Our Banner

Mail address:

Cynthia Lucas #1 Mandalay Rd, Stuart, FL 34996 - We could use some help with expenses.

Martin 9/12 Calendar (& City of Stuart)

Monday, September 24, 2012

Something Is Wrong #tcot

By  on 9.24.12

Ben SteinDon't look now, but Islam is becoming the MSM's official religion of America.

Now, it's not just that no one bats an eye at the amazing truth that the United States is beaming TV ads all over Pakistan apologizing for a derogatory Internet trailer for a nonexistent movie demeaning the being that Muslims call "The Prophet Mohammed." No one in the MSM even slightly hints that doing the kowtow in the same country that sheltered Osama bin Laden to a group that reveled in, delighted in the terrorism against American civilians and still provides the framework for the terrorist Haqqani network, might be humiliating and an insult to the memory of the great Americans who were murdered just last week in Libya.

No, we just take it in stride that our President and our Secretary of State will apologize to the people who hate us and want us dead. That's not what I am referring to.

Read the remainder of the post at The American Spectator...

The Conservative View on Foreign Aid #tcot

It's also the libertarian view, despite what Lindsey Graham wants you to think. 

By JACK HUNTER • September 24, 2012

When a number of conservative Republican senators and congressman began calling for an end to foreign aid to Libya, Egypt, and Pakistan, Senator Lindsey Graham disagreed, dismissing this push as “the libertarian view.” This “libertarian view” on ending foreign aid was shared by Republican congressmen Michelle Bachmann and Allen West as well as James Inhofe. The opposite view was held by not only Sen. Graham, but also Democratic senators John Kerry, Harry Reid and President Obama.

The definition of what is and isn’t “conservative” has been in dispute in a post-Bush Republican Party living through the age of Obama. On foreign policy this has been perhaps most true, where not only issues like what justifies foreign aid are being debated, but justification for war itself. One of the more revealing parts of the 2012 Republican primaries was when last spring candidate Newt Gingrich immediately pounced on President Obama for not intervening in Libya sooner than he did—only to reverse his position days later, saying the U.S. had no business being in Libya in the first place.

Gingrich’s conservative instincts were confused by the ongoing redefinition of that term—Bush-era conservatives were typically for all military interventions, and thus Gingrich spoke in that vein. But in 2012, Newt found himself running against Tea Party influenced presidential candidates who had staked out bashing the president for his Libya military actions as the conservative position.

Or would that have been the “libertarian view?”

Read the rest on The American Conservative...

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Guess who's selling socialism/transnationalism/NWO #tcot

The mainstream media has had a field day on the remarks of a certain young Congressman who insists on a straight-talk description of the subversives in Washington - those who would comprimise the sovereignty of the United States. In the Congressman's own words, he is, "...calling a spade a spade." For this, Congressman Allen West has our heartfelt gratitude and support. The press, however, continues the ridicule at its own peril.

Naming names, however, is an activity that carries its own perils and is not something that a politician can engage in without election consequences. That SHOULD be the meat of an honest press outlet. There is none.

Just for fun, let's present some remarks that have been made in the past careers of some of the people who are now running our government, and let's see if you can guess who made the remarks!! You can make your guesses in the comments section of this blog. Ready? I'll start with a big hint.

Senate - July 1, 1992 
Congressional Record [Pages S9473 - ]

Excerpt:

It is, I believe, the duty of this generation of Americans to complete the task that Woodrow Wilson began. 
  Today, I shall describe the third and fourth parts of America's agenda for a new world order: organizing for collective military security, and launching a worldwide economic-environmental revolution.
  
 In advancing, on a new world order agenda, toward an expanded commitment to the collective use of armed force, where necessary

Excerpt:

Instead of tiptoeing toward a revised mandate, NATO should make a great leap forward -- by adopting peacekeeping outside NATO territory as a formal alliance mission. 

Excerpt:

A more pressing need, on which we should act without awaiting the negotiation of membership change, is to further empower the [United Nations] Security Council through the standing availability of military forces
  One remarkable development of recent years -- a true precursor of the new world order  -- is the U.N.'s active and competent role in fostering the settlement of conflicts in Namibia, Angola, Western Sahara, El Salvador, and Cambodia.
 

