"This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Watergate hearings. For those of you too young to remember, back then the administration had an enemies list. They were spying on reporters, and they used the IRS to harass groups they didn't like. Thank God those days are gone forever." –Jay Leno

"A lot of critics are comparing President Obama to President Richard Nixon, which is unfair. Nixon's unemployment rate was only 5 percent." –Jay Leno

"Since President Obama took office, the Democratic Party has lost nine governorships, 56 members of Congress, and two Senate seats. In his defense, Obama said, 'Well, I did promise change.'" –Conan O'Brien

"Today the White House unveiled its latest high-tech weapon: the IRS audit." –Jay Leno

"Did you hear about this? The IRS has admitted they were targeting conservative groups. President Obama called it outrageous and said he would immediately have his Benghazi investigators look into it." –Jay Leno

"First it was Benghazi, then the IRS scandal, and now this phone records scandal. Remember the old days when President Obama's biggest embarrassment was Joe Biden? What happened to those days?" –Jay Leno

"It was just revealed that the Department of Justice secretly recorded the phone calls of AP journalists for two months. Obama promised reporters that the incident will be immediately investigated – by the Department of Justice." –Jimmy Fallon

"Mexico's economy has been on the upswing the last couple of years. They're getting investors from companies all over the world. In fact, Mexico is now home to 11 million undocumented Americans." –Jay Leno

"Over the weekend President Obama gave the commencement speech at Ohio State University. He said, 'I dare you to do better' — to which the students yelled back, 'No, we dare YOU to do better. We need jobs!'" –Jay Leno

"Yesterday President Obama spoke at Ohio State's graduation, and told students that it's their responsibility to make the world a better place. It got awkward when students were like, 'Wait, isn't that literally your responsibility?'" –Jimmy Fallon

"CNN anchor Carol Costello was robbed of her iPhone in broad daylight while walking down the street in Atlanta. Unfortunately it was on CNN, so there weren't any witnesses." –Jay Leno

"Bill Clinton was being interview recently, and he said that despite all the speculation, Hillary hasn't said anything to him about running for president in 2016. Though in fairness, she hasn't said anything to him since 1998." –Jimmy Fallon

"According to Forbes magazine, Al Gore is now worth more than $200 million. This is what Gore meant when he talked about going green." –Jay Leno

"New predictions claim that 42 percent of Americans will be obese by the year 2030. They say the only way to stop it is for government to step in. Oh, yeah, that will work. When it comes to trimming the fat and tightening your belt, who knows better than the U.S. government?" –Jay Leno

"Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is the guy who told his wife he was going for a hike and then went to Argentina to see his girlfriend. He was then exposed as an unethical, lying, cheating weasel. In a stunning comeback, he has been elected to Congress, where he'll fit right in." –Jay Leno

"Senator John McCain will introduce a bill that lets cable customers pick which channels they want to pay for. For instance, HBO would cost you $10, AMC would cost you $5, and NBC would pay you $200." –Jimmy Fallon

"A man arrested for shooting at the White House says he was upset over U.S. marijuana laws. Man, if only there was some way to mellow that guy out." –Stephen Colbert

"President Obama held a press conference today. He said he still wants to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, but he doesn't know how to do it. He should do what he always does. Declare it a small business and tax it out of existence." –Jay Leno

"All five living presidents were in Dallas today for the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. President Obama said he was happy to support the opening of the library. He should be. After all, Bush got him elected twice. Blame Bush on that one, sir!" –Jay Leno

“I dismiss the premise, the idea that these are scandals,” Carney said flatly.

Interesting viewpoint. In related news, Carney denied that he works for the Obama administration, denied that his name is Jay Carney, and denied that the earth rotates around the sun.

But in spite of Carney's ridiculous "dogs are not dogs" rhetoric, he still has a leg up on Eric Holder.

Called to testify before Congress about the Justice Dept. secretly seizing AP phone records, Attorney General Holder said "I don't know" to just about every pertinent question asked of him. Here's a sample of his pathetic responses:

The Attorney General recused himself from the leak investigation that wound up targeting the AP, so he had a handy way to avoid answering any questions about it when he was called before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

"I was not the person involved in that decision," he told Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the committee. "I was recused in that matter."

Nearly every time he was asked a question about the AP, Holder found some way to dismiss it. A sample of his answers:

"I am not familiar with the reasons why the subpoena was constructed in the way that it was because I'm simply not a part of the case."

"I do not know, however, with regard to this particular case, why that was or was not done."

"I simply do not have a factual basis for answering that question."

"Again, Mr. Chairman, I don't know."

"I assume he was, but I don't know."

"I don't know what has happened in this matter."

“This is both an ongoing matter and an ongoing matter about which I know nothing.”

Did it simply not occur to Holder to FIND OUT about the AP scandal prior to facing Congress ? Of course not. He knew full well what sort of questions he'd be asked. He is the head of the Justice Dept., and he is responsible for the actions of those who work for him. Holder was simply stonewalling. He should be fired and cited for contempt of Congress. This nonsense has gone on long enough. Every time these scandals pop up, nobody knows anything. Nobody is responsible for anything. This stinks to high heaven.

