--James Madison, Federalist No. 39
"The first question that offers itself is, whether the general form and aspect of the government be strictly republican. It is evident that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government. If the plan of the convention, therefore, be found to depart from the republican character, its advocates must abandon it as no longer defensible."
--James Madison, Federalist No. 39
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"To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted."
-- Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures, 1791 Provided courtesy of Say NO to Socialism!
Newsmax By Richard Wagner and Martin Gould The gross costs of the national healthcare law rammed through Congress by [Alleged] President Barack Obama will reach an estimated $1.76 trillion over 10 years – nearly twice the amount originally projected. The figure, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revealed on Wednesday, is bound to cause embarrassment to the administration as it comes just as debate on “Obamacare” is starting to heat up again, two weeks before the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on whether the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. Immediately the revelation stirred controversy among opponents of the bill. “Both fiscally and for the sake of our health care system, Americans cannot afford the president’s healthcare law,” said Georgia Rep. Tom Price, chairman of the Republican Policy Committee. “The longer the president’s healthcare law remains on the books, the greater the threat it poses to our nation’s healthcare and our fiscal well-being,” said Price, an orthopedic surgeon. “The CBO’s revised cost estimate indicates that this massive government intrusion into America’s health care system will be far more costly than was originally claimed. The law’s true cost to American taxpayers is part of a series of promises [Alleged] President Obama and Democrats in Congress made that will be broken,: he said. Healthcare expert Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of New York State, told Newsmax that the original cost projections of the plan were “a shell game” and that the new report “inches closer to the truth” about the cost of the reforms. Read this story at newsmax.com ... Provided courtesy of the Committee to Defend the Natural Family
Greeley Gazette Jack Minor A federal judge has ordered a Missouri school district to unblock its web filters and give students access to sexually explicit material by the middle of March. A US District Judge issued a preliminary junction against the Camdenton R – III School District banning them from using filtering software. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the district claiming it was deliberately restricting access to homosexual themed sites, while allowing students to view what it claims are “anti-LG BT sites that condemn homosexuality.” In issuing its ruling, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri said the district's custom filtering system "systematically allows access to websites expressing a negative viewpoint toward LGBT individuals by categorizing them as 'religion,' but filters out positive viewpoints toward LGBT issues by categorizing them as 'sexuality.” Joe Ortwerth, executive director of the Missouri Family Policy Council, says, “When you consider that there's a federal law on the books that obligates school districts to ensure that their computers do not allow access to materials that might be pornographic for minors, this judge's action -- considering that -- is pretty shocking.” The ACLU’s website claims that schools cannot block LGBT sites claiming that to do so is a violation of the First Amendment. “Programs that block all LGBT content violate First Amendment rights to free speech, as well as the Equal Access Act, which requires equal access to school resources for all extracurricular clubs, including gay-straight alliances and LGBT support groups.” Among the sites the ACLU says students have a right to view is the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. The site provides a link to “It Gets Better” which is a program advocating the homosexual lifestyle founded by Dan Savage, a “gay” sex columnist. Savage is known for his vulgar and raunchy columns. He was also responsible for “bullying” Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum by creating a “Google bomb” that attached a vile sex term to the candidate’s name. ----- The ACLU disputes that it is advocating students be allowed to view pornographic material, however, by disabling the filters in order for students to view “safe sites” sexually explicit sites will be permitted as well. The Alliance Defense Fund, which filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of the school, noted that the “sexuality” filter blocks access to over 8,200 websites of which 7,800 would not be blocked by using the “adult” or “porn” filters and that many of the 7,800 sites contain sexually explicit materials. The brief provided examples of specific sites that would not be blocked by the filter that provided access to pornographic images and pictures. “There remains the one standard that has not yet been universally used, namely, the choosing of candidates on moral grounds. A nation always gets the kind of politicians it deserves. When our moral standards are different, our legislation will be different. As long as the decent people refuse to believe that morality must manifest itself in every sphere of human activity, including the political, they will not meet the challenge of Marxism. Contemporary history proves that modern political leaders, devoid of a moral inspiration and relying solely on a mass basis (might makes right), proves ineffectual in time of crisis."
-- Fulton Sheen, “COMMUNISM and the CONSCIENCE of the WEST” -1948 Provided courtesy of the Committee for American Resource Self-Reliance
Anchorage Daily News SEAN COCKERHAM The U.S. Senate on Tuesday resoundingly rejected a sweeping measure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other protected areas to drilling as well as approve construction of the Keystone pipeline project. The vote was the first time in four years the Senate has voted on a measure including ANWR drilling, and it failed miserably. The proposal needed 60 votes to pass and avoid a filibuster. It received only 41 votes in favor, with 57 senators against. Read this story at adn.com ... State Controller John Chaing continues to uphold the California Great Seal Motto of “Eureka”, i.e., 'I have found it'. But what Chaing is finding as Controller is that California’s economy as measured by tax revenues is still tanking. Compared to last year, State tax collections for February shriveled by $1.2 billion or 22%. The deterioration is more than double the shocking $535 million reported decline for last month. The cumulative fiscal year decline is $6.1 billion or down 11% versus this period in 2011.
