Entries Tagged 'U.S. Constitution' ↓

Originally published at 2.0: The Blogmocracy

From the 1389 Blog mailbox:

From: Robert Bowen
To: 1389 Blog Mailbox
Date: 7/27/2010, 8:17 PM EDT
Subject: Amazing

I THINK IT IS REMARKABLE THAT WITHIN A WEEK OF TIGER WOODS CRASHING HIS ESCALADE, THE PRESS FOUND EVERY WOMAN WITH WHOM TIGER HAS HAD AN AFFAIR IN THE LAST FEW YEARS, WITH PHOTOS, TEXT MESSAGES, RECORDED PHONE CALLS, ETC. AND, THEY NOT ONLY KNOW THE CAUSE OF THE FAMILY FIGHT, BUT THEY EVEN KNOW IT WAS A WEDGE FROM HIS GOLF BAG THAT HIS WIFE USED TO BREAK OUT THE WINDOWS IN THE ESCALADE. NOT ONLY THAT, THEY KNOW WHICH WEDGE! AND EACH AND EVERY DAY, THEY GIVE AMERICA MORE UPDATES ON HIS SEX-REHAB STAY, HIS WIFE’S PLANS FOR DIVORCE, AND THE DATES AND TOURNAMENTS HE WILL PLAY IN. OBAMA HAS BEEN IN OFFICE FOR OVER A YEAR NOW, AND THIS SAME PRESS: STILL CANNOT FIND ANY OF HIS CHILDHOOD FRIENDS OR NEIGHBORS OR LOCATE ANY OF OBAMA’S COLLEGE PAPERS OR GRADES OR HOW HE PAID FOR A HARVARD EDUCATION OR WHICH COUNTRY ISSUED HIS VISA TO TRAVEL TO PAKISTAN IN THE 1980′S OR BARRY SOETORO OR EVEN MICHELLE OBAMA’S PRINCETON THESIS ON RACISM. THEY JUST CAN’T SEEM TO FIND THEM!!! YET THE PUBLIC STILL TRUSTS THAT SAME PRESS TO GIVE THEM THE WHOLE TRUTH! TRULY REMARKABLE!!!

Despite the use of block caps, this letter makes a valid point. Somehow, I don’t expect the media to come up with any definitive answers. All we ever get is the “same-old same-old” – the media, even the supposedly “conservative” media, slandering everyone who questions Obama’s eligibility for the Presidency as “birthers” or as part of the “lunatic fringe.” Any self-anointed media pundit who denies that this is a legitimate question is complicit in all of the harm that the Obama administration has done thus far and will do in the future.

A significant percentage of the American public continues to doubt the official version of Obama’s origins and his curriculum vitae – too many to write off as crazy. Every time another piece of evidence surfaces that casts doubt on Obama’s official bio, the mainstream media and even the quasi-conservative media downplay the issue, pretend to debunk it without actually debunking it, and ridicule anybody who expects a better answer than that.

Perhaps if Obama were executing the duties of the Presidency in conformance with the US Constitution and US law, and in the interests of America’s citizens and taxpayers, it would be much easier for people to believe that Obama is American-born. Instead, he has been governing like a third-world socialist dictator, like a wannabee Chavez or Mugabe writ large.

Originally published at 2.0: The Blogmocracy

Underemployment: Obama’s dirty little secret

Even the best-qualified, highest-skilled, and hardest-working Americans are up against it these days. Yes, even those Americans who still have jobs! We all know that the official unemployment statistics are vastly understated, in that they focus only on claims for unemployment compensation. The stats do not properly account for older workers who have taken early retirement after losing a job; young workers who cannot enter the labor force; “discouraged workers” who are still looking for work, but whose unemployment benefits are exhausted; disabled persons who could work to a limited extent, but who aren’t being hired; and American citizens who have had to travel overseas, often at great sacrifice and financial loss, to find work.

But perhaps the biggest of the dirty little secrets hidden by the official unemployment statistics is underemployment. I know about this from personal experience. Despite all of my qualifications, I have not been able to find full-time employment in over two years. The reason? With all of the hidden ramifications of Obamacare looming over everyone’s heads, along with the other past and future attacks on private enterprise, nobody wants to hire full-time people at all if they can help it. Certainly nobody wants to hire someone over 55 for a full-time job where the employer will be forced to provide overpriced health insurance or be fined for not providing it. Some people may call it age discrimination, but it’s the government that is causing it, not the prejudices of private employers.

