Far From Random Thoughts and Observations: September 11, 2008 Edition

Today is the seventh anniversary of the September 11′th attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and if you look at most newspapers or watched most morning shows, you wouldn’t have known it. Is the drive-by media so hell-bent on their agenda to elect Barack Obama President that they can’t even recall that horrible day when it didn’t matter whether you were Republican or Democrat, but American? Have they forgotten that we were attacked; that thousands of innocent people lost their lives? Are they so jaded, so quite honestly anti-American that they can’t take time from stories on obese dogs and pomegranite facials to remember? Those in New York were right there! They lost friends, family, coworkers, and other acquaintances, but you wouldn’t know it. It is apparently wrong to stir such feelings of patriotism, grief, and anger. It might make you vote for someone actually qualified to be President.

I’m disappointed in my countrymen, or at least the media of my countrymen. I will not forget. I will never forget those lost, and the nation’s innocence that was lost as well.

Random Thoughts and Observations – August 1, 2008 Edition

• First of all, let me say that I’m very thankful for the husband that I have, that we share the same moral, religious, and political beliefs.  I was perusing the friends of friends on MySpace, and saw that a guy I briefly dated is running as a Democrat for the State House in Oklahoma.  There is no way on God’s green earth that I, well could ever have married him because I can’t stand him as a person, have supported him for office!  Of course, we see things totally differently politically.  I’m all for small government, freedom of religion, freedom in itself, low taxes – or no taxes, drilling for oil domestically, building new refineries and nuclear plants, and just plain common sense.  Like I said, I’m eternally grateful for my husband because he does have common sense, no matter how much I tease him otherwise.
• Secondly, never doubt the power of the personal blog.  Sunday or Monday I posted the tale of our troubles in finding a church home before finding the one we recently joined, naming one church in particular, and actually got a response back from said offending church!  I just deleted the post because I had reservations about naming the church to an extent.  I was asked to get in contact with them to help with this issue.  Maybe I should, but I really want nothing to do with the whole lot of them, still yet.  I disagree with so much of what they represent that I would do little more than criticize.  Oh, and I believe in having a pastor, not a “spiritual life coach.”  That’s the sort of thing Oprah has, and I do not belong to the Church of Oprah.
• I made a special point to try and listen to all of The Rush Limbaugh Show today via the Internet because today was the special 20′th Anniversary Episode.  I usually just get to listen as I drive around in my Camry at lunch, but today I listened at my desk.  I love listening to El Rushbo because I AM an educated, informed woman in her late twenties who thinks for myself, rather than following the drivel that most of the Drive-By Media spews forth for us to ingest.  Anyway, I heard Rush give the funniest name to the likes of Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Barack Obama – “celebutards.”  Honestly, the name in itself says it all, I think; for all three of them.  Also,  yesterday I had the joy of listening to an archived clip of the infamous “Rita X,” and her off-the-wall, liberal malapropisms.  I laughed more than I have in ages after listening to that.  I have got to talk Bart into letting me join Rush 24/7.
• Lastly, I want to say that it’s beyond time that animal cruelty become a felony in the State of Arkansas.  Now, I don’t think we should have a bill written by the likes of PETA or HSUS fanatics, but it should warrant more than a misdemeanor when people bash in the heads of innocent dogs, and use cattle prods on them in ways no one should use one on anyone.

Bering Land Bridge Flooded: Scientists Blame Global Warming

    Last night on the drive home from work I was listening to my local talk radio station as I often do and caught the hourly ABC News Update.  Of course, with temperatures reaching near and over 110 degrees Fahrenheit one of the top stories is the weather.  As I listened to the report, I almost had to pull over in order to finish laughing, but alas, pulling to the side of the road is now illegal in the State of Arkansas.

    What was so funny were the obviously hand-picked reactions of people to the heat across the nation that they played.  One woman from Washington D.C. proclaimed that it's global warming. It's global warming, the ice caps are melting, she's melting, yada, yada, yada.  I wasn't surprised that the drive-by media played that little clip.  After all, their favorite "story" is that the world is coming to an end, things are worse than they've ever been, and it's all George Bush's fault.

