Benghazi Witness: Special Forces Told “You Can’t Go” To Benghazi

In my opinion this is the biggest cover up and out right lie and for some reason it was permitted to happen. Help was prevented from coming. Do you understand that? I would call it accessory to MURDER!.

Situation this big you can bet your sweet bippy Skippy and Madame shrillery knew about it 3 minutes after it happened. If they were not told people would be fired. This is not a minor matter that minions handle.

If this does not send people to jail, notice I did not say just impeachment, then I would say we are just peeing in the wind and fooling ourselves by saying it’s raining.

In closing might I just say….They need to fry all their sorry arses.

———————————— ~ Steve~  ———————————————

From  Freedom Outpost

May 7, 2013 by Tim Brown

More is coming to light surrounding one of the biggest scandals of the Obama administration as Benghazi whistleblowers prepare to testify before Congress this week. According to CBS News, Benghazi witness Greg Hicks informed congressional investigators that “a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa.”

“I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them,” Hicks testified.

Sharyl Atkisson reports,

The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized. Hicks gave private testimony to congressional investigators last month in advance of his upcoming appearance at a congressional hearing Wednesday.

According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”

Obama administration officials have insisted that no military resources could have made it in time. A White House official told CBS News that, at the start of the attack, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “looked at available options, and the ones we exercised had our military forces arrive in less than 24 hours, well ahead of timelines laid out in established policies.”

The following is an excerpt from Hicks’ April congressional testimony which was released from the House Oversight Committee.

Q: But do you think, you know, if an F-15, if the military had allowed a jet to go fly over, that it might have prevented [the second attack]?

A: Yeah, and if we had gotten clearance from the Libyan military for an American plane to fly over Libyan airspace. The Libyans that I talked to and the Libyans and other Americans who were involved in the war have told me also that Libyan revolutionaries were very cognizant of the impact that American and NATO airpower had with respect to their victory. They are under no illusions that American and NATO airpower won that war for them. And so, in my personal opinion, a fast-mover flying over Benghazi at some point, you know, as soon as possible might very well have prevented some of the bad things that happened that night.

Q: The theory being, the folks on the ground that are doing these — committing these terrorist attacks look up, see a heavy duty airplane above, and decide to hightail it?

A: I believe that if — I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them.

******

Q: I just wanted to ask, you mentioned permission from the Libyans. Why is that important? What did you mean by that?

A: Well, it’s their country. And for an American military aircraft to fly over their country, we have to have permission from them to do so.

Q: So what would have been the risk of — do you think it would have been risky for us to send someone, do you think it would have been counterproductive for us to send a fighter pilot plane over Benghazi without that permission?

A: We would have certainly wanted to obtain that permission. I believe we would have gotten it if we had asked. I believe that the Libyans were hoping that we were going to come bail them out of this mess. And, you know, they were as surprised as we were that American — the military forces that did arrive only arrived on the evening of September 12. Yeah.

While this would not have saved Chris Stevens of Sean Smith, it would have probably saved the lives of Tyrone woods and Glen Doherty who were waiting on support that never arrived.

Q: Now, at this point, are you having communications with Washington?

A: I was in communications with Washington all night long. I was reporting all night long what was happening to Washington by telephone.

Q: When these Special Forces folks were told essentially to stand down, what was your next move? Did you have a recourse? Were you able to call Washington? Were you able to call anyone at this point to get that decision reversed?

A: No, because the flight was — the flight was leaving. And, you know, if they missed — you know, if the vehicles didn’t t leave when they leave, they would miss the flight time at the airport. And the airport — you know, we were going all the way to Mitiga. The C-130 is at Mitiga, which is all the way on the other side of Tripoli.

Q: What was the rationale that you were given that they couldn’t go, ultimately?

A: I guess they just didn’t have the right authority from the right.

Hicks indicates that there was not a denial from Libya to allow US armed aircraft, but rather that the Libyans would have been willing, but they were never asked. This is contradictory to the Obama administration’s claims.

                                                                  H/T  Freedom Out Post

http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/05/benghazi-witness-special-forces-told-you-cant-go-to-benghazi/ 

I Think Ben Swann is a Tolkien Fan

Listen for the play on words referencing Lord of the Rings towards the end.

