Freedom Threatened By Plan To Federalize Local Government In Florida

By Suzanne Eovaldi

December 15, 2012 

A new initiative by the federal government called Seven50, a cousin of Agenda 21, seeks to relieve local governments nationwide of direct representation by and for local citizens in matters of education, infrastructure, and population.

 Indian River County Commissioner Bob Solari (772- 226-1442) is putting out an urgent call to attend a special Indian River County Commission meeting concerning this topic on Tuesday, December 18 at 9 a.m. in the Vero Beach County Chambers (1801 27th Street, Vero Beach, FL.)  Though Alabama already has passed legislation to curb the Seven50 agenda, seven southeastern counties along Florida’s coastline from Miami to Vero Beach threaten to place their citizens’ lives under control of HUD and other federal agencies by backing this “diversity” proposal.

Morphing the highly unpopular Security and Prosperity Partnership to Agenda 21 and finally into Seven50, our federal government  is hell-bent on removing any local control and input from average American citizens concerning what they can do with their own land, private property, local schools, and local infrastructures from bridges to meeting houses. “What we want to be when we grow up,” says  Marcelor Camblor-Cutsaimanis in a video interview with Nancy Ferre on PBS as she attempts to explain the benefits of Seven50.  Of course, the public TV host heaps praise upon this blatant attempt by the feds to exercise total control over the lives of Americans.
Whether you live near Southern Florida’s east coast or took part in Alabama’s efforts to rein in this dreadful plan, you must inform your neighbors about the dangers of Seven50.  The UN and the Obama administration have been relentless in their efforts to marginalize our freedoms. A puff piece about this fifty year, UN initiative to destroy local and county governance claims Seven50 is “good” for us given the ”…realization that local governments and civic groups can’t effectively tackle [their] problems and needs in isolation.” Well, just ask the still-suffering inhabitants of ocean front towns along the New Jersey and New York coastlines how they feel about the FEMA response to the destruction of their homes and businesses by Hurricane Sandy.
Counties across the nation are being REGIONALIZED to circumvent the structure and policies of local governance . It is an insidious program operating under the radar. Why didn’t the PBS interviewer ask activist Cutsaimanis about the FEMA performance in Staten Island, where residents are being drowned in federal red tape and frustrated by buck-passing and bureaucratic inefficiency?
If you live near the area, pleased attend the Vero Beach, FL county commission meeting on Dec. 18.  And wherever you live, find out if Seven50 threatens to supplant local governance, turning your town or county into a “protectorate” of the federal government.

Obama Caught Fake Crying - They are Coming For Our Guns (video)

Gun Control, People Control and Thought Control

by Daniel Greenfield
December 13, 2012

The gun control debate, like all debates with the left, is reducible to the question of whether we are individuals who make our own decisions or a great squishy social mass that helplessly responds to stimuli. Do people kill with guns or does the availability of guns kill people? Do bad eating habits kill people or does the availability of junk food kill people?

To the left these are distinctions without a difference. If a thing is available then it is the cause of the problem. The individual cannot be held accountable for shooting someone if there are guns for sale. Individuals have no role to play because they are not moral actors, only members of a mob responding to stimuli.

That is how the left approached this election. Instead of appealing to individual interests, they went after identity groups. They targeted low information voters and used behavioral science to find ways to manipulate people. The right treated voters like human beings. The left treated them like lab monkeys. And the lab monkey approach is triumphantly toted by progressives as proof that the left is more intelligent than the right. And what better proof of intelligence can there be than treating half the country like buttons of unthinking responses that you can push to get them to do what you want?
Would you let a lab monkey own a gun? Hell no. Would you let it choose what to eat? Only as an experiment. Would you let it vote for laws in a referendum? Not unless it’s trained to push the right button. Would you let it drive a car? Nope. Maybe a bicycle. And if it has to travel a long way, you’ll encourage it to use mass transit. Does a monkey have freedom of speech? Only until it annoys you.
The clash that will define the future of America is this collision between the individual and the state, between disorganized freedom and organized compassion, between a self-directed experiment in self-government and an experiment conducted by trained experts on a lab monkey population. And the defining idea of this conflict is accountability.

To understand the left’s position on nearly any issue, imagine a 20th Century American and then take away accountability. Assume that the individual is helpless and stupid, has little to no control over his own behavior and is only responding to stimuli and functions in a purely reactive capacity. Then use that data to come up with a response to anything from kids getting fat to a football player shooting his wife to terrorists firing rockets at Israel. The only possible answer to reactive behavior is to find the thing being reacted to and condemn it.

The final failure of accountability for the left is a failure of moral organization, while for the right it is a failure of personal character. The right asks, “Why did you kill?” The left asks, “Who let him have a gun?”, “Who didn’t provide him with a job” and “Who neglected his self-esteem?”

If you eat too much, it’s because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it’s because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem.

The defining American code is freedom. The defining liberal code is compassion. Conservatives have attempted to counter that by defining freedom as compassionate, as George W. Bush did. Liberals counter by attempting to define compassion as liberating, the way that FDR did by classing freedoms with entitlements in his Four Freedoms. On one side stands the individual with his rights and responsibilities. On the other side is the remorseless state machinery of supreme compassion. And there is no bridging this gap.

Liberal compassion is not the compassion of equals. It is a revolutionary pity that uses empathy as fuel for outrage. It is the sort of compassion practiced by people who like to be angry and who like to pretend that their anger makes them better people. It is the sort of compassion that eats like poison into the bones of a man or a society, even while swelling their egos with their own wonderfulness.
Compassion of this sort is outrage fuel. It is hatred toward people masquerading as love. And that hatred is a desire for power masquerading as outrage. Peel away the mask of compassion and all that is underneath is a terrible lust for power.

Freedom goes hand in hand with personal moral organization of the individual by the individual. Organized compassion, however, requires the moral organization of the society as a whole. A shooting is not a failure of the character of one man alone, or even his family and social circle; it is the total failure of our entire society and perhaps even the world, for not leveraging a sufficient level of moral organization that would have made such a crime impossible. No man is an island. Every man is a traffic jam.

