Conservatrolling Topic

[kode54]

www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/21/official-says-water-complaints-act-of-terrorism/2445071/

A Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation deputy director warned a group of Maury County residents that unfounded complaints about water quality could be considered an "act of terrorism."


thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/06/21/2193521/preemptive-strike-conservatives-vow-to-defy-supreme-court-if-it-rules-in-favor-of-marriage-equality/

[Chromeo]

islamic terrorism
i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01119/somalia_1119345c.jpg

ecoterrorism
static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Environment/Pix/pictures/2008/04/21/earthactivists-paul-j-richards-afp460.jpg

(the world according to conservatism)

[Tails82]

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577904578555552707034238.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The Obama Age of Proliferation

While the President dreams, nuclear weapons spread.

Mr. Obama returned this week to Berlin to give his long-promised speech laying out his plans to rid the world of nuclear weapons. His idea is to remove those weapons initially and primarily from American hands. North Korea and Iran each got a single line in his speech, which is at least more than he gave to China, which is investing heavily in the world's third largest nuclear arsenal. Nukes in the hands of terrorists? Mr. Obama said he'll hold a summit on that one in 2016.

He said he'll work on reducing U.S. stockpiles through "negotiated cuts" with Russia. Whenever this Administration negotiates with Russia, beware. But there's another danger. President Obama left the door open to unilateral U.S. reductions, possibly without Congressional approval.

The Berlin initiative is the long-promised follow-up to the 2010 New Start accord with Russia, which brought down stockpiles of warheads, missiles and bombers. In his speech this week, President Obama urged everyone to "move beyond Cold War nuclear postures." But is there anything that evokes the Cold War more than arms control with Moscow?

Even the Kremlin isn't likely to embrace this new offer. "We cannot endlessly negotiate with the United States the reduction and limitation of nuclear arms while some other countries are strengthening their nuclear and missile capabilities," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian radio last month. By "some others," he means China.

Good point. Bilateral negotiations are an anachronism. Before the Cold War powers cut any deeper, how about some clarity about the size of the Chinese arsenal and its intentions? Beijing hides its warheads and missiles in tunnels and has the industrial wherewithal to build many more quickly. The Pentagon thinks the Chinese have up to 400 nuclear warheads, which sounds low. The Pakistanis possess more than 100.

The Russians are terrified of a rising Chinese military on their long southern border. Beijing likely has 1,800 bombs and warheads, the former commander of Russia's Strategic Forces told the military journalist Bill Gertz last year. Whether this number is accurate or not, the Russians think it is. They're reluctant to give away any more of their rusting strategic long-range arsenal. Forget about any progress on thinning Russia's formidable stockpile (size unknown) of shorter-range tactical weapons.

Yet engaging in arms talks could give the Kremlin fresh leverage over America's missiles defenses. The Russians have wanted to kill the program since Ronald Reagan made it a priority, and they have found a weakness in President Obama's dreams of disarmament. To get New Start, the White House in 2009 cancelled plans for a missile defense site in Poland that would protect the U.S. against an Iranian ICBM.

Mr. Obama is literally pleading with Moscow to strike another arms deal, which underscores the surreal nature of his vision. He handed the Kremlin reams of classified data about American missile defense, supposedly to allay fears that U.S. defenses will weaken Russia's nuclear deterrent. Invoking executive powers, the Pentagon and State Department rebuffed requests by Congress to specify the information shared with Russia to see if it might have jeopardized U.S. security.

Meanwhile in the real world, North Korea adds to its nuclear arsenal and tests weapons with impunity. Iran marches ahead toward its atomic capability despite U.N. sanctions. Their neighbors in Asia and the Middle East watch and get ready to build or buy their own weapons in response. The legacy of the President who dreams of nuclear disarmament is likely to be a world with far more weapons and more nuclear powers.

[Chromeo]

Oh no, America might only be able to destroy the world twice over instead of ten times like before. Clearly we need more nuclear weapons.

[kode54]

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/22/undercover-police-lovers

Fuck the police.

[Tails82]

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577904578557274272099196.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Over the objections of Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.) last week released online the full, 205-page transcript of an interview that committee investigators conducted with an IRS employee in Cincinnati named John Shafer. Mr. Cummings explained that he was compelled to release the Shafer transcript because it explodes Mr. Issa's "conspiracy theories"—chiefly, that the White House played a role in the targeting of conservative groups, and that it was orchestrated out of IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C. In fact, Mr. Issa has never said the former, and much that is known so far about the IRS scandal suggests that the Washington connection is substantial.

As it happens, the revelation of Mr. Shafer's testimony isn't likely to discourage the investigation.

Mr. Shafer, the manager of an IRS screening group in the Cincinnati office, told committee investigators that in February 2010 one of his employees brought a tea-party application for nonprofit designation to his attention.

Given the media coverage that the tea party was receiving, Mr. Shafer deemed the application a "high profile" matter and alerted his managers to its existence. Shortly thereafter, according to his testimony, lawyers in the IRS's Washington, D.C., office said, "We want to look at the case." On the evidence of the Washington office's interest in that initial case, Mr. Shafer said IRS agents in Cincinnati then held the applications of tea-party groups until they were given "further direction" from D.C...Mr. Shafer was unable to say why officials in Washington were so interested in the tea-party cases or whether the officials' interest was politically motivated.

"Did you have an understanding at the time about what the reason was for sending the cases [to Washington] for review?" investigators asked him. "No," he responded. They pressed further. "Do you have personal knowledge of the motivations of Washington and how they worked the tea party cases?" "I do not," Mr. Shafer said.

The testimony offered by other Cincinnati IRS employees—which I have reviewed in full, un-redacted form—contradicts Mr. Cummings's claims and those of Obama administration officials, such as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, who has pointed the finger at "line employees" in Cincinnati. The IRS interviews suggest that the agency's officials in Washington closely controlled the review of tea-party cases.

Consider Gary Muthert, the Cincinnati IRS screener who told investigators that he began singling out tea-party applications at the request of Mr. Shafer, who told him "Washington, D.C., wanted some cases."

And there is Elizabeth Hofacre, the Cincinnati IRS agent who for several months in 2010 was charged with handling all tea-party applications. She told the committee that she understood the "lookout list" used to flag the applications of tea-party groups was also intended to flag those of Republican and conservative groups. When the applications of liberal groups came in, she sent them along for general processing.

Ms. Hofacre also told the committee's investigators that IRS lawyers in Washington were controlling her every move. "I was taking all my direction from EO Technical," she told investigators, referring to the group of IRS tax lawyers in Washington that handles tax-exempt organizations. She went on to say that she had "no autonomy" in her handling of the cases, and she termed the behavior of IRS officials in Washington in the matter "very unusual."

Mr. Cummings's efforts have drawn attention away from these troubling accounts, which have been partially released by the House Oversight Committee—and instead bogged the committee down with questions of whether to release full interview transcripts.

Why would Obama, whose EPA officials were appointed to "crucify" random innocent businesses, use the IRS to do the same thing? I mean it just doesn't add up in my brain-dead default Obama-worship mode.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577904578561830226825770.html

Don't let anyone convince you that civil unrest in Brazil in recent weeks is a spontaneous rebellion against big, corrupt government.

For sure, grievances against government mismanagement and corruption exist. But protesters need organizers, and my reporting suggests that President Dilma Rousseff's political adversaries on the hard left are hard at work, applying Rahm Emanuel's famous dictum: Never let a crisis go to waste.

How Ms. Rousseff responds will determine whether Brazil remains engaged in its decades-long evolution toward democratic capitalism or sinks back into the 1970s. She would be well advised to remember Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who said that those who stand in the middle of the road get run over.

During the eight years that left-wing Workers' Party (PT) President Lula da Silva governed Brazil (2002-10), outsiders marveled at the moderation of the Castro-hugging former union leader. Hugo Chávez turned Venezuela into a socialist swamp. But Lula, once an advocate of foreign-debt default and other socialist bromides, respected the power of international capital markets.

He aimed to assure investors that Brazil was open for business. Currency stability, an energy policy that welcomed foreign players, and competitive gains in agriculture gave Brazil the look of a nation awakening from a big-government slumber. Global money managers gave Brazil a thumbs up. With a rising middle class, it became a Wall Street darling.

Lula's constituency on the hard left was unhappy. It had waited a long time to get its man in power. Bullets during the days of guerrilla warfare hadn't done it. But ballots had delivered the nation from any semblance of capitalism, or so they thought. Lula's failure to follow through was seen as a betrayal.

The trouble for the die-hard socialists was that Brazilians were beginning to thrive under Lula's quasi-market policies. Low inflation and a new welfare program for the very poor eroded the appeal of radicalism. As long as capital flowed into Brazil, the real was strong and the future looked bright. Expectations were rising.

To understand Brazil's fall from grace, remember that the muscular real, for all its benefits, revealed the competitive weakness of domestic manufacturers. Instead of letting them adapt, the government intervened heavily in the foreign-exchange markets to try to weaken the currency. The government also ramped up protectionism.

John Welch, Latin America strategist for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, notes that Brazil increased import tariffs last year to 25% on 100 capital goods. "In addition," Mr. Welch wrote me by email on Saturday, "the government increased to 60% local content rules on concessions in [deep water] oil exploration and production, electricity generation, railroads, and infrastructure projects that involve the government. Adding to this the obsessive policy of weakening the real, it is no surprise that investment collapsed in 2012."

The economic slowdown is increasing investor wariness about the government's willingness to regain fiscal discipline. On Friday, Goldman Sachs's emerging-markets analyst Alberto Ramos warned in a research note that Brazil's "fiscal policy is turning increasingly expansionary."

