Random Ramblings from IowaDawg
Say What? I Say This To You Now!
Don’t Believe the Pipe
I am basically at a loss on this one. I was just searching (fun to search for dumb things, like pipes) and came across this image. So I searched further and found a link full of these images. Anyways, check it out at the link below the picture.
See more of these HERE.
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Report: Ron Paul signed off on racist newsletters.
Adam Jacobi fired from CBS for premature Joe Paterno death story.
Tweets still must flow – Twitter develops a way to censor tweets by country, depending on a given nation’s set of laws. For example, Germany forbids pro-Nazi content. The alternative is to stay out of some countries altogether. Twitter hasn’t used this, but if they do, you’ll see it here.
Tim Cook responds to claims of factory worker mistreatment: “We care about every worker in our supply chain” – Apple’s CEO, in response to a lengthy piece in the NYTimes about conditions in Chinese factories that make Apple’s products, says in a letter to employees that his company has a program training workers on their rights and safety.
Polish Politicians Don Guy Fawkes/Anonymous Masks To Protest ACTA Signing and European Parliament Official In Charge Of ACTA Quits, And Denounces The ‘Masquerade’ Behind ACTA
President John Tyler’s grandson is still alive, thinks Newt Gingrich is a jerk.
5 Famous People Who Succeeded Long After They Should’ve Quit.
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What debate? He’s pushing text book class warfare. End of story.
(Chicago Tribune) — President Obama said Friday that one of the biggest fights he will wage on the campaign trail is the GOP criticism that his tax proposals amount to “class warfare.”
Nothing against the wealthy, Obama said, “everybody wants to be rich.” The question is, he said, whether the nation is offering opportunity to all.
“We’re going to have a robust debate about whose vision is more promising [for] moving this country forward,” Obama said.
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The left’s logical case for abortion rights had officially collapsed. We can thank CNN’s Piers Morgan for administering last rites when he resorted to the tired, sensationalized, “Yeah, well, what if your daughter was raped?” argument with Rick Santorum in a televised interview.
…you see virtually no liberal willing to speak to the most fundamental question of the entire controversy: the humanity of what is in the womb. They simply declare any discussions of humanness, biology, and personhood rights to be above their pay grade, and thereby dismiss themselves from any expectation or obligation to answer questions that would expose their logical bankruptcy. Instead, they set the parameters of the debate, and draw conservatives into wildly emotional exchanges that inflame passions rather than engage intellects.
[snip]
Morgan’s disgraceful retreat from sound logic to the manipulative playground of emotion-driven passions is as transparent as it is embarrassing. This question is designed not to reveal any truth in the abortion debate, but rather, it is a tactical scheme made for the cameras in which the liberal questioner puts the conservative respondent in a corner. If Santorum says he would deny his daughter’s pleas, he looks like the cold and heartless goon that Morgan believes him to be. If he says he would relent and allow his daughter an abortion, he surrenders his moral high ground and appears a hypocrite.
And though Santorum answered the question effectively, stating that he “would do what every father must do…try to counsel your daughter to do the right thing,” there’s a greater point to be made here. Liberal politicians never have to answer such outrageous emotionalism in their interviews. Can you imagine, for example, Barack Obama being called on his condemnation of former President Bush’s advanced interrogation techniques with this challenge: “If Sasha and Malia were kidnapped and were being held and brutally tortured by terrorists, and we captured one of their accomplices who had knowledge of their secret hideout, would you not authorize any force necessary to get your girls back?” Can you fathom the outcry against such a loaded, sensationalized question?
Read the article here.
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People Should Replace Their Drudge Bookmark and Blogroll Spot With This Aggregator…BadBlue
And go there daily!
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Talk about spouting bullshit!
President Obama seemed to admit that his State of the Union (SOTU) speech ran too long, as he acknowledged to House Democrats that they “had to suffer through” the event, before recapping the State of the Union in 40 minutes less time than the original.
“You already had to suffer through a relatively long speech from me this week, so I’m not going to speak too long,” Obama said at the House Democratic Retreat today. “What I wanted to do, first of all, was just say thank you [for your public service].”
Obama empathized with “how much your heart bleeds when you see constituents are going through a tough time.” …
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Justice Dept. to SCOTUS on Obamacare: Don’t overturn entire law
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Okay, got my final form from the OPM today about what I get each month for my postal pension. It lists my gross amount, then line by line what is deducted from that to end up with the net amount I actually get each month. Yes, the even take out of my retirement a portion for federal income tax! Geesh.
