"...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. 

"When the President does it..."

"When the President does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard Nixon.

People are calling it "Benghazi-gate", claiming that it's the biggest scandal since Watergate. That's wrong. It's bigger. People didn't die in Watergate.

I'm just going to get right into this.

The Attack and After

September 11-12, 2012 - Benghazi

8:30 p.m.: U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens exits the consulate to say goodbye to a Turkish diplomat. "Everything is calm at 8:30," reports a state department official. "There's nothing unusual."

9:00 p.m.: Stevens retires to his room for the night. For two months, Stevens had been reporting to the U.S. of increasing violence in Libya. His Security Support Team of 16 armed guards left a month earlier, despite his and Lt. Colonel Andrew Woods' pleas for it to remain. The team now resides in Tripoli. There are only five security guards with Stevens and Information Management Officer Sean Smith.

9:40 p.m.: An attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi reportedly begins, the beginnings of which are caught on tape. The attackers are well armed, organized, and carrying an Islamist Radical flag. They storm and set fire to barracks on the embassy before moving on. A diplomatic security agent sees and monitors the events from a security compound and immediately alerts the State Department in D.C., where Charlene Lamb can now watch the events as they unfold. The agent also alerted the quick reaction security team at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli.

9:40-10:15 p.m.: American security guard David Ubben moves Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith to a security room - a large, windowless room with medical supplies and a locked gate. The other security guards assemble machine guns and other supplies. Stevens, Smith, and Ubben are separated from the other Americans, who are in two different areas on the compound themselves.

The security room is only a short-term safe haven, meant to hold until back-up can be brought in.

Around 10 p.m.: Knowing they can't get into the 'safe haven', the Islamists set the building on fire and leave. The three Americans attempt to find clean air, fail, and are forced to exit the safe haven. Ubben finds a window in the compound and climbs out. When his two companions don't follow, he goes back in. After several attempts, he is forced to leave. He climbs to the top of a building and radios the other agents. Three agents arrive and enter the burning building.

10:15-10:45 p.m.: Sean Smith is found dead. 6 Americans and 16 members of the Libyan militia arrive from the annex a mile away.

11:00 p.m.: The forces can no longer hold the compound. The back-up from the annex and the remaining security guards take Smith's body with them as they leave. They drive to the annex. They are fired upon by grenades and AK-47s.

Looters scavenge around the main residence and find Stevens (also on tape). At first he appears dead, but they then notice he is breathing.

1:00-1:45 a.m.: Stevens arrives at the hospital where doctors attempt to save his life. He dies of severe asphyxiation. (*NOTE: There are discrepancies about how and when Stevens died. There is a video of him being found by the looters, as I mentioned about, and the official report says he died of smoke inhalation. Immediately following the attack, though, some representatives spoke out about the situation and said he was tortured and/or sodomized by the Libyans before his death and others say he was shot in the hospital after someone revealed his location to the attackers.)

1:30 a.m.: The team of reinforcements arrives from Tripoli. At the annex, the men are still being attacked.

4:00 a.m.: An attack is made that is "planned and precise". American security guards Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods are killed. The annex is evacuated.

September 11-12, 2012 - United States (6 hour time difference behind Libya)
The official timeline from the Pentagon
This will be dissected and corrected later

3:42 p.m.: The U.S. military's Africa Command ordered an unmanned surveillance drone over the embassy 17 minutes after the attack began. It did not arrive for another hour.

4:30 p.m.: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's office is notified of the attack. Obama, Panetta, and Army General Martin Dempsey discuss what to do next.

6:07 p.m.: The White House receives an email: "Ansar al-Sharia claims responsibility for Benghazi attacks."

6-8 p.m.: Panetta and Dempsey begin discussions with General Ham, head of Africom, the African Command. The group gives verbal orders to "deploy a team of Marine anti-terrorism troops...and two special forces unites", one stationed in the United States and one in Europe.

10:28 p.m.: The Associated Press releases a statement from Hillary Clinton blaming an anti-Muslim video made by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula from a few weeks earlier. Doherty and Woods have not been killed yet.

Early morning: D.C. receives news that Ambassador Stevens is dead. Barack Obama does not. He has been in bed for several hours.

September 12, 2012

Obama says Benghazi was an "act of terror," but not "terrorism."

September 14, 2012

The White House issues a statement saying that there was no evidence of this being a planned attack.

September 16, 2012

Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf says that the attack had been planned months ahead of time. U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, says there is no evidence that attack was planned.

September 18, 2012

Obama says extremists used the "offensive" video as an excuse for violence against the U.S.