Mr. Ramos notes that the current 5.8% unemployment is a historical low for Brazil. But GDP growth slowed to 0.9% last year and headline inflation—the broad measure that includes volatile food and energy prices—is now 6.7%. Inflation is running at 8.3% year over year in non-price-controlled goods, and at 9.8% in nontradables such as services.

it is worth asking who neatly arranged for the roadblocks and vandalism that broke out across the country after an annual increase in bus fares. There is solid evidence to suggest that it came from disillusioned and radical groups on Ms. Rousseff's left. Protests in Porto Alegre, for example, began under the leadership of the likes of the Socialist and Freedom Party, which was formed by former PT members expelled for resisting Lula's pension reform.

Using an anti-status-quo message and social media, organizers have not found it difficult to attract young people of many political persuasions. It is likely that most of them don't know they are being used.

[Tails82]

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324637504578565530512048940.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The Age of American Impotence

As the Edward Snowden saga illustrates, the Obama administration is running out of foreign influence.

At this writing, Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive National Security Agency contractor indicted on espionage charges, is in Moscow, where Vladimir Putin's spokesman insists his government is powerless to detain him. "We have nothing to do with this story," says Dmitri Peskov. "I don't approve or disapprove plane tickets."

Funny how Mr. Putin always seems to discover his inner civil libertarian when it's an opportunity to humiliate the United States...Mr. Snowden arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong, where local officials refused a U.S. arrest request, supposedly on grounds it "did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law." That's funny, too, since Mr. Snowden had been staying in a Chinese government safe house before Beijing gave the order to ignore the U.S. request and let him go.

Now Mr. Snowden may be on his way to Havana, or Caracas, or Quito. It's been said often enough that this so-called transparency crusader remains free thanks to the cheek and indulgence of dictatorships and strongmen. It's also been said that his case illustrates how little has been achieved by President Obama's "reset" with Moscow, or with his California schmoozing of China's Xi Jinping earlier this month.

But however the Snowden episode turns out (and don't be surprised if the Russians wind up handing him over in exchange for an unspecified American favor), what it mainly illustrates is that we are living in an age of American impotence. The Obama administration has decided it wants out from nettlesome foreign entanglements, and now finds itself surprised that it's running out of foreign influence.

That is the larger significance of last week's Afghan diplomatic debacle, in which the Taliban opened an office in Doha for the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan"—the name Mullah Omar grandiloquently gave his regime in Kabul before its 2001 downfall. Afghan President Hamid Karzai responded by shutting down negotiations with the U.S. over post-2014 security cooperation.

Now the U.S. finds itself in an amazing position. Merely to get the Taliban to the table for a bogus peace process, the administration agreed at Pakistan's urging to let Mullah Omar come to the table on his owns terms: no acceptance of the Afghan Constitution, no cease-fire with international forces, not even a formal pledge to never again allow Afghanistan to become a haven for international terrorism. The U.S. also agreed, according to Pakistani sources, to allow the terrorist Haqqani network—whose exploits include the 2011 siege of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul—a seat at the table.

Yet having legitimized Haqqani and given the Taliban everything it wanted in exchange for nothing, the U.S. finds itself being dumped by its own client government in Kabul, which can always turn to Iran as a substitute patron. Incredible: no peace, no peace process, no ally, no leverage and no moral standing, all in a single stroke. John Kerry is off to quite a start.

What's happening in Afghanistan is of a piece with the larger pattern of U.S. diplomacy. Iraq? The administration made the complete withdrawal of our troops a cornerstone of its first-term foreign policy, and now finds itself surprised that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki won't lift a finger to prevent Iranian cargo planes from overflying his airspace en route to resupplying Bashar Assad's military. Syria? President Obama spent two years giving the country's civil war the widest berth, creating the power vacuum in which Iran, Hezbollah and Russia may soon achieve their strategic goals.

And Iran: In 2003, Tehran briefly halted its secret nuclear-weapons work and agreed to suspend its enrichment activities, at least for a few months. Yet since then, every U.S. effort to persuade Iran to alter its nuclear course has failed. Is it because the Obama administration was insufficiently solicitous, patient, or eager for a deal? Or is it that Tehran believes that treating this administration with contempt carries little cost?

"America can't do a damn thing against us" was a maxim of the Iranian revolution in its early days when America meant Jimmy Carter. Under President Obama, the new maxim could well be "America won't do a damn thing."

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323683504578565750859278118.html

When the Obama administration sued BMW and discount retailer Dollar General earlier this month for the alleged use of unfair criminal background checks to screen workers, the left cheered the move...But if the Obama administration's ultimate goal is to increase employment opportunities for minorities, it might consider the empirical research showing that employers who check criminal backgrounds are more likely to hire blacks. Employers who run criminal background checks are also more likely to hire people with spotty work records—a disproportionate number of whom are minorities.

"We find that employers that check criminal backgrounds are in general more likely to hire African Americans," writes Henry Holzer of Georgetown University and two co-authors of a 2006 academic paper titled, "Perceived Criminality, Criminal Background Checks, and the Racial Hiring Practices of Employers."

The authors continue: "n an analysis of employer willingness to hire other stigmatized groups of workers (such as workers with gaps in their employment history), we find nearly identical relationships. Combined, these results suggest that in the absence of background checks, employers use race, gaps in employment history, and other perceived correlates of criminal activity to assess the likelihood of an applicant's previous felony convictions and factor such assessments into the hiring decision."

When you limit the information an employer can use to make a hiring decision, you increase the likelihood that he'll make that decision based on statistics alone. The authors conclude that "the adverse consequence of employer-initiated background checks on the likelihood of hiring African Americans is more than offset by the positive effect of eliminating statistical discrimination."

Opposition to criminal background checks is yet another example of how well-meaning liberals push public policies that make them feel better but ultimately do more to harm than help the intended beneficiaries.

[Tails82]

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324637504578567380502446560.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The U.S. has a long and difficult history with racial discrimination, but on Tuesday the Supreme Court marked a milestone worth celebrating when it ruled that a section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act has outlived its usefulness. The political left is reacting as if this means a return to Jim Crow, but the ruling is best understood as a sign of the racial progress that progressives claim to believe in.

In a 5-4 decision, the Justices said that the law's Section 4b coverage formula—which requires that nine states and parts of seven others get federal preclearance of changes to their voting laws—can no longer be constitutionally justified.

"Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority in Shelby County, Ala. v. Holder, "Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions." The Constitution requires that the federal government treat states equally, and the Voting Rights Act's selective restrictions were only warranted under extraordinary circumstances. "Current burdens," Justice Roberts wrote, quoting a previous case, must be justified by "current needs."

The High Court previously described all of this progress in a 2009 case, but in the habit of this restrained Roberts Court stopped short of overturning Section 4 and invited Congress to revise its formula. Congress ignored that warning, and this time the Court followed through on its constitutional logic and ordered Congress to rewrite its preclearance formula to reflect current reality.

In practical terms, this will be very hard for Congress to do without including the entire country in its map of voting discrimination. As the Chief Justice noted in oral argument in Shelby County, the state with the largest gap between white and black voter turnout is Massachusetts. Congress will have to explain why the Bay State deserves to be treated better than Mississippi, where black turnout exceeds white turnout.

blog.heritage.org/2013/06/25/greece-austerity-doesnt-involve-public-sector-layoffs/

Greece: Austerity Doesn’t Involve Public-Sector Layoffs

Slate’s Matthew Yglesias might be attacked as an “austerity denier” now that he has joined Heritage’s Salim Furth in pointing out that there is a lot of policy diversity under the broad label of “austerity.”

Yglesias explained last week why a small but sudden layoff of government employees might bring down the Greek coalition government:

"So far [political] awkwardness has been avoided by having zero public-sector layoffs. All that sky-high Greek unemployment you’ve read about has come from people losing jobs in the private sector. That’s clearly not a sustainable dynamic, and including public sector job losses in the package is a necessary part of the program. But in a patronage politics system, nothing is so simple."

Greece has promised to lay off public employees before. In early 2012, Greece committed to dismissing 15,000 public servants by the end of the year. It did not happen. Despite the lack of government layoffs, the unemployment rate rocketed to 25 percent...Most of the cuts merely rolled back the $7 billion jump in the government’s employee compensation that constituted part of a failed stimulus in 2008 and 2009.

Cutting the wages of overpaid employees is a good start, and Greece cannot afford to maintain sinecures for thousands of extra managers. But with government unions so strong that surgical cuts seem politically impossible, the Greek government tried to make a little headway by completely closing down the public broadcasting service, which had been used as a goodie-box of political favors for decades. The New York Times reports, “Before the financial crisis hit in 2009, it had about 100 on-air presenters earning around $650,000 a year.”

While the public broadcasters fiddle, the Greek private sector has burned. In order to maintain “20 advisers in the C.E.O.’s office,” Greeks have paid more taxes on everything. Income taxes keep rising, and the value-added tax climbed from 19 percent to 23 percent, making the tax significantly more detrimental to economic activity.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323683504578567533647032380.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Obama unveils a war on fossil fuels he never disclosed as a candidate.

President Obama's climate speech on Tuesday was grandiose even for him, but its surreal nature was its particular hallmark. Some 12 million Americans still can't find work, real wages have fallen for five years, three-fourths of Americans now live paycheck to check, and the economy continues to plod along four years into a quasi-recovery. But there was the President in tony Georgetown, threatening more energy taxes and mandates that will ensure fewer jobs, still lower incomes and slower growth.

Mr. Obama's "climate action plan" adds up to one of the most extensive reorganizations of the U.S. economy since the 1930s, imposed through administrative fiat and raw executive power. He wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by 2020, but over his 6,500-word address he articulated no such goal for the unemployment rate or GDP.