Anyways, the raise I got on the COLA for this year? That was eaten up real fast by the increase in my health benefits plan! Geesh again!
So now, barring some crap by our president or one of his czars or agencies, I know what I will get each month this year.
All-American Muslim’s Very Special Tribute to 9/11
Empathy is the essence of tragedy. To be able to mourn for others we have to feel their loss and make it our own. Most Americans never lost anyone on September 11. Most never knew anyone who died that day in the planes above or the buildings below. And yet we as a nation felt that blow. Their pain was our pain. And that response was not limited to the United States as millions of people beyond these shores reached out and took in the full weight of that tragedy and grief.
When cast members insist that the terrorists were not Muslims, or not truly Muslims, their denial echoes the collective denial of Muslim communities and leaders in America who have never come to terms with the problem because they are too busy misrepresenting themselves as the victims. They are too busy feeling sorry for themselves to understand the pain of so many Americans on the anniversary of that awful day.
But All-American Muslim’s denial that the September 11 hijackers were Muslims acting in the name of Islam, because Muslims are incapable of terrorism is blatantly dishonest. Especially when the series featured two Imams who support terrorists, Imam Abdul Latif Berry, who is quite a fan of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and Husham Al-Husainy, who supports Hezbollah. The appearance of these two men on a series which pretends to show us the peaceful nature of the real All-American Muslim demonstrates how difficult it is to detach the religious violence in Islam from the Muslim community.
When Al-Husainy signed a document which read in part, “We remind our sons to get ready to carry out their duty in Holy Jihad and continue the path which our young valiant men in Hezbollah began in Southern Lebanon” and which invoked a “Islamic nation which extends to all parts of the world”; how was this any different than a bulletin from Osama bin Laden?
Time for Republicans to rein in the EPA, another government agency run amuck thanks to the liberals!
In 2011 the Environmental Protection Agency provided $1 million in grants to 46 different non-profit and tribal organizations to promote what it called “environmental justice.” Since 1994, a little-noticed EPA program has handed out a total of $23 million in such grants to 1,253 organizations, for stated purposes that observers are questioning.
President Bill Clinton and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) were responsible for implementing “environmental justice” as part of the EPA’s mission. In early 1990, following a lobbying push by the CBC, the EPA established the Environmental Equity Workgroup. In 1994 it was renamed the Office of Environmental Justice.
In February of that year, Clinton signed an executive order requiring all federal agencies to develop environmental justice strategies. The order established an interagency working group comprised of the heads of 11 departments and agencies and several White House offices.
As a result, the EPA has spent millions each year to promote its “environmental justice” vision to Americans by awarding cash grants to community-based activist groups.
Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Christopher Horner told The Daily Caller that the Obama administration’s EPA is “abus[ing] environmental justice as badly as they’re abusing other grants of authority.”
The EPA’s grants have gone beyond organic gardening projects and tree plantings. One financial award went to the Cleveland Tenants Organization for fighting bed-bug infestations. Another paid the Florida-based Institute for Community Collaboration train teenagers to become environmentalists.
The Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island received money in July 2010 to organize barn-raising events. That same month, Groundwork Somerville was funded to persuade suburban Bostonians to replace their incandescent light bulbs with more energy efficient — and more expensive – compact fluorescent bulbs.
In December 2011, Congress overturned a planned government-mandated phase-out of the older Thomas Edison-style bulbs.
West Harlem Environmental Action received taxpayer dollars to educate New Yorkers about the “local challenges posed by climate change (i.e., sea-level rise and extreme weather events).”
Federal dollars also paid a Utah dance company to teach children in 10 elementary schools how to dance for environmental justice. “Kinesthetic learning,” the EPA reports, “will be used to examine air quality issues and encourage youth and their families to adopt healthy living practices.”
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In the queue at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”
The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”
He was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?
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Ron Paul’s oiliest maneuver in congress is his insistence that he is pure as the driven snow when it comes to earmarks. It’s actually quite slimy. Here’s how he justifies being one of the top earmarkers in congress.
Say congress puts a general federal infrastructure spending bill up for vote. The bill is called the American Bike and Rollerblading Pathway Project, and it has a 100 million dollar budget. When this pie is held up on the floor for a vote, representatives clamor for a piece of that pie and request slices (earmarks.) Along with their vote they will put their order in – 1 million for the Grant Guthrie Nature Park, 2 million for the Shlomo Beard Memorial Pathway, etc.
