This is why I Started This Blog

I didn't believe it even after I saw it. A man was arrested for reading the bible. the BIBLE! Not only that, but the cop arrested the guy for "impeding an open business" Which is bull since the courthouse was CLOSED AT THE TIME HE READ THE PASSAGES! He wasn't impeding anything!



Let's pray for these brave men who dared practice their freedom of religion in spite of a downright tyrannical police officer.

Motivation Monday, Even Though it's Almost Tuesday

Yeah, I know. I'm late. I haven't been so great at keeping the Rule 5 bit going, but I've had a life the past few months and haven't exactly had time to act the part of computer junkie as much as I'd like. Anyway, to make up for what I missed, here's a bit of Rule 5 inspirational music, with Krista Branch providing the hotness:

Kirsten Powers Continues Anti-GOP Narrative, but Without Mentioning Starving Seniors

I don't know why I keep coming back to the Daily Beast. Perhaps it's because most of the articles I read are linked from Hot Air, who doesn't tell you their source before you actually click on the link itself to find out what the article in question says. I've had to put up with reading articles by Meghan "Mean Girl" McCain, among others that make me grind my teeth whenever I see the ubiquitous phrases "tea party racism" or "tax the rich". Kirsten Powers's latest writing for the Beast is of the latter variety. I know Hannity allows her on his show to provide an alternate point of view during his Great American Panel, but come on. Surely you can find SOMEONE on the left who can actually make a coherent argument, or at least a truthful one.

Oh, I forgot. We're talking about the left here, who use sites like Wonkette to demonize down syndrome children in a shameless attack on conservative families. Never mind. I thought I was dealing with rational adults for a second there. Must have been temporary insanity. At any rate, to the meat and mead of the article:

It is tellingly headlined "The GOP's Budget Backfire". Right away you know this is not going to be a favorable or even objective piece on the budget deal  passed by the House of Representatives last week. It only gets better (worse?) as you go. Example:

Not only are Republicans wasting time with the Paul Ryan proposal, their cynical gambit on the even more drastic House Republican Study Committee came back to bite them. They may be under pressure to keep campaign promises about balancing the budget—but they're running a huge risk of electoral disaster with their overreach.


Overreach? You, Kirsten, want to talk to us, Conservatives, about overreach? Are you forgetting the years of 2007-2010, when Democrats had full control (minus Bush's veto power, of course, which he never used) of the purse strings and could have put the kibosh on any of this discretionary spending at any time during their tenure as the 111th congress? Seriously? Oy...


To be fair, at least Kirsten tries to use polls to justify her rehashed and recycled arguments. According to a gallup poll she cites for us, more people now support taxing the so-called "rich" in order to balance the budget for 2012. But look closely at the poll she uses. If you take a closer look and actually do a little math, you'll realize that the majority of those that support taxing those who make over 250k a year are democrats, as opposed to the majority of those who oppose that measure being Republicans. Nice try Kirsten, but that little lie of omission about a partisan split couldn't escape my eagle eye for journalistic integrity, and I'm just an amateur blogger. Do you really think that people smarter than me won't get it enough to realize your smoke and mirrors are just that? 


Gallup's bottom line about the poll shows:


Bottom Line

Americans mostly approve of Friday's budget agreement that will keep the federal government running through September, but few say it was a victory for either party. Whether this is because of the messy politics involved in reaching it, or because the $38.5 million in spending cuts was not, in fact, a complete victory for either party, is not clear.

Republican and Democratic leaders are making considerable noise about the federal debt, and Americans share this concern. President Obama is expected to spell out his vision for reducing the national debt in a White House speech Wednesday afternoon, and Republicans are expected to press for dramatic deficit reduction in the looming negotiations over raising the debt ceiling. With a divided Congress, the challenge will be, once again, to strike a compromise between Democrats' calls for higher taxes on the wealthy and Republicans' calls for deeper domestic spending cuts. At this stage, the Democrats' position seems to have the greater public appeal.

