"If this be treason, make the most of it."

"Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the first had his Cromwell, and George the Third -- may profit from their example. If this be treason, make the most of it." Patrick Henry, Speech in the House of Burgesses, May 29, 1765, regarding the Stamp Act

His name is Edward Snowden. He's a 29 year old high school dropout from Hawaii and he's an intelligence analyst formerly employed at both the CIA and NSA. He's also currently on the run, believed to be hiding somewhere in Hong Kong, from the government that he just blew the whistle on, revealing that they have been tapping not only into the phone records of millions of their citizens but also tracking their online searches, videos, and private records. No, this isn't the Chinese government - he's on the run from the U.S., who wants to prosecute him for his "reckless disclosures."

Fortunately for Snowden, the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Hong Kong excludes political offenses. Unfortunately for Snowden, that may not be enough to protect him. The extradition treaty states that 'Hong Kong can refuse to transfer a suspected criminal to the United States if giving up the person “implicates” the “defense, foreign affairs or essential public interest or policy” of the People’s Republic of China.' If the DOJ asks for Snowden, more than likely Hong Kong will give them Snowden.

Snowden doesn't think he's safe. In an interview filmed roughly three weeks ago when he officially became a whistleblower, he says that he expects to be a fugitive for the rest of his life, "however long that may be." He knows what he did made him a target. It's interesting, then, that he's a self-declared whistleblower - he revealed himself and saved the administration the effort of conducting an investigation (and since we know how competent the administration is when investigating important issues, he might have been able to go, I don't know, the rest of his life before they turned up anything on him.)

So why do it? Some people are saying he's an attention seeker, hoping for his 15 minutes of fame. Some, including himself, say he did it because it was the right thing to do. Which leads to the obvious question: was it the right thing to do? Was it treason or was it heroic?

It was treason.

He's a hero.

Here's what he told: the NSA has been collected the phone records of millions of Verizon customers each day and plugging them into a database. They do not have the content of the phone conversations, but are keeping track to see if anyone is in communication with terror suspects outside of the U.S. This has been going on for 7 years. It's since been revealed that this database extends to AT&T, Sprint, and credit-card transactions. At the same time, information about the program PRISM came out. PRISM is an internet scouring program that allows the government to track internet usage through nine different corporations, including Facebook, Skype, Apple, and Google. I have not been in touch with anyone outside the U.S., there's nothing wrong with my taxes, and I'm not planning on starting a conservative organization anytime soon. Just thought I'd save some time for the faceless federal agent who's watching me type this write now so they don't have to track me down anywhere else. 

The reaction to this revelations has been passionate on both sides. For the public, it has led to understandable outrage and an unprecedented level of government mockery. For the feds, it's led to....an actual statement addressing the issue, rather than denying knowledge of it beforehand. That's notable - BO did not find out about this on the news and he's defending it. In a press conference last week, BO said:

• "The programs are secret in the sense that they are classified. They are not secret, in that every member of Congress has been briefed." 

There's the BO lie we all knew was coming! Many members of Congress have already come forward and said that they knew nothing about the programs.

• "They may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism."

Like the Boston Bombers.

• "I welcome this debate and I think it's healthy for our democracy. I think it's a sign of maturity, because probably five years ago, six years ago, we might not have been having this debate."

It's easy for him to say he welcomes debate now, once it's out in the open. 5 or 6 years ago we weren't having this debate....because we didn't know this debate needed to be had.

The 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Back in 1787, this amendment was necessary because one of the primary reasons the Revolution was fought was because of the writs of assistance, which allowed British regulars to enter and search the houses of colonists without search warrants. That's not happening today (yet) but the amendment wasn't met to read literally - it's about privacy. The 4th amendment protects the privacy of the people from the prying eyes of the government. PRISM and these NSA phone databases are a major invasion of that privacy.

The feds are saying that this invasion of privacy is necessary for our protection and that Snowden has put us all at risk now that the terrorists know that they can be tracked via phone and internet (side note: Osama Bin Laden didn't use a phone or internet because he knew he could be tracked.) The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, says that this has damaged our intelligence gathering capabilities. 

In 1759, Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." 

Which brings me back my original statement. Oran's Dictionary of the Law defines treason as "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]." By that definition, Snowden committed treason. He revealed information to the public that the government wanted hidden. He confirmed what the terrorists already knew - we use modern day technology to track them. 

You know who else committed treason? George Washington. Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Jefferson. Patrick Henry. Each and every Forefather of this country acted against the Mother Country and did what they believed was right, knowingly putting their lives in danger to fight for the rights they believed in. That's what Edward Snowden did. He committed treason to protect the 4th Amendment of the Constitution for the American people. 

Which begs the real question: what has happened to this country that it's become treason to defend the Constitution? 

God bless America

"...that is outrageous, it is contrary to our traditions, and people have to be held accountable and it's got to be fixed."

"But I can tell you that if you've got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous, it is contrary to our traditions, and people have to be held accountable and it's got to be fixed. So we'll wait and see what exactly all the details and the facts are. But I've got no patience with it. I will not tolerate it. And we'll make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this. - BO 5/13/13

Today Jay Carney held a press conference to discuss the recent Benghazi scandal.....and IRS scandal.....and AP scandal. In that press conference, he revealed that 1) the White House knew nothing about any of these incidents and 2) none of them can be blamed on the Obama Administration. IF they can all be proven (ignore the fact that the IRS has apologized for targeting Tea Party groups) then some people "have to be held accountable." Because it's "outrageous" that the IRS would target conservative organizations based on their ideologies (if they did, blame the IRS!) or that the government would tap and record AP reporters home and work phones for two months worth of conversations (if they did, blame the Department of Justice!) or that someone would edit the Benghazi talking points twelve times, eliminating all references to Al-Queda (if they did, blame the CIA!). Outrageous. Unheard of. Trust your government.

It amazes me that BO and Jay Carney can stand in front of the nation and lie through their teeth. I watched Carney's press conference this morning, not because I thought he'd reveal anything pertinent, but because I thought it'd be a good laugh. And I was right. All I learned from Carney (apart from the definition of the word "unfettered") was that, not only are the morons in charge of this country total liars, they are also completely inept and believe the American people to be complete idiots. Actually, I learned all of that a long time ago, but it was still fun to watch Carney squirm as the media FINALLY asked questions of more importance than where MOO gets her hair styled.

It's no wonder that Carney was overwhelmed today - I think anyone who has been paying attention the last week has been overwhelmed. BO has suddenly gone from the media's darling at the top of the world to Nixon Jr. So what exactly is happening in all three of the scandals that have blown up this week? And what does it mean for dear leader?

#1 - Benghazi
This is the one that started it all and, I believe, the one that BO's administration most wants forgotten. About two weeks ago, reports came out about three "whistleblowers," three former members of the administration who had certain classified information but had been told not to reveal it, decided to speak out. The got attorneys and testified at a hearing before the House Oversight Committee, revealing details that had never been released before, and putting the WH into some very bad light. The information they revealed was so bad that the next day, the MSM started asking questions about Benghazi to Carney! The whistleblowers were Greg Hicks, former deputy chief of missions in Libya and the 2nd highest in command there behind Ambassador Stevens, Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant Secretary of State for counterterrorism, and Eric Nordstrom, former regional security officer in Libya, and they dropped some bombshells.

1. There were multiple stand-down orders given the night of the attack - and they absolutely made the difference between life and death for the four Americans murdered there. Despite the fact the Lt. Col. Gibson had his men in Tripoli ready and on the runway to board a plane to Benghazi, they were not allowed to leave their military base. Hicks, however, was able to travel to Benghazi before the end of the attack. If he could make it, soldiers could have made it, and since two of the men did not die until nearly 7 hours after the attack began, that means someone willingly chose not to save them.
2. Hicks told Hillary Clinton at 2 a.m., as the attack was happening, that it was a terrorist attack. She blamed it on a YouTube video three days later, at the memorial service of four dead Americans. So did Susan Rice - five times. So did BO - for days after the attack. (Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is still in prison, by the way, for practicing his unfettered right to the 1st amendment.) 
3. The movie was a "non-event," according to Hicks....until the President made it one. The day after the attack, the Libyan President immediately said it was a terrorist attack. Rice, Clinton, and BO said that wasn't the case. Guess what? That pissed him off. It humiliated him on a national stage. So when the FBI wanted to come investigate, he refused. The investigation didn't begin for 17 days after the attack, by which time the crime scene had been thoroughly contaminated. 
4. Ambassador Stevens was taken to a hospital the night of the attack. The hospital was run by the terrorists who attacked the embassy.