Read this story at breitbart.com ... "The executive branch of this government never has, nor will suffer, while I preside, any improper conduct of its officers to escape with impunity."
-- George Washington, letter to Gouverneur Morris, 1795 Every Tuesday and Thursday Night
Hosted by America's Party Chairman Tom Hoefling National Conference Call featuring America's Party leaders, special guests, and principled independent, conservatives from across the land Email questions or comments to tomhoefling@gmail.com The calls are live-streamed on the web at talkshoe.com. The call-in number is: ………………..(218) 936-4343 and the conference ID is: ………………..340794# The Tuesday and Thursday night calls begin at: ………………..9:00 p.m. Eastern ………………..8:00 p.m. Central ………………..7:00 p.m. Mountain ………………..6:00 p.m. Pacific ………………..5:00 p.m. Alaska Provided courtesy of the Peace Through Strength Institute
FrontPageMag.com Daniel Greenfield Wars begin in a thousand ways. Some begin with lies, others with truth. Some with aggression and others with appeasement. But behind those many beginnings are some familiar qualities. Arrogance, incompetence, ignorance and cowardice. Those qualities should be familiar because we can hardly go a day without seeing them displayed behind the teleprompter in its familiar place in Washington D.C. or on the endless road trip to the Muslim world that is the Obama Doctrine. We have seen them in Istanbul and Cairo, and we can see their consequences in Tehran and Tunis. In a world where America has kept the peace, they are swiftly leading us to war. Bombs Away in North Korea The words “North Korea” and “diplomacy” are a running joke even in diplomatic circles, and seeing a headline like “Clinton hails North Korea food deal” doesn’t give you enough information to determine whether you are seeing a news story from 2011 or 1994. Sadly, the answer is 2011, as the Hope and Change crew have put their faith in their own diplomacy, rather than in history or common sense. North Korea is more than just a Communist mafia with nuclear weapons; it’s the starting point in the supply chain for any Muslim country that wants its own nuclear weapons. Its ability to blackmail the West encourages nations like Iran to push for their own nuclear programs to be able to have their own atomic blackmail card… and brings us closer to the day when a bankrupt North Korea decides that America really is a paper tiger and our soldiers find themselves fighting a second Korean War. A Cold Day in Hell in Iran If the world were a playground, Iran would be the school bully who has been beating us up since 1979. The United States has occasionally fought back; mostly it has tried to be the bigger man in the conflict. All that changed with this administration which has signaled loud and clear that it will not fight back no matter what. It takes a lot to get a compliment out the Iranian leadership, which views America as the Great Satan, but Obama’s “diplomacy” did the trick when the Supreme Leader of Iran said, “Two days ago, we heard the president of America say: ‘We are not thinking of war with Iran.’ This is good. Very good. These are wise words. This is an exit from illusion.” There are diplomats in D.C. patting themselves on the back for that achievement when they should be hanging themselves instead. These aren’t words of peace, this is the leader of a theocracy that has been at war with the United States from Day One, gloating that the Great Satan has finally accepted that it can’t defeat the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. The United States has been the last remaining restraint on Iran after the fall of Saddam. Now that restraint is gone and the Ayatollahs are off the leash and all that more eager for a fight now that they’re sure we can’t fight back. In The Caliphate’s Corner There’s a reason that Chamberlain merited eternal infamy for his pandering to Hitler, but even he didn’t actually invade Czechoslovakia to hand it over to the Nazis. Carter’s support for the Ayatollahs created a major threat but even he didn’t turn over half the Middle East to them. Obama has managed to combine the worst of both men and then some by backing a series of revolutions that have put the Muslim Brotherhood in the driver’s seat. The Al-Nahda Party in Tunisia, which has taken power, has been quite clear that it is the new caliphate. In Egypt, the Caliphate has proven popular with Egyptian voters who came out in droves for the Salafis and the Brotherhood. And that’s just the beginning. Libya and its oil wealth are still up for grabs and the reforms and new elections in the wake of the Arab Spring will go on swinging Arab countries into the hairy arms of the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is not going to be any better at running those countries than their former governments were. Even Saudi money can only buy so much free food for the masses. But there’s a time honored way to distract the people from how little they have to eat—with a war. The first target of a Caliphate that wants to dominate the region will be us. They already have our weapons and our money. When their popularity dips, they’re going to thank Obama for putting them in power in the traditional manner… with a war. Facing the Dragon with an Empty Hand The last time that we got into a war with a major Pacific power it was because Japan thought we were stunting its regional ambitions. This time around swap China for Japan and we are likely to be facing the same war all over again. Except China is in a better position than Japan was and Obama’s drastic cuts to the military, particularly to the navy and air force, put us in a much weaker position to play defense. Last year Obama showily insisted that the United States is a “Pacific Power”, even while he was stripping away our ability