Excerpt:

To realize the full potential of collective security, we must divest ourselves of the vain glorious dream of a pax Americana -- and look instead for a means to regularize swift, multinational decision and response. 
   The mechanism to achieve this lies -- unused -- in article 43 of the United Nations Charter, which provides that: 
All members undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements, armed forces ..... necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security. 
   Article 43 provides that the agreement or agreements shall be negotiated as soon as possible. But for 47 years that condition was not met: the cold war polarization that beset the United Nations made it impossible for such force commitments to be negotiated. 
  The agreements envisaged by the U.N. founders -- under which nations would designate specific units to be available to the Security Council -- have never been made. 
   Article 43, at present, is a promise unfulfilled. The time has come: the
 United States, in conjunction with other key nations, should now designate forces under article 43 of the United Nations Charter.

Excerpt:

In sum, the assignment to the U.N. Security Council of American and other military units would enhance one valuable instrument of American foreign policy -- that is, participation in collective military action --

 


So, can you guess who this distinguished speaker is? And when you do, can you recognize the intellectual capacity so evident in his public comments today? Of course such an erudite proposal could come only from a man of his intellect.

JJM (Jim)

Thursday, September 20, 2012

The Significance of Party Platforms #tcot

by Phyllis Schlafly September 19, 2012

House Speaker John Boehner was quoted during the Republican National Convention as saying, “Have you ever met anybody who read the Party platform? I never met anybody.”

Scoffing at the Party’s platform is the typical attitude of establishment-backed politicians who don’t want to be bothered with addressing the hopes and goals of grassroots voters. Downgrading the platform is the mark of losing candidates such as Bob Dole and John McCain.

The Republican Platform is written by a committee of one man and one woman from each state who are elected by those who have already been elected from their state as Delegates to the quadrennial National Convention. It is a very democratic (small d) process.

Most of the members of the 2012 Republican Platform Committee in Tampa had never served on a Platform Committee before, and many had never before been to a Republican National Convention. Their product is a reliable statement of what grassroots voters care about.

The Republican platform writers were upfront about social issues, conspicuously ignoring Governor Mitch Daniels’ foolish attempt to call a “truce” about social issues. The grassroots are smart enough to have figured out that social issues (a) motivate voters and (b) cause the enormous spending and debt that Barack Obama has piled up, a statistical fact that establishment gurus like to ignore.

Link to article at Eagle Forum...

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Pat Buchanan: Is it time to come home from the Middle East? #tcot

BY PAT BUCHANAN | September 17. 2012 | SOURCE: UnionLeader.com
BuchananIs it not long past time to do a cost-benefit analysis of our involvement in the Middle and Near East?

In this brief century alone, we have fought the two longest wars in our history there, put our full moral authority behind an “Arab Spring” that brought down allies in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, and provided the air power that saved Benghazi and brought down Moammar Gadhafi. 

Yet this past week U.S. embassies were under siege in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, and U.S. diplomats were massacred in Benghazi. 

The cost of our two wars is 6,500 dead, 40,000 wounded and $2 trillion piled onto a national debt that is $16 trillion, larger than the entire U.S. economy. And what in heaven's name do we have to show for it? 

We The People





Send this video to every independent voter you know. If you're not sure if your friend is registered to vote, ASK HIM/HER. It's up to you to preserve the Republic.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

KNOW YOUR CURRENT EVENTS #tcot

*|INSTAPAPER:|*

So, what else do you do on a beautiful Saturday afternoon but sit at your computer viewing the live broadcast of FreePac Ohio?

Sorry to report that's what I'm doing. It's 4:00 pm and I'm really impressed. The event goes 'til 7:00 pm.
The greatest thing I've learned so far is that FreedomWorks now has a Scorecard feature on their website. 
This Scorecard indexes every Congressman and every Senator and every vote they have cast in their recent careers. The votes are scored by their affinity to the conservative viewpoint.

Of course we know that that method begs the question, "who's view?" We know that one description of conservativism is not enough to satisfy everyone. That being said, another rating is added to those others who propose to rate legislators and their performance. Just having several souces for this information makes the process more reliable, if not perfect. Just having another outlet focusing attention on the actions of our legislators gives us more hope and gives them pause.

A sample of this data shows us that our friend and Representative, Tom Rooney, seems to be faltering in the eyes of those raters at FreedomWorks. His four sessions in Congress have yielded a Conservative score of 84%. And that's not bad. Until you see that the trend is 95%, 94%, 78% and 75%.

Where is he going from here?
 