What's that you say? American's share this concern about the debt? Of course they do. That's not the question Kirsten answers with her article, however. Kirsten skirts that question by falling back into her "tax the rich" talking point delivered to her COD by the DNC. She also makes some noise about an alternative budget that would have cut spending even more drastically than the Ryan plan, but that budget didn't pass because at the last minute a few Republican voters switched from yes to no. What she doesn't tell you, but what the article does say, is that the more conservative RSC budget only has a few differences that make it more conservative than the Ryan plan. Via Right Wing News Watch, These are:


Discretionary Spending: The RSC proposal would trim FY 2012 total discretionary spending down to 2006 levels-a $141 billion cut from the last budget passed in 2010.  The subsequent 9 years of total discretionary spending would be frozen at 2008 levels-$933 billion annually.


Medicaid:  The RSC plan adopts the same laudable block grant and mandatory cap program for Medicaid that is proposed in the House budget.  The difference is that the RSC pegs its spending level to 2006, providing increases only for inflation.  Ryan’s budget increases the spending level slightly more every year.  Consequently, Honest Solutions achieves an extra $712 billion in Medicaid savings over 10 years.


Medicare: Again, the RSC plan takes Ryan’s premium support proposal and accelerates it in order to achieve more front loaded savings.  Their plan fundamentally differs from the House plan in three ways.  First, their premium support plan would only be optional, thus offering the Medicare recipient the option to stay on the current system or opt for the more free market oriented plan.  On the other hand, unlike the House plan, this plan would allow even current Medicare recipients to opt for the premium support program any time after 2017.   More importantly, the premium support option begins in 2017, well within the 10 year budget frame.  Ryan’s version would delay the reforms for an extra four years.


Our friend Ms. Powers, however, is more concerned with the fake "gotcha" moment that the democrats managed to pull on the Republicans at the last minute by organizing a unified "present" vote, which would have allowed that budget to pass. however, for reasons I personally have not been made aware of as yet, they decided not to pass that budget and instead went along with the Ryan plan. 


"I find the RSC budget draconian and counterproductive, but the difference between the House Republicans and me is I won't lie to you and tell you that I support it just to get credit for doing something I never wanted to happen."


No, Ms. Powers, you'll just use Gallup polls to distort the reality of what the public wants as an excuse to raise taxes on small businesses and upper middle class households; and on the two budget plans, to Ms. Powers I say...so what? Either way the reforms happen, and either way the reforms are drastic. The only difference between these two plans is HOW DRASTIC THE REFORMS ACTUALLY ARE! Also, either way the reforms are NECESSARY! Ryan's plan will have the same effect as the RSC plan, albeit on a slightly smaller and more drawn out scale, but the result will be the same: a balanced budget and a U.S. economy brought back from the brink of insolvency, which is what both sides claim that they want! 

Fleebag Supporters Resort to Criminal Activity

So the Wisconson Fleebaggers are so confident of their recall elections that they have to have their thugs break into where the petitions are being held and steal them:

Another Epic Win

Rand Paul continues to amaze and excite me. If he ever runs for president, thus far he's given me little cause not to vote for him. Via Real Clear Politics:

This...is...PAINFUL TO WATCH!!!

This video was painful, as stated in the title. Try to keep your brain cells alive as you watch, but don't underestimate the power of stupid ideas.

My Take on the Budget Deal, and Other Musings

John Boehner is getting a lot of flak for avoiding a government shutdown and striking a less than perfect deal to pass a budget that should have been passed months ago by the then Democratic majority. I think people are missing the point on this. Boehner has just cleaned up a huge mess left behind by his colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I admit, I'm not so happy about the budget deal as I would like to be, given that we had to give crucial ground in order to make substantial gains, but isn't that what compromise really is? Boehner and the Repubs fought tooth and nail to get this deal, did they not?

I have to say that I'm in agreement with JACG on this one. She has gone into some detail about how this amounts to a win for Speaker Boehner and the Republicans, but some just won't let it go. That said, I admire the sand of the ones who stuck by their principals and voted no in the hopes of getting a better deal. It's those kind of people we need to keep things on the right track. Mark Levin calls the budget deal a scam, but I'm not so sure. The fact that he seems to be the only one doing so seems to lend a little less credibility to the idea that we're being scammed. I don't know, as I don't know the full extent of the budget deal, but if Fuzzy has her head on straight (and I'm sure she does) then we won tonight, and we should be celebrating the fact that we got ANY kind of deal out of the jackasses and averted a government shutdown. Not that the world would have ended, but I honestly can't abide our troops not getting their due pay for putting their lives at risk day in and day out. Politico also reports that, in the words of Charlie the Clown, the GOP is "Duh, WINNING!".