Social accountability on this scale requires the nullification of the personhood and accountability of the individual, just as the moral organization that it mandates requires removing the freedom of choice of the individual, to assure a truly moral society. When compassion and morality are collective, then everyone and no one is moral and compassionate at the same time. And that is the society of the welfare state where compassion is administered by a salaried bureaucracy.
Choice is what makes us moral creatures and collective compassion leaves us less than human. The collective society of mass movements and mass decisions leaves us little better than lab monkeys trying to compose Shakespeare without understanding language, meaning or ideas, or anything more than the rote feel of our fingers hitting the keyboard.

This is the society that the left is creating; a place filled with as many social problems as there are people, where everyone is a lab monkey except the experts running the experiments, and where no one has any rights because freedom is the enemy of a system whose moral code derives from creating a perfect society by replacing the individual with the mass. It is a society where there is no accountability, only constant compulsion. It is a society where you are a social problem and there are highly paid experts working day and night to figure out how to solve you.

The Obama Administration has ordered changes in a new military handbook to now forbid U.S soldiers from criticizing the Taliban.

by William Bigelow
12 Dec 2012

In addition, our men in uniform are forbidden to disparage pedophilia. Even further, our soldiers are instructed not to speak of women’s rights. Or homosexuality. Or criticism of Afghans at all.

The manual, which runs 75 pages, insinuates that the reason for the insider attacks among our troops by Muslims is that we are ignorant of Afghani culture. The handbook intones: “Better situational awareness/understanding of Afghan culture will help better prepare [troops] to more effectively partner and to avoid cultural conflict that can lead toward green-on-blue violence.”

It’s our insensitivity that fosters the sneak attacks inside our armed services.

63 of our soldiers have been murdered in almost 40 insider attacks just this year.

U.S. Marine General John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, “does not approve of its contents,” according to a military spokesman.

This follows an Obama Administration decision in 2012 that removed any materials that portrayed Muslims negatively. The FBI was ordered by Obama to eviscerate instructional material that shows Muslims as violent or open to becoming terrorists. 

And it’s not just the FBI; almost all federal agencies are now tasked with Muslim outreach. The Justice Department has an Islamic civil rights program, Homeland Security has coffee with Muslim organizations that are radical, and even NASA was pushed on Muslim diplomacy.

Video gallery of union thuggery in Michigan

by Michelle Malkin

December 11, 2012

[ed. Too many to post. Utterly disgraceful scenes. Time to end this democrat party shakedown called "unionism"...]

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/12/11/video-gallery-of-union-thuggery-in-michigan/

Islam Is the Fastest Growing Religion in England; Christianity on the Decline, Census Data Shows

by Jason Howerton
December 12, 2012

Islam is the fastest growing religion in England and Wales, according to new census data. The number of people identifying with no religion nearly doubled over the last decade while the percentage of people who call themselves Christians has dropped to 59 percent, down from 72 percent 10 years ago, CNSNews.com reports.
The Muslim Council of Britain was pleased with the new data, saying Muslims were playing a “significant part in increasing diversity in Britain.”
Of the roughly 56.07 million people counted in the census, 33.24 million described themselves as “Christian” while 2.7 million identified as Muslims, an increase from 3.0 percent to 4.8 percent over a 10-year period. Further, the 2.7 million Muslims in England and Wales make it the second largest religion there. The next largest religions are Hinduism (817,000), Sikhism (423,000), Buddhism (248,000) and Judaism (263,000).
Religious leaders attempted to explain away the trend. “Christianity is no longer a religion of culture, but a religion of decision and commitment,” said a spokesman for the Catholic Church.
A spokesman for the Archbishop’s Council of the Church of England said “one of the reasons may well be fewer people identifying as ‘Cultural Christians’ i.e. those who have no active involvement with churches and who may previously have identified as Christian for cultural or historical reasons.”
CNSNews.com has more background:

Other mainstream and fringe faiths (including pagan, pantheist, wiccan, satanist, druid, “Jedi Knight” and others) lagged far behind, but the number of people declaring themselves to have no religion jumped to 14.4 million, from 7.7 million a decade ago. This means a full one-quarter of people in England and Wales now identify as having no faith.
In the U.S., by contrast, a 2007 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey found 16.1 percent of respondents identified as “unaffiliated” with any particular religion, while in the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey the figure was 14.9 percent. (The U.S. Census Bureau is prohibited by law from asking questions on faith affiliation on a mandatory basis.)
British secularist groups did not conceal their delight, reiterating predictions that Christians could be in the minority within five years.

Andrew Copson, of the British Humanist Association (BHA), said the new census data proves governments need to realize that religion is growing “decreasingly relevant.”
Additionally, Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society said the data “should serve as a warning to the churches that their increasingly conservative attitudes are not playing well with the public at large.”

Three Months Later: No Justice, Unanswered Questions on Benghazi

by Guy Benson
13th December, 2012

Three months ago today, President Obama woke up to the news that US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans had been murdered during a terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi.  The president had been informed that an active attack was underway the night before -- but how actively he followed the developing raid, and what (if any) orders he issued, remains a mystery.  On September 12, the president skipped his daily intelligence briefing and flew to Las Vegas for a campaign rally.  This much we know.  The Obama campaign eventually accused Republicans of "politicizing" the massacre by asking questions about it, asserting that the "entire reason" it was a major national story was due to rank exploitation of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.  Even with the president's re-election safely tucked away, the White House has continued to defend its UN Ambassador (and possible Secretary of State in waiting) against charges that she dissemminated false information to mislead the public about the true nature of the deadly attack.  The president and his top lieutenants have repeatedly dodged difficult questions, changed their stories, and hidden behind the dubious fig leaf of "ongoing investigations."  Obama has vowed to track down those responsible for the atrocities and bring them to justice.  He has also stated his desire to find out exactly what happened in Benghazi that night.  The federal investigation into the attacks got off to a stupefyingly dreadful start, and three months later, justice and accountability remain in short supply:

Three months after Ambassador Christopher Stevens, a diplomat and two CIA contractors were murdered in Benghazi, there is no sign of the killers being brought to justice by the United States. The investigation into the attacks has been hampered by the reluctance of the Libyan authorities to move against the Islamist terrorists identified by the FBI as responsible for the killing, according to American officials briefing the 'New York Times'. None of the suspects has been arrested or killed and some have fled Libya. Last month, the FBI issued a global appeal asking anyone with information about the killers to send information in an e-mail, text message or via Facebook. Stevens, the first U.S. ambassador to be killed in the line of duty since 1979, diplomat Sean Smith and CIA contractors and former U.S. Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, were killed in an attack on the U.S. consultate in Benghazi on September 11. The following day, President Barack Obama vowed: 'Make no mistake, justice will be done.' But that promise may remain unfulfilled if there is not more cooperation from the Libyan authorities.

The White House and its allies now insist that most questions on Benghazi have already been asked and answered -- a claim that even some members of the mainstream media are finding hard to swallow.  Here's a question: Is this report accurate?

A source with personal knowledge of the security situation in Benghazi told Breitbart News that Senators who listened to closed door testimony about the Benghazi attack were shocked to learn State Department security personnel agents were not immediately armed. Additionally, agents separated from Ambassador Chris Stevens left to retrieve their M4 weapons in a separate building. Only one returned to protect the Ambassador, while the other two hunkered down in the barracks, the source relayed. “From the accounts I read, those guys were not ready. When the attack came that night, they had to go back to the other room and grab their weapons. Then the worse part about it was they never even returned to be with the Ambassador. One returned to be with the Ambassador with his rifle ... There were no shots fired in return. On the embassy property, just the embassy property, none of those security agents blasted a single bullet from a single pistol or rifle at all in defense of the Ambassador—nothing.”

We already knew that the security situation at the consulate was woefully inadequate, but this is the first we've heard about zero shots being fired in the ambassador's defense (which is not to be confused with the subsequent, prolonged firefight at the CIA safehouse).  Jay Carney may not be able to think of a single question on Benghazi that hasn't been sufficiently addressed, but I certainly can.  Here are a dozen relevant and important inquiries, just off the top of my head:

(1) Who, specifically, denied repeated requests for increased security resources and personnel from American officials on the ground in Libya?  Why were these requests shot down?
(2) A senior State Department official testified that the US had the "correct" number of security assets in Benghazi. Amb. Susan Rice stated that our security presence at the Benghazi mission was "substantial."  Does the president stand by those assessments?  If not, why were they made in the first place?
(3)  Why were US security personnel pulled out of Libya, even as Amb. Stevens warned of heightened risks?
(4) Why was the Benghazi consulate operating below the bare minimum standards for a US diplomatic compound, especially after our government learned that at least ten known Islamist militias were operating in the city?
(5) Why wasn't security beefed up after a series of attacks on western targets in Benghazi, including previous attempted bombings at the American consulate itself?
(6) Where was the president during the raid itself?  How closely did he follow what was happening, and for how long?
(7) Was the president made aware of the numerous desperate pleas for help from two former SEALs, who battled the terrorists for seven hours before being killed?  If not, why not?  If so, what was his response?
(8) Which government officials, specifically, watched the attack unfold in real time -- hour after excruciating hour -- via footage from an American drone?  Was that drone armed?
(9) Why were American forces and resources not deployed to help defeat the enemy, particularly while several Americans were alive and urgently seeking reinforcements?  Why was a key counterterrorism task force not convened during the attack?
(10) Who, specifically, changed Susan Rice's public talking points by excising references to Al Qaeda, and why?  If there was a national security concern, what was it?  Where did the inaccurate "spontaneous protest" narrative originate?  Why was that story deemed more fit for publication than the accurate terrorism evidence?  And if Rice had little direct knowledge of the facts on the ground in Benghazi, why was she selected as the administration's spokesperson on the subject?
(11) Why was the president still publicly hedging on the terrorism question several weeks after the attack, especially if a terrorist link had been established "almost immediately."
(12) Why did it take the FBI weeks to arrive at the unsecured, bombed-out consulate after the attack?  Why were sensitive documents left in the rubble, even after they'd left?  Without jeopardizing any leads, what -- if any -- progress has been made in identifying, capturing, or killing those responsible for the assault?
Three months later, the American people and the families of the fallen still deserve answers.

[ed. The shameful role of the "mainstream" media, including Candy Crowley, who ran intereference for Obama has left plenty of questions to be answered...]

ABC chairman warns: this government will restrict your free speech like no other country

by Andrew Bolt
December 11, 2012

The Gillard Government’s assault on our free speech is a disgrace. For me, this issue alone makes this vengeful Government’s defeat critical, and it is a relief to finally hear prominent figures speak out:

ABC chairman and former top jurist Jim Spigelman has warned that a planned overhaul of discrimination law will impose unprecedented restrictions on free speech, including making it unlawful to offend people, leaving the nation isolated from international norms.
The Gillard government’s planned consolidation of all federal discrimination laws would significantly redraw the line between permissible and unlawful speech and open the way for the banning of publications, said Mr Spigelman, the immediate past chief justice of NSW.
If the government’s draft bill were enacted, discrimination in all areas would be affected by provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act that were used last year against newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt so that merely offending people would amount to unlawful discrimination.
“I am not aware of any international human rights instrument or national anti-discrimination statute in another liberal democracy that extends to conduct which is merely offensive,” Mr Spigelman said.
“We would be pretty much on our own in declaring conduct which does no more than offend to be unlawful. The freedom to offend is an integral component of freedom of speech. There is no right not to be offended.”

