Make Mine Freedom

According to Yahoo! News, Professor Utopia has issued his first threat to employ the veto power against a spending bill. What could it contain? Reams of pork-barrel spending at the taxpayers expense? Foreign aid dollars that will end up in the coffers of known terrorist organizations like Hamas? Research funds to determine the sex habits of the rare Oregonian tree-squid? Oh, no, Gentle Readers.

This particular bill actually contains money to be spent on… wait for it… fighter jets.

Apparently Professor Utopia doesn’t think the nation needs more advanced fighter jets like the F-22. Heavens, can’t have us building fighters that can’t be seen on radar! That wouldn’t be “fair”, now would it? And fairness is the watchword of this administration, even moreso than effectiveness.

Even Dame Pelosi’s House of Representatives thinks we need them.

We can borrow north of a trillion dollars for every harebrained scheme that comes down the pike, most of which will ultimately end up causing more harm than good, but Obama is drawing his line in the sand when it comes to national defense?

I feel like I’ve gone through the looking glass.

Okay, so David Letterman finally made a real apology for his horrid joke last week about Gov. Palin’s daughter. Unlike his original apology, wherein he was cracking even more bad jokes, this one seems to be sincere.

I, for one, accept him at his word. Of course, it’s up to Gov. Palin (and/or her daughters) to do the actual accepting of the apology, as they were the injured parties, but I hope they do so, so we can all move on.

Good on you, Dave.

It is fashionable in some conservative and libertarian circles to pooh-pooh the idea that Dr. Utopia and the Democrat regime are in any way working to bring about an actual, literal, “socialist” society.

Reuters (hardly an engine of right-wing propaganda) begs to differ:

General Motors Corp’s plan for a bankruptcy filing involves a quick sale of the company’s healthy assets to a new company initially owned by the U.S. government, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.

Note the key phrase there; “owned by the U.S. government”.

This is not some right-wing conspiracy theory. This is not some tortured explanation of some subtle aspect of politico-economic theory. This is outright ownership, by the Federal government, of a formerly private corporation. In fact, it is the dismembering of that corporation to allow the Federal government to get its claws on the best parts, and making sure that organized labor gets the lion’s share of the remains, despite explicit contracts giving that place to investors (”greedy Capitalists”).

Note the dictionary definition of socialism:

Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

But the second definition is even more ominous, to my mind, particularly because it is not mutually exclusive of the first one, but rather is an extension thereof:

The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.

The automobile industry, broken up piecemeal, its assets seized by the Federal government without a shred of Constitutional authority to do so. They’ve been chomping at the bit to get their hands on the health care industry since Hillary Clinton first came into the White House, and it looks like they’re going to take another pass at it this year.

We’re on the fast track to socialism, overtly and without apologies, despite what the apologists for the regime may say. Wake up, people! Flood Congress with calls, emails, and faxes telling them to stop this destruction of the very foundation of our society; economic freedom.

Because after economic freedom is lost, the other freedoms must needs be lost as well.

Chairman of the New Hampshire Democrat party Ray Buckley weighs in on his thoughts regarding the recent Tea Party protests:

I’m sorry to say, Mr. Buckley, that I and everyone I spoke to at the rally in Morristown, NJ knew exactly what we were protesting. The enormous deficit that your President and your Congress have foisted on us. The movement to increasing taxes yet more on the most productive few to give to the vast sea of takers. The attitude that the rich are somehow evil for being successful, and that they deserve to be hammered down. The notion that President Obama seemingly has that America is somehow evil, and needs to be humbled.

And nowhere, Mr. Buckley, was anyone anything other than polite and well-behaved. Contrast that to what happens when the Left protests:

No tear gas was needed at the Tea Parties, Mr. Buckley.

I had the dubious honor of being interviewed for the Daily Show while I was at the Morristown, NJ Tea Party. I got asked a good question about whether or not we were seeing taxation without representation, and they cut the camera off as I was composing a decent answer. Fortunately, through the wonders of modern technology, I am now able to give that answer.

I now officially declare myself to be a YouTube star.

It is painfully clear that Susan Roesgen is a hostile reporter here. The scorn and disdain she shows for these people is palpable… she even *argues* with the guy she’s trying to interview, for the love of all the Gods! She has christened this as an “anti-government and anti-CNN” rally, and I’ve got to say if this is the depth to which CNN has sunk in its “journalism”, then I can think of nothing better.

If being pro-freedom means being anti-CNN, then I am a proud anti-CNN protester now and forever.

There were great speakers, not a single rowdy or heckler, and decent media coverage (yours truly was interviewed for The Daily Show, which went about as well as I expected it to; I fully expect them to edit it to make me and everyone else look silly). All in all, a fantastic event despite the weather, and I am looking forward to the next one on Independence Day!

Get in on the action here: http://www.morristownteaparty.org

On the Green in Morristown, NJ (incidentally the town where I grew up!), there will be a tea party to both protest the nonsense bailouts and power-grabs going on in Washington, and to stand up for good old fashioned American values. I’ll be there, and I hope everyone reading this blog will, too.

Things are being organized here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MorristownTeaParty/

See you there!

I had stumbled across this video a couple of months ago, but when I saw it featured on Glen Beck’s show the other day, I was inspired to share it here. Great stuff.

Well done, Speaker Pelosi.

Just when I thought you couldn’t sink any lower, you and your cronies on the House Banking Committee such as Barney Frank rammed through the House a law imposing a near-total tax on the AIG executives who dared to keep a bonus to which they were contractually allowed. Rather than blaming Senator Dodd, who apparently included the provision allowing the bonuses at the behest of the White House, you target individual Americans. You might not like what they did, and you might think that they performed below expectations. But you know what?

THAT’S NOT YOUR CALL!

The Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 provides that: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed.”

An ex post facto law is one that impacts those affected by it after the fact. Like the bill that was passed today. After all, it’s intended to go after people who already got their bonuses.

A Bill of Attainder is “a legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial.”

Were the AIG executives put on trial in anything other than the “court of public opinion”? Nope. Were they singled out for punishment? Ayup.

Way to go, Speaker Pelosi. You managed to violate the same paragraph of the Constitution twice in a single bill. And that disgrace of a President, Barack Obama, will dutifully sign it, because he has absolutely no shame, and no regard for the Constitution he swore to protect and defend. As long as his agenda gets passed, and his Democrat cohorts increase their power.

I don’t know about you, Gentle Reader, but I’m getting pretty damned sick of this. I’ll be reading Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” tonight.