REPUBLICANS ARE MORE ETHICAL THAN DEMOCRATS!

It would to you Hanoi, anything to help the ones who hate us. Originally Posted by i'va biggen

Almost as much as he himself hates us.

He has his Master Baiter degree from Field and Stream.

JD, I think it is possible that keywords in stories about the Verizon thing might trigger automatic alarms on the niprnet. Especially since it's about the NSA. There is plenty of civilian internet overseas that they can use to find the information.

Also, members of the Armed Forces do not, in fact, have unrestricted 1st Amendment rights. There are many thing civilians can do that members of the military would be punished for. This story shows the guy doing a fair amount of them. He is obviously allowed his political views....he can't bring them to work. He is allowed his religious beliefs...he just can't allow bias to affect his dealings with his subordinates. Nobody is persecuting him, he's just being crotchety to an extent that was demonstrably causing a breakdown in unit morale and cohesion.

Actually, he loves America, and hates what we are becoming - a police state. I agree with him.

When you get two guys like Glen Beck and Daniel Ellsberg in agreement; then you know things have gone too far and have to change (not the "hopey" kind)!

It is easy to be cynical about the corrosive effects of power. No party has a monopoly on corruption and misuse of public office. Yet cynicism is not the same as wisdom. Such every day cynicism helps Democrats escape from the uncomfortable moral challenges posed to big government advocates by the slew of scandals erupting in Washington.

What we are seeing involves systemic flouting of the law by Democrats, from elected and appointed officials to unionized bureaucrats, who have targeted ordinary citizens because they are political opponents, riding rough shod over our rights to free speech, assembly, freedom of the press and equal application of the law.

There has not been abuse of power on this scale in this baby boomer's lifetime. This is beyond the ordinary, and ordinary cynicism will not suffice. The debate over whether our President is guilty of active abuse, leadership by example, or incompetence is important. But it is not the most important thing going on. The problem is far larger than the Oval office, and will extend past this presidency unless there is significant government reform.

Sadly, calls to fix the problem will not be bi-partisan. Even support for a thorough investigation is coming almost entirely from Republicans and swing voters. Democrat approval of Obama is holding firm. Most Democrats are eager to minimize the unfortunate headlines. They don't want what they see as sideshows to interfere with their goals for massive social and political change, and income redistribution. Not Benghazi, where lives were lost, nor IRS misconduct, where the election was skewed, nor harassment of the press by the DOJ, has caused them to re-examine what they are about. Only conservatives will seek systemic reforms commensurate with the problems. Democrats have nothing to offer, because Democrats' idealism is the fountainhead of the problem.

My theory is this: while the abuse of power stemmed directly from the thuggish Chicago way which was emanating from the White House, the heart of the problem is the utopian idealism of the President, his inner leftist circle, the old media, his big donors, right down to the Democrat man in the street. They all agree that victory for their side is so virtuous and vital, nothing must stand in its way. Not the law, not respect for others, not common decency.

Thomas Sowell's brilliant book, Intellectuals and Society, explicates why liberals' utopian vision leads to such moral failures. They think they have government policy answers to people's needs and policy cures for all of society's ills. Government can do it all -- take care of us all, tell us the one correctly enlightened way to think, change the very climate of our planet. If only they could attain the power to put their ideas into action. It is easy to move from that sense of superior capability and moral mission to thinking the means of grabbing power are justified because your intentions are so good, so crucial.

New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman daydreams of what he and fellow liberals could accomplish ruling America with all the powers of the Chinese Communist Party. Republican politicians, no matter how power hungry and narcissistic, know that is a nightmare. Their followers know that is a nightmare. Democrats do not.

Democrats, from liberals to leftists, see themselves along with Obama as the embodiment of hope, and their opponents as anti-hope. Of course those opponents are illegitimate and must be defeated by any means necessary. Of course, the limits posed on elected and bureaucratic power by our anti-utopian founding fathers must be breached.

Democrats reject the Supreme Court decision that enabled conservative small-government groups to fundraise on an equal footing with ACORN, Move-on, and the unions. Democrats do not want to apply our laws and our Bill of Rights protections to political opponents, especially not successful ones such as the Tea Party.

