Monthly Archives: September 2014

On Constitution Day, 2014, we thank the Founding Fathers for this sacred document!

This piece by a man I personally think may prove to be as providential a man as were the Founding Fathers shows the dramatic impact of all the years of our educational systems simply either ignoring the Constitution and the system of government that small group of geniuses created for us all those years ago or, much worse, attacking it and its very foundations as racist, etc. ,etc, etc., to the point that if one addresses some public bodies and  start speaking of the Bill of Rights one starts getting blank, open-mouthed stares. I know. I’ve been there. And, one will risk being called a crazy “Tea Party” person which is truly astonishing in view of the fact that I consider that to be a very high compliment– one of the highest an American citizen can be paid. On this day, I say Thank God for our Constitution– the only think standing between this tyrannical administration and complete and unrestrained dictatorship. Happy Constitution Day!

A plea for constitutional literacy on Constitution Day

The safeguard against government intrusion is a return to the Founding document

Constitution Day Sept 17 Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times more >

By Ben S. Carson – The Washington Times – Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Earlier this summer, I managed to perplex, perhaps even offend, a famous TV interviewer when I declared I wanted a federal government that followed the U.S. Constitution. Seemingly aghast, the interviewer went so far as to suggest my position was a “highly charged thing to say.”

Imagine that. A journalist who, owing to the Constitution, has the right to report freely and to speak freely, being uncomfortable to hear a fellow American swear allegiance to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers’ vision of a limited central government.

I fear we as a nation have drifted too far away from an understanding and appreciation of the greatest governance document the world has ever produced. We have a president today who usurps power never given to him in the Constitution, a dysfunctional Congress so gridlocked that it can’t fulfill its mission as a separate-but-equal branch of government, and a Fourth Estate of media elites who cheerlead for a bigger, more intrusive government that unnecessarily addicts those struggling to escape poverty to handouts, rather than encouraging self-reliance.

Let me be clear. Rightly sized and empowered, government serves an excellent purpose. Our Founding Fathers knew that and created a perfect vision for a republic of independent states protected and served by a central federal governmentwith strong checks and balances. Those checks on powers were essential to the Framers, who wanted to make sure three equal but separate branches would ensure we always had a government “of the people, for the people and by the people,” as Abraham Lincoln once so wisely said.

Today we have people who are simply overgoverned, subjected to taxation, regulation and intrusions by a massive federal government that our Founding Fathers would never have tolerated. It wants to control what we eat, how we live and even how much we can earn. It values political correctness over freedom, co-dependency over self-reliance and redistribution of wealth over personal success.

That’s why I said what I did that Sunday morning to that news-talk show host. I told him I would love to have a government again that placed the Constitution of the United States at the center of its mission, that recognized government was never intended to be intruding on every aspect of our lives. Everywhere I go in this great nation these days, I hear that same plea, from farmers in rural communities fearful the next federal regulation will put their generations-old family farm out of business, to shopkeepers suffocating under an unnecessarily high tax burden to young people seemingly reconciled that their government will monitor, record and track their every movement.

How do we reverse this creeping despair that we have drifted too far away from our founding principles? It’s simple. I think we must go back to the source of our great American experiment — the U.S. Constitution. In a little more than 4,500 words, the Framers created a vision of government that preserved liberty first and foremost and yet found a way to serve the basic needs of a republic. For 200 years, that document guided this great nation through dark times and soaring success. For most of our history, schoolchildren were taught the guiding principles of the Constitution from the earliest age, and even members of Congress with controversial civil rights histories such as the late Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia kept a copy of that great document in their jacket pocket to remind them of the responsibilities and limits of governance.

On this Constitution Day, a wonderful holiday created with bipartisan support just a few short years ago, let’s recommit ourselves to rereading and appreciating our Constitution and ensuring that our children and our children’s children grow up with the same appreciation we were given. Familiarity with the greatest ideas ever created for preserving liberty will breed appreciation. Appreciation will help us all overcome the ignorant political correctness of a few media elites and governing officials who seem to dismiss the fundamental principles of a government that respected liberty first and foremost.

Ben S. Carson is author of the new book “One Nation: What We Can All Do To Save America’s Future” (Sentinel)

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/16/carson-a-plea-for-constitutional-literacy-on-const/#ixzz3DbJRmJ1H
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God Bless America. Land That I Love. Stand Beside Her……

 [From Instapundit.com this morning]:

 SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

 

SO NOW IT’S THE 13TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11. Back then, InstaPundit was shiny and new new. Now it’s not, and some people have been warning of “blogger burnout.” But I’m still here. On prior 9/11 anniversaries, I’ve given shooting lessons to a Marine, I’ve taken the day off from blogging, and I’ve even gone to a Tea Party with Andrew Breitbart.

