Back to Basics

Earlier I was reading a story at the Boston Herald website about the possible political future of Dances With Identity Theft, which is titled “Elizabeth Warren winning support for 2016 White House bid.”

After a couple of paragraphs there was an ad that pops up on a rotating basis, and it fit perfectly with the subject of the story:

When the picture is clicked it goes to a YouTube video about the Mashpee Wompanoag Tribe taking on the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. No word yet on whether Fauxcahontas supports their cause.

Target marketing at its finest.

PHOTOS.COM

I think we can all agree that 2012 was an interesting year.

As it was a Presidential election year, headlines were dominated by election news. But election politics was only part of what made 2012 interesting: There were wars and rumors of more wars, large storms and the ongoing worldwide financial crisis. All of these played a part, in one way or another, in the recent election.

But there were a lot of other newsworthy events as well: Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s investigation into President Barack Obama’s birth certificate (and the media’s disinterest), the imprisonment of Brandon Raub (and the media’s disinterest) and a related issue, the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the self-immolation of the Republican Party and ongoing efforts by the elites to establish one world government. To look at some of the big issues of the year, I’ve chosen the 10 most commented upon of all my articles from the past 12 months.

In addition to providing a refresher on some of the year’s biggest stories, this exercise may also serve to help educate our new readers who may have missed some of these discussions and to rebut some preconceived biases some have — as evidenced by their comments — when they first arrive at Personal Liberty Digest™.

So here they are, counting backward beginning with No. 10. I hope you enjoy the year in review.

Suspending All Logic

Believing without doubt the official birth narrative of President Barack Obama — that he was born to Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. in a hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961 — requires a complete suspension of logic.

Last month, I pointed out in How Can Anyone Be A Birther? a partial list of reasons to doubt the official story. Note that I say it’s only a partial list. There is enough evidence to produce reasonable doubt in the minds of reasonable people that Obama is not a natural-born United States citizen as required in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

Obama has for several years claimed he was born in Hawaii. He has also claimed, through his official biography with a literary agent and as a young man in Hawaii, that he was born in Kenya.

Both of those are not possible. Therefore, one is a lie. Obama is, among other things, a liar.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

So You Think You Are Free?

So you think you are free? After all, we have a Constitution with a Bill of Rights that “preserves” our freedoms.

So you think you’re free? Ask Brandon Raub what life in a free country is like. He was kidnapped from his home by the FBI, Secret Service and local police over Facebook posts in which he questioned 9/11 and accused the Bush family of committing crimes. He was held for a week with no charges and had a psychiatrist threaten to medicate and brainwash him.

He’s not alone. John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, who gained Raub’s release, says calls coming into his organization reveal a pattern of abuse.

How come Paul Ryan’s $700 billion Medicare “cuts” that would have no effect on anyone over 55 and increase options for retirees as they’re grandfathered in (if you’ll pardon the expression) would be the equivalent of pushing grandma off a cliff, but Obama’s $700 billion Medicare cut to shovel the money into Obamacare was an achievement?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCEgidipc5g

That was Obama’s deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter in a rare fit of honesty.

Meanwhile, President Obama called Paul Ryan a “decent man” that he happens to disagree with because he wants to kill old people.

Speaking of that, according to David Axelrod, Paul Ryan is eager to kick his own mother off Medicare.

It’s been two years since President Obama signed the Unaffordable Care Act and Joe Biden uttered his now famous “this is a big f-ing deal.” The Obama campaign is still doing some fundraising off the Plugs’ fit of giddy, power-grab induced Tourette syndrome:

*****

This is ripe for Republican mockery. I’d suggest the GOP counter by selling a design like this:

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For the record, the debt has increased $5 trillion during Obama’s just over three years. Saving America from bankruptcy is expensive!

Last night was certainly interesting for me, politically and personally. First, the live recording of The Delivery was plagued with occasional internet outages that I very much hope are not related to these acts of sabotage alleged committed by disgruntled, striking Verizon workers.