There’s no need to take my word for any of this. Look at any job board or want-ad listing and notice the proliferation of part-time, temporary, and contract assignments, and the relative absence of full-time jobs with benefits. For example, a retail store that would normally hire two or three full-time employees will instead hire five part-time employees for 15 to 30 hours per week, at minimum wage, perhaps with commissions, but no benefits. A recent Gallup Poll also reveals large-scale underemployment in the form of part-time workers who want, but cannot get, full-time employment.

The liberal elite wants it that way

Of course, the liberal establishment pretends not to know why unemployment remains so high. Case in point: NYT: Mystery for White House: Where did the jobs go? [H/T: Rodan]

That conundrum, which reclaims center stage in Washington this week, is this: Why is unemployment so high?

The whodunit has flummoxed economists in both parties for a year. In 2009, as the new Obama administration grappled with the financial crisis, joblessness rose nearly two points beyond customary recession forecasts.

Part of the uncertainty concerns why. More consequential now, as the administration and Congress determine what to do, is whether the unemployment spike reflects a short-term or permanent shift in demand for workers.

But seriously…

I have studied economics and I know this for certain: All they have to do is repeal Obozocare, resume drilling, seal the borders, and end the H-1b program, and unemployment will drop three points within a month. I guarantee it!

But none of that will happen until we somehow muster the political will to force our government to do that. Or until enough States secede and decide to govern themselves in the interest of their own citizens.

One way or another, we need to free ourselves from the predatory liberal elites who flout the will of the people and who serve only their own interests and those of our foreign enemies.

The Obama administration, together with the liberal establishment in academia, the mainstream media, the NGOs, the foundations, the Ivy League, and the UN, all have reason to want unemployment to remain high. Why? Because, though it may make the Obama administration look incompetent in the short run, as it did with FDR, it will create more dependency on the government and increase centralized government power in the long run.

Dependency, the Liberals’ Natural Resource explains how this nefarious system works:

A Heritage Foundation report shows that thanks to multiple government programs, the proportion of Americans in some way dependent on government largess has suddenly jumped by 31.2% since 2001 after decades of much slower increases. Even in inflation-adjusted dollars, America now spends thirteen times more on public welfare than it did in 1965. Dependency has snowballed in health care, public welfare, and housing, and the upward trend seems likely to continue as Obama’s statist polices take hold and baby boomers retire. Indeed, the president plans to spend some $10.3 trillion in welfare over the next decades. In a nutshell, Uncle Sam is replacing the family, the church, private charities, and all other non-government sources of assistance, and this means regular jobs for the new caregivers. And it feels good to work for Uncle Sam: Benefits included, the average federal workers in 2008 earned double what those in the private sector took home. So it is hardly unexpected that since about January 2008, some 7.9 million private sectors jobs have disappeared, while 590,000 public sector jobs were created — and this trend seems to be multiplying. It’s a thoroughly modern ménage à trois of dependent citizens, well-paid government employees ministering to them, and harried taxpayers footing the bill.

…

Here’s what makes this “new wealth” so attractive: In today’s uncertain economy, it far outshines the old wealth of building things and selling them at a profit. For one, jobs ministering to the dependent are labor-intensive and immune to mechanization. Government jobs are also wonderfully secure. It is inconceivable, for example, that a counselor working with Vietnamese gangs in Los Angeles will be replaced by an industrial robot or that under-employed social workers will also be asked to direct rush hour traffic to trim labor costs. This is not the cost-cutting-obsessed airlines where passengers make their own reservations, print boarding passes, stow their own luggage, and bring their own food. Nor can these interventions be outsourced to foreign competition. Helping the less fortunate has a permanent “Made in USA” label attached — Toyota has no interest in tackling the pathologies of those living in Detroit.

The supply of these jobs-generating assets is also inexhaustible. America will never, never run out of this newly discovered “wealth.” We may deplete our oil and ravage our forests, but what are the odds of drug addicts, the mentally ill, young unwed mothers, and others needing intervention vanishing? Those mired in pathology are a truly renewable natural resource. Social problems do recede, but rest assured, replacements are easily found (e.g., sex addiction). In a pinch, just open the borders and receive a bountiful fresh supply. And compare the ease of setting up an in-school clinic to mentor anorexic, non-English-speaking adolescent girls with low self-esteem versus building a factory. The former is instantly shovel-ready.

Read it all.