    Come on, it's summer.  Almost every summer we go through this.  We're lucky this year because it's started in August, not July or even June.  Here in Northwest Arkansas we've yet to reach the century mark.  We've come close, but haven't yet hit it.  I can think of numerous times in my twenty-seven years where we had 100 degree days in mid to late June.

    It's absolutely arrogant of us to believe that we as human beings have so much influence over the Earth.  Long before we were able to measure greenhouse emissions, the globe was subject to Climate Change.  I don't know about you, but I'm certainly glad the the Earth warmed up from the Ice Age and even the Little Ice Age.  I would love to have a time machine and take all the celebrities and such who cram global warming down our throats to the Bering Straight at the end of the Ice Age.  Can you imagine?  There would be widespread panic.  "The world's coming to an end!"  "We can no longer walk from Alaska to Siberia!"  "What are we going to do"  "We must stop burning the fires that keep us warm and heat our food!"  "Surely we must have caused this calamity!"  "Though there's no true scientific proof of this, a consensus of us say that we believe this in order to gain exposure!"

    I think that the Global Warming scare is the biggest scam in the history of scamming.  The entire sale of carbon credits to offset carbon footprints is such a waste.  Seriously if you believe that, I have some ocean-front property in Arizona that you might be interested in purchasing.  Al Gore can tell the world how to be "greener," but he'll still fly around in his fancy jet, kick-back in his huge, air-conditioned house, and count all the millions of dollars countless gullible people will hand him for carbon credits.

    Now I do think we need more gas-efficient vehicles and we do need to find an alternative fuel for our needs, but not for the same reasons.  I think we should never allow ourselves to become so dependent on foreign sources of energy.  When we are so dependent, other countries have a vise-grip on our balls, so to speak.  I hate to see trees cut down and land developed because I always stand amazed at the wondrous beauty of God's creation.  I loathe trash and litter because it takes away from the pristine beauty of the world.

    Common sense has left the general populace.  We no longer can form our own opinions on anything.   We let the media dictate what we think, and the media likes to scare us in order to obtain ratings.  It's all sensationalism, not journalism.  Form your own opinions.  Take a broad look at the history of this world, not our recorded history.  Don't be that close-minded.  We didn't cause the Bering Land Bridge to flood all those ages ago, and we aren't causing the polar bears to drown now.

The Un-Fairness Doctrine: The U.S. Government VS the Citizens of the U.S.

    It seems to me that there is an invisible war being fought in America today, a war between the people of the United States and her government.  You see our government, especially congress, no longer seems to care what we as a nation want or how we want our nation governed.  Instead, they want to reform everything in order to fit their own agenda:  an agenda that to me seems like steps closer and closer to the point where we no longer have any of the freedoms that our forefathers fought for so valiantly.  They wish to strip away those freedoms that the men who almost two-hundred and thirty-one years ago signed the Declaration of Independence for, thus committing treason against the Crown of England.  If they ever help anyone, it's usually people who aren't even the voting public.

    The Amnesty Bill, er the Immigration Bill died today on the Senate floor, again.  All I can say is that it's a victory for the American people, despite what mass media and most lawmakers say otherwise.  Someone must be looking out for us, and I mean neither the legislative nor the executive branches of our government.  A number of Senators have displayed confusion and dismay at the outcry against the bill.  Here's an excerpt from cnsnews.com:

"Sen.
Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said the influx of telephone calls and faxes
from opponents of the bill had jammed   Senate telephone lines.

Sen.
Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) described the fight over the immigration bill as "a
war between the American people and their government," adding that the
vote on cloture was "about whether or not we're going to listen to the
American people."

Reid criticized the outpouring of opposition,
saying calls and letters have been "filled with prejudice and hatred
and venom." He said he turned one letter over to investigators when it
suggested he should enter a witness protection program for supporting
the bill.