September 20, 2012

White House spokesperson refers to the attack as terrorism. Obama, at a town hall meeting, says that "extremists" took advantage of "natural protests" to the anti-Muslim video.

September 21, 2012

Clinton calls it a terrorist attack.

September 24-25, 2012

Obama is asked on The View if the attack was a terrorist attack. He says it's under investigation.

September 27, 2012

A White House spokesperson says that Obama believes it was a terrorist attack.

Seriously, now, what happened?

Does any of that look remotely suspicious to you? There are so many things wrong with this story that I'm not even sure where to begin. Let me first say, though, that this will be the post where you might decide I'm a crazy conspiracy theorist and never come back. Or it might be the post where you decide that this country is so damn scary that it's time to pick up your passport and get outta here. I suggest Switzerland.

1) Let's start with the obvious - the strange refusal to refer to the attack as a terrorist attack when the White House knew within hours that that's exactly what it was. Instead, they blamed it on the anti-Muslim film by Nakoula, who they arrested and who was later sentenced to a year in prison for being a "danger to the community" and because the judge had "a lack of trust in the defendant." In other words, Nakoula exercised his right to the 1st Amendment, which our pro-Islamic government didn't like, and was then made into a scapegoat because, god dammit, Obama said somebody would be punished for this.

The truth - Obama's only accomplishment in four years has been his claim to ending terrorism by killing Osama bin Laden. Calling this attack what it actually was so soon before the election jeopardized his whole platform.

2) Let's talk, now, about why no one helped our Americans as the White House watched them die on screens in front of them. I mentioned General Ham of Africom briefly. We need to spend some more time on him. In Stuttgart, Germany, Ham received the same cries for help that the White House received. He immediately put together a response team and informed the Pentagon that he was prepared to help. He was told to stand down. He decided to ignore the command and, less than 30 seconds after this decision was made, his second in command, David Rodriguez, told him he was relieved of command.

On October 18, Panetta announced that Ham was retiring, which was strange since he'd only served a year and a half of this three year term. His replacement was David Rodriguez. After several people questioned whether he was being forced to quit because of Benghazi, the official statement became he was choosing to retire in spring 2013.

3) The drones over Benghazi provided real-time footage of what was happening. Experts say that this should have led to a quicker military response. Speaking of which, that group from Tripoli apparently ran into problems in the airport, delaying their arrival. What's more, that annex full of soldiers near the main residence in Benghazi? From what I can discern, more CIA operatives were around but they were told to "stand down" - not once, but twice. Woods and Doherty disobeyed orders and went to help - resulting, eventually, in their deaths.

4) Hillary Clinton got some weird flu, which left her dehydrated, which caused her to faint, which led a concussion, which caused a blood clot in her head, preventing her from testifying at the Benghazi trial because her term would be over before she would be better (which backfire because Congress is refusing to swear in the new Secretary of State until she speaks). General David Petraeus, head of the CIA, meanwhile, is sudden not credible before his testimony because his extramarital affairs, which had been known about but not released before, are suddenly revealed. Someone really doesn't want us to know some stuff.

5) At the trial in December, four government officials were made scapegoats for the Benghazi attacks and they were fired. Except, not really. Three of them are currently on paid administrative leave and one of them was simply moved to another desk.

6) Where was Obama when this was all happening? Seriously, every big moment (okay, not that last one) of Obama's administration has had a photographer around to capture it. I haven't seen a photo of this one yet.

All this begs the question - why didn't the government want to help our Americans?

Okay, here come the conspiracy theories. Except, when you think about them, they're not really that outrageous. They're totally plausible. And terrifying.

1) Here's a question - why was Ambassador Stevens even in Benghazi? He knew that violence had increased and reported this several times. Answer (in question form) - was he a gun runner? The official U.S. status is to refuse to allow heavy weapons into Syria, but there's a lot of evidence that government officials, including Stevens, are aware of a heavy flow of weapons moving from Libya to Jihadist Syrian rebels. Here's what may have happened (explained to me in a Glen Beck video and then described as best I can here):

• When Obama was elected, Gaddafi (then President of Libya) was ecstatic, praising him as a "friend" and stating that for a country to go from Reagan to a black man of Muslim descent was an achievement that led to the end of disputes between the two countries. That changed quickly.
• BO realized Gaddafi had to go. To do this, he could either: 1) use American troops or 2) use the 'enemy of my enemy' policy, in this case referring to Al-Queda, or the Libyan Opposition composed of several Islamic radical groups. Basically, then, BO decided to support this radical groups as during their uprising against Gaddafi.
• Ambassador Stevens was the middle man between the U.S. and these groups. He worked directly with the leader of the uprising, Belhaj. 
• Well, we got rid of Gaddafi. Not long after, The Telegraph reported that Belhaj met with members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Turkey. They needed weapons. They got their weapons in September 2012 - on a ship from Benghazi. 
• Then Obama wanted President Assad of Syria gone. To do this, they sent weapons through Turkey to Jihadists on the border. (NOTE: Obama is in very good standing with the Prime Minister of Turkey.) The New York Times reported that the CIA had operatives in Turkey working with 'allies' to decide who they would give the weapons to (who would use them to fight Syria). The "allies" that got to pick? The Muslim Brotherhood. 
• On September 11, before the attack, Ambassador Stevens was meeting with an ambassador from Turkey.