Last year the Environmental Protection Agency released "new source performance standard" regulations that are effectively a moratorium on new coal plants. The EPA denied that similar rules would ever apply to the existing fleet, or even that they were working up such rules. Now Mr. Obama will unleash his carbon central planners on current plants.

The higher costs will ripple through the energy chain, which is precisely Mr. Obama's goal. Only by artificially raising the cost of carbon energy can he make even heavily subsidized "renewables" competitive.

In general every $1 billion spent complying with an EPA rule threatens 16,000 jobs and cuts GDP by $1.2 billion—and the agency is now writing scores of multibillion-dollar rules. Keep in mind that last month the Administration quietly raised the "social cost" of carbon by 60% in a regulatory filing related to microwave ovens. That means the EPA can jack up costs by 59.99% and still justify them by claiming the higher benefits.

This regressive burden won't merely be borne by average American consumers and utility rate-payers—especially in the Midwest and Southern regions that use the most coal. This also threatens one of the few booming parts of the economy, the energy revolution driven by shale gas and unconventional oil. The return of manufacturing to the U.S. depends on this cheap abundant energy, and it could as easily re-relocate overseas as the U.S. becomes less competitive.

For good measure, Mr. Obama also declared that he will approve the Keystone XL pipeline "only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution." Yet the oil in Alberta won't stay in the ground if Mr. Obama blocks the route to the Gulf of Mexico. It will be shipped by rail and boat to China and elsewhere. The only question is whether America will benefit from this shovel-ready project that will create tens of thousands of jobs.

Speaking of futility, Mr. Obama's ambitions will have no effect on global atmospheric carbon concentrations. Emissions are already falling in the U.S., thanks primarily to the shale gas boom, but emissions are rising in the developing world. Mr. Obama pandered to the climate-change absolutists by saying "We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society." But he never explained how his plan will reduce warming, or why climate models have failed to predict the warming slowdown of the last dozen or so years even as more CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere.

Most striking about this Obama legacy project is its contempt for democratic consent. Congress has consistently rejected an Obama-style "comprehensive" anticarbon energy plan. That was true even when Democrats ran the Senate with a filibuster-proof majority in 2009-2010 and killed his cap-and-trade energy bill. The only legislative justification for Mr. Obama's new plan is an abusive interpretation of the Clean Air Act, which was last revised in 1990 and never mentions carbon as a pollutant.

So instead Mr. Obama will impose these inherently political policy choices via unaccountable bureaucracies, with little or no debate. Mr. Obama might have at least announced his war on carbon before the election and let voters have a say. Instead he posed as the John the Baptist of fossil fuels in locales such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia—taking credit for the shale fracking boom he had nothing to do with and running ads attacking Mitt Romney as anticoal.

Now safely re-elected, Mr. Obama figures he can do what he pleases. The Americans who will be harmed will have to console themselves with 99 weeks of jobless benefits, food stamps and ObamaCare.

blog.heritage.org/2013/06/25/obama-climate-change-plan-war-on-coal-would-hike-natural-gas-prices-42-percent/

Obama Climate Change Plan: War on Coal Would Hike Natural Gas Prices 42 Percent

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/06/25/barack_obama_is_a_great_success

So Putin, Russian president Vladimir Putin, is telling us that he will not extradite Edward Snowden, that Snowden's in Moscow and he's free to fly wherever he wants. There have been conflicting stories coming out of Russia. Snowden is there; Snowden isn't there. Again, I had people yesterday say, "Boy, don't you just love the way Putin and the ChiComs are handing it to Obama?"

I said, "You guys are totally misunderstand. Yeah, Putin may look like he's embarrassing Obama, but this is exactly what Obama is reveling in the idea here of a deflated, declining superpower status. The idea that..." Obama's not taking this personally, that Putin is doing whatever he's doing, that he won't extradite Snowden, that he's telling Obama no.

All it means to Obama is that the United States isn't as feared nor is it as respected. In Hong Kong they wouldn't extradite Snowden. I'm telling you, this is right up Obama's alley, to preside over the decline of the superpower once known as the United States. Look, there isn't any doubt about this any more. There's no doubt about what Obama's agenda is. There's no doubt about what his plans for transforming the country are, and there's no doubt that he's just profoundly successful with all this...If anybody really believes Obama's trying to spur and grow this economy, create a growing private sector with growing private sector jobs, they're hopeless. If anybody really thinks that Obama's trying to strengthen the US border and all this, they're hopeless. They're lost. We're coming up now on the five years of this.

At some point, you've gotta wake up and realize that what you're witnessing is happening because somebody wants it to happen. Not because they're making mistake after mistake after mistake. Not because powerful forces out of your control are making things happen. At some point, you have to admit what's happening is happening...This is the world's last remaining superpower. There is no reason for what's happening to this country to be happening unless somebody wants it to. We have the ability to project power anywhere in the world we want, and emerge victorious anywhere. Be it Iran, be it Iraq, be it Afghanistan, there's nothing stopping us except us.

The fact that Obama's coming up on five years in office now... Look at this story: "76% of Americans are Living Paycheck to Paycheck." Well, what would you expect, when all of these jobs have been lost?

They just vanished.

When taxes are skyrocketing, when costs of living are skyrocketing, energy and everything else -- and now the coal industry is next, and so the cost of energy is gonna continue to skyrocket; it's gonna go up, gasoline. We have an administration steadfastly opposed to the discovery and the creation of more domestic energy. The Keystone pipeline is just the most glaring example. We have an administration that's dead-set against any policy that would increase our own supply of fossil fuel energy and thus reduce prices.

At some point you have to admit, "You know what? This isn't just a mistake. This isn't somebody not qualified for the job and doesn't know what they're doing. This is somebody who knows exactly what they're doing." So when you see CNN Money has the story, "76% of Americans are Living Paycheck to Paycheck"? Well, what do you think is gonna happen when you have an administration that's doing everything it can to take people's wealth?

What do you think's gonna happen when you have policies designed to prevent the accumulation of wealth? What is going to happen when you have policies that shrink the United States economy? The federal government is the only thing growing. It's getting bigger and bigger. Now, the oil and gas industry is booming in places Obama can't stop it -- i.e., on nonfederal lands. You would think, using common sense, "Okay, we've got an oil and gas boom in the Dakotas, and it's happening because of fracking."

You would think that an American president would see this and say, "Man, look what we could do nationwide if we expanded this outside the Dakotas! Look at the jobs we could create. Look at the energy we could find. Look at the lack of dependence that we could create on Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern oil-producing states! Look at all the good that could come from this."

No!

What do we have?

We have an administration that is trying to limit it to the Dakotas, punish the people doing it there, and make sure it doesn't happen anywhere else. And this is an accident? This is somebody who doesn't know what they're doing? "He's just a good guy, Rush! He's just inexperienced, you know? He just doesn't have that much knowledge. He's trying as hard as he can." This is not gonna fly any longer.

[Chromeo]

republicans in 'anti-democracy criminals' shocker

www.gamefaqs.com/boards/261-politics/66565235

(skip to the mid-end point if you like)

[Tails82]

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/the-defiance-of-marriage-act

Days from now, our country will be celebrating an America that its founders would barely recognize. Freedom, Alexis de Tocqueville once said, requires virtue. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear that the pillars of both are under attack. By a single vote, five unelected justices determined that they know better than God and struck at the heart of marriage in America.

It was a powerful rebuke of a law FRC helped develop, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) -- but not the final blow. To the disappointment of many, this was not the sweeping nationwide redefinition of marriage that homosexual activists were hoping for. Instead, the Court's majority decided that the federal law is unconstitutional in states where same-sex "marriage" is legal. There, couples will have full access to the 1,100 federal benefits, rights, and protections that naturally married spouses enjoy. While it wasn't a complete dismantling of marriage, the Court's ruling paves the way for a wave of attacks on state constitutional amendments all across America, where same-sex couples will fight for the same "rights" the justices are granting elsewhere.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy insisted that defining marriage as the union of a man and woman -- as nations have since the beginning of time -- is "to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the States." It is one thing, Justice Antonin Scalia fired back, "for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it [are] enemies of the human race." Chief Justice John Roberts agreed, writing that the definition of marriage wasn't driven by a "sinister motive" but by its "role and function throughout the history of civilization." Nor, argued Justice Samuel Alito, did Congress or the federal government violate the Constitution by defining marriage through DOMA in 1996. "The Constitution does not guarantee the right to enter in a same-sex 'marriage.'" And certainly judges, he said in oral arguments, are "not equipped to make such an assessment."

Nor are we. What God imprinted on the human heart, no judge or court can change. The Court can declare same-sex "marriage" a legal right in the eyes of government, but judges cannot make it morally right in the hearts of the people. This is an institution that carries God's own signature. Even absent any faith, the natural order proves the only successful model for civilization is natural marriage. For nine years, homosexual activists have hidden behind the black robes of the court, trying to force their will on America before people wake up to the devastation. In California, voters already understood what was at stake. In two separate referendums, they flooded the ballots for marriage, winning a constitutional amendment in 2008 in the largest state in America. For five years, the Left has battled to tear down this monument to democracy and the natural family. California Governor Jerry Brown, ignoring his people -- and the law -- took a page from President Obama's school of defiance and refused to defend the amendment in court. Left without options, the proponents of Proposition 8 took it upon themselves to protect it.

