While on vacation, both Obama and Putin enjoy a bike ride.
A Different View of Foreign Policy
by Ron Paul
As one who is opposed to centralization, I am wary of attempts to turn a grassroots movement against big government like the Tea Party into an adjunct of the Republican Party. I find it even more worrisome when I see those who willingly participated in the most egregious excesses of the most recent Republican Congress push their way into leadership roles of this movement without batting an eye — or changing their policies!
As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.
Our foreign policy is based on an illusion: that we are actually paying for it. What we are doing is borrowing and printing money to maintain our presence overseas. Americans are seeing the cost of this irresponsible approach as their own communities crumble and our economic decline continues.
I see tremendous opportunities for movements like the Tea Party to prosper by capitalizing on the Democrats’ broken promises to overturn the George W. Bush administration’s civil liberties abuses and end the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A return to the traditional U.S. foreign policy of active private engagement but government noninterventionism is the only alternative that can restore our moral and fiscal health. I am optimistic, and our numbers are increasing!
Original article appearing at ForeignPolicy.com
Under Siege in America
by Oliver North
“We’re under siege,” said rancher Ed Ashurst, as he pointed to where he had tracked the killer of his friend and neighbor to the U.S.-Mexican border. “Five years ago, we didn’t even bother to lock our doors. Now, my wife and I carry firearms everywhere we go.”
John Ladd is a fifth generation cattle rancher in southern Cochise County, Arizona. The southern boundary of his family property is a ten-mile long stretch of steel fence erected by the U.S. government. On the other side of the fence: Mexico. He told us, “Mexican drug cartels are running this part of America.”
The poet Robert Frost posited that “good fences make good neighbors.” From what our FOX News War Stories team documented this week, that’s not the case here in southern Arizona – where “the fence” on the U.S.-Mexican border remains unfinished. According to many level-headed, beleaguered Americans here, the fence is little more than a “speed bump” for drug couriers, killers, human smugglers and lesser criminals flooding into our country.
Continue reading . . .
Glenn Beck Restoring Honor Live Stream
Well, today is the big day for Glenn Beck and his Restoring Honor rally. And, as it is set to start at 10am (ET), you are able to watch it here live.
CBO: Extend Bush Tax Cuts to Boost Economy
by Donald Lambro
A surprising report from the Congressional Budget Office gives new support to permanently extending the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush—dealing a major blow to President Obama’s plans to raise taxes at the end of this year.
In a significant story that receive scant attention from the national news media, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf says that keeping the Bush tax cuts that affect upper-income taxpayers, small businesses and investors will give the weakened economy a “considerable” economic boost over the next several years and create jobs that will drive down unemployment.
Elmendorf’s conclusions were part of a CBO analysis released recently on the government’s record-breaking trillion-dollar deficits.
“Under that … scenario [keeping the tax cuts at their present levels], economic growth would be stronger next year; unemployment would be lower next year,” Elmendorf said.
CBO’s analysis gives the Republicans new ammunition for its midterm election agenda that calls for extending the Bush tax cuts—a position that has virtually full support within the business community, among major economists, and even a growing number of congressional Democrats, who have been hearing from beleaguered small businesses during the August recess.
Economic growth fell to 2.4% in the second quarter and some economists are projecting that the true rate of growth will be closer to the 1% range when the Commerce Department issues its revised estimate in the coming weeks.
CBO strongly reinforced this more bearish outlook.
“In addition, under current law, both the waning of fiscal stimulus and the scheduled increases in taxes will temporarily subtract from [economic] growth, especially in 2011,” CBO warned Congress.
In another sign of the Obama stimulus plan’s economic impotence, CBO is forecasting a mediocre 2% economic rate of growth in 2011, far from the more robust 3%-plus growth rate needed to make a dent in the unemployment rate.
Continue reading . . .
A “Summer of Recovery”
by Tad DeHaven
The White House’s misbegotten “Summer of Recovery” continued today with the release of another administration “analysis” that purportedly demonstrates the stimulus’s success in “transforming” the economy.
Vice President Joe Biden unveiled the report alongside Energy secretary Steven Chu and numerous businesses officials willing to serve as political props in return for Uncle Sam’s free candy. Biden bemoaned the nefarious “special interests” that were coddled by the previous administration. What does the vice president think those subsidized business officials attending his speech are called?
The money the White House has lavished on these privileged businesses isn’t free. The money comes from taxpayers—including businesses that do not enjoy the favor of the White House—who consequently have $100 billion (plus interest) less to spend or invest. Therefore, the fundamental question is: Are Joe Biden — an individual who has spent his entire career in government— and the Washington political class better at directing economic activity than the private sector?
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Rule of Law: The Great Foundation of Our Constitution
It was eleven years after the Declaration of Independence—and four years after American victory in the Revolutionary War—that a small group of delegates would convene in Philadelphia to create a new charter for governing the new nation. In order to comprehend this historic achievement we must first understand that this moment and the constitutional document that resulted were built on the great foundational principle of the rule of law.
