by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyrant
Having posted both in defense of civil unions for same sex couples and most recently in support of same sex marriages I non the less found the decision by the Obama administration as outlined below out of line for the reasons stated by two Republican lawmakers.
The issue is policy and until such time as the policy is changed exceptions should not be made.
Republican lawmakers are blasting the Pentagon's decision to allow troops to march in uniform at a San Diego gay-pride parade last week.
Two senior Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services committees said Tuesday that the Pentagon was out of line to grant the one-time exemption that allowed military uniforms in the parade.
Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) said the Pentagon made a “dangerous exception” to its policy of not allowing military uniforms in parades. In a statement, the Armed Forces Readiness subcommittee chairman said that the decision was made to advance the Obama administration’s social agenda.
“I am calling on the DOD to halt these dangerous exceptions to policy for political purposes. This decision was an outrageous and blatantly political determination issued solely to advance this administration’s social agenda,” Forbes said in a statement Tuesday. {Emphasis Mine}
"Sadly, this is yet another violation in what has become a pattern of this administration’s assault on the longstanding history of the Department of Defense as a nonpolitical organization,” he said.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asking for an explanation behind making the exemption in light of the military's "unambiguous regulations" to preserve its apolitical stance.
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Both Inhofe and Forbes said that the Pentagon’s decision to allow the service members to participate in the parade in uniform was in clear violation of Defense Department rules on participation in political activities while in uniform.
Forbes pointed to a press release from San Diego LGBT Pride that said the inclusion of military uniforms was helping celebrate the “growing list of states with marriage equality.” {Read More}
Of course Obamaites will find a way to politicize this issue on grounds totally irrelevant to the issue of policy violation and maintaining the military's a political posture.
What we have come to expect from Obama and his supporters.
by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny
On the heels of a lunatic madman's senseless violence in Aurora Colorado Friday the demagoguery has begun in earnest.
I get that sensible gun laws, background checks, and restricting assault weapons has merit and further reasonable discussion is sensible. Even desirable. Most Americans likely have similar thoughts... As long as law abiding citizens always retain the right to bear arms for the lawful purpose of hunting, target practice, and self defense (self defense as a check against government tyranny) is protected. Oh, that's right, I almost forgot. The right is already protected, by the U.S. Constitution. But that will not deter the more extreme anti firearm enthusiasts in their pursuit to re-interpret the Constitution in their attempts to take firearms out of the hands of law abiding citizens entirely. But I digress.
Apparently there are some that have decided President Obama, Mitt Romney, and the NRA have blood on their hands, Of course this explicitly and implicitly means President Obama and Mitt Romney, as well as the NRA bear responsibility for the Colorado massacre. Call it as you see it. It certainly deserves everyone's reasonable and rational consideration.
Be sure to read more on this discussion here and here.
Two views. Both properly understood, and by working together on this issue, improved public safety and the retention of firearm ownership can be assured. To ignore either view is foolish and will render less than the desired results.
by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny
This sight is no fan, advocate or supporter of Mitt Romney. However when the "other" side, or opposition party takes it upon themselves to get their knickers all in an uproar over Romney's correctly quoting the President's statements, well, to frigging bad boys and girls.
President Obama's reelection campaign accuses Mitt Romney of distorting the president's words, by showing a side by side comparison of the Obama's words and Romney's quotation of those words:
"Mitt Romney is launching a false attack," the ad's text states. But the weird thing is: The Obama campaign is purposefully trying to make it sound like Romney is misquoting the president, when the official White House transcript backs up Romney's quotation.
In the ad, Romney says that Obama revealed his thoughts on business when he said this, "If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."
And, in fact, according to official White House transcript that's precisely what Obama said on July 13, 2012 in Roanoke, Virginia.
Nevertheless, the Obama campaign, in the ad, says it's not true. "The only problem?," the ad text reads. "That's not what he said." It then turns to Obama, from the same Roanoke campaign speech, who said, "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life."
Which is true. Obama did say that. But he also said the line that Romney says he said-- "If you’ve got a business --you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."
What I am most curious about is which of his actual documented statements really represent the President's philosophical and political views. I believe I know which it is, but certainly welcome your views on this quite important question. After all, this election will determine America's future for some time to come methinks. Read it all right here.
I just visited one of the more balanced political blogs on the net. Frank Hill of Telemachus has weighed in on the President's statements that generated some buzz.
Here's a teaser.
President Obama sure stirred up the hornet's nest last week when he told a small business group in Roanoke, Virginia:
'If you've got a business, you didn't build that!'
What would you think he was talking about if you had nothing other than those 9 words to read?
The statement came across to many as further evidence that the President is hostile to the private sector, profits and the whole free enterprise system.