In other words, if the government stops the private sector from offering relatively secure, remunerative, full-time employment to American citizens, that will eventually leave the government as the only source of good jobs on American soil. This is how the federal government creates a new class of Soviet-style apparatchiki. Of course, those jobs ONLY go to those who actively support the regime and do their part to enhance the careers of those already in power, while keeping everyone else down.

Now what?

Our goal is to re-empower ourselves and our families, and decentralize and take back control over everything that has been usurped from us. That means we need to go on the attack to discredit the liberal establishment and all its pomps and all its works, anywhere and everywhere it appears.

We must overcome not only economic underemployment, but the underemployment of the human spirit.

To that end, please turn your attention to this excellent article: Read the rest of this excellent article at America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution. [H/T: doriangrey]

… Consider: The ruling class denies its opponents’ legitimacy. Seldom does a Democratic official or member of the ruling class speak on public affairs without reiterating the litany of his class’s claim to authority, contrasting it with opponents who are either uninformed, stupid, racist, shills for business, violent, fundamentalist, or all of the above. They do this in the hope that opponents, hearing no other characterizations of themselves and no authoritative voice discrediting the ruling class, will be dispirited. For the country class seriously to contend for self-governance, the political party that represents it will have to discredit not just such patent frauds as ethanol mandates, the pretense that taxes can control “climate change,” and the outrage of banning God from public life. More important, such a serious party would have to attack the ruling class’s fundamental claims to its superior intellect and morality in ways that dispirit the target and hearten one’s own. The Democrats having set the rules of modern politics, opponents who want electoral success are obliged to follow them.

…

Reducing the taxes that most Americans resent requires eliminating the network of subsidies to millions of other Americans that these taxes finance, and eliminating the jobs of government employees who administer them. Eliminating that network is practical, if at all, if done simultaneously, both because subsidies are morally wrong and economically counterproductive, and because the country cannot afford the practice in general. The electorate is likely to cut off millions of government clients, high and low, only if its choice is between no economic privilege for anyone and ratifying government’s role as the arbiter of all our fortunes. The same goes for government grants to and contracts with so-called nonprofit institutions or non-governmental organizations. The case against all arrangements by which the government favors some groups of citizens is easier to make than that against any such arrangement. Without too much fuss, a few obviously burdensome bureaucracies, like the Department of Education, can be eliminated, while money can be cut off to partisan enterprises such as the National Endowments and public broadcasting. That sort of thing is as necessary to the American body politic as a weight reduction program is essential to restoring the health of any human body degraded by obesity and lack of exercise. Yet shedding fat is the easy part. Restoring atrophied muscles is harder. Reenabling the body to do elementary tasks takes yet more concentration.

The grandparents of today’s Americans (132 million in 1940) had opportunities to serve on 117,000 school boards. To exercise responsibilities comparable to their grandparents’, today’s 310 million Americans would have radically to decentralize the mere 15,000 districts into which public school children are now concentrated. They would have to take responsibility for curriculum and administration away from credentialed experts, and they would have to explain why they know better. This would involve a level of political articulation of the body politic far beyond voting in elections every two years.

If self-governance means anything, it means that those who exercise government power must depend on elections. The shorter the electoral leash, the likelier an official to have his chain yanked by voters, the more truly republican the government is. Yet to subject the modern administrative state’s agencies to electoral control would require ordinary citizens to take an interest in any number of technical matters. Law can require environmental regulators or insurance commissioners, or judges or auditors to be elected. But only citizens’ discernment and vigilance could make these officials good. Only citizens’ understanding of and commitment to law can possibly reverse the patent disregard for the Constitution and statutes that has permeated American life. Unfortunately, it is easier for anyone who dislikes a court’s or an official’s unlawful act to counter it with another unlawful one than to draw all parties back to the foundation of truth.

Read it all.

• Jihad Watch: Chicago hotel backs out of hosting Islamic supremacist pro-sharia conference
  

  Good for the Marriott Oak Brook. It will interesting to see which “moderate” Muslim advocacy groups speak out now in defense of Hizb ut-Tahrir and its conference, since Hizb ut-Tahrir openly supports Sharia and the restoration of the caliphate, with all that means for the denial of rights to women and non-Muslims [emphasis mine]. CAIR’s Brave Ahmed Rehab responded with roadblocks and detours when asked about them on Fox last year.