Ron Paul puts in tons of requests for that pie. Then he votes “no” on the bill, claiming to have uniquely stellar principles, and simply smugly waits to see if he will get his money.
His view is, “the money is going to be spent anyway so why not bring it home to my district?” Yes, perfectly logical, except for one thing. Ron Paul is perpetuating the rising budgets year after year because HIS behavior is sending a signal to the Feds that more and more money needs to be confiscated from the public because earmark requests proves the need for more and more taxes.
It’s like being at a bachelor party with a stripper. You’re told that the stripper is going to service everyone, but it’s going to be put to a vote first. You vote no, but your pants are around your ankles with magic marker arrows pointing at the places you want special attention, and then you convince yourself that you didn’t cheat on your wife because your voting record was clear.
Ron Paul is not a solution, he is the problem. If he was principled he wouldn’t make the requests. He’d leave the room when the stripper showed up. Because of Ron Paul the next bachelor party is going to need 2 strippers because old Ronny kept last year’s stripper so busy.
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Daily Kos Blogger: ‘Barack Obama, Best President Ever’!
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Why 2012 is starting to look like 1984
~ Between SOPA, NDAA, telecommunications surveillance, and people’s willingness to share endlessly via social networking, will 2012 mark the year consumers irreversibly surrender their privacy and freedoms? ~
Read the rest of the article here.
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Obama Has Dissolved the Separation of Powers
. . . In sum, Obama dissolved the separation of powers, the framers’ ingenious bulwark against any government branch’s seizure of supreme power — and thus the Constitution’s bulwark against tyranny. The president claims the power to appoint federal officers without the Senate’s constitutionally mandated advice and consent. He does so by claiming unilateral powers to dictate when the Senate is in session, a power the Constitution assigns to Congress, and to decree that an ongoing session is actually a recess. This sheer ukase, he says, triggers the part of the Constitution we’re keeping because he likes it — viz., the executive power to fill vacancies without any vetting by the people’s representatives.
Mind you, a president is the only government official constitutionally required to swear that he will “preserve, protect and defend” that Constitution. We are talking here not just about Obama’s characteristically breathtaking arrogance. These are profound violations of his oath and of our fundamental law. But rest assured he will get away with them. For that, Republicans can thank themselves and their surrender to statism.
For the entire article, go here to the National Review
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Will Obama steal the 2012 election?
This is an excellent and well thought out essay! Be sure to read it all….
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. claims Jim Crow is returning. In a recent speech, Mr. Holder said that attempts by states to pass voter identification laws will disenfranchise minorities, rolling back the clock to the evil days of segregation. He said that a growing number of minorities fear that “the same disparities, divisions and problems” now afflict America as they did in 1965 prior to the Voting Rights Act. According to the Obama administration, our democracy is being threatened by racist Republicans. Hence, the Justice Department must prevent laws requiring a photo ID to vote from being enacted.
Mr. Holder argues that voter ID laws disproportionately discriminate against poor blacks and Hispanics — citizens who cannot afford to acquire a driver’s license, passport or other form of photo identification. The latest victim is South Carolina; its voter ID law has been blocked by the Justice Department. Liberal Democrats — taking their cue from the White House — are portraying the national movement for election reform as an authoritarian assault upon civil liberties. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has even petitioned the United Nations, asking it to declare states’ voter ID laws human rights abuses. For the radical left, America has become Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
This would be comical if the consequences were not so serious. South Carolina’s legislation provides for free ID cards to be given to anyone who needs it. Not one person — white, black or brown — is discriminated against or discouraged from casting a vote at the ballot box. Moreover, the Supreme Court already has ruled on the issue — upholding state voter ID laws. In the 2008 Crawford v. Marion County Election Board decision, the high court held that an Indiana law mandating photo identification at the voting booth was indeed constitutional. If it is good enough for the Supreme Court and the overwhelming majority of the states, then it should be for Mr. Holder as well.
It isn’t. And the reason is simple: The administration is trying to whip up minority frenzy, propagating the myth of widespread ballot suppression. The goal is to foster a sense of racial persecution of blacks, intending to maximize voter turnout in November. The results, however, will be to poison race relations further. Mr. Holder is cynically playing the race card in order to achieve President Obama’s overriding ambition: re-election.