The rule of law may be the most significant and influential accomplishment of Western constitutional thinking. The very meaning and structure of our Constitution embody this principle. Nowhere expressed yet evident throughout the Constitution, this bedrock concept is the first principle on which the American legal and political system was built.
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Soldier Spotlight
Army Guardsman receives Soldier’s Medal for bravery
By Sgt. Darron Salzer, National Guard Bureau
ARLINGTON, Va., (Army News Service, Aug. 19, 2010) — “An angel in disguise” is how Army Maj. Nathlon Jackson was described by Air Force Gen. Craig McKinley at a ceremony at the Army National Guard Readiness Center Wednesday.
McKinley, who is the chief of the National Guard Bureau, presented the Soldier’s Medal to Jackson, adding that “Soldiers like Jackson are what the National Guard is all about, people helping those in need.”
The Soldier’s Medal is the highest non-combat medal awarded for heroism.
On Jan. 11, Jackson, who is section chief for the Army Guard’s enlisted policy branch, was walking from the readiness center to her car for lunch, when she saw smoke pouring from a house.
“As I walked over to the house, I could smell that something was burning, rather than it being smoke from a pot burning in the kitchen,” she said. “I opened the mail slot with my hand and started to yell inside ‘hello, hello’ to see if anyone was home.”
A neighbor from across the street came outside during the commotion and told Jackson that someone was inside the burning house. She also provided Jackson with a key to the residence.
Jackson entered the home and proceeded up to the bedroom, where she found Shirley Rollins, who was overcome by smoke.
Rollins, who attended the award ceremony and who has lived in the neighborhood next to the readiness center for 62 years, said that she remembers nothing from that day.
“I remember going to bed the night before, but I don’t remember waking up to smoke,” she said. “Since I live by myself, nobody else was there, and the cat was gone, but neighbors … came to rescue me.”
During the ceremony, Rollins thanked an emotional Jackson for being such a wonderful person and thanked Jackson’s mother for bringing such a wonderful daughter into the world.
Humbled by the experience and all of the attention she has received since January, Jackson said, “You should help who you can.”
“It was a natural instinct for me to help Miss Shirley … you need to help someone in need and not pass them by,” said Jackson. “As Soldiers, that’s what we do and that is why I joined the Army National Guard.”
Dismantling America: Series 2
by Thomas Sowell
One of the few campaign promises that Barack Obama has kept was this: “We are going to change the United States of America!”
As in many other cases, those who were thrilled by the thought of “change” seldom seemed to consider whether it would be a change for the better or for the worse. True believers in the Obama cult assumed that it had to be a change for the better.
Now it is slowly dawning on more people that it is a change for the worse– runaway government spending, under the banners of “stimulus” and “jobs” is not stimulating anything except political pay-offs to special interests. As for jobs, the percentage of the population with jobs keeping on declining, even as the administration points to all the jobs it is creating.
It is of course not pointing to all the other jobs that it is destroying, whether by taking money out of the private sector or by loading so many mandates on employers that labor is made artificially too expensive for many employers to do much hiring.
Continue reading . . .
How did we get to the point where many people feel that the America they have known is being replaced by a very different kind of country, with not only different kinds of policies but very different values and ways of governing?
Something of this magnitude does not happen all at once or in just one administration in Washington. What we are seeing is the culmination of many trends in many aspects of American life that go back for years.
Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the institutions set up by that Constitution are enough to ensure the continuance of a free, self-governing nation. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what members of the Constitution Convention were creating, he replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
In other words, a Constitutional government does not depend on the Constitution but on us. To the extent that we allow clever people to circumvent the Constitution, while dazzling us with rhetoric, the Constitution will become just a meaningless piece of paper, as our freedoms are stolen from us, much as a pick-pocket would steal our wallet while we are distracted by other things.
Continue reading . . .
Ground Zero Rages On
There continues to be a great deal of debate surrounding the proposed Ground Zero mosque. But why? This should be an open and shut case. Yet it still continues.
For the most part, Obama could have ended this whole thing when he addressed it. However, not commenting on the wisdom left the issue wide open. His argument is still that this is a First Amendment issue.
It is, but it doesn’t end there. He must continue in his childish ways of things and try a new game of connect the dots. He is correct that the First Amendment provides for the freedom to practice religion. But, the buck doesn’t stop there.
When the president is sworn to office, he in summary says that he will protect and uphold the Constitution. By coming out in support of the religious clause, he forgets the first fundamental clause to protect the Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.
Yes, America was founded on the notion of freedoms. But it is mandatory to protect the whole of the People from outside attacks. All be it if those attacks should come from within, and funded and supported by nations that wish harm or utter destruction.
Which paints the obvious point that this mosque and those behind it and those that are willing to fund it should be investigated. After all, we took the time – at taxpayer expense – to investigate whether or not baseball players used steroids, or sports enhancement products for those politically correct. Why is it okay to investigate that but not investigate a terrorist funded church that will be a flagship training center on the hollowed grounds that thousands of Americans lost their lives? This is nothing but a slap in the face in the name of attack, conquer and occupy.