Tea Party citizen activists, some of whom testified so eloquently before the Ways and Means committee last week, had organizations as small as 60 members and budgets of a few hundred dollars. Why would the IRS be wasting time on them? Because Democrats knew that if these fellow citizens were left to freely organize, they might have trounced Obama in 2012, as they trounced House Democrats in 2010. So the IRS -- along with the FBI, OSHA and the EPA -- hounded them.

Democrats love to talk about rights. The right to a job, to health care, to American citizenship, to a place in college, to free birth control -- but not the Bill of Rights, not property rights, not the right of opponents to compete in fair elections. Democrats don't care overmuch for the core American values of individual liberty and responsibility. They dream of making the world over into a never-seen-before beautiful and fair and peaceful place, all through the power of government.

They reject religion as backward, but they assign a ruling liberal elite god-like powers to fix every problem. Unlike religion, their road to utopia requires that individuals have less liberty and less responsibility. We hear over and over from frustrated liberals that since Obama can't get Congress to obey him cooperate, he must evade the division of power meant to protect us from presidential tyranny. They want him to get his will done by other means, including legal and illegal administrative diktat, working through the bureaucracies. The IRS attempt to shut down opposition non-profits is a result of the liberal urge to power.

Republican politicians and bureaucrats are just as partisan, and can be corrupt and power hungry -- which is why our Constitution limits government -- but their sense of mission has limits, and they are grounded in American history. They accept constitutional limits. Democrat liberals and leftists do not.

Even Republican politicians understand the value of American individualism. However much any Republican politicians may seek and abuse personal power for their own gain, they don't have an institutional and moral goal of diminishing each person's independence for the common good. Democrats see liberty as a threat to their agenda. They bristle at the word, and envision a gun toting militiaman. They see liberty as the enemy of food stamps, and they want food stamps more.

Liberal idealism is so self-righteous that the liberal urge to power will brook no limit. Freedom of speech and assembly and the press, Supreme Court rulings, equal application of the tax laws -- only for fellow liberals, liberal media, and liberal advocacy groups.

The scandals making headlines are not surprising, they are inevitable.

As Kimberly Strassel of the Wall St. Journal documents in an important column, The IRS Political Timeline, President Obama spent months calling for what happened. Strassel writes:

These were not off-the-cuff remarks. They were repeated by the White House and echoed by its allies in campaign events, emails, social media and TV ads. The president of the United States spent months warning the country that "shadowy," conservative "front" groups-"posing" as tax-exempt entities and illegally controlled by "foreign" players-were engaged in "unsupervised" spending that posed a "threat" to democracy. Yet we are to believe that a few rogue IRS employees just happened during that time to begin systematically targeting conservative groups? ...Cincinnati IRS employees are now telling investigators that they took their orders from Washington. For anyone with a memory of 2010 politics, that was obvious from the start.

Yet Strassel is missing the bigger picture. Yes, Obama demonized his opposition -- from Fox News, to the Tea Party, to individual Republican donors -- in a way never heard before from a sitting President. The key thing to understand is that these were attitudes that he shared with millions of his fellow liberals and the liberal press. Millions of Democrats liked and agreed with his denigration of Republicans as racists and selfish, out only for themselves at the expense of the country, liars and cheaters, getting rich on the backs of the poor and middle class. They believe it. They wanted more of it. Only a rare voice from the left side of the aisle protested.

Talking about Republican racism, idiocy and selfishness became dinner table conversations for millions. President Obama's viciousness was downgraded to "incivility," or even admired as strength by his followers. Scapegoating Republicans for the country's woes was greeted happily and amplified by his followers. Hatred of Republicans was a fun way for them to bond with one another. It reinforced their sense of moral and political superiority, as scapegoating always does. No Republican policy was considered a well-meaning, albeit misguided, proposal aimed at our common goals of a flourishing and fair nation. Republicans were made into the dangerous and sinful Other, who must be nullified for the common good.

Denigration, disrespect, dehumanization always precedes discrimination and persecution. As the night follows day, the vilification campaign was followed by active persecution, carried out against conservative groups between their 2010 victories and the 2012 election, and continuing to the present.