Then, once my internet connection did stabilize (too late to finish this post so it would drop at its customary time), I learned that the public sector unions, who spent millions upon millions in a fit of juvenile temper to recall enough Republicans to take over the Wisconsin state Senate, failed about as completely as they could have. Democrats won two of the 6 seats they targeted for recall but will face two recall elections of their own next week. The most likely result of the Great Wisconsin Hissy Fit is that Democrats will have spent a lot of money that could have helped union workers struggling to pay the bills in the Obama Economy in order to win one seat in a state legislature.

On the whole, not a bad night, technical problems notwithstanding. Oh, the picture of Che? That’s Justin Hart’s contribution to the victory dance. I approve!

The show post will be out a bit later today, so keep your eyes peeled!

Photoshop credit: Leo Alberti

AmeriCorps’s favorite scandal-plagued mayor
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, FOTO (Friend of the Obamas)

A prominent Democratic politician who had been banned from receiving federal aid three years ago over fraud charges is once again raking in government funds from the very same program he abused. It pays to be a FOTO — Friend of the Obamas.

Our publicly-subsidized con artist is Sacramento mayor and former NBA star Kevin Johnson. He donated the maximum individual amount to Obama for America, campaigned across the country for Obama in 2008, and bragged to California media during his mayoral run about his friendship and access to both Barack and Michelle Obama. The Obama administration’s Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) recently bestowed Johnson’s city with an AmeriCorps grant worth more than $650,000.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KHEZg9pSE8

The money will flow into Sacramento’s “Get Fit Now! Initiative,” which will hire 124 AmeriCorps members “to teach fitness and nutrition education to children and offer adult fitness classes for their parents. They will also set up school-based gardens where children will learn how to grow fresh vegetables.”

That’s a lot of fertilizer-shovelers employed in the name of “public service.” If the award smells funny, it should. For Johnson, AmeriCorps has indeed been all about service – self-service, that is.

In 2008, the independent Inspector General overseeing AmeriCorps, Gerald Walpin, concluded that Johnson and aide Dana Gonzalez had squandered hundreds of thousands of a nearly-million-dollar grant earmarked for his non-profit youth organization, St. HOPE. Based on Walpin’s investigation, AmeriCorps’ parent organization (the aforementioned CNCS) suspended Johnson and Gonzalez’s access to federal funds. Here’s a refresher on their fraud and abuse that led to the ban:

*Using AmeriCorps members to “recruit students for St. HOPE Academy;”

*Using AmeriCorps members for political activities in connection with the “Sacramento Board of Education election;”

*Assigning grant-funded AmeriCorps members to perform services for Johnson such as “driving [him] to personal appointments, washing [his] car, and running personal errands;” and

*Improperly using AmeriCorps “members to perform non-AmeriCorps clerical and other services” that “were outside the scope of the grant and therefore were impermissible” for “the benefit of St. HOPE.”

Johnson didn’t get jail time. Instead, the Democratic U.S. Attorney in Sacramento cut a cozy settlement deal so Johnson could avoid criminal prosecution. The deal also allowed Johnson to re-pay just a fraction of the money he siphoned from AmeriCorps coffers for personal gain – and it freed Johnson to receive federal Obama stimulus money for Sacramento. (My most recent check of the Recovery.gov website shows the city has taken in at least $32 million in stimulus cash.)

In keeping with this administration’s brutal war on whistleblowers, Inspector General Walpin was unceremoniously fired and smeared by Team Obama. The White House baselessly questioned the veteran watchdog’s mental health and accused him of political interference. The First Lady then installed her former chief of staff, Jackie Norris, in AmeriCorps’ top management to ensure – in Mrs. Obama’s own words – that they remained the program’s “No.

Rest assured, Mike Huckabee will aggressively defend this practice ASAP.

From J.P. Freire at the Washington Examiner:

With a schedule as hectic as President Obama’s it must be hard to stick to a training regimen without help — but why does he insist on having his old trainer fly out from Chicago to D.C. regularly when Obama and his wife exhort the rest of us to drive less? And in a recession? According to Ashley Parker at the New York Times, Obama’s fitness czar Cornell McClellan comes out to D.C. every week:

Mr. McClellan grew up practicing martial arts, eventually earning a black belt, and as a college student realized that he had a knack for working with people. He owns Naturally Fit, a personal training and wellness center in Chicago, and now spends part of his week in Washington at Mr. Obama’s request.