NBC's Lisa Myers reported this morning that the IRS  deliberately chose not to reveal that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups until after the 2012 presidential election. She said the head of the IRS had known about the targeting for a year. Watch the video at the above link for her entire report.

Now, guess what the acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller said when Congress asked him who was responsible for targeting conservative groups. Do I even have to tell you ?:

Acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller said indicated he did not know who was responsible for the targeting of conservative groups by IRS agents. ”I don’t have that name, sir,” he told GOP congressman Dave Reichert in today’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the scandal, which came to light last Friday. 

Reichert persisted, “Did you ask anybody?” 

“Yes,” Miller responded — he asked the senior technical adviser, Nancy Marks. 

“And what did Nancy tell you, who’s responsible?” Reichert asked. 

“That I don’t remember, to be honest with you,” Miller said.

Hundreds of conservative groups were targeted, and Miller can't even come up with one name of a person responsible ? Not even when he KNOWS this is what Congress will ask him ? This is another guy who should be cited for contempt of Congress (Obama already made him resign, even though he was going to resign in a few weeks anyway). Miller is clearly covering up.

It's time to hold the feet of these lying sob's to the fire. They are displaying incredible arrogance in addition to the corruption that happened on their watch. Every time they stonewall, the culture of corruption is further confirmed.

===

I will be out of town for the next couple of weeks. I'll try to check in, but I can't promise anything.

When the Benghazi talking points were scrubbed of references to an al-Qaeda affiliated group being behind the attack, and also scrubbed of the CIA's warnings about a coming attack at Benghazi, President Obama said he had nothing to do with it. He didn't know anything about it, even though the talking points were changed 12 times, and even though CIA chief David Petraeus said the altered talking points were "essentially useless" and were the White House's call. Obama also claimed to know nothing about requests for increased security at Benghazi being denied.

When it was discovered that the IRS had been improperly targeting conservative political groups for a couple years, President Obama said he didn't know anything about it. Obama said he just found out about the IRS's nefarious activities last friday, even though Obama's own Press Secretary, Jay Carney, said White House lawyers knew about the IRS investigation in April. It has also been learned that senior IRS officials knew about the targeting long ago.

Now we discover the Justice Department seized the phone records of twenty Associated Press reporters. Right on cue, the White House said it had  "no knowledge" of that event either.

It seems nobody ever tells Obama anything about the very government departments under his control. Obama apparently finds out about these things at the same time WE do, when they appear in the news. Have they done away with the Presidential Daily Briefing, or what ? Obama's advisors aren't on his staff, they are in television studios at ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News...but only if you believe the White House's "we know nothing, we see nothing" Sergeant Schultz routine. If Obama is indeed the reincarnation of Sergeant Schultz, what IS his job, aside from making speeches blaming everything on the Republicans ?

For four and a half years, I've been hearing from Obama apologists about how nothing is Obama's fault - not the record deficits on his watch, not the record debt accumulation on his watch, not the highest unemployment rates in decades, not the record levels of government dependency, not the downgrading of America's credit rating, etc. This President is responsible for nothing (except for the rising Dow-Jones industrial average. That was his doing).

Yesterday, Obama hung out with celebs Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel at moviemaker Harvey Weintstein's fundraiser, as part of his endless political campaign.

Maybe instead of schmoozing with the glitterati,  Obama should start hanging out with his department heads and find out exactly what's going on in his administration. He seems to have no clue. Fore !!!

The report said the IRS targeted groups with names containing “tea party” and “patriot” and that delays occurred in processing returns of conservative applicants, said the aide, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss information that has not been released to the public.

The IRS made no mention of targeting conservative groups in five separate responses to congressional inquiries between Nov. 18, 2011, and June 15, 2012, according to the TIGTA timeline.

The only reason there was an IG report in the first place was because of all the complaints from targeted conservative groups. The facts are, the IRS covered up their wrongdoings for as long as they could. When they could no longer hide what they did, they said "we apologize" over the phone, as if that was supposed to be the end of it. It should be only the beginning.

After top IRS officials discovered Glenn Beck was being harassed in particular, the IRS changed course...and went about the business of harassing conservative and libertarian groups in general. If wasn't only "tea party" and "patriot" that put the IRS bullseye on people's backs. There were other criteria as well. Also from The Washington Post:

[IRS] officials targeted nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution...The documents...described giving special attention to instances where “statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.”

Yes, we musn't criticize the government or educate the people about that Constitution thingy. Heaven forbid. That could interfere with the government's big plans for us. All that First Amendment, free speech stuff is so 18th century. That is even longer ago than Benghazi. Like Hillary said, what difference does it make now ? Those whiny conservatives are complaining about being singled out for persecution. They are just being partisan. Listen to Obama, who told us the other day to stop giving credence to those cynical people who keep warning us about government tyranny. That never happens...except when it does. Obama says the government is your buddy, your pal. No worries. You probably won't be harassed by the IRS or some other government body, provided you do and say the right things, of course. It's a trade-off. It's kinda like old Soviet Russia, but with the IPhone and XBox now. A great leap forward.