Today, the Supreme Court, in a profoundly disturbing decision, ruled that these voters lacked the standing to represent a state amendment that more than 7,000,000 Californians passed. Our legal experts are analyzing the complicated next steps and implications of this decision on marriage law in California. What is clear is that it was a slap in the face of democracy, in which five justices agreed that the people of 'We The People' can be ignored when the outcome is not what a tyrannical government wants. The Supreme Court holds instead that voters' voices can be discarded in a heap of judicial arrogance. Left untouched, the Court's ruling allows the executive branch to effectively veto any duly enacted law, without any remedy for a vulnerable electorate.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/06/26/just_18_months_ago_barack_obama_was_a_bigot

Just 18 Months Ago, Barack Obama was a Bigot

Just 18 months ago, the president of the United States opposed gay marriage. Now, 18 months later, we are told that the whole country supports gay marriage, and those who don't are bigots. That was in the Supreme Court ruling today, that people who oppose gay marriage are bigots and want to deny and want to make fun of and want to impugn and demean homosexuals. Why do we even need a court, if it is going to behave like this? Why do we even need a Congress?

So stop and think about this: A year and a half ago, even the president of the United States opposes gay marriage. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, signed DOMA into law. Now all of a sudden, after Obama changes his mind, the whole country supports gay marriage, and those who don't are bigots. David Corn, who's at Mother Jones now (he used to be with The Nation), just moments ago tweeted the following:

Quote, "Ten years ago today, Scalia wrote an angry dissent saying if sodomy laws were rejected it would lead to...gay marriage! Well, he was right," close quote. That's David Corn saying it with a smile. "Ten years ago today, Scalia wrote an angry dissent saying if sodomy laws were rejected it would lead to...gay marriage! Well, he was right." Corn is chortling, gloating, but Scalia was right -- and people said he was crazy 10 years ago. They mocked him for being an alarmist.

They told everybody he was a homophobe ten years ago. In his dissent, Scalia also points out the Supreme Court is not supposed to be greater than any of the other two branches of government. With the DOMA decision, the court has announced that they are superior to the Congress and to the executive. Again from his dissent, Scalia writes, "It is an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people's Representatives in Congress and the Executive.

"It envisions a Supreme Court standing (or rather enthroned) at the apex of government, empowered to decide all constitutional questions, always and everywhere 'primary' in its role."...We have all been sucked in here that there are nine people who wear black robes who all of a sudden are the final arbiters of everything, and everybody just goes long with it (panting) and they wait with their tongues hanging out with bated breath and excitement for what's coming down the pike. With each of these decisions from the court we have more and more usurpation of constitutional power -- and, by the same token, we've got, sad to say, a Congress which seems willing to abrogate its power.

'Cause they don't want to make the controversial decisions. I remember when it came time to start closing military bases because of budget reasons. What did Congress do? Hell, they formed a bunch of "blue ribbon panels" of retired members of Congress and retired military people...They decided which bases would remain open and they decided which bases would be closed, so that when the rubber hit the road, the member of Congress could tell his constituents, "It wasn't me! I -- I -- I had nothing to do with it. We had a blue ribbon panel!" More and more controversial decisions were passed on to the court. It happened with McCain-Feingold, campaign finance reform. Neither a president nor a Congress wanted to deal with it.

"Ah, we'll let the court figure it out! We'll let the court be the final word," and the court has willingly -- especially the leftists on the court have willingly -- accepted it. They've stepped in and said, "We'll be happy to be the final authority!" This was not a matter of the court finding DOMA unconstitutional, by the way. Do you know that? That's not what happened here. They didn't really bother to do that. The court just decided that the decision was wrong and they're gonna correct it.

Now, we're told over and over and over again the court is supposed to go out of its way to not overturn decisions of the legislative branch. Like they didn't with Obamacare, remember. John Roberts twisted himself into positions that were unrecognizable in order to avoid declaring Obamacare unconstitutional, which it clearly was. In this case, they couldn't wait to strike out at DOMA because -- and here's the real reason for this ruling today. The five libs and Justice Kennedy, for some reason, just couldn't wait to insult supporters of traditional marriage, and they took the occasion of this case to do it.

It wasn't a judicial ruling.

It was pure politics coming out of the Supreme Court, which, by the way, is not unique, either. That's been happening for quite a while.

President Bill Clinton today, folks, released a statement, together with his wife Hillary Rodham Rodham, hailing the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. Bill Clinton signed it into law. In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act passed the House of Representatives 342 to 67. It passed the Senate 85 to 14. What a bunch of bigots! The Supreme Court majority today said that all of those 342 in the House and those 85 in the Senate passed the Defense of Marriage Act 'cause they hated gays.

...

CALLER: You know, I got up this morning and I was talking to my wife and one of my daughters. Actually I was driving to work and my daughter works at my office and I said, "The thing that worries me about this is not whether they'll saying that this Act is unconstitutional. It's that I'm gonna be officially declared to be, to some extent, un-American effective today. You cannot be a loyal Catholic, an Orthodox Christian or actually..."

RUSH: You can't be a constitutionalist. You can't be a defender of the founding...What the Supreme Court majority said today essentially was, "We're gonna find that DOMA was bad because we don't like the people who are for it. We don't care about the law. We don't care what happened legislatively. We just don't like the people...They, the majority in this decision, used character assassination as a means of deciding this case, not the law.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/06/26/supreme_court_rulings_on_gay_marriage_represent_the_fracturing_of_the_american_culture

Scalia's dissent today in the Defense of Marriage Act decision, I'm gonna read portions of it to you. It is unlike any dissent by any justice I've ever read about any case. And that's because Scalia says that the majority in the DOMA ruling was unlike any majority that this court has ever produced, that it was filled with venom and rage. If Scalia's dissent is right, what it means is that the common, ordinary fisticuff arguments between left and right in this country have now taken over the Supreme Court. And the law and judicial restraint, temperament and all that has evaporated. And the court is no different than a barroom now. Whoever has the largest number on one side, the loudest voices and the most insulting voices wins.

...

Speaking of Scalia, his dissent today in the Defense of Marriage Act ruling is breathtaking. In his view, what's happened here is the Supreme Court has now demonized proponents and supporters of traditional marriage as it has been understood for thousands of years. The Supreme Court majority, in its ruling, actually uses language that insults and demonizes the people who support marriage as it's been since the beginning of time.

Now, if you ever had any doubt that the left is intolerant and fully invested in the low art of personal destruction through smear tactics, just read Scalia's dissent in United States v. Wade. In this dissent he quotes the majority and illustrates how they smear -- in a Supreme Court ruling, smear -- supporters of traditional marriage as a means of justifying their opinion. What Scalia says is that the majority in the DOMA case, in order to arrive at their decision, actually says that the supporters of traditional marriage...

Well, they name-call. There's no legal reasoning here, or very little. Scalia says the majority has arrived at its point of view because the opponents of homosexual marriage are reprobates and bigots. It's disgusting. It demeans the Supreme Court, and it's turned the Supreme Court into nothing different from any venue in this country where people argue. It proves that we are up against people who don't give a damn about the rule of law or about basic decency or about decorum.

I have often said that what animates people on the left -- what motivates them, what informs them -- is defeating us. No matter how, no matter what, no matter what it means. Their hatred for us overwhelms anything else. No matter the result, victory that includes impugning and demeaning and insulting us is what they seek. It's what makes them happy. Now, the left politicizes everything, and in this case, hardball politics became the name of the game.

So now it's not just schools or doctor's offices or where you vote, the military, the NFL or football games. Now it's even the Supreme Court that has been turned into an advocacy unit of the Obama administration. Not even hiding it. The majority decision in DOMA makes it plain that the majority of the Supreme Court is nothing more than any other aspect of the team advancing the Obama agenda. The Scalia dissent is extraordinary, and the court's majority opinion in this case has poisoned any opportunity for reasoned civil debate going forward.

It really is striking.

This is Antonin Scalia saying the majority attacks the supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act as having as their sole motivation, the only motive was to harm homosexuals. They proceed from there in declaring it unconstitutional. The majority said that it's unconstitutional because the people who wrote it... By the way, it was Bill Clinton, a Democrat Congress, and a Democrat president who made this law possible -- and they were pandering.

The Democrats back then were pandering to a majority opinion in this country which wanted to maintain the definition of marriage as that between a man and a woman, and Clinton is running for reelection. It was Clinton who signed DOMA. The majority in the Supreme Court has just raked Clinton over the coals as a bigot, and the Democrat Congress over the coals, accusing them of having as their only motivation the wish to harm homosexuals.

Scalia continues, "Bear in mind that the object of this condemnation is not the legislature of some once-Confederate Southern state ... but our respected coordinate branches, the Congress and Presidency of the United States," and in this case the presidency was held by Bill Clinton. So Scalia's pointing out that the majority in this case was accusing Clinton and the Democrat Congress of passing DOMA because they only wanted to hurt gay people.

"Laying such a charge," Scalia writes, "against them should require the most extraordinary evidence, and I would have thought that every attempt would be made to indulge a more anodyne explanation for the statute. The majority does the opposite -- affirmatively concealing from the reader the arguments that exist in justification" for DOMA. So it gets worse. Not only does the majority decision today accuse the people who supported DOMA of doing it only to hurt gay people...

He then accuses the majority of concealing the just arguments for the statute. He says the majority "makes only a passing mention of the 'arguments put forward' by the Act's defenders, and does not even trouble to paraphrase or describe them.' I imagine that this is because it is harder to maintain the illusion of the Act's supporters as unhinged members of a wild-eyed lynch mob when one first describes their views as they see them. ... The court mentions none of this.

"Instead, it accuses the Congress that enacted this law and the president who signed it of something much worse than, for example, having acted in excess of enumerated federal powers-- or even having drawn distinctions that prove to be irrational. Those legal errors may be made in good faith, errors though they are. But the majority says that the supporters of [DOMA] acted with malice -- with the 'purpose' (ante, at 25) 'to disparage and to injure' same-sex couples.