The intimidation and harassment of political opponents by the IRS, the involvement of the FBI, OSHA and the EPA in trying to suppress the kitchen-table group called True the Vote, the targeting of Fox News by the Justice Department, the harassment by the IRS of individual Republicans -- all following the soaring rhetorical inspiration of the President -- are abuses of power on a new scale in American history, but they are predictable outgrowths of the liberal utopian vision.

The collusion of the media in burying one scandal after another and the partisanship of the Democrat voters who still don't see the problem, is again, unique in generations. It was this broad public backing that enabled the administration and bureaucracy's abuse of power.

The argument can be made that President Obama is at heart a small-scale leftist politician who has surrounded himself with thuggish advisors schooled in the Chicago way, none of them of a stature fit for national power. One such Obama supporter obviously thought up the IRS idea, others in power obviously supported it, both passively and actively, and many self-interested government union workers carried it out.

This was not the work of a few people. In July 2010 an email describing the targeting of the Tea Party groups was sent by mistake to the entire IRS office in D.C. Obama's Treasury Department knew about it five months before the 2012 election. The head of the IRS knew about it, and he visited the White House a remarkable 157 times. As Hillary Clinton likes to say, it takes a village.

Only one IRS agent said, "No" and resigned. We cannot count on the government to police itself, let alone shrink itself. The only thing that can push back the tide of big government is a resurgence of the Tea Party that will sweep small government conservatives into office in 2014 and 2016. Becky Gerritson, President of the Wetumpka, Alabama Tea Party explains why:

We knew that the government had gone far beyond its habitual, deficit spending. The government was mortgaging America's future. And we knew that Washington wasn't going to stop by itself...

I'm telling my government that you've forgotten your place. It's not your responsibility to look out for my wellbeing and to monitor my speech. It's not your right to assert an agenda. Your post, the post that you occupy, exists to preserve American liberty. You've sworn to perform that duty, and you have faltered....

What the government did to our little group in Wetumpka, Alabama is un-American. It isn't a matter of firing or arresting individuals. The individuals who sought to intimidate us were acting as they thought they should, in a government culture that has little respect for its citizens. Many of the agents and agencies of the federal government do not understand that they are servants of the people. They think they are our masters. And they are mistaken.

Are they mistaken? We will be finding out in the next months and years. It will take a lot of long, hard, political work to halt the government juggernaut and reject the liberal dystopia. This could be the beginning of a new era of American renewal, moral and political, based on personal responsibility and freedom. Which way it goes depends on us.

Strange bedfellows indeed. It is usually the Left crying foul over Government intrusions into the privacy of citizens. But it seems that since it is their guy in the Whitehouse, they have a delima.

Admit that PResident Obama is not much different than any other President when it comes to keeping the cards close to the vest, or admit that since he is black, and liberal, anything he does cannot be questioned.

What we are witnessing here is the old adage that power corrupts. Just look back at all of the things that "candidate" Obama railed against, that "President Obama" is perfectly fine with.

Keep in mind, in a few years, there might be a guy in the WHitehouse with a "R" after his name. DO you want him to have all of these "powers" that people like Andrea Mitchel have no problem with.

As for our little whistleblower, he might should look into the cost of funerals.

The Administration: Scarier Than You Could Imagine

By Lloyd Marcus
If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound? If the Obama administration breaks the law at will, lies to the American people, uses every government agency at its disposal to punish its conservative/Republican enemies and no one does anything about it, does the administration make a sound? Yes it does -- resulting in devastating consequences for the American people.


Despite a trifecta of scandals, Obama and company continue to stonewall, lie, or refuse to answer questions -- in essence, giving Congress and the American people the finger. Pundits are shocked and taken aback by the unprecedented arrogance of the Obama administration.


Such pundits are a bit late coming to the dance, as we in the Tea Party have been well aware for years of the lawlessness and arrogance of this bunch of thugs from Chicago. Have these surprised pundits forgotten Obama's unprecedented overreaches into the private sector -- nationalizing General Motors, bullying banks, ignoring the ruling of federal judges, trashing the Constitution, and more?