The IRS kept evolving it's targeting of political groups:

...six months later, the agency decided to target “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement.

Notice how the IRS kept expanding the number of people it targeted. Through all these different iterations of targeting, it never occurred to them to merely treat all political groups the same. What better symbol of bureaucracy gone wild ?

I'd be astounded at the behavior of the IRS, but I'm actually getting used to this type of behavior from our government. These assaults are becoming a regularity, which may be the most chilling part of all.

Next, the IRS is going to expand greatly in order to enforce the most complicated legislation in the history of the country, known as ObamaCare. That should work out just swell.

The Executive Branch of the federal government harassed members of the opposition. That's what happened when the IRS, which is under the scope of the Executive Branch (Treasury), unfairly targeted Tea Party groups prior to the 2012 presidential election.

This sounds an awful lot like...the second coming of Richard Nixon.

We're back to the days of - who knew what, and when did they know it ?

And naturally, the Obama administration isn't going to make the Benghazi e-mails public.

I wonder if there are any tapes.

I'm going to keep this short today, but if any of you haven't read the full transcript of the tortured press conference given by Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney (which took place after the administration's secret press briefing), you should. The entire White House press corps knew Carney was covering up and spinning. They asked him the same questions over and over again, because Carney wouldn't give them a straight answer. It was positively painful. I kept waiting for Carney to say "it depends what the meaning of the word "is" is".

Now I must go prepare for my coming IRS audit. I am not a crook.

Have a nice weekend.

Many say the answer is simple.

America spends a staggering amount of money on military/defense, far more than any other country in the world. In 2010, the USA represented about 45% of the world's total defense spending. According to Ron Paul, in 2011 we had 900 overseas military bases, and military personnel in 130 countries. America is the world's pre-eminent military superpower, without question. We provide an umbrella of protection for our allies not only in North America, but over Europe and Asia as well. We have been called the world's policeman, and rightly so. Since World War II, it has been America who sends it's soldiers into harm's way. Korea, Vietnam, the Bay Of Pigs, Grenada, Panama, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya.

All we have to do is stop.

Bring our troops home. Close our military bases around the world. Let our allies defend themselves. Why is it always OUR blood being spilled ? That's not fair.

If we withdraw from our role as protector of the free world and righter of international wrongs, we could save hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars PER YEAR. That military/defense savings could be used to shore up our unsustainable entitlement programs and maybe provide everyone with health care insurance to boot. Plus, our soldiers would no  longer be in harm's way. And without our military presence in the Middle East, maybe the Islamists wouldn't hate us so much, and we'd be safer from terrorist attacks here at home. It's win win.

I told you, the solution is simple. I hear people propose this solution all the time, and I have to say, it sounds good to me. Like most people, I'm sick and tired of war. Who doesn't hate war ? War stinks. If I could wave a magic wand and end war forever, I would. That would be great. I grew up on The Beatles. Give Peace A Chance. All You Need Is Love. That's what I'm all about. I don't want to fight anyone. I abhor violence.

So let's implement this simple solution and end America's hegemonic military reign. Sound good ? Cool.

But before we do, there are a few things to discuss. We musn't confuse simple solutions with simplistic ones. We must go into this with our eyes open. Ending America's umbrella of military protection has consequences. We can't pretend otherwise. What might those consequences be ?

Let's start with Asia.

Currently, we protect South Korea from North Korea. Without our protection, North Korea would almost certainly invade South Korea to accomplish it's numero uno desire for a reunited Korea. That would be the first major war as a result of our withdrawal. Lots of people would be killed. Sad, but no longer our problem.

Next, China very much wants to re-take Taiwan, but America has sworn to protect Taiwan, and China doesn't want to do tangle with mighty America. If we removed our protection, China would invade Taiwan. That would be the second war  sparked by our withdrawal.

Our ally Japan also lives under the umbrella of American protection. Without us, Japan would dramatically increase it's military spending, because Japan lives next to crazy North Korea, who is perilously close to being a nuclear power if it isn't already. China and Japan are not friends either, and there is a history of bad blood between those two countries. Basically, without America, it is extremely likely that the entire Asian peninsula would become destabilized and more volatile.

Next, the Middle East.

The Islamists would be OVERJOYED at the prospect of no American military power in the region. They'd literally be dancing in the streets all over the Middle East...and then they'd go about the business of destroying Israel and taking over every other Middle Eastern country. Iran would become the strongest country in the Middle East next to Israel. Iran would takeover Iraq, and then it would take Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, who would no longer benefit from the military protection of the United States. Once Iran's coalition was strong enough, and Israel was no longer being armed by the United States, Israel would be destroyed. Because the Middle East supplies oil to China, Russia, and the European Union, there would probably be major oil disruptions as the Middle East descended into chaos and war. The oil disruptions would likely draw China, Russia, and the EU into an ever-widening conflict as the economic reverberations shook the world. We'd lose lots of our oil supply too, but so what, we're no longer involved. We'll make do with (cough) wind and solar power.