So it turns out Usain isn’t the only Bolt to have set a world record. Wish I were happier about it.
From Spigelman’s speech:

However, so far as I have been able to determine, we would be pretty much on our own in declaring conduct which does no more than offend, to be unlawful. In a context where human rights protection draws on a global jurisprudence, this should give us pause when we re-enact s 18C and before we extend such protection to other contexts.
Section 19(2)(b) of the proposed Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill 2012, introduces “offending” into the definition of discrimination for all purposes, not just for racial vilification… The new s19 defines, for the first time, discrimination by unfavourable treatment to include “conduct that offends, insults or intimidates” another person. As has always been the case with s 18C, the relevant conduct must occur “because the other person has a particular protected attribute”....
There are 18 separate “protected attributes” set out in section 17 of the draft Bill, seven of which apply only in the employment context. These are wide ranging and, in a number of respects, novel. One such attribute is “race"…
The inclusion of “religion” as a “protected attribute” in the workplace, appears to me, in effect, to make blasphemy unlawful at work, but not elsewhere. The controversial Danish cartoons could be published, but not taken to work. Similar anomalies could arise with other workplace protected attributes, eg. “political opinion”, “social origin”, “nationality"…
The new Bill proposes a significant redrawing of the line between permissible and unlawful speech. This is so, notwithstanding the ability to establish that relevant conduct falls within a statutory exception. A freedom that is contingent on proving, after the event, that it was exercised reasonably or on some other exculpatory basis, is a much reduced freedom. Further, as is well known, the chilling effect of the mere possibility of legal processes will prevent speech that could have satisfied an exception.
When rights conflict, drawing the line too far in favour of one, degrades the other right. Words such as “offend” and “insult”, impinge on freedom of speech in a way that words such as “humiliate”, “denigrate,” “intimidate”, “incite hostility” or “hatred” or “contempt”, do not. To go beyond language of the latter character, in my opinion, goes too far.
None of Australia’s international treaty obligations require us to protect any person or group from being offended. We are, however, obliged to protect freedom of speech.

All this is plainly true. It is truly astonishing that such arguments now need to be made to protect one of our most critical freedoms from this government.
The question for me is why I heard so few prominent figures mount them in response to my own ordeal. Spigelman gives a clue:

There may now have elapsed sufficient time for us to debate the issue dispassionately, and not on the basis of whether or not you like Andrew Bolt.

Spigelman seems to suggest that the principle of free speech was surrendered by those only too glad to have a conservative silenced.
Contemptible. Many of our “human rights” warriors have exposed themselves to me for what they are. As Bertrand Russell famously put it:

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

UPDATE
Chris Merritt:

JIM Spigelman’s human rights day oration marks the beginning of the end for Nicola Roxon’s botched plan to consolidate federal discrimination laws.
That scheme was already in trouble because of the growing concern about the Attorney-General’s decision to reverse the onus of proof in discrimination law - thereby destroying one of the bulwarks of liberty.
Spigelman has delivered the coup de grace by exposing the nanny-state policy that lies at the heart of this plan..
[Roxon] put forward a scheme that treats the community like naughty children… Publications could be banned. Liability for religious slights at work would be assumed - unless the accused could prove otherwise.

This Government first insults Australians as either too-tender petals and too-nasty ferals, and then insults them double by stripping them of their freedom.
I know good Labor Ministers - not least Martin Ferguson, of course - are resisting those in the Government such as Stephen Conroy who are trashing our free speech and free media.
But we cannot be sure they will win out in the end, and especially not if Gillard wins the next election. So those who value free speech have no option: throw this Labor baggage out before they do serious harm.

UPDATE:

Add Kelvin Thomson to the list of Labor MPs trying to save Australia - and Labor - from the worst excesses of Labor’s authoritarians:

Senate Democrats: Um, Let's "Postpone" Obamacare's Medical Device Tax

by Guy Benson

December 11, 2012

What a pity.  If only someone had demonstrated the foresight to warn against the destructive consequences of Obamacare's medical device tax, they might have helped turn public sentiment sharply against the law prior to passage.  Oh, that's right, conservatives did -- and the American people rose up in opposition.  Now, the very actors who are most responsible for ignoring public demands and jamming through Obamacare are trying to "delay" or repeal a major element of their law, warning that it could stifle medical innovation and kill jobs.  Welcome to the party, guys.  You're about two years too late:

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and 16 other Senate Democrats want the medical device tax - included in the 2010 healthcare reform law that they supported - postponed. The 2.3 percent excise tax that devicemakers must pay on their gross sales goes into effect on Jan. 1. It's one of the new revenues used to offset the cost of the healthcare law. The Internal Revenue Service issued Wednesday its final rules on the tax, which will impact profits on items such as high-tech burn treatments, catheters, back braces and in-home HIV tests. Casey signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this week asking that he support delaying implementation of the tax. Casey supports fully repealing it. "With this year quickly drawing to a close, the medical device industry has received little guidance about how to comply with the tax—causing significant uncertainty and confusion for businesses," the senators wrote.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that both of Minnesota's Democrat Senators are scrambling to mitigate the damage caused by the law...for which they both cast decisive votes -- a small detail that didn't make it into the story:

Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken pointed to thousands of high-paying jobs that device companies support in Minnesota, headquarters to such giant devicemakers as Medtronic and St. Jude Medical. The industry has painted the tax as a job killer that would hurt innovation. "The delay would give us the opportunity to repeal or reduce that tax," said Klobuchar, co-author of a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seeking the delay. Repeal is the ultimate goal of the letter's 18 signers, including Klobuchar, Franken and all the heavy hitters in the Senate Democratic leadership. But politically that would be virtually impossible before Jan. 1, said Norman Ornstein, a congressional expert with the American Enterprise Institute.