Two really, really important things were brought about by these revelations. First, more whistleblowers, rumored to be from the CIA, are going to come forward, now that they know they won't be threatened like the first three (something BO "was not aware" of). By bet: one will be General Petraeus and we'll discover that his sex scandal was revealed because he disagreed with the changing of the talking points. Which brings me to the second important occurrence - suddenly, the main stream media is interested in the attacks and the day after the hearings, an ABC reporter discovered that the talking points used by UN Ambassador Susan Rice following the attacks underwent 12 revisions before they were released. The initial talking points were written up by the CIA...which is why BO's decision to blame the CIA for any changes is perplexing. But he's never put a lot of effort into trying to fool Americans. Of course, the White House denounces this, saying there was only one "stylistic" change that had nothing to do with eliminating references to Al-Queda. I guess they're just assuming the public will ignore the evidence in the form of the actual changes that were made? They are refusing to release e-mails regarding the talking points too (because this administration is transparent, you guys!).

Then, in the midst of this scandal, two more scandals were revealed, neither of which make the WH look good (we'll get to those) but neither of which would implicate BO or Hillary for murder, either. It's incredibly convenient. And it's not working. Those damn reporters have started doing their jobs and continue to ask questions regarding Benghazi. Now, BO and Carney's new mantra is that there's nothing there. This is some GOP spun "sideshow" with no substance.

It matters to Eric Nordstrom. And Greg Hicks. And Pat Smith, the mother of the murdered Sean Smith.

#2 - IRS

"30 percent of this country will always vote Republican. I'm just asking why? Yes, paranoia, greed, and racism are fun, but..."Bill Maher said that in 2011. It was funny then; now it's freakin' hysterical.

Friday, the Internal Revenue Service 'apologized' to Tea Party and Conservative affiliated groups for targeting them for further scrutiny for tax exemptions. Since 2010. Something that IRS Senior Official Lois Lerner has known about since 2011. Tea Party members who thought their tax exemption forms were strange brought them up in 2010, saying they were being singled out, but they were dismissed as paranoid conservatives.

But seriously, folks, trust the government.

An IRS unit in Cincinnati figured this all out when they were sorting through tax exemptions forms for 2012. They had so many political ones that they'd separated them into a different group and something. didn't. add. up. (Maybe this was too complicated for the higher ups, like Lois Lerner, to comprehend. After all, she isn't very good at math.)

Groups were targeted for intense scrutiny if they contained the words "Tea Party" or "conservative" or if part of their goals were "to improve our country" or to "educate about the Constitution." You know, radical things like that. These organizations had to answer incredibly intrusive questions about who funded them, how often they received funding, if they were in contact with members of any legislative bodies, if they or anyone in their family was considering running for any type of public office, and if they had an personal relationships with anyone in office (please describe). The replies for these forms took up to 500 pages to complete. Liberal groups of the same size and scope were fast-tracked at an average pace of 9 months; conservative groups went through this process for 27 months.

Now, using the IRS for political purposes isn't anything new. According to his daughter, FDR (my favorite guy!) was probably the first president to use the IRS to intimidate political opponents. That means Huey Long was likely the first victim. Long was the governor of Louisiana before he was elected to the Senate in 1930. There, after initially supporting FDR's New Deal plan, he eventually became its harshest critic (because it sucked). FDR called Long one of the two most dangerous men in the country. When FDR tried to refuse him federal funding, Long one-upped FDR by refusing to accept any federal funding that was sent to Louisiana and telling them to "go to hell." Long began his own crusade to gain a national base and possibly run as an independent in a future election - and his success terrified FDR. Polls soon showed he had support from about 15% of the country - enough to swing the election to the Republicans.

FDR had already begun using the IRS against Long. It's unknown when the investigation started, by three days after Henry Morgentheu was appointed as the Secretary of Treasury, he called Elmer Irey, the head of the special intelligence division of the IRS, into his office and said, "Why have you stopped investigating Huey Long, Mr. Irey?" When Irey said it was on hold, Morgentheu instructed him to get right back on it. He had to report to Morgentheu with weekly reports. When he failed to arrive one week after nearly a year of this, Morgentheu called and said, "You haven't seen me in eight days."

Long resented the intrusion of up to 250 IRS agents in his state and said so frequently. By 1935, the IRS began indicting low-level members of Long's administration. After Long was assassinated in September 1935, the indictments of many of the members were dropped after they pledged to support Roosevelt in the next election.

Andrew Johnson and John Kennedy both were reported to use the IRS to buy votes. Perhaps the most infamous presidential abuse of the IRS, though, came from Richard Nixon. Nixon aides developed "enemies lists," including political thinkers, engineers, and reporters, for whom to target with the IRS. He created a system for the IRS to use to persecute people, rather than look at cases individually. One of the counts listed for his impeachment was how he and his administration worked:

"to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law."

Sound familiar?

(On a side note, remember how the Republicans have been against gun registries because they will lead to national gun registration which will give the government knowledge about citizens that they have no business having? Remember that slippery slope argument? Remember how liberals said it was totally unrealistic?)

#3 - AP 

This one must have been particularly grueling for the MSM to digest. Barack Obama, the media's darling, their savior, the man whose ass they've kissed and whose bloody footprints they've covered for over four years, abandoned them.

In April and May 2012, the Department of Justice has secretly obtained and recorded phone calls, both home and work, from reporters and editors of the Associated Press staff. They seized 20 separate phone lines and recorded about 100 different journalists. No official reason for the search has been released, although they may have been searching for who revealed information about a foiled terrorist attack on May 7, 2012.

We have this thing called the 1st amendment. It guarantees the right of free speech. We also have a 4th amendment which protects against unlawful searches and seizures and requires a warrant for such things. In instances like this, that warrant is called a subpoena. Rules provided by the Justice Department state that subpoenas of records must be approved by the attorney general. News organizations are typically notified in advance if the government wants phone records so that negotiations can take place, since another rule regarding subpoenas is that they can be used only after all reasonable attempts at another solution have been made. They are also required to be as narrow and detailed as possible to avoid a government intrusion......like this.

What now?
So where does this leave us? With a government we can't trust, which we'e known for a long time, but with a media suddenly inspired and pissed off. The next week or two could be a circus. I had a professor talk about Watergate recently and he said that that summer (forty years ago from this summer), people were riveted to the news; that everyday something new was revealed and the arrows closed down on Nixon more and more.

But that won't happen here, for course, because this wasn't the governments fault. At least, not BO's part of the government. It was the CIA, which BO has no authority in, and the IRS, which BO has not authority in, and the Justice Department, which BO has no authority in. Which begs the question, what exactly does BO have authority in? If, like Carney would like us to believe, he didn't know about any of these scandals until he learned about it from CNN just like us (NOT like us - I learned it from FOX), what else doesn't he know? Why can't he control his government?

But that's only if you believe Carney and BO. If you don't, there really only one question to ask. If someone will "have to be held accountable," is BO going to make us go through the trouble of impeaching him, or will he just resign?

Stay tuned, folks. The ride is just beginning.

God bless America.

"...force them to drop their lawsuit to have the so-called partial birth abortion ban ruled unconstitutional."

"We have all been concerned lately with the rise of conservatism in this country, especially as it relates to women. You’ve read the alarming news about the Justice Department’s request for hospitals to turn over the private medical records of dozen of patients. This cynical ploy is to designed to intimidate a group of physicians and force them to drop their lawsuit to have the so-called partial birth abortion ban ruled unconstitutional."- MOo (Michelle Obama) in a 2004 campaign letter for her husband.