Speaking of Europe, what do you suppose would have happened in Bosnia had we not intervened to stop the ethnic cleansing ? Perhaps everyone would have been "cleansed" by now. I'm just asking. I remember a few places where we didn't intervene. 70,000 have been killed in Syria so far, and millions have been displaced. We haven't intervened there. We didn't intervene in the Rwandan genocide, and about 500,000 were killed. There are plenty of other examples. It's a good thing we have the United Nations to keep bad actors in line, eh ? Oh wait, the might of the United Nations is primarily American might. Oh well. Let's hope the genocides don't get too out of hand. I'm sure a strongly worded UN resolution will stop North Korea or the Islamists. Well, maybe. Okay, it won't.

If we're lucky, all the wars that would be sparked by the withdrawal of American military might will stop short of World War III, though World Wars I and II indicate the odds aren't very good for pre-American power world stability.

There's your simple solution.

I'm not recommending any course of action here, of course, I'm just your humble reporter. I'm only pointing out choices and consequences. The people you should distrust are the ones who pretend there wouldn't be any consequences.

1) Five days after the attack, UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on the sunday television talk shows as a spokesperson for the Obama administration and falsely blamed the Benghazi attack on a protest over an anti-Muslim YouTube video. The Obama administration knew full well by that time that there was no protest at Benghazi. What occurred was a planned terrorist attack and nothing else. Why the Obama administration had Ms. Rice promote such a falsehood has been the subject of speculation. Many believe it was because the presidential election was so close, and the Benghazi terrorist attack disproved the President's contention that he had reduced the terrorist threat.

The Washington Post Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, reached the following conclusion:

It is not new that there was no protest. That’s been officially well established. It is also not new that many officials knew it was a terrorist attack.

What is new is that [Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks, the deputy chief of mission in Libya at the time of the attack] has put a human face on previous reporting. He also disclosed he spoke directly to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton the night of the attack, presumably relaying his conclusions.

The hearings also revealed an e-mail written by Elizabeth Jones, the acting assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, in which she recounted a conversation with the Libyan ambassador on Sept. 12: “When he said his government suspected that former Gadhafi regime elements carried out the attacks, I told him that the group that conducted the attacks Ansar Al Sharia is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.”

One generally presumes that top government officials have access to classified information and firsthand accounts not available to the media. But in this case either their judgments were colored by media accounts as well — or they took advantage of the media’s reporting to obscure some politically difficult news.

In my opinion, Kessler is being overly kind here. I find it hard to believe the Obama administration's judgment was "colored by media accounts". That's the tail wagging the dog. It was the Obama administration that was getting firsthand information from it's people on the ground, and from the Libyans as well. The media was mostly guessing, as it tends to do whenever there is a unresolved tragedy. Whistleblower Hicks said of Rice's disingenuous talk show rhetoric, "I was stunned. My jaw dropped. And I was embarrassed”.

2) Whistleblower Hicks said he was punished for questioning Rice's testimony. From the WaPo Fact Checker again:

[Hicks] described a phone call by an “upset” Cheryl Mills, State Department chief of staff and close confidante to Clinton, concerning his meeting without the [State Department] lawyer. And he said that when complained about Rice’s statement, asking “why she had said there was a demonstration, when we had reported that there was an attack,” Jones curtly gave him the sense “that I needed to stop the line of questioning.”

After that, he said, relations with his superiors went downhill, especially with Jones, who gave him “a blistering critique of my management style.” He eventually returned from Libya and was given a job that he described as a significant demotion.

The takeaway - One must not question the official dispatches of Glorious Leader, even if they are a steaming pile.

3) The State Department ignored repeated requests for increased security at Benghazi prior to the attacks. From The Hill:

Eric Nordstrom, the regional security officer posted in Libya at the time of the attack — which left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead — said State Department officials had asked for increased security in Benghazi in the months before the attacks. 

But he said those requests never made it to Clinton’s desk, and he slammed State’s Accountability Review Board (ARB) for failing to address the breakdown in communication within the department’s upper levels. 

Nordstrom suggested the board’s report attempted to protect higher-ranking officials, and specifically faulted it for not looking at the key role played by Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy in failing to deliver the request for more security to Clinton. 

He said a similar failure occurred in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, which killed 19 Americans.

“[The ARB] has decided to fix responsibility on the assistant secretary level and below,” said Nordstrom. “And the message to my colleagues is that if you’re above a certain level, no matter what your decision is no one’s going to question it.

“I look back and I see the last time we had a major attack was East Africa. Who was in that same position, when the unheeded messengers ... were raising those concerns? It just so happens it was the same person. The under secretary for management was in that same role before.

“There’s something apparently wrong with the process of how those security recommendations are raised to the secretary.”

The ARB report was ordered by Clinton and conducted by former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen.

My takeaway from this is, the ARB consists of the State Department investigating itself and basically exonerating itself from blame (a minor official had to resign), despite the fact that ignoring the requests for increased security resulted in the deaths of four Americans. You're doing a heckuva job, State !!! Or not. Something is seriously amiss there.

