Back to Basics

PHOTOS.COM

The elected class is as dishonest as the day is long. Its sole desire is to gain and hold its parasitic existence and sit at the seats of power. Until you realize this, you will never break the bonds of conventional wisdom and understand what’s going on behind the scenes.

To the average person, the political class can be a conundrum. How, most people will ask, can a politician say during election time he is for or against a particular thing or policy in an effort to gain favorability among the electorate and then, once he’s elected, do an about-face and say or do the exact opposite? The answer is very simple. Politicians — with few exceptions — owe their existence to the moneyed elites. You cannot try to rationalize their actions with logical or moral behavioral standards. Those rules do not apply to them.

Members of the political class are often treated as if they have achieved some special standing based on the positions they hold. But remember, they hold their elected positions solely because they are good at closing a sale, have a charming smile and can turn a phrase. They are most often gregarious and outgoing and charming. They do not necessarily have greater than average intelligence (see Joe Biden), but they are good liars because they are emotionally shallow, have an inflated sense of self-worth, are egotistical and lack empathy. In short, most of them are psychopaths lacking any morality whatsoever.

The elites bankroll their campaigns and promise them lucrative seats on boards of major corporations once they have used up their political capital. In return, the elected class must sell their souls to the moneyed elites and promise to do their bidding when it’s time to pass new laws or begin new programs. They happily do this because power and prestige are their primary motivators.

The elected class lose their political capital only when they grow old and senile or transgress the bounds of normal decorum (i.e, get caught in a sexual, financial or political scandal) so egregiously that they become toxic or when the electorate becomes so agitated by their continued lies and turnabouts that they come out en masse to vote against them. Oftentimes, even this is overcome through voter fraud and manipulation; but occasionally the bums are thrown out on their collective ears. They then move on to their job-in-waiting and receive six- and seven-figure salaries to continue hobnobbing with their old buddies and to pass around more political graft in exchange for legislation that benefits the companies they represent.

The immigration reform movement is case in point. Notice there is a bipartisan movement to grant amnesty to illegal aliens. You might ask yourself why this is. Why would a gang of eight Senators — and “gang” is the operative word — with supposedly disparate political philosophies band together to craft a bill that will destroy America and then go on record as trying to get their 92 cohorts to pass it? Why would they also try to sell it to the American people as being beneficial to the country when common sense tells you that is not so?

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has never been one to moderate on anything. From her wild-left ideas to her voting record, the woman seems to believe that the voters owe her a life of luxury and posh living.

Lee’s excesses apparently extend to her reckless use of taxpayer money to travel around the world. As reported:

The House Committee on the Judiciary reported Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) traveled around the world on an official trip in February that cost $23,646. The February 16-22 trip on commercial flights was to Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee did not travel over or back with CODEL Landrieu that included several members of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption. The delegation was to meet with local community leaders, adoption officials, and other government officials, such as the Vietnamese Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee took commercial flights over and caught up with the delegation in Seoul, South Korea. After visiting South Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia she then left the delegation early for her return commercial fight through Frankfurt Germany.

The trip costs included $19,970 for transportation, $1,292 for per diem, and $2,385 for other purposes.

$2,385 for “other purposes,” Representative?

In an age when nearly 50 million Americans are living on food stamps and the government is in sequestration mode??

Dear, dear!

The larger question: Just what the hell does America gain by spending $23K to send a cowgirl from Texas to South Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia? Why did she not travel with the other members of the Congressional delegation?

Good heavens, with the nation nearly $17 T in debt, is there not a more prudent way to spend taxpayer money???

Remember the good old days when Dianne Feinstein would insist her husband remove his name from consideration for government contracts in the state she represents because she didn’t want there to be any appearance of impropriety? Me neither.

From Crazifornia by way of Sister Toldjah:

Out of the entire universe of those who could have won the first phase construction contract for California’s high speed rail boondoggle, who would stand out as the last person who would win it if there were no political patronage.

Put another way, who is the most likely person to win it if there is political patronage?

Both questions have the same answer: Richard Blum, the husband of California senator Diane Feinstein.

So, who won the contract? Blum, of course, as the principle owner of Tutor Perini, the lead firm in the three-firm consortium selected by the California High Speed Rail Authority.

That would help explain headlines like this one from just over a year ago:

Shorter headline: Cha-CHING!