Here's a minor fact that did manage to sneak into the article's 14th paragraph: "The House has already voted to kill the tax, approving a bill offered by Minnesota Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen."  Low information voters may ask themselves why anyone would have gone along with such a dreadful idea in the first place.  The answer is simple.  Fake math.  Democrats needed to inject as much "revenue" -- real and phony -- into the bill in order to manufacture a bogus CBO score on the legislation's final price tag.  The more revenues were stuffed into the law, the less it would technically "cost," providing just enough fleeting political cover to cobble together the requisite number of votes. Every liberal on television in the days preceding the final House vote highlighted the bill's absurd price tag of $941 Billion, citing "the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office" as gospel. They failed to mention that Congress had deliberately employed insane gimmicks and costly tax increases to gerry-jig that score, and that the real figures would be much, much higher.  This cynical ploy has led cary-carrying Obamacare supporters in Congress and the White House to repeal and dismantle several pieces of the law, even before the bulk of implementation.  The medical device tax is merely the latest installment in a series of "nevermind" moments -- and it almost certainly won't be the last, as brand new disasters are brewing.  And while we're on the subject of Obamacare, Mary Katharine Ham mines a nasty little nugget embedded in the avalanche of newly-released regulations pertaining to the law (via the Associated Press):

Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It’s a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Obama’s health care overhaul. The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers. Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a “sleeper issue” with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers. “Especially at a time when we are facing economic uncertainty, [companies will] be hit with a multimillion-dollar assessment without getting anything back for it,” said Mr. Sheaks, a principal at Buck Consultants, a Xerox subsidiary. Based on figures provided in the regulation, employer and individual health plans covering an estimated 190 million Americans could owe the per-person fee.

Not to worry, we're told, this tax is only "temporary," and will be reduced over time.  MKH snarks:

The fee starts at $63 in 2014 and it gets lower every year until it’s phased out in 2017 because, obviously, people with pre-existing conditions will stop costing more money after that.

Premiums are going up, and $63 is going to look like a walk in the park before all is said and done.  This is a flagrant violation of Obama's magical "premiums will go down by $2,500!" pledge, but apparently nothing that the man says actually matters once those words become inconvenient to his latest government expansion project.  And guess who's going to get slammed the hardest by the premium hikes?  Young people, the demographic that is most supportive of the law.  Way to go, guys.

US sending 20 more F-16s to Egypt, despite turmoil in Cairo

by Maxim Lott
December 10, 2012


Instability in Egypt, where a newly-elected Islamic government teeters over an angry population, isn't enough to stop the U.S. from sending more than 20 F-16 fighter jets, as part of a $1 billion foreign aid package.
The first four jets are to be delivered to Egypt beginning Jan. 22, a source at the naval air base in Fort Worth, where the planes have been undergoing testing, told FoxNews.com. The North African nation already has a fleet of more than 200 of the planes and the latest shipment merely fulfills an order placed two years ago. But given the uncertainty in Cairo, some critics wonder if it is wise to be sending more top gun planes.
“Should an overreaction [by Egypt] spiral into a broader conflict between Egypt and Israel, such a scenario would put U.S. officials in an embarrassing position of having supplied massive amounts of military hardware … to both belligerents,” said Malou Innocent, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute. “Given Washington's fiscal woes, American taxpayers should no longer be Egypt’s major arms supplier.”

“Given Washington's fiscal woes, American taxpayers should no longer be Egypt’s major arms supplier.”

- Malou Innocent, the Cato Institute

The U.S. government ordered and paid for the fighter jets for Egypt's military as part of foreign aid for Egypt back in 2010, when Hosni Mubarak ruled. The fighter jets were supposed to be delivered in 2013, and delivery will go ahead as scheduled even though Hosni Mubarak has been removed from power and replaced by Mohamed Morsi, who led the Muslim Brotherhood before becoming Egypt's president.
Morsi was democratically elected, but last month attempted to seize dictatorial powers for himself. After widespread protests and violence in Egypt's capital of Cairo, Morsi backed off from his power grab. But he is pushing through a controversial new constitution for Egypt that would more strictly enforce Islamic Shariah law, and only recently said he reserves the right to have the military arrest protesters without charges.
"The Morsi-led Muslim Brotherhood government has not proven to be a partner for democracy as they had promised, given the recent attempted power grab," a senior Republican congressional aide told FoxNews.com.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, (R-Fla.), who chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, recently criticized U.S. military aid to Egypt:
“The Obama administration wants to simply throw money at an Egyptian government that the president cannot even clearly state is an ally of the United States,” Rep. Ros-Lehtinen said.
The $213 million order, which is paid for by U.S. taxpayers and is part of Egypt's foreign aid package from America, had to be approved by lawmakers in Washington.While the basic F-16 has been a military workhorse for top air forces for more than 25 years, the cockpit electronics are constantly updated and the models Egypt is getting are the best defense contractor Lockheed Martin makes.
"This is a great day for Lockheed Martin and a testament to the enduring partnership and commitment we have made to the government of Egypt," said John Larson, vice president, Lockheed Martin F-16 programs. "We remain committed to providing our customer with a proven, advanced 4^th Generation multirole fighter."
"In an air combat role, the F-16's maneuverability and combat radius exceed that of all potential threat fighter aircraft," the U.S. Air Force description of the plane reads.

"The F-16 can fly more than 500 miles, deliver its weapons with superior accuracy, defend itself against enemy aircraft, and return to its starting point. An all-weather capability allows it to accurately deliver ordnance during non-visual bombing conditions."
A Pentagon spokesman said the U.S. and Egypt have an important alliance that is furthered by the transfer.
"The U.S.-Egypt defense relationship has served as the cornerstone of our broader strategic partnership for over thirty years," said Lt. Col. Wesley Miller. "The delivery of the first set of F-16s in January 2013 reflects the U.S. commitment to supporting the Egyptian military's modernization efforts.  Egyptian acquisition of F-16s will increase our militaries' interoperability, and enhance Egypt's capacity to contribute to regional mission sets."

5 Myths Liberals Have Created About Themselves

by John Hawkins
11th December, 2012

Liberalism is like a restaurant with ugly decor, terrible food, overflowing toilets and roaches scurrying across the floor -- that stays packed every night. Sure, liberals may be sanctimonious, mean spirited and advocate policies that don't work, but you can't help but admire the excellence of their public relations network. They can laud themselves for courage because they take a stand everyone they know agrees with, pat themselves on the back for their compassion as they maliciously insult someone that disagrees with them and congratulate themselves for their charitable behavior as they give other people's money away. Liberal mythology is one thing, but what it actually looks like is a different beast entirely.