  “Illinois hotel backs out of hosting Muslim group,” by Sophia Tareen for Associated Press, July 11

  …

  And that shows the weakness and short-sightedness of evaluating these groups solely on the basis of whether or not they employ or advocate violence.

  Read the rest.

• Islamic hardliners return for Sydney convention after push for ban fails
  

  by Sally Neighbour

  HUNDREDS of Islamic activists are assembling in Sydney for a convention being held by the controversial Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

  This is its first big event in Australia since a failed push to outlaw it three years ago.

  Senior Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) members have flown in from Britain for the conference, which is part of a series of events being held around the world, as the group steps up its campaign for the formation of a trans-national Islamic state.

  …

  In 2007, when HT held its last international assembly in Australia, the federal government considered banning the organisation in response to claims that it incites religious hatred and indirectly encourages terrorism.

  But ASIO advised the then attorney-general Philip Ruddock that there was insufficient evidence to proscribe the group as it did not advocate terrorism.

  HT explicitly rejects the use of violence in its quest for an Islamic state. But it supports militant campaigns against Western forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and opposes the existence of Israel, which it calls an “illegitimate” state that “must be removed”.

  Read the rest.
  H/T: Gramfan

Political correctness versus survival, again

It is a disgrace that we should have to be going through this every time our Muslim enemies hold meetings on Western soil.

In the US, it is long past due for a Constitutional amendment to disqualify Islam as a religion protected under the First Amendment. Islam is not a religion in the sense that our Founders envisioned a religion to be. Like Nazism and Communism, Islam is an expansionist, totalitarian, enemy ideology that seeks to rid the world of everything other than itself.

Ideally, the amendment should go further than that, so as to ban immigration or naturalization of Muslims, as well as to forbit the signing of any treaty or alliance, the sale of any weaponry, or the rendering of any form of assistance to any country or nation with a predominantly Muslim population.

Australia and every other civilized part of the world should do the same.

The blowback

The ongoing US intervention in the Balkans, against the Orthodox Christian Serbs, on the side of the Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, is responsible for most of the jihadist resurgence in the past two decades. Every US president since Reagan left office has been siding with the Muslims in the Balkans, and this represents folly to the extent of treason against US interests. By now, anyone who still believes that the Saudis, or any Muslim nation for that matter, could possibly be allies of any non-Muslim nation is mentally incompetent to serve in public office.

Saudi Arabia is the source of the radical Wahhabi imams who are radicalizing other Muslims all over the world, including the US. The US/NATO intervention in the Balkans opened the door for them to work their evil, not only in the Balkans, but throughout the EU and the US.

A sample of the evidence

• Jihad Watch: Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Wahhabist Muslims expel local mufti in bid to take over mosque
  

  “The Wahabi movement has slowly been taking roots in Muslim populated areas of the Balkans, increasingly resorting to violent acts.”

  Funny how that keeps happening. “Macedonia: Islamists blamed for attack on Skopje mufti,” from AdnKronos International, July 2:

  Skopje, 2 July(AKI) – Three people have been detained by police in Macedonia after local mufti Ibrahim Sabani was expelled from a mosque during religious services, local media reported on Friday. Islamists linked to the fundamentalist Wahabi movement have been blamed for the attack on the mufti and police said three suspects had been charged with disorderly conduct.

  Read the rest.

• Balkan Insight: Radical Islam “Threatens Macedonia”
  

  By Sinisa Jakov Marusic

  02 July 2010 The Skopje branch of the Islamic Religious Community, IVZ, in Macedonia has warned that radical Islamist groups following Wahhabi teachings are trying to take control of the central mosques in Skopje.

  Skopje Mufti Ibrahim Shabani, who is the head of the IVZ branch in the capital, made the remarks after a fist fight broke out on Friday in one of the main Skopje mosques when the dismissed leadership of the Isa-Bey mosque refused to let in the newly appointed imam from IVZ to lead the prayer.

  “This was a coup prepared by radicals who operate in Skopje,” Shabani said. “This criminal Wahhabi gang is known for its radical practices and misuse of Muslim believers.” 

  Shabani accused the discharged imam, Ramadan Ramadani, for leading the group that caused the incident.

  “We will ask the authorities to break these radical groups and bring them to justice. This was proof that the Wahhabi structures go against the institutions and against the IVZ constitution, the rule book and the hierarchy,” Shabani said.

  Ramadani denied any involvement with radical groups.

  Read the rest.