Adolf Hitler. Josef Stalin. Osama Bin Laden. Adam Lanza. Dylan Harris. Eric Klebold. Lee Harvey Oswald. Seung-Hui Cho. Boston 4/15 Bomber. Ted Kaczynski. There's a list somewhere of people who will rot in Hell. These names are on it. Kermit Gosnell is at the top of that list.

Kermit Gosnell is a serial murderer. He's despicable, he's sick, and he's going to suffer eternally for his crimes, but he's not going to suffer here. Here, the media turns the other way. Here, Pennsylvania Department of Health, the Department of State and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health ignored complaints about his facility. Here, the President "can't comment" on a case in progress (unless that case is Trayvon Martin) but "his position on the basic principle — that as President Clinton said, abortions ought to be safe, legal and rare — is very clear."

Abortion. Is that what this is? Is that what's it's called when 30-week old, six-pound infants are born screaming onto a table and their spinal cords are snipped? Is that what it's called when said baby "is big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop"?

Kermit Gosnell was an abortionist unlike any other. He didn't have a standard fee - he charged by the pound. The bigger the baby, the higher the cost. Gosnell's "House of Horrors" is almost too awful to describe - his "clinic" served mostly poor and minority women, who were placed on blood-stained tables in a room that stank of urine, with flea-ridden cats scouring the floors, and parts of fetuses in jars around the room. These remains were only 45 of the estimated 400 babies he murdered.

For the last 5 weeks, he's been in trial on 8 counts of murder - 7 babies and 1 patient, who died when she was given too much of a cheap sedative (I'm not sure if her 19-week old fetus, which was found in Gosnell's freezer 3 months later, was one of the 7 babies or not.) These charged do not include the woman who, after she changed her mind about her abortion, was drugged, tied down, and forced to continue.

The truth is, there's not much I can do here to give justice to the horror of these crimes. I will not attach pictures of the babies - babies, not fetuses - because I saw one by accident and it scarred me for life. I don't like to make predictions, but this man will be found guilty - if not here, then by a higher power - and he will rightfully suffer. And God is already with the babies that he killed from 1972-2011. Kermitt Gosnell is the sickest thing in the world right now.

But what comes close is the media's decision to completely ignore the trial. It's easy to find information on Gosnell - he's not a low-key guy - but none of it comes from the media. And do you know what? It's because they are doing what they do best - covering the ass of our Savior, BO.

Let me explain the difference between abortion, partial-birth abortion, and Gosnell's murders. There isn't one. It's all murder, it just occurs at different times. Abortion as it's typically referred to generally happens within the first trimester of pregnancy, during the first 19 weeks. 88-92% of all abortions in the United States occur within this time frame. Partial-birth abortion, also known as late term abortion, occurs after 20 weeks. It is around this time that babies start to become "viable," meaning they can survive outside the womb. Here's an actual five-step instruction guide for partial-birth abortionists:

1. Guided by ultrasound, the abortionist grabs the baby’s legs with forceps.
2. The baby’s leg is pulled out into the birth canal.
3. The abortionist delivers the baby’s entire body, except for the head.
4. The abortionist jams scissors into the baby’s skull. The scissors are then opened to enlarge the skull.
5. The scissors are removed and a suction catheter is inserted. The child’s brains are sucked out, causing the skull to collapse. The dead baby is then removed.

What Gosnell did is infanticide - the baby is born, alive, and is then killed. BO supports this.

As an Illinois state senator in 2002, Barack Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. Before the vote, he was the only person to speak out against it. He said (emphasis mine),

As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child – however way you want to describe it – is now outside the mother’s womb and the doctor continues to think that it’s nonviable but there’s, let’s say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just coming out limp and dead, that, in fact, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved.

Ignoring all the "in fact," "uh," and "let's say's" in that passage, BO was more concerned about the doctor performing the botched abortion than the living child on the table. He thought that it was too much trouble to call in a second doctor to check to see if the baby could be saved and that the decision should just be up to the doctor who just messed up the abortion (and, since it's that doctors job to correctly perform abortions, how eager are they going to be to acknowledge that they messed up?)

His opinion hasn't changed since then, of course. In 2012, BO gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in this country, to retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who once wrote regarding partial-birth abortions "That holding--that the word 'liberty' in the Fourteenth Amendment includes a woman’s right to make this difficult and extremely personal decision--makes it impossible for me to understand how a State has any legitimate interest in requiring a doctor to follow any procedure other than the one that he or she reasonably believes will best protect the woman in her exercise of this constitutional liberty." He voted in support of partial-birth abortions twice in the Supreme Court. Our highest civilian honor in this country. I wonder what lesser people are like...

So the media doesn't cover Gosnell because this might come back and bite the Commander-in-Chief in the ass. That's not the only reason, of course. BO's pro-choice in general and so is most of the liberal media, which is why they didn't cover 500,000 people who joined the March for Life in D.C. on March 18th (next one is January 22, 2014!) You'd think that would be hard to miss.

But pro-life isn't hot these days. No, the hot topic is "women's rights." Oh, how I hate that term. Why do women, or any other "rights" group, for that matter, feel the need to make themselves into victims? What "rights" are they fighting for? It's strange, but I've been a woman my entire life and I've never felt discriminated against.

So what are "women's rights," exactly? It's interesting, but when I searched the term (on wikipedia - teachers lie, it's a great source) I found that these "rights" generally include: suffrage, education, to hold public office, to own property, military service, to enter into legal contracts, to fair wages, and marital, parental, and religious rights. Please, any women who read this, tell me the last time you were denied entrance into school for being a woman. Actually, let's think about all the quotas colleges have and how many of them so desperately want equal numbers of men and women that they turn down qualified men in order to balance off the numbers. Men's rights, anyone?

There was one other right that was mentioned and that was "to bodily integrity and autonomy." I guess that would be where abortion fits in. Except it's not. Abortion isn't about a woman's body anymore - it's about the body (and the life) of the baby.

"But pregnancy affects the woman!" cry the feminazi's of the world (and the pro-choicers. Same diff.)

Yes, no duh pregnancy affects the woman.

"So if a woman doesn't want to be pregnant, she has the right to not be pregnant."

Right, again! And if a woman doesn't want to be pregnant, then she can prevent that. By not having sex.

I know that's a radical idea, but it's also effective 99.9% of the time. A woman has "bodily autonomy" because she has the choice to use her body to have sex. I think most people know that sex can result in pregnancy. If a woman chooses to take that risk, then she should accept the consequences - a baby.

Describing a baby as a consequence sounds so harsh to me, but I guess that's how some people see it - not as a life, not as a child, but as a burden. And that's sad, but if that's how people see it, then they shouldn't be allowed to be parents, which is why there's this wonderful thing called adoption. Last year, over 3,000 adoptions came from South Korea, China, Russia, Ethiopia, and Ukraine in addition to over 9,000 adoptions occurring in the United States. People want children. And children deserve life.

The biggest argument for pro-baby killers is rape. And I see the argument. I just went on and on about a woman's choice to have sex, but in rape it's not the woman's choice. I'm still against abortion. I'm sorry for women who are raped, especially if they get pregnant as a result, but it's not the baby's fault. I can understand if they don't want the baby, but it's still a baby. Again, adoption. Or keep the child. Because even if the child is a child by rape, it's still a life. And that child did nothing to deserve to die - punishing the baby won't hurt the rapist.

• And rapes (and incest) only account for 1% of the total number of abortions performed a year. 
• Only 12% of abortions are performed because of risks to the mother's health. 
• A heart breaking 86% of abortions are done for convenience.
• 50% of abortions are performed by women under the age of 25. 
• 40% of minors having abortions report that their parents don't know about it. 
• 72% of Planned Parenthood's patients are below the poverty's line.
• At the current rate, soon 1/3 of all women will have had an abortion. 
• About 3,000 people died on 9/11. More than 3,000 abortions occur a day.
• Roughly 1 million abortions occur a year, about the total number of deaths in all American wars combined.
• 55 million babies have been aborted since abortion was legalized by Roe v. Wade. 

I'll end with a quote from a man who was right about damn near everything, it seems.

