las Vegas casinos into the repackaged immigration reform bill, Breitbart News has learned. This provision, a brazen example of crony capitalism, was inserted into the immigration law enforcement section of the bill despite the fact that it has nothing whatsoever to do with "immigration" or "law enforcement."On page 66 of the repackaged bill, the following provision appears:
“CORPORATION FOR TRAVEL PROMOTION.—Sec- 9(d)(2)(B) of the Travel Promotion Act of 2009 (22 U.S.C. 2131(d)(2)(B)) is amended by striking ‘‘For each of fiscal years 2012 through 2015,’’ and inserting ‘‘For each fiscal year after 2012.”The Travel Promotion Act (TPA) of 2009 allows the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to spend up to $100 million on promoting travel to specific areas of the country. If the provision Reid and Heller inserted into the proposed immigration reform legislation becomes law, the benefits of the TPA would be extended indefinitely.
As the Heritage Foundation’s Jena McNeill wrote in June 2009, the Travel Promotion Act creates “a government-run public relations campaign funded by a tax on international visitors.” After the law was passed, the PR campaign touting Las Vegas casinos and other tourist destinations in the U.S. using that tax was rolled into a government-run corporation called “Brand USA.” In October 2012, Jim DeMint and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) released a report that “reveals a history of waste, abuse, patronage, and lax oversight” with the Brand USA program and the Department of Commerce that oversees it.
When the Travel Promotion Act was passed in 2009, the Las Vegas Casino industry and the Las Vegas Strip officially thanked Reid for passing it. Among others, Bally’s Casino ran an advertisement on their electronic billboard on the Strip thanking Reid for its passage, a billboard Reid promoted on his website.
“The recently signed into law Travel Promotion Act is going to greatly benefit Nevada because we have so many wonderful tourist attractions,” a 2009 post from Reid’s website reads. “Senator Reid fought so hard to pass this bill because he knew that it would mean thousands of jobs for Nevada as foreign tourists flock to Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe. Yesterday a number of hotels on the Las Vegas Strip showed Senator Reid their appreciation for his efforts on behalf of Nevada by thanking him in their marquees.”
Heritage’s Jessica Zuckerman wrote in a 2012 post based off DeMint’s and Coburn’s report ripping the program that Congress “should leave the promotion of tourism to the private sector.”
“Instead, Congress and the Administration should focus on making it easier, safer, and more efficient for travelers to come to the U.S by improving U.S. visa services and expanding the Visa Waiver Program, the very program that is helping to fund Brand USA’s misguided efforts,” Zuckerman wrote.
Current law would fund the government-run program through 2015. But, now Reid and Heller have inserted an indefinite expansion of it into a bill that has nothing to do with tourism, and into a section of the bill that was supposed to be aimed at adding additional Border Patrol and U.S. Customs Border Protection officers to the current staffs of those agencies.
The provision was inserted under “Sec. 1102,” which is titled: “Additional U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers.” That section falls under “Title I: Border Security and Other Provisions,” “Subtitle A--Border Security” in the repackaged bill.
Heller is a co-sponsor of the revised bill; he was not a sponsor of the bill in its original form.
Reid has consistently pushed projects that benefit big casinos over the course of his career.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/22/Harry-Reid-Dean-Heller-insert-Casino-Cronyist-favor-handout-into-amnesty-bill
Corker Amendment Lets DHS Ignore Border Security Provisions
The new version of the “Gang of Eight” bill, repackaged with the “border surge” amendment from Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-ND), would grant the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to decide whether or not to implement the border security technology and fencing provisions in the bill. Ignoring them wold result in no repercussions whatsoever.On Page 30, line 4 of the new bill, there is a provision that gives Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (or any of her successors) complete discretion on deploying certain technology or use “alternate technology” instead. The language of the bill, however, also allows her to deploy no additional technology.
“If the Secretary determines that an alternate or new technology is at least as effective as the technologies described in paragraph (3) and provides a commensurate level of security, the Secretary may deploy that technology in its place and without regard to the minimums in this section,” that part of the new bill reads. “The Secretary shall notify Congress within 60 days of any such determination.”
...But if the Corker Amendment passes as is, of course, none of that means anything because Napolitano--who already thinks the border is secure--could, completely on her own, determine some other “technology” is good enough and implement that in the place of all this technology. Napolitano could do that “without regard to the minimums” laid out in the statute.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/22/New-version-of-amnesty-bill-grants-Big-Sis-authority-to-completely-ignore-border-security-provisions-in-immigration-bill
Repackaged Amnesty Bill Allows Napolitano to Nix Border Fence
Another loophole inserted into the new version of the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill allows Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (or any of her successors) to nix the construction of a required border security fence if she does not find it to be an "appropriate" use of resources.The new version of the bill was introduced via a so-called “border surge” amendment from Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-ND), with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid repackaging the whole bill into the amendment.
