66 years ago today, D-Day.
Thank you to those of you who fought during WWII… and those who have fought since.
Category Archives: Politics/Military
Are we losing our freedoms?
Right on the Left Coast quotes from the Washington Examiner about the government’s working paper on the “reinvention of journalism.”
Apparently the working paper thinks that the newspapers have a right to the news they report:
Copyright protects an author’s articulation of facts, but not the facts themselves.
State law versions of the “hot news†doctrine, however, can protect a news
organization’s investment in fact gathering to a limited extent. In International News
Service (INS), the AP challenged the use of its news wire stories by INS, which
immediately rewrote the stories and distributed them to its own clients. Based on
common law misappropriation principles, the Supreme Court recognized a “quasi
property†right of very short duration in the facts that were gathered, digested, and
disseminated at great expense by the AP.
Would anyone be talking about this if there weren’t a move to federalize the press? I don’t think so.
Would the government recognize a blogger’s right to the news? Probably not. And, according to some, the bloggers wouldn’t be protected.
God help us that we are giving away our freedoms to a government which wants to run it all. (That’s totalitarianism, in case you weren’t thinking.)
Flag Etiquette
All persons present should face the flag, stand at attention and salute on the following occasions:
1. When the flag is passing in a parade or review. The salute to the flag
in the moving column is rendered at the moment the flag passes.
2. During the ceremony of hoisting or lowering the flag.
3. When the National Anthem is played and the flag is displayed.
4. During the Pledge of Allegiance … I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
from Flag Co
Memorial Day
This is a day to remember those who serve this country and those who have lost loved ones who served this country.
The photo is from Blackfive.
Military and the Ivy Leagues?
Quoting Thucydides,
“A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors has its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”
Right on the Left Coast offers a pungent comment on the “softening” of the Ivy Leagues toward the military.
Obama Naive?
Telegraph UK has “10 Reasons Why Barack Obama is the Most Naive President in US History.
I didn’t say it. I just showed you it was there.
Health Care Perspective
“In a private fee-for-service medical system, a dead patient is a revenue loss. In the National Health Service (UK), a dead patient was a cost savings.” -Harry Bailey MD 1930-2003, Sheffield (England) University Medical School 1950-1956; Harvard Medical School 1958-1981, US Navy Medical Corps 1982-1991.
The above quote is from my late father.
Bawl your eyeballs out: A father’s promise
Cleveland.com has the story of Robert Jr and Sr.
The letter sat on the dresser for four years.
Robert Gilbert never opened it. He only touched the envelope when he needed to dust around it. He wanted to give it back to his son unopened.
Every time his Marine son was deployed, his son would ask, “You still got my letter?”
His dad never wanted to read what was inside an envelope marked: “Dad, open this if I am wounded. Love, Robert.”
The call to open it came March 8.
A Discussion of the Political Situation
by a postliberal, Well-Meaning Opposition.
Here’s the sticking point: there seems an inability to back all the way down the road and re-look at the question Is this the right thing to do? Failing that, they are locked endlessly in the impression that ours is a moral failing, that must be addressed on moral grounds. They assume we must not like universal coverage only because it is too expensive; that we are reluctant to extend citizen’s rights to detainees only by failure of generosity and justice. They can’t think of other reasons. When we say something else they think we are just rationalizing, and are really just fearful and morally flawed.
Thus the things they say are horribly insulting and accusing. They are not generally horrible and accusing people, and are hurt when they are called on it. We must have misunderstood their intent or meaning. Longtime followers of this site know that this is where village idiots come in, and why I aspire to be one. When you are accusing others of evil motives, that is in itself reason to backtrack as far as need be to make sure you have understood.
It is fair to ask whether this unwillingness to backtrack is not a sort of intellectual sin, or a moral cowardice of its own. Often it is, and I have been strident over the years that any progressive’s refusal to consider that such a thing is even possible tells me when I am onto something. Once the door is opened to the possibility that these supposedly moral stances are suffused with more primitive tribal values, or class values, or mere fashionableness, there is going to be pain in store for any of us who walk through. But when they hear “fashionable” they think that’s not me, I’m anti-fshionable; “tribal,” they think no that’s ethnic, racial or sexual – I don’t have those prejudices. That there might be a deeper tribalism, a deeper fashionableness, does not enter their minds. They can easily reject the superficial meaning, and so are well-defended against the deeper one.
So we all pretend there is no door. I have walked through the door a few times, which is why I am postliberal. But I have little doubt there are still further doors I refuse to see as well. It’s human nature. There are always more doors, that both our faults and our virtues are influenced by factors we did not suspect.