• Ground Zero Mosque: Americans Get a Taste of Serbdom
  

  By Julia Gorin
  Last week I blogged about the radical Islam that, thanks to our interventions in the Balkans, has entrenched itself in Kosovo and is now proceeding according to plan. That is, targeting not the Christians whom we helped them target originally, but the ultimately intended victims: the area’s non-radicalized Muslims. I also mentioned the connection of this trend to the participation of Albanians on the Gaza Flotilla.

  The very day that I posted these items, there was a new blog acknowledging the same problem — from none other than the Weekly Standard’s Stephen “Suleyman Ahmad al-Kosovi” Schwartz. Schwartz spent the 1990s making radicalization of the Balkans inevitable by shilling for the “national” interests of the nominal Muslims there — who surely would be immune to the radicals we were infesting the region with! …

  [Clipped for length]

  …[T]he international community has failed to protect non-Albanian language rights and [has] allowed the flag of the Republic of Albania to fly on most public institutions since 1999. In their report’s conclusion, the UN officers point out that the Pristina sports stadium is emblazoned with “an enormous picture of an armed, bearded, combat-uniformed KLA leader.” Such an image, they argue, runs counter to the UN’s original mission of making Kosovo a secure environment for all residents. Failure to remove the provocative poster demonstrates that the international community is in fact “bowing to the dictates of extremists and warlords.”

  That comes from a 2008 interview with Canadian military reporter Scott Taylor, who in a subsequent article underscored that “there are innumerable monuments all over Kosovo to honour these ‘heroes’ and ‘martyrs.’ Given that this conflict in Kosovo was a bloody inter-ethnic civil war, and the fact that the original NATO mandate was to provide a safe environment for all Kosovo minorities…these monuments to KLA fighters only serve to intimidate non-Albanians.”

  Intimidation. Precisely the point of the Ground Zero mosque. Yet what could Americans expect to happen when they raised no concerted objection — and continue to raise no objection — to our leaders doing this very thing to other Christian nations? Remember, what we’re doing with Kosovo is still reversible, with only 69 recognitions out of 192 UN members (35.94%) so far approving of the independence that would enshrine and legitimize this international crime engineered to win over Greater Islam.

  Like many others, even while fretting about the Islamization that has been the result of supporting the violent Albanian national cause, Schwartz continues to support that cause.

  As Peter Worthington, an early detector of the Kosovo fraud, wrote last year in the Edmonton Sun, supporters of the Kosovo war should be embarrassed. Instead, they shamelessly continue talking and writing about this issue. Suleyman al-Kosovi Schwartz is in no position to still be flapping his gums instead of feeling like the useful idiot that he is.

  Does the Weakly Standard have any idea that the man whose Balkans writings it promotes is a fraud? I realize that the term “neocon,” at least in my interpretation of it, means one who takes a longer time to appreciate reality, but this is ridiculous.

  But then, we’re always in a vacuum when the subject concerns Serbs. Why, that wasn’t Islamism — merely Albaniansism, and necessarily the result of something the Serbs themselves must have caused. Much like the way people view the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (And never mind that Islam and Albanianism have innumberable uncanny similarities.)

  If the Ground Zero mosque goes ahead, Americans will get the slightest sense of what it feels like to be a Serb living on Serbian land, occupied by one’s tormentors. Some might call it poetic justice. I call it the logical conclusion of Western policies in the Balkans, where the demise of the Free World was sealed by our own hand. What we did to Balkans Christianity when we joined the jihad against it on five fronts was the beginning of the end for all of us.

  Read it all.

Follow the money, if you can

Who is paying for the huge Ground Zero mosque complex? That’s a good question. Saudi Arabia has provided lavish funding for Wahhabi mosques, community centers, “charities,” and other establishments throughout the world. But there has yet to be any official word on the funding source for the Ground Zero mosque.

• The Ground Zero mosque and media conquest of Islam

  …An identified group with unknown sponsors has purchased a building with US$ 4.85 million cash steps away from where the World Trade Center once stood — to turn it into potentially one of the largest New York City mosques or Ian slamic Mecca right inside USA.

  The Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, told the New York Times — which put the story on its front page — that he has assembled several million dollars to turn it into ‘’an Islamic center near the city’s most hallowed piece of land that would stand as one of ground zero’s more unexpected and striking neighbors.’’

  The 61-year-old Imam said he paid $4.85 million for it — in cash, records show. With 50,000 square feet of air rights and enough financing, he plans an ambitious project of $150 million, he said.

