Image by roberthuffstutter via FlickrTexas state representative, Suzanna Gratia-Hupp, whose parents were killed by an insane gunman while her gun was out in the car, gives very moving and bold testimony about the REAL reason that the second amendment was designed to protect our God-given right to keep and bear arms.
Image via Wikipedia
Wikileads suffers Denial of service attack this Morning
Coming soon to Portland? 
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeI guess Al Gore is turning up the heat about now.
I am overwhelmed
George Soros, Liberal Idiots, Politics, The Shadow Party, The Shadow Warriors
Those are the words of George Soros. And he feels the United States must be destroyed.
George Soros was born György Schwartz in Hungary in 1930. Soros, born a Jew but now an atheist, was the son of a Nazi colloaborator and accompanied his father while the father assisted in the confiscation of private property from Jews. Through it all, he feels no guilt. In fact
“70% of Mr. Soros’s fellow Jews in Hungary, nearly a half-million human beings, were annihilated in that year. They were dying and disappearing all around him, and their numbers no doubt included many whom he knew personally. Yet he gives no sign that this put any damper on his elation, either at the time or indeed in retrospect.”
Soros has called 1944 “the best year of my life.”
Read more at www.floppingaces.net
This Should be a Career Stopper
Anwar Al-Awlaki may be the first American on the CIA's kill or capture list, but he was also a lunch guest of military brass at the Pentagon within months of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Fox News has learned.
Documents exclusively obtained by Fox News, including an FBI interview conducted after the Fort Hood shooting in November 2009, state that Awlaki was taken to the Pentagon as part of the military’s outreach to the Muslim community in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.
Read more at www.foxnews.com
It Took the British, Who have a strong Aversion to "tea parties" to define the feeling....
Both main parties are elitist. Washington is full of the same type of arrogant people who look down on those outside the system. These elites don't listen to people like me - we're just part of the country they fly over.
Both main parties are elitist. Washington is full of the same type of arrogant people who look down on those outside the system. These elites don't listen to people like me - we're just part of the country they fly over.
Conservative activists calling themselves the Tea Party arrived on the political scene in 2009. The anti-establishment movement won several victories over mainstream Republicans in primary contents ahead of November's mid-term elections.
Here four voters from across the US explain why they support the Tea Party movement and what they expect from the forthcoming vote.
Read more at www.bbc.co.uk
Hey Portland Oregon, If you want us to become European ....
How about Kicking the Illegal Aliens out... and the Anarchists on Two Wheels along with them.....
Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed", Chancellor Angela Merkel says.
In a speech in Potsdam, she said the so-called "multikulti" concept - where people would "live side-by-side" happily - did not work.
Mrs Merkel's comments come amid recent outpourings of strong anti-immigrant feeling from mainstream politicians.
A recent survey showed that more than 30% of Germans believed Germany was "overrun by foreigners".
While acknowledging that this was the case, Mrs Merkel stressed that immigrants living in Germany needed to do more to integrate, including learning to speak German.
"Anyone who does not immediately speak German", she said, "is not welcome".
Read more at www.bbc.co.uk
The Higher Tax means I will work Less is a Old Strategy:) I did that During the Carter Administration. I worked until I got the Max in the Tax Bracket and Quit till the next year… A lot of Construction hands did the same.…
The Higher Tax means I will work Less is a Old Strategy:) I did that During the Carter Administration. I worked until I got the Max in the Tax Bracket and Quit till the next year… A lot of Construction hands did the same.…
Read more at www.ashokkarra.com
- Greg Mankiw, “Higher Taxes Mean I’ll Work Less” (h/t Megan McArdle; bugmenot may of use) — from the article: Without any taxes, accepting that editor’s assignment would have yielded my children an extra $10,000. With taxes, it yields only $1,000. In effect, once the entire tax system is taken into account, my family’s marginal tax rate is about 90 percent. Is it any wonder that I turn down most of the money-making opportunities I am offered?
- Simon Rippon, “Sam Harris, the Naturalistic Fallacy, and the Slipperiness of Well-Being” — yeah, the “just” and the “good” are indeed different enough.