Racism has nothing to do with states implementing voter ID laws. Rather, it is about protecting the integrity of our electoral system. . . .
McCarthy: Obama Recruits Qaradawi Can our president get any lower? This is a guy who issued a fatwa to kill our troops in Iraq!!!!!
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Oh, this would be so damn neat! If only they were closer to me, like here in Iowa.
We have spent a lifetime total of approximately three million hours playing video games where we destroy things and basically run around being insane. It’s a kind of therapy that lets us take out our frustrations on digital victims. But at some point, destroying pretend stuff ceases to be quite as satisfying. The people behind Drive a Tank get that – and they might just be our soul mates.
Drive a Tank is a service in Minnesota that lets you satisfy your innermost desires to drive around a wicked armored vehicle. For $499, you can drive two tanks around a wooded course and test fire some historic weapons. But for just $499 more you can use that mean machine for what it’s really meant for: crushing the life out of a poor, defenseless car. Add another $200 and you can crush a second car.
Go HERE.
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Dear Mr. President:
Although it is two hundred years, and more, since I laid down the cares of an eventful temporal existence and took up residence in my long home, Our Gracious Lord has seen fit to bestow upon my spirit the gift of perpetual cognition, and He has granted the further boon of permitting me, for a few moments, to assume sufficient corporeality to pen this letter, which I place before Your Excellency as the cri de coeur of a patriot whose efforts on behalf of his country have been deemed by its citizens to possess no little significance.
I have watched, frequently with pride and joy, occasionally with grave misgivings and sadness, the arc of our country’s history over two centuries, since those of my generation first established that Orchard of Liberty on the North American continent that would become the envy of the world. Over many seasons that Orchard has borne good fruit, and has flourished in the golden light of our Sacred Constitution. In evil times, this Arboreal Garden has been watered with the blood of heroes, which sustenance has served to make it even hardier and more prolific.
Imagine my consternation then, Sir, when I look upon our Orchard today, and see the fruit withering on the branch, the crowns blighted, and the whole cloaked in the gauzy shrouds of assiduously destructive bagworms. How slothful and inattentive have become the arborists who constitute what my friend Thomas Jefferson referred to as our natural aristoi! What bovine complacency has afflicted a once alert and industrious citizenry! And – Your Excellency will pardon the boldness of one who was present at the creation – what pernicious and invidious husbandry doth your own administration display!
Under the sanction of what right, divine or human, do you and those of your faction undertake to transform a free people into a herd of lowing cattle? By what law, constitutional or legislative, do you and your like-minded philosophes propose to turn a great nation into a vast ward for the feeble-witted, or a prison for three hundred millions of debtors? You join with hordes of warlike Musselmen to beset our Hebrew brethren with chimerical demands, your Department of Justice – Justice, sirrah! – has taken pride of place amongst the criminal caste, and everywhere your rapacious clerks and petit judges harass honest citizens with encroachments on their liberties from which even His Late Majesty, George the Third, would have recoiled in disgust.
Our Garden is become a tangled bed of weeds and thorns as those of your school have beggared the working man, and stood as highwayman to the banker and merchant. Our system of public education is like unto an academy for the teaching of treason, and a university for the manufacture of a large class of impertinent mendicants for whom the taxpayers must serve as unwilling almoners in perpetuity. And you strive, through cunning and secret stratagems, to disarm the people, thereby subjecting them to the caprice of an all-powerful central government, in one stroke imposing tyranny and depriving the citizenry of the capacity for resisting it.
In spite of this accumulation of political felonies, you have had the temerity, the astonishing rind, to posit an intellectual and spiritual kinship with several of your distinguished predecessors. I note, with considerable relief, that you have not as yet presumed to impute to me the same act of bastardy with which you have sought to malign the honor of these illustrious gentlemen. I caution you never to do so, for, in the event, I would bargain with Almighty God that I should pass an hundred years in purgatory in exchange for the grace of an hour in which to call upon you, to offer the choice of sword or pistol.
Your most obedient servant,
George Washington
- SOURCE
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Reason number 199 why Ron Paul is freaking senile and should not be running for any elected office:
Not only did Paul say that he would not respond militarily to Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, he even went so far as to add that Iran would be justifiedin cutting off the strategic waterway in response to sanctions.
Read the article here.