More from Investors Business Daily:

Tutor Perini Corporation (NYSE: TPC), a leading civil and building construction company, today announced that its joint venture’s bid, valued at approximately $985 million, was recently identified by the California High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority) as the “apparent best value” for the design and construction of the initial Madera to Fresno segment of the California high-speed rail system. The Authority’s Board of Directors is expected to approve the design-build contract for this project in the coming weeks. Once the contract is awarded, Tutor Perini’s portion of the contract value will be added to the Company’s backlog.

What is the “apparent best value”? About $35 million per mile of track. But it’s a small price to pay to be able to make the popular Borden to Shafter commute in record time (or maybe not).

Past DiFi coverage:

The Feinstein Chronicles

A question for Dianne Feinstein

DiFi and the culture of corruption

PHOTOS.COM

When members of the psychopathic elected class get busy mixing campaigning, legislating sop to their corporatist partners in crime, talking the Constitution out of existence and expanding tyranny from that sewage pit that is our Nation’s capital, the assaults on liberty can seem almost dizzying. Enabled by their propagandists in the mainstream media, they manufacture and then gin up crises, propose freedom-robbing legislation to “save” you from the evils they’ve manufactured and then create yet another crisis to distract you from the last.

Their goal is to overwhelm your senses and hit you from all sides, beating you down so that they can move the bar of tyranny gradually but inexorably leftward. They are content with incremental steps. They use gradualism in their self-created maelstrom of chaos.

With myriad assaults on liberty and our senses occurring now, it seemed impossible to focus on just one this week. So I decided to touch on several at once. Hopefully, this helps make some sense of the chaotic paradigm in which we find ourselves today.

Laws And The Constitution Are Meaningless To The Elected Class

On Thursday, 16 Republicans joined 52 Democratic Senators to override a possible filibuster and begin a treasonous assault on the 2^nd Amendment. Two Democrats joined with 29 Republicans and attempted to prevent a gun-control bill from coming up. Unfortunately, the traitors had the 61 votes (68, actually) to override the veto. The two Democrats who stood for the Constitution were Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.

These traitorous Republicans proved themselves to be big-government statists and voted against the Constitution along with the statist/progressive Democrats: Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Dean Heller of Nevada, Mark Kirk of Illinois, John McCain of Arizona, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

The bill, deceptively called the Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act, does just the opposite of what its name implies. By getting the bill onto the floor, gun grabbers have pushed open the door for the registration of gun owners. The amendment process will turn it into a Frankenstein monster that could include a ban on so-called “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines.

Any provisions inserted into the bill that would preclude registration or setting up a database of gun owners will be ignored. Proof of this is found in Missouri, where the State’s database of concealed weapons permits was twice given to Federal LEOs (legally entitled to oppress) investigating Social Security disability fraud. This is just one example among many of the Feds getting their hands gun records.

Recently released cables by WikiLeaks reveal the mindset of those who intentionally and over the long term inhabit the Washington cesspool.

The famed 19th Century revivalist and major contributor to America’s “Second Great Awakening,” Charles Finney, said the following: “If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the public press lacks moral discernment, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in Christianity, the pulpit is responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it.” I believe Finney was absolutely correct.

Notice that Finney believed there was a direct correlation between the kind of legislation passed in Congress and the kind of preaching taking place in the pulpits of America’s churches. He also believed that the pulpits of the country were responsible for corruption in government. Again, I agree.

America’s biggest threat does not come from abortionists, gay rights activists, pornographers, or drug dealers. Neither does our biggest threat come from North Korea, Iran, Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan. America’s biggest threat comes from our nation’s pulpits.

In all candor, I’m increasingly frustrated with many of my pastor and Christian brethren. Over the decades, they have made a god out of government–especially the federal government. Their support for US military interventionism (justified or not) borders on worship. Plus, they have put their absolute trust in the Republican Party to the point that their support for the GOP has, for all intents and purposes, made the Republican Party more sacred than their own churches. They would abandon a church, or denomination, or pastor quicker than they would abandon the GOP–regardless of how much Big Government Republicans promote. When a Republican is in office (especially the office of President), he or she takes on the image of a god more than a civil magistrate. The Religious Right was absolutely deaf and dumb to the ubiquitous unconstitutional and unlawful conduct committed during Bush’s eight years in office. In fact, virtually everything that President Barack Obama is currently doing to circumvent constitutional government was copied from G.W. Bush’s political playbook.

Then these same pastors and churches turn around and get all righteously indignant about abortion, gay rights, family decay, etc. The fact is, the government in Washington, D.C., is the chief culprit in America’s moral and cultural tailspin. DC is a cesspool whose leakage has spilled over into the entire country. And the more pastors and Christians refuse to resist the ever-burgeoning power and influence of Washington’s unconstitutional manipulation and intimidation of our states and communities, the deeper the manure gets. Yet, so many pastors and Christians continue to quote Romans 13 as justification to sit back and do NOTHING to prevent DC’s unlawful control over what was the FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES of this nation.