Still, pundits are missing the much greater horrifying picture. My fellow Americans, we are in deep, deep trouble. The cold reality is that until someone steps forward in real opposition to Obama governing according to his will while ignoring all the laws, checks, and balances, we are defenseless, expendable supplicants of a tyrannical dictator.


Remarkably, the mainstream media is complaisant with Obama acting like our king rather than our president because he is liberal, he is black, and his presidency is historic. Obama's agenda fits neatly with the mainstream media's socialist/progressive agenda. So they are elated to have a Teflon liberal black guy in the White House furthering their cause.


Speaking of expendable supplicants, let us not forget Ambassador Chris Stevens, Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty, and Sean Smith, who lost their lives -- left to die in our consulate in Benghazi.


The people in the Obama administration are emboldened to do whatever they please: bully conservative groups and individuals, secretly invade our privacy, target reporters, and thumb their noses when they get caught -- all without any real political push-back or consequences. We the American people are in deep excrement.


Ponder that, folks. As long as the mainstream media provides cover for Obama and keeps his poll numbers high by making sure no bad news is linked to Obama (Limbaugh Theorem), our president is empowered to function as a supreme ruler, free to do whatever he pleases to us. Dear God, help us!


Obama is the first black president. Okay, I get it. But neither Obama's black skin nor the mainstream media's rabid desire to protect his legacy should award him imperial dictator status, trumping the best interest of the American people.


The Republican party desperately needs leadership -- someone willing not just to say "no" to Obama's tyranny. We need someone who will walk tall and passionately proclaim, "H*** no!"


America needs a politician with backbone and fortitude willing to endure being called racist by Obama's subservient mainstream media; someone unafraid of being targeted by the IRS; someone willing to be hated by clueless poll participants; someone willing to endure EPA persecution if he is a business owner; someone willing to endure his phone and e-mail privacy illegally violated; and someone willing to endure attempts to criminalize their opposition to Obama's agenda.


Under Obama's IRS-controlled health care, any politician daring to oppose Obama's agenda will more than likely suffer delays and denial of medical care for his family and himself. Suddenly, his conservative Republican mom finds herself at the bottom of the list for that kidney.


Yes, it is going to take a politician with incredible stones to challenge the great all-powerful beast, the Obama administration.


I am confident that such a hero will step forward. Between you and me, I am keeping an eye on Rep. Trey Gowdy, House Oversight & Government Reform Committee.


Most people caught lying or with their pants down back off. When caught red-handed, Obama pokes his finger in our eye.


It has been exposed that the administration sent Susan Rice out to lie about Benghazi on five national TV shows. In response to getting caught, Obama promoted Rice. Lois Lerner was caught using the IRS to bully, intimidate, and suppress the conservative vote in the 2012 presidential election. Obama promoted Lerner. The latest in his growing list of offenses and scandals, Eric Holder was caught lying about targeting reporter James Rosen.


Naïve pundits say, "Eric Holder is toast. He has to go." My reply is, "Holder ain't goin' nowhere. You guys still do not get it. Holder is black and liberal, and Obama is arrogant beyond belief, with the media in his back pocket." Obama recently stated that he is behind Holder 100 percent.


Folks, do you see the horror of what we are dealing with in America today? We have an administration free to rule as it pleases, with no one -- I repeat: no one -- really holding its feet to the fire. Will someone please throw this out-of-control administration across their knee, spank its butt, and say no?


Meanwhile, I heard someone say on TV in response to Holder's stonewalling and lying, "Holder risks another contempt of Congress filed against him." I am sure Holder is quaking in his boots.

Uncle Whirlie, please provide some kind of source for this bullshit.... Or get Hanaway to do it for you.

But you've blown your cover.

Probably other things, too.

Having thought about this overnight I do have one serious reservation; everyone is talking about what Snowden has done and what he has revealed but what what about other things he knows. If he wants a asylum from China then they are going to want something in return. That should be what worries people. What will he have to trade to China in exchange for some version of safety? Does he know the locations of assets and will he give them up?


Tex! Are you always so literal. Its like you have the imagination of a six year old.