- Ario Farin, “All that is solid” — from the post: Leipzig is on the verge of completing a major construction project which aims to regenerate the city and its hinterland to attract more outdoor and water sports tourism. To this end, an intricate network of cycle paths has been laid out and connected away from the main roads and through the city’s remnants of nature, such as the Auenwald, the floodplain forest around which Leipzig was built.
- Christopher Hitchens, “The Politicians We Deserve” — no comment necessary.
America's liberals are happily arming Osama bin Laden
The extent to which the enemies of America abroad ape the anti-Western rhetoric of Western intelligentsia never ceases to amaze. The latest example features none other than Osama bin Laden, who in a recently released Internet recording lamented the massive flooding in Pakistan, for which he blamed - wait for it - climate change.
In the message, a voice believed to be bin Laden's proclaims, "The huge climate change is affecting our nation and is causing great catastrophes throughout the Islamic world," which "calls for generous souls and brave men to take serious and prompt action to provide relief for their Muslim brothers in Pakistan." But as John Collins Rudolf reminds us on the New York Times' Green blog, it's not the first time bin Laden has so railed:
Read more at www.washingtontimes.com
I have no idea if I got the sailing/knot imagery even remotely correct. Just taking a guess to get started with this poem.
On land any length of rope that’s hitched
to something beyond itself and takes
the strain is called the standing part.
Tossed over a beam or limb, with a slipknot
tied in the farther end, the standing part
could be said to end in a noose. At sea,
put to use, rope changes its name to line.
Terms (from poetryfoundation.org)
Phillip Booth
On land any length of rope that’s hitched
Read more at www.ashokkarra.com
to something beyond itself and takes
the strain is called the standing part.
Tossed over a beam or limb, with a slipknot
tied in the farther end, the standing part
could be said to end in a noose. At sea,
put to use, rope changes its name to line.
The part spliced into an eye or, say,
made fast to a shackle, the part that does
the work, that works, remains the standing part.
Any loop or slack curve in the running part
of the line, the part that’s not working, becomes
a bight; and the part of the running part
that’s let go, or finally eased off
until there’s no reserve left, is known
as the bitter end. As it is in other events,
ashore or at sea, that come to the end of the line.
Remember the USS Cole on the Anniversary of the Unanswered Attack on USS Cole, October 12;2000
My Flag is Half Staff for this Unpunished Crime
hey have grieved and coped, reminisced and ruminated on what might have been.
The survivors of the attack on the destroyer Cole, and the families and friends of the 17 Sailors who died on Oct. 12, 2000, have had 10 long years to mourn. To keep alive the memories so children grow up knowing a missing parent. To honor the sacrifice their shipmates made.
Some have made an uneasy peace with the past. But there is one sore spot shared by many: frustration that the criminal case against the alleged mastermind of the bombing has ground to a halt.
Saudi national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, captured in late 2002 and held for years at CIA black sites, was scheduled to be arraigned on capital murder charges in early 2009. But days before that happened, the o
They have grieved and coped, reminisced and ruminated on what might have been.
The survivors of the attack on the destroyer Cole, and the families and friends of the 17 Sailors who died on Oct. 12, 2000, have had 10 long years to mourn. To keep alive the memories so children grow up knowing a missing parent. To honor the sacrifice their shipmates made.
Some have made an uneasy peace with the past. But there is one sore spot shared by many: frustration that the criminal case against the alleged mastermind of the bombing has ground to a halt.
Saudi national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, captured in late 2002 and held for years at CIA black sites, was scheduled to be arraigned on capital murder charges in early 2009. But days before that happened, the official in charge of military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, announced she had dismissed the charges against him.
Around the same time, President Obama took office, promising to close the detainee facility in Cuba. He met with some families of Cole victims at the White House and pledged that justice would be done, but he said the cases needed to be reviewed. Read more at m.military.com
The Hermit Kingdom has Dissent???? The Emperor's suit is fraying:))
North Korea leader Kim Jong-il's oldest son, Kim Jong-nam, said he is 'personally opposed to the hereditary transfer' of power to his half-brother, Kim Jong-un.
Indeed, Kim Jong-nam, the son of an actress, professed “no interest” in a decision that he said “as a matter of course” would have been made by his father. Jong-nam, whose mother died in 2002, is assumed to have lost out on inheriting leadership after his arrest and detention in 2001 by immigration officials at Japan’s Narita Airport near Tokyo. Traveling on a fake Dominican passport, accompanied by two women and a son, aged four, he reportedly said he was bringing them to nearby Disneyland.
