He certainly looks defensive. The red-head is Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia -- talking at the start of the NATO meeting in Lisbon, Portugal.
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Sharing, not equality, is the human norm
I have excerpted today on POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH an academic paper that takes a fair bit of concentration to follow but which is, I think, of fundamental importance. Its thesis is that charity (e.g. welfare payments to the poor) springs from a basic human instinct but that instinct is neither altruism nor a belief in equality. It is an instinctive expectation of reciprocity. In other words, we give to others in the instinctive expectation that we will get something back. We put resources into the common pot in the expectation that everyone else will do likewise. In modern societies that expectation is often violated, with welfare recipients giving nothing back. That offends our basic expectation of reciprocity and feels wrong. Hence there are periodic attempts made to get the poor to work for their welfare payments or to get them off welfare altogether
So the Leftist opposition to welfare reform is founded -- once again -- on a denial of basic human instincts. Despite their cloak of good intentions, Leftists are profoundly anti-human. They hate the world about them and that mostly means the people in it
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Palin slams Obamas as unpatriotic and racist
Sarah Palin has accused Barack and Michelle Obama of being unpatriotic and has suggested they are racist. In leaked extracts of her new book, America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate argues that the first black US president is among those who regarded the Tea Party movement as racially prejudiced and who thinks "America is a fundamentally unjust and unequal country".
As proof, she quoted a 2008 campaign speech in which Mrs Obama said "for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country". Mrs Palin went on: "I guess this shouldn't surprise us, since both of them spent almost two decades in the pews of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church listening to his rants against America and white people."
Mrs Palin's second book is regarded as a launch pad for a bid for the 2012 Republican nomination, which she admitted this week she was "seriously considering".
The book criticises talent show contestants and the "cult of self-esteem", which she blames partly on Mr Obama: "No one they have encountered in their lives - from their parents to their teachers to their president - wanted them to feel bad by hearing the truth. So they grew up convinced that they could become big pop stars like Michael Jackson."
SOURCE
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Another vast bureaucracy about to hit America?
One of the threats from the present "lame duck" session of Congress is that they might at any time pass the "Food Safety Modernization Act", which sounds good but which would create great bureaucratic burdens on all American food producers. There is however a lot of opposition to it -- from Tea Party opponents of big government to organic farming freaks. With such bipartisan opposition to it, one would think it would fail to be passed, but that is not at all certain. Below is a comment from a conservative site followed by a video from the other side of the aisle, which seems to be somewhat more up-to-date. Calling your Senator to express opposition to the bill would certainly be a good move
First Health Care, Next the Food Supply
Just because the duck is lame doesn't mean it can't still do terrible damage to American freedom. Our new Congress, especially the new House, isn't yet seated, and this current Congress can still wreak terrible havoc on our rights if not stopped.
Case in point: Senate Bill 510, believed to be coming to the floor Wednesday, November 17 (pending). This is the food safety version of ObamaCare. Reading the thing will make your head hurt for all its cognitive dissonance. Trying to winnow out its complexity and hidden empowerments is stultifying.
Introduced by Dick Durbin of Illinois, the bill has moved through the usual phases of amalgamation and deal-making. The monstrosity advancing to the floor on Wednesday is not so much "food safety" as it is the decadence of the rights of small farmers, hobbyist food producers, garden-variety farmers markets, and your average small producer of foodstuffs. Under the rubric of safety, this Senate proposes a bill that establishes such new and sweeping powers over how you and I produce and consume foodstuffs that even the Pew Charitable Trusts * are calling S510 a clear and present danger. National Health Freedom says,
It is a dangerously broad regulatory bill giving extensive discretionary power to the FDA over the entire food supply chain without proper checks and balances to avoid abuse of power;
It would impose one-size-fits-all-regulations on thousands of small and mid-sized farmers, small-scale local farms and food producers, and would drastically burden, to extinction, basic natural and organic food suppliers, thus endangering the lives of Americans who depend on local wholesome foods;
It does not reflect a well-thought-out solution, or address the real causes of food safety issues stemming from the industrialized food supply chain; and:
It attempts to limit the authority of our own domestic U.S. laws when it includes language ensuring that our US law will not disturb other international agreements that we have made. It states: "Nothing in this Act shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the U.S. is a party."
Lee Bechtel of the National Health Federation, the nation's oldest health-freedom organization, says:
The concern for freedom and health freedom advocates with the legislation, and the NHF's concern, is not because it addresses existing conventional food safety system problems, tainted imported foods, peanut butter... et.al. but because of these non-conventional food safety attempts to expand FDA authority and impose more controls over the marketplace and the access to nutritional foods and supplements.
For example, Page 26 Manager's Amendment:
(d) SMALL ENTITY COMPLIANCE POLICY GUIDE.- Not later than 180 days after the issuance of the regulations promulgated under subsection (m) of section 418 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (as added by subsection (a)), the Secretary shall issue a small entity compliance policy guide setting forth in plain language the requirements of such section 418 and this section to assist small entities in complying with the hazard analysis and other activities required under such section 418 and this Section.
Neither specified nor even alluded to is the empowering language of what "assist" or "hazard analysis" or "small entities" may mean. In federal empowerment legislation, this means whatever they want it to. Lee Bechtel goes on to write,
There is no legislative language that gives any clarity or defines what a "small entity" is. Instead, leaving it up to the FDA to decide the application of the law. The Senate bill unlike the House version does not include specific exemption language for small farmers, small organic farms, etc. In fact, Senator Testor has an amendment to address this matter, if the Democratic Senate leadership allows it to be offered.