Jim McG./m912tc

Friday, September 14, 2012

America's Fiscal Distress #tcot

This video, from a retired accountant, explains in simple language the urgency of our nation's financial distress.


 


Many thanks to D. Robin Barker for his vigilance.

m912tc

The Imaginative Conservative: The Natural Map of the Middle East

The Imaginative Conservative: The Natural Map of the Middle East: by Patrick Buchanan

 “Apart from political maps of mankind, there are natural maps of mankind. … One of the first laws of political stabili...

*|INSTAPAPER:|*

Thursday, September 13, 2012

RON PAUL: FED'S QE3 'DETACHMENT FROM REALITY' #tcot

WND EXCLUSIVE

Congressman demanding audit predicts worse economic crash than 2008

U.S. dollarA member of Congress who has been pushing for more transparency, including an audit, of the Federal Reserve for years says the announcement today the quasi-governmental agency is going to print more money to try to help the U.S. economy isn’t surprising.

Nor is it smart, said U.S. Rep. Ron Paul.

“No one is surprised by the Fed’s action today to inject even more money into the economy through additional asset purchases. The Fed’s only solution for every problem is to print more money and provide more liquidity,” Paul said.

“Mr. Bernanke and Fed governors appear not to understand that our current economic malaise resulted directly because of the excessive credit the Fed already pumped into the system.”

The Federal Reserve said today it is launching its third attempt to revive the U.S. economy, once again by printing more money.

According to a report in CNN, this edition of the program will involve having the government buy $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities per month – with no set end date.

Read the article at World News Daily...


m912tc

No, It’s Sharia and the Assault on U.S. Missions

No, It’s Sharia and the Assault on U.S. Missions - The Corner - National Review Online

     I could not more vigorously disagree with my friend Daniel Pipes, who disappointingly lays fault for yesterday’s carnage at the feet of Reverend Terry Jones. In essence, Daniel — like much of the progressive, bipartisan U.S. ruling class — adopts the reasoning of Muslim Brotherhood jurist Yusuf Qaradawi, who admonishes that women who fail to conform to fundamentalist Islam’s restrictive sartorial standards have only themselves to blame when they get raped.
     Let’s say Terry Jones was Imam Terry Jones. It is not hard to imagine because there goes by not a day when some Islamist leader of far more consequence than Jones matter-of-factly spouts hatred of America and the West that is more provocative, and more representative of his country or region, than anything that has ever passed Jones’s lips. Would it make you riot? Would it make you commit murder? Would it foment more than a yawn? And if it did stir so much as a suggestion that this typical Muslim leader should be silenced, the only public protests and pious government caterwauling would be directed at that suggestion, not at the anti-American incitements that prompted it. 

*|INSTAPAPER:|*

Stuart News: Resisting easy monetary fix

by George Will - Copyright © 2012 Scripps Media Inc. 09/13/2012 – The Stuart News, Page A7

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Fortunately, not everything is up to date in Kansas City. Esther George, president of the regional Federal Reserve Bank here, is refreshingly retrograde regarding what less-circumspect people welcome as the modernizing of the nation’s central bank into a central economic planner. She has concerns, both prudential and philosophical, about the transformation of the Fed in ways that erase the distinction between monetary policy, which is the Fed’s proper business, and fiscal policy, which is inherently political.

The basic interest rate — i.e., the federal funds rate minus the inflation rate — was negative during about 40 percent of the disastrous 1970s and the 2000s, which ended disastrously. Because today’s rate is negative, the Fed’s stimulus repertoire is reduced to “quantitative easing.” That phrase, which is how government speaks when trying not to be understood, means printing money. Except printing is so 20th century. Nowadays, the Fed gives banks digital transfusions of money to lower long-term interest rates, which result in ...

Not much bang for trillions of bucks. With corporations holding upward of $2 trillion in cash, and 30-year mortgages at 3.5 percent, George, speaking several weeks before this week’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, asked: “Is there anyone not borrowing today or purchasing a house because interest rates aren’t low enough? Do we expect that businesses will hire if their long-term rates are lower?” Very low interest rates discourage saving, punish retirees living off interest-bearing assets and, George says, “incent people into riskier assets.” Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke evidently thinks that driving up the stock market will quicken the animal spirits of the affluent 20 percent who own 93 percent of equities, and this “wealth effect” will spur economic activity, eventually benefiting others. So, the interest rates Barack Obama favors are a form of the trickle-down economics he execrates.