The budget deal wasn't the only occurrence of note, however. Apparently protest god-of-the-left Bob Dylan doesn't like the fact that he's been named protest god of the left. Maureen Dowd apparently doesn't like the fact that he doesn't like it. All in all, if ol' Bobby Boy is pissing off Lefties, then I have a whole new respect for the guy. But what's even better is the method by which he's pissing them off. Apparently he's doing well and making money doing the thing that he's famous for. Horrors. Such a blatantly honest class enemy should be immediately strung up and sent to the gallows. Grab your torch and pitchforks!

And finally, the most absurd act in this three act play: China. Apparently the Reds aren't too happy with our Human Rights record. Why? Apparently because it outshines their own dismal chronicling of the very same subject. In light of U.S. disapproval of China's actions (cracking down on protesters, blogs, and others) in response to the recent catastrophe that the Middle East has become, the Red Chinese have dared reach down and find a pair, and asked We the People to step down as a judge on the Human Rights council. Right. Because China is SO MUCH BETTER at treating prisoners and dissidents well than we are *cough*bullshit*cough*. Tienemen Square ring a bell, anyone? Feh.

And that, dear readers, is my rant. Hope you enjoyed it, many more to come in the future.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a more balanced approach to the budget deal than my other sources. He calls the budget deal a truce, rather than a victory, but acknowledges that the GOP has gained both credibility and ground in the fight to cut spending and reduce the size of government.

Sounds like a win to me.

A Woman with Brains and Balls

Ever hear of a woman named Ann Barnhardt? I have, and you're about to. All you have to do is scroll down to watch the video at the end of my little rant here. But first, a bit of background information on the happenings that led to this video being made. We are all, I'm sure, familiar with Senator Lindsay "Grahamnesty" Graham, RINO-SC. He's the insipid little fool that said recently that he wished we could "hold people accountable" for certain types of speech. That it just so happened to deal with speech against the greatest threat to democracy since Hitler, Stalin and their goons were on the scene is just a coincidence I'm sure. NOT! For Graham's exact words, watch this little gem of a video I pulled from Youtube:



Yeah, you heard that correctly. He said that burning the Koran is speech that "inspires" the enemy. In actuality, what burning the Koran does to these people is DEMORALIZE them by making them so incredibly enraged at our infidel practices, that they cannot fight the war effectively! Inspirational speech is more like this.

Now, in comparison to Ronaldus Maximus, Linsday Graham is less than the shadow of a snake, no doubt. Especially where his wartime policies are concerned. Restricting speech so that our enemies won't be offended? Reagan would have laughed this guy out of the Senate if he'd heard such a ludicrous proposal as that!

But apparently others think this is a good idea. Of course, there are always those who think that less freedom for the people will lead to more security. Those people are woefully misinformed, and need to look at what big government has done to such countries as Germany and Soviet Russia before they go and advocate getting rid of the constitution.

Now, take the woman I mentioned above, Ann Barnhardt. This woman has more balls in her little finger than Graham has in his whole body, and the videos at the bottom prove it. She even gives her address and contact information, daring people to call her bluff and come after her if they're serious about not wanting to offend Islam. Oh did I mention that in the second part of the video she burns a Koran, which she has conveniently bookmarked with raw pieces of bacon? Absolutely incredible that someone would do something so shockingly un-PC these days. I know the libs are in hysterics over the pastor who originally proposed the Koran burning a while back, but if they saw THIS, they'd go absolutely nuts!

The best part is that each passage she has conveniently bookmarked is a passage that advocates either prostitution, rape of prepubescant boys and girls, or even beating your wife if she refuses to have sex with you. She even points out a passage in the very book the Islamists revere so much that calls Allah a "deceiver". Now, why on Earth would Muslims refer to their own god as a deceiver unless they believed it? And who else do we know of as a deceiver? Someone who whispers temptations into our ears and persuades us to only think of ourselves at the expense of our neighber? Oh, right *church lady voice*....could it be....SATAN? Well now isn't that special?