"I know what's been going on out there," said Sen.
Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). "I know the calls that have been made. I
know some of the threats that have been made. And yet we have a chance
with this bill to really do the right thing."

She said senators
and constituents who don't support the measure "don't understand the
bill." Feinstein urged her colleagues to vote for cloture because "if
we miss this opportunity, there is not likely to be another opportunity
in the next few years to fix this."

    No, Senator Feinstein, we don't support the measure because WE DO UNDERSTAND THE BILL.  You see, we don't like it.  We don't think that it has the best interests of the United States at heart.  It has the best interests of people who are breaking the law and living here illegally at heart.  It has the best interests of politicians hoping to gain a bevy of new, grateful constituents.  However, for those of us who were born and raised here; those of us who don't break the law, but respect it would get the shaft.  Thankfully enough of us are well-informed enough to call you it.

    That brings me to my next topic:  Apparently we the people of the United States of America are too well-informed.  Too many of us listen to Conservative Talk Radio.  I personally love to listen to Rush Limbaugh, Phil Valentine, and Glenn Beck.  I may not agree with every work that they say, but I agree more with what they say than what is constantly spat from print and televised media.  Even Fox News, which is supposed to have a conservative slant isn't really conservative enough for me.  I can't stand to listen to the liberally biased trash that spews forth from them any more.

    Long before Dan Rather was discovered to have made up evidence against President Bush, I knew that televised news was purely liberal.  It's just that it's gotten to be ridiculously more liberal in recent years.  If I want to hear about things that I care about, I'll listen to talk radio and read on the internet.  Now however, several key Democrats want to silence conservative talk radio.  Apparently We the People know too much, and Democrats are now chomping at the teeth to revive the Fairness Doctrine, for radio only.  Here's a clip from the most liberal of all print media, The New Your Times:

"After getting hammered for years by the conservative takeover of
talk radio, Democrats are fighting back on several fronts — from
challenging their foes on air to endorsing the revival of the Fairness
Doctrine, the abandoned federal regulation that once obligated
broadcasters to balance the political opinion they air.

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential contender John Edwards,
raised the roof on this emerging campaign against conservative punditry
by phoning in to MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Tuesday to debate right-wing
icon Ann Coulter.

Behind
the scenes, prominent Democratic lawmakers are exploring the idea of
more regulation. While some of this is aimed at showing the party’s
grass-roots activists that their leaders are fighting back, it also
provokes a serious debate about the role of government in regulating
public airwaves.

Unless broadcasters take steps to voluntarily
balance their programming, they can expect a return of fairness rules
if Democrats keep control of Congress and win the White House next
year.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com."

    My reaction to that is why don't I just go live in a Communist country where all media is regulated by the government.  Why don't I just let the government control what clothes I wear and how much I eat?  Oh wait, they're already trying to control what I eat with dietary restriction on transfats and so on.  We should all be automatons with no thought or action varying from what the government wants.

    Just the thought of the government trying to reign in control of talk radio and impose fairness in itself is unfair because they certainly won't be doing that to television or print media.  Seriously, for every minute that I have to watch Chris Matthews, Brian Williams, and Dan Rather spew their liberal garbage, I want to see Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Phil Valentine.  If we're going to do this, let's make everything fair.

    That won't happen though.  Our government cares nothing for the American people, and slowly they'll learn as we vote them out of office that unless they take the power of the vote away, we will eventually win.  You can't keep information from the people.  You can't manipulate it to fit your whims.  We will eventually learn the truth, and the truth will set us free.

Oh, Good Grief!!!: Why the Domestic Spying Program Isn’t As Bad As It’s Made Out To Be.

Well our sensationalist media is making a big deal out of nothing once again. Yesterday reports were made that several large phone companies have been supplying phone records to the NSA. So now, the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to either hold new hearings on that or add it to their entire Domestic Spying case. Do they not realize that they’re making fools of themselves? If the media would stop reporting the insane accusations and report instead what’s really going on, there would be no story to tell. People’s privacy isn’t really being violated any more than it is when we log on to the computer, and cookies track what we look at. How do you think that those ads that are specifically directed to you and your interests come into being?