1) Liberals love science: As Ann Coulter says, "Liberals use the word science exactly as they use the word constitutional. Both words are nothing more or less than a general statement of liberal approval, having nothing to do with either science or the Constitution." The liberal commitment to science consists entirely of talking about how important science is when they believe they can use it to further the liberal agenda. On the other hand, when science shows that adult stem cells actually work better than embryonic stem cells, millions in Africa have died because liberals needlessly insisted on banning DDT or the evidence shows AIDS is never going to take off in non-drug-using heterosexuals, liberals have about as much interest in science as they do in supporting the troops.

2) Liberals care about education: If you define "education" as doing as much as humanly possible to toss plums to the teachers’ unions who help fund and elect Democrats, liberals love education. Alternately, if you define education as the rest of us do, making sure our kids learn as much as possible and are prepared for the working world, liberals don't care about education at all. They fight merit pay, oppose firing bad teachers and try to kill even effective school choice programs. Any time there's a divergence between what's best for the teachers’ unions and what's best for the kids, the kids ALWAYS lose with liberals.

3) Liberals are tolerant: In a very real sense, liberals don't understand tolerance. To them, tolerance is promoting whatever position they happen to hold while excluding all competing views. So, if a conservative speaker shows up on a college campus, liberals try to shout him down. Liberals have tried to censor conservative talk show hosts with an Orwellian "Fairness Act." They work tirelessly to try to silence Fox News, which is the one center right network up against ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC. They block professors for their conservative views, blacklist conservative actors and lock conservatives out of almost every major newspaper in America. That's not open-minded; it's a level of dogmatic intolerance that could rival the most radical cult.

4) Liberals don't moralize: Liberals believe in allowing children to have abortions over the protests of their parents, they want to force churches to perform gay weddings that violate their Christian beliefs and they demand that the Catholic Church provide abortion and birth control over its strenuous moral objections, but then they turn around and deny that they're moralizing. Getting beyond that, they couch their arguments about tax rates, government programs and economics in distinctly moral terms. After all, what is the term "fair share" if not an appeal to morals? If liberals are going to continue to pretend that they don't moralize, at least they should admit that they’re morally inferior to conservatives.

5) Liberals love the poor: For both philosophical and practical reasons, conservatives believe in helping the poor escape poverty. We agree wholeheartedly with Ben Franklin's words of wisdom,

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."

On the other hand, liberals "love" the poor like a cat loves mice. The cat gets fat off the mice and liberals get elected off of sadistically keeping as many Americans mired in poverty as they can. Then, they can give the poor just enough money to get by on while railing against those mean old conservatives who're claiming the destitute can have better lives when any "compassionate" person would realize food stamps and welfare are the best most of these people can ever do. That's not love; that's a gang of pushers trying to hook as many customers as possible.

How to Brainwash the Sheeple into Doing Anything You Want

By Mike Bundrant
December 10, 2012

A few hours ago I was cycling through an nearby neighborhood.
As I approached a mother and her two children walking down the sidewalk, the cutest little four-year-old piped up.
“Hi…!” she said.
“Hi…!” I replied.
At that point, mom jerked the little girl by the arm, bent down and whispered something hushed and intense in her ear.
As she continued to watch me ride by, I saw the girl’s expression morph from happiness and curiosity into pain, fear and confusion.
“Well, there you have it,” I said to myself. “Fear is once again hammered into an innocent child’s psyche. How sad.”
Children have no way to question their parents’ wisdom. If mom says strangers are dangerous, they are, no questions asked.
In this case mom did more than just tell her I was dangerous. She activated physical pain and fear during the child’s interaction with me. In NLP we call this “anchoring.”
By associating an intense state of mind/body – fear and pain – with strangers, the mother hopes to condition her child to avoid them.
The next time the girl finds herself in a similar situation, she will most likely experience fear, pain or confusion.
Over time, she will lose her desire to reach out and connect with people she doesn’t know. By avoiding strangers, she hopes to avoid the negative feelings associated with them. Classic Pavlovian conditioning!
Needless to say, there are other more effective, yet non-traumatizing ways to teach children about their own safety, but that is a topic for another article, coming soon.
Anchoring is remarkably effective if done well. Think about it. How many of your responses during the course of a day are preconditioned? Do you stop at red lights?
Shake someone’s hand when it is extended to you? Do you pull over when you see flashing red lights in your rear view mirror? You don’t have to think about any of these responses. They are anchored in, ready to be employed when triggered.
If you want someone to be in your herd, then find a way to condition them. Fear works best for creating sheeple.
We could do a warped experiment, for example, on a small child. Find any common object – say a red ball. Hold up the red ball and then terrorize the child into a state of intense fear by yelling or screaming at him.
Then, put the ball away and return to normalcy. Repeat this sick little ritual daily.
Before long, all you will need to do is hold up the red ball and the child will respond with anticipatory fear. Soon, the ominous red ball will haunt the child’s dreams.
If you want to expand your power over the child, the red ball is now a nifty tool. Teach the child that the only way to escape the fear inducing red ball is to do what you want.
For example, teach him that if he bends down to touch his toes, you will put the ball away immediately. Soon, all you will need to do is pull out the red ball and he will touch his toes without even thinking about it.
His fear may then generalize. When he sees other red objects, he may feel afraid and bend over for them, too. He may even start to bend over compulsively, in anticipation of any potential new red objects that might show up unexpectedly.
Yes, he is now running from the red balls in his mind!
At this point, he might develop a ritual. To prevent any and all red objects that day, he bends over 10 times every morning, noon and night. In other words, he is now a slave to fear.
To control him, all you need is a red ball (or to know how to get him to think of one) and a warped conscience.
Much of counseling is devoted to undoing unfortunate anchors that were conditioned in childhood.
If the counseling is successful, the red balls of life lose power and new, more positive anchors are put into play – intentional anchors for greater personal power, joy, confidence and so on.
Most people are raised with some version of the red ball. Do what I say or else you’re gonna get it! Do what I tell you or I will reject you, abandon you, hurt you, scare you or otherwise make you feel miserable. 
Negatively conditioning a child in this way is the perfect set up for creating sheeple. All you need to do to herd them is stimulate their fears. People do the most amazing things to avoid fear.
If I were a twisted tyrant creating a country of sheeple, here’s what I’d do:
First, I’d champion principles like conformity, consumerism, instant gratification, social status, and intolerance for personal sacrifice. All of these are wonderful “red ball” kinds of tools that can be used to induce workable positive and negative feelings.
Of course, I’d be grateful for all of the lazy, immature parents who help tremendously by enslaving their children to fear. Then, I would:
1. Scare the living hell out of everyone, probably by creating a catastrophe that could “happen again if we don’t take measures to stop it” (we want red balls floating around in people’s imagination).
2. Associate some visual symbol or keyword to the horror of the event.
3. Repeat the keyword or show the symbol at key times or whenever I want to manipulate people. Doing what I want is a way for people to escape the fear that I conditioned in them.
With this system firmly in operation, I am now free to subject my sheeple to all kinds of degrading practices that will keep them in their place, permanently.
I can do almost anything I want, given their fears. Amazingly, they will not only cooperate, but even think I am doing them a favor as I degrade and humiliate them!
“We’ve got word that someone in the vicinity may be carrying a red ball! Alright everyone, bend over and let’s inspect your junk. It’s for everyone’s safety.”
The ultimate mind bender is that people end up willingly subjecting themselves to what their parents most feared – molestation by a stranger.
Thank you for protecting me from the dreaded red ball, sir! The inspection wasn’t that bad, either.
Wait, where’s my wallet?
What an ironic mess it would be, if such a society existed!