Another Hollyweird multimillionaire rants against capitalism

Hollywood hypocrite Joss Whedon

The Hollywood Left are a whiny, tiresome, hypocritical bunch.

Screenwriter-producer-director-composer-occasional actor Joss Whedon has a net worth of $45 million. He acquired that enormous pile of lucre by creating and directing several successful television shows, most notably the cult favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse.

Whedon just hit the big time with the blockbuster movie Avengers, which is the third highest-grossing film worldwide and the highest-grossing 2012 film, earning more than $612 million in North America, as of July 10, 2012, and over $843 million in other countries, as of July 8, 2012, for a worldwide total of $1.455 billion.

TV and movie making, of course, are capitalist enterprises that had made Whedon a multimillionaire, richer beyond most Americans’ dreams. But Whedon wants you to know that he absolutely despises capitalism and instead lauds socialism as “beautiful.”

John Nolte reports for Breitbart’s Big Hollywood, July 14, 2012, that Whedon told an audience that he was raised by people on the Upper Westside neighborhood of Manhattan in the 1970s who thought socialism was a ”beautiful concept.”

Whedon is frustrated by how socialism remains a taboo word in American politics. He blames it on — you guessed it — Republicans who calls “socialist” Obama, his administration’s many initiatives, as well as laws that advocate increasing spending on social welfare programs. Whedon traces this horrible misuse of the word “socialism” to — you guessed it — Ronald Reagan.

Whedon hysterically laments: “We are watching capitalism destroy itself right now. [America is] turning into Tsarist Russia [and] we’re creating a country of serfs. We have people trying to create structures and preserve the structures that will help the middle and working class, and people calling them socialists. It’s not Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal […] it’s some people with some sense of dignity and people who have gone off the reservation.”

Nolte wryly notes that since Whedon “is probably worth somewhere around a gajillion dollars,” he’s “obviously talking about socialism for, you know, other people.“

Nolte then challenges Whedon to walk the talk:

“Good heavens, there are probably a hundred thousand people living in poverty around Los Angeles — living on the streets, waiting tables, parking cars — waiting and working and hoping for a taste of the success Joss Whedon’s enjoyed. You know, the people Whedon is obviously referring to when he speaks of serfs.

I say, tear down those studio walls! Open those studio gates! Enough of Hollywood meritocracy! Spread the wealth!

It’s time to produce screenplays written by nobodies and cast actors who aren’t very good.

It’s time to pay gaffers and production assistants and wardrobe and make-up personnel the same amount of money as, well, Joss Whedon makes!

Lead by example, Joss.”

Hey, Whedon. I used to like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I will never watch it again, nor will I watch Avengers when it comes out on DVD. By boycotting you, I’m really just helping you to be less of a Big Fat Filthy Rich Capitalist Pig.

~Eowyn

Federal Government Apparently Spying on Joseph Farah

Via wnd.com:

Farah: ‘Spy drone’ buzzed my home

‘They will be at war, we will be hunted down’

by Chelsea Schilling

His private property was scouted by a drone that sounded “like a lawnmower buzzing over my head,” WND Editor and CEO Joseph Farah revealed on the July 5 Alex Jones Show.

“I’m taking my dog for a walk and guess what I see right over the tree line right above my head is a drone,” he said. “I don’t live in the city, I don’t live in a populated area, I live in one of the most rural places you could possibly live in Northern Virginia and there could only be one thing that this drone was spying on and that would be me, that would be my property because there’s just nothing else around except woods and deer.”

Farah joked that the drone might have been spying on him because he qualifies as a “terrorist” in a new Department of Homeland Security report that defines “extreme right-wing” terrorists as Americans who are “reverent of individual liberty.”

“We’ve got our work cut out for us. More and more, I realize that the liberty lovers out there really have to stick together,” he urged. “Fundamentally, we’ve got to stick together, or we’re going to hang together, as our founders said.

“Look – this is the first term – if he’s re-elected it’s going to be war – they will be at war – we will be hunted down like dogs, keep that in mind, that’s what the stakes are,” warned Farah.