4) On the day of the attack, requests for U.S. military assistance at Benghazi were denied by the Obama administration. From the Christian Science Monitor:

[Whistleblower Mark Thompson, the acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism] described how his request for a specialized emergency response team was rebuffed by officials at the White House. He said he got the idea the officials weren’t sure what was happening in Benghazi and therefore weren’t sure if the “FEST” team of special operations forces and intelligence personnel was a suitable option. He also said he considered the response inadequate because “one definition of a crisis is you do not know what’s going to happen in two hours.”

From the Wall Street Journal:

The State Department has said that the [FEST] team, based in the U.S., wouldn't have arrived in Libya in time to make any difference. Daniel Benjamin, the head of counterterrorism at the time of the September attacks and Mr. Thompson's former boss, has said that the question of whether to deploy the team was posed early, and the State Department made the correct decision against sending it.

Meanwhile, Mr. Nordstrom, the security chief, testified that the Benghazi compound failed to meet security standards, even though it faced some of the gravest security threats...The three witnesses also testified they asked for more security before the attacks, but were rebuffed. Mr. Hicks said that at one point, he felt so vulnerable he asked diplomatic security officers if they would train diplomats how to handle guns.

Mr. Nordstrom said he told officials in February 2012 he wouldn't support occupying the diplomatic compound in Benghazi until security upgrades had been completed. A government official waived requirements that the Benghazi compound meet security standards, Mr. Nordstrom said.

This part simply boggles the mind. We have military personnel all over the Middle East, all over Europe, and in some 90 countries around the world, but we couldn't find anyone to go protect our people in Benghazi ? Come on now. I was born, but it wasn't yesterday. And as far as whether anyone could have arrived in time to help, you don't know that until AFTER THE FACT, and it's a pathetically lame excuse for not even trying.

The bottom line is, Benghazi was a huge screwup by the Obama administration, both at State and at the White House. Nobody could look at the facts and reach any other conclusion. This needs to be investigated, addressed, and resolved, so the same thing doesn't recur in the future...but all I see Democrats doing is playing cover-your-you-know-what, calling it a partisan witchhunt, another "vast right-wing conspiracy". What a sad state of affairs. Our dead patriots deserve much better.

That phrase should be defined in the dictionary as "the shutting down and regimentation of the human mind", because it is largely a device used by political hacks to control people and prevent them from thinking "impure" thoughts, as if that's possible. It isn't, and if it ever does come about, that would be truly frightening. It would result in a Stepford Thousand Year Reich robot culture that would make Jonestown look like Disneyland.

Like most bad ideas, political correctness isn't all bad. It starts out as benign, even helpful. For example, the most politically incorrect word in America is the n-word. It's so politically incorrect that I won't even use the real word. Instead, I use a euphemism, which is silly, because I am imparting the same exact meaning as if I used the real word. Still, I won't use the word , because it's offensive and racist given America's past history of slavery. That much political correctness is perfectly fine. We don't want to go around offending and degrading people.

But then we take political correctnesss too far. We start complaining about things like the names of baseball teams, such as the Cleveland Indians. An Indian refers to a "native American". I'm still trying to figure out how that is offensive. It sounds a lot more like we're honoring native Americans than casting aspersions on them by calling the Cleveland team the "Indians", and in fact, the Cleveland Indians WERE named after a native American ballplayer named Louis Sockalexis. That's an honor, but lots of folks have been "politically corrected" into believing it's somehow inappropriate. I don't get it. If it's improper for some reason to name a baseball team after a group of people, why isn't anyone upset about the stereotypically-named New York Yankees ?

Once political correctness takes hold, it spins out of control. We've been trying to figure out what to call black people for my entire lifetime. First, it was Negroes. Then it was African-Americans. Then it was blacks. The same thing happened with the Indians, who used to be called, ta-da, "Indians". Now, we call them Native Americans (which is no different), but we still call cowboys "cowboys". Why ? Shouldn't we be calling them 'Western Americans" or something ? And as long as we still feel the compulsion to needlessly classify and divide people by race in our 21st century melting pot,  can we please figure out for once and for all a racial designation for the group we call Latino/Hispanic/Spanish/Mexican/Puerto Rican/Cuban/etc. ? The U.S. Census still refers to them as "some other race", "Hispanic or Latino", or "Not Hispanic or Latino". The rest of us are white, black, Asian, Native American, or Native Hawaiian.

A political agenda invariably comes into play with political correctness, in an attempt to change one thing into something else.

Instead of  "illegal immigrants", they call them "undocumented workers", whatever the heck that is supposed to mean. It sounds like someone who lost their card key at work, instead of someone who entered this country illegally.

Instead of "abortion", it is softened to a "woman's right to choose", as if the woman is merely choosing Charmin over Cottonelle. Who could be against that ? Never mind the human life that was snuffed out before it even had a chance for a life, and don't even mention the fact that 40% of the lives snuffed out are Negro/African American/black. That isn't genocide, it's a "woman controlling her own body". Hands off those babies, you men. Your children are...none..of...your...business !?!?!?

