From Obama's May 2nd Michigan Graduation Speech:

Today's twenty-four seven echo chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before. It has also, however, given us unprecedented choice. ...we now have the option to get our information from any number of blogs or websites or cable news shows.

This development can be both good and bad for democracy. .. if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

This of course requires that we all agree on a certain set of facts to debate from, and that is why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads.

The White House's "I Love you back!/(Laughter)/(Applause)" version of this speech is also available. H/T to the hubby.

Happy 4th of July.

President Obama has taken complete control of the First Amendment in an around the Gulf of Mexico region; the physical breadth of the BP oil spill will now work as a map, where 65 feet beyond the borders of this oily map, America's freedom as we know it has ceased to exist.  read more »

[Edit]: A summary that exposes deeper ramifications:

New Scientist, a popular site with over 3 million unique visitors a month, initially responded to the nation's first abortion ban based on fetal pain in April 2010 with a simple "briefing" that wasn't widely repeated throughout the web. The article focused on discrediting Nebraska's 20-week abortion "Fetal Pain" restriction as "debatable."

Late last week, New Scientist followed up (HT Tabitha Hale's Amplify) with a direct refutation of the "pain claim" by citing a UK study that had been picked up by UPI and the AP for mass distribution.  read more »

Day after tax day: taxed at every level, privacy at no level. 

The Obama Administration has taken steps to secure access to both our public and private communications. If you're a citizen and a target of Obama's DOJ, you're emails are fair game, sans search warrant and just cause. 

I've been on the internet since '91 and have internet email accounts that date back to 1997. Although I had never seriously considered the ramifications of a 3rd party reading my emails before the 2008 elections, I felt measurably secure with Yahoo storing my info. Pre-2008, I wrote to my friends and family and talked about the weather. I also never expressed my political opinion. Back then, politics and religion were taboo. 

Now, I am concerned on at least 2 levels: using the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, the Obama Administration has now gone through legal channels to access emails older than 180 days without cause, thereby superceding the privacy rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution. 

Then there's the hook of incitement: if we are tied in some way to a hate crime that may have culminated through a flash mob we inadvertently instigated through a "Let's get together!" tweet, for example, we may face the same ramifications for inciting hate crimes -- a method for quelling free speech that's all the rave in socialist European countries where citizens don't enjoy the same Constitutional freedoms we have here in the states.   read more »

This is why we can't dismiss people like Polly Higgins the Barrister by simply calling her "nutty as a fruitcake." 

It turns out, our Polly, champion of the Treehuggers who believe trees have Rights, is deep into a Solar Panel the Sahara scam (dubbed "Saviour of the World") that would provide solar-manna from the sky, "sufficient to cover all needs of the earth."  

Wow. The progressives don't even care to connect the "myth" of God to a person anymore. Now that climate change is religious dogma, we've just been supplied with a God-Company Incarnate,  with the UN about to turn Enforcer to prosecute Climate Deniers -- although they have yet to lift a finger against Holocaust deniers like Ahmadinejad.    read more »

In this segment of  his 4/13 show, Mark finally calls Obama a Global Citizen. Although this term can take on a multitude of meanings.  he uses it to emphasize how Obama implements policies that destroy American values and culture, American prosperity, and are clearly not American-delineated, especially in retrospect of what has transpired since his election into office. We can begin to see how Obama is more interested in serving the interests of the world than he is in serving the citizens of his own nation. For background, the following are excerpts from articles Mark mentions in this clip. Skip ahead to the trascript of this important segment, or right click and download and begin listening at 30:13 for maximum impact. Again, this is from yesterday's Monday, 4/12/10 show. ** From the Millions of unemployed may never recover, the Seattle Times: 

Despite recent job gains, one grim statistic casts a long shadow over the recovering economy and the futures of more than 6 million workers: Fully 44 percent of the nation's 15 million unemployed have been out of work for more than six months.And evidence suggests many of them may never rebuild their working lives completely.Never since the Great Depression has the U.S. labor market seen anything like it. The previous high in long-term unemployment was 26 percent in June 1983, just after the deep downturn of the early '80s. The 44 percent rate this year translates into more than 6.5 million people.In fact, nearly two-thirds of these workers actually have been jobless for a year or longer, new Labor Department reports show.

From The Detroit News' AP survey: Recovery to remain sluggish into 2011:  read more »

The Activists' War on Private Property, Industrialization and the Free Market

As the self-proclaimed Superguardian of human rights, the UN defines the following 4 crimes  as "crimes against humanity," prosecutable under the jurisdiction of the ICC (International Criminal Court):

• genocide
• war crimes
• ethnic cleansing
• crimes against humanity

The UN works incredibly hard to be the final authority by citing these and other "international laws" to member states -- including the United States. 