"I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born."-Ronald Reagan

God bless America. 

"We believe it to be illegal and we know it to be oppressive."

"Since the industry began to formulate a Code under the NRA in June, 1933, we have at all times opposed any form of price-fixing. We believe it to be illegal and we know it to be oppressive. We quite understand that, if we were compelled to sell our tires at exactly the same price as they sell their tires, their great national consumer acceptance would soon capture our purchasers and ruin us." - Carl Pharis, general manager of Pharis Tire and Rubber Company, one of the victims of the NRA

Since 1948, at least 17 surveys of historians, professors, and presidential scholars have ranked the presidents from best to worst. Only five presidents have been in the top 10 of all 17 of these surveys. They are: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt. When the rankings are averaged, Abraham Lincoln comes out as #1 and FDR as #2.

The amount of praise that this country has heaped upon Franklin Roosevelt has always been a thorn in my side (to put it mildly.) I've steadfastly stood by my belief that FDR was the closest thing to a Socialist this country had until BO came about and that the credit he gets for pulling the country out of the Great Depression is misplaced, since entering World War II is what pulled us out and he tried his damnedest to keep us out of the war. Very few people have ever agreed with me.

Then, by chance, I came across a book. This book was called New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy has Damaged America. I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven. Burton Folsom, Jr. took every thought I'd ever had about FDR and backed it up with facts so concrete that I wanted to run out into the street and find someone to argue with just so I could prove them wrong.

What was even more astounding, though, is that Folsom wrote his book in 2008, before BO had had time to make an impact. To read the policies that FDR set in motion, and see them playing out now, is mind-boggling....and terrifying. This is the start of several blogs I'm planning to write on Folsom's book and BO's administration today. So next time a liberal tries to argue that FDR is ranked right up there with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, you can set them straight and watch them writhe as you decimate their idol.

The NRA

Then

No, not that NRA. FDR's NRA (boy, these acronyms are going to get old real fast) stood for National Recovery Act and was signed into law in 1933. Under the NRA, a majority in any industry had government approval to establish the expansion limitations, wages, hours, and prices of all products within an industry. Anyone in that industry was subject to the "codes" established by that majority and faced jail time or heavy fines if they failed to comply.

Sound like Socialism? Because that's what it was.

Under these codes, everyone in any particular field was equal - which resulted in next to no competition or innovation; there's a reason that applications for patents for inventions were lower in 1939 than they had been any year in the 1920's. With set prices, industries had no motivation for improvement.

All the industries under the NRA followed a trend - higher prices, higher wages, and less hours. Perhaps in theory this meant that more people would have more money and more time to buy products; in reality, most businesses couldn't afford to pay workers more to do less, the result being that these companies stopped hiring and starting firing.

One example comes in the tire industry, whose codes were established by giants like Goodyear, Goodrich, and Firestone. Prices for tires immediately raised and thus, so did the price of cars. America's export of cars decreased and so did the number of Americans buying automobiles - American car sales in 1933 were 1/3 of what they had been in 1929. Inside the industry, tycoons like Goodyear and Goodrich flourished despite the decrease in sales because they had a nationwide audience. Small companies, like Carl Pharis' company in Newark, Ohio, survived by selling quality tires at cheaper prices to a small and supportive community that trusted their products. When the codes were established, though, Pharis was forced in increase the price of his tires despite knowing that he could have made a profit at a lower price. When the prices were evened out, though, he didn't have the same audience and couldn't compete. He fired all 1,000 of his workers and closed down.

Not everyone complied to the codes like Pharis did but they suffered the consequences nonetheless. Jacob Maged of Jersey City, New Jersey, owned a dry cleaning business. For 22 years, his low prices and quality work had enabled him to keep up with bigger companies in town despite the fact that he was on the outskirts of town. Under the NRA Cleaners and Dyers Code, he was instructed to charge 40 cents to press a suit. He continued to charge is customers 35 cents in order to stay in business. Not only was he thrown in jail for this, he was also fined $100. According to the Washington Post at the time, "For a parallel it is necessary to go to the Fascist or Communist states of Europe."

This wasn't a singular case. Between 1937 and 1939, business failures increased 50%. So common were the problems for small businessmen, in fact, that the NRA was taken to the Supreme Court in 1935 and unanimously voted unconstitutional.

Now

The NRA never returned but the assault on small businesses is something that the U.S. is all too familiar with today through Obamacare. Under Obamacare, employers will be required to provide the same health care plan to all their employees...if they employ more than 50 full-time workers. Like the NRA, if they fail to comply, they will be forced to pay a fine. The solution? Either pay the fine (which, in many cases, would be cheaper than the health care plans) or, much like the businessmen under the NRA who could no longer afford to pay such high wages, small businesses are going to keep their employee count under 50.

What's more, just like the businessman who no longer needed motivation to improve his products, without competition, there's no reason for doctors to improve the quality of their service. Under Obamacare, patients will be assigned a doctor rather than choosing their own like they would in, say, a free country. In a 2012 survey, based on 5,000 answers, 60% of doctors questioned said that they believed that Obamacare would have a negative impact on patient care. Without competition, doctors won't have a chance of earning higher salaries through hard work and improvement. 43% said that they were considering retiring in the next five years because of the law, 90% said that they wouldn't encourage their family to go into health care, and one doctor was quoted as saying, "I would not recommend becoming an M.D. to anyone."

This is what happens when government's try to regulate matters that they have no business being involved in - everybody loses.


Up next: How FDR started government paternity...and how BO encourages it.


God bless America

"...awakening the natural curiosity of young minds..."

"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards." - Anatole France, French poet, journalist, and novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921.

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” - Mark Twain

I like to read. I'll read fantasy or fiction books if they're really good, but mainly I like to read historical books, about soldiers or presidents and about true events which, I believe, are usually better than fiction. I like to write - obviously. I like to discuss and debate, but I like to do research and have facts first. I like history and I like politics, and, quite simply, I really just like to learn. Unfortunately, I'm currently in college, so I don't really have a lot of time for that right now.

No, you read that right - I can't learn as much as I'd like to right now because I'm going to school. Does that seem counterintuitive to you? It sure does to me.

I had a unique high school experience - it was very small, very personal, and very, very intense. I wrote a 18-page long argumentative essay on physician-assisted suicide when I was in 10th grade; I wrote another 20+ page paper on the Spanish Influenza in 1918, the 'forgotten flu,' before I graduated; I picked up a poem I'd never read before, analyzed it for 15 minutes and then gave a 10 minute speech on it. I'm not telling you this to brag about what I considered to be the best education I could have received - I'm telling you so you can see how exponentially high my expectations were for college, because everyone told me my education would only get better.

I don't think they intentionally lied. For most students I've met in the two colleges I've attended, college has been harder than high school. But it's not for me. And I hate that.

There's a long list of things I could rant about, but there's one aspect that I think needs to be discussed and it applies to education at all levels and that is the lack of actual thinking that goes on in schools and the dangers that poses.

What do I mean by the lack of thinking? I mean that students are not taught to question anything. They're given worksheets and sat down in front of a television and told to answer notes. They're told that what they are taught are the only facts there are. And this is dangerous because when they're told that what they're learning is the absolute truth, they eventually start to believe that.

This poses problems in a number of areas - what if scientists didn't question the truths they're given? what if historians just stopped researching the past because everything's already known? what if engineers stopped trying to make new versions of the iPhone? - but I think it poses the biggest danger through the power of indoctrination it gives educators.

Indoctrination - the process of inculcating ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or a professional methodology. It is often distinguished from education by the fact that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned.

Isn't that exactly what I just described? Children and young adults being taught things without questioning them and accepting them as the truth?

I'm going to give you some examples of this, ranging for college level educators all the way down to grade school. The examples that I'm giving are personal and if these are the kind of things that I've seen personally, just imagine how much more goes on. (Or don't. It's kind of infuriating.)

College Level Indoctrination

I'm in a class about the Revolutionary War. My professor has openly stated that he doesn't support the American Revolution. I knew he felt this way before he acknowledged it, though, because of the kind of statements he made in class, which I've been writing down.