A certain political persuasion gets very upset when Islamic terrorism is called "Islamic terrorism" for some reason, but they haven't come up with a good euphemism for that one yet. I'm counting the days until this certain political persuasion (liberals don't like it when I call them "liberals") figures out that Islamic terrorists could be viewed as "right-wing terrorists", due to their religious beliefs and ultra conservative social views. Maybe they have already realized this, but the fact that the Islamic terrorists are also a "minority" creates a direct contradiction in the politically correct liberal, I mean, "progressive", mind. In politically correct circles, minorities must be protected from the "majority" (read: white people) at all costs. Evidently, white people are the root of all evil, though I can't see how they are any more or less evil than anyone else. I must not have been properly "educated".

Speaking of right-wing terrorism, a commenter took me to task in my last post because I referred to Adolph Hitler as having a left-wing ideology. The commenter said Hitler was a right-wing capitalist. I present the following Hitler quote in rebuttal - "We are Socialists, we are enemies of the capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with it's unfair salaries, with it's unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions".

I submit that the "politically correct" view of Hitler as a right-winger is extremely flawed, to say the least. The above quote would put Hitler in the Occupy movement., not the Tea Party movement.

The leading wave of political correctness seems to emanate from California or New York these days (no coincidence). Here are some "loaded words" that New York City wanted to ban from standardized school tests - Divorce. Dinosaurs. Birthdays. Religion. Halloween. Christmas. Television. The NYC Dept. Of Education explained that it wanted to avoid words where "the topic is controversial among the adult population". This is political correctness gone wild. Are we reaching a state where our delicate sensibilities are so easily offended ? If so, maybe they should just give us all happy pills in order to keep our fragile psyches from having to face anything that might cause distress....or maybe that is already happening. Americans consume the vast majority of the world's prescription drugs (narcotics). Karl Marx once famously said "religion is the opiate of the masses". Now that religion is politically incorrect (in certain circles), is it somehow better that actual opiates are the opiate of the masses ?

Control. Regiment. Repeat. The keys to placing a people in submission. This brings to mind another Hitler quote - "How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think". I'll say. How else does one explain Nazi Germany ?

===

"Political correctness doesn't change us, it shuts us up" - Glenn Beck

"Political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism" - P.D. James

But perhaps the Reverend has a point. Who can forget all those right-wing mass murderers from the last century, like Mao, Stalin, Hitler (of the National SOCIALIST Party), Pol Pot, etc....well, okay, all those genocidal atrocities were committed by left-wing centralized control governments of the type the Reverend supports, not by limited government liberty advocates like myself, but why let facts get in the way ?

The other thing the Reverend won't tell you is, the only time an American government should have anything to fear from the people is when that government tramples the rights of the people. In such a case, it is the patriotic duty of the people to replace the government. Lest liberals begin hyperventilating over my words, I am not issuing a call to arms. I'm issuing a call to the ballot box, a call to citizenship. In a recent poll, 42% of the respondents didn't know Obamacare was the law. That's a sign of an uninformed electorate. If we don't safeguard our rights, we will surely lose them.

Let's take a moment to check and see if anyone is trying to trample on the rights of the American people. Ask yourself a few questions.

- Is anyone trying to remove your Second Amendment rights ?

- Has anyone forced you to purchase health care insurance from a private provider or face a government fine  just by virtue of your existence ?

- Has anyone advocated in favor of higher and higher taxes, further depriving you of your own hard-earned money ?

- Is anyone trying to control what food you eat ?

- Is anyone trying to control what you drink ?

- Is anyone trying to tell you what you may smoke and where you may do it ?

- Has anyone advocated in favor of amnesty for those who break our immigration laws, violating our national sovereignty ?

- Has anyone proposed making your medical records available to the federal government ?

- Has anyone trampled on the property rights of Americans ?

- Has anyone greatly increased the number of warrantless wiretaps of domestic communications ?

- Has anyone reauthorized the Patriot Act, which originally had sunset provisions ?

- Has anyone taken us to war in Libya without the constitutional authorization of Congress and in violation of the War Powers Act ?

- Has anyone advocated depriving people of their very right to life, which is the most fundamental right of all ?

- Has anyone made it a unitary executive decision to assassinate American citizens ?

- Is anyone issuing traffic citations via camera without any police officers present ?

- Is anyone about to put drones in the air all over America that can see right into your house ?

- Is the government irresponsibly consuming an ever larger slice of GDP, running up record levels of debt, and threatening our collective economic future ?

- Has anyone ignored the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution in order to further establish centralized federal control that violates the intent of the Founders ?

Hopefully, you know the answers to the above questions. If you don't, I suggest you find out. If you do know, you'll know that people who follow the perpetrators of the above are like lemmings being led off the edge of the cliff. I expect some of them won't even realize it until they hit the rocks below. I feel sorry for them, but don't be one. The future of freedom depends upon it. Freedom is NOT something to take for granted. The very nature of government is to impinge on freedom. Our nation is not the rule throughout history. The rule is tyranny and oppression. American freedom is the exception (and we haven't perfected it either). The more government we have, the less freedom we have, and the more dangerous the government becomes. It becomes our master rather than our servant. As Thomas Jefferson said, "My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

The FDA announced that a Plan B contraception pill can be sold over the counter to women as young as fifteen years old. Plan B is also referred to as the morning-after pill, and here's what it does:

If a woman already is pregnant, the morning-after pill has no effect. It prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg. According to the medical definition, pregnancy doesn't begin until a fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the uterus.