Did Geologists Find Source of Stonehenge’s Boulders?
The source of the rocks forming the inner circle of Stonehenge has been a long debated mystery, but geologists think they have found the source of at least some of the stone.
The Daily Mail reports that Robert Ixer from the University of Leicester and Richard Bevins of the National Museum of Wales think the rocks may have come from Craig Rhos-y-Felin in Pembrokeshire, a county in southwest Wales. They found almost 99 percent of the rhyolite rock samples from Stonehenge’s inner circle matched rock from this area.
According to the museum press release, the story deepens:
Along the Rhos-y-felin crags, the rhyolites are distinctly different on a scale of metres or tens of metres. This has enabled Bevins and Ixer to match some Stonehenge debitage samples to an even more precise locality at the extreme northeastern end of the area.
What this means is that the area is now small enough for archaeologists to excavate to try and uncover evidence for associated human activity so providing another strand of the story of how the stones from Pembrokeshire reached Stonehenge.
“Many have asked the question over the years, how the stones got from Pembrokeshire to Stonehenge,” Bevins said in the press release. “Was it human transport? Was it due to ice transport? Thanks to geological research, we now have a specific source for the rhyolite stones from which to work and an opportunity for archaeologists to answer the question that has been widely debated. It is important now that the research continues.”
More HERE.
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In his last Afterburner of 2011, Bill Whittle takes a look at the state of this country three years into Obama’s rule and has amassed a list of breathtaking failures bound to stun and/or depress champions of smaller government. Solyndra, Fast & Furious, the Keystone Pipeline and the deficit are just a handful of the scandals that make Bill’s blood boil. So what do we need to do in 2012 to counteract Obama’s policies? Take a look.
FLORIDA: A salute to our military and veteran heroes with featured speaker Allen West
Steyn: Another year deeper into denial
Krauthammer: Are we alone in the universe?
George F. Will: Ringing in a conservative year
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At last night’s General Assembly, Occupy Wall Street passed a proposal to set up a $100,000 fund solely for bailing people out of jail. It’s the largest chunk of funds that OWS has allocated for one purpose, and represents nearly a third of the budget. The fund is meant to get protesters out of jail following direct actions, which historically have ended in multiple arrests — or mass arrests, like on the Brooklyn Bridgeback in September.
According to OWS media team member Jeff Smith, “we didn’t change any of the stipulations on who gets bail and how much.” Three thousand dollars is still the maximum bail allowed, except for under special circumstances (like with Joshua Fellows, whose bail was set at $25,000. The movement agreed to pay it. the bail was apparently paid by a third party, not OWS itself).
The new bail budget is effective immediately. Policies are already in place for who gets bail and who doesn’t — according to Smith, any kind of violent offense would require consensus to bail the person out, while smaller offenses that go along with the territory of direct actions (trespassing, disorderly conduct, etc) can dip into the bail fund automatically.
Last night the protesters also voted to send money to Occupy Oakland, in the neighborhood of $25,000.
(see, they know they are doing wrong. idiots who give them money are just that, idiots. does the tea party have such a fund? does the tea party need such a fund?)
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Obama’s National Security ‘Not Top 10? of 2011 Read this and see why America is screwed with Obama leading!
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Des Moines, Iowa back in the news.
Chris Matthews showed up from Java Joe’s in Des Moines in the 11 am hour on MSNBC Friday to underline the liberal arrogance that in the Obama era, all the country’s hatred is against Obama, and apparently liberals are utterly incapable of adding anything to the Hate Quotient.
“I heard a voice this morning a woman came up to me and said I’m really for Obama, but I want to end these years of hatred. Now if people start voting for the Republicans because there’s too much divisiveness because of Obama, that’s real trouble for the White House,” Matthews said. He then declared: “In other words, the way to end the hatred in America is to get rid of the object of the hatred. Well, that’s a strange way to do things.”
(yes, the idiot says basically that liberals don’t hate, it is the republicans, the tea party people. again the leftist mantra, racism if you do not like obama!)
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Ron Paul in Des Moines:
Appearing on Jan Mickelson’s radio show on WHO in Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday morning, Rep. Ron Paul, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said he believes he is the candidate that “can connect with both” the Tea Party movement and the Occupy movement.
Paul’s observation came after Mickelson asked him about a group of Occupiers who were protesting at Paul’s Iowa campaign office on Thursday morning.