So what? The NSA has obtained phone records to enter into a computer that will determine if calling patterns show any possibility terrorist activity. It’s not like some gossip columnist is sifting through each and every phone call to get the juicy details of everyone’s lives. They’re not going to tell on you to whomever you don’t want to know about certain calls. The government has more important things to do than play Gladys Kravits to the entire nation.

Of course, the media wouldn’t be doing their job if they weren’t doing their best to throw the American public into a senseless panic. Personally, I don’t even mind the wire tapping of international calls. We are at war against terrorists, whether people want to remember or not, and some measures have to be taken in order to insure national security.

If the only civil liberty that is “violated” in this war on terror is eavesdropping on international calls and the inputting of phone call records into a computer, then we’re doing quite well. I’m sure that many people haven’t bothered to learn what happened to civil liberties in other wars. The Espionage and Sedition Acts of WWI were far more encroaching than what we face today.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Espionage Act of 1917 was a United States federal law passed shortly after entering World War I, on June 15, 1917, which made it a crime for a person to convey information with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies. It was punishable by a $USD 10,000 fine and 20 years in prison. The legislation was passed at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, who feared any widespread dissent in time of war constituted a real threat to an American victory.

Publications which the Wilson Administration determined were guilty of violating the 1917 Espionage Act “were subject to being deprived of mailing privilege, a blow to most periodicals,” according to Sidney Kobre’s Development of American Journalism book. A section of the Espionage Act allowed the Postmaster General to declare all letters, circulars, newspapers, pamphlet books and other materials that violated the Act to be unmailable.

As a result of the Espionage Act, about 75 newspapers either lost their mailing privileges or were pressured to print nothing more about World War I between June 1917 and May 1918. Among the publications which were censored in this way as a result of the Espionage Act were two Socialist Party daily newspapers: the New York Call and the Milwaukee Leader. The editor of the Milwaukee Leader–Victor Berger–was also sentenced to 20 years imprisonment after being convicted on a charge of conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act. The Industrial Workers of the World [IWW]’s Solidarity journal, as well as the American Socialist and The Masses bohemian radical magazine, were also banned from the mails under the terms of the Espionage Act. German-American or German-American language newspapers, pacifist publications and Irish nationalist publications like Jeremiah O’Leary’s Bull were also banned from the mails as a result of the Espionage Act.

The laws were ruled to be compliant with the United States Constitution in the United States Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919). Schenck, an anti-war Socialist, had been convicted of violating the Espionage Act, after he published a pamphlet urging resistance to the World War I draft. Although Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes joined the Court majority in upholding Schenck’s conviction in 1919, he also introduced the theory that punishment in such cases can only be limited to political expression which constitutes a “clear and present danger” to the government action at issue.

The law was later extended by the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it illegal to speak out against the government.

The Sedition Act of 1918 was an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917 passed at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson(D), who was justifiably concerned any widespread dissent in time of war constituted a real threat to an American victory. Germany subversive activity had assisted in overthrowing the Russian Czar in 1917, and contributed to the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916. Germany subversive activity in Britain was less successful.

The Sedition Act forbade Americans to use “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the United States government, flag, or armed forces during war. The act also allowed the Postmaster General to deny mail delivery to dissenters of government policy during wartime.

The Sedition Act was an attempt by the United States government to limit “freedom of speech,” in-so-much-as that “freedom of speech” related to the criticism of the government during war.

The Espionage Act made it a crime to help wartime enemies of the United States, but the Sedition Act made it a crime to utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States’ form of government.

In WWII, we put people of Japanese and German decent into interrment camps. That wasn’t right, but the government did what it thought was best to keep people safe. So, get over being outraged that some international calls have been tapped, and REALLY get over your records being input into a government computer.