On page 35, line 24 of the new bill, a provision was inserted that says Napolitano--who already believes the border is secure--can decide against building a fence if she chooses not to erect one:
Notwithstanding paragraph (1), nothing in this subsection shall require the Secretary to install fencing, or infrastructure that directly results from the installation of such fencing, in a particular location along the Southern border, if the Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain effective control over the Southern border at such location.The “paragraph (1)” that new waiver refers to is the one that supposedly “requires” the construction of a fence along the border.
Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall establish a strategy, to be known as the ‘Southern Border Fencing Strategy,’ to identify where 700 miles of fencing (including double-layer fencing), infrastructure, and technology, including at ports of entry, should be deployed along the Southern border,” that paragraph of the bill reads.This could allow illegal aliens to be granted amnesty, or legalized “Registered Provisional Immigration (RPI)” status, once Secretary Napolitano submits a fencing (and border security) plan to Congress. However, this provision allows Napolitano to decide against building the fence after doing so, with no legal ramifications.
As Breitbart News has already detailed, a similar provision was inserted with regard to border security technology requirements.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/22/Another-loophole-in-new-amnesty-bill-Big-Sis-can-decide-to-not-build-border-fence
‘What Is It You Want Us to Do?’
Right: die. Which brings to mind Mitch McConnell’s observation today:
WASHINGTON—The Senate’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, accused the Obama administration and its allies of undertaking a broad effort to push conservatives off the political playing field by trying to identify and harass their donors and force them into silence.
Mr. McConnell, in a pointed speech before a mostly conservative audience at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, said the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups was one element of a broader attempt to vilify the political right.
President Barack Obama and his allies, he said, citing the IRS matter and other actions, had created a “culture of intimidation … around any person or group that spoke up for conservatism—or against the direction the president and his administration wanted to take us.”It’s about time the mastodons of the GOP finally realize what they’re up against, and what they have been up against for a very long time. For the Obama administration is not simply politics-as-usual, in which both sides of the aisle gather to welcome us — the marks — to their weekly poker game, and we’re the guys who leave without our pants. No, this time (as my faux-leftist character, David Kahane, likes to say) it’s personal. Thanks to a combination of timing, good luck, and the incredible stupidity of the Republican Party, which nominated not one but two sure-loser candidates against him, Barack Obama and his brain trust have finally succeeded where previous generations of radical Leftists had failed, and that is the successful neutralization of the conservative movement, which must perforce lead to its ultimate destruction.
I want you to get mad. Good old-fashioned all-American furious, as you realize that we’ve been playing you for suckers for decades now, relying on your good will and sense of fair play and willingness to entertain any theory, no matter how ridiculous. Slow to anger, that’s you guys, whereas our side usually resembles nothing more than visiting day in the insane asylum, what with all the shouting, shrieking, screaming, begging, whining, imploring and general carrying-on. Whereas you tend to sit there, smiling and nodding, welcoming us into your homes via the evening news, and into your children’s noggins via the state-controlled educational system, and into your purses and bank accounts via the ever-expanding reach of the federal government and its insatiable appetite for your money and your property. Not realizing that slowly we are squeezing the life out of you and what used to be your country, slow-boiling the frog, delay-poisoning you with our arsenic biscuits, the way Miss Madeleine Smith eventually rid herself of her inconvenient lover, Emile L’Angelier, in long-ago Scotland.
I want you to understand that very little of what you are about to read has happened to you by accident, that most of it was done with malice aforethought – not in any vast-left-wing conspiracy sort of way, controlled from Moscow Center by a giggling psychopath stroking a white cat, but still deliberately – and with the clear intention of bringing down your society and replacing it with something else. Something that will still be called “the United States of America” (maybe; we haven’t decided yet) but will bear as little resemblance to the land of Lincoln as 19th-century Britain does to its 21st-century incarnation.
I want you to understand that with each passing day, as we wrap our tentacles more tightly around you, binding you with a million small pieces of petty legislation, harassing legal tactics, intrusive law enforcement, and the criminalization of just about everything, we are doing this for a reason: to weaken you enough so that in the unlikely event you actually do decide to fight back, you won’t be able to.And that’s basically the leftist strategy for America and has been since I was in college at the end of the turbulent Sixties.
When I heard Obama nattering on about “fundamental transformation,” I knew exactly what he meant, as could any of my cohort from that era.