• "There are two ways to wealth - inheritance and marriage."
• "He exhibited many traits similar to his American colleagues: He was greedy. He exploited power. He was wealthy."
• "[The American Revolution] was contrived, it was wicked, it was....'daring.'"

Earlier this week, I'd had it. He'd finished telling us about an incident of tarring and feathering on a British supporter that had apparently happened for no reason so I looked him up. John Malcolm was his name and the day he was attacked by a mob of colonists, he'd been seen screaming at a boy in the streets and when another man confronted him about it, he'd bashed him in the head with his walking cane so hard the man fell unconscious and had a permanent scar. Now, I'm not advocating for tarring and feathering (though my professor might - he also said that that would be a good solution to all these gun control issues, which he assured us was a joke. I'm still not sure who he was referring to) but the context of that situation was important - it made a difference between the colonists seeming like radical savages to explaining the tensions that were going on at the time - and he left it out and would have left it out unless I hadn't brought it up. And this wasn't the first instance of this happening.

Now, I can deal with this professor's liberal extremism (which he vehemently denies - he refers to himself as a moderate constantly, which is still wrong because he shouldn't bring his politics in at all). I'm smart enough to look beyond what he's saying and realize that he's full of it. But, apparently, some of my classmates aren't. (Case in point: one girl said that she'd always thought that tarring and feathering was just an expression and didn't really exist. People agreed with her.) Today, a different girl said that, before this class, she'd believed the Revolution was an honorable event but this class has showed her how silly and terrible the patriots were. Now, she feels that "It's actually kind of embarrassing." 

The founding of our country. 

This is what is being taught to my generation. And they all believe it. This is how the cycle starts.

Primary School Indoctrination

But we'd be foolish to believe that it didn't begin before college. Children are being indoctrinated with liberal beliefs everyday. 

On President's Day, my former (private) elementary school had an assembly to, one would think, celebrate presidents. "A Prayer for President Barack Obama" (obviously this is a religious school - the word 'prayer' is forbidden in public schools/everyday society) was shown. Please take 4 minutes and 23 seconds to watch the whole thing.


That is not a prayer. This is propaganda. This is a way to mold young, vulnerable minds into believing what liberal teachers want them to believe. Shots of MLK interspersed with BO and 'hope' and 'change' - it's basically a subliminal message. Children seen MLK, who they're taught is good, and know the words 'hope' and, they way they are taught 'change' are good so of course BO is good too! Look how happy all those people are!

The principal apologized. She said most of the kids didn't understand anyway.

OF COURSE THEY DIDN'T! THAT'S THE PROBLEM! These kids see these things, presented by their teachers, whom they trust to teach them what's right and what's wrong, and they accept them and no one ever tells them otherwise because, quite frankly, most of their parents are as brainwashed as they are. This is how liberalism begins.

60% of people ages 18-29 voted Democrat in the 2012 election. That's the largest majority of votes by any age group that either BO or Mitt Romney received. 60%.

60%.

I heard a saying once: If you're not a liberal at 20 you have no heart; if you're not a conservative at 40 you have no brain. That's changing. Too many people don't have brains and they won't until they start getting properly educated - not by teachers, but by people who actually understand this stuff. Instead of fighting, instead of blaming, we need to be educating.

These blogs are the best I do because I'm stuck in college.

God bless America. 

"...each individual is accountable for his or her own actions."

"We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his or her own actions." - Ronald Reagan

"I love listening to these guys lecture us about deficits. I inherited a trillion dollar deficit." - BO, still blaming Bush in 2012

I just recently finished Peggy Noonan's "When Character was King," a book about Ronald Reagan as a leader and as a person. I've always admired Ronald Reagan - he's always been my favorite president. Now more than ever, I'm bitter that I missed out on his term (I was born when Clinton was in office, I remember sitting on the floor in my living room coloring or something while my parents watched George W. Bush be elected, and now...ugh.)

There were so many things that stood out to me in this book, but probably the biggest is just how far the leadership of this country has fallen since the Reagan era and how sad it is that all the work he did is seemingly being undone under the BO administration. The contrast between Ronald Reagan and BO is mind-blowing.

Before I really knew anything about Reagan, I knew that he helped the economy and that he was strong in foreign relations. Anyone who knows anything about BO knows that he's helped decimate the economy and that he's a joke in foreign relations. Comparing these two presidents policies in these areas reveals a great deal about them

The Economy

BO has often claimed that he inherited the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression. That's not true. Like BO, Reagan inherited a very weak economy from his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. His crisis was arguably worse - the Misery Index, inflation rate plus the unemployment rate, was 19.5 when Reagan took office compared to 7.5 when BO began his first term. Today it's at 9.5. Unlike BO, Reagan didn't spend his entire presidency blaming someone else for his economic troubles. He fixed it.

Unemployment and the Work Force

When Reagan took office, unemployment was at 7.4%. When he left in 1989, he had cut that by more than thirty percent, to 5.4% What's even better, though, is he did it by creating jobs. The Labor Force Participation rate (LFP), which measures the proportion of the population either looking for jobs or working, was at 63.5% when Reagan took office. By the end of his first term, when he was running for reelection, he had it up to 64.4% - an addition of 5.7 million jobs.

In contrast, when BO took office, unemployment was at 7.8%. At the end of December 2012, it was at....7.8%. This number is incredibly deceiving, though, because it's based solely on people who are in the LFP and looking for jobs. When BO took office, the LFP was around 66%. In December 2012, it was at 63.7%. As of January 20, 88,839,000 Americans ages 16 and older are not looking for work.

To sum up, while Reagan cut unemployment by more than 30% while adding 5.7 million jobs in his first term (and that's just his first term), BO has seemingly done nothing about unemployment while decreasing the work force.

Inflation

For people, like me, who struggle to understand economics, inflation is "a rise in general prices in an economy over an extended period of time." Think gas prices.

In the last year of Jimmy Carter's term, inflation had reached as high as 14.8%. The day Reagan came into the White House, it was at 12.8%. By 1983, less than two years into his term, Reagan had brought inflation down to below 4%, where it remained for the remainder of his presidency. He did this by "backing a tighter monetary supply" - not printing more money. This led to an initial recession, where unemployment reached as high as 10.2%, before providing a stable economy as described above.

Here's BO's inflation resume: When BO took office, inflation was at 0.2%. As of January, it was at 1.6%. Yep, that increased too. According to DollarTimes.com, where you can find out the value of American dollars every year compared to today (try it - it's fun), $1.00 in 1984, at the end of Reagan's first term, had the same buying power as $2.27 in 2013.

Let's use gas prices as a specific example. Under Reagan's first term, the price of gas decreased from $1.25 to $1.17. In BO's first term, gas prices rose from $2.40 to $3.17.

Taxes

In his first few months in office, Reagan enacted the Economy Recovery Tax Act of 1981, where he cut taxes across the board by 23% - including for the highest income earners. Reagan was a believer in trickle-down economics, meaning that the benefits of economic policies that benefit the wealthy in turn help everyone as the wealthy employ and invest. He cut the budgets of the Departments of Housing and Urban Development by 40%, of Commerce by 32%, of Agriculture by 24%, of Education by 19%, and of Transportation by 18%; he did increase spending in the Department of Defense because he was a firm believer in the importance of our national security (we'll get to that). Because of these policies, every income level saw an income increase, the highest tax rate on individuals went from 78% to 35%, and the country maintained an unprecedented 92 month economic boom.

Through the fiscal cliff bill, BO raised taxes on everyone making more than $450,000, although he originally wanted to tax everyone making more than $250,000. Through that same bill, he agreed to $1 of cuts to federal programs for every $41 spent. Through the current sequestration, he's trying to raise them again. If they're not raised under the sequestration, the Department of Defense will suffer budget cuts.

Foreign Relations

Ronald Reagan was a badass. That is all.

A little backstory on that speech makes it all the more kick ass. Reagan was an adamant anti-Communist - he viewed it as the biggest threat to American security ("How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone he reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.") He'd had been trying to get the Soviets to cut back on the number of nuclear weapons for his entire presidency. Not surprisingly, they resisted.