Further, how about this for a TSA-brand of intrusion into your affairs? Pg. 3 of the Manager's Amendments to S510 -
(2) USE OF OR EXPOSURE TO FOODS OF CONCERN.-If the Secretary believes that there is a reasonable probability that the use of or exposure to an article of food, and any article of a food, that the Secretary reasonably believes is likely to be affected in a similar manner, will cause serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals, each person (excluding farms and restaurants) who manufactures, processes, packs, distributes, receives, holds, or imports such article can be acted upon by the FDA.
That would be you and me, if we're hobby farmers at the local farmer's market.
Dr. Silva Chandra says:
If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public's right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one's choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.
What are Republican thinking? Seven out of twelve co-sponsors are Republicans.
You know by now that the real dangers of federal legislation are hidden in a root-cluster of treaties, acts, bills, agreements, resolutions, and other governmental legerdemain that disguises the facts. Like with a metastasizing cancer, you have to run down all the tentacles that get back-doored and de-facto empowered rather than focusing just on the prima facia. Or, as Dr. Daniel Geer, Sc.D. says, Complexity is the enemy of security.
S510 puts all U.S. food production under the control of the Department of Homeland Security. And the Department of Defense. We lose not only private-citizen control of our food supply, but sovereignty as well. The bill sets in motion standardization of the food animal supply chain, focusing on eliminating biodiversity in food animal genetic stocks. It further mandates that the federal government control and empower hormonal, genetic, and antibiotic additions to our food supply while postponing most definitions of what will constitute "food crimes" under the bill's sweeping and generalized powers.
Remember Nancy Pelosi's infamous "we'll know after we pass it"?
You may be disposed to embrace a genetically modified, enhanced, and altered food chain, but for those of us who eat our foods unadulterated, raised naturally, and without benefit of the federal government mandating what we can and can't eat, S510 is one more giant step toward consolidating total power over the lives of free citizens. It is standardization on a scale never seen. Remember Ireland and its potato famine. That's what standardization accomplishes. One bug killed an entire economy.
This bill constitutes some of the worst of the worst of corporatist policies favored by the political class controlling our federal government. Conservatives must rebel at any sign of government intrusion into our private affairs, and criminalizing private food production is as wrong as it gets. S510 does just that, if reading between the lines of its muddy language suggests where the lame duck Pelosi-Reid Congress is headed. If implemented, S510 can define as a crime to clean, store, and own seeds or seed stocks unless granted that right by the federal government. Think you'll be granted that "right" when arguing against Monsanto's lawyers?
There's plenty of inflammatory news, blog entries, and postings on the internet regarding S510, and you'll find most of it from sources you'll consider Birkenstock-wearing greenies. So what? Read the bill. Follow the trail of what this bill embraces through the WTO, ending the 1994 Uruguay Agreements. Follow the failed Clinton money through Burson Marsteller (the giant public relations firm) and on through the empowerment of vague definitions within. And if you can read far enough on the faint trails of treaties, past legislations and acts, you'll realize that the federal government, under successive attempts by the corporatist Left, is grabbing not just your health care, but your food supply.
Its House companion Bill, HR 2749, empowers federal bureaucracies to totally prohibit the movement of any and all foods into or out of a given area (Section 133b, "Authority to Prohibit or Restrict the Movement of Food," sponsored by Congressman Dingell). Sure, sure, the idea may be to prevent the spread of dangerous foods, but once the camel's nose is under the tent, you know what can happen.
In other words, what are Republicans doing, signing on to legislation so grievous to the rights of the citizens they are sworn to protect?
SOURCE
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Could California Sink The Obama Presidency?
There's a present-day crisis on the "left coast," and most Americans have no idea how bad it is. When more Americans get a grasp of the carnage - and once Barack Obama begins to act-out his natural tendencies towards "government bailouts" - the American electorate may very well become so outraged that the President destroys his own future political prospects.
California - the most populous state in our nation - is bankrupt. Just as is the case in Washington, D.C., nobody in The Golden State dares to say the word "bankrupt" to describe the state government right now, but it is still nonetheless true.
However, since Californians collectively defied the national trend of abandoning the bankrupting Obama-styled economic policies in the recent election, and instead voted for more of the same, the 31st state in our union is now on the fast-track for economic collapse. And it is a crisis that is custom-made for politicians like Barack Obama, who love to spend other people's money in an effort to make themselves appear heroic.
There is no political will in California to cut state government programs (at least not in any substantial way), and "deep cuts" just aren't going to happen. Similarly, there is plenty of "fat" that could be eliminated from the state budget - a swift cut in the state's generous unemployment benefits program would make sense - but again, no California politician has the courage to do something so sensible.
So instead, California is accruing $40 million a day in debt, just to keep their unemployment benefits checks flowing. This is the kind of fiscally lethal public policy that has brought down the country of Greece, yet California refuses to do what is necessary - cut government spending - and instead is poised to raise payroll taxes (again) as a means of partially paying for unemployment benefits.
So what's a guy like Barack Obama to do? Politically he can't afford to do nothing while the "biggest blue state" in the country begins to default on its debts, and he'll probably find it personally difficult to resist his natural tendencies to "rescue" and "control" things (think G.M. and Chrysler and the many "bailed out" banks). And while there won't be adequate support in the Congress to legislate an official "bailout" for California, one could envision the President "ordering" the U.S. Treasury to "offer assistance" of some sort, and perhaps trying to "command" revenues out of the private sector and into California government coffers (Mr. Obama had no constitutional authority to "demand" a "settlement" from B.P. oil, but he did it anyway).
But as Americans in the other 49 states learn more about the decades of fraud and waste that has brought about California's self-induced disaster, the more angry they will become at a President who drives the nation further into debt as a means of "enabling" California's dysfunction to continue.
California will lapse into some condition of "default," and President Obama will get involved. The nature of his response could determine his tenure at the White House.
More here
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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