Apocalypse Please
Well, today was supposed to be the beginning of the rapture but either it didn’t happen or I know nobody who “made the cut” and the earthquakes and suffering will begin any moment.
In light of today’s non-event I thought I would post a video by my favorite current band–Muse–called Apocalypse Please. The song combines the coming apocalypse with the “never let a good crisis go to waste” mentality. (At least that is my interpretation.) While the rapture may not have started today, we still have to deal with a regime which tries to portray every issue as a crisis and tries to govern through fear and intimidation.
“Declare this an emergency
Come on and spread a sense of urgency
And pull us through”
Armed Forces Day
A repost from last year’s Armed Forces Day:
Today is Armed Forces Day and I would like to extend a very heartfelt thank you to all of those men and women who are serving and have served this country in the armed forces.
Because of what you are doing and have done, I am able to do what I am doing.
Thank you very much!
I have decided to take a slight departure from the normal tribute videos that I like to post. It isn’t very often– with the exception of ”the Nuge”– that we hear of hard rockers writing songs of tribute to the armed forces, but I found a few and here they are for your listening pleasure.
Drowning Pool– Soldiers
Three Doors Down– Citizen/Soldier
Kid Rock– American Warrior
Now that the war in Libya has reached the sixty day mark Barack Obama must go to the Congress under the War Powers Act and seek approval in order for him to legally continuing his bombing. Barack Obama has already admitted that the war he started in Libya, which he promised would be short, would continue on indefinitely–when you have no goal or no clearly defined mission it is hard to tell when it is time to leave.
Because the war with Libya has no end in sight, and with the United States’ involvement in the war reaching the sixty day mark, Senate Republicans sent Barack Obama a letter asking him if he was going to comply with the War Powers Act (the very act he used as justification for doing the United Nations’ bidding without congressional approval) and ask the Congress for permission to continue the war.
Here is part of that letter: Read more…
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said at the Capitol on Thursday that the health care law’s medical spending requirement for health insurance companies is “not good for the people of New Hampshire.”
a state like New Hampshire where there are only two plans in the market; the smaller plan has 30 percent and they have said definitively they can’t meet 80 percent this year – they will have to leave the market – that’s not good for the people of New Hampshire
Those words were spoken by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius while answering a question about whether she was concerned that more states would ask for Obamacare waivers. She admitted that under Obamacare the smaller of the two healthcare providers in the state would be forced to drop coverage for New Hampshirites, leaving the residents of New Hampshire subjected to what is for all intents and purposes a monopoly in the healthcare industry in this state.
One would naturally think that if New Hampshire were to ask for a healthcare waiver that it would be granted to the state–after all, she did admit that the law as currently written would hurt the residents of New Hampshire. Well, New Hampshire did apply for a healthcare waiver…..and was denied!
Barack Obama–or probably more accurately, the whole Democrat party–is grooming Goodwin Liu for an eventual seat on the Supreme Court and he had hoped that his path to the Supreme Court would begin today with his approval to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but John McCain promised to seek a filibuster and today the Republicans remained united and stopped Liu’s appointment to the court. It is not often that I agree with John McCain, but this is one of those times so kudos are in order for the “Maverick” and all the Republicans who met this challenge head on.
This is great news for the republic–and probably the best news we have had from the Republicans since they gained control in November–as Goodwin Liu is about as radical as they come and he needed to be stopped before he even made it onto the lower court. Goodwin Liu–much like Barack Obama–wants to fundamentally change America. Goodwin Liu is a statist who feels that people have the right to expect the government to take care of and regulate every aspect of their lives. Read more…
Barack Obama does not like his policies or the failed results of those policies to be questioned whatsoever, and in fact he has a history of trying to intimidate those in the media who have the audacity (of hope) to actually question him on the issues. So it comes as no surprise that as Barack Obama flew into Massachusetts earlier today he has shunned the Boston Herald and will not allow the paper access to his fundraiser in Boston.
Barack Obama is unhappy with the Boston Herald because he feels they are a biased paper and have not given him a fair shake; his answer to this problem is to ban them from his fundraiser when it seems as if a better alternative would be to have let the paper have access and try to win them over by making a believable statement as to why his policies are correct. Barack Obama feels that by shunning the newspaper that the Boston Herald will fall in line in the future in order to gain an audience with the president.
Video: Why Allen West must run for president in 2012
It is becoming more and more obvious to me that while Barack Obama should be vulnerable in 2012 the Republican field to date is too weak and flawed to defeat him. Unless and until a true conservative steps up the the plate Barack Obama’s re-election is all but assured no matter how badly he has failed in his first term.