This year, as in most past years, it’ll be blogging as usual. And here’s a link to my original 9/11 coverage — just scroll on up. At this late date, I don’t have much new to say on 9/11. But these predictions held up pretty well. Which is too bad.

The picture above is by my cousin-in-law Brad Rubenstein, taken from his apartment that day. You might also want to readthis piece by James Lileks.

And here’s a passage from Lee Harris’s Civilization And Its Enemies.

Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe.

They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the Enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish.

They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the Enemy. And that, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the Enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn’t done enough for — yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part — something that we could correct. And this means that that our first task is that we must try to grasp what the concept of the Enemy really means.

The Enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the Enemy always hates us for a reason — it is his reason, and not ours.

I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating today.

Now, of course, with the Syria debacle last year, leading into this year’s Iraq rerun, it seems like we’ve gone from tragedy to farce and back to tragedy. Are you feeling the hope and change? I’m not.

God bless America. We need it.

Islam: A religion of love, peace, art, music, clitorectomies and beheadings.

OK Lawmaker Accused Of Making Anti-Muslim Remarks

I studied this Facebook post to be sure I could judge it for myself, and I challenge anyone to do the same and then show me where there is anything incorrect or inaccurate in one single word of this post by this gentleman in Sequoyah, Oklahoma. Of course, most of the article is about the guy from CAIR getting, as my pals in Arkansas would put it, “all bowed up” about these perfectly accurate statements – what else is new? I do sincerely hope that Mr. Bennett has retained the services of one or more very competent sharpshooters for extra security, as I understand ISIS is already in El Paso and it won’t take them long to get to Sequoyah. Perhaps he might consider, as he is in Oklahoma, getting some Redskins to watch his back… just sayin’…..

 

 

Posted: Sep 03, 2014 5:42 PM CDT Updated: Sep 03, 2014 5:50 PM CDT

BY LACIE LOWRY, NEWS 9 – BIO | EMAI

State Rep. John Bennett of Sequoyah wrote the comments on Monday night. Oklahoma’s Council on American-Islamic Relations called on Republican Party leaders to denounce the comments on Wednesday.

OKLAHOMA CITY -A controversial statement made on Facebook by a state lawmaker has outraged Muslims in Oklahoma.

The Islamic community demanded an apology after a state representative posted on Facebook to be “wary of Muslim Americans” and then shared a link about the ISIS brutality in the Middle East.

State Rep. John Bennett of Sequoyah wrote the comments on Monday night. Oklahoma’s Council on American-Islamic Relations called on Republican Party leaders to denounce the comments on Wednesday.

“I was really disappointed that someone who is elected to represent the people would put something so negative out there,” said Adam Soltani, CAIR-Oklahoma Executive Director.

CAIR-Oklahoma said it wants Representative Bennett to apologize for his comments.

Bennett’s post reads in part, “The Quran clearly states that non-Muslims should be killed… Be wary of the individuals who claim to be ‘Muslim American’. Be especially wary if you’re a Christian.”

“You can take verses out of the Bible or any other holy book out of context. They look good or they look bad depending on how you frame them,” Soltani said. “But the Holy Quran states that you take the life of one innocent person, it’s as if you took all of humanity.”

Bennett said he can say what he wants on his private Facebook page and he sticks by his comments. He said it is ironic a group that fights for First Amendment rights is trampling on his first amendment rights.

Bennett also said he is not taking anything out of context because ISIS militants are using the Quran to carry out beheadings in Iraq and Syria and if they aren’t stopped, the same will happen here.

CAIR has publicly condemned ISIS and called them an extremist group with ideals that are the antithesis of Islam.

“To tell fellow Oklahomans that they need to be wary of someone like myself, that’s concerning and that can only lead to what we fear would be hate crimes and Islamaphobia,” Soltani told News 9.

Soltani said Bennett’s idea that religious extremism is wrong is correct, but relating that to Islam in America is absolutely wrong.

Bennett told News 9 he is not advocating violence against anyone, but wants to educate people. He said he will only apologize if CAIR-Oklahoma condemns any Quran teachings that promote violence against non-Muslims

 

Letter from the parents of Aaron Carson Vaughn of SEAL Team VI: Please resign, Mr. President

Vaughn of SEAL Team VI: Please resign, Mr. President

 

Billy and Karen Vaughn

After finally choosing to view the barbaric, on-camera beheading by ISIS of freelance war correspondent James Foley, I have been left with a level of rage known only to those of us who have sacrificed unspeakable offerings on the altar of world peace.

My offering was my only son — Aaron Carson Vaughn. Aaron was a member of SEAL Team VI. He was killed in action when a CH47D Chinook, carrying thirty Americans and eight Afghans was shot down in the Tangi River Valley of Afghanistan on Aug. 6, 2011.

endorse1Many times over the past three years, I have been asked what drove my son to choose his particular career. What made him want to be a Navy SEAL? My answer is simple.

