Monthly Archives: April 2012
Video Captures Woman Sobbing Uncontrollably During TSA Pat Down
MADISON, Wis. (CBSDC) – A video captured a woman shaking and sobbing uncontrollably while being frisked by a Transportation Security Administration agent.
Political blogger Jim Hoft — who runs the Gateway Pundit website — captured the incident at a Madison, Wis., airport Sunday.
“This morning at a Midwest airport I witnessed this poor woman suffering through this horrible sexual violation,” Hoft said on his Gateway Pundit website.
The video shows a TSA agent patting down a woman in a pink sweater.
During the pat down, the woman can be heard sobbing and is visibly shaking while the TSA agents runs her hands down the woman’s legs.
(Read more)
Some Asian glaciers ‘putting on mass’
A French team used satellite data to show that glaciers in part of the Karakoram range, to the west of the Himalayan region, are putting on mass.
The reason is unclear, as glaciers in other parts of the Himalayas are losing mass – which also is the global trend. (Read more)
Machiavelli’s “The Prince” — a review
A review by my friend Andy Duncan:
Machiavelli offers advice for imperial aggressors on how they should conquer a Muslim state:
But if once the Turk has been vanquished and broken in battle so that he cannot raise new armies, there is nothing to worry about except the ruler’s family. When that has been wiped out there is no one left to fear, because the others have no credit with the people.
So, capture Saddam Hussein and kill his sons. But once we achieve that, what do we do next with a former Muslim leader’s country:
When states newly acquired as I said have been accustomed to living freely under their own laws, there are three ways to hold them securely: first, by devastating them; next, by going there and living there in person; thirdly, by letting them keep their own laws, exacting tribute, and setting up an oligarchy which will keep the state friendly to you.
So, set up an interim appointed government and eventual elections guaranteed to keep the interim appointed government in place, with good options on the oil supply made out to your business friends. But what do we do about a possibly resentful population?
Violence must be inflicted once and for all; people will then forget what it tastes like and so be less resentful. Benefits must be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.
Ah, yes. Gradually re-establish the water and the electricity supplies, then link in the ‘election’ of your interim appointed government to coincide with further improvements, so as to keep this government in place and suitably disposed towards yourself.
But we should avoid blaming Machiavelli for our own modern world. It is our politicians who have created it, not this wonderful Florentine writer. He was just telling it like it was. Many of his views even coincided with our own:
The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms; and because you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow…Rome and Sparta endured for many centuries, armed and free. The Swiss are strongly armed and completely free.
His belief in the sanctity of arms would even have stood comparison with the National Rifle Association:
There is simply no comparison between a man who is armed and one who is not. It is unreasonable to expect that an armed man should obey one who is unarmed, or that an unarmed man should remain safe and secure when his servants are armed.
So next time you hear your local police calling themselves public servants, ask yourself who has the guns, and who has the power. (Read more)
the Trotskyite roots of the National Review and ‘neo’ conservatism
Have you ever used the term “Islamofascist?”
Do you get excited when some politician gets up on his hind legs and starts babbling about “American exceptionalism?”
You, too, may be a Trotskyite.
. . . .
The typical American wannabe conservative does not want to think too deeply about why a supposedly right-wing publication would get so worked up about a piece of writing that offends liberal sensibilities.
That wannabe conservative has been brainwashed by the heirs of old Leo.
I get these pests commenting constantly on my blog. They parrot the neocon line about spreading human liberation to every corner of the Earth without even realizing that every word of it has been planted in their brains by Trotskyites.
Here on the Lew Rockwell blog is a good explanation of the roots of “neo” conservatism in the thought of Trotsky:
From the anti-Stalinists who became conservatives — including James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, and Irving Kristol — the Right gained a political education and, in some cases, an injection of passion. The ex-radicals brought with them the knowledge that ideological movements must have journals and magazines to articulate their perspectives. In 1955, for example, William F. Buckley, Jr., launched National Review at the urging of Willi Schlamm, a former German Communist. In its early years, National Review was largely written and edited by the Buckley family and a handful of former Communists, Trotskyists, and socialists, such as Burnham and Chambers.
Read the whole thing. Then you will get some understanding of why NR seemed conservative at a time when worldwide communism was a real threat but now seems so liberal. By “liberal” of course I mean in favor of the sort of big-government, centralized state that the Republicans created under George W. Bush.
You can see why these NR types feel so threatened by Ron Paul. He represents a return to the small-government, decentralized conservatism popular before the Trotskyites took over the American “right.”