You will find the rest of the article here, along with associated video.

——————————————————————-

This is not merely chilling, but downright terrifying when you consider the capabilities these drones provide the government, and I am not referring to just surveillance, either.

Joseph Farah is a private citizen, and as such has the exact same constitutional rights and protections all Americans have enjoyed for well over 200 years.

His startling revelation should have every conservative and libertarian in congress screaming from the rooftops, as what makes them so confident they themselves are exempt from the reach of Big Sis and her shiny new bin of toys?

I fear we have all but lost the America we all grew up in, as what we have now is no-longer recognizable to me.

-Dave 

(h/t: my buddy Earl)

Holder’s Election Tampering Machine Now Targeting Georgia

Via the AJC:

U.S. Justice Department challenges Georgia’s runoff calendar

1:26 pm June 22, 2012, by jgalloway

The U.S. Justice Department is threatening a legal challenge to the way that Georgia conducts federal – i.e., congressional — runoff elections, declaring that the state doesn’t give enough time for members of the military overseas to receive and return ballots.

Federal law requires that ballots be available to overseas personnel at least 45 days before the vote. That would require ballots for an Aug. 21 primary runoff to be issued by July 7 – or three weeks before the first round of voting.

Read the original notice, received last week, here. To make sure overseas votes are counted, the DOJ has proposed a consent order – click here to read it — that would require the state to hold off declaring official winners of an Aug. 21 primary runoff by seven working days, until Aug. 31. (A similar cushion would be added to any Dec. 4 general election runoff that involves federal office.)

Secretary of State Brian Kemp has declared he won’t agree to the DOJ demands, and implies that the action is simply an attempt by a Democratic administration to muddy a red state’s electoral affairs. From a statement:

Three days after sending notification of the DOJ’s authorization to sue the State of Georgia, the DOJ sent a proposed consent decree for the State to execute with the understanding that the DOJ would file the consent decree simultaneously with the DOJ’s lawsuit in federal court.

If the DOJ was earnest, they would have previously contacted us about their concerns rather than sending a notice of a lawsuit a month before the Primary Election. Georgia is literally in the middle of the 2012 Primary. Currently, ballots have been printed and absentee voters (military and overseas included) are voting, while the DOJ is attempting to twist the State’s arm into agreeing to a consent decree, the terms of which would place unnecessary stresses on the elections administration process, before even filing the lawsuit.

The DOJ has not previously expressed concerns about Georgia’s compliance with the MOVE Act, or Georgia’s ability to transmit absentee ballots to UOCAVA voters. In fact, the DOJ approved Georgia’s timing for run-off elections in 2005 after the General Assembly altered prior election laws.

Bottom line: If the DOJ gets all that it asks for, we could have a significant delay in a declared winner in two congressional races – the new 9th District and the 12th District. It makes little difference in the 9th District. There is a Democrat, Gainesville attorney Jody Cooley, but the district is very, very weighted toward the GOP.

But the Republican race for the 12th District is a contest to challenge Democratic incumbent John Barrow of Augusta. And a delayed or confused GOP finish could work to Barrow’s advantage.

- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider

-End

Unfortunately, Mr. Galloway left a great deal of relevant information out of his article, but to be fair, this story is just coming out today, and no one is really reporting on it as yet.

Several things I do know:

1. This is not an attempt by the State of Georgia to disenfranchise the votes of our military members.
2. The Justice Department sued the state in 2005, the result of which is the policy it has had in place ever since.
3. The absentee ballots for the primary have already been mailed out – and Holder’s goons know this.

As more about this comes out in the coming days, I will be researching the additional information and posting accordingly.

I am not yet 100% sure what the lying, corrupt Eric Holder has up his sleeve concerning my home state, but I am beyond a little confident it is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

Given what has unfolded concerning Arizona, Florida, and now Georgia,  I am of the belief that this worthless POS from Hell will stop at nothing to help rig the 2012 election for the Dear Ruler in November.

Stay tuned.