In 1979, Reagan visited NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). While there, he asked what would happen if the Soviets launched a nuclear missile at the US at that moment. The response was: "It would blow us away." Reagan was disturbed to know that, for all the money that was spent there, all NORAD would be able to do in the face of a real nuclear threat was tell the American people that they had approximately fifteen minutes to live.

At the time, most people thought they were pretty safe because of MAD - mutually assured destruction, that is, if the Soviets fired at the US the US would retaliate and vice versa, ergo no one fired. But Reagan didn't like that, especially when he was told that even under that policy approximately 150 million Americans would die if a nuclear war actually commenced. So he launched what he called the SDI - the Strategic Defense Initiative.

The SDI was a program to form a sort of nuclear shield to protect from a nuclear missile. It wasn't supported by American citizens - it was impossible, it wasn't necessary, it was too expensive, it would be destabilizing, it was only a bargaining chip for Reagan to get the Soviets to cut their number of nuclear weapons - and it wasn't supported in the Pentagon - because they knew it meant less funding for their projects. And it definitely wasn't supported in the Soviet Union.

The Soviets knew they were fighting a losing battle, that their totalitarian dictatorship wouldn't spread across the world. The one thing they had going for them was their ability to scare other nations with their nuclear missiles. If Reagan succeeded with SDI and gave it to other nations, as he promised to do, they lost all that remained of their power. They also knew that SDI might work and they did not want the US to beat them.

Gorbachev was the fourth Soviet president during Reagan's tenure and all his predecessors had refused to come to terms with Reagan regarding arms reductions of both countries. In 1985, Reagan gave it another go with this new president in Geneva. SDI was a major topic and, for Gorbachev, a major problem. He did not believe that Reagan would share it with the Soviets and believed it was an offense because why would the US need a shield if they didn't intend to issue the preeminent strike?

The two men got along and left the meeting without coming to terms, but they continued their discussion through a series of letters. Reagan used them to soothe away Gorbachev's concerns regarding SDI. Gorbachev responded without a public letter where he promised that "the Soviet Union would eliminate all its intermediate force nuclear weapons in Europe, would agree to a moratorium on nuclear testing and it would consider the elimination of all nuclear weapons on both sides by the end of the century...in return for one thing." This one thing, of course, was the elimination of SDI.

Reagan had a lot to gain by agreeing, publicity wise. He didn't. The Soviets, he knew, were working on building their own version of SDI and he still thought it was too important to surrender. What followed then was a series of hostage situations and tensions had risen high by the time the two men met again in Reykjavik.

In Reykjavik, Gorbachev and Reagan made immense progress. Gorbachev agreed to eliminate nuclear missiles in Europe and all ballistics missiles within ten years. They both agreed to cut nuclear delivery programs. Gorbachev said he would "seriously reduce the Warsaw Pact forces." They'd come to terms and had negotiated, in Reagan's words, "the most massive weapons reductions cut in history." Then Gorbachev said that it all depended, of course, on the end of SDI.

Reagan lost his temper. Gorbachev refused to budge. Reagan left the meeting.

Again, Reagan took a huge risk, publicity wise. This would have been "the most massive weapons reductions cut in history." He would have had respect from his supports and critics. It might have been the most defining moment of his entire presidency. Except it wasn't.

This was. The next year, he gave his famous "Tear down that wall!" speech. Four months later, Gorbachev requested another meeting. In that meeting, the came to an agreement banning all intermediate-range nuclear weapons. Reagan continued work on SDI and the Soviet Union became a non-threat.

Yeah. He was a badass.

Barack Obama is an apologist. That is all.

• Four Americans were killed in Benghazi in a terrorist attack. BO blamed an anti-Muslim video made in the US and apologized. 
• This, of course, was a terrorist attack. That nobody was ever punished for. 
• Hell, here are his top 10 apologies as of 2009. 
• He's hired Chuck Hagel as his Secretary of Defense. Chuck Hagel hates Israel. 
• BO refuses to make any spending cuts....except for the Department of Defense.
• BO's Soviet Union is North Korea. They have nuclear weapons. They just did a test of said nuclear weapons. North Korea just released a video game of BO in flames. BO has done nothing. 

I don't really need to sum up the differences between these two men here. The data and the policies speak for themselves. Here's a visual difference, though: Ronald Reagan, having just lost the presidential bid in 1976 to incumbent President Gerald Ford, was asked to make an impromptu speech. This wasn't hard, because he was intelligent, passionate, and knew what he was talking about. Have you ever seen BO without his TelePrompter? 

God bless America

"Death is the solution..."

"Death is the solution to all problems - no man, no problem." - Joseph Stalin

His name was Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and he was 16-years-old when President Barack Obama had him killed.

Unless you were living under a rock for the last month, or in case you only watch MSNBC and CBS, you know that in the early days of this month the Department of Justice leaked a memo that authorized the use of drones by the government to kill people who pose an "imminent threat" to the United States. This includes American citizens. The report goes on by saying that it "does not require the United State to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future." On February 2, the White House won a court battle that allows it to keep the reason it targets specific Americans for drone strikes a secret.

Are you scared yet?

This brings us back to Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. He was killed on October 14, 2011 while eating dinner outside at a restaurant in Yemen, where he'd lived for approximately five years. He was born in America and was an American citizen. His father, Anwar al-Awaki, also an American citizen, had taken his family to Yemen to join al-Queda. He was a very prominent figure in the terrorist organization until he and Samir Khan, another American citizen, were killed in drone strikes two weeks before his teenage son. The teenage son he hadn't seen in two years because he was in hiding. Anwar al-Awaki was on an established American kill list. His son was not. So why was he killed? We don't know and, according to the courts, the White House doesn't have to tell us. We said it after Benghazi and we were ignored, but we now have proof: Barack Obama can get away with murder.

Before I move onto the real cause of concern, let me address the drones themselves a bit. Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles controlled either by pilots on the ground or pre-programmed missions and drone attacks are attacks carried out by drones with missiles. The strikes didn't begin under the Obama administration; the first reported drone strike occurred in Yemen in 2002. They began in Pakistan in 2004. Under the Bush administration, there were 52 drone strikes in Pakistan. Under Obama, there have been 310. I can't find statistics comparing the two in Yemen, but since 2008, the number of strikes has decreased in Pakistan while increasing in Yemen; there were seven strikes in the first ten days of 2013.

I'm not going to talk about the hypocrisy of the Left criticizing (to put it kindly) George W. Bush for using water boarding techniques and giving Obama a pass with the drones (which is wrong: Bush's techniques never killed a terrorist; the Nobel Peace Prize winner is estimated to kill a terrorist with a drone daily.) I'm actually going to shock you here: I don't disagree with the use of drones. If drones can be used to take out terrorists abroad and American lives don't have to be risked, go for it. I'm going to focus on the what the media should be focusing on: the fact that BO can and is killing American citizens....and not just with drones.

Yep, the drones are just the start of it. I've been saying for months now that there is some underlying secret to this Obama administration, that they're not as incompetent as they seem. Isn't it strange that Obama isn't even pretending like he cares about the economy? That the only time it comes up is when there's some deadline crisis approaching? How about the fact that, although Obama claims that energy is a huge concern for this term, he's delaying the approval of the Keystone pipeline, which could provide up to 450,000 temporary jobs and could cut America's foreign dependence on oil by up to 40% as the gas prices for the month of February reach an all-time high? And how about the sudden push for all sorts of changes - gun control, women in the military, gay boy scouts - which keeps the media and American citizens pretty distracted?

Distracted is the right word. Obama doesn't want you digging deep right now because if you do, you might find out that why he's not concerned about the economy or about energy or about the citizens of the United States. You might find out about a few things and if you find out those few, you might start making connections. I'm here to help you do just.

While many Americans are choosing to remain oblivious to the impending troubles in this country, other nations aren't. Let me introduce you to the www.eutimes.net. They're not afraid to delve into some pretty wild theories and I'm going to share one with you. It's about Obama's death squads, known as the Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response Team, or VIPER. It's a program run by the TSA (you know, the same TSA that likes to grope little kids and old people in the airports), which reports to the Department of Homeland Security.

