28 September 2008

Alcee Hastings is a dumbass

Alcee Hastings: "If Sarah Palin isn't enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention. Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through."

Ok, I'm thinking it through..............nope, Alcee, you're still stupid. How can Hastings seriously equate being a gun owner and a hunter to being a racist?? Since I'm a gun owner AND a Jew I must hate myself.

Not only is Hastings a dumbass but check out his past. "Hastings, a former federal judge, was impeached and removed from the bench in 1989 for perjury and corruption. Elected to Congress in 1992, he supported Hillary Clinton during the primaries until she conceded the race."

More about Hastings' illustrious past: Rep. Hastings Says Palin “Don’t Care” About Jews, Blacks: "Hastings has the dubious honor of being one of only six federal judges to be removed from office through impeachment for perjury and conspiracy to obtain a bribe. The judge turned politician was embroiled in a 1983 scandal involving the solicitation of a $150,000 bribe in return for favorable treatment for defendants in a racketeering case before him. Hastings repeatedly lied under oath at his criminal trial and forged letters in an effort to get acquitted. In 1988 the Democratic-run House voted overwhelmingly (413-3) to impeach Hastings who had been appointed to the federal bench in the Southern District of Florida by Jimmy Carter. The Democratic-run Senate subsequently removed Hastings from the bench. He has represented south Florida’s 23rd District in the House since 1993."

Hastings was elected to Congress after he was impeached and removed from the federal bench? For Pete's sake, this guy is a felon and people still voted him into Congress. Maybe Congress IS the opposite of progress.

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27 September 2008

Someone has an opinion on Obama.........

A picture sent to me this morning by a friend and coworker......



I couldn't have said it better myself.

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25 September 2008

Obama and McCain

Not that I agree with a bailout of any private corporations by our federal government with our tax dollars, but at least McCain wants to do what he is getting paid to do - work in Congress.

McCain Suspends Campaign to Help With Bailout: "John McCain will suspend his presidential campaign Thursday and has asked to postpone his debate Friday with Barack Obama so the two senators can return to Washington to help negotiate a Wall Street bailout, an approach that Obama promptly rejected."

So John McCain has decided to see if he can help, as a member of Congress, with our current financial situation. He wants to go back to Congress to do the job he has, not the job he wants.

Obama disagrees with McCain essentially saying (in my interpretation), "screw Congress and the financial crisis, I want to be the next president, let's debate!" BHO said: "Such disruptive measures were unnecessary." BHO thinks that if McCain delays the debate to do the job for which McCain (and Obama) are being paid, that's "disruptive."

More Obama: "There are times for politics and there are times to rise above them, do what is right for the country. This is one of those times." Hey you big dummy, Congressional votes are part of politics, voting on bills and issues is part of what is right for the country and its your current occupation. Staying on the campaign trail and missing a large majority of Congressional votes is not right for the country. Members of Congress should get paid according to the number of times that they vote "yes" or "no" on issues. Showing up and voting "present" shouldn't count.

The prefix "Con-" is the opposite of the prefix "Pro-" which makes Congress the opposite of progress. Obama examplifies this idea.

I'm gonna go drink a couple more beers. This election is depressing. I'd vote for Bob Barr if it wasn't the equivalent of voting against McCain and for the next Vladimir Lenin.

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10 September 2008

You can put lipstick on a marxist.....

...but he's still a Marxist.

No matter how much "lipstick" the media puts on Obama, he's still a marxist.

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09 September 2008

Has freedom become a political orphan?

Steve Chapman has written a superb editorial at chicagotribune.com about the lack of individuality and freedom and the rise of collectivism in America. He specifically sites the lack of any mention of the idea of freedom in the recent republican and democratic conventions.

The article is so good that I have reposted the article in its entirety.

"'We must, and we shall, set the tide running again in the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom. —Barry Goldwater, accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination'

This year's Republican National Convention had a different theme for each day. Monday was 'Serving a Cause Greater than Self.' Tuesday was 'Service,' Wednesday was 'Reform' and Thursday was 'Peace.'