-Dave 

(h/t: Erick Erickson via the Neal Boortz Radio Show)

Obama: Killer of Jobs, Divider of Races, Out-of-Control Spender and Now Destroyer of Forests

How Obama Bureaucrats Fueled Western Wildfires

By Michelle Malkin  •  June 20, 2012 01:12 AM

High Park Fire, image via InciWeb

My fellow Coloradans have endured a terrifying and miserable summer so far. Wildfires have ravaged the state. Thousands have been evacuated. Open burning has been banned. Air quality is oppressive. Dry weather and strong winds aren’t helping the front-line personnel trying to contain the blazes. And the season has only just begun here and in across the West. Sean Paige, who runs the invaluable MonkeyWrenchingAmerica.com site, first alerted me to the fateful decisions made by the Obama administration last year that effectively poured fuel on the 2012 Western wildfires. Read my column below and weep. And then make sure you do all you can to 1) help the victims; 2) press the feds for answers about the government’s shrinking aerial tanker fleet, and 3) replace the negligent bureaucrats and their bosses with competent officials who put the core public safety duties of government first instead of last.

***

How Obama Bureaucrats Fueled Western Wildfires
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The smell of singed air here is inescapable. Less than 50 miles west of my neighborhood, the latest wildfire has spread across 1,100 acres. It’s the fifth active blaze to erupt in our state over the past month. But ashes aren’t the only things smoldering.

The Obama administration’s neglect of the federal government’s aerial tanker fleet raises acrid questions about its core public safety priorities. Bipartisan complaints goaded the White House into signing a Band-Aid fix last week. But it smacks more of election-year gesture politics: Too little, too late, too fake.

Ten years ago, the feds had a fleet of 44 firefighting planes. Today, the number is down to nine for the entire country. Last summer, Obama’s U.S. Forest Service canceled a key federal contract with Sacramento-based Aero Union just as last season’s wildfires were raging. Aero Union had supplied eight vital air tankers to Washington’s dwindling aerial firefighting fleet. Two weeks later, the company closed down, and 60 employees lost their jobs. Aero Union had been a leader in the business for a half-century.

Why were they grounded? U.S. Forest Service bureaucrats and some media accounts cite “safety” concerns. But as California GOP Rep. Dan Lungren noted in a letter obtained by reporter Audrey Hudson of the conservative D.C. newspaper Human Events last year, a Federal Aviation Administration representative said it was a contractual/compliance matter, not safety, that doomed Aero Union’s fleet.

“I am deeply troubled by the Forest Service’s sudden action,” Lungren warned, “particularly as California enters into the fire season. Our aerial firefighting fleet is already seriously undercapitalized.” Both the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General have been critical of the Forest Service’s handling of the matter. All of this has been known to the Obama administration since it took the reins in 2009.

Nine months after Lungren’s warning, the deadly High Park fire in Larimer County, Colo., claimed a grandmother’s life, destroyed 189 homes and scorched nearly 60,000 acres. Arizona, New Mexico, Washington and Wyoming also have battled infernos this summer.

After months of dire red flags from a diverse group of politicians ranging from Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry and Arizona GOP Sen. Jon Kyl to Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and New Mexico Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman, President Obama finally signed emergency legislation last week to expedite the contracting process. Obama will borrow planes from Canada and provide $24 million for new aerial tanker contracts.

But the money won’t come until next year, and the dog-and-pony rescue moves will not result in any immediate relief. “It’s nice, but this problem isn’t fixed with a stroke of the pen,” former Forest Service official and bomber pilot Tony Kern told the Denver Post this week. “You need to have the airplanes available now.” Veteran wildland firefighter and blogger Bill Gabbert of WildfireToday.com adds: “The USFS should have awarded contracts for at least 20 additional air tankers, not 7.”

Imagine if Obama’s Forest Service had been a private company. White House eco-radicals would be rushing to place their “boots on the necks” of the bureaucrats who made the fateful decision to put an experienced aerial tanker firm out of business as wildfires raged and the available rescue fleet shrunk.