“It was an easy sell for me, because I thought of it as kind of a duty, to serve the president,” said Mr. McClellan, who works out with the first couple, often in the early morning, at the gym in the White House residence. Mr. and Mrs. Obama both try to exercise for at least an hour every day, and Mr. McClellan says he usually sees them two to four times a week, depending on their schedules.

Read the rest here.

The “buy local” campaign the White House pushes must be meant for the rest of us — there are dozens and dozens of personal trainers in the DC area.

The White House has expressed a desire to reduce carbon emissions produced by the government, and Obama recently allowed 40,000 federal employees to telecommute for a week to cut down on travel emissions. It seems as if a trainer a thousand miles away could be just as effective appearing in the gym on a big screen TV.

And if all other workout options failed they could play “where’s my purse” to stay in shape as prescribed by Let’s Move — it’d be cheaper and better for the environment than flying a guy to and from DC several times a week.

The science is settled: That stuff won’t fit in there

There’s a chance, albeit slight, that the environmentally-conscious celebrities who push these “green” vehicles will loan the Queensland police some of their SUVs, Hummers and limousines so they can have enough room for their equipment, but I’m not counting on it:

Queensland Police have been left red-faced over its choice of new “green” patrol cars. The service boasts it is going green, taking delivery of 100 hybrid Toyota Camrys. Shame no one checked the boot size. Frontline officers say the boots of the new patrol cars are too small to carry all their essential equipment, including flak jackets and emergency equipment.

They can’t put it on the back seats – that’s where the criminals go – leaving them little option but to ditch it, or keep it under their feet in the front.

And the front seats are already a tight squeeze for officers wearing accoutrement belts and cargo pants.

The police union said the decision showed how far removed top brass were from the frontline that they could approve cars that aren’t big enough to be useful.

The Queensland Police Service (QPS) boasts about its green car choice in this year’s annual report, saying its “smarter vehicle purchases” meant it had “the most operationally suitable vehicles”

Proposed new rule: Nobody should be forced to drive a car that can’t easily fit Al Gore’s BS in the trunk.

In general, is it wise, given the apparent fact that an increasingly hotter planet is destined to bury everyone in several feet of snow, to be making people drive smaller cars? It’s a good thing Noah wasn’t a Gorebot, or he’d have told everybody ride out the flood in something the size of a gravy boat — and kept the Ark for himself, of course.

The Queensland SWAT team, above, arrives on the scene of a hostage situation in their new “green” vehicles

Unlike most red-necked conservative intellectuals living in the Bay Area, I have never found it particularly difficult to “watch” my weight.

With a size 50 waist, three or more double chins, and a neck size scarcely below triple digits, how in Hades can I NOT watch my weight?

After years of battling neurotic doctors, “ideal weight” charts pushed by corporate interests intent on earning windfall profits from a man-made pandemic of expensive-to-treat anexoria, and scales that lie without shame, I have finally surrendered.

Effective immediately, in the best interests of my fragile sanity, I will no longer weight myself, or allow myself to be weighed.

Period, end of discussion.

Consider the relevant facts, please.

Weighing one’s self can lead to depression, anxiety, and fat. In fact, politicians could do the public far more good by outlawing scales instead of worrying about Trans-fats, cholesterol, salt, carbohydrates, and other innocuous items in the diet of all normal Americans.

Think about the mental games one plays when engaged in the Fit or Fat numbers game:

On the odd occasion when the scale actually shows a weight loss, one’s food -addicted brain immediately sends a crazy message to one’s stomach that goes something like this:

“Bravo! and Sayonara to being fat. This is cause for celebration, so bring on a few five-pound boxes of fudge and as much buttered popcorn as can be stuffed into the family min-van and a U-Haul trailer!”

If, on the other hand, the scale reveals a weight gain, one’s scheming brain sends the following distorted message to one’s weight management center:

“Idiot! Just as we warned you, it is hopeless and a complete waste of time to even try to lose weight! To hell with celery sticks and water.

“Bring on a dozen BBQed short ribs, three pounds of mashed potatoes smothered in real butter, and any fudge and popcorn not consumed this morning when you celebrated that short-lived weight loss!”

And so it is in the wild and wacky world of weight management, or mismanagement to be more precise.