The Iowa Republican presidential caucuses will take place this Tuesday.
Here is a transcript of Mickelson’s and Paul’s exchange [...]
Paul: “Last week, I believe, we had a rally and people on the staff were worried. You know: Occupiers are there, occupiers are there. They’re in the front row. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Should we call the police? I said no: Just relax a little bit. And there was no ruckus, and afterwards I shook a lot of hands. They come up to me and they say: We are from the Occupy movement but we support you. So, I figure that, you know, an open viewpoint about the Constitution and freedom and attacking some of the things that they don’t like—they don’t like the bailouts, and I don’t like the bailouts. So, there are some things that we can agree on. I think the Tea Party movement and the Occupy movement are motivated for different reasons, but they come together because they don’t trust government anymore and that’s why I think I can connect with both groups.”
(maybe come tuesday the followers of this old man here in Iowa will wake up sober and not vote in the caucus for him? hey, I can hope!)
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Some members of the Occupy Wall Street group in Charlotte, N.C., are under fire for setting American flags ablaze, but one of the protesters is defending his incendiary actions.
“Those were actions taken on my behalf,” Occupy Charlotte member Alex Tyler said at a camp meeting, according to a Charlotte Observer report. “I did it to display my utter contempt for American greed, not (the military).”
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police have charged Tyler and three other men with arson and setting fire to woods in the area of tents that previously housed members of the local Occupy movement. A police report says the men caused the fire by burning two American flags.
Burning a flag is not illegal, but local police say the protest violated the law because a fire pit wasn’t used.
(these are just dirtbag idiots who deserve to be deported. or better yet, have this bunch go to the local VFW and try to occupy and burn our flag)
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Leaving behind a year of bruising legislative battles, President Barack Obama enters his fourth year in office having calculated that he no longer needs Congress to promote his agenda and may even benefit in his re-election campaign if lawmakers accomplish little in 2012.
Absent any major policy pushes, much of the year will focus on winning a second term. The president will keep up a robust domestic travel schedule and aggressive campaign fundraising and use executive action to try to boost the economy.
Aides say the president will not turn his back on Congress completely in the new year. He is expected to once again push lawmakers to pass elements of his jobs bill that were blocked by Republicans last fall.
If those efforts fail, the White House says, Obama’s re-election year will focus almost exclusively on executive action.
Earnest said Obama will come out with at least two or three directives per week, continuing the “We Can’t Wait” campaign the administration began this fall, and try to define Republicans in Congress as gridlocked and dysfunctional.
Campaign officials say Obama will fully engage in the re-election campaign once the Republicans pick their nominee. He will focus almost exclusively on campaigning after the late summer Democratic National Convention, barring unexpected developments at home or abroad.
(this is how kings and dictators rule. they make up laws and rules and changes as they feel. this man, obama, is one of those)
On a $4 Million Vacation, Michelle Begs for $3
Speaking from her paradisical $4 million Hawaii vacation, Mrs. Obama wants to know: Do any of President Obama’s supporters have $3 to spare for his reelection?
This is approximately like coming upon Warren Buffett on a street corner with a McDonald’s cup asking if he can have 15 cents.
Michelle’s request was part of an email sent to the Obama 2012 list today.
Over the next 11 months we’ve got an organization to grow, voters to register, and people to get fired up.
I hope you’ll close out this year by donating $3 or more now to help make sure we’re ready for the next one . . .
Thank you so much, and happy new year,
Michelle
The obscene juxtaposition of the first lady on a $4 million vacation while asking what would have to be middle to low income earners for three bucks – who else would they be targeting with such an appeal? – is yet another example of lack of perspective the Obamas seem to be gaining while in power.
Mrs. Obama takes extravagant vacations to Spain and southern Africa. The president golfs obsessively and is currently dining at Honolulu’s ritziest restaurants. All while asking their fellow Americans to “sacrifice” during this time of not plenty.
And they blow $4 million – mostly taxpayers’ money – on a vacation, while wondering if the small people can come up with $3.
What about renting a beach house next year at the Jersey shore? I mean, if we’re all going to sacrifice.
(yes our king and his queen are living large at the public tit, and we are all paying for this! but think about this, don’t all those high rolling islamic leaders do the same? he is just being like them, seeing as how he really is an islamic)
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Tehran said it will test-fire missiles in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, a move likely to stoke tensions with Washington already running high over Iran’s threats to close the strategic oil waterway if sanctions are enforced.