[We interrupt this important message with special news bulletin. This is what the DHS does. The video is long, but it's worth it. This is not an isolated case.]

Anyway, back to the death squads. A Federal Security Forces memo prepared for President Putin in early January states that over 800 of these things are being sent out across the United States in preparation for something that Russian intelligence anticipates to occur around the 22nd of February (happy birthday to me). This information was found after the ruling passed that allowed Obama to kill without a reason. In preparation for this, the DHS has ordered 200,000 rounds of hollow point ammunition on top of the 1.6 billion rounds of this internationally banned ammunition that they've already obtained in the last 9 months. This is nearly 2 billion rounds of ammunition. Compare that to the US military forces, who use only about 70 million rounds of ammunition a year in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You might think this sounds absurd and I'd be inclined to agree with you if the Russian intelligence report was where this story ended, but there's more evidence to illuminate the dark underbelly of the Obama administration. Dr. Jim Garrow is a Noble Peace Prize nominee who has dedicated his life to saving orphaned baby girls in China who have fallen victim to the one child policy. He has spent over $25 million in the last sixteen years rescuing approximately 40,000 Chinese baby girls. He is the author of "The Pink Pagoda: One Man's Quest to End Gendercide in China" and is the founder and executive director of the Bethune Institute's Pink Pagoda schools, 168 private English-immercision schools for Chinese children, and the employer of roughly 6,300 employees. He also claims to have been told by "one of America's foremost military heroes" (whose identity he cannot reveal) that "Obama is using a new 'litmus test' in determining who will stay and who must go in his military leadrs. Get ready to explode folks. 'The new litmus test of leadership in the military is if they will fire on US citizens or not.' Those who will not are being removed." Remember General Ham, who wanted to help the Americans at Benghazi?

Then our friends at the good ol' Federal Security Forces in Russia reported on the first two victims of the Obama death squads:

1. John Noveske - owner of Noveske Riflewords, on of the mremier makers of "assault-style weapons." He was killed in a single-car accident where he allegedly crossed the oncoming lane on a highway, went into a dirt shoulder, struck two boulders, and was ejected from his car. 
2. Keith Ratliff - business partner of FPSRussia, the 9th most popular YouTube channel (all about guns), and the sole owner of FPS Industries, which works with customized weaponry and is a world leader in military technology (FPS = First Person Shooter). He was discovered on the side of the road with a single gunshot wound in the head.

Two 2nd Amendment activists turn up dead in mysterious ways.

I really wish I could say they were the only strange deaths, but I can't. I tried to count how many of these were caused by single bullet wounds or single car accidents, but I couldn't keep track. That's my challenge to you. 

How about Chris Kyle? How about the 31 other Navy Seals who've died in the last two years not in combat, including the majority of the men who killed Osama Bin Laden? Where are the Benghazi survivors? 

People who oppose Obama's policies are dying. Obama has been given a legal OK to kill people without giving a reason. This is bad. 

If these blogs ever just stop, please be suspicious. 

God bless America

"...I am in favor of some degree of government censorship..."

"Since the press can play such an influential role in determining the perceptions of the masses, I am in favor of some degree of government censorship...Inflammatory [sic] articles can provoke mass opposition and possible violence, especially in developing countries." John Brennan, President Obama's nomination for head of the CIA, in his 1980 graduate thesis on the dictatorship in Egypt.

God forbid the media provoke opposition. That's not, like, their jobs or anything.

Earlier this week, my english class had a discussion on a Fredrick Jackson Turner essay about the American frontier. In the essay, Turner argued that the frontier was what separated America from Europe, that it was unique and stood for independence, small government, and opportunities. At the end of the class, my liberal professor made a claim that the reason why Americans cling to our guns is because they were so important on the frontier and that's why Europe doesn't have these problems. I was indignant so I responded on an online class forum. Below is what I wrote. Bolded is what my professor read aloud the next day in class.


At the very end of class, the mention of guns was brought up as something that people cling to as a lingering remnant of the past; as something that we have problems with that other countries don't because of how the important the frontier was for the making of this country. I disagree. I don't think people "cling" to gns in some sort of nostalgic way - I think people have a right to guns because it's in our Constitution, but I think it's in our Constitution because of all the things we talked about in class today.

A lot of people are focusing on the negative aspects of the frontier. I realize that, in today's society, people don't want to glamorize (it seems to me any part of) American history, but the whole point of the essay was what a unique and important part of history the frontier was for America. Today in class, we linked the frontier to liberty, opportunity, and small government. We said that Europe was the opposite of a lot of these things. So to say, then, that guns are a problem that we Americans cling to because of this past, well, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The frontier, overall, represented freedom from oppression and growth, something positive. Europe, on the other hand, was viewed as negative. If we cling to guns because of our past, then aren't we then clinging to liberty and opportunity, while other countries, who don't have "problems" with guns (untrue) clinging to restrictions, aristocracy, and the status quo? 

My teacher read my first sentence because he said that I said his argument better than he did. He didn't read my argument. He censored my argument to my face in front of the class. After I called him out on it, he explained to the class that I'd said it was our Constitutional right to have guns and he said we should change the Constitution. He said a few other things that basically made me sound like a right-wing nut job, which I'm totally okay with. He then said I was welcome to come by and debate guns with him later (but when he admitted that was a liberal who'd never seen a gun outside of TV and knew nothing about them, I knew that I'd already won.)

It's always been very obvious to me the amount of censorship and bias in this country, generally by the media, but never was this more apparent to me than that day in class. At first, when I heard him reading it aloud, I thought he'd twisted my words somehow. When I went back and looked at it, though, I realized that it was just good, old-fashioned censorship. I'd written it, he just took it entirely out of context by stopping before the next sentence: 'I disagree.' And that is censorship.

Most people think of censorship as absolute prevention of free speech, but it's more than that. Censorship isn't just about what's not shared; it's more about what is shared and how people receive it. I've heard it described best in this way: "The control of the information and ideas circulated within a society." That's what censorship is all about. Control. 

Exemplified here.

“[I]t is the obligation of all leaders, in all countries, to speak out forcefully against violence and extremism. It is time to marginalize those who -- even when not directly resorting to violence -- use hatred … as a central organizing principle of politics...The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. Yet to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated...”

That's a quote from last September from our President BO to the UN. And, while he fails to do so in many other situations, here he practiced what he preached. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man who man an anti-Muslim film that was initially blamed as the cause of Benghazi, is in jail under the pretext that he was a "danger to the community" and because the judge had a "lack of trust in the defendant."

That's censorship.

More BO/BS: 

"One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates. If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it. I think John Boehner genuinely wanted to get a deal done, but it was hard to do in part because his caucus is more conservative probably than most Republican leaders are, and partly because he is vulnerable to attack for compromising Republican principles and working with Obama."

This is censorship. Barack Obama is calling out specific news outlets and blaming them for the failures of his government organizations because they are critical, which, let's be clear, is the job of the media. (Apparently, BO feels that since White House staff members are incompetent in their jobs, other should be as well.) Notice that he didn't call out any Liberal news stations for attacking Republicans (he can't call them out for attacking Democrats because they don't do that.) They do attack Republicans, though, and I'm not sure I even need to provide links to articles that prove that. BO himself slams Republicans for everything.

BO called out Fox and Rush because he didn't like what they were saying. He didn't like that they were challenging him. He didn't like that they were pointing out that BO's appointed Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, is notoriously anti-Israel. He didn't like that they are bringing up accounts of guns used in self-defense. He doesn't like that they know that his recent moves in immigration, females in combat, and gun control is all a smokescreen for the fact that the economy has shrank 0.1% in the 4th quarter of 2012. He doesn't like them doing their jobs and doing them well. So he blames them.