  Most US mosques, including many in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are funded directly or indirectly by Saudi Arabia the country to which 15 of the 19 hijackers who bombed the World Trade Center belonged. The UAE, Qatar and Iran are other major sponsors across the USA…
  Read it all.

Political correctness versus survival

It is time for Constitutional amendment to disqualify Islam as a religion protected under the First Amendment. It is not a religion, but an expansionist, totalitarian, enemy ideology that seeks to rid the world of everything other than itself. The same amendment should ban immigration or naturalization of Muslims, as well as forbidding the signing of any treaty or alliance, the sale of any weaponry, or the rendering of any form of assistance to any country or nation with a predominantly Muslim population – with absolutely no exceptions whatsoever. And I do mean NO exceptions, not even if the country’s current government claims to be secular.

In ANY conflict, the side with the Muslims is always the wrong side. They are, by their own definition, always our enemies.

By Sparta

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
Washington Times: Byrd upheld law – when it helped Democrats

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

There was an omission in the listing of noteworthy votes by the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, in the article “Sen. Robert Byrd, longest-serving member of Congress, dies at 92″ (Web, News, Monday). I refer, of course, to the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton.

On Aug. 6, 1974, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette quoted Mr. Clinton as saying of President Nixon: “No question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI … is an impeachable offense. … If a president of the United States ever lied to the American people, he should resign.”

Twenty-four years later, on Dec. 19, 1998, Mr. Clinton was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming only the second president in U.S. history to be impeached and the only man popularly elected as president to have been so indicted.

Mr. Byrd made the following statements regarding Mr. Clinton’s impeachment, Published in the Congressional Record for Feb. 12 1999: “The president plainly lied to the American people. Of course, that is not impeachable, but he also lied under oath in judicial proceedings” and, “The president lied to the American people, and, while a great majority of the people believe, as I do, that the president made false and misleading statements under oath, still, some two-thirds of the American people do not want the president removed from office.”

Much is made of Mr. Byrd being the “soul” of the Senate, the one to hold his colleagues to the letter of the Constitution. It seems, however, that was only the case when Mr. Byrd deemed doing so to be convenient or politically expedient. Having admitted that Mr. Clinton’s perjury charges reached the prerequisite for removal from office, he wrote, “I called for these proceedings to be dismissed, out of genuine concern for the divisive effect that an ultimately futile trial would have on the Senate and on the nation.” Failing to get the proceedings dismissed, he voted against conviction.

In other words, out of concern for the nation (i.e., the Democratic Party) Mr. Byrd chose to not follow the letter and intent of the Constitution.

STELLA L. JATRAS

Camp Hill, Pa.

By 1389

How to stop the arrogance of power

A recent post on this blog, Is the US the last fortress standing? raised the issue of what peaceful means are available to get rid of a bad government in the US. At present, we do not have much recourse, other than to move toward state sovereignty and eventual secession.

But with a suitable Constitutional amendment, which we could put into effect as soon as we have the political will to do it, we could add one more effective tool for enforcing government accountability.

Senator Lindsey Graham is out of line

In the Blogmocracy comment thread, Signs of Sanity Surfacing in New York City, I became involved in the following conversation:

FurryOldGuyJeans wrote:

Sen. Graham: Tea party will die out

WASHINGTON, July 1 (UPI) — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said much of his work is “completely opposite” from the Tea Party and predicts the movement will “die out.”

“Everything I’m doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement’s at,” Graham told The New York Times Magazine in a profile that will be published Sunday, The Hill reported Thursday.

1389AD wrote:

Lindsey Graham is a disgrace. He is also whistling past his own graveyard. The Tea Party movement is very strong in SC, and he’s accurately perceived as a sellout. I doubt that he’ll be elected again. Unfortunately, his term won’t be up for another four years.

FurryOldGuyJeans wrote:

There is always a recall election, if SC law allows for such.

1389AD wrote:

We don’t have that. Every state should have recall for ALL elected officials and, IMO, also for firing unelected bureaucrats, for nullifying unpopular laws, and for voting entire agencies out of existence. The same should apply to the federal government.

I do NOT believe in allowing plebiscites or ballot initiatives for the purpose of taking any “positive” action, such as enacting any new laws or regulations, or putting anybody into office, or spending any money. That leads to all kinds of problems with demagoguery and mob rule. Recall should work purely in the negative, as part of the checks and balances, as a restraint on reckless government action that does not enjoy the consent of the governed.