“Shorter- and longer-range, ground-to-sea, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles will be tested on Saturday,” the ISNA news agency quoted Iran’s navy spokesman, Commodore Mahmoud Mousavi, as saying on Friday.
Iran, which has been carrying out war games in the Strait of Hormuz over the past week, has said that “not a drop of oil” would pass through the strait if Western governments follow through with planned additional sanctions over its nuclear programme.
The US State Department said on Thursday that Iran’s threat to close the waterway, through which more than a third of the world’s tanker-borne oil passes, exhibited “irrational behavior” and “will not be tolerated.”
The naval manoeuvres launched by Iran in the strait on December 24 have so far included mine-laying and the use of aerial drones, according to Iranian media.
Analysts and oil market traders have been watching developments in and around the Strait of Hormuz carefully, fearing that the intensifying war of words between arch foes Tehran and Washington could spark open confrontation.
Here’s the rest of the story.
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Matthews: Rick Perry doesn’t have the brains to be president Chris is a freaking blowhard, the left’s Glenn Beck wannabee!
Obama marks 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day — 3 weeks late
More than Iranian malarkey in the Strait of Hormuz
Bachmann fades into oblivion Hopefully she is gone and out of mind come next Tuesday.
75 Years Ago Today, the First Occupy — by Human Float Michael Moore This fat ass has the nerve to have anything to do with the occupy movement.
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Among the racially charged newsletters published under Ron Paul’s name, one example is particularly odious to Houston Democrats.
One of the newsletter articles described Rep. Barbara Jordan, a Houston Democrat revered in the civil rights community, as “the archetypal half-educated victimologist, yet her race and sex protect her from criticism.”
The story was covered extensively by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News in 1996, when Paul sought to reclaim a seat in Congress, and 2007, when Paul was running for the Republican presidential nomination. But the newsletters did not receive significant media attention until last week, when the Texas congressman took the lead in theIowa presidential caucuses.
Today, the woman who represents the Houston congressional district long represented by Jordan demanded an apology.
“Ron Paul cannot continue to pursue the position of the presidency of the United States of America without formally apologizing and discussing his true positions regarding these newsletter writings,” Jackson Lee said in a statement.
Jackson Lee likened Paul’s situation to then-candidate Barack Obama’s predicament when controversial statements by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, threatened to derail the Chicago Democrat’s 2009 presidential campaign.
Obama “gave a landmark speech on race to explain his views on race and the history of race in America,” Jackson Lee said. “Mr. Paul should do the same.”
(this from a woman who yells racist at anyone who dares oppose her! she uses her gender and more her race as a freaking whining tool)
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(Star-Advertiser) — President Barack Obama is playing golf this afternoon, his fourth golf outing of his Hawaii vacation, as he wraps up a full week of vacation.
Obama is playing the Kaneohe Klipper course on Marine Corps Base Hawaii for the third time in a week. He left his rented vacation home at about 11:30 a.m. The White House has not yet released the names of his golf partners. . .
(91st golf outing for this president. but does the MSM count? or comment on this? no because he is a liberal just like they are)
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This whole thing? I find hilarious as hell! And the people doing this? Crazy ass loonies, just like the man they follow!
This is a story I couldn’t resist writing. Ron Paul supporters are spraying vinegar at the sky to “kill” clouds. They’re standing in their backyards, on their porches, and in front of their windows, angrily aiming spray bottles filled with vinegar into the air.
How could I not write about this? If I live to be one-hundred years old, will I ever again get the chance to write about something so incredibly insane?
I have several friends who support Ron Paul. The aim of this piece is not to malign or belittle all Paul supporters – just the ones who adhere to the “if Alex Jones says it, it must be true” school of thought. And boy, do those Paul devotees love the “chemtrails” conspiracy theory (the belief that the contrails created by the exhaust of aircraft engines are actually toxic “chemical trails” that the Zionist/Illuminati/Bilderberger/alien-lizard-man secret societies are using to poison the earth).
When not listening to Alex Jones and Jeff Rense, chemtrail believers obsessively take photographs of the “poison trails” and “evil clouds.” Of course, since the alien-lizard-Zionist-Bilderbergers forbid the puppet governments of the world from admitting that chemtrails exist, the intrepid chemtrail hunters have been stymied. Sure, they can photograph them, but they can’t stop ‘em.