“The Obama administration is scrambling now to help ensure the Forest Service has the air assets it needs to fight the ongoing inferno,” Colorado free-market environmental watchdog Sean Paige reported at MonkeyWrenchingAmerica.com last week. “But the crisis is bound to raise questions not just about whether the cancelled contract created additional weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but about what the administration has been doing over the past three summers to shore-up the service’s air fleet.”

Where there’s smoke swirling over Team Obama, there are usually flames of incompetence, cronyism and ideological zealotry at the source. The ultimate rescue mission? Evacuating Obama’s wrecking crew from the White House permanently. November can’t come soon enough.

Who’s to Blame for the Southwest’s Wildfires?

by
Caren Cowan

June 23, 2011

The ironies of “be careful what you ask for” have never been clearer — despite the smoky haze in Albuquerque and throughout New Mexico and Arizona. So far, some 700,000 acres have burned in just two fires, as a direct result of the federal government’s inability to manage forests in the Southwest. At the same time, the radical environmental groups who are responsible for these catastrophic fires are also involved in hearings in New Mexico on air quality — and demanding expensive “pollution” controls on the suppliers of the state’s electricity.

The connection between the radical environmental groups and these life-threatening fires is easy to make. Radical groups like WildEarth Guardians (WEG) (formerly Forest Guardians) and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) oppose all management and uses of national forests, including timber production (thinning) and livestock grazing. When national forests are not managed, they burn with intensive fury, killing wildlife, their habitats, jobs, communities, and part of our national heritage. The CBD and WEG claim they are trying to take America back to the way it looked prior to European settlement; but Native Americans also managed the landscape, so the attempt to eliminate human existence is not realistic, nor is it healthy for our national forests.

Now, as a result of the inability to manage national forests, the damage that has been done to air quality in New Mexico because of these and other fires will take months, if not years, to repair. Pet owners are now being asked to use caution in exercising their pets. For those with respiratory problems, air quality in Albuquerque and other areas is literally life-threatening.

Advertisement

For nearly two decades the US Forest Service (USFS) has spent much of its time and our taxpayer dollars fighting so-called environmental groups in litigation rather than pursuing common-sense forestry and land management practices that have been mandated in federal law. Rather than managing our region’s forests for health and multiple uses, the USFS has been forced to nearly eliminate economic use and put at risk the wildlife populations that are supposed to be so near and dear to groups like the WEG and CBD.

These groups who have filed hundreds of lawsuits in New Mexico and Arizona and collected millions of taxpayer dollars to stop the USFS from managing for healthy forests claim to be doing good in the name of species like the Mexican spotted owl, the Mexican wolf, the spikedace, and the loach minnow. The list is almost endless. In every case, the answer the WEG and the CBD have called for, and often gotten, is the removal of management and economic activity such as logging, mining, and ranching.

Little seems to have been learned from the Rodeo-Chediski Fire in Arizona in 2002 — when most of the area’s habitat for the Mexican spotted owl was charred beyond recognition. Rather than understanding the horrors of their actions in removing logging and grazing that naturally keep the fuels that feed the past decade’s catastrophic fires, these groups have filed more lawsuits, which keep the fire-ravaged areas from being rehabilitated. Natural resources that could be salvaged go unused.

The Mexican wolf, a species that has cost the American taxpayer millions of dollars and is on the verge of collapse, is further threatened by these ongoing catastrophic wildfires. According to the federal government, the Wallow Fire has already consumed the wolf habitat in Arizona. The habitat in New Mexico is now in the line of fire. How many wolves have survived the fire to this point? There is no answer to that question and there is unlikely to be one for time to come. However, it is not unreasonable to expect that wolves that have received millions of dollars in federal and state funding have been lost.

Even the availability of electric generation across many western states is at risk as the Wallow and Horseshoe fires indiscriminately race across landscapes that house power lines feeding homes and businesses from Texas to California. Despite the WEG’s hearing and press releases about potential pollution for electricity generation, the air quality that New Mexico and Arizona are suffering today can be laid directly at the feet of the WEG.

So that there is no misunderstanding, natural fire is not always bad. But when the fuel load is not controlled — and it has not been for decades — it becomes violent and dangerous to animal and man alike. In the mid 1990s, one Arizona forestry specialist noted that even at that point, the fuel load was comparable to setting a match to thirty oil tankers per acre. Over the past fifteen years, that number has probably increased tenfold. And it is one thing when fires are “natural” — but in this case, the fires are believed to be intentionally set by drug backpackers trying to evade US Border Patrol.