That one single statement, coupled with his stated incessant desire over the past 3.6 years to 'raise taxes on the wealthy'; 'make them pay their 'fair share' (whatever that is...someone please give us an exact number or percentage of income that can truly be considered 'fair') and his propensity to regulate everything under the sun in America sure seems like 'proof' to any reasonable observer, doesn't it?
To be fair about it, here is the exact transcript of what he said in its entirety:
"There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me (one person exactly, Warren Buffett, our insert)-- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.
You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges.
If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. (We thought Al Gore invented the Internet- our insert again) Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires. "So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the G.I. Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam.
That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President -- because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together."
We can see where he 'said': 'If you have got a business, you didn't build that'. It is right there in the transcript for all the world to see.
Either President Obama's teleprompter went out-of-whack and he went off on a bad tangent ad-libbing or he has a very bad and probably now-fired speechwriter.
But to be entirely charitable, even though the fun thing to do would be to pile on in this political season, we will at least acknowledge that the President might have been referring to the fact that each individual business person did not build all the roads and bridges and the Internet on their own.
Which is sorta true. But not entirely. {Read More}
Every so often we have our views called into check. Whenever this happens the wise person considers the perspective, as well as the experiences of the person calling the entrenched views into check. In doing so one learns and therefor grows. At least that is how it should work.
Milos Forman, the immigrant from Czechoslovakia who later won Academy Awards for best director for the films “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus”, provides just such a check for America. He clearly, and accurately describes American politicians misunderstanding of totalitarianism and western European democratic socialism in his July 10th op-ed piece in the New York Times .
He ends the article with a very poignant warning. Mr. Obama, and politicians of both major parties, as well as every American citizens ought to consider his words... and warning.
The New York Times - WHEN I was asked to direct “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” my friends warned me not to go anywhere near it.
The story is so American, they argued, that I, an immigrant fresh off the boat, could not do it justice. They were surprised when I explained why I wanted to make the film. To me it was not just literature but real life, the life I lived in Czechoslovakia from my birth in 1932 until 1968. The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched, telling me what I could and could not do; what I was or was not allowed to say; where I was and was not allowed to go; even who I was and was not.
Now, years later, I hear the word “socialist” being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others. President Obama, they warn, is a socialist. The critics cry, “Obamacare is socialism!” They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism.
My sister-in-law’s father, Jan Kunasek, lived in Czechoslovakia all his life. He was a middle-class man who ran a tiny inn in a tiny village. One winter night in 1972, during a blizzard, a man, soaked to the bone, awakened him at 2 in the morning. The man looked destitute and, while asking for shelter, couldn’t stop cursing the Communists. Taking pity, the elderly Mr. Kunasek put him up for the night.
A couple of hours later, Mr. Kunasek was awakened again, this time by three plainclothes policemen. He was arrested, accused of sheltering a terrorist and sentenced to several years of hard labor in uranium mines. The state seized his property. When he was finally released, ill and penniless, he died within a few weeks. Years later we learned that the night visitor had been working for the police. According to the Communists, Mr. Kunasek was a class enemy and deserved to be punished.
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Whatever his faults, I don’t see much of a socialist in Mr. Obama or, thankfully, signs of that system in this great nation. Mr. Obama is accused of trying to expand the reach of government — into health care, financial regulation, the auto industry and so on. It’s fair to question whether the federal government should have expanded powers: America, to its credit, has debated this since its birth. But let’s be clear about how frightening socialism actually could be.
Marx believed that we could wipe out social inequities and Lenin tested those ideas on the Soviet Union. It was his dream to create a classless society. But reality set in, as it always does. And the results were devastating. Blood flowed through Russia’s streets. The Soviet elite usurped all privileges; sycophants were allowed some and the plebes none. The entire Eastern bloc, including Czechoslovakia, followed miserably.
I’m not sure Americans today appreciate quite how predatory socialism was. It was not — as Mr. Obama’s detractors suggest — merely a government so centralized and bloated that it hobbled private enterprise: it was a spoils system that killed off everything, all in the name of “social justice.”
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I am not asking Mr. Obama and the Republican leaders to stop playing instruments of their choosing. All I am asking is that every player keep in mind the noble melody of our country. Otherwise the noisy dissonance might become loud enough to wake another Marx, or even worse. {The Entire Article}
Indeed wisdom is increased through the recognition of truth as well as having the ability to understand and accept it as truth. President Obama has many failing, he has shown he does not have the answers to our national problems, his solutions have created more questions than answers, he has a vision vastly different than many, perhaps the majority of Americans, but as Mr. Forman has aptly pointed out the President is not what the right has painted him to be.