If that made no sense, I apologize. This is better.

2) Immediately after the attack, someone put forth the idea that all the incompetence was intentional - as was the attack. The theory goes:

• Obama meant for Stevens to get kidnapped, but not killed, in order to use him in a prisoner exchange. 
• With whom, you wonder? Omar Abdul Rahman, the Blind Sheikh, perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Obviously. Rahman is held here in the U.S. and has been for 20 years and is supposed to be there for life. 
• Recently, Egyptian President Morsi has been urging Obama to release him and Rep. Peter King confirmed that Obama was negotiating with Morsi. 
• Today it's been revealed that he's planning to come and speak with Obama in person. 
• Now, I have a few ideas on why Obama would want to exchange prisoners, but those would take WAY too long to get into here. But think about it - Stevens died from smoke inhalation; he was shot or tortured. Maybe they were there to kidnap him. From there, Obama could have swapped prisoners and still come out looking like a hero. And now, suddenly, after 20 years, the Egyptian President is coming over to negotiate for Rahman? Hmmmmmm. Just watch and see what happens with this guy in the next few months.

So there you have it. Well, probably not all of it. Who knows how much else we don't know.

God bless America.

"Focus your operations on oil..."

"Focus your operations on oil, especially in Iraq and the Gulf area, since this will cause them to die off [on their own]." - Osama Bin Laden (quoted by Barack Obama in 2006 in the U.S. Senate Committee on Public Works and Environment - so could be totally false.)

"We will lay the foundation of our future capacity to meet America's energy needs from America's own resources." -Richard Nixon, 1974

I hate celebrities and their hypocritical, holier-than-thou involvement in politics; let's be honest, actors are paid to recite lines that someone else has written for them and, besides that, they really just shouldn't speak at all.

This rant is being brought to you because of the number of recent celebr-idiots trying to grace us with their oh-so-profound political wisdom. Example numero uno. (Corrected in this video. Seriously, whoever made this is my new hero.)

But I've already ranted about the ridiculousness of anti-gun laws so I won't do that again. (Today.) Here's my rant reason: Matt Freakin' Damon and his new movie, "Environmental Lies that will Lead to the Destruction of our Already Doomed Economy" aka "Promise Land."

Before we can dissect the lies and misinformation in that, let's first define what this evil form of energy is. Hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, is the process of extracting natural gas from shale rock layers underground. Using 3D imaging that allows scientists to determine the exact area to drill, horizontal drilling allows special fracking fluids to be injected into the shale area. The drilling can take up to a month, after which time the well that's created is cemented (to protect groundwater) and the shale rock is fractured hydraulically, creating channels that allow gas to be extracted quickly and easily.

Sounds awful, doesn't it?

Now, I have no intentions of ever seeing Damon's movie (or any of his movies from now on. He angers me) so I can't say what his exact claims are but I can summarize them like this: "It involves gas so it must hurt the environment! You'll destroy the atmosphere! You'll poison our animals! Go ahead and kill our unborn children, but if you even think about touching one of our trees, we'll get one of our armed bodyguards to come shoot you since you won't be able to defend yourself pretty soon."

That sad thing is, that's not really that far off of some of the real anti-fracking arguments out there.

Argument 1: YouTube clips, mainly from the anti-fracking documentary "Gasland" created in early 2012 by Josh Fox, show people near fracking sites lighting their water on fire and a study done by Duke claims that wells near fracking sites contain 17 times more methane than wells elsewhere.

Response: Josh Fox was interviewed by Phelm McAleer about those clips and admitted that he knew that those areas had flammable water before fracking began there but he didn't include that information in his documentary because "it was not relevant." When McAleer posted this interview on YouTube, Fox immediately hired lawyers who tracked it down and removed it. (On a side note, McAleer's own documentary "FrackNation" premiers on January 22nd. It was funded solely by donations and, in order to keep special interests groups out of it, all donations from gas companies were returned.)