Whether the issue is air quality, forest management, or productive natural resource use, it is time for the citizens of this nation to stand up and take control of our forests back from radical environmental groups. It is time to stop paying these groups to destroy our treasured forests and their wildlife — not to mention the people who live, work, and play there.

Reprinted from PJ Media

Two separate stories that point out hypocrisy, ineptitude and downright stupidity of the Obama administration and the criminally insane radical environmentalist movement. Hundreds of thousands to millions of acres of forest that burn every year, mostly thanks to eco-nuts that sue to prevent logging and other measures to sucessfully manage our forests and prevent these massive wildfires

Tom in NC 

The Tyranny of the Watermelons

As a general rule, I usually refrain from posting things here at FotM I find on The Drudge Report, as most all political and news junkies hit that site before the chair in front of their computer is even warm.

As such, I tend to stay off the proverbial beaten trail, as it were, and look for things that may not always make the front pages of the nation’s newspapers, perhaps not even make the “A” section, but that do have a profound impact on our freedoms and liberties.

I do not worry all that much about reaching the Entertainment Tonight/People Magazine crowd, nor the American Idol zombies, nor those who get their “news” from the alphabet networks, as they are too illiterate to even visit sites such as this. And even if they are functionally literate and somehow manage to stumble in here, they do not possess the linear logic to comprehend what they are reading, and often that is when their inner troll surfaces.

What follows is one of the occasional exceptions, as it somewhat mirrors a previous post concerning the increasingly tyrannical behavior of the federal, unelected bureaucrats who have acquired a great deal of power over us, yet apparently answer to no one.

Via humanevents.com (illustrations are mine):

Summertime Blues
by Audrey Hudson
04/23/2012

Planning a vacation this summer to Miami’s Biscayne Bay for a little fishing?

Think again, because the National Park Service wants to set aside a large swath of the pristine area as a marine reserve zone, so you might have to leave the fishing poles at home. And the boat.

Perhaps horseback riding is more your speed and the family plans to ride through California’s Sequoia or Kings Canyon National Parks? Sorry, but all of the permits were pulled for those activities this summer.

Or maybe you just want to lounge on the soft sands of North Carolina’s Outer Banks and read a novel, fly a kite with the kids, toss a Frisbee to the dog, and watch dad catch some fish?

No, no, no and no.

Beachcombers along specific stretches of those legendary shores are seeing signs telling them to leave their kites and pets at home, and to watch where they step.

“Leave no footprints behind. Walk in water where footprints wash away,” read the signs posted in February by federal officials.

Beaches that once welcomed fisherman to drive up to the water’s edge are also off-limits to the vehicles, and so is fishing.

These vacation destinations are all national parks that once encouraged such recreational uses and enjoyment but their new “no trespassing” attitudes have angered the local communities, and some in Congress as well.

In March, Rep. Walter Jones (R–N.C.) challenged the restrictions imposed by the beach signs, which were the result of battles with environmentalists to protect certain species.

The park service that operates the Cape Hatteras National Seashore pledged to replace them, and the new signs will read: “Walk near water’s edge. Stay below high tide line.”

Still not allowed: kites, pets, vehicles, or fishing. Sunbathing is permissible if you don’t mind getting hit by the waves every few minutes.

 Beach access

“The federal government needs to remember that Cape Hatteras was established to be a recreational area for the American people,” Jones said. “But taxpayers can’t recreate without access to the beach. The goal of management ought to be a balanced approach between visitor access and species protection.”

Roping off national parks to the public and limiting opportunities for recreation, which in some cases were at the request of environmental groups, is a growing trend that lawmakers say they will examine during an oversight hearing of a House Resources subcommittee on April 27.

Florida’s Biscayne National Park is one of the largest urban recreational fishing and boating parks in the United States, but federal park employees say the coral reef is declining; so, boating and fishing must be restricted in certain areas.