Read more at www.csmonitor.com
This guy is a good blogger
This blog will have 10,000 unique visits for September — my thanks to all of you for making that possible.
How is the blog doing with regards to contributing in some small way to larger goals? I’m not sure.
This blog will have 10,000 unique visits for September — my thanks to all of you for making that possible.
How is the blog doing with regards to contributing in some small way to larger goals? I’m not sure. So far I haven’t seen a rebirth of interest in the liberal arts, nor have I seen people as a whole take reading carefully seriously. A more thoughtful, authentic partisanship is a far distance from where we are now.
Read more at www.ashokkarra.com
We the People, Reclaiming Our Constitution? That is Political Propaganda?
Diane Wickberg didn't intend to become a public defender of the First Amendment. But now that she's found herself in that position, she's not backing down from the fight.
The 55-year-old Flagstaff grandmother, with the help of the Goldwater Institute, is suing Coconino County Recorder Candace Owens after Wickberg was twice stopped at the polls for wearing a "tea party" T-shirt.
Read more at www.tax.com
The rest is worth a look:))
I, the Lord, will make barren
your fields and your fairways.
Your refrigerators will be empty,
no steaks and no leg bones,
no butter and no cornbread.
And I will remove your screen doors,
force the mosquitoes indoors
where you lie on the bed undead.
For my house you have not readied,
no flat screen and no broadband.
I, the Lord, will make barren
your fields and your fairways.
Your refrigerators will be empty,
no steaks and no leg bones,
no butter and no cornbread.
And I will remove your screen doors,
force the mosquitoes indoors
where you lie on the bed undead.
For my house you have not readied,
no flat screen and no broadband.
My habitation is a wasteland
of furniture from motel rooms.
I will send the ostrich and badger
in herds through your wrecked rooms;
your beds will be entered by turnstile;
the floor will seethe with bees.
For my house is but a prefab;
For my house is but a prefab;Read more at www.ashokkarra.com
I guess she thought that the Financial Markets Suck:))
She told Canal Plus: "I see some [foreign investment funds] looking for returns of 20 or 25% at a time when fellatio is close to zero."
Read more at www.bbc.co.uk
900 miles out. Pirates are certainly widening their net.... EU needs more Assets....
n the early hours of 25 September, the Panama flagged MV LUGELA sent a distress alert to its Greek operator.
The vessel was in the Somali Basin, approximately 900 nautical miles East of Eyl, Somalia. A short while later, the vessel altered course to sail towards the Somali coast.
The vessel was in the Somali Basin, approximately 900 nautical miles East of Eyl, Somalia. A short while later, the vessel altered course to sail towards the Somali coast. There has been no contact with the ship throughout this incident.
After having transited through the Gulf of Aden, the MV LUGELA was sailing in direction of Republic of Mauritius with a cargo of steel bars and wires. The MV LUGELA, deadweight 4,281 tons, has a crew of 12, all Ukrainian.
Magliocchetti used straw donors to funnel $386,250 to members of Congress
His Friends abandoned him as soon as he was no longer useful....
Magliocchetti was a major fundraiser for three powerful Democratic members of the defense subcommittee -- the late John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, James P. Moran of Virginia and Peter J. Visclosky of Indiana -- who had repeatedly helped him and his clients.
Superlobbyist Paul Magliocchetti, who specialized in getting defense earmarks for his clients, pleaded guilty Friday to federal charges of making hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to members of Congress.
Magliocchetti admitted using straw donors -- friends, lobbyists and family members, including his aged in-laws -- to funnel $386,250 in illegal contributions to favored members of Congress including key members of the House appropriations defense subcommittee who provided hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks for the clients of his now defunct Arlington lobbying firm, The PMA Group
SOS different name... A rose by any other name.....
ACORN Housing Corporation, which was formed in 1985 by ACORN organizers, changed its name this year to Affordable Housing Centers of America.
ACORN Housing Corporation, which was formed in 1985 by ACORN organizers, changed its name this year to Affordable Housing Centers of America.
An official report released this week says an ACORN offshoot group cannot properly account for how it has spent millions of federal dollars and recommends that the group repay the government and be put on standby mode until it cleans up its act.