to be one. It’s one thing to provoke the dragon, but another to do it when you don’t have the weapons to fight him. Obama has insisted on baiting China while weakening the United States. It’s a bad combination that can only lead to disaster. All Quiet on the Denial Front As a “Man of Peace”, Obama has maintained his image by selectively altering reality. Wars are no longer called wars. Terrorist attacks are no longer described as terrorist attacks. But there’s a reason why we describe certain things as “Acts of War”, it’s because the enemy is meant to know that doing them to us will result in a war. That’s no longer the case. Before WW2 came the “Phoney War”. We’re stuck in several of those right now. But denial isn’t just a river in Egypt; it’s a way to let the enemy hit us as many times as he wants while we pretend that nothing is going on. But that doesn’t keep war at bay; it just keeps us from fighting back while encouraging greater acts of war and terror. Refusing to acknowledge aggression is the surest way of inviting war. Just ask Neville. The Hungry Bear Russia hasn’t gone away just because Hollywood stopped featuring it as the villain in action movies and neither have its territorial ambitions. The reset button hasn’t reset anything except the brains in D.C. and the Obama Administration’s abandonment of a missile shield based out of Eastern Europe amounted to an abandonment of Eastern Europe in the eyes of Moscow. The bear is still hungry and it won’t wait forever to take back what belongs to it. When that day comes we will either have to back NATO or abandon it in the face of a war that could have been avoided with fewer reset buttons and more reality buttons. The War at Home It may have escaped the attention of the White House, but these days we’re fighting fewer terrorists from abroad and more terrorists who were either born in the USA or have their citizenship. The policy of the Obama Administration is not to describe terrorists like Major Nidal Hasan as such, but it doesn’t change the fact that we are moving from a war against Jihadists from abroad to the development of domestic terrorist cells by native born Muslims. That’s no longer just a war, it’s a civil war and the policy of denial makes it impossible to address. If the cells continue proliferating, then we won’t need to go to Afghanistan to find the enemy, we’ll be able to find them right here on the home front. Giving the Green Light for Domestic Repression The Obama Administration’s fixation on soft power would be ridiculous if it weren’t so destructive. The twilight of the Bush Administration saw the United States in a stalemate with Russia and Iran over their aggressive moves in Georgia and Iraq, and the sunrise of the Hope and Change era saw futile attempts at a reset button push with Russia and diplomatic outreach to nowhere with Iran. These efforts did not lead to peace or improved relations; they did however give those respective regimes the confidence to steal elections while ramping up their domestic repression. A fundamental mistake of appeasers is to assume that they are contending with tyrannies only in the sphere of foreign relations. Tyrannies are first and foremost concerned with maintaining internal order and try to avoid a combination of internal and external conflicts. When soft power eases the pressure on them externally, it gives them the breathing room they need to suppress domestic dissent and once that’s done they have the freedom to engage in external conflicts. The Syrian Solution It’s a sad day when Hillary Clinton is the voice of reason, but in an administration that imagines Syria will be as easy as Libya, when even Libya wasn’t as easy as Libya, she is the closest thing to a reality check. But that reality check is failing and it seems as if the United States is headed to another war in which we have everything to lose and the Brotherhood has everything to gain. The Bolivarian Dissolution At some point in his life, Obama no doubt donned a red Che t-shirt. South of the border though they take that sort of thing more seriously and the red sweep in Latin America is more than just dangerous, it raises the prospect of a hemispheric war. Chavez may seem like a clown, but he has helped bring together a coalition of the left and tied it together with Iran and its Shiite proxies. Obama has cheered on the return of the reds, but red and green together may mean a war, open or covert, that he is completely unprepared for. Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/13/10-ways-obama-has-made-war-more-likely/ "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
--James Madison, Federalist No. 47 Provided courtesy of SayNOtoSocialism.com
Coalition for Healthcare Redesign Dave Racer In a way I felt badly for my listeners. They had to confront some very hard facts about our great country that go far beyond, but include the provision of and payment for healthcare. The United States is in trouble – deep and serious trouble. This is what I said to the professional health insurance agents in Peoria, Illinois on March 6. Then I laid out overwhelming statistics about state and federal spending, the increase in the national debt (in dollars and as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product), and most appallingly, the total unfunded debts and liabilities of American government. And I talked about cultural and moral decline. Please, don’t stop reading. This is a vitally important message. Dr. Larry Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor, totals the U.S. unfunded liabilities at $211 Trillion - $676,000 for every U.S. resident currently counted by the U.S. Census Bureau. These are funds that must be spent if we are to maintain the programs currently on the books. But that spending will never happen because it cannot