To conclude, I give the reasons that non-liberals believe motivate them. All we neocons and neoliberals, libertarians and postliberals, think these are our real reasons. We may delude ourselves in this, and we may turn out to be nothing more than the shallow, selfish, prejudiced boors we are accused of being. But it would be wise to at least consider that we might actually believe these things.
1. These schemes seldom actually fix very much, they just make us all feel that we have done something about it.
2. Progressive plans have obvious benefits, but non-obvious consequences which are dire. The simple benefit to individuals is in the open; the complex cost to society is disguised.
3. “Cost” doesn’t mean just money. Loss of values, culture, and character are important costs.
There is much more on the website, which I will add to my daily reads. Visit Assistant Village Idiot to read the post.
Origin of Rednecks
Turns out, the origin is probably from Mississippi:
PJM posted about it after his Sharecropper’s Daughter picture.
Sorrow, not quite despair.
The health care bill has passed.
My government now owns the auto industry, banking, and health care.
One giant step at a time into socialism.
Sorrow. Pain. Tears. Weeping.
Despair sits just outside, though. Despite the immediate tax additions, the health care aspect won’t go into effect until 2014. There is still a little time to potentially stave off the destruction of America.
But not much.
And despair crouches at the door.
Quote of the day
“We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution.†— Abraham Lincoln
Many a True Word is Said in Jest.
Can of Whoop Ass
from Miss Cellania via Happy Catholic
Health Care
I am praying about health care. I am praying that today is not the day my country goes officially socialist. God, please, bless the United States.
Rape, Birth or Abortion
Can you tell which person was conceived by rape? No. Not really.
Guns
I am a strong believer in the second amendment. I like guns. I think everyone who is not mentally deficient or a criminal and is over 18 (or possibly 21) should own one, at least.
American Daughter has an interesting post on the differences between US gun ownership and Swiss gun ownership. The Swiss come out way ahead.
And the “Why no one invades Switzerland video” that my husband liked so much is also there. (And now here.)
The Government Wants Your IRA
transcript of Rick Santelli’s discussion
Business Week said:
The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.
And this is why the survivalists are gaining traction.
I have an old friend who is converting his life time savings into gold, silver, ammunition, booze and other non-perishable staples for what he believes is the inevitable “economic crunch.” I hope he is wrong that it is imminent, but at least now he can rest easy knowing that the government can’t get to his nest egg, and based upon the recent price of ammunition and gold/silver it is appreciating nicely.
from the Rofasix
By the way, this was proposed in 2008 in Argentina and is now fact in Argentina.
If we’re going the way of Argentina, we are in a world of hurt.
Blame Bush: a broken meme
[O]n March 14, 2008, then Sen. Obama voted in favor of the 2009 budget which authorized $3.1 trillion in federal outlays along with a projected $400 billion deficit. The 51-44 vote that morning was strongly along party lines with only two Republicans saying “Yes.”
When the final conference report was presented to the House on June 5, not one Republican voted for it.
This means the 2009 budget was almost exclusively approved by Democrats, with “Yeas” coming from current President then Sen. Obama, his current Vice President then Sen. Joe Biden, his current Chief of Staff then Rep. Rahm Emanuel, and his current Secretary of State then Sen. Hillary Clinton.
How is this possibly something that happened before Obama “walked in the door” when his Party ramrodded the original budget through Congress with virtually no Republican approval — save Bush’s signature, of course — and the highest members of the current Administration — including the president himself!!! — supported it when they were either in the Senate or the House?
Sadly, Obama-loving media care not to address this inconvenient truth.
But that’s just the beginning…
Read the rest.
I do think he can blame some of it on Bush. Bush, after all, chose to sign the legislation that not a single Republican voted for. That says something about Bush’s shift to the left that I hadn’t thought about before.
Found via the Common Room.
Bogus Global Warming Claims Were for Political Purposes
Scientists used and re-used this information without ever checking it. I am guessing part of the reason for the lack of checking (especially since it was never published in a peer-reviewed journal which should have checked it) is that it matched what the scientists were expecting to find and so they accepted it.
The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.
Doesn’t that tell you more about science being subjective than you wanted to know?
I found this on Watts Up With That. It includes several screen captures of British papers on the topic.
Enormous Support for a President
a president who entered office with enormous support and an unprecedented amount of goodwill.
The Commentary is talking about Obama.
He got 53% of the vote. I’m not sure that is enormous support. He did get 8 million more votes than McCain. Of course, in a country of 305 million people, an amazingly high 127 million voted.
That’s over a third of the population, which includes children!