Aaron Vaughn was a man who possessed the courage to acknowledge evil. And evil, once truly acknowledged, demands response. Perhaps this is why so few are willing to look it in the eye. It is much simpler — much safer — to look the other way.

That is, unless you are the leader of the Free World.

As Commander-in-Chief, your actions — or lack thereof — Mr. President, cost lives. As you bumble about in your golf cart, slapping on a happy face and fist-pounding your buddies, your cowardly lack of leadership has left a gaping hole — not only in America’s security — but the security of the entire globe. Your message has come across loud and clear, sir: You are not up to this job. You know it. We know it. The world knows it.

Please vacate the people’s house and allow a man or woman of courage and substance to seize the reigns of this out-of-control thug-fest and regain the balance we, America, have provided throughout our great history.

Thanks to your “leadership” from whatever multi-million dollar vacation you happen to be on at any given moment, the world is in chaos. What’s been gained, you’ve lost. What’s been lost, you’ve decimated. You’ve demolished our ability to hold the trust of allies. You’ve made a mockery of the title “President.” And you’ve betrayed the nation for which my son and over 1.3 million others have sacrificed their very lives.

But this should come as no surprise, since your wife uttered a vile statement on Feb. 18, 2008, during the primary campaign — one that speaks volumes of your true convictions. “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country,” she said.

I am sure my deceased son thanks you for that, Mrs. Obama. Oh, and you’re welcome.

Geostrategy-Direct: Cutting Edge Intelligence to Your Mailbox

Never in my lifetime have I witnessed such despair and such growing fear that the world’s last best hope, America, has finally been dismantled. Perhaps the better word is transformed — fundamentally transformed. Come to think of it, it’s become difficult — if not impossible — to believe things haven’t gone exactly as you planned, Mr. President.

Amazingly, in five short years, your administration has lurched from one disaster to another. You spearheaded the ambitious rush to end the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan — with no plan on how to do so effectively. Also, the release of “the Taliban five” in exchange for one American — without consulting Congress — is also on your shoulders.

You have been at the helm during unprecedented national security leaks — including, but not limited to the outing of SEAL Team VI on the Bin laden raid, the outing of the Pakistani doctor who provided the intelligence for that raid, the outing of Afghanistan’s CIA station chief, and the outing of your personal “kill list” to make you look tough. In addition, 75 percent of American deaths in Afghanistan and 83 percent of Americans-wounded-in-action have occurred on your watch, according to icasualties.org.

And now, we have this recent, heinous event: the beheading of an American citizen by a barbaric organization you foolishly referred to as “the JV team” in your statements to the New Yorker magazine in January.

You, sir, are the JV team. It’s time for you to step down and allow a true leader to restore our honor and protect our sons and daughters.

America has always been exceptional. And she will be again. You, Mr. President, are a bump in our road.

Billy & Karen Vaughn are Gold Star parents of Special Operations Chief (SEAL) Aaron Vaughn, KIA 6 Aug 2011. Billy is the author of Betrayed: The Shocking True Story of Extortion 17. Read more at http://www.forourson.us.

Somebody needs to say it to his face: Barack Obama is the worst president, by far, since at least the Civil War. For the love of God, man, go away

Obama, Outed: If Only
If he’s bored, we’d be more than happy to let him leave.

 

Just resign already. Go. Be gone. Vamoose. Get out of our lives. More important: Stop endangering all of us with your self-indulgent vacations and self-absorbed dithering, along with unconstitutional domestic power plays while the whole world burns.

Barack Obama already is derelict in his duties as commander in chief. He ought to abdicate and just step off his self-made throne.

Knowledgeable people were calling for Obama to begin air strikes against the Islamic State barbarians months before Obama could rouse himself to admit that the brutes were something other than “jayvee” terrorists. Because he didn’t, thousands of innocents died, villages were razed, churches were destroyed, thousands more were left homeless, and vast swaths of territory were lost to purveyors of pure, unadulterated evil.

 
And now, after several years of the Islamic State rising, after half a year of its being obvious that the Islamic State is a new sort of threat, after a couple of months of vicious terror of a sort even this troubled modern world has rarely seen, and after the Islamic State beheaded an American journalist on camera, we have a man pretending to be president who tells the world that the leaders of the globe’s most powerful nation still “don’t have a strategy yet” for the situation.

Words fail.