The report from the inspector general for the Department of Housing and Urban Development reviewed how ACORN Housing Corporation -- now called Affordable Housing Centers of America -- has spent federal grant money over the past two decades. The report described the group's book-keeping as "problematic and unsupported," and claimed that more than $65,000 in "ineligible" salary expenses were charged to a federal grant last year, including costs for six employees after they were terminated.
ACORN Housing Corporation, which was formed in 1985 by ACORN organizers, changed its name this year to Affordable Housing Centers of America.
Read more at www.foxnews.com
Wait a moment. I smell hypocrisy. Didn’t we help GM (and Chrysler) with a big bailout, and not help competitors Ford, Nissan, Honda, or Toyota or any other automaker that builds cars in the U.S.?
Moreover, the circularity of GM’s logic leads to some strange places. It would presumably allow any big corporation to get tax deductions (in effect, tax subsidies from the rest of us) for outlays for lobbyists, political ads, and political donations to members of congress – so long as these expenditures help the company relative to its competitors.
Problem is, the tax laws don’t allow this.
Nor does the law allow taxpayer-supported entities to use taxpayer dollars to influence elections. And yet this is exactly what GM is doing.
Since TARP, suspicions about big government in cahoots with big business have fueled angry tea partiers on the right and despairing cynics on the left. GM’s crass disregard for the spirit if not the letter of the law continues to fuel them.
Since the bailout, GM belongs to the taxpayers. So why are they funding political candidates?
In this file photo from April 21, 2009, American flags fly outside General Motors world headquarters in Detroit. The government and taxpayers have owned General Motors since the bailout. Why is a government-owned company choosing candidates to give campaign contributions to?
General Motors has given $90,500 to candidates in the current election cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Hmmm? Last time I looked, you and I and every other U.S. taxpayer owned a majority of GM. That means some of the money we’re earning as GM owners is being used to influence how we vote in the upcoming mid-term election.
To put it another way, we taxpayers are paying some people (GM executives) to tell us how we should vote for another group of people (House and Senate candidates) who will decide how our taxes will be used in the future.
Read more at www.csmonitor.com
Pretty Mean Jab.....
On September 23, 2010 I filmed a public "Meet and Greet" and speech...
Read more at www.youtube.com
I guess the only one who don't like being a Super Power is in the White House
While preaching to the choir at his April 12 Nuclear Security Summit, President Obama revealed his perspective on America's matchless military might: "Whether we like it or not," he said, "we (the United States) remain a dominant military superpower." That the president would even imagine "we" might not "like it," betrays his fixed membership within that "progressive" camp of self-loathing "or nots." (Mr. Obama's anti-Americanism is showing.)
Indeed, if there were ever a question whether Democrats are woefully weak on national defense, that question was cleared up on Tuesday. Taking direction from Lady Gaga (evidently Mr. Obama's new national defense czar) Senate Majority Leader and chief surrender monkey Harry "the war is lost" Reid cynically attempted, but fortunately failed, to ram through a repeal of Section 654,Title 10, USC - the law prohibiting homosexual conduct within the ranks of the armed services. Just two Democrats - Sens. Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas - voted against repeal.
Read more at www.washingtontimes.com
Why America Won....
the
On September 23, 1779, 231 years ago to the day...
"I have not yet begun to fight!" shouted John Paul Jones when the captain of the British ship Serapis asked him to surrender.
Their ships were so close their cannons hit each other and their masts entangled, yet the American ship Bonhomme Richard, named for Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, refused to give up.
When his ship began sinking, instead of striking the colors, John Paul Jones lashed his ship to enemy's to keep it afloat. After 3 more hours of fighting, the British surrendered.
Read more at navycaptain-therealnavy.blogspot.com
231 years ago today - reminder from Chris Murch USNA - 83
You cannot make this stuff up:))
The Obama administration has hit a new low in race-obsessed government. The post-racial president can't even fight bedbugs without affirmative action.
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced to "environmental justice" advocacy groups that the agency plans to spend more than a half-million dollars battling the bedtime pests in "communities disproportionately exposed to environmental harms and risk." That's bureaucratese for minority communities.