Florida Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart and David Rivera are challenging the proposed rule, which would close off 20 percent of the park to boating and fishing.

“The park service appears to have decided that it knows best, and that allows it to ignore the public in the pursuit of its own notions of sound conservation,” a group of Florida marine and fishing organizations said earlier this month in a letter to the editor of Soundings Trade Only Today.

You will find the rest of the article at this link.

It is refreshing, for a change, to see that at least some republicans are questioning this insanity.

The only question is, will there be enough to matter?

-Dave 

(h/t: drudge.com)

9.1% jobless. What economic recovery?

Yesterday I heard an anchorperson on one of the alphabet TV networks enthuse, once again, about the economy getting better!!!!!!

That’s a lie.

The U.S. economy is getting worse.

This just in from Gallup, the jobless rate is now 9.1%;

“U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, increased to 9.1% in February from 8.6% in January and 8.5% in December.”

“In addition to the 9.1% of U.S. workers who are unemployed, 10.0% are working part time but want full-time work. This percentage is similar to the 10.1% in January, but is higher than the 9.6% of February 2011.”

Gallup adds the 9.1% jobless to the 10% who want full-time work but can only find part-time work, which makes the real unemployment rate a whopping 19.1%.

And if you add to the 19.1% figure the 88 million Americans who are long-term unemployed and are no longer even looking for work, then America’s true unemployment rate is even higher.

Here’s a hint: In January 2012, the percentage of adults participating in the U.S. labor market fell to 63.7%, the lowest level since May 1983.

~Eowyn

Barack Hussein Obama’s War on Christianity

Via washingtontimes.com (emphasis is mine):

KUHNER: Obama threatens religious liberty

Mandating contraception coverage violates the Christian conscience

By Jeffrey T. Kuhner

Like many leftists, President Obama has deep contempt for Christianity and democracy. This is why his administration has declared war on the Catholic Church and religious liberty.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently went ahead and approved last year’s decision to mandate that many religious organizations provide health insurance plans to their employees that include contraception, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization coverage – and this must be done without charging a co-pay. In other words, Mr. Obama has done something that is ominous and unprecedented: compelling religious groups to embrace and subsidize free birth control. Catholic universities, hospitals and charities must either betray their fundamental social teachings or drop insurance coverage for their employees, thereby triggering massive financial penalties under Obamacare. The choice is simple: Abandon Catholic doctrine or go out of business.

The ruling will not simply devastate the Catholic heath care system and elaborate social network, which includes soup kitchens, adoption centers, immigrant services and parochial schools. It directly assaults and violates the conscience rights of Catholics. The church teaches that contraception is a sin, an immoral attempt to obstruct God’s will of when and whether human life should be created. It is the ultimate embodiment of pride: man trying to act as God. That is why opposition to birth control is at the heart of the Catholic faith.

The church teaches that the primary purpose of sexual activity within the sacred bonds of marriage is procreation – to perpetuate humanity from one generation to the next. For nearly 1,500 years, such thinking underpinned the Christian West. That was then; this is now. Since the 1960s, modern society is obsessed with contraception, abortion and sexual hedonism. The results have been declining birth rates and shrinking native populations. Literally, the West is dying. As the late Pope John Paul II put it, we are in the grips of “a culture of death.” Birth control is a key pillar. It is a seminal aspect of the socialist drive to establish a secular utopia – smash the traditional family by relentlessly advancing the sexual revolution. The pill and the condom are the hammer and sickle of cultural Marxism. Decades ago, the Vatican warned that birth control eventually would lead to the West’s demise. A civilization unable – and unwilling – to reproduce itself is doomed.

Yet even if one does not care a scintilla about the church’s stance on contraception, the ruling should frighten everybody – Christian and non-Christian. America was founded upon one key principle: religious freedom. The Pilgrims fled religious persecution. Our Founding Fathers deliberately created a republic banning an established church, such as England’s Anglican Church, and championed a nation where different religious denominations could exist – and flourish – without government harassment. Religious liberty lies at the core of American freedom. In fact, the Founders considered it so important that it comes before all other rights enshrined in the First Amendment. James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, said, “Conscience is the most sacred of all property.” The Obama administration is telling Catholics that their conscience rights can be trampled with impunity. The state has the power to coerce people to support and pay for practices they find morally repugnant and contravene their fundamental religious beliefs. This is tyranny.