happen. It cannot happen because we will be bankrupt before it can happen. According to Peter Ferrara, in his must-read tome,America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, the U.S. public debt ratio to GPS will be 107 percent by the end of 2012. It will quickly climb thereafter to a level exceeding that which is destroying Greece today. If there is no sharp change in U.S. spending, it will lead to a world economic collapse. I know, I know, these are harsh words and hard to read; not at all uplifting. Now, however, is time for sobriety and seriousness. Frankly, I wish I could give this same talk to all Americans. Maybe I could do it as a webinar. It is an urgent talk, a vital talk. But there is more. The U.S. at its root is not about money: it’s about ideas upon which we have built a great nation of free people, an exceptional nation in every way. One of our foundational ideas is moral integrity. “We do not have money problems,” Alan Keyes often said during his 1996 presidential campaign. “We have moral problems.” The moral problems are directly related to how and why we spend money, as individuals, families, and governments. How we spend money on healthcare is directly related to our moral dilemma. What I am about to write is likely to cost me some readers, because some people do not want to deal with these disturbing trends. Each of them, and far more, contributes to our cultural, moral, and financial decline. Recently, a British bio-ethicist opined that a newborn baby should be treated the same as an unborn child – only he uses the “scientific” term, fetus. This “ethicist” believes that abortion law should apply to newborn babies – meaning parents should be free to kill the unwanted infant, just as they are able to do with babies still in the womb. Dr. Peter Singer, of Dartmouth, made the same observation years ago. Dr. Zeke Emmanuel, former adviser to [Alleged] President Obama on healthcare reform and brother to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, believes we spend too much on healthcare for certain populations. In a 2010 Lancet article, Emmanuel and his co-authors suggested that we should reduce spending for children younger than about five, and adults older than about 62. He believes we should focus healthcare spending on others, healthier people with more life expectancy. Who should decide? Under ObamaCare, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and others of the new federal MediCrats who know better than you, or me, or pastors, priests, rabbis, and Imams. An 18-month old girl toddler declared one day, “I am a boy.” As a result, her parents are raising her as a boy, and intend to treat her with hormones to delay the onset of puberty. By age 17 or 18, the parents reason, the girl can choose to be a boy for life, and undergo transsexual surgery. The story is told in the context of an article about an emerging pediatric practice, whereby children are choosing to live as genders different from the one God created (oh, of course, they do not see that God has a role to play a role in these issues). Parents of children with gender confusion hope that health insurance will pay for their children’s treatment as preventive care. Lastly, is the latest report on children born out of wedlock – excuse the old-fashioned term. If you wish, I can just say “born to single mothers.” These statistics should set off alarms for the social cost awaiting our country, none of which figure into Dr. Kotlikoff’s calculations. According to the National Institutes of Health, 29 percent of Caucasian babies are born to single moms. As bad as this sounds, 53 percent of Hispanic babies are born to single moms; the number for African-American babies soars to 73 percent. Even during slavery, as Alan Keyes points out in Masters of the Dream, only 15 percent of African-American babies were born into families without a father present. We must integrate the underlying facts about our country’s financial and cultural demise with every decision we make about the future of U.S. healthcare. To pretend these are not relevant is to self-destruct. The root cause and the real solution are the same: personal moral responsibility. A remnant still has it, but society in general seems to be tossing it aside. We will keep fighting for healthcare consumerism, a reduction in wasteful healthcare spending, doctor-patient relationships, healthier bodies, and all such pursuits. But, the one pursuit that overrides all this is that of moral character, at a far higher level than is apparent today. In 2012, we can get started on one aspect of saving America; elect people of moral integrity to office, and throw the others out the door. "What is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part [the necessary and proper clause] of the Constitution and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them ... the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers."
-- James Madison, Federalist No. 44, 1788 RaiseAStandard.com
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God." -- George Washington "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock."
-- Will Rogers "There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you."
-- Will Rogers "Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for."
-- Will Rogers "We are a nation that has a government--not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which show signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed."
--Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981 "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin "All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office. To me there is nothing in it, beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting human felicity."
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