But where do we look for alternatives to the current pathetic state of presidential hopefuls? Allen West may be the only viable option, but so far he has declined to run, here is a video I found at Trevor Loudon’s New Zeal of an impassioned plea by Janet Contreras urging Allen West to run.
If Allen West runs he will have my vote, and I have to think that I am not alone but we have to convince him to run.
It appears as if Newt Gingrich–after feeling the heat from conservatives–has flip-flopped once again. As I wrote about in this post, when Paul Ryan introduced his budget, and before Gingrich had made up his mind to run for president, Newt spoke glowingly of the proposal. He claimed that Paul Ryan’s budget was a serious effort at reform and would “define modern conservatism.”
But after declaring his candidacy, and while attempting to woo the senior vote, Gingrich flip-flopped on Paul Ryan and undercut the Republican efforts to bring the budget under control by calling the proposal “radical” and “right-wing social engineering.”
And now that Newt Gingrich is feeling the heat from Republicans and conservatives around the blogoshere he called Paul Ryan to apologize for stabbing him in the back; claiming that he didn’t properly articulate what he was trying to say. I am sorry Newt but I do not believe that you misspoke, I feel as if you said what you meant and you did it for purely selfish, political reasons.
Newt Gingrich flip-flops on Paul Ryan’s budget; calls Medicare reform “right-wing social engineering”
When Paul Ryan first introduced his budget proposal–and before Gingrich decided to run for president–Newt Gingrich had this to say about the proposal:
Paul Ryan has stepped up to the plate,” Gingrich said. “This is a very, very serious budget and I think rivals with [what] John Kasich did as budget chairman in getting to a balanced budget in the 1990s, just for the scale and courage involved…”
“Paul Ryan is going to define modern conservatism at a serious level,” Gingrich continued on April 5. “You can quibble over details but the general shape of what he’s doing will define 2012 for Republicans
But Newt has a Romneyesque history of flip-flopping; he flip-flopped on his love for his wives over the years depending on how sick they became, he flip-flopped on cap and trade, and now he has flip-flopped on Paul Ryan’s budget as well. What was once, in his opinion, a defining moment for modern conservatism and a courageous attempt at a serious budget proposal is now nothing but “right-wing social engineering” now that he is running for president and looking to woo the senior vote.
But this is frustrating on another, more important level because this is the budget that the Republicans have put forward and this is the budget which will be debated in the Congress and Newt Gingrich has just undermined what the Republicans in the Congress are trying to accomplish and he has done it for personal political gain and I find it to be selfish and unbecoming from a person that wants to be the leader of the free world. For once Newt should put the best interest of the country ahead of his own personal goals.
Barack Obama and the Democrats will now be able to oppose this budget proposal by using Gingrich’s words against the responsible Republicans who are trying to draw down the national debt and reign in the out of control spending. Newt Gingrich has just handed the Democrats a gift that they could not possibly have hoped for in their wildest dreams and he did it to undermine the Republicans in the hope that it would benefit him in the long run.
Newt Gingrich supports healthcare mandates
As I wrote when it was learned that Newt Gingrich was in fact going to run for president, I have no intention of voting for him. I find him to be morally suspect and a flip-flopper on the issue of cap and trade. He appeared in a commercial with Nancy Pelosi claiming that action (cap and trade) must take place in order to save the world, but when it became politically expedient for him to do so he did an about face and now claims that he opposes cap and trade. Much like Mitt Romney and his evolving positions Newt Gingrich cannot be trusted.
But yesterday came revelations that change my mind–I will not only not give Newt Gingrich my support but I will actively work against him to ensure he does not gain the Republican nomination. On “Meet the Press” yesterday David Gregory called out Newt Gingrich for comments he made during the healthcare debate in 1993, here is what Gingrich said back then:
“I am for people, individuals–exactly like automobile insurance–individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance, and I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance”
That is interesting because it sounds quite a bit like the policy of healthcare mandates that Barack Obama has put in place, surely he cannot support Barack Obama’s healthcare mandates can he? David Gregory pressed Newt Gingrich and asked him if the mandates included in the healthcare law enacted by Barack Obama we the same as what he was advocating for in 1993. Newt Gingrich tried to claim that they were not quite the same, but he never quite explained why his version of requiring people to have healthcare insurance was any better than Barack Obama’s version–or how it was constitutional for that matter.
As you can read here, Newt Gingrich tried desperately to distance his healthcare mandates from Barack Obama’s mandates but the fact is that you either support forcing the American people to purchase a goods and service or you do not, and it is quite evident that Newt Gingrich supports some sort of healthcare mandate and for that alone he is no better than Barack Obama.
America's Watchtower 