"It says that the motivation for DOMA was to 'demean,' ibid.; to 'impose inequality,' ante, at 22; to 'impose ... a stigma,' ante, at 21; to deny people 'equal dignity,' ibid.; to brand gay people as 'unworthy,' ante, at 23; and to 'humiliat[e]' their children, ibid." This is in the majority opinion! Scalia is pointing it out and saying it's reprehensible. The majority is citing these assumed motivations. You won't find anywhere in the record of DOMA what I just read to you being the reasons people wanted it to become law.

This is what the libs assume people who support traditional marriage believe. So you have a bunch of hacks disguised as judges on the Supreme Court today, impugning the motives (with no evidence) of the supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act. Scalia is beside himself. He thinks this is the last area that any court should be going to. Impugning the motives which are unstated and cannot be known, while ignoring the record, which has testimony in hearings and all sorts of other data that was made available in support of the Act.

"I am sure," Scalia writes, "these accusations are quite untrue. To be sure (as the majority points out), the legislation is called the Defense of Marriage Act. But to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority's judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement.

"To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to 'disparage,' 'injure,' 'degrade,' 'demean,' and 'humiliate' our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence -- indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history."

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323844804578529030063800200.html

The American Psychiatric Association released a revision of its diagnostic bible in May, the first major rewrite in two decades. "The Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," or DSM-5, is the official guidebook for diagnosing every conceivable psychiatric ailment. This new edition loosens the rules in a disturbing way.

In previous editions, you the patient had to meet certain specified criteria in order to be diagnosed for any particular condition. For example, if I were going to diagnose you as having schizophrenia, then you had to have specific symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations. If you didn't have those symptoms, then I couldn't make the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Not anymore. Last month, DSM-5 introduced a new diagnosis, "Unspecified Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder." The only required criterion is that you have some distress from unspecified symptoms, but you "do not meet the full criteria for any of the disorders in the schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders diagnostic class." You don't have to have delusions. You don't have to have hallucinations. In fact if you do have delusions and hallucinations, then you probably don't qualify for unspecified schizophrenia. (You will find the new diagnosis in one short paragraph at the bottom of page 122 of DSM-5.)

Likewise for every other diagnostic category, including, for example, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Let's suppose that you occasionally don't pay attention to your wife. You don't meet the old-fashioned criteria for ADHD, which included impairment in multiple settings, like on the job or while driving. You are inattentive only when your wife is talking. You pay attention to everybody else. Hey, no problem. You now qualify for "Unspecified Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder."

That makes it easier than ever to go to your local physician, tell him or her that you have unspecified ADHD, and ask for a prescription for a powerful stimulant such as Adderall or Vyvanse. If the physician hesitates, whip out your copy of the DSM-5 and read aloud the relevant passage (it's on page 66), which specifically indicates that no criteria must be met except at least occasional symptoms of inattention which cause "significant distress or impairment."

But what if your symptoms are too vague even to nudge the compass, however sluggishly, in any direction, toward any particular diagnosis whatsoever? What if you're just feeling down because you're not "living your best life," to borrow Oprah's phrase, and you want your doctor to fix the problem? No worries. The DSM-5 offers a completely new diagnostic category "Unspecified Mental Disorder" (see page 708). The only requirement is that you "do not meet the full criteria for any mental disorder."

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/06/26/obama_s_goal_is_to_shrink_the_economy

Economic news: "US Economic Growth was More Tepid Than Previous Estimated in the First Quarter." For those of you in Rio Linda, that means it's a little cooler than they thought it was gonna be, and there wasn't as much economic growth in the first quarter as all the experts figured. "US economic growth was more tepid than previously estimated in the first quarter, held back by a moderate pace of consumer spending, weak business investment and declining exports...So excluding inventories, the economy grew at a 1.2% rate, the slowest in two years, and that's the take-away here. It's likely only to get worse, because this is the result of economic policies put in place on purpose. Folks, we're now well into the fifth year of this. It's well enough time for people to have determined that we're headed in the wrong direction and that maybe there needs to be a shift in policy. But instead, we are doubling down on what has created the problem.

With the president's announced executive orders yesterday to impose even more burdens on this economy in an effort "to stop climate change," there's nothing that's going to change direction that we're going. There's nothing that's gonna result in the economy getting bigger.

It's gonna keep getting smaller, and more and more of the economy is going to be usurped by the government. So what used to be a big pile of money that you had a chance to access -- a growing pie of wealth that you had a chance to attack and get your piece of -- is getting smaller and smaller. The pie is getting smaller. Your opportunities to get your piece of it is getting smaller and smaller because the government's taking more and more of it.

They took one-sixth of that pie for Obamacare.

Now we're gonna dump anywhere from 11 to 46 million low-wage and unskilled people into the country competing for jobs, which is only going to force wages lower. So it means your opportunity for your piece of the pie is going to be spread around to even more people who are gonna be much more attractive to hire 'cause they're not gonna cost very much to hire.

So Obama announced yesterday a bunch of executive orders 'cause he can't count on Congress. He signed a bunch of executive orders to finally fight climate change. Algore called it historic. That should be all you need to know that it is a disaster. It is more crony capitalism. It is corruption. It is an alliance of participating industries with government. It's executive orders for the government to just run in and do what the people and their representatives would not authorize.

He's dictating policy. He's on the verge of making it impossible for Republicans to ever win another election with amnesty and the get-out-the-vote efforts that are part of Obamacare. See, Obamacare wasn't about insuring poor people. Did you think that? Did you think the purpose of Obamacare was, "Yeah, there are 30 million uninsured and Obama's just gonna insure them"? No, no. No, 30 million people are gonna remain uninsured. We have now been told this by the CBO.

Thirty million people will remain uninsured. Three hundred million will have unaffordable health insurance, but every damn one of them possible will be registered as a Democrat voter, thanks to the Obama exchanges. Obama's war on coal is not about global warming, it's not about climate change, 'cause there is none! There isn't any global warming. Obama's war is on the private sector economy, and the winner is gonna be an all-powerful federal government -- which, of course, is for the good of all the people.

[Pyro ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ ✔]

That post is too long you need to some it up. All I saw was someone talking about pie. Nom.

So whats the deal in America now? Can the homosexual marry?

[Jordan Ω]

Are you upset about this, Tails?

[Tails82]

Sure why not.

Why am I not a fan of public schools?

www.humanevents.com/2013/06/20/california-schools-to-train-kids-to-sell-obamacare/

California Schools to Train Kids to Sell ObamaCare

The Los Angeles Unified School District will use a state grant to train teens to promote ObamaCare to family members. Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, announced grants of $37 million on May 14 to promote the nationally unpopular law.

LAUSD will receive $990,000. The district listed as a primary outcome for its project, “Teens trained to be messengers to family members.”

Covered California spokeswoman Sarah Soto-Taylor said staff have not questioned this goal.

LAUSD will also use tax-paid staff to promote ObamaCare through phone calls to students’ homes, in-class presentations, and meetings with employees eligible for ObamaCare’s taxpayer-covered healthcare...Teens will be trained to be messengers not to those groups, but to their own families, to get more people enrolled in taxpayer-subsidized healthcare.

If the project is successful, Los Angeles families can expect more use of students to push government-preferred messaging.

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/polygamists-the-more-the-marry-er

Despite two very disappointing rulings, 38 states still define marriage as the union of a man and woman -- including California, where Proposition 8 is still the law of the land. Until an appeals court says otherwise, the reports that the amendment has been struck down are untrue...That said, the landscape has been fundamentally altered in a society where the rule of law is slowly unraveling. Twelve states can now force taxpayers to supply more than 1,100 benefits which, until yesterday, were reserved for real spouses. And both the court and rogue leaders like Jerry Brown have, in the words of Justice Antonin Scalia, "declared open season on any law that...can be characterized as mean-spirited." In a nation where our own President feels no obligation to defend the law, it's no wonder the Human Rights Campaign thinks it can impose same-sex "marriage" on every state in five years.

Emboldened by Justice Anthony Kennedy's sharp rebuke of our side, liberals aren't even bothering to hide the rest of their agenda. Polygamists popped the cork on a little champagne of their own after Wednesday's rulings, as they wait their turn for nationwide acceptance.

"We're very happy with it," said Joe Darger, a Utah polygamist, "I think [the court] has taken a step in correcting some inequality, and that's certainly something that's going to trickle down and impact us... I think the government needs to now recognize that we have a right to live free as much as anyone else." Proponents of "plural marriages" are riding the homosexual movement's wave of success all the way to legitimacy. They're using the same playbook, the same sound bites-and so far, the Democratic Party seems surprisingly open to the idea. After all, who are we to say that two or three or nine consenting adults shouldn't be able to make the same commitment? Love is love, right?

Not as far as FRC and some conservative leaders are concerned. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who never backs away from a fight, made it clear where he stands on the issue. "[The] Supreme Court decisions on marriage are a regrettable overreach against the will of the people as expressed through large, bipartisan majority in Congress and directly through referendum in California -- a markedly blue state." For now, our job is to stand for truth and work to win back the ground the Court took. That starts by reminding society why the marriage of a man and woman is uniquely important -- not just to society, but to the future of America.

...

The world's temperatures haven't risen in 15 years, but that isn't stopping the President from turning the heat up on climate change. Desperate to change his own climate of scandals and controversies, President Obama took to Georgetown on Tuesday to invoke a sweeping environmental policy the only way he knows how: without Congress's consent. The imperial President, who uses executive orders to write laws that he can't pass, once again showed his contempt for the democratic process by issuing these policies without a single debate.