The GOP's Continuing Betrayal of Its Rock Stars

By Steve Flesher
As if running moderate Republicans in two consecutive national elections (and losing) wasn't enough, some of the GOP's latest attempts to find their inner coolness have been successful only at one thing: letting the left and their pals in the media dictate the direction of the Republican Party.


Fairly recently, we were informed of top-level RNC employees putting forth an initiative to hand out mid-level positions to various minorities. This was pointed out by a longtime D.C. insider, who talked about it in an article published at The Hill. Not only are the D.C. experts implementing ultra-affirmative-action measures to prove that they can "reach out," but none of them (white guys in suits) seems willing to put his own top-level positions on the chopping block for the sake of the cause. This gives the left a double-talking point. It projects hopelessness for liberty and equal opportunity based on merit, and the RNC is now just as guilty as the left is of wanting to micromanage from the top.


Even more recent, a study was conducted by the College Republican National Committee (CRNC). Its focus was on the youth vote, and it sought to answer why Romney failed to capture it. This was important to them, since conservatives like Reagan mysteriously did just fine with the youth vote. I was sorry to see that no part of their study, however, focused on the simplicity of Reagan's conservative message. Reagan enjoyed being a rebel where the establishment was concerned and, even more so, was not afraid of annoying the left. Causing a ruckus for the right cause usually excites young voters who love a fight with the establishment. Nevertheless, the GOP wants to continue compromising -- an art that has us with a pointless debt-ceiling limit with "trillion" as its measuring unit.


The study was also featured on The O'Reilly Factor a few nights ago. In it, they claim (among other things) that GOP candidates have to be in touch with pop culture. They further claim that we must "advertise in mediums used by young people." As O'Reilly summarized, we want a "candidate that tweets." He then concluded the segment by saying that what it "comes down to" is a "charismatic candidate" who "speaks their [young voters'] language."


There is some truth in all that. Our spokespeople have to be in line with the kind of messaging that works. Usually, the more clear and concise the message is, the better the result. Are we a party that believes in the power of the individual, or not? If not, what are we going to hand out for free? It's also beneficial to have conservatives confident enough to step outside of their comfort zones to bring the message to places where Americans will accept it as refreshing.


The problem is, when the current crop of obvious conservative rock stars either take their messages to bigger platforms or use their time in office to live up to their campaign promises, the usual old guards in the GOP are the first in line to attack. Their choice to continue doing so results in an inaccurate revelation for the left which suggests that the more conservative a candidate is, the easier it is for liberals to win elections.


Senator Ted Cruz campaigned against the GOP establishment's candidate in the 2012 Senate primary. He was the perceived ultra-right-wing candidate the left just couldn't wait to run against. The GOP couldn't stomach the idea of having a true conservative represent them so the big money went with David Dewhurst in the primary. With the support of the Tea Party and an endorsement by Sarah Palin, Cruz was able to catch up with Dewhurst in the primary, forcing him into a run-off election. Cruz went on to win with a comfortable margin.


Surely the GOP's biggest rock star in the Senate, Cruz is reluctant to jump on board with policies which have proven to fail in the past. Despite being a Harvard grad, he aligns himself with the same common sense that warns the rest of us of repeating such policies. He opposes amnesty (currently being dressed up as something else). He opposes "compromise" on a budget that the rest of us know will lead to another debt-ceiling increase. As such, he's winning the ire of John McCain and Susan Collins, not to mention writers on the left furious that he won't "respect his elders," suggesting he's "rude" and that he "doesn't get the Senate."


Similarly, Senator Rand Paul led a lengthy filibuster a few months back on the government's position on the use of drones. Senator Ted Cruz jumped in to back him. As the filibuster progressed, other Republicans jumped in, and as the article referenced mentions, they used quotes from "pop culture and literature" to make their case. When the filibuster ended, young voters witnessed the power of democracy in a republic and were encouraged by it.


Senators Cruz and Paul, however, can hardly be mentioned without thinking of Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. As Senator Cruz himself has said, she "jumped in early" and supported candidates like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and others who are fighting to "reach out" effectively.