Richard W. Fisher, George’s counterpart at the Dallas regional Fed, is “perplexed” by Wall Street’s “preoccupation, bordering upon fetish” concerning a possible QE3. Financiers “have become hooked on the monetary morphine we provided when we performed massive reconstructive surgery” during the 2008-09 panic. However, “monetary policy provides the fuel” for America’s economy and “we have filled the gas tank and then some.”

When the independent Fed buys bonds to affect short-term economic stimulus by manipulating long-term interest rates, this is less monetary policy than fiscal policy, which is the business of an accountable Congress.

Bernanke’s term ends in 2014 and Mitt Romney says he would not reappoint him. If Romney becomes president, he should appoint someone such as George, who would concentrate on protecting the currency as a store of value — restraining inflation — while reversing the recent inflation of the bank’s ambitions, which have not prevented the recovery from being dreadful and may have helped to make it so.

EMAIL George Will

Monday, September 10, 2012

Rockefellers Preside Over Creation Of Global Journalist Group To “Advance Reporting On Religion”

Jurriaan Maessen - ExplosiveReports.Com

September 8, 2012

logoThe Rockefeller Foundation has recently presided over the creation of a new international journalism group to “advance reporting on religion”, the AP reports.

The stated goal of the newly created International Association of Religion Journalists? In the words of the steering committee’s chair Maria-Paz Lopez: to help journalists write “with accuracy, fairness and balance” on all religious matters.

Teaming up with the Association of Religion Data Archives, the international group launched its website, describing itself as “the world’s first international body of religion journalists provides editors, reporters and analysts with the tools, resources and support to promote accurate, fair and balanced reporting on religion worldwide.”

“The International Association of Religion Journalists (IARJ) was founded by leading journalists from 23 countries in six continents at a meeting at The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy. Nearly 400 journalists from more than 90 nations have been accepted into the new organization.”, the group’s website states.

Under the header “A Global Voice”, the group states that “global religion journalism comes with great responsibility.”

What excellent coincidence that the Rockefeller Foundation came along to preside over the creation of this global group, ensuring a flying start. Or is it?

Read the rest...


m912tc

U.N.-backed 'Agenda 21' development rules anger many in Texas

by Aman Batheja / The Texas Tribune

Posted on August 28, 2012 at 9:01 AM
Updated Tuesday, Aug 28 at 9:37 AM

Agenda21A Lubbock County judge's comments last week that President Obama might cede U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations and spark a civil war have been widely ridiculed. But concerns about U.N. overreach are gaining ground, with the attacks mostly focused on a 20-year-old nonbinding U.N. resolution called Agenda 21.

Texas critics of the resolution have seen their fears echoed by activists at city council meetings around the state and adopted by some of the state's Republican leaders.

Agenda 21 was signed by more than 170 countries, including the U.S., in 1992 and aims to encourage governments to promote environmentally friendly development such as preserving open spaces and discouraging urban sprawl. A variety of organizations around the world promote similar principles.

Such issues have become of particular concern in fast-growing Texas. Many regions are struggling to integrate a steady stream of new residents while avoiding gridlocked roads and retaining communities' character.

Critics of Agenda 21 view it as a sinister effort by an international organization to tell communities what to do and a blatant infringement on private property rights.

Continued at the Texas Tribune...


m912tc

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Constitutional Amendments on 2012 Florida Ballot

AMENDMENTS TO THE FLORIDA CONSTITUTION ON THE 2012 GENERAL ELECTION BALLOT - Summary

AMENDMENT 1 - HEALTH CARE SERVICES View Full Text (pdf)

AMENDMENT 2 - VETERANS DISABLED DUE TO COMBAT INJURY; HOMESTEAD PROPERTY TAX DISCOUNT View Full Text (pdf)

AMENDMENT 3 - STATE GOVERNMENT REVENUE LIMITATION View Full Text (pdf)

AMENDMENT 4 - PROPERTY TAX LIMITATIONS; PROPERTY VALUE DECLINE; REDUCTION FOR NONHOMESTEAD ASSESSMENT INCREASES; DELAY OF SCHEDULED REPEAL View Full Text (pdf)

AMENDMENT 5 - STATE COURTS View Full Text (pdf)

AMENDMENT 6 - PROHIBITION ON PUBLIC FUNDING OF ABORTIONS; CONSTRUCTION OF ABORTION RIGHTS View Full Text (pdf)

AMENDMENT 8 - RELIGIOUS FREEDOM View Full Text (pdf)