Why not term limits?

I do not think enacting more term limits will be the answer, and here is why:

• Term limits affect both the good and the bad, in effect throwing out the baby with the bath water.
• Term limits do not provide the voters with a mechanism for undoing the results of election fraud.
• Term limits allow a bad government to do too much damage before the term limits become effective.

As Glenn Beck points out, the body of four-term President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s was scarcely cold before the US enacted a Constitutional amendment limiting the Presidency to two terms. While I have no quarrel with that amendment, it fails to address our own predicament. By definition, term limits do nothing to stop a bad elected official from doing irreparable damage during his current term in office. Right now, we are looking at a situation in which we need to remove a bad president and many bad legislators as soon as we possibly can. We simply cannot afford to wait until 2012 for the president and 2014 for some senators who are actively flouting the expressed intent of their constituents, as though they do not expect our elections to matter any longer by the time their current terms expire.

Recall is an option we need

It’s time for American activists who respect the Constitution and the rule of law to begin a movement to enact an amendment to the US Constitution to allow recall elections to remove a president or any other federal official, and to allow any State to conduct a recall election to remove any of its US Senators or Representatives.

At the level of each State, we need the same thing, for removal of a bad governor, state legislator, or other state official. At this moment, the need for this at the federal level is priority number one.

Quite the contrary.

The UK, Germany, and other G-20 countries are cleaning house while the US, under George Soros and the Obama regime, is trying to drag the rest of the world, along with itself, down into the abyss.

See for yourself:

• Soros wants to collapse German economy with debt
  

  Transnational Totalitarian Progressive George is well known to be Barack Hussein Obama’s puppet master. He is a supporter of Islamic-Imperialist groups like Hizballah and Hamas. Soros despises American allies like Colombia and Israel and through his funding of International Leftist NGO’s. In short Soros is the perfect Bond villain, an evil sinister man who had no qualms taking the property of fellow Jews during the Holocaust.

  Barack Hussein Obama recently lectured the G20 nations to not balance their budgets. Instead he wants them to keep spending and borrowing. The reason for this is very simple, he is doing his master’s bidding. George Soros and his buddies collapsed the US economy in Sept. of 2008 so the Progressives can seize power. That was not enough however, now they want to bankrupt the whole world starting with Germany. Soros had the audacity to try to lecture the German government into spending more money… Read the rest.

• Defying opposition from within the Coalition, Tories to shut the open door for migrants
  

  Theresa May will unveil the country’s first ever cap on migrant workers on Monday – finally ending Labour’s open door immigration policy.

  Despite opposition within the coalition Cabinet, the Home Secretary will impose a strict limit on the number of non-EU work permits that can be handed out.

  Eventually, it is expected to lead to a sharp reduction in the more than 100,000 migrants and their family members who are told they can work here each year… Read the rest.

  In other words, the UK is working to roll back all forms of immigration, legal and otherwise, especially from Third World countries. The US should be doing the same.

• The Hill: US Isolated on Spending at G-20
  

  …Germany, France and Great Britain have all launched austerity campaigns designed to reduce public debt. They’re motivated in part by the Greek debt crisis, which continues to scare countries across Europe.

  “In the run-up to the summit, a clear plurality of G-20 countries has come up on the side of fiscal consolidation and not stimulus spending,” said Dan Price, a senior partner at Sidley Austin and former President George W. Bush’s “sherpa” for G-20 summits.

  Japan has also introduced a strategy to reduce its budget deficit, while Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is hosting the summit in Toronto, has challenged G-20 members to cut their deficits in half… Read the rest.

What does this mean?

Why can other countries begin to turn around, while the US seemingly cannot?

One problem is that the system of checks and balances in the US Constitution is broken. When we are foolish enough to elect a truly horrible legislature and President, we have no effective means of rolling back, or even of reining in, the abuse and the usurpation of power, until irreparable damage has been done. The Clinton Administration taught us that the threat of impeachment is toothless. The Supreme Court has too much power, and all too often, it uses that power to reaffirm unworthy laws and regulations as being Constitutional.

What now?

Since 1865, the States have feared to assert their right to annul any federal law or regulation that clearly flouts the Constitution. But that is beginning to change. We can only hope that enough citizens in enough States will realize that the federal government is not our protector, but a socialist tyranny that neither has nor deserves the consent of the governed.

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