Isn't it interesting how Bill Clinton can show up on Arsenio Hall's program playing a saxophone -- or Obama can dance with Ellen -- and be praised for it? Yet when Sarah Palin shows up on Dancing With the Stars or puts out a family-friendly reality show celebrating Alaska's greatness, fellow GOP talking heads refer to her as a "Kardashian." By using the media's insatiable love for ratings, Palin has been able to show up on the Today Show, knock out Katie Couric accordingly, and leave her co-hosts speechless as she publicly rooted for more constitutionally conservative candidates in an election year. In going outside her comfort zone, she used huge platforms to spread the message of conservatism.


Scaling down that platform recently, Palin gave a speech to a graduating class in a small Washington town. There, she presented each graduate with a dollar bill, had them all stand up to find it under their seats and said: "you've got to get off your butt to make a buck." This is a message likely to stick with these graduates for years to come.


Cruz, Paul, and Palin have stuck to their conservative principles and have used the power of public service combined with avenues like social media to effectively reach young voters. That the ever-increasingly frustrated left continues to bash them confirms it.


What's puzzling, though, is how the GOP nonsensically doubles up not only on those attacks, but on the same policies we are supposed to be opposing as a party capable of winning national elections.

NO LINK! ALL CAPS.

SEE YA!

City of San Francisco funds religious place of worship

Thomas Lifson
Perhaps you, like me, assumed that the City of San Francisco, California would avoid any governmental sponsorship of a particular religion, and would never house a place of worship of a specific religion on its own property. And if such government sponsorship ever came to light, you would be certain that the ACLU and the atheist activists would raise their voices in protest.


But not when it comes to Islam.


The San Francisco Chronicle's investigative duo Matier and Ross tell us:


Muslim cabbies now have their very own place at San Francisco International Airport to wash their hands and feet before they pray.


Hmm, just for Muslims, no kufrs need enter, or even ask for their own reliugious worship space at SFO.


Royal Cab driver Hasan Khan, 52, a Pakistani immigrant, collected some 300 signatures from fellow cabbies, urging the airport to give them their own cleansing station.

Airport brass obliged - and the wash equipment was installed on the ground floor of the main garage, right next to where the drivers congregate for their breaks.

"The way we look at it...this was in the interest of maintaining a good relationship with ground transportation providers,'' says airport spokesman Doug Yakel.


Right: 'maintaining a good relationship" means not getting your head cut off. One can't imagine that evangelicals, Jews, Catholics, Mormons or any other religious group would receive this kind of exclusive use of city-owned property. But then again, where are the beheadings undertaken by fanatical evangelicals, Jews, Catholics, or Mormons?


Sharia creeps in on cat's feet, out of the San Francisco fog.

It's funny; the gay community embraces this kind of tolerance.............

The Obama Presidential Library will have a Bush-Cheney wing
Silvio Canto, Jr.


We heard about that angry NYTimes editorial.....the same one that was amended later. It reminded me of the husband who called his wife from the car and said: "Honey I did not mean that. Sorry to call you that name."

We saw Maureen Dowd's column on Sunday. She spent paragraph after paragraph attacking Bush and Cheney. Then she finally had to come clean and accept that it was Obama who turned into "Peepin' Barry":
"Back in 2007, Obama said he would not want to run an administration that was "Bush-Cheney lite." He doesn't have to worry. With prisoners denied due process at Gitmo starving themselves, with the C.I.A. not always aware who it's killing with drones, with an overzealous approach to leaks, and with the government's secret domestic spy business swelling, there's nothing lite about it. " (NYTimes)
Sorry Maureen! It must be tough to learn that the prince wont be knocking on your door to see if the shoe fits!
And don't forget to read that imaginary "Dear George" letter:
"Well, George, that is probably all you have time for, and I hope you accept my apology. You can take heart that, even though I am a Democrat, I decided to keep going nearly all your vision and plans on national security and even take it to all-new levels."
What's next? My guess is that the Obama Library in Chicago will soon start working on the Bush-Cheney wing.
Visitors will enter a room called GITMO and wait indefinitely for the tour guide.
They will see a big drone in the middle of the floor called "W".
And best of all, they will eat in a restaurant named Cheney and enjoy Wyoming catfish.


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