In the crosshairs of this latest environmental witch hunt are carbon emissions, which he intends to fight through a multi-billion dollar program that will bankrupt families, the poor, and the elderly, and kill the fossil fuel industry. "Some 12 million Americans still can't find work," the Wall Street Journal criticizes, "real wages have fallen for five years, three-fourths of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck, and the economy continues to plod along four years into a quasi-recovery. But there was the President in Georgetown, threatening more energy taxes and mandates that will ensure fewer jobs, still lower incomes and slower growth."

www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wh-touts-kenyan-program-obtain-national-id-cards-voter-registration_737990.html

WH Touts Kenyan Program to Obtain National ID Cards for Voter Registration

It's another one of those things where other countries can do it but we can't. Speaking of the trip, Obama should stay in the third world where he belongs instead of spreading their abuses and election funny business over here.

blog.heritage.org/2013/06/27/syria-would-the-u-n-att-ban-u-s-aid-to-the-rebels/

Proponents of the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) assert that the treaty prevents signatories from supporting not only the Syrian opposition but future rebellions against other totalitarian regimes.

The Geneva Academy argues that the transfer of arms to a non-state actor “could amount to a violation” of the treaty. At Oxford University, Stuart Casey-Maslen states that the ATT makes transfers “arguably…unlawful.” David Bosco at Foreign Policy calls British support for arming the Syrian rebels “possibly contradictory” given Britain’s backing for the ATT. Rachel Stohl, an influential U.N. consultant on the ATT, opposes aid to the rebels (though not specifically because of the ATT). And Control Arms, the umbrella nongovernmental organization (NGO) backing the ATT, asserts that the war in Syria is “stark proof that [the ATT] is needed to stop weapons exacerbating already horrific abuses against civilians.”

The Administration disagrees with this interpretation of the treaty until a little while from now, when their reinterpretation/redefinition will become as contradictory as their beliefs that the first amendment was meant to silence people, the second was meant to take guns away, etc.

Case in point, July 4th was meant to celebrate Obama:

washingtonexaminer.com/nancy-pelosi-on-the-fourth-of-july-celebrate-obamacare/article/2532463

Because of Obamacare, the Fourth of July has taken on a whole new significance: not only do Americans celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, they also celebrate “health independence” delivered by the law.

Pelosi also used the holiday to fault Republicans for not reversing the spending cuts mandated by sequestration. “If Paul Revere were here today, we would need someone like him to be running through the streets saying, ‘sequester is coming!’” she said. “This is very fundamentally important to the success of our country, to the survival of many here, to the strength of our military as well as to the success of our economy.”

washingtonexaminer.com/treasury-irs-targeted-292-tea-party-groups-just-6-progressive-groups/article/2532456

Refuting Democratic suggestions that progressive groups were also swept up in the IRS probe of the tax status of Tea Party organizations, the Treasury Department's inspector general has revealed that just six progressive groups were targeted compared to 292 conservative groups.

In a letter to congressional Democrats, the inspector general also said that 100 percent of Tea Party groups seeking special tax status were put under IRS review, while only 30 percent of the progressive groups felt the same pressure.

"At this point, the evidence shows us that conservative groups were not only flagged, but targeted and abused by the IRS," said Sarah Swinehart spokeswoman for the Ways and Means Committee.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324328204578571994084780764.html

According to a House Ways and Means Committee source, only seven of the 298 cases flagged by the IRS for extra scrutiny appeared to represent progressive causes. Not one of the seven was subject to harassment or abuse. Of the seven, only two were even sent follow-up questionnaires after their applications for tax-exempt status were received. Neither of those two was asked inappropriate or invasive questions. And all seven saw their applications approved.

Conservative groups were treated differently, sent to a secondary review group after being flagged for scrutiny. They were subject to undue burdens and harassment—lengthy and invasive questions about donors and even prayer habits. There, in the secondary offices, some of them languished for years. "Some of them are still languishing," said the source.

The report claims that part of the problem is that those who were targeted and abused didn't "leverage" the Office of Taxpayer Advocate. But when Sen. John Cornyn contacted the local advocate's office on behalf of the targeted Texas group True the Vote, his letter went unanswered for 11 months, and the eventual reply didn't answer his questions. Forget how they'd treat an average citizen—that's how they treat someone who has power.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/06/27/prosecution_s_star_witness_says_trayvon_martin_called_george_zimmerman_a_creepy_ass_cracker

Prosecution's Star Witness Says Trayvon Martin Called George Zimmerman a "Creepy-Ass Cracker"

This is the United States of America in 2013...probably an Obama voter. This is a classic example of a low-information citizen. Her name is Rachel Jeantel.

She's a friend of Trayvon Martin's. This is the murder trial of George Zimmerman. And Rachel Jeantel is who Trayvon Martin was talking to the night he was killed. She testified yesterday and is testifying again today. During the cross-examination, while asking what she knew about a possible arrest in the case, defense attorney Don West asked her this: "There wasn't any talk at school? There wasn't any talk at the wake?"

JEANTEL: Everybody was trying to forget about it.

(ATTORNEY) WEST: Nothing in the news that you heard?

(WITNESS) JEANTEL: I don't watch the news. The only time I watch the news is for weather.

WEST: Had you seen any press conferences or any news whatsoever --

JEANTEL: I had told you, I don't watch news!

WEST: -- where his attorney spoke?

JEANTEL: I do not watch news!

RUSH: And we can believe it! We can certainly believe it. That's a pretty convincing admission. "I had told you, I don't watch the news," except the weather. So this next sound bite, this is when Rachel Jeantel claims that Trayvon called Zimmerman a "creepy ass cracker." During the cross-examination, Rachel Jeantel and Don West had this exchange...

JEANTEL: I had asked him how the man looked like. He looked like "a creepy-ass cracker."

WEST: Okay. Let me make sure we got that. "Creepy..."

JEANTEL: ..."ass cracker."

WEST: ...ass cracker.

JEANTEL: Yeah.

WEST: Okay. Is that what you recall him saying?

JEANTEL: Yes!

WEST: Okay. And that to you mean like a -- a white individual?

JEANTEL: Yes!

RUSH: The attorney said okay, "Let's make sure we got that: 'Creepy ass cracker.'" "That's right." "Okay. And that to you mean like a -- a white individual?" "Yes." So, "creepy ass cracker." But she didn't think it was "racial." She didn't think it was offensive. Don West and Rachel Jeantel continued after she admitted that Trayvon Martin referred to Zimmerman as a "creapy ass cracker."

WEST: You don't think that "creepy ass cracker" is a racial comment?

JEANTEL: No.

WEST: You may not consider it a racial comment --

JEANTEL: No.

WEST: -- but it's essential offensive, isn't it?

JEANTEL: No.

WEST: You don't think calling someone a creepy ass cracker is offensive?

JEANTEL: No.

RUSH: No, of course not! It's common parlance and statement of fact. Zimmerman was and is a "creepy ass cracker." It's a statement of fact. It's not racial. It's not offensive. Creepy ass cracker. She knows that she can't say anything that's offensive. It's not gonna ever be judged as offensive. She's permitted to say whatever she wants! Now, if Trayvon Martin had been referred to as a "crazy-ass" something else, that would have been big.

This is the prosecution's star witness, folks. This is it. Rachel Jeantel. The exchange then continued...about a letter that she wrote. By the way, she's 19 years old, and she can't read cursive on a letter that she supposedly wrote herself...Does the lawyer sound like he's lauding it over her? Does the lawyer sound like a "creepy ass cracker" that won't leave her alone? (interruption) Yeah. They're gonna call this guy a bully. Before this is all said and done, this lawyer -- who is desperately trying to not to say anything. He desperately wants the witness's testimony to speaks for itself, but he's making sure. He's asking her to repeat and he's gonna end up being the bully. You wait and see. "Creepy ass cracker bully." That's what the lawyer is gonna be end up being here.

[Tails82]

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/feinstein-no-einstein-on-marriage

Even an all-day filibuster, shouting crowds of Planned Parenthood supporters, and the clock can't beat Governor Rick Perry (R-Texas), who will have the last word on the state's sweeping pro-life bill. State senator Wendy Davis (D) had tried for hours to postpone the chamber's vote on a measure that would ban abortions after 20 weeks and enact a whole raft of safety and health protections at local clinics. And while the Senate did finally vote to pass the proposal, it was decided that members had done so too late. The session, which expired at midnight Tuesday, ran out as protestors yelled loud enough and long enough to create enough chaos that members couldn't finish their business fast enough.

Thanks to Governor Perry, they'll have more than enough time on Monday, when he's ordered the Texas legislature to reconvene. "I am calling the legislature back into session because too much important work remains undone," the Governor announced. "Texans value life and want to protect women and the unborn... We will not allow the breakdown of decorum and decency to prevent us from doing what the people of this state hired us to do." Hats off to Governor Perry for calling the Democrats' bluff and doing everything in his power to give women and children the safest environment possible. We look forward to welcoming Texas into the courageous fraternity of states that have banned abortion after 20 weeks!

Yay babies, fight back against mobocracy through reason and the legal process.

blog.heritage.org/2013/06/28/hobby-lobby-wins-major-victory-against-obamacare-mandate/

Hobby Lobby Wins Major Victory Against Obamacare Mandate

The ruling comes just one day after a lengthy opinion of the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit sent the case back to the district court to reconsider Hobby Lobby’s request for a temporary block to the mandate.

Hobby Lobby and the Green family faced the terrible choice of violating their faith or paying massive fines starting this Monday morning,” remarked Becket Fund for Religious Liberty General Counsel Kyle Duncan. “We are delighted that both the 10th Circuit and the district court have spared them from this unjust burden on their religious freedom.”