So what was missing? Only what used to be held up as the central ideal of the party. The heirs of Goldwater couldn't spare a day for freedom.

Neither could the Democrats. Their daily topics this year were 'One Nation,' 'Renewing America's Promise' and 'Securing America's Future.' The party proclaimed 'an agenda that emphasizes the security of our nation, strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, honest government, and civil rights.' Expanding and upholding individual liberty? Not so much.

Forty-four years after Goldwater's declaration, it's clear that collectivism, not individualism, is the reigning creed of Republicans as well as Democrats. Individuals are not valuable and precious in their own right but as a means for those in power to achieve their grand ambitions.

You will scour the presidential nominees' acceptance speeches in vain for any hint that your life is rightfully your own, to be lived in accordance with your beliefs and desires and no one else's. The Founding Fathers set out to protect 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,' but Barack Obama has a different idea.

The 'essence of America's promise,' he declared in Denver, is 'individual responsibility and mutual responsibility'—rather than, say, individual freedom and mutual respect for rights. The 'promise of America,' he said, is 'the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper.'

In reality, that fundamental belief is what you might call the promise of socialism. What has set this country apart since its inception is not the notion of obligations but the notion of rights.

'All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself,' wrote the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. 'The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary co-existence of individuals.'

That idea got lost somewhere between Thomas Jefferson and John McCain. What do Republicans believe in? McCain told us Thursday: 'We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law . . . We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities.'

Would it be too much to mention that what sustains the American vision of those things is freedom? That without it, personal responsibility becomes hollow and service is servitude?

Apparently it would. Republicans are big on promoting freedom abroad, but in this country, the term encompasses a lot of things they don't like—the right to a 'homosexual lifestyle,' the right to protest the Iraq war, the right to privacy, the right not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and more. Conservatives who once thought Americans had too little freedom now sometimes think they have too much.

Liberals, on the other hand, are wary of embracing freedom precisely because of its historic importance to the right. They fear it means curbing the power of a government whose reach they want to expand.

While they value many personal liberties, they have no great attachment to forms of freedom that involve buying, selling, trading and accumulating. Those, after all, can involve selfishness, and Democrats, like Republicans, don't want to protect selfishness.

But freedom isn't freedom without the right to pursue what you value—money or knowledge, pleasure or sacrifice, God or atheism, community or misanthropic solitude—rather than what others think you should value. It includes the right to go to hell, and the right to tell others to do the same.

The latter is a valuable prerogative that we have not yet lost. After watching the conventions, if you have the urge to use it on either of the two major parties, feel free. If he were alive, Barry Goldwater might join you."

Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board. He blogs at chicagotribune.com/chapman and his e-mail address is schapman@tribune.com

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06 September 2008

Did the framers of the Bill of Rights consider personal protection?

Maybe they did.

One of the arguments against an individual's right to bear arms is that the second amendment needs to be interpreted in the context of the time in which it was written. Anti-gunners claim that the Bill of Rights was written with the idea of maintaining a militia against foreign forces (i.e. the British during the American Revolution) and not with giving individuals the right to own firearms for personal defense.

Anti-gunners also argue that we (people who favor gun rights) cannot claim that the second amendment could be about individual rights or personal protection since we could never really know what the people who wrote the Bill of Rights were thinking at the time.

Perhaps Thomas Jefferson disagreed when he borrowed a quote from the 1700's criminologist Cesare Beccaria: "The laws that forbid the carrying of arms .... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants. They serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

So people were thinking of personal defense against criminals well before modern times. Fascinating......

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01 September 2008

Some Pro-Gun Quotes....

"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms .... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants. They serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." - Thomas Jefferson

"The Constitution shall never be construed to authorize congress to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens .... from keeping their own arms." - Samuel Adams

"Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved." - Aristotle

"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." - Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Japanese Navy)

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote." - Unknown


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