New York Times: Arms Shipments ‘Secretly’ Approved by Obama Admin. Ended Up in Hands of Islamic Militants

10th December, 2012

The Obama administration “secretly” approved arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, however, U.S. officials quickly became concerned as evidence suggested Qatar was handing the weapons over to Islamic militants, The New York Times reports, citing a number of United States officials and foreign diplomats.
There is no evidence available that suggests the U.S.-approved weapons were involved in the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, which left four Americans dead on Sept. 11. But the revelation is sure to ignite speculation.
More from The New York Times:

But in the months before, the Obama administration clearly was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in helping arm Libyan militants, concerns that have not previously been reported. The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government.
The experience in Libya has taken on new urgency as the administration considers whether to play a direct role in arming rebels in Syria, where weapons are flowing in from other countries.
The Obama administration did not initially raise objections when Qatar began shipping arms to opposition groups in Syria, even if it did not offer encouragement, according to current and former administration officials. But they said the United States has growing concerns that, just as in Libya, the Qataris are equipping some of the wrong militants.
The United States, which had only small numbers of C.I.A. officers on the ground in Libya during the tumult of the rebellion, provided little oversight of the arms shipments. Within weeks of endorsing Qatar’s plan to send weapons there in spring 2011, the White House began receiving reports that they were going to Islamic militant groups. They were “more antidemocratic, more hard-line, closer to an extreme version of Islam” than the main rebel alliance in Libya, said a former Defense Department official.

“To do this right, you have to have on-the-ground intelligence and you have to have experience…If you rely on a country that doesn’t have those things, you are really flying blind. When you have an intermediary, you are going to lose control,” said Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser who is now dean of Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
The startling revelations raise even more concerns regarding the Obama administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East.


The secret transactions began in the early months of the Libyan rebellion that ended in Qaddafi’s death. Various officials sought to assist the rebel forces trying to oust the Libyan dictator.
It was a short time later that Mahmoud Jibril, then prime minister of the Libyan transitional government, voiced his concerns to administration officials that the U.S. government was allowing Qatar to arm Islamist militant groups that were against the new Libyan leadership, anonymous U.S. officials said.
The Obama White House has not learned where all the weapons, paid for by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, ended up in Libya, according to officials.
Qatar is accused of shipping machine guns, automatic rifles and ammunition by air and sea. Some of the weapons have since ended up in the hands of militants with ties to al-Qaeda in Mali, where radical Islamists have implemented Shariah law in the northern part of the country, according to a former Defense Department official. Other small arms have gone to Syria several American and foreign officials and arms traders told the Times.

The Case of Brandon Raub: Speaking Out Against Government is a Mental Disorder

By Susanne Posel
August 24, 2012

Yesterday, Circuit Court Judge Allan Sharrett, dismissed the unlawful detainment and FBI case against US veteran Brandon Raub.
The FBI petitioned the court to have Raub involuntarily detained and forced to have psychiatric evaluations after a previous hearing wherein the Special Justice Walter Douglas Stokes granted the governmental request citing entries on Raub’s private Facebook page was “terrorist in nature”.
Stokes originally sentenced Raub to 30 days commitment to a psychiatric ward at the Veterans Hospital in Salem, North Carolina.
Sharrett dismissed Stokes’ ruling citing that the original petition was “devoid of any factual allegations that it could not be reasonably expected to give rise to a case or controversy.”
John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, said:
“This is a great victory for the First Amendment and the rule of law. Brandon Raub was arrested with no warning, targeted for doing nothing more than speaking out against the government, detained against his will, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys. These are the kinds of things that take place in totalitarian societies. Today, at least, Judge Allan Sharrett proved that justice can still prevail in America.”
On August 16th, Raub was removed from his Virginia home by the FBI and Secret Service without having been read his rights or presented with an arrest warrant.