You will find the rest of Jeff Kuhner’s article at this link.

I know I seem to be rather fixated on Germany and the inter-war years today, but as each day passes the striking similarities between then and what is now happening in this country are becoming much too real to ignore.

This is exactly the same way it started for the German and ultimately occupied European Jews during that period, as by the time the ovens got cranked up in earnest, the people living in nearby towns had become so acclimated to the persecution of the Jews they were completely numb to it, even though there is no way they were unaware of what was happening in those nearby camps – and these were civilized people.

And let us not forget that it was not just Jews that were rounded up and packed off to the Hitlerite hotels, six million of which ultimately perished, but three million Christians died right along side them.

This is no time for Christians in America to “turn the other cheek,” because as history has repeatedly demonstrated, this sort of persecution will only get worse if it is not effectively resisted early and often. The time to nip this nonsense in the bud is now.

All freedom-loving Americans need to stand up and speak out, because it is not just Christians this rogue government is looking to intimidate and harass, but just about anyone who runs afoul of the whims of this increasingly tyrannical and out-of-control administration.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

-Pastor Martin Niemöller

-And Pastor Niemöller would know, as he spent seven years in NAZI concentration camps.

-Dave 

(h/t: Jeffry T. Kuhner)

1930s Germany Lives On – Right Here in Obama’s Amerika

Throughout history, totalitarian governments have “encouraged” their loyal citizens to report on those that may be engaging in activities that could be deemed detrimental to the security of the state. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Castro, and many others had, and still have, their citizens spying on one another, which has often led to the arrest, interrogation and possible incarceration of those fingered, and often to something even worse.

As I have posted previously, it appears we have moved well along that sad path right here in America, as not only is government itself spying on us, it is encouraging us to spy on each other.

Via publicintelligence.net (emphasis and highlights mine):

February 1, 2012 in Featured

Do You Like Online Privacy? You May Be a Terrorist

Public Intelligence

A flyer designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes lists basic tools used for online privacy as potential signs of terrorist activity. The document, part of a program called “Communities Against Terrorism”, lists the use of “anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address” as a sign that a person could be engaged in or supporting terrorist activity. The use of encryption is also listed as a suspicious activity along with steganography, the practice of using “software to hide encrypted data in digital photos” or other media. In fact, the flyer recommends that anyone “overly concerned about privacy” or attempting to “shield the screen from view of others” should be considered suspicious and potentially engaged in terrorist activities.

Logging into an account associated with a residential internet service provider (such as Comcast or AOL), an activity that could simply indicate that you are on a trip, is also considered a suspicious activity. Viewing any content related to “military tactics” including manuals or “revolutionary literature” is also considered a potential indicator of terrorist activity. This would mean that viewing a number of websites, including the one you are on right now, could be construed by a hapless employee as an highly suspicious activity potentially linking you to terrorism.

The “Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities” contained in the flyer are not to be construed alone as a sign of terrorist activity and the document notes that “just because someone’s speech, actions, beliefs, appearance, or way of life is different; it does not mean that he or she is suspicious.” However, many of the activities described in the document are basic practices of any individual concerned with security or privacy online. The use of PGP, VPNs, Tor or any of the many other technologies for anonymity and privacy online are directly targeted by the flyer, which is distributed to businesses in an effort to promote the reporting of these activities.

-End 

Click here for the original article and associated graphic.

We are very rapidly losing our America, and I find it not a little alarming that none of the current republican presidential candidates (who are always so quick to remind us of their unwavering “support” for the Constitution), are talking about this kind of stuff with any regularity – if they even bring it up at all.

Worse still are those that are actually in a position to do something to reign this crap in are simply not doing it, nor are they even giving it the usual hollow lip service.  There is no way they do not know what is happening.

Perhaps they feel they will somehow be immune from the consequences when things really go to Hell?

God help us.

-Dave

(h/t: boortz.com)