Meanwhile, Russia invades the sovereign nation of Ukraine. Barack Obama can’t even bring himself to acknowledge that it’s an invasion, much less do anything effective about it. But we can’t say we weren’t warned that Obama would be so compliant with Putin: It was in March 2012, speaking on an open mic to Russian apparatchik-cum-president Dmitry Medvedev, that Obama promised, “After my election, I have more flexibility.” Little did Ukraine know that such “flexibility” would include turning a blind eye to the loss of major parts of its own territory. The West has not even provided military aid to help Ukraine defend itself.

Kiev might be in Ukraine, but the chicken is in the White House.

Even worse than his failure to help a sovereign nation stand up to a bully is Obama’s betrayal of another ally, one of our most crucial partners on the world stage — Israel. But that’s what Obama and his pompous secretary of state, John Kerry, have done with relation to Israel, on multiple counts. First Kerry had the gall to threaten Israelwith boycotts if his own ill-advised “peace talks” met with failure, as they were certain to do, given how poorly conceived they were. What Kerry called “peace” amounted to Israeli abandonment of the Jordan Valley and establishment of an Arab capital in East Jerusalem, though both arrangements would be scandalously dangerous for Israel’s security. Then, while Israel was being bombarded with thousands of Hamas rockets, an Obama-Kerry spokesman had the temerity to label an Israeli response “disgraceful,” and “totally unacceptable and totally indefensible.” Perhaps Kerry and his morally bankrupt mouthpiece might themselves want to spend time in Ashkelon or Beersheba during a Hamas rocket attack — maybe in the middle of the night, when sleep makes it difficult to respond to sirens in time to seek adequate shelter.

As Israel achieves the unprecedented — and encouraging — status of a tacit alliance with Egypt, Jordan, other “moderate” Arab states, and even (to some degree) Saudi Arabia, leave it to the Obamites to demand the intercession of terrorist-supporting Turkey and Qatar. This isn’t misguided; it’s depraved.

Israel warns that Iran is processing uranium that can be used only for bombs and developing missiles specifically usable for nuclear-bomb delivery, the ayatollahs continue to repeat their assertion that the United States is the Great Satan, and Obama’s response . . . is to relax sanctions on Iran. Amazingly, the administration is even playing footsie with Iran as a possible “ally” against the Islamic State in Iraq. This is jaw-droppingly inane, if not insane.

But it’s not only the security of allies that Obama endangers. His deliberate creation of an ever-more-porous southern border is allowing criminals in by the score, or maybe by the hundreds, alongside, almost assuredly, terrorists as well.

Obama, though, keeps whining and dining and vacationing and playing golf, with his weak-looking swing, either oblivious or indifferent to the dangers to which he is subjecting Americans.

Even if one assumes that our supposedly earth-healing president has the best of intentions rather than a mere desire for power and a deep animus against anyone who disagrees with him — not necessarily a reasonable assumption at this point — his record is one of astonishing ineptness. Everything he does creates disaster. Obamacare is deeply unpopular as it forces premiums through the roof, raises multiple taxes, severely harms important industries, fails to process claims and enrollments, narrows patient choices, forces consumers from their preferred plans and doctors, and adds hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt.

The economy continues on its path of the slowest “recovery” since World War II, Obama’s “stimulus” never having stimulated a thing (other than more debt) — largely because, as Obama admitted, in a joking tone, “shovel-ready wasn’t as shovel-ready as we expected.”

Obama promised a politics of reconciliation but has produced only more division. He promised transparency, only to run an administration of such deliberate secrecy that even a lapdog media feels compelled to lodge a formal protest. He promised racial harmony, only to join a corrupt attorney general in exacerbating racial tensions again and again. He promised to elevate political discourse but instead ran one of the mostvicious reelection campaigns in memory, while repeatedly, throughout his presidency, attacking the patriotism and basic decency of his adversaries.

Food-stamp use is way up; the percentage of the work force currently employed remains at or near record lows. Energy costs, especially for gasoline, have skyrocketed since his first inauguration. Disaster relief has been bungled (or worse). And, of course, religious freedoms are constantly under assault, while political enemies are harassed and discriminated against by a corrupt IRS.

Scandals abound: Fast and Furious; the New Black Panthers, Benghazi; the NSA’s domestic spying; the IRS; mistreated inspectors general; race-based “justice.” Cover-ups aplenty; contempt of court; judicial smackdowns galore: The list goes on.

But all Obama can do, when he is not greatly exacerbating whatever problem he chooses to create, is retreat further into his princeling world, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, shifting blame to everyone else, and acting as if somehow he wafts above the ordinary world of politics that in truth he has done so much to pollute.

Rather than leading from behind — an absurdity — he should leave behind the office that seems alternately to annoy and bore him. Let Joe Biden take responsibility; at least Biden engages rather than withdraws when the going gets tough.

Somebody needs to say it to his face: Barack Obama is the worst president, by far, since at least the Civil War. For the love of God, man, go away