US Budget in 1/100th of a Second - $1210For the year 2011:
- The US Government spends $1210 per 1/100th of a second (both portions)
- The portion to the right is money borrowed by US Government to fill the the gap caused by the budget deficit.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
US Budget & Deficit Visualized
Via Western Rifle Shooters Association
Unqualified ‘diversity’ picks
Via Tom
President Obama has said that one quality he prizes highly in his judicial appointments is empathy. “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom,” he told a Planned Parenthood conference way back in 2007. “The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”
Alas, according to the American Bar Association, empathy isn’t good enough. Last week, news leaked that the ABA has secretly informed the White House that it rated 14 out of a potential 185 nominees for federal judgeships “unqualified” — most of them women and minorities put forth in the name of “diversity.”
Fourteen may not seem like many, but The New York Times (which broke the story) reports that it’s more than the combined number of judges the ABA “flunked” during the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (who stopped submitting his nominations to the ABA).
After some huffing about racism and discrimination against women, the administration chose not to nominate any of the 14. With Republicans continuing to block many of Obama’s choices, it’s no time for another losing fight.
But this won’t stop Obama & Co.’s mad pursuit of “diversity” (narrowly defined in terms of race and sex) or from elevating politically correct “empathy” over what should be a judge’s chief consideration, fidelity to the law.
NC Sheriff Attacked by Atheists for Putting Religious Ad in Newspaper
Verbatim Post
For atheists, the First Amendment is a one-way street. They don’t believe in “freedom of religion” but “freedom from religion.” The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) sent a letter to the Onslow County Board of Commissioners on Nov. 16, asking the board to stop Sheriff Ed Brown from creating any more ads about religion.
Sheriff Brown published an advertisement in The Daily News in Jacksonville, N.C., written in letter format and addressed it to “All Decent and Respectable Citizens of a Decent and Respectable Society.” The FFRF wants the Board of Commissioners to stop him from publishing similar advertisements in the future. The FFRF also wants Brown to issue an apology, and says the board should take disciplinary action against him.
The First Amendment, if it even applies to the states, states the following:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
As you can see, the prohibition is addressed to Congress not to the state of North Carolina or its counties. In fact, the first Amendment was demanded by the states to keep the national government and its courts out of the religious business of the states. Even if the First Amendment does apply to the states, there is this line: “Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise” of religion. So what the FFRF is attempting to do is have the county commissioners violate the Constitution.
Then there are the provisions that prohibit the government from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” So it seems to me that Sherrif Brown is on solid constitutional ground.
North Carolina’s constitution has an interesting history when it comes to religion. Article XXXII of North Carolina’s 1776 Constitution is specifically Christian by stating the following qualifications for public officers in the state:
“No person who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State.”
This provision remained in force until 1835 when it was amended by changing the word “Protestant” to “Christian,” and as so amended remained in force until the Constitution of 1868 which describes North Carolina as a “Christian State” (Art. XI, sec. 7). The present Preamble reads:
“We, the people of the State of North Carolina, grateful to Almighty God, the Sovereign Ruler of Nations, for the preservation of the American Union and the existence of our civil, political and religious liberties, and acknowledging our dependence upon Him for the continuance of those blessings to us and our posterity, do, for the more certain security thereof and for the better government of this State, ordain and establish this Constitution.
The following was included in Sheriff Brown’s ad: “When America turns back to God’s Law and man’s standards established from God’s Law, good and decent things will turn around for All Americans.” How is this statement a violation of the North Carolina Constitution when it describes God as “the Sovereign Ruler of nations”? A sovereign ruler has rules. Rules are laws.
Is their historical precedent for government officials publishing religious statements in newspapers?
George Washington’s 1789 “Thanksgiving Proclamation” was published in the October 14th issue of the Massachusetts Centinel and includes the president’s signature. The Preamble states that “it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.” Like North Carolina’s present constitution, Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation describes God as “Lord and Ruler of Nations.”
If Sheriff Brown’s advertisement violates either the Federal or state of North Carolina constitution, then President Washington, who was present at the drafting of the national Constitution and the First Amendment, was a significant violator of the law. I guess that puts Sheriff Brown in good company.
Just so you know, Sheriff Brown paid for the ads with this own money.