And now here we are, just five years later, snooped on, spied on, singled out for special attention by the IRS, with every evil imputed to us and nowhere to turn for succor but to ourselves. Sure, it’s easy to make fun of Obama — our “spokesmodel” president, as I called him today over at NRO — but the fact is that he’s already gone a long way to accomplishing the goals his handlers have set for him. And, now that he’s free from electoral scrutiny, you can bet he’ll go a lot farther in the time remaining in the second term. More words of wisdom from Kahane:
I want you to understand that when we say it’s for your own good, we mean that it’s for our own good.
I want you to understand that when we use a term like “social justice” what we really mean is that payback’s a bitch.
I want you to understand that when we start babbling on about advocacy and activism – only we men of the Left could invent out of whole cloth the twin non-professions of “activist” and “advocate” and have them taken seriously in the pages of the New York Times – what we really are talking about are what used to be known as “agitators.”
I want you to understand that whenever we accuse you of something nefarious — and our usual litany includes such well-worn staples as racism, sexism, ageism, heightism, weightism, carnivoreism, antidisestablishmentarianism, homophobia, tridecaphobia, hydrophobia, and glossolalia — or of adopting a particularly mean, dirty and low-down tactic, it simply means that those are the very things we are thinking of at that exact instant, and would actually indulge in ourselves if we thought you weren’t looking.
I want you to understand that when we say “hate speech” we pretty much mean every word that comes out of your mouths.
I want you to understand that when we speak of such as things fierce moral urgency, our “morality” is based on absolutely nothing more than whatever suits our purposes, and bears only an accidental resemblance to anything found in such traditional sources of morality as churches and synagogues.
I want you to understand the truth of Frost’s observation that a liberal is a man too broad-minded to take his own side in an argument.
I want you to understand the truth of Chesterton’s observation that tolerance is the only virtue left to the man who no longer believes in anything.
I want you to understand that, though we may profess to celebrate life, in fact we are little more than a suicide cult, intent on doing in our rage as much damage as possible before finally shuffling off into the darkness that we are sure awaits us.
I want you to understand that we will not be happy until you agree with us.
I want you to understand that you have met the enemy, and he is us.Here endeth the lesson, for now. Much more to come.
http://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/2013/06/21/what-is-it-you-want-us-to-do/?singlepage=true
A Tarnished Silver Anniversary
This
day in history, on June 23, 1988, Dr. James Hansen of NASA officially
launched the man-made global warming scare by proclaiming before a
Congressional hearing and the world that "the greenhouse effect is here
and is affecting our climate now." From there the U.N.'s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change took over, and the rest is
history.
So, celebrations are in order. Time to commemorate:
* Hundreds of regulations on the books and coming down the road to run down industrial growth and economic advancement;
*
Thousands of hours of political grandstanding about how human exhausts
have fueled funnel-cloud fury, hyped hurricane histrionics, and
otherwise monkeyed with the meteorological mechanisms;
*
Millions of tax-payer dollars shoveled into bottomless pits of "free"
energy project subsidies, redundantly redundant Keystone XL
and fracking environmental studies, vacuous eco-activist indoctrination
curriculum, and crazy carbon-sequestration schemes; and,
* Billions of people in poverty who could easily be lifted out by access to abundant, low-cost, readily-available fossil fuels.
Toot the horns. Toss the confetti.
These are accomplishments only a socialist party could celebrate.
Puttin' On the Ritz
Things are heating up in D.C. with scandals being exposed so rapidly it's hard to keep track of them. And as Obama's luck would have it, they are coming in tandem with his mismanagement of the economy and the deathly impact his signature achievement "ObamaCare" is having on any recovery. Naturally, the way for someone like Obama who evades all responsibility to handle this is to travel abroad in grand style, hoping once again to attain that level of celebrity that has carried him this far above his abilities to govern.On a trip estimated to cost at least $100 million, he got off on the wrong foot immediately,
He made clear that he thinks the fighting in Northern Ireland is about religion and that religious education promotes violence. There's no other way to read his statement calling for an end to Catholic schools in Northern Ireland.
We need you to get this right. And what's more, you set an example for those who seek a peace of their own. Because beyond these shores, right now, in scattered corners of the world, there are people living in the grip of conflict -- ethnic conflict, religious conflict, tribal conflicts -- and they know something better is out there. And they're groping to find a way to discover how to move beyond the heavy hand of history, to put aside the violence. They're studying what you're doing. And they're wondering, perhaps if Northern Ireland can achieve peace, we can, too. You're their blueprint to follow. You're their proof of what is possible -- because hope is contagious. They're watching to see what you do next.There's no evidence to back his claim and the church has made clear that it regards these schools as a critical component of its mission.
Now, some of that is up to your leaders. As someone who knows firsthand how politics can encourage division and discourage cooperation, I admire the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Assembly all the more for making power-sharing work. That's not easy to do. It requires compromise, and it requires absorbing some pain from your own side. I applaud them for taking responsibility for law enforcement and for justice, and I commend their effort to "Building a United Community" -- important next steps along your transformational journey.