What Plan B does is PREVENT pregnancy, which is why we should support it. It is not really an "abortion pill", as some people have suggested. I repeat, it PREVENTS pregnancy. Therefore, it is greatly helpful in reaching the goal of eliminating abortions, which should be our moral imperative.

The FDA says Plan B is safe and effective, and if taken within 72 hours would cut the risk of pregnancy by nearly 90%. Sounds good to me.

So, how did anti-abortion conservatives react to the good news about improved Plan B availability ?

Like this:

Social conservatives had opposed any efforts to loosen restrictions on sale of the morning-after pill, arguing that it was important for parents and medical professionals to be involved in such decisions involving young girls.

The group Concerned Women for America charged that health officials were putting politics and so-called progress ahead of the health of children as well as women.

"It makes no sense that kids need parental permission to take aspirin at school, but they're free to buy and administer Plan B," Penny Nance, CEO and president of CWA, said in a statement.

Sigh. The problem with this argument is that by the time parents and medical professionals are all consulted about Plan B and a mature consensus decision is reached, it would be too late. The teenage girl would most likely be pregnant already. That's assuming the teen had the nerve to tell her parents she just had sex in the first place. These  consevatives are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. If the goal is to end abortions, which I most definitely think it should be, their position makes little sense. With a solution staring them right in the face...they turn against it. These people sound like the people who are against abortion and are also against birth control. Duh. I've had enough of these screen-door-on-the-submarine arguments, where all options lead to failure.

Unless the FDA is lying about the risks of Plan B, and I have no reason to believe they are, this sounds like a godsend (no pun intended).  Let's do something smart for once and support it. It sure beats the heck out of slaughtering 55 million more unborn beating human hearts while masquerading genocide as a "woman's right to choose"....doesn't it ???

Here's my rule - If liberals advocate it, it's probably bad for America. The rule holds true about 7-8 times out of 10.

Am I overstating things ??? Am I just a crazy right-winger ?  Let's check. This will be the first in a series of "Follow The Lemmings" posts, which will examine the effects of liberalism on this country. In fairness, liberalism, like most -isms, has it's positive aspects, which I do not deny. Liberals (not Democrats) have been on the right side of many civil rights issues (though they are on the wrong side of the one I'm going to discuss today). Liberals (not Democrats) were on the right side of civil rights in the 60's for the most part (until they created the welfare state and started passing discriminatory laws like affirmative action). Liberals were on the right side of women's suffrage back in the day. They are on the right side of equal rights for gays now. Liberals also have a positive influence of things like clean air and clear water, even though the EPA is near to becoming an unelected tyrannical fourth branch of government, unanswerable to the other three.

In spite of the good things liberals do, they are socialist economic nazis. That alone nullifies everything positive about them, and there is much more about them from which to run.

Today's issue is illegal immigration. Here's how liberals are trying to destroy America on that issue.

Liberals advocate amnesty for illegals, though they don't call it amnesty. They pretend it's something else, but it's amnesty. Liberals like to call things something other than what they really are. That's a textbook liberal misdirection technique. That's why they don't use the term "illegal immigrants". They use "undocumented workers", because that masks the illegality.

Amnesty will result in tens of millions more legal Americans at a time when our unemployment rate is already way too high, at a time when we already don't know how we're going to fund our entitlements with 77 million baby boomers retiring, and at a time when we are already racking up historic levels of debt. If there is a worse idea for America than bringing in tens of millions of new uneducated, low-skilled people and adding them to our already record entitlement rolls, I don't know what it would be....thus, that's exactly what liberals propose we do, and there are enough scared Republicans going along to make it happen.

Not only do liberals advocate ignoring our immigration laws (and Obama has blatantly ignored them, in violation of his oath of office), the nation's leading law enforcement liberal, Attorney General Eric Holder, has proclaimed that breaking America's immigration laws and then demanding rights of citizenship is a "civil right". This is the latest Orwellian liberal Newspeak, where a thing is precisely the opposite of what it really is. If you follow Holder's so-called logic, by extension the entire world could enter this country illegally and then claim they have the "civil right" to American citizenship. The idea is so preposterous that only a liberal like Holder could even think it. If we don't have the right to control our own borders, we aren't even a sovereign nation.

But it's even worse than that. Not only do liberals advocate against the sovereignty of the United States, and advocate against our nation's laws, they use American taxpayer dollars to advertise against them as well. If what follows doesn't shock you, then you're already a liberal lemming, brainwashed beyond hope. From Judicial Watch:

Judicial Watch today released documents detailing how the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is working with the Mexican government to promote participation by illegal aliens in the U.S. food stamp program.