The people at the Freedom From Religion Foundation are either ignorant of this history or hope that the majority of people who read The Daily News in Jacksonville, N.C. are. They are also playing the “fear factor” card. They’re hoping that a threat of a lawsuit will persuade the commissioners to issue a reprimand to the sheriff. I’ll keep you posted.
"What did President Obama know -- and when did he know it?"
Newly released White House Visitor Logs list Grindler as having visited the White House 40 times, but only four times with the President himself. All four meetings with the President occurred over a two-week period, between 7 May 2010 and 19 May 2010. . .
Summary: In early 2010, Gary Grindler was intimately involved in all aspects of Operation Fast and Furious. During the height of the operation, Grindler visited the President on four separate occasions in only two weeks -- his only documented meetings with the president at the White House.
So my question is this:
A Brief History of the Transatlantic Counterjihad, Part V
This is the sixth of an eight-part history of the Transatlantic Counterjihad. Links to the first five parts are at the bottom of this post.
A big thank-you to the Counterjihad Collective for undertaking this project.
A big thank-you to the Counterjihad Collective for undertaking this project.
The Counterjihad Collective
V. Official Opposition to the Transatlantic Counterjihad
The Origins of Anti-Islamic Sentiment
The Islamization of Europe was a (perhaps inadvertent) byproduct of the need to import foreign labor to the continent in the decades after the Second World War. The process fed on itself, as liberal immigration laws and “family reunification” policies brought ever-increasing numbers of unassimilable foreigners, most of them Muslims, into Western Europe. The official state policy of Multiculturalism allowed newcomers to disappear into ever-growing enclaves, where they could live and function as if they were in their native countries, without any requirement that they integrate into the host population.
Friends of North Carolina History:
The Cape Fear Historical Institute will have an information table at this Saturday’s Christmas Open House at Harmony Hall, Noon to 6PM -- one of the few remaining plantations of the colonial era of North Carolina and which is experiencing an ongoing restoration. The plantation was self-sufficient and raised crops and livestock for the inhabitants and export, including turpentine shipped down the Cape Fear River to Wilmington.
The circa-1768 house and property was the 12,000 acre home of Col. James Richardson, with outbuildings typical of a plantation of that era and into the nineteenth century – it remained in the Richardson family till 1874. On display are weapons of that period and working blacksmith shop, music in the nearby Chapel, storytellers, tours of all buildings – as well as costumed guides in colonial through antebellum planter attire. Please plan to attend.
The address is 1615 River Road in White Oak, near Elizabethtown. See www.HarmonyHallNC.com for more info.
Justice at Last
Verbatim Post
The Look Like America bill, originally H.R. 1533, seemed a perfectly ordinary piece of feel-good legislation when proposed by Barack Osama Obama. “Our diversity is our strength,” he said. “We must increase the representation of minorites in our institutions to reflect our diverse population and ensure the fairness for which America stands.” Congress passed the bill without reading it. It was the sort of thing one passed. Besides, there was no money involved, and the bill was not obviously anti-Semitic.
Not obviously. But then one of the obscure policy shops that abound in Washington, the Committee for Ethnic Piety, filed suit against Harvard for noncompiance. The proximate cause was an article in the Harvard Crimson, the school newspaper, about a course called Math 55, the hardest math course at the univrsity and thus, Harvard liked to think, in America. The students in Math 55, reported the Crimson, were 45 percent Jewish, 18 percent Asian, and 100 prcent male. The class didn't, said the Committee for Ethnic Piety, look like America.
It certainly didn't.
Harvard, ever sensitive to questions of justice, which it conflated with federal funding, agreed to make the class Look Like America. The administration asserted that only through inadvertence had it failed to notice the clear racism, sexism, and continent-ism occurring under its nose. It established a committee of reform, which set to work.
The first and most ticklish hurdle was The Jewish Question. Jews were two percent of the American population. At 45 percent in Math 55, they were over-represented by a factor of over twenty. The injustice was undeniable. Two percent of a class of twenty-five meant that Math 55 should contain half a Jew. It would then look like America. The Jewish students would have to go.