Argument 2: Some people claim fracking will harm our economy because of heavy truck trips (huh?), suggestions that "drill-friendly communities do worse than others in personal income, employment growth, economic diversity, educational attainment and ability to attract investment," and, in New York, where fracking is taking place, will destroy the ever important tourism.

Response: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Seriously, becoming less dependent on foreign resources is going to harm our economy? Harm our economy? At this point, how can our economy be harmed?

That argument is the most illogical that I've found so far. Here are some actual examples. In Pennsylvania, which does use fracking, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry released a report that said that from 2009-2011, 72,000 jobs had been created solely in the fracking industry.

Other countries are actually using the economic success of fracking to encourage their own governments to adopt the practice. One more time: countries want to emulate an American practice because of its economic success. An article written in December 2012 by a journalist in Great Britain points out that, while the cost of natural gas in China is at $12 a unit, in America it has dropped from $8 in 2008 to $3. It's contributed $50 billion in taxes in that time as well.

And that economic success isn't limited to the areas that are being drilled. Take Wisconsin, for instance. Silica sand is used to open the channels in fracking and the largest producer in the nation of this sand is Wisconsin. In November 2012, there were 37 operating mines and 41 more had received permits. As of last August, there were no official employment numbers of the mines, but the industry estimates that it will eventually have approximately 2,780 people working for it.

Argument 3: Fracking harms the environment and all the little birdies and the trees and the squirrels...ahem. It causes earthquakes, asthma, and destroys the ozone layer as well as polluting our air and water.

Response: For four years, Governor Cuomo of New York has been deciding whether or not to allow fracking in certain areas of the state. It's no coincidence that the state hid a report concluded nearly a year ago that deemed fracking an environmentally safe practice. The report was leaked earlier this week  to the New York Times by "an expert who did not believe it should be kept secret." (And the Times, bless their liberal hearts, released this information under the most unappealing and bland headline possible: "Gas Drilling is Called Safe in New York." Can you imagine if it'd been proved otherwise? "Extensive Research Determines Hydrofracking Holds Deadly Environmental Consequences.") 

The 8-page long report says that fracking can be done safely. "It delves into the potential impact of fracking on water resources, on naturally occurring radiological material found on the ground, on air emissions and on 'potential socioeconomic and quality-of-life impacts.'"

As if that weren't enough, estimates suggest that carbon dioxide levels in the U.S. have declined by about 800 tons, or 14%, since 2007, making this the lowest CO2 emissions have been in 20 years. That's because, in the last 5 years, the use of coal for energy has decreased from 45% to 32% while the use of gas for energy has risen from 20% to 32%. That's because 57 million additional energy consumers have been added to the U.S. and they've been using gas. Per capita, U.S. carbon emissions have dropped 20% and are now the lowest they've been since 1961. 

In comparison, the type of clean energy our president BO promotes, are wind, which lowers carbon emission by 1/10th of what fracking does, and solar, which reduce emission by 3 megatons. The shift from coal to gas has reduced carbon emissions by about 400-500 megatons a year.

So there you have it. Fracking = good. Celebr-idiots with big mouths and no brains = bad.

God bless America.

"I place...public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared."

"To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. I place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared." – President Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kerchevel, July 12, 1816.

BO is probably so happy right now that he's already planning his next $4 million trip to Hawaii, kindly paid for by the taxpayers of the United States of America, thank you very much.

Seriously, though, BO has spent the last few days doing NOTHING while Slow Joe contacted members of the Senate to make a "compromise" to avoid the Fiscal Cliff. Then, yesterday, the man has the audacity address the public, surrounded by a group of liberal "middle class" lemmings, and angrily shake his finger while attacking the GOP (shocker). Seriously, watch this video and try not to gag. Then, the Senate passes a bill onto the House of Representatives (which for some reason makes people think that we avoided the so called Fiscal Cliff deadline. Yeah. We didn't.) and the bill contains - wait for it - tax increases and no spending cuts!

Let me repeat that. After weeks of the GOP refusing to capitulate to BO's demand for higher taxes on the seemingly wealthy portion of this country, the Senate finally reaches a compromise that raises taxes on the wealthy and doesn't cut spending. (I feel like this kind of sums up everything, with BO as Jafar, of course.) The Liberals are claiming that they compromised because they wanted to increase taxes for singles making about $200,000 and couples making about $250,000 but that got extended to $400,000 and $450,000 respectively. That is BS. And they know it.

The Republicans in the Senate failed and not just "kind of, sort of, compromised their values" failed - they "tripped and landed face down in a pile of dog crap in front of that guy you really wanted to impress" failed. To sum up their failures:

1) Tax revenue is increasing by $620 billion while spending cuts add up to $15 billion. That's $1 cut for every $41 spent.