Because issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity -- symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others -- these are not tangential to peace; they're essential to it. If towns remain divided -- if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs -- if we can't see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.
Ultimately, peace is just not about politics. It's about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don't exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation.
There's plenty of evidence that Wahhabi-sponsored schools and one Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) an easy ride from the White House in suburban Virginia in particular, do promote violence. Obama has not once seen fit ever to lecture Moslems or the school's Saudi sponsors about it or to encourage it to change.
Ismail Selim Elbarasse served as an accountant at ISA for 14 years before he was arrested for videotaping bridge structures including the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in August, 2004. On the day of his arrest, he was also named as an "unindicted co-conspirator" for laundering money on behalf of the American affiliate of Hamas.If you have any question about the texts used in this school -- and undoubtedly it follows the texts used in such schools around the world, here's the list.
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, an ISA valedictorian, is serving a thirty-year prison sentence for providing material support to Al-Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President G.W. Bush.
Abdalla I. Al-Shabnan, Director General (Principal) ISA, was arrested by Fairfax police in June, 2008 for obstruction of justice and failing to report a case of child sexual abuse involving a five year old girl at the Popes Head campus. Al-Shabnan was fined $500.
Mohammed El-Yacoubi and Mohammed Osman Idris, were denied entry into Israel when authorities there found El-Yacoubi carrying what the FBI believed was a suicide note linked to a planned martyrdom operation in Israel.
Under fire, the academy reportedly deleted some of its most contentious claims but refused to make the supposedly amended textbooks available for public scrutiny. (In the original, the textbooks sounded an awful lot like the hatred spewed by Reverend Jeremiah Wright. He served for over two decades as the Obama's preacher without complaint from the man who thinks he has warrant to tell the Irish how to manage the education of their students.)
Nevertheless, although it was unable to obtain the entire collection, the Commission managed to acquire and review 17 ISA textbooks in use during this school year from other, independent sources, including a congressional office. While the texts represent just a small fraction of the books used in this Saudi government school, the Commission's review confirmed that these texts do, in fact, include some extremely troubling passages that do not conform to international human rights norms. The Commission calls once again for the full public release of all the Arabic-language textbooks used at the ISA.If -- aside from being a further manifestation of Obama's towering egotism and eccentric obtuseness -- you find this confusing -- I did -- James Taranto explains it for us: It seems Obama confused Belfast with Selma:
In July 2006, the Saudi government confirmed to the U.S. government that, among other policies to improve religious freedom and tolerance, it would, within one to two years, "revise and update textbooks to remove remaining references that disparage Muslims or non-Muslims or that promote hatred toward other religions or religious groups." The Commission is releasing this statement as the two-year timeframe is coming to an end, and with particular concern over the content of textbooks used at the ISA, in order to highlight reforms that should be made before the 2008-09 school year begins at the ISA.
Examples of Problematic Passages in Current ISA Textbooks
The most problematic texts involve passages that are not directly from the Koran but rather contain the Saudi government's particular interpretation of Koranic and other Islamic texts. Some passages clearly exhort the readers to commit acts of violence, as can be seen in the following two examples:
• In a twelfth-grade Tafsir (Koranic interpretation) textbook, the authors state that it is permissible for a Muslim to kill an apostate (a convert from Islam), an adulterer, or someone who has murdered a believer intentionally: "He (praised is He) prohibits killing the soul that God has forbidden (to kill) unless for just cause..." Just cause is then defined in the text as "unbelief after belief, adultery, and killing an inviolable believer intentionally." (Tafsir, Arabic/Sharia, 123)
A twelfth-grade Tawhid (monotheism) textbook states that "[m]ajor polytheism makes blood and wealth permissible," which in Islamic legal terms means that a Muslim can take the life and property of someone believed to be guilty of this alleged transgression with impunity. (Tawhid, Arabic/Sharia, 15) Under the Saudi interpretation of Islam, "major polytheists" include Shi'a and Sufi Muslims, who visit the shrines of their saints to ask for intercession with God on their behalf, as well as Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists.
The overt exhortations to violence found in these passages make other statements that promote intolerance troubling even though they do not explicitly call for violent action. These other statements vilify adherents of the Ahmadi, Baha'i, and Jewish religions, as well as of Shi'a Islam. This is despite the fact that the Saudi government is obligated as a member of the United Nations and a state party to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and other relevant treaties to guarantee the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.
he delivered a banal lecture on American history to an audience in a foreign country, idly analogized his own country's history to theirs, and in the process inadvertently insulted Catholics, a group he has already alienated by way of deliberate attacks. No wonder they call him the World's Greatest Orator.
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