Forgive me, but when I hear these pastors and Christian leaders bewail the conditions of America, I get kind of sick.

The wind-up:

The Delaware County DA’s office has announced that James Schiliro, the mayor of Marcus Hook, has been arrested.

He is facing multiple criminal charges, including reckless endangerment. Schiliro surrendered to police early Thursday morning.
[...]
According to court documents, the mayor is accused of having a police officer pick up a 20-year-old friend in a police cruiser and bring him to his home. Inside, the mayor allegedly served the minor alcohol and asked for sexual favors.

When the man refused, the mayor allegedly told him he was a hostage and fired his gun inside of the home, court documents said.

And the pitch: Schiliro is a member of Michael Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns.”

Reports say Schiliro’s a Republican, but he sounds more like a No Labels man.

More:

Ballistics tests done by the investigators confirmed a bullet found in a wall in Schiliro’s home did match one of the guns. Schiliro sold eight weapons shortly after the incident, according to court records.

It’s possible Schiliro accidentally fired the gun, especially if he got his firearm safety tips from one of Bloomberg’s gun control ads.

Schiliro has been removed from the Mayors Against Illegal Guns list of supporters.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEbTknXJYY8

In related stories, the Mayors Against Illegal Guns should encourage its members and former members to also be against illegal drunk driving, corruption, bribes and child sex crimes.

Bloomberg obviously needs stricter background checks for his gun control bunch.

Count me in as a supporter of a different organization: Gun Owners Against Illegal Mayors.

(h/t Mental Recession and The Black Sphere)

More proof that politicians appear to be treated differently that the rest of us. Even though this goof is the Mayor, why was he not arrested and charged …

Here is the story of a Mayor who allegedly ordered the police to pick up a young man (kidnapping under color of authority?), drop him off at the Mayor’s House where the Mayor gave this young man alcohol and begged for sex. Unfortunately, this is one of the anti-gun Mayors on Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” Committee. Unfortunate because he pulled out various guns to allegedly intimidate and/or threaten suicide.

Of course, there is the standard excuse … alcoholism!

Here is the news report …

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEbTknXJYY8

Authorities say on the evening of Feb. 21, the first-term Republican was drunk. They say he had a borough police officer drive to neighboring Trainer, where he picked up a 20-year-old man who considered Schiliro a father figure and mentor. He was delivered to the mayor’s Green Street home where he found Schiliro intoxicated and despondent as his adolescent daughter slept upstairs. Court documents say the mayor gave the young man two or three glasses of wine and asked him 20 to 30 times if he could give him oral sex; the 20-year-old refused.

That led the mayor to produce three guns and wave them around, at one point threatening suicide. At least one shot was discharged, officials say, leaving the young man terrified and feeling trapped. Finally he was able to leave and walked home, where he told his mother about the ordeal.

Schiliro and his attorney, Michael Malloy, have basically conceded that account (except for the sexual proposition). They have said the mayor sold the guns the next morning and got rid of all the booze in his house. Schiliro has also realized he has a problem with alcohol and is seeking outpatient treatment. And despite the fact that members of borough council and the local GOP leadership have asked him to resign, Schiliro says he isn’t going anywhere.

Now facing charges of official oppression, recklessly endangering another person, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment and providing alcohol to a minor, and freed on $50,000 unsecured bail, he hasn’t changed his mind. <Source>

Bottom line …

There was a 13-year old daughter asleep nearby. So why is he not also been charged with endangering his child and having her removed by child protective services?

These “don’t do as I do, do as I say” liberals are out of control. Bloomberg’s website no longer lists the mayor as a supporter (being silently scrubbed to avoid embarrassment). Enough. Certainly the Republican party knows or has an inking of the personal foibles of its membership and should be working to clean up its candidates and politicians, lest the democrats remain the party of power in perpetuity.

And, by the way – I do not see any gun-related charges on this particular list of charges.

– steve

You do not have to look any farther than California to find corrupt socialist democrat ideologues who have managed to ascend into the stratosphere of political power players. These four women typify what has gone wrong with California and America. Gross corruption, stupidity, incompetence, racism and a socialist agenda are are all self-evident in this small group of democrats. As former Los Angeles Times Columnist, Burt Prelutsky, once put it …

“Frankly, I don’t know what it is about California, but we seem to have a  strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I’m not  bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close.