The promotion of the food stamp program, now known as “SNAP” (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), includes a Spanish-language flyer provided to the Mexican Embassy by the USDA with a statement advising Mexicans in the U.S. that they do not need to declare their immigration status in order to receive financial assistance.  Emphasized in bold and underlined, the statement reads, “You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.”

Our own federal government is telling illegals to sign up for food stamps, in violation of federal law. How things could get more twisted and Orwellian than that, I don't know.

I keep hearing Obama, Holder, and others (like Rubio) talk about a "pathway to citizenship", as if it is our duty to provide citizenship to those who have come here illegally. Says who ? It most certainly is NOT our responsibility to reward lawbreakers. Is it our duty to give money to bank robbers too ? Of course not. This is how liberals try to convince you to accept their illogical and immoral positions. Besides, there already is a pathway to American citizenship. It goes like this - get out of the country you entered illegally, apply for legal entrance into this country, and get in line. That's how it works everywhere else, and that's how it should work here too, but that doesn't make liberals feel good about themselves, nor is it a sufficient vote pander for Democrats.

My only exception is for the children of illegals who were born here, the so-called Dreamers. They didn't violate any borders, and they had no choice in the matter. They should get to stay.

Now, it appears Assad has used WMD.  Both British and US intelligence say they have evidence of Assad's use of chemical weapons. If this is true, Obama's line in the sand has been crossed. Here's a statement from the White House:

"Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin. This assessment is based in part on physiological samples. Our standard of evidence must build on these intelligence assessments as we seek to establish credible and corroborated facts. ...

"Given the stakes involved, and what we have learned from our own recent experiences, intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient — only credible and corroborated facts that provide us with some degree of certainty will guide our decision-making ...

The "physiological samples" the Whiite House is talking about are commonly known as dead bodies.

The Free Syrian Army (opposition to the Assad government) criticized the White House's statement, saying there is no doubt Assad has used chemical weapons:

"Small scale? Varying degrees of confidence? The leaders of the Free Syrian Army are certain that chemical weapons are being used in Syria, so we find this whole statement odd,...We've noticed that the American administration only works according to its own needs,...We've started to believe that there is a conspiracy in the West to support the regime in its quest to oppress the Syrian people,...But if Washington 'truly' wants to help Syria, it will use this finding to start arming the Syrian rebels".

Welcome to the Middle East. No matter what America does or doesn't do, we end up being blamed.

My prediction is, if Assad's chemical weapons usage is corroborated, we will be at war with Syria. Not an all-out invasion type of war like iraq, but war nonetheless. Something along the lines of Libya, with UN backing. The White House referred to "the stakes involved" here. When those stakes include chemical weapons possibly falling into the wrong hands, the Obama administration will not turn a blind eye.

However, there's a big problem. In Syria, as with so much of the Middle East, defining the "wrong hands" for WMD is tricky business. As we already know, the Syrian rebels, who we officially support, include anti-American factions such as Hezbollah and Al Qaeda allied groups. Those are the ultimate "wrong hands" to acquire chemical weapons, because they could end up being used against America and/or Israel. If we help overthrow Assad only to see the Isalmists rise to power in Syria, it would be hard to call that an improvement. Imagine nerve gas being released at the Boston Marathon finish line instead of homemade bombs. The thought is almost too horrific to contemplate.

Here is a link to Syria's chemical weapons history. Within Syria's WMD history is a link back to Saddam's WMD, those WMD stockpiles that we all remember were not found during the American invasion of Iraq. However, there were a few things our media conveniently left out of it's narrative. Check this out:

===
In 2003 the US, Britain and others went to war in Iraq to make the world safe from Saddam Hussein and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Ever since, however, we have been told that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the proof of that is that none was ever found – surely one of the most profoundly illogical and imbecilic formulations ever to have fallen from human lips.

At the time, however, there were a number of reports that enormous truck movements across the border from Iraq into Syria suggested that some of these WMD had been moved there. Saddam’s Air Vice-Marshal Georges Sada, whom I interviewed, said he was absolutely certain that WMD had been moved from Iraq to Syria. All of this was however brushed aside for, as the bien pensant world has never stopped intoning with positively religious fervour, ‘we were taken to war in Iraq on a lie’...two official reports – Duelfer and Carnegie in 2004 – that supposedly exonerated Saddam of still having WMD by the outbreak of war ignored much information that indicated the smuggling of chemical and biological weapons from Iraq into Syria...In October 2003, the US intelligence community publicly pointed for the first time to transfers of WMD from Iraq to Syria. The Director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, James Clapper, said it linked the disappearance of Iraqi WMD with the huge number of Iraqi trucks entering Syria before and during the US invasion; based on satellite imagery, it assessed that these trucks contained missiles and WMD components...captured Iraqi documents record that the Russian ‘spetsnaz’ moved many of Saddam’s weapons and related goods, including chemicals used to make chemical weapons plus missile components and MIG jet parts, out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the 2003 invasion.

===

There's more evidence, but you get the picture. Things aren't always so simple as they'd have you believe, but "Bush lied" is an easier concept to grasp onto, I guess.

WMD threats. We're back to that. All that is old is new again. But now that I think about it, the threat was never old or non-existent, it was just swept under the rug for a bit.