If bigoted bugs were singling out blacks, Hispanics and American Indians, liberals might have a rational reason for working harder to protect them, but in New York, where bedbugs have gone big-time, they are hitting the rich as well as the poor, black and white alike. After all, we taste the same. That's one reason the critters have been dubbed "Bloombugs" - for the famously rich Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg who has been so ineffective in fighting the plague of bloodthirsty insects.
Read more at www.washingtontimes.com
thought provoking...
Mary Elizabeth Williams, "Have Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart Crossed the Line?"
- Megan McArdle, "The Bad Financial Luck of the Irish" - from the article: But Ireland's problems are really rather special. For various reasons, including favorable corporate tax rates and an educated, English-speaking population, capital poured into the country for more than a decade, leading to a banking sector that was grossly inflated compared to the underlying economy. The US banking sector is rather tame by comparison to most European nations--bank leverage at the beginning of the crisis was about equal to GDP, rather than the three to five times GDP found in many European nations. But Ireland is almost in a class by itself.
- Mark Bauerlein, "Lincoln, History and Ideology" - the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy has been printing copies of the Gettysburg Address that do not contain the words "under God." The trouble with this: it is almost certain Lincoln said those words at Gettysburg, and the most authoritative copies of the Address contain those words.
- Mary Elizabeth Williams, "Have Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart Crossed the Line?" - from the article: But how much difference is there anymore between a Glenn Beck pompously telling an audience of acolytes exactly what it wants to hear, and Jon Stewart doing it? How much self-congratulation about how much better our side is than their side can there be to go around?
Yet even though the contract probably had just a marginal effect on the November elections, it still had value. It was a blueprint for the Republicans in Congress, a straightforward plan of action that gave the GOP majority meaning and purpose. The real worth of the contract was in governing, not electioneering. Read more at www.ashokkarra.com
Can't buy the votes to stay... Or can He
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hoped the defense policy bill would help make a final pre-election argument for Democrats while energizing the base on gay rights and immigration.
But what he got was a failed vote and a mix of frustration and disappointment from the people he was trying to help. The stalled defense authorization bill — one of the last major Senate votes before November’s elections — was emblematic of the Nevada senator’s struggles to cut deals with the GOP while still pleasing core Democratic constituencies.
The disappointment was widespread.
Read more at www.politico.com
And Democrats on both sides of the Capitol are unhappy that a debate on gay rights and immigration distracted yet again from issue No. 1: jobs.
Ooh! So NorKo sinks a South Korean military ship and we better back off, lest they strike out against South Korea! Gotta love that logic.
So we basically say to Kim the Younger: do as Daddy has done and you will be both respected and rewarded.
Spineless.
NYT John Pomfret reporting that America and its allies in Asia are working to reopen talks with North Korea, afraid that the ongoing succession process could send the whole relationship down the path to war.
Score one for the Kims and so much for Team Obama's "strategic patience" (tough talk and shows of force and letting the Kims stew in their own paranoid juices). I had thought the White House had settled on a solid path of not caving in, but Obama seems to have chickened out rather quickly:
Read more at www.thomaspmbarnett.com
And another one Departs the Ship
President Obama's top economic
adviser, Larry Summers, is leaving the White House at the end of the year, the administration announced Tuesday.
Summers will return to Harvard University as a professor.
Read more at www.foxnews.com
So why all these twists and turns to say people get mad when others talk?
So why all these twists and turns to say people get mad when others talk?
“A Man may make a Remark” (952)
Emily Dickinson
A Man may make a Remark -
In itself — a quiet thing
That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark
In dormant nature — lain -
Let us deport — with skill -
Read more at www.ashokkarra.com
Let us discourse — with care -
Powder exists in Charcoal -
Before it exists in Fire.
Testing... Testing... one,... two,... three...
French intelligence services are hunting a female would-be suicide bomber who
they believe could be planning to target the Paris metro.
France raised its terrorist alert warning today amid fears of suicide bomb
plots against the Paris transport network.
French intelligence services are hunting a female would-be suicide bomber who
they believe could be planning to target the Paris metro.
The alert followed a tip-off from a friendly intelligence agency – thought to
be Algeria’s — warning of an imminent al-Qaeda threat.
Read more at www.telegraph.co.uk
Five French nationals have been kidnapped close to a French uranium mine in
Niger in the last week, while a bomb scare caused alarm at the Eiffel Tower.
