It was ____ who said....

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."


A)  Speaker of the House John Boehner

B)   Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell

C)   Titular Head of the Republican Party Rush Limbaugh

D)   Speacher Extraordinaire Barack "Words Matter" Obama

ANSWER:   D.  Senator Barack Obama, 2006. Congressional Record, S.2237-8, 3/16/06


The "Debt Limit" at that time was $8.5 trillion.  That was the year Obama joined the Senate.  They are now at $14.5 trillion.

Don't worry, he didn't 'flip flop,' he wasn't 'wrong,' he wasn't a 'partisan hack'...

"He now believes it was a mistake..." - White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. 

Don't worry, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner knows what he is doing, he went to an expensive college:

"Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner now estimates that the nation's debt ceiling will be reached no later than May 16, and has urged Congress to act before then...Geithner noted that the Treasury Department can take "extraordinary measures" to buy time -- about eight extra weeks, maximum -- after the May deadline..." White House: Obama Vote Against Raising Debt Limit a 'Mistake'

Californication...

LAPD makes it easier for illegal immigrant drivers

This was from earlier in the year, but it just came to my attention on the other coast.  The Los Angeles Police Department had a policy that vehicles stopped at sobriety checkpoints, in which the driver had no license (i.e. shouldn't be driving), the vehicles was towed, and the registered owner could come pick it up.

The point (which I believe started with DUIs in San Francisco about ten years ago) was that you could issue people tickets...which meant nothing.  Even if they did go to court, the fines were not enough to stop them from driving.  (Note:  if the driver does not have a license, do you think he/she has insurance?).  So they passed a law that took away the vehicle...temporarily.

In Arizona - it wasn't just for DUIs, if you were in an accident, or ANY traffic stop, and you had NO DRIVER LICENSE, NO PROOF OF INSURANCE - the vehicle was towed.  The owner (you can't be a 'registered owner' without a driver license) could pick up the vehicle the next day.


What was the result?  Many cars were towed that NOBODY came to pick up.  Why?  Because the registrations were in names of people who had no idea about the car, or allowed their name to be used but didn't care to get involved to pick up the car.

...so, back to LAPD:

“As we reviewed our impound policies it became obvious to me that they had disparate impact on individuals based on something that was entirely out of their control," Beck said.

California doesn’t issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.

Under the new policy, officers will give unlicensed illegal immigrants “reasonable time” to find someone else to drive their cars home. 

"I think that in the course of time he will be acknowledged as a great police chief and a very wise man because this is the right thing to do," said Juan Jose Gutierrez of Vamos Unidos U.S.A.


God Bless America!

Pro Life Choice...

Pilot survives night in Lake Huron after plane crashes

Michael Trapp's plane crashed in Lake Huron.  He survived.  The plane sunk, and he survived...by treading water for 17 hours. 

I have often wondered how long I could tread water for.  I believe I could do it until I succumbed to something else, like hypothermia, or shark attack...but that I could keep going, not falling to exhaustion. My current record is 10 minutes...1,010 minutes shy of Trapp's feat.  It is actually quite boring.  The 10 minutes was fully clothed, with boots, as part of survival training, and I passed the time by making fun of people that were having difficulties, and swimming around them, pretending to go under.  At ten minutes - we had to move on to the next test.

*Note to self:  If you crash your plane into Lake Huron...do it in the summer!

Operation Informant Runner...

Column: ATF’s Melson May Have a Second Wind; Should FBI Have Used Violent Gun Smuggler as Informant?

"...If you haven’t been following that closely: ATF was looking at some guy, who had a reputation as a violent gun dealer for the Mexican Cartels — only to find out that the FBI was using this guy as an informant. So of course, ATF had to back off..."

"...maybe, just maybe, the FBI needs to draw the line with some informants (like Bulger) when it appears their crimes out weigh the benefits of getting the information..." As far as the FBI goes, the line has been drawn...If there is any hint that an informant is committing unauthorized illegal activity - the FBI shuts him/her down.  This is part of the reason that the FBI doesn't...well...arrest alot of people.  When they are successful, often times, at the end of an investigation, when all the bad guys are in jail...and they talk to each other...they figure out that the one bad guy not in jail...was the informant.