AMENDMENT 9 - HOMESTEAD PROPERTY TAX EXEMPTION FOR SURVIVING SPOUSE OF MILITARY VETERAN OR FIRST RESPONDER View Full Text (pdf)

AMENDMENT 10 - TANGIBLE PERSONAL PROPERTY TAX EXEMPTION View Full Text (pdf)

AMENDMENT 11 - ADDITIONAL HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION; LOW-INCOME SENIORS WHO MAINTAIN LONG-TERM RESIDENCY ON PROPERTY; EQUAL TO ASSESSED VALUE View Full Text (pdf)

AMENDMENT 12 - APPOINTMENT OF STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT TO BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM - View Full Text (pdf)


From the Highlands Tea Party Website.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

WSJ: American Character Is at Stake

By NICHOLAS EBERSTADT | August 31, 2012

The American republic has endured for well over two centuries, but over the past 50 years, the apparatus of American governance has undergone a radical transformation. In some basic respects—its scale, its preoccupations, even many of its purposes—the U.S. government today would be scarcely recognizable to Franklin D. Roosevelt, much less to Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson.

What is monumentally new about the American state today is the vast empire of entitlement payments that it protects, manages and finances. Within living memory, the federal government has become an entitlements machine. As a day-to-day operation, it devotes more attention and resources to the public transfer of money, goods and services to individual citizens than to any other objective, spending more than for all other ends combined.

The growth of entitlement payments over the past half-century has been breathtaking. In 1960, U.S. government transfers to individuals totaled about $24 billion in current dollars, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. By 2010 that total was almost 100 times as large. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, entitlement transfers to individuals have grown 727% over the past half-century, rising at an average rate of about 4% a year.

In 2010 alone, government at all levels oversaw a transfer of over $2.2 trillion in money, goods and services. The burden of these entitlements came to slightly more than $7,200 for every person in America. Scaled against a notional family of four, the average entitlements burden for that year alone approached $29,000.

Read from the Wall Street Journal...


M912TC

Sunday, September 2, 2012

FORBES: How Obama Is Robbing The Suburbs To Pay For The Cities

By Stanley Kurtz

OP/ED 
|
 
8/13/2012

Political experts left and right agree: the coming election will be decided by America’s suburbanites.  From Florida to Virginia on across the country, in every battleground state, they are the key demographic. All of which raises a question that has not been considered as yet, and ought to be: is President Obama’s re-election in the suburbanites’ interest?  The answer emphatically is no.

As many Americans do not know, in the eyes of the leftist community organizers who trained Obama, suburbs are instruments of bigotry and greed — a way of selfishly refusing to share tax money with the urban poor.  Obama adopted this view early on, and he has never wavered from this ideological commitment, as a review of his actions in office goes to show.

President Obama’s plans for a second-term include an initiative to systematically redistribute the wealth of America’s suburbs to the cities.  It’s a transformative idea, and deserves to be fully aired before the election.  But like a lot of his major progressive policy innovations, Obama has advanced this one stealthily–mostly through rule-making, appointment, and vague directives.  Obama has worked on this project in collaboration with Mike Kruglik, one of his original community organizing mentors.  Kruglik’s new group, Building One America, advocates “regional tax-base sharing,” a practice by which suburban tax money is directly redistributed to nearby cities and less-well-off “inner-ring” suburbs.  Kruglik’s group also favors a raft of policies designed to coerce people out of their cars and force suburbanites (with their tax money) back into densely packed cities.

Obama has lent the full weight of his White House to Kruglik’s efforts.  A federal program called the Sustainable Communities Initiative, for example, has salted planning commissions across the country with “regional equity” and “smart growth” as goals.  These are, of course, code words.  “Regional equity” means that, by their mere existence, suburbs cheat the people who live in cities.  It means, “Let’s spread the suburbs’ wealth around” – i.e., take from the suburbanites to give to the urban poor. “Smart growth” means, “Quit building sub-divisions and malls, and move back to where mass transit can shuttle you between your 800 square foot apartment in an urban tower and your downtown job.” In all likelihood, these planning commissions will issue “recommendations” which Obama would quickly turn into requirements for further federal aid.  In fact, his administration has already used these tactics to impose federal education requirements on reluctant states.  Indeed, part of Obama’s assault on the suburbs is his effort to undercut the autonomy of suburban school districts.

Read the rest at Forbes....


M912TC

Subscribe