Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Ft. Hood Victims Shamefully Denied Purple Hearts

Ft. Hood Victims Shamefully Denied Purple Hearts:
What fact do you suppose is better known: (a) that Nidal Hasan has been incarcerated since he killed 13 American soldiers and wounded several others while screaming, "Allahu Akbar!" in the 2009 For...

How Many Lives Do Guns Save?

How Many Lives Do Guns Save?:
We all know that guns can cost lives because the media repeat this message endlessly, as if we could not figure it out for ourselves. But even someone who reads newspapers regularly and watches num...

Monday, April 1, 2013

Freedom Quote

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

Abraham Lincoln

China mobilizing troops, jets near Korea | Washington Free Beacon

China has placed military forces on heightened alert in the northeastern part of the country as tensions mount on the Korean peninsula following recent threats by Pyongyang to attack, U.S. officials said.

Reports from the region reveal the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) recently increased its military posture in response to the heightened tensions, specifically North Korea’s declaration of a “state of war” and threats to conduct missile attacks against the United States and South Korea.

According to the officials, the PLA has stepped up military mobilization in the border region with North Korea since mid-March, including troop movements and warplane activity.

China’s navy also conducted live-firing naval drills by warships in the Yellow Sea that were set to end Monday near the Korean peninsula, in apparent support of North Korea, which was angered by ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills that are set to continue throughout April.

North Korea, meanwhile, is mobilizing missile forces, including road-mobile short- and medium-range missiles, according to officials familiar with satellite imagery of missile bases.

The missile activity is believed to be North Korea’s response to the ongoing U.S.-South Korean military exercises that last week included highly publicized flights by two B-2 strategic nuclear bombers near North Korean territory as part of annual military exercises.

Lawsuit over health care tax could kill 'Obamacare' - Washington Times

“Obamacare” looks increasingly inevitable, but one lawsuit making its way through the court system could pull the plug on the sweeping federal health care law.

A challenge filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation contends that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because the bill originated in the Senate, not the House

. Under the Origination Clause of the Constitution, all bills raising revenue must begin in the House.

SPECIAL COVERAGE: Health Care Reform

The Supreme Court upheld most provisions of the act in June, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took pains in the majority opinion to define Obamacare as a federal tax, not a mandate. That was when the Sacramento, Calif.-based foundation’s attorneys had their “aha” moment.

“The court there quite explicitly says, ‘This is not a law passed under the Commerce Clause; this is just a tax,’” foundation attorney Timothy Sandefur said at a Cato Institute forum

on legal challenges to the health care act. “Well, then the Origination Clause ought to apply. The courts should not be out there carving in new exceptions to the Origination Clause.”

The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the challenge in November, arguing that the high court has considered only eight Origination Clause cases in its history and “has never invalidated an act of Congress on that basis.”

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is expected to rule on the Justice Department’s motion “any day now,” said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Paul J. Beard.

Exclusive: Illegal Border Crossings Double, Border Becomes Less Secure as Beltway Gets Close to Deal on Immigration Reform - Katie Pavlich

As the immigration reform Gang of Eight inside the Beltway prepares to announce a deal later this week, claiming border security will come before a path to citizenship for millions of illegals, Border Patrol agents have seen illegal border crossings double and warn the cutting of agent work hours will only result in less border security, not more.

"We've seen the number of illegal aliens double, maybe even triple since amnesty talk started happening," an agent toldTownhall, who asked to remain unnamed due to fears of retaliation within Customs and Border Protection [CBP], something he said is common. "A lot of these people, although not the majority, are criminals or aggravated felons. This is a direct danger to our communities."

Data obtained by Townhall and reported within CBP from February 5 through March 1, 2013 shows 504 illegal aliens were spotted exploiting the Tucson/Nogales area, 189 were caught on CBP intelligence cameras. Of those 504, only 174 were apprehended and 32 of the 189 on camera were carrying large drug load packs for Mexican cartels. Some were armed with AK-47 style weapons.

Below are selected photos obtained by Townhall from CBP intelligence cameras in Southern Arizona near the border with Mexico. Sensitive information has been redacted in order to protect the security and identity of the camera locations.

photo ScreenShot2013-04-01at120307AM_zps89483e1e.png

Last week, Fox News reported sections of the border will soon become unpatrolled as hours for on-the-ground agents are cut. Townhall has learned Border Patrol agents working the border have been fully funded, yet internal political battles within CBP may be causing funds to be funneled to managers, rather than those getting their boots dirty on patrols.

"Customs and Border Protection has been given enough money to fully staff the border but has chosen to use the money elsewhere, we believe it is to fund the salaries of Supervisory CBP Officers. The money they are diverting was to go to AUO (Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime) which is actually straight pay and is used to pay Border Patrol Agents for anything past eight hours. Being that we have to maintain staffing 24/7 this is a huge part of border security. The criminals and drugs don't stop coming so we have to make sure we have people out there. Cutting AUO will be a 30% pay cut for our agents but more importantly a minimum 20% loss of staffing out in the field," Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council Shawn Moran tells Townhall. "It is internal politics within CBP and also with immigration reform. There are still battles between legacy Customs, INS, and Border Patrol managers as to the direction CBP takes and how the funds are being used. Meanwhile both parties claim no immigration reform until the border is secured, well this surely will not secure the border."

DAVID STOCKMAN: We've Been Lied To - Business Insider

DAVID STOCKMAN: We've Been Lied To, Robbed, And Misled

Adam Taggart, Peak Prosperity | Mar. 31, 2013, 7:07 AM | 121,462 | 89

selfownership1 via YouTube

Daily Digest 4/1 - Life Without Banks In Rural China, Israel Taps Offshore Gas Field

Daily Digest 3/31 - Cyprus Feeling Bailout Pain, E.P.A. Plans Stricter Sulfur Limit in Gasoline

David Stockman: We've Been Lied To, Robbed, And Misled

Then, when the Fed’s fire hoses started spraying an elephant soup of liquidity injections in every direction and its balance sheet grew by $1.3 trillion in just thirteen weeks compared to $850 billion during its first ninety-four years, I became convinced that the Fed was flying by the seat of its pants, making it up as it went along. It was evident that its aim was to stop the hissy fit on Wall Street and that the thread of a Great Depression 2.0 was just a cover story for a panicked spree of money printing that exceeded any other episode in recorded human history.
David Stockman, The Great Deformation

David Stockman, former director of the OMB under President Reagan, former US Representative, and veteran financier is an insider's insider. Few people understand the ways in which both Washington DC and Wall Street work and intersect better than he does.

In his upcoming book, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America [37], Stockman lays out how we have devolved from a free market economy into a managed one that operates for the benefit of a privileged few. And when trouble arises, these few are bailed out at the expense of the public good.

By manipulating the price of money through sustained and historically low interest rates, Greenspan and Bernanke created an era of asset mis-pricing that inevitably would need to correct. And when market forces attempted to do so in 2008, Paulson et al hoodwinked the world into believing the repercussions would be so calamitous for all that the institutions responsible for the bad actions that instigated the problem needed to be rescued -- in full -- at all costs.

Of course, history shows that our markets and economy would have been better off had the system been allowed to correct. Most of the "too big to fail" institutions would have survived or been broken into smaller, more resilient, entities. For those that would have failed, smaller, more responsible banks would have stepped up to replace them - as happens as part of the natural course of a free market system:

CONSERVATIVE RIGHT- "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."

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