"...Then there’s the issue of doing the right thing. The FBI was dealing with a major gun runner. It should have given ATF a heads up that it was working the guy. It didn’t. Now, with this mess, who knows. The informant may end up dead as a result of this all coming to the surface..."  I wonder if the FBI agents knew their "informant" was a major gun runner?  If so - score!  I can tell you this, if the FBI muckety-mucks had known - he would not be an "informant", game over, shut down - they would rather NOT arrest anybody, NOT shut down the gun running, than face the headlines...that they are facing. Which, to me, shows they (the muckety-mucks) didn't know. 

"...In any event, this whole mess can’t be good for anybody and it certainly can’t help the already strained the relationship between the FBI and ATF..." True that. Then again...why is there an ATF? Why is there a DEA?

Question:  Do you know what FBI agents, ATF agents and DEA agents have in common?




Answer:  They all applied to the FBI.


Just kidding! Can't we all just get along.  There needs to be some tightening up at the ATF...but there needs to be some loosening up at the Bu...

Wait what?

Last week, it was big news that "Syrian protesters" attacked the American Embassy...mind you, those were supporters of murderous dictator Bashar al-Assad (how do you say astro-turf in Arabic?)

United States Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford reacted and posted some comments on his Facebook page...then some real Syrian protesters assaulted Ford's vehicle...with olive branches and roses.

I Can't Wait...

..when they announce the "agreement" - it will all be fixed, or on its way to being fixed.  Whew! That was close! Re-election for all!

Freedom...

Congratulations....

...to Derek Jeter, of Pequannock, New Jersey, for getting 3,000 hits.  I hate the Yankees.

Derek and I were born in the same hospital.  Now, decades later, we work only a few miles apart.

Other things Jeter and I have in common:

In 2011, his salary will be $14,729,365 . . . and I also have a job.



Broken Ice...

The union representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and employees has issued ANOTHER no confidence vote in its leadership.

ICE has to be the most inept agency out there.  Which is saying something, considering the ineptness that's out there!

Janice Kephart of the Center for Immigration Studies has done alot of work exposing what the Obama administration has done to decapitate an already brainless organization.  In 2010 she exposed a letter from the ICE Union President that contained the following:

"• While ICE reports internally that more than 90 percent of ICE detainees are first encountered in jails after they are arrested by local police for criminal charges, ICE senior leadership misrepresents this information publicly in order to portray ICE detainees as being non-criminal in nature to support the Administration's position on amnesty and relaxed security at ICE detention facilities.

• The majority of ICE ERO Officers are prohibited from making street arrests or enforcing United States immigration laws outside of the institutional (jail) setting. This has effectively created "amnesty through policy" for anyone illegally in the United States who has not been arrested by another agency for a criminal violation.

• ICE Detention Reforms have transformed into a detention system aimed at providing resort like living conditions to criminal aliens. Senior ICE leadership excluded ICE officers and field managers (the technical experts on ICE detention) from the development of these reforms, and instead solicited recommendations from special interest groups. The lack of technical expertise and field expertise has resulted in a priority of providing bingo nights, dance lessons and hanging plants to criminals, instead of addressing safe and responsible detention reforms for non-criminal individuals and families. Unlike any other agency in the nation, ICE officers will be prevented from searching detainees housed in ICE facilities allowing weapons, drugs and other contraband into detention centers putting detainees, ICE officers and contract guards at risk."

If you know the battle our understaffed agents wage at the border, catching only a percentage of those crossing illegally - this is a spit in their face.

I know people who cross the border legally, and stay illegally past the date on their visa, and work.  Its hard to convince them what they are doing is wrong, and to do it the right way...when there is no consequence to their actions...when the President of the United States and his party work to erase our borders.

I mean...

...you got the first mainstream Cuban-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that's a storybook, man.

On the 4th of July, 1776...

...the Founders didn't just start a nation, they sought justice and they declared freedom.


"...the Fourth of July. It is the birth day of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, as what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life . . . There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon . . .

. . . But your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to . . . They who did so were accounted in their day plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to proceed.


Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated, by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men to look back.


As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of.


The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present rulers.


Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.


. . . Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it.


On the 2nd of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction.


Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, there fore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation's history-the very ringbolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.


Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. . . The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

. . . They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was "settIed" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final"; not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.


How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defence. Mark them! Fully appreciating the hardships to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep, the corner-stone of the national super-structure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.


Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. . ."

Frederick Douglass  1852


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