As news of the proposed ethnographic hecatomb spread across the country, alarm erupted among the prejudiced. Over seven hundred departments of engineering across the country protested. They could see where Looking Like America was going. Math departments, Silicon Valley, the National Institutes of Health—all reeked of injustice, meaning Koreans, Jews, Indianss, and Chinese, and were conscious of sin. They didn't Look Like America. They Looked Like Math 55. In the Bay area, the proportion of geniuses from India in computing was alarmingly high. Some laboratories Looked Like the Punjab. These malefactors knew well that the coming of justice would gut their enterprises.
Desperate to maintain their positions of racial and patriarchal privilege, they pointed out that the Jewish kids, like all the students in Math 55, had 800 math Boards and had done things like independently develop tensor calculus by the age of three. The view from the Gulch was expressed off-the-record by Dr. Gud Soma Darjeeling, president of Santa Clara Neurocomputing, which employed seventy PhDs in solid-state physics, including three Anglos. “Look, the US is in intellectual collapse. The average American university wouldn't qualify as a high-school in Japan. It's crazy. The whole world know it's crazy. But take out the Kims, Khans, Nguyens, Wangs, and Cohens, and what's left is Albania in 1750.”
The lead attorney for CEP, Patricia Mikoyan-Gurevich, wasn't having it.
“Ability doesn't exist, and occurs equally in all groups, and anyway justice is more important than patriarchal-racist abstractions. Sexism is clear at Harvard. When an entire class is male, it isn't by accident.”
With this, no one was in disagreement.
Asians were as problematic as Jews. If a Jewish pppulation of two percent required half a Jew in a class of twenty-five, then a six percent population of Aisans required an Asian-and-a-half. Various solutions were proposed. Perhaps a short, light-weight Gujarati would do, or maybe a prodigy of ten from Mumbai. Otherwise, admitting three Asians every two years might serve.
The paucity of females in Math 55 was easier to address. Harvard had already established that there was no difference in mathematical ability by firing a president who thought there might be. Since ability didn't exist and was found equally in everyone, the sxual balance was quickly rendered equitable by eliminating entrance requirements.
Harvard then set about the intricate matter of making the class thirteen percent black, sixteen percent Hispanic, a tenth of a percent Iroquois, and so on.
Meanwhile, CEP turned its attention to the lush pastures of music. The New York Philharmonic, being in New York, was discovered to consist disportionately of Italians, Jews, Hungarians, and so on. It Looked Like New York, which wouldn't do. The American Association of the Musically Hopeless, consisting of the deaf, tone-deaf, mutes, and amputees, filed suit on grounds that their membership was not represented at all. (They carefully overlooked the fact that they were over-represented among rock bands.) This brought up an important juridical question: Since most Americans could not play an instrument, should not the orchestra reflect this?
Thirteen years after the passage of the Look Like America bill, the United States ranked in international measures of mathematics just behind the Central African Republic, the New York Phil couldn't play Happy Birthday, and racial and sexual justice flourished. Yet the vexed problem of Math 55 had not been entirely solved. Progress had been made, yes. The class looked almost like America, counting on its fingers and showing no trace of patriarchalism, which in any event it couldn't spell. However, CEP's Committee on Oppressed and Marginalized Indigenous Peoples of Color noted that the class contained no student from oppressed peoples of the Amazon rain forest. CEP regarded national boundaries as essentially phallic, since they were longer than they were wide, and thus beneath notice.Harvard, distraught at finding yet another instance of its institutional racism, cast about for a suitable indigene.
After a laborious search the university discovered Wunxputl, a member of the Tloxyproctyl tribe of the Amazon Basin, consisting of twelve people who lived on yams and the flesh of the Three-Toed Sloth. Wunxputl was at Wellesley, where he served in a minor administrative position that had no responsibilities. He had been brought there seven years earlier by the anthropology department, so it could atone for White Guilt. It didn't matter that Wellesley was guilty of nothing. The atonement was a pleasant form of narcissism, allowing the faculty to congratulate themselves on their moral purity.
Harvard arranged with Wellesley to borrow Wunxputl for three minutes every seven years, which it had calculated would satisfy the demands of ethnic proportionality. Justice, at last, had been achieved.
Epic Tram Lady
Via Matthew
LANGUAGE
LANGUAGE
========
========
Her language is crude; her feelings are real. Who can deny that her native London has been destroyed? Certainly not the Diversity on the tram, who, mouthing television commetary, can only claim they're doing jobs the Brits won't.