Facebook comments were recently cited as evidence in a court case concerning cyber bullying where comments on a personal page were ruled by a US Federal court as information that can be lawfully obtained by the police to be used against a defendant.
William Pauley, US District Court Judge, stated that because the defendant made violent threats in his posts which are deemed public information that they are allowable as evidence against him by prosecutors.
Government officials scan Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and YouTube for evidence of criminal activities, activists and possible suspects who may have not committed a crime just yet.
According to the psychiatric manual, the DSM-IV-TR, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is a mental disease wherein free thinkers, non-conformists, civil disobedience supporters, those who question authority and are perceived as being hostile toward the government are labeled mentally ill. Psychiatrists refer to this mental defect as “Mentality III”.
This mental disorder is defined as: “a recurrent pattern of negativistic, defiant, disobedient, and hostile behavior toward authority figures that persists for at least 6 months.”
Symptoms of ODD include:

• negativistic and defiant behaviors are expressed by persistent stubbornness
• resistance to directions
• unwillingness to compromise, give in, or negotiate with adults or peers
• defiance may also include deliberate or persistent testing of limits, usually by ignoring orders, arguing, and failing to accept blame for misdeeds
• hostility can be directed at adults or peers and is shown by deliberately annoying others or by verbal aggression (usually without the more serious physical aggression seen in Conduct Disorder)

This classification of support for our nation’s return to a Constitutional Republic has now been labeled as a mental disorder with serious repercussions.
Recently David C. Gorczynski was charged with attempted bank robbery and making terroristic threats – and to add insult to injury, one misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct.
Gorczynski is only guilty of protesting outside a Wells Fargo Bank while holding one sign that read “You’re Being Robbed” and another that stated “Give a man a gun, he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob a country.”
Carl Scalo, Easton police chief said that “We can’t allow the perceived idea of protesting to be a defense to criminality. People have to understand if they want to protest, there’s a line.”
In January, globalist George Soros made the “prediction” that civil unrest based on the financial collapse of the US dollar was on the horizon.
Soros said : “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”
The vision is rioting in the streets that “will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States.”
Having deemed protest of our government a mental disorder, it appears that Soros idea of our immediate future may play out as predicted. Of course, being a member of the global Elite, he should know.

Unserious People (video)

Morsi’s Tactical Retreat

By Robert Spencer
December 10, 2012



All the pundits whose credibility was on the line for their uncritical hailing of the “Arab Spring” uprisings can breathe a sigh of relief: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi has, according to Fox News, “agreed to rescind the near-absolute power he had granted himself.” Well, that’s a relief! Democracy in Egypt is saved! The “Arab Spring” really was about democracy and pluralism after all, and this proves it! All is well! Isn’t it?
Actually, no. As everyone knows except Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James “Clueless” Clapper, The Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated to imposing the rule of Islamic law in Egypt and around the world. And as is evidenced by the fact that the two foremost Sharia states in the world today, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are both authoritarian regimes with dismal human rights records, Sharia is much more compatible with dictatorship than it is with republican, representative government.
That makes it likely that while Morsi has had to retreat for the moment, he has not given up his goal or changed his overall objective: to turn Egypt into a Sharia state in which one is not free to do anything but serve Allah.
The Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, however, the former face of the notorious (and failed) Ground Zero Mosque project, begs to differ. He wrote recently in The Daily Beast: “Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi rode to power at the head of the Muslim Brotherhood with the promise that he would create a government based on Sharia, the Islamic law. So it is ironic that by granting himself sweeping powers, including immunity for his decisions against judiciary appeal, he has violated one of the central principles of Sharia: no one is above the law.”
Rauf said that “for the past six years, I have been working with some of the leading Muslim scholars to create a Sharia Index to determine what an authentic, tradition-based Islamic state ought to look like.” The conclusion? “The majority of our scholars concluded that a representative democracy, which can determine the collective will of the people, is the best contemporary method of determining God’s will.”
In this, however, as so often in his case, Rauf was being less than honest. The primary evidence for this is historical: Rauf’s scholars supposedly concluded that “a representative democracy, which can determine the collective will of the people” was the best expression of Sharia government, and yet never in the history of Islam from its beginnings to the present day was a Sharia state ever a representative democracy. Turkey has since the end of World War I been the closest thing to a representative democracy that Muslim countries have, but it only became one when, under the rule of Kemal Ataturk, it decisively and explicitly rejected Sharia for a Western model of governance.
Has it just been bad luck, or some kind of coincidence, or some combination of malignant forces (Zionists!) that has prevented Muslim states from forming representative democracies? Or have they failed to do so because Sharia itself tends toward authoritarianism? Certainly Muhammad is said to have counseled what appears to be unconditional obedience to rulers: “You should listen to and obey your ruler even if he was an Ethiopian (black) slave whose head looks like a raisin” (Bukhari 9.89.256). Nor is he recorded as having set up any kind of voting system or representational government for the nascent Muslim community – and as he is the supreme model for emulation for Muslims (cf. Qur’an 33:21), that is a decisive point.
Rauf likewise doesn’t give any hint of the fact that Sharia, in a systematic and thoroughgoing manner, denies equality of rights to women and non-Muslims. Anything close to “representative democracy” that adhered to the classic tenets of Sharia would limit the voice of both groups in the government, and thereby undercut its claim to be a representative democracy in the first place. Muslim men may be accorded some consultative or even supervisory role in ensuring the ruler’s adherence to Sharia, but that in itself does not a representative democracy make.
Of course, the Imam Rauf has made a career out of deceiving audiences in the U.S. and Europe into thinking that Sharia is benign and completely compatible with Western principles of human rights and freedom. The tens of thousands who have been protesting against Morsi’s power grab in Egypt know better; they know that his attempt to destroy the last vestiges of representative government in Egypt went hand-in-hand with his adherence to Sharia, or, as the Muslim Brotherhood credo puts it, to Allah as his objective; the Qur’an as his law, the Prophet as his leader; Jihad as his way; and death for the sake of Allah as the highest of his aspirations.
And they also must know, even as Morsi and the Brotherhood attempt to cool things off in Egypt now, that he has not put away his authoritarian aspirations for good, and will claim dictatorial powers again at a time when he thinks he can get away with it. For him to do anything else would be to abandon his goal of imposing Islamic law over Egypt; and that is one thing that his opponents can be certain he is not going to do, even as he bows to current realities and tacitly acknowledges that it might take a bit longer to get there than originally planned.

But the Muslim Brotherhood has been waiting for this moment since 1928. They know how to be patient.