They’re much happier with a hack like Newt Gingrich who can stir up the masses to concentrate even more power in Washington. They can overlook his support for cap-and-trade and the individual mandate as long as he pushes their internationalist foreign policy. (Read more)
The pro-choice case for infanticide
Just when you thought the religious right couldn’t get any crazier, with its personhood amendments and its attacks on contraception, here comes the academic left with an even crazier idea: after-birth abortion.
No, I didn’t make this up. “Partial-birth abortion” is a term invented by pro-lifers. But “after-birth abortion” is a term invented by two philosophers, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva. In the Journal of Medical Ethics, they propose:
[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.
Stefan Molyneux on being a libertarian, against all odds
60 minutes does shamelss NASA sob story
High joblessness in the home of U.S. space flight
Russia Is Massing Troops On Iran’s Northern Border And Waiting For A Western Attack
he Russian military anticipates that an attack will occur on Iran by the summer and has developed an action plan to move Russian troops through neighboring Georgia to stage in Armenia, which borders on the Islamic republic, according to informed Russian sources.
Russian Security Council head Viktor Ozerov said that Russian General Military Headquarters has prepared an action plan in the event of an attack on Iran.
Dmitry Rogozin, who recently was the Russian ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, warned against an attack on Iran.
“Iran is our neighbor,” Rogozin said. “If Iran is involved in any military action, it’s a direct threat to our security.” Rogozin now is the deputy Russian prime minister and is regarded as anti-Western. He oversees Russia’s defense sector.
Read more: articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-09/news/31311454_1_russian-defense-ministry-military-action-dmitry-rogozin#ixzz1suALPT7B
(Read more)
Former Soviet Citizen Confronts OWS Socialists
“Germany will bleed for the Euro”
From today’s Open Europe news summary:
Benoît Coeuré, ECB executive board member, hinted yesterday that the ECB could renew its purchases of eurozone government bonds if fears over Spain continue to spread, although Jorg Asmussen, another member of the ECB’s executive board, insisted that the ECB “has done its part”, following its unlimited long term lending operations. Meanwhile, a leader in Wirtschaftswoche argues that Germany is facing inflation as a result of the ECB’s actions, concluding that “Germany will bleed for the euro”.
Doug Wead: Ron Paul Is Untouchable and Pure, He Would Never Sell Out to Mitt Romney
ELECTION FRAUD: Ron Paul vs The Savagery of the Opposition
AG Beau BIDEN, Mandates That Sheriffs No Longer Have Arrest Powers
A very dangerous power grab. Central control of the guns is one of the most important steps toward tyranny.
Sheriff Jeff Christopher of Sussex County, Delaware, when he was elected to the office in 2010, thought he was handpicked by the people to represent them as the highest-ranking law officer in the county. Instead, he has found himself in the middle of a fight for the future of American law enforcement as a result of a nationwide effort to abolish the sheriff’s office altogether.
It is one more example of federal and state governments ignoring the will of the people as well state laws. In the case of Delaware, the state’s own constitution stipulates that the office of the sheriff is a constitutionally created position just like the secretary of state and the attorney general. Delaware’s Constitution states: “The sheriffs shall be conservators of the peace within the counties . . . in which they reside.”
This time it is Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden, sending out mandates to commissioners informing them that their sheriffs no longer have arrest powers. In an opinion released Feb. 24, State Solicitor L.W. Lewis said that neither the state nor the common law grants arrest powers to the county sheriffs.
It would appear that Lewis is a little confused. The office of sheriff was created more than a century before the official founding of the United States. Delaware’s first sheriff took office in 1669.
“Now my deputies and I have been relieved of all arrest powers and can’t even make a traffic stop,” he said. “Delaware has only three counties. . . The other two sheriffs . . . will not stand up with me” to prevent the elimination of county law enforcement, he said.
Beau Biden’s questionable ruling against the longtime tradition of the sheriff being the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the county because of election by the people means the state’s usurpation of the office appears to be a forthcoming fact. (Read more)
Taxpayers pay millions to mow lawns of foreclosed homes
American taxpayers own close to 200,000 vacant houses, and over the next year they will spend more than $40 million just to mow lawns at these properties. Taxpayers also foot the bills to paint walls, fix cabinets, plant flowers and more — expenses that just last year, exceeded a half a billion dollars.
The housing bailout has already cost taxpayers $124 million, now Americans are spending hundreds of millions more fixing up foreclosed homes to try and sell them. It is a bizarre and expensive side effect of the housing market collapse and failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants that went into federal conservatorship in 2008.
Fannie Mae alone repaired nearly 90,000 homes last year.
“That is a lot of homes, and it is a lot of materials that need to be purchased,” said Jay Ryan, Fannie Mae’s vice president of real estate owned homes. (Read more)