Or CAN they? This year, a movement has spread like dengue fever among chemtrail sleuths. This movement claims that chemtrails can be “killed” with vinegar, sprayed upward from the ground. And hundreds of chemtrail true believers are doing just that – and they’re uploading videos to Youtube, Dailymotion, Ebaumsworld, and elsewhere, documenting their chemtrail “kills.”
Of the hundreds of “chemtrail kill” videos, the majority are made by self-described Ron Paul supporters. I’ve dubbed this branch of the Paul camp the “Paulsamics” (as in “Paulsamic vinegar”). If you want to see the sheer volume of Paulsamic videos online, just Google or Youtube-search “chemtrails” and “vinegar.”
As Leon Wolf at RedState so aptly observes, “Ron Paul has built an entire political career off of pandering to the paranoid and hate filled when he thinks no one is looking.”
More
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Another case of “I want to blame someone else and get tons of money because I am stupid”
A 20-year-old woman paralyzed in a car crash after a night of underage drinking is suing a bar for not checking her ID.
Chelsea Hess, now 22, argues a barman should have asked her to show her ID when she ordered drinks at a South Carolina Bar in 2009.
Despite being a year under the legal age to drink Ms Hess spent several hours at Jock’s Sport Grill in Bluffton, South Carolina where she drank with friends and played billiards.
Night out: Chelsea Hess at 20-years-old finished drinking with friends at a local sports bar before taking to her car without wearing her seat belt leading to her car crashNight out: Chelsea Hess at 20-years-old finished drinking with friends at a local sports bar before taking to her car without wearing her seat belt leading to her car crash
When she left the premises at 1am and was driving home her car ran off the road.
Officials say Ms Hess, who was not wearing a seat belt, was over the legal drink drive limit.
She was ejected from the vehicle and hurled 20ft suffering catastrophic injuries that left her as a paraplegic.
According to the lawsuit Ms Hess claims the bartender should have asked if she was old enough to buy alcohol or if she was drunk when she was in the bar.
‘The bartender failed to attempt to ascertain whether or not plaintiff was already impaired by alcohol consumption when she purchased the alcoholic beverage and made sale to plaintiff even though she was unable to legally purchase the alcoholic beverage, and notwithstanding the possibility that she was already impaired by alcohol consumption,’ according to the complaint obtained by the Courthouse News Service.
Response: Ms Hess is now suing the bar in Bluffton, South Carolina for serving her alcohol under the age limit as well as the city for the road’s conditions resulting in her paralysisResponse: Ms Hess is now suing the bar in Bluffton, South Carolina for serving her alcohol under the age limit as well as the city for the road’s conditions resulting in her paralysis
Ms Hess has also sued the Department of Transportation and the town of Bluffton and Beaufort County claiming they had failed to properly maintain the road where she crashed.
The lawsuit says the wheels of her 2000 Mitsubishi car ‘suddenly dropped off into a large unmaintained area on the shoulder of Alljoj Road, which caused plaintiff to lose control of her vehicle and causing her to roll the vehicle off the side of the road.’
In its response to the lawsuit, Schubert Place LLC, operator of Jock’s Sport Grill, denied Ms Hess’s claims.
They said she was responsible for her injuries due to her acts of ‘negligence, recklessness, willfulness and gross negligence’
The South Carolina Department of Transportation also blamed Ms Hess, saying the accident occurred due to a number of events for which she bore responsibility, including driving while intoxicated and failing to keep her under control.
Ms Hess, now aged 22, is seeking punitive damages that could run into millions and cover the cost of her round-the-clock health care.
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Des Moines, Iowa back in the news.
According to Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaug of the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Kanzi, a 31-year-old bonobo in her care, became fascinated with making fire after watching the film Quest for Firewhen he was only a year old.
“The movie was released about a year after Kanzi was born and was about early man struggling to control fire,” says Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh. “Kanzi watched this spellbound over and over hundreds of times.”
The chimp soon began collecting firewood and attempting to ignite it. “His demeanour when he focused on making fire was just like when he watched the movie,” says the doctor, who has clearly not watched enough movies herself to know this couldn’t possibly end well.
In addition to his fire-making skills, Kanzi can also understands some 2,000 words through a system of symbols called lexigrams.
Suffice it to say, if he develops a knack for riding horses I’m outta here. Or wants a gun!