As the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals noted in its opinion yesterday, the Green family faced crippling fines unless it complied with the mandate. Absent the temporary halt to the mandate granted this afternoon, Hobby Lobby could have face fines of up to $1.3 million a day starting as early as next Monday. Even if the company had stopped offering health insurance altogether, harming their employees by taking away valuable benefits, Obamacare would still have hit Hobby Lobby with a fine of about $26 million per year after 2014.

More than 200 plaintiffs are currently involved in more than 60 lawsuits against this HHS mandate. Of the 28 cases that have had rulings touching on the merits, 21 have received temporary halts to the mandate’s enforcement while their cases proceed. Most involve family businesses burdened by the coercive rule.

Dems weak on defense (they'd rather attack/spy on Christians):

blog.heritage.org/2013/06/28/ayotte-on-americas-tragic-lack-of-purpose-in-the-world/

Speaking before an audience at The Heritage Foundation, Ayotte highlighted the importance of promoting a 21st-century agenda of peace through strength. Americans may not be paying attention to America’s place in the world, Ayotte pointed out, but the rest of the world is.

In large part, she argued the White House has been overwhelmed because it lacks a serious game plan for playing the great game. The Administration’s approach to strategy, she argued, is producing “naïve wish lists.”

Today America faces a number of threats to its vital national interests: the return of great-power competition, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and weapons of lethal precision, the spread of violent extremism, and the dangers presented by failed or failing states.

Nevertheless, Congress and the President have reduced defense budgets by almost $500 billion over the next 10 years and have enacted a sequestration that, unless reversed, will require another $500 billion in reductions. These decisions were made with no analysis of their impact on the military or the national security strategy.

The failure of the United States to sustain its defensive capabilities will lead to increasing levels of global risk and conflict, greater danger to the American homeland and America’s vital national interests, reduced economic growth, and a worsening of America’s fiscal crisis.

“It’s both tragic and telling that by 2019 the United States will be spending more on interest on the debt than we will on defending this nation,” Ayotte said.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323873904578573443195131124.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Keith Alexander, the general in charge of the National Security Agency, told ABC News on Sunday that intelligence revelations by fugitive contractor Edward Snowden had "caused irreversible and significant damage to our country and to our allies."

But no worries, President Obama seems to think it's no big deal. "I have not called [Chinese] President Xi personally or [Russian] President Putin personally" about the case, Mr. Obama said on Thursday in Senegal.

And why not? "Number one, I shouldn't have to," Mr. Obama said. "Number two, we've got a whole lot of business that we do with China and Russia, and I'm not going to have one case of a suspect who we're trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I've got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues." Oh, and he doesn't want to "be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker."

That's a revealing answer, and not in a good way. Mr. Obama has invested precious diplomatic capital trying to "reset" relations with Russia and personalize relations with China's leaders, including this month with Mr. Xi in Palm Springs...if there's a point to the exercise it's precisely so he can pick up the phone and intercede with Vlad and Jinping over this kind of issue.

The Washington Post reports that U.S. analysts fear Mr. Snowden stole much more than he's disclosed. "They think he copied so much stuff—that almost everything that place does, he has," a former government official said.

Several reports quote intelligence sources as saying that al Qaeda and terrorist groups have gained insight into how to avoid NSA detection. The Russian and Chinese intelligence services almost certainly copied whatever Mr. Snowden hauled with him to Hong Kong and Moscow. Nearby on these pages, journalist Edward Jay Epstein connects a few dots and suggests that Mr. Snowden took his consultant job with plans to steal and that he may have had help. In short, there is much more to this debacle than we know so far.

Meantime, Mr. Obama seems to think the only way to force Mr. Snowden's extradition is to make concessions to the Chinese and Russians, rather than demand his return and force Moscow and Beijing to pay a price for failing to comply. Perhaps it's because this Administration rarely seems to exact any price for the misbehavior of other countries that our diplomatic demarches are now treated with such open disdain.

This is why Mr. Snowden remains in a Moscow airport terminal, making demands (via his father) of the terms the U.S. must meet before he returns home. This is also how Russia merrily arms Bashar Assad's forces in Syria, and how Mr. Assad unleashes chemical weapons on his own people, and how Iran marches toward an atomic bomb—all with little concern for what the U.S. might do.

All according to plan, might I add, seeing as Obama hates the US and wants to withdraw from the world stage. Is it just a coincidence that Obama doesn't do a thing to stop a traitor?

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323873904578573382649536100.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Before taking the job in Hawaii, Mr. Snowden was in contact with people who would later help arrange the publication of the material he purloined. Two of these individuals, filmmaker Laura Poitras and Guardian blogger Glenn Greenwald, were on the Board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation that, among other things, funds WikiLeaks.

In January 2013, according to the Washington Post, Mr. Snowden requested that Ms. Poitras get an encryption key for Skype so that they could have a secure channel over which to communicate.

In February, he made a similar request to Mr. Greenwald, providing him with a step-by-step video on how to set up encrypted communications.

So, before Mr. Snowden proceeded with his NSA penetration in March 2013 through his Booz Allen Hamilton job, he had assistance, either wittingly or unwittingly, in arranging the secure channel of encrypted communications that he would use to facilitate the publication of classified communications intelligence...Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Poitras also flew to Hong Kong. They were later joined by Sarah Harrison, a WikiLeaks representative who works closely with Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder. Mr. Snowden reportedly brought the misappropriated data to Hong Kong on four laptops and a thumb drive. He gave some of the communications intelligence to Mr. Greenwald, who had arranged to publish it in the Guardian, and Mr. Snowden arranged to have Ms. Poitras make a video of him issuing a statement that would be released on the Guardian's website. Albert Ho, a Hong Kong lawyer, was retained to deal with Hong Kong authorities.

This orchestration did not occur in a vacuum. Airfares, hotel bills and other expenses over this period had to be paid. A safe house had to be secured in Hong Kong. Lawyers had to be retained, and safe passage to Moscow—a trip on which Mr. Snowden was accompanied by WikiLeaks' Sarah Harrison—had to be organized.

The world now knows that the misappropriation of U.S. communications intelligence began appearing in the Guardian and other publications on June 5, and Mr. Snowden left Hong Kong for the Moscow airport on June 21. A question that remains to be answered: Who, if anyone, aided and abetted this well-planned theft of U.S. secrets?

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/06/28/rachel_jeantel_portrayed_as_victim_of_bullying_by_zimmerman_s_defense

Rachel Jeantel Portrayed as Victim of Bullying by Zimmerman's Defense

FRANCIS: I think that would any of us, you know, at nineteen be that polished to be able to relive over and over and over again those excruciating details? I thought that the -- the defense, after a while, really started to look like a bunch of bullies --

RUSH: Yeeees.

FRANCIS: -- because they were trying to trip her up, and regardless of what you think of her delivery, she was consistent.

RUSH: "A bunch of bullies." That defense lawyer was doing everything he could to soft-pedal what was going on...So yesterday on CNN, all day and night, they had their white anchors asking black guests to tell them what "creepy-ass cracker" meant.

BROOKE BALDWIN: The issue is the word "cracker."

RYAN SMITH: (whispers) Right.

BALDWIN: She said that this was -- that he was being targeted because it was a race thing, but then she said the word "cracker," itself, wasn't racial. Did you hear that?

SMITH: Yeah! And it made total sense to me! You know why? A lot of black folks all over the country, for a lot of southern folks, nothing wrong with that statement. There is a cultural divide that is going on in this trial that played out between Rachel Jeantel and Don West.

RUSH: Right. It's a cultural divide. He doesn't understand it! She's the victim. I tell you, if she's a star witness... I don't know. Because you can't predict juries. I mean, this is an all-female jury, and we've had those before. Do you remember the Menendez trial, the two brothers that slaughtered their parents? Well, they were acquitted. Lyle Menendez was acquitted, and they had some of the female jurors on Oprah. You may remember this; some of you may have forgotten it. But I'm not exaggerating.

A female member of that jury went on Oprah and said, "We felt so bad for him because he was going to have to go through the rest of his life without his mother."

Yeah, that's because he killed her. In fact, after he thought he killed her, he went back in the house, reloaded the shotgun, and fired again to make sure.

"Yes," said the female juror, "but he's suffering. It's so tragic. He's going to spend the rest of his life without his mother."...that's a California jury. This is a Florida jury. You can't predict juries ever, but especially now. This witness yesterday was the star witness. If that was the best that the prosecution has, they have to be in trouble in the real world, a sane world.

There's a story on a website called Global Grind by Christina Coleman...her piece is, "Why Black People Understand Rachel Jeantel," and the basic thrust of this story is that white people are in Mars; black people are from Venus.

We are a universe apart. A half century of decimating the black race in America has resulted in a divide so deep and wide that there's no bridging it and there's no understanding it, and there's no commonality. In my mind, when I looked at this yesterday, I thought Rachel Jeantel was shredded. I thought her credibility was pretty much destroyed. But if you thought that, I guarantee you that in the rest in the media, you and I are profound minorities.

Because the story is how great she was, how wonderful, and what a great citizen. She really hung in there against these bullies and these prosecutors. But she was consistent. And the prosecutor had no idea how to relate to her. When she said, "We don't call the cops where I live," the defense lawyer had no idea, no clue. And the point of this story here by Christina Coleman is one of the reasons that we think her testimony was so ineffective or defective was because we just can't understand people like her.

We "white people" just can't understand.

"Let's cut to the chase," she writes. "Any attorney, jury member, judge or white person in that courtroom is not going to understand Rachel Jeantel. And I don't expect them to. In fact, I certainly ... understand why white people wouldn't like Rachel."