2) This solution is going to ADD $4 trillion to our national debt over the next 10 years. (The number is from money lost in taxes from people below the $450,000 level, the "doc fix", the extension of unemployment benefits, and taxes on small businesses.)

3) Here are some of the hidden gems of the bill: tax cut extensions to "certain film and television productions" (all the Hollywood liberals who backed BO want their rewards) that reach $430 million, $331 million for railroads, $59 million for algae growth, $222 million for rum production in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, $70 million for NASCAR, and $4 million for electric scooter production as part of the "green" movement.

So, congrats, Senate Republicans, on getting that "compromise".

(The bill passed 89-8. On that note, let's commend the five Republican members of the Senate who have spines and voted against the bill, Mike Lee, Richard Shelby, Charles Grassley, Rand Paul, and (hopefully the 2016 Republican candidate) Marco Rubio. Rand Paul saying (in reference to POTUS) "You may not get any more revenue...but you can say, "I stuck it to the rich people,'" was the most hilariously accurate thing any politician has said about this whole fiasco.)

But here's the best part for BO and the Liberals: they get to blame the Republicans for the tax increases that are going to hit everybody, regardless of income, this year because of ObamaCare. Now, they were going to blame the Republicans no matter what, but this whole Fiscal Cliff has given them ample opportunities to ingrain it in the malleable minds of the lemmings of this country that the Republicans only want to take your money - which is so ridiculously ludicrous that I can't even wrap my head around it. They blame the Republicans for doing exactly what their party wants to do. Ugh. Not even going to go there.

Let's take a look at some of those ObamaCare taxes, shall we?

• The Individual Mandate Tax - This requires a couple to pay the higher of either $1,360 a year or 2.5% of adjusted growth income and the amount will be higher or both by 2016.
• The Medicine Cabinet Tax - This came into effect in 2011 and it prevents reimbursement for over-the-counter medicine except insulin.
• The Flexible Spending Account Cap - This places a cap of $2,500 a year (while it is currently unlimited) on the amount of pre-tax income that can be placed into these accounts. This really hurts middle class families with special needs children, who can use this for up to $14,000 a year, since the majority of this type of healthcare isn't covered by most health insurance.

This isn't all of them, but you get the drift. Everybody's taxes are going up and they were always going to go up. In addition to ObamaCare, by not renewing the Bush-era tax cuts, deductions are going to be cut as well, and BO has always known this, he just refers to his tax hikes as "not extending the Bush cuts" and people don't bother to think about what that means. But, yeah, expect those to be blamed on the Republicans too. 

So where does that leave us? The House of Representatives is supposed to be meeting tonight to decide whether or not to accept the bill or send it back to the Senate for amendments - which is essentially rejecting the bill and pushing us over the Fiscal Cliff (remember how the Liberals have been saying that we avoided that by the Senate's bill? Yeah, they knew that we didn't and that it had to pass the House first, but now they can blame the House Republicans for not passing it. It. Never. Ends.) So here's my say - go over the Fiscal Cliff. Stop the fake compromising and take the blame for the Fiscal Cliff, because they're going to get the blame for all the other taxes anyway, and show the public that the Democrats were so against cutting taxes for everyone that they'd rather have everyone be taxed. 

(The elephant in the room here is how perfectly that plays out for BO - he gets all the taxes from everyone and the Republicans get all the blame).

But this isn't just me being spiteful. This Fiscal Plan solution doesn't work. All that has been accomplished thus far has been that the Democrats have shown that they can manipulate the Republicans and win, because that's all this is for these politicians, a big game with our money (they all got pay raises this week, BTW). And raising the taxes on just part of the population is wrong. It's not a little increase, either - we're talking an increase from 35% to 39.5%. That's a lot of money. And how is it fair to punish people who work hard to make money by taking their money and giving it to people who don't work as hard? Taxing the wealthy doesn't help the economy - it hurts it. Who do the liberals think provide the jobs? Generally, it's the wealthy people. And when wealthy people stop making money, they stop hiring. But I digress. 

House Representatives: You missed your chance with Plan B. You missed the opportunity to let the Dems do whatever they wanted by simply voting "present" and then letting the Dems take all the blame for the inevitable economic failure this results in. This is your last chance - grow some spines and go over the Fiscal Cliff. You have absolutely nothing to lose at this point. 

God bless America. 

EDIT: As I was writing this, the bill was passed. Not shocking, but indescribably disappointing.

Screw it all, I'm moving to Switzerland.

EDIT 2: Obama left for Hawaii last night. Yep.