This woman has apparently been arrested for "racially aggravated public order offence." If any were in doubt of the true tolitarian nature of Cool Britannia, let Epic Tram Lady stand as an example.
Ramzpaul makes a powerful response (if a bit stretched analogy-wise): when European cities are overrun, none dare call it genocide.
Stop Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Without Due Process
Immediate action required!
Deep inside the National Defense Authorization Act (S. 1867) that the Senate is currently considering is a dangerous and unconstitutional portion that needs to be stripped out. Congress would grant the President the power to use the military in order to detain certain individuals, including American citizens, without trial or due process, indefinitely.
Section 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act reads: “Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force … includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons…. [including] [d]etention under the law of war without trial....” This “indefinite detention” section hands over to the Executive Branch the power to have the military arrest U.S. citizens. No trial needed. Simple suspicion would suffice.
This could be quite reminiscent of Stalinist Russia where a knock on the door in the middle of the night meant that the person taken by the military was often never seen again, perhaps having been imprisoned in Siberia or executed. The Japanese American Citizens League has warned that this measure’s detention principles are similar to the ones that sent innocent Japanese-Americans into concentration camps during WW II.
Sadly, this bill has already been passed in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives with nary a whimper by a 322-96 vote. The excuse given for such an egregious disregard for the Constitution by supporters of the bill including authors Senators John McCain (R- Ariz.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) is that the provision would strengthen and codify the legal framework necessary for dealing with “terrorists.” Other supporters insist that the language doesn’t necessarily include American citizens.
U.S. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) who voted against the bill in the House, thinks differently. Amash says the act would indeed “permit the federal government to indefinitely detain American citizens on American soil, without charge or trial, at the discretion of the President.” He notes that the language “does not preclude U.S. citizens from being detained indefinitely, without charge or trial, it simply makes such detention discretionary,” therefore it is misleading and outrageous.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is speaking out in opposition to the "indefinite detainment" provision of S. 1867. He is also offering an amendment that would simply strike out Section 1031 of the bill. As this alert is being written on November 29, the Senate is debating S. 1867 and could vote on the Paul amendment this evening or tomorrow, November 30. A related amendment by Senator Udall to revise the detainee provisions of S. 1867 has already been defeated today by a vote of 37 yeas and 61 nays.
Indefinite detention without due process leaves citizens without the legal protection of the Constitution and strikes at the heart of the essence of U.S. law. It is positively shameful that any elected representative would even consider voting for such an assault on so sacred a fundamental value as the right to due process.
Far too much power has already been either usurped or given over to the Executive Branch under the guise of national security. Contact your Senators immediately and demand that they safeguard individual freedom and liberty by upholding the protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Have them support the Rand Paul amendment that would completely strike Section 1031 from S. 1867, or any other amendment that would accomplish the same purpose.
If one or more amendments are added to S. 1867, it will likely go to a conference committee and then return to both the House and the Senate for a final vote. So, a word to your Representative on this issue is also advised. Make sure you find out how he or she voted on the NDAA before getting in touch.
Thanks.
Your friends at The John Birch Society
Air Force Academy adapts to pagans, druids, witches and Wiccans
Via Billy
Reporting from Colorado Springs, Colo.—In the still of a cold November evening, a small gathering of pagans, led by two witches, begins preparations for the coming winter solstice. But these are not just any pagans, and this is not just any setting. They are future officers of the United States Air Force practicing their faith in the basement of the Air Force Academy's cadet chapel.
Their ranks are slim. According to the academy's enrollment records, only three of 4,300 cadets identified themselves as pagans, followers of an ancient religion that generally does not worship a single god and considers all things in nature interconnected.
Still, the academy this year dedicated an $80,000 outdoor worship center — a small Stonehenge-like circle of boulders with propane fire pit — high on a hill for the handful of current or future cadets whose religions fall under the broad category of "Earth-based." Those include pagans, Wiccans, druids, witches and followers of Native American faiths.
The Real Newt Gingrich
Via Bill
This is the perfect time to view this video exposé of Newt Gingrich by John F. McManus, President of The John Birch Society. This video, an updated version of a 1996 video about Newt Gingrich, was released in 2009.