Watch the video for the full effect. Whether your head explodes or not will determine your place on the political spectrum:

For it After he was Against It: Holder Reverses Decision Regarding KSM Trial

Astonishment. That was the feeling I experienced just now, as I randomly decided to head over to Fox News.com and see what their front page story was. I've taken to expecting bad news from the media so much that the bright shiny nuggets of good news seem that much brighter and more valuable to me. Apparently, our esteemed AG, Eric Holder, has run into what the article calls "the buzz saw of reality" and has grudgingly accepted the fact that New York is not the best place to hold the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammad and his cronies. The article reads in part:

Because a timely prosecution in federal court does not appear feasible, the attorney general intends to refer this matter to the Department of Defense to proceed in military commissions," reads the order to dismiss signed by U.S. District Judge Kevin Duffy.

The decision to return the detainees to a military commission is a reversal from Holder, who announced in November 2009 that he would move the trials to a civilian court in the United States. Supporters said it sent the right message to the rest of the world that U.S. courts were the fairest and best venue for trials. 

Gee, ya think? Holder didn't exactly take this lying down, since he decided to rip into Congress, blaming their legislation  for forcing his hand and leaving him  no choice but to *GASP* abide by the will of the people of NYC:

Congress tied the Obama administration's hands in trying the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and his accomplices, Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday, announcing that he was left without a choice and has referred the cases to the Defense Department for trial. 

In stark language, Holder lambasted Congress for imposing restrictions blocking any detainees from being tried in the U.S., saying that the "unwise and unwarranted restrictions" undermine the U.S. in counter-intelligence and counter-terror efforts.

Not only that, but he also threw what in this humble Crusader's mind amounts to a temper tantrum, screaming about how he knows better than everyone else how to handle these things:

Do I know better than them? Yes. I respect their ability to disagree but they should respect that this is an executive branch function, a unique executive branch function," Holder said in a press conference.

And during a press conference to boot. Not exactly the height of gentlemanliness. Oh, and guess who else isn't happy! The ACLU threw their own little hissy fit as well:

ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero, which vehemently opposes military courts, said the Obama administration's decision "is completely wrong."

"There is a reason this system is condemned: it is rife with constitutional and procedural problems and undermines the fundamental American values that have made us a model throughout the world for centuries. Attorney General Holder's previous decision to try the 9/11 defendants in federal court was absolutely the right call but this flip flop on the part of the Obama administration is devastating for the rule of law and greatly undermines America's standing abroad," Romero said.

I've put the juiciest parts here for your viewing pleasure, but be sure and read the whole thing. At the very least it'll make you smile.

Al Gore Contributing to the Very Thing he Claims to Despise!

That's right, boys and girls. The self-proclaimed savior of the planet, Mr. Al "I'm Just Raising Awareness" Gore has been causing the very problem he claims to be trying to help solve. Via Jammy Wearing Fool:

Now how exactly will Al Gore's masterful invention go about destroying the planet? Why, by giving climate change "deniers" a voice to oppose the environmental wackos.

The planet may not be so lucky. It's increasingly apparent thatthe internet may bring about the death of human civilisation, beating out previous contenders such as nuclear holocaust and the election of George W. Bush.

The agents of this planetary death will be the climate-change deniers who, it's now clear, owe much of their existence to the internet. Would the climate-change deniers be this sure of themselves without the internet?

Indeed, how on Earth would all us country bumpkins who refuse to be swindled by the snake oil salesmen at the IPCC get along without their Orwellian policies telling us how to think, feel, and do basically everything necessary to live a normal life as a worker drone for the great Statist Revolution?

I particularly find amusing the idea that the mere election of The Evil One (AKA George W. Bush) was a contributer to a nonexistent crisis. I particularly like how he's embraced the "new F-ing tone" (as RS McCain calls it) by calling us all idiots literally from the first word of the article.

I could go on about how they need to see the error of their ways and simply realize that people disagreeing with you doesn't mean they're idiots, but I have a feeling that'll be too much wishful thinking on my part. My only source of solace is that people who write things like this make themselves sound so incredibly stupid  that no one takes them seriously. At least, no one smart enough to realize that differing opinions are a GOOD thing, rather than a bad.