When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we’re Number One.

There’s no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on ‘Macbeth’. The four of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don’t know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words.”

The New and Improved Iron Curtin by Burt Prelutsky

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Barbara Boxer, arguably the dumbest member of Congress	Dianne Feinstein, corrupt and foe of 2nd Amendment
Nancy Pelosi, corrupt ideologue	Maxine Waters, corrupt and a racist

Bottom line …

WAKE UP AMERICA!

Longtime readers know my contempt for GOP Rep. Don Young goes back to the very beginning days of this blog.

He is a corrupt, Big Government porker whom grass-roots conservative reformers have tried to dislodge from the U.S.S. Republican Establishment for years.

He is now in hot water for calling laborers who picked tomatoes on his family farm “wetbacks.” (Hey, never mind that his family was breaking the law and employing illegal aliens!)

The archaic, offensive term comes from Eisenhower’s deportation programs “Operation Wetback” in the 1950s.

At a time when the GOP says it’s trying to “modernize,” Young’s diarrhea of the mouth shows why the party is such a joke. These gaffes are the symptom of the D.C. GOP’s incumbency protection racket.

Young is a 21-term congressman who holds a spot on the Most Corrupt Politician lists of both the left and right.

That’s the larger offense at work here.

I’ll repeat it again for the GOP deaf and dumb:

Entrenched incumbency is the disease. Fresh conservative blood is the cure.

***

Side note: When your liberal friends go on their smug tirades about Don Young, you can politely remind them that stupid, old entrenched incumbents who say offensively racist things aren’t just a GOP problem.

Flashback: Ex-Klansman Robert Byrd who condemned “race mongrels” says “white niggers” on national TV.

Flashback: Joe Biden on “articulate and bright and clean” Barack Obama

Flashback: Harry Reid wants all Hispanics to think and vote alike.

Flashback: Loretta Sanchez – “The Vietnamese” are trying to take away my seat!

And much more.

Related: Alabama Democratic lawmaker “sends shocking RACIST rant to gun-rights constituent, and copies every member of the state legislature”

In another case in the annals of conservative “adaptation” to yesterday’s liberal innovation, Ohio Republican senator Rob Portman has just announced that he now supports faux marriage. The change was motivated, he said, by his son having come out to him and his wife as a homosexual.

Well, it’s a good thing his son didn’t announce that he was involved in bestiality.

Talk about a pandering parent.

We can also talk here about letting your personal life influence your public policy. If I were a statesman and learned that a child of mine were hooked on cocaine or had joined the Taliban, I wouldn’t change my position on drug policy or terrorism. Of course, Portman has said that his son’s revelation inspired some soul searching, and, true, life events can spur thought and intellectual growth. But is his decision really the fruits of sound intellectual analysis?

In an interview on his Obamaesque evolution, Portman talked about his “Christian faith,” “love and compassion,” and the Golden Rule. As to the last thing, I would certainly want others to do unto me as they would have me do unto them (unless they happen to be masochists), and this would include leading me toward Truth and virtue — not away from them.

And while Jesus espoused the Golden Rule, He also said, “[H]e that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.” The fact is that God and His law come even before family; “Blood is not thicker than morality,” as Dr. Laura Schlessinger once put it. And while this may seem a harsh prescription, it is actually the only way to do right by your family. I’ll explain.

Portman cares about his son’s happiness, as any parent would. But what breeds happiness? Aristotle pointed out that virtue (good moral habits) is a prerequisite for a happy life, and this is where God’s law comes into play. To start with a simple example, it may seem to make a little child happy at the moment if you allow him to eat a quart of ice cream for dinner, play all day instead of tending to education, or steal a toy from a store. Yet we know that such indulgence wouldn’t breed the virtue of temperance, industriousness, or honesty and wouldn’t lead to happiness. Likewise, would we encourage a grown son to deal drugs or steal cars if the money realized thereby seemed to make him happy?

The point is that the loving thing isn’t always to give people what they want, but what they need. And this is where a person’s yardstick for decision-making matters. If we’re emotion-oriented, we’ll likely put too much stock in someone’s feelings and give him what he wants even when those feelings contradict moral law.

Unfortunately, this is common nowadays due to our descent into moral relativism. After all, we can’t use morality — which, properly understood, refers to rules for man’s behavior that originate outside of man — as a yardstick if we don’t believe it exists. And this is precisely relativism’s underlying message, with its claim that what we call “morality” is just a function of man’s collective preferences. And without this awareness of moral reality, emotion becomes the most compelling yardstick for behavior available.