And it's not just BO that censors the media. The media censors the media. The news stations reporting about Democratic Senator Menendez's underage prostitute scandal have been ignoring it for days. The fact that an armed off-duty officer disarmed the shooter in the Atlanta middle school today is a side note. The only clip of Hillary Clinton's Benghazi testimony being shown is the one outburst she had (which is still idiotic - "What difference does it make." Gawd.) and none of the intense questioning done by Rand Paul, John McCain, or Ron Johnson. Perhaps the most abhorrent example: the recent editing of a speech given by the father of a Newtown shooting victim, strategically cut to make it appear that the man was being heckled by supporters of the 2nd Amendment. You can see the edited and unedited clips here. As of yet, MSNBC has yet to apologize for the blatant censorship.

And it goes back further, of course. Here's a great list of some of the most obnoxious attempts of censorship by the mainstream media in recent years.

Does this concern you? Does it concern you that our President wants the parts of the media that challenge him to shut up? Does it concern you that the majority of the media doesn't need the President to encourage them to censor themselves? Does it concern you that most of the media and the government are working together to make sure that you don't know the truth?

It should.

"The chief function of propaganda is to convince the masses, [who] slowness of understanding needs to be given time in order that they may absorb information; and only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on their mind."Adolf Hitler.

God bless America

"A woman is human..."

"A woman is human. 

She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. 

Likewise, she is never less. 

Equality is a given.

A woman is human."

-Vera Nazarian

More likely than not, you've heard that Leon Panetta has cleared women for ground combat. This is an overturning of the 1994 Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule, which prohibited women from fighting in ground combat units as well as some of the more physically demanding portions of the military. This ruling expands on the decision from about a year ago to allow 14,500 women into combat positions, mostly in the army, and will open up about 230,000 infantry jobs in the army and marines to women. Right now, women comprise of 207,308 about the roughly 1.4 million active duty soldiers. Despite the 1994 rule, around 280,000 women have fought in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with 152 being killed and 946 wounded.  

This announcement has been met with mixed reactions. Liberals, of course, are praising it, calling it "ground-breaking" and a step forward in women's rights. I'll come back to that "women's rights" idea later, but let me tell you what I think of it.

Let me preface this by saying: I am a woman. And I'm a very patriotic woman who has considered military service. On the surface, I think the gender equality of this decision is great. I know strong women. I know powerful and intelligent women who the military would only be so lucky to have fight for them on the battleground. My roommate is in our university's ROTC program and she is ecstatic about this decision, but if she asks me what I think, I'll tell her the truth: I think it's a bad move militarily, but a good move politically. 

To begin with, traditionally, men have been the protectors of their families. "This isn't the 1940's!" I can hear some femi-nazi's screeching. And they're right. Times have definitely changed since then. Like I already mentioned, there are strong women in this world, women just as strong or more so than men. I'm not denying that. But the fact remains that women are viewed, quite often, whether rightfully or wrongfully, as the sex that needs protection. And some men, not misogynistic pigs but chivalrous, traditional men, might feel the urge to act on chivalry and protect the women they are supposed to be fighting with. Then, I ask, when they're on the battlefield, fighting for their lives, will women be a distraction, one more thing to look out for, even if women don't necessarily want that extra protection? I can't answer that, but I think it might be. 

A friend of mine raised another issue with this. She said she had a former military serviceman as teacher in high school and he believed having a mixed gender base was distracting for an entirely different reason: there was sexual tension. And when armed forces members are flirting, they might have trouble fighting. 

Speaking of sexual tension, the close quarters that soldiers share could lead to some very uncomfortable situations. Marine veteran Ryan Smith agrees with me. In the linked article, he recaps one of his own missions in Iraq and the conditions that he and his infantry squad lived under and, in his opinion, having to strip naked after a shower-less month of vile sanitary conditions and dysentery in front of members of the opposite sex would be uncomfortable for everyone involved, no matter how professional they are.

My last point of concern here deals with the exact opposite situation: what if the very people that women need protection from are the men they are fighting with? The Department of Defense estimates that roughly 19,000 sexual assaults occur in the military each year. Of those, about 16% are reported. Of those, about 17% are prosecuted and a grand total of about 6% of these rapists ever face jail time. This is a huge problem. "The Invisible War" documents some of the rape investigations (or lack there of) and shows just what kind of toll this takes on the women involved. And this is happening without ground combat roles; increasing the number of military positions for women isn't going to make that problem any better. And then imagine if a infantry woman is taken by the enemy...

But these are apparently mute points because Panetta's made his decision. So now I wonder: will women have to meet the same physical qualifications? They should. There's a biological difference between men and women but if women want equal rights they should have exactly the same requirements to gain positions. And war won't go easy on them just because they're women. So, assuming that the requirements are the same, there's a good chance that many women won't meet the qualifications to join infantry squads. That works out pretty well for Panetta - he can claim that the government is making the necessary changes for women to advance, but it's not their fault that some women don't meet the physical requirements. 

What happens when a woman becomes pregnant? If the draft returns, will it include women? For all those liberals cheering, will they be cheering when the government comes for their daughters? 

And this just leads me to a much larger topic: this "war on women" that I'm sure affected this decision. Why else? There are so many more important things going on in this country right now, why is this getting any attention? Because if the Obama administration can't win the war on terror (but, of course, they have won that), they will defeat this "war on women," which shouldn't be too difficult seeing as they created it.

So that I could be as accurate as possible, I googled "War on Women" to see if I could get a definition for what it actually is...and it is defined, I kid you not, as "a political catchphrase...used to describe the Republican Party's initiatives in federal and state legislatures that are seen as restricting women's rights...". The Republican Party's initiative. Gotta love it. Can we start a "War on Unborn Children" as a political catchphrase to describe the Democratic Party's initiatives in federal and state legislatures to murder babies? 

Here's what it really is: a political agenda created by the Democratic Party and turned into an issue in order to win female votes during the election, a plan that was unfortunately successful as 55% of women voted for BO. Gawd. I have never been so ashamed of my gender. But here's where the problem for the Democratic Party comes in: there was no war, but they promised to end the war and protect women's rights...so now they need to find some women's rights to protect. 

This is what desperation looks like. This decision, right here, is happening because BO's administration realized that, after preaching about women's rights, they were nasty, lying hypocrites, not only for the whole country, but in their own administration. Here's why. BO has filled four large positions since his re-election. 

Secretary of State: John Kerry (aka a white man)

Secretary of Defense: Chuck Hagel (aka a white man)

Secretary of the Treasury: Jack Lew (aka a white man)

CIA Director: John Brennan (aka a white man)

Now, I don't think these men were bad choices because they are men (I think they were bad choices because they are incompetent buffoons who are determined to see the United States reduced to a third world country under the dictatorship of their savior, Barack Obama). I don't care what gender anyone is as long as they can do their jobs...which they can't, but that's truly not the point. In his first-term, 8 of the 23 cabinet positions were women (36%). That's better than George W. Bush but not as high as Bill Clinton. Here's my thing: I. DON'T. CARE. There is no "quota" for the number of women who are working in the White House and nor should there be. The person best for the job should get the job. But for a man who owes women for his re-election, replacing all the women who are leaving and then some with white men is bad. And hypocritical. And totally not unexpected.

But wait, there's more! In 2011, The Washington Times surveyed the 121 White House members who made more than $100,000 a year (whose taxes all better have gone up like all the rest of ours). 47 of them were women and 74 were men. And more still! Female employees for BO have a median salary of $60,000, 18% less than that of their male co-workers ($71,000). 

And this is just a small part of the hypocrisy. Lena Dunham comparing voting for Barack Obama to losing your virginity is one example; Slow Joe feeling up the congresswomen he swore in and telling one to "spread your legs, you're going to be frisked" is another; BO accepting TIME'S Person of the Year over Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban for fighting for women's rights at age 15, epitomizes it all. 

So, ladies, here are the facts: Their "war on women" as it is currently defined is a myth, but there is a war on women out there, and it comes from the government. It's not about equal pay or reproductive rights, it's about feeling like we are oppressed because they tell us that we are oppressed. Instead of turning to men, then, they want us to turn to the government because they protect our 'rights' and they will help us 'advance'. The government doesn't want to make us strong, though, they just want us to depend on them instead of men...or ourselves. But we don't need them. We are strong. We are smart. We are independent. Don't let the government tell you anything otherwise. 

God bless America.