Despite the fact that we remain the model for democracy throughout the world, the UN threatens to usurp the Constitution and the sovereignty of America by invoking the supremacy of international law. These attempts remains hidden from public discourse. If all the UN intends to accomplish were made  common knowledge, we'd have louder debates and realize that the problems of socialized healthcare is just the beginning.  

Realize that the UN doesn't have anymore muscle power than they did a decade or 25 years ago to address these crimes against humanity as they occur, but they have found another way to try to address these crimes-- and that is by aligning prevention through the utilization of resources of its member states, by its member states,  for its member states.      read more »

Amid Rasmussen polls telling us what middle America already knows and CNN playing "nice", it behooves every freedom-minded individual to forget that we are a breath shy of being called "terrorists."

There are the various, sundry people, who - either because of ignorance or willful blindness to fairness -- will claim Timony McVeigh would have been "one of us" and that political terrorism begins before the act:

Would Timothy McVeigh be part of the Tea Party movement if he was still here today and had not been caught?  My guess is he would, and he would be welcomed with open arms.   That being said, I believe he was at one time a patriot---but the real question is; when does the delusional view of patriotism morph into terrorism---it starts long before the act of terrorism---I believe there are some loud voices out there that would view terrorism as patriotic to support their Ideology.

Then there are others will mindlessly repeatlefty organizations as they attempt to discredit you and I by labeling the conservative movement "political terrorism," as in exhibited politicalarticles.net's "Political Terrorism: We are Witnessing a Total Nervous Breakdown of Right-Wing America"  read more »

Just about now, the spring 2010 Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (Global) Advisory Committee (GAC) has concluded their bi-annual meeting on global information sharing that begins at the local level.

The GAC met in October of last year.

Some of what was discussed included AG Eric Holder's commitment "in getting the Global message out," DHS's concern in sustaining funding for fusion centers (of which there is currently no Congressional oversight), and of particular note, the Nationwide SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) Intiative:

a historic partnership among local,state, tribal and federal agencies (including BJA, DOJ, DHS, FBI,and the US Department of Defense). The NSI establishesa national capacity to accomplish what law enforcement agencies have been trying have been doing for years --gathering information regarding behaviors and incidents associated with crime to, "connect the dots" -- and establishes a standardized approach to sharing information with the goals of detecting and preventing criminal activity, including terrorism-related activities .. [by] developing relationship among police, fusion centers, and the communities they serve (particularly immigrant and minority communities) to best address the challenges of crime control and prevention of terrorism. 

More attempts to mischaracterize conservatives. This time,  by widely-quoted major newssource, the Houston Chronicle. 

This one got fed to the liberal trolls throughout the internet, and the leftist trough was refilled again and again, by a democratic site, too, for good measure. 

From Dunham and Simons report in "Census Caught in Anger Toward Washington: Officials Worry Low Response Rate is a Form of Protest":  read more »

Y'know, there's a little mantra that exists about relationships, whispered between friends when they discuss their loves, their interests, their sex, whatever:

They're trying to control you.

You need out, man. You can't let her boss you around like that. You need to do what you want, when you want. You're in control of yo-sef. 

Girl, he's mistreatin' you again? And you're still with him? Don't you see he's got some kind of mind-control on you? The sex can't be that hot. He's tryin' to control you! 

Freedom, right? 

What "choice" have we predominately heard about when it comes to healthcare? Doctor choice? Clinic choice? Shot choice? No, pro-choice abortion. Ok? Your choice of deciding whether to have someone stick a probe up your uterus, suck your baby into a sink, or maybe syringe some saline solution to burn the baby out. If you're a guy, then it would apply to your choice of having your progeny decimated, it's brains squished and bloody body mangled enough to be poured into the same test tube you might use for donating your semen. Yeah, it's bad. Fight to keep your child alive.. or keep your boys safe to begin with. 

But, "choice." Because that "control" -- mind-control, sex control, intimidation control, whatever -- didn't allow you to choose to keep your legs shut or your penis in your pants in the first place. Because you didn't have a choice before conception, only after. 

Now it's come to light that someone actually admits that Obama's healthcare legislation is what conservatives knew all along: Control. Control over your medical choices.  Control over your medical decisions, what proponents of pro-choice  have argued against for decades: control over your body.   read more »