What is this? Doesn't like her? Whoever said they don't like her? I don't know whether she's telling the truth or not, but I do know that she is a tool. She's a useful tool for a bunch of leftists who are looking at this trial as an opportunity to advance a political agenda, because leftists look at everything as an opportunity to advance a political agenda and that's what this trial is for a leftists, and that's what this trial is for civil rights activists. And that's what's wrong.

The fact that we can't have an American citizen show up as a witness and judge her as a witness without regard to her skin color or her heritage or background or what native language she speaks -- the fact that we've got to think about all of that first -- is illustrative of the problems that we have in the country.

"The reason white people don't understand Rachel Jeantel has something more to do with white privilege then, what they would call, Rachel's capricious nature...what white people see in Rachel has little to do about her own issues, and more to say about the America that white people are blind to...But as West continued his questioning, riddled with nuances to throw Rachel off track..." See, he did that because she's a minority, don't you know? Defense lawyers never try to throw witnesses off track! Only when they have minorities up there do they do that, I guess. "But as West continued his questioning, riddled with nuances to throw Rachel off track, the glaring subtext of this all became clear.

"Don West doesn't understand why Rachel didn't call the police when she heard a struggle. Rachel, who is a black woman, doesn't call the police. Why? Black people and police officers don't mix," and white people are never going to understand that. "Distrust in police stems from decades of being disenfranchised and treated unfairly by those who were supposed to protect us. And yes, I'm taking it there...distrust in white people. Government. LAPD. NYPD." Ms. Coleman, if you distrust the government so much, why do you keep voting for Democrats?

So we have more '60s clap trap, here. On this racial differences business, which is it today? Is it racist to say that black people aren't like white people, or is it racist to claim that blacks are like white people? I get confused! Because I know a lot of black people who get criticized for being "too white." They do too well in school. They speak too well, whatever, and they're criticized. They're "not authentic."

You see, it's hopeless. It's hopeless. We're from different worlds. By the way, I... Here's Ebony. Ebony magazine. "When You Make Fun of Rachel Jeantel, You Make Fun of Us." Who is making fun of her? (interruption) Well, Snerdley is, but you haven't heard him. I'm not making fun of her! This is another thing, this presumption that all of these things are going on out there. When we saw Rachel Jeantel on the witness stand today, we saw ourselves.

"We saw the daughter of immigrants, the product of Miami Norland Senior High School and the poignant realities of the disparities in our public education system that provides unequal opportunities to many immigrant students and students of color." You people at Ebony, stop voting Democrat if you want to change that! You want to straighten out the public education system? You want to straighten out the inequities in the public schools? Stop voting Democrat!

Who have you been voting for for 50 years?

Who have you been depending on for 50 years to bring you out of all of this?

They've been letting you down -- every day, every year -- for 50 years! Who runs the public school system, for crying out loud? You do! You and your Democrat allies! Man, I tell you, this is painful, folks. It's really painful.

I'll tell you what the cultural divide is: blacks are openly racist, gun people down in places like Chicago but that never makes the news because we're supposed to just look the other way. Or come up with a bunch of excuses, well they're in gangs because they're poor and they can't ever succeed because the real racism is from those dirty whites, therefore they should never try. So they can be as lazy as they want, commit as many crimes as they want, shoot down whites or start race riots in California while the media defends it, literally go after people and pound their heads into the concrete, then come out with bounties from groups like the New Black Panthers promising rewards to anyone in the lynch mob who can get them the man's head. And there will be no consequences because of one thing, their race. See how they raise a stink and protest when someone like Trayvon finally has to deal with the consequences of his crimes and gets what's coming to him. How dare the victims defend themselves!

I'll tell you why this witness didn't call the cops: because she is friends with a violent drugged-out psycho like Trayvon Martin. Of course she wouldn't call when she knows who the criminals are! Of course the cops arrest the people who by and large commit the crimes in this country! But we can't have that. We must look the other way and pardon any of the gang-banging cop killers if their skin is dark enough to be deemed authentic.

And of course, who do these thugs run off to every time for protection? The Democrat party, the party of fellow criminals. The politicians who are responsible for making the slums, for making the neighborhoods unsafe, who seek a permanent underclass of dependents, the party whose biggest gifts to us include slavery, segregation, and the continuing welfare plantation. You put up former KKK members and re-elect them decade after decade because they promise some more money from the federal stash. You re-elect corrupt Rangels because of their skin color, as they oversee your continued misery, but promise to throw you ghetto-dwelling swine a little more slop next year. Now for the grand prize: a man who had no experience, who oversaw your falling employment prospects and continual suffering, who has stated the object of the game is to put you into a permanent welfare coalition where advancement is impossible, and 97 percent of you vote aye because he's not a cracker. "Let's put up the Magic Negro, no 'authentic' slave blood but he has a Negro dialect when he wants one! All those dumb blacks who are too stupid to get an ID or think for themselves will vote for us!" Which is worse, the racists who come up with these schemes, or the fact that the schemes work because, thanks to liberal so-called education, there are plenty of fools willing to subjugate themselves for the occasional condescending handout?

[Tails82]

www.ncregister.com/site/article/exposing-soviet-unions-war-on-christianity

"The Soviet War on Religion" exhibit was first sponsored by the Archdiocese of Denver last October at the Cathedral-Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.

Among the boldly colored images, priests are mocked as greedy hypocrites. God is portrayed as a slothful drunkard. Clergy are linked with capitalists as enemies of the Soviet working people. Parents are warned to avoid baptizing children because the sacrament spreads germs.

"The posters are eye-openers," observed Father Grandon, parochial vicar at St. Thomas More Church in Centennial, Colo. He also serves as a board member of the Mary, Mother of God Mission to the Russian Far East, which is reviving the Catholic community in Russia’s easternmost territory, the largest diocese in the world.

"They’re shocking historic documents, vividly harsh, and, I fear, they’re particularly relevant today," the priest said.

The posters offer "a warning that this could happen again. Where you have a disrespect for the freedom of religion, a rampant kind of secularism, this could happen again," observed Father Grandon.

He added, "If we forget these horrific historical examples, and if we become lethargic in our political involvement, our prayers, in our practice of religion, our culture could be lost. It could happen even here."

Viewed together, the posters represent an ominous picture of an intense government effort to divide people from the Church and thus from God.

Among the themes running through the exhibit, especially in the period immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 (when forces led by Vladimir Lenin took power by toppling a provisional government that had displaced the czar earlier that year) is aggressive antagonism toward the clergy.

Priests are depicted as predators who mislead and extract wealth from innocent people. They are shown manipulating people for money — by charging fees for baptism, for example — or being manipulated by their capitalist allies.

Fundamentally, the new communist dictators were trying to undermine any potential challengers to their power, and they saw the leadership of the Church as threatening their hold on society.

Between 1918 and 1920, the regime killed 28 bishops and jailed or killed thousands of priests.

The posters also depict devout grandparents as dangerous influences on youth. In a 1930 poster, an ugly old grandmother tries to corral her granddaughter to a church, above which blackbirds circle. The child, dressed in a Communist Young Pioneer outfit, strains to go to school. The text reads, "Religion Is Poison. Protect Children From It."

These negative images contributed to a public campaign to minimize the authority of Christianity, even as the regime was brutally repressing religion by closing churches, monasteries, charities and religious schools and seminaries.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which had 117 million members in 1914, was crushed over several decades. By 1930, approximately 80% of the village churches in the Soviet Union had been destroyed.

The Roman Catholic Church had 500,000 believers in 150 parishes before 1917.

Many were members of ethnic communities, such as the Polish, Ukrainians and Germans.

But by late 1930, only two Catholic churches in the entire country were still open, one in Moscow and the other in St. Petersburg, and most believers had been harassed, persecuted, jailed or even killed.

Christianity as an obstacle to progress is another theme seen in the propaganda posters. Lenin is described as "cleaning the world of filth" in a 1920 poster that shows him sweeping away the kings of England and Prussia, a wealthy industrialist and an Orthodox priest.

Top communist leaders were involved in the anti-religion campaign; Leon Trotsky led a special group charged with seizing church valuables. He believed that, ultimately, Christianity would be overcome by new distractions, such as film.

After World War II, propaganda posters portray religion as being opposed to medicine and science. Images that mock the power of prayer to heal or link the sacraments, such as Communion, with spreading disease, were posted in hospitals and clinics.

The fact that, in the 1960s, Soviet commissars continued to denigrate Christianity in public imagery suggests that the leadership was never confident that the "New Soviet Man" they aspired to create had forgotten God or his Church on earth.

And, in fact, the Russian people did not forget the Church.

Since the fall of communism in 1991, the Russian Orthodox Church has experienced a remarkable revival.

Between 1991 and 2011, the number of parishes grew from 12,000 to 30,675, and the number of monasteries and convents increased from 117 to 805, according to the Orthodox Church’s information office.

The Catholic Church has also experienced marked progress in recovering communities that were almost extinct...According to Father Maurer, the long, dark period of communist rule, when Christianity was ridiculed and suppressed, continues to create problems for the Church’s health today.

While more people identify as Christians in Russia, the percentage that practices the faith regularly is very small.

Common issues such as alcoholism, divorce and abortion are also indicative of a society that has not been able to deeply live Christian values.

For Father Maurer, the situation in Russia, mainly as a result of the anti-religion campaign, calls on believers to think about how to "re-Christianize" the country.

Art was used in the Soviet Union to get people to reject the Church. Now, art, in the form of music, is being used to encourage people in Russia to return to the Church and to facilitate Christian fellowship.