GBTV - Where the Truth Lives

Election Season 2014

And it has brought us to this trainwreck called ObamaCare and we have bankrupted our kids and grandkids!

We are now headed into the 2014 Election Season and common sense and conservatism are on the rise. Please stand-up and be counted!

Reading Collusion: How the Media Stole the 2012 Election is a great place to start!

The Founding Father's Real Reason for the Second Amendment

And remember the words of Thomas Jefferson "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." See Video of Suzanna Gratia-Hupp’s Congressional Testimony: What the Second Amendment is REALLY For, below (u-tube HERE).

The Leaders Are Here... Palin, Cruz, Lee, Paul, Chaffetz....

T'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

Can You Really Still Believe That None of These People Would Have Done a Better Job???

Bloggers' Rights at EFF

SIGN THE PETITION TODAY...

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

The Audacity of American Exceptionalism

Last night I finished reading Governor Palin's newest book, America by Heart. It was a wonderful, encouraging, challenging read. In fact, I fear I read it too quickly and didn't let everything sink in--kind of like when you regret eating a piece of dark chocolate too quickly. I will be re-reading it soon.

I found the book almost to be like an American took a theoretical journey similar to that of Alexis de Tocqueville when he traveled throughout all of America in the early 19th century observing American culture, politics, and Founding documents. In a sense, that's what Governor Palin did when she wrote this book. She viewed America's Founding documents, speeches by Presidents like Reagan, Kennedy, and Coolidge. She spoke of American work ethic and how great joy comes through the effort of hard work, not entitlement. She wrote of issues of race and feminism. She wrote of her personal experiences with family-- the birth of her children and her relationship with her husband. She wrote of her faith--how it is both deeply personal, but also very public.

Many politicians and political leaders write about such things, but there is something different about how Governor Palin presents the message. I think it has something to do with the title--America by Heart. It wasn't America by Mind or Thoughts on American Exceptionalism; it was America by Heart. The thoughts that she put down on paper were heart-felt. They were genuine. She didn't present a long dissertation on feminism or economics, but she did present well-reasoned, heart felt thoughts on those topics. You knew that she meant every word she wrote. Her words weren't focused group tested or written for the sake of political expediency; they were written because she meant them.

During the 2008 campaign, in the nascent days of my political awareness, I decided to read Obama's book, the Audacity of Hope, and McCain's book, Faith of my Fathers, prior to election day, hoping to get a first person perspective of the two men running for president. Prior to the 2008 campaign, I'd only really seen the term,"hope", as a religious term. Particularly, I always thought of hope as described by the writer of Hebrews in the New Testament: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see". We hope for things in the future, and things not of this world, but of eternity. Without getting too theological, suffice it to say, hope to me, was looking ahead to something, rather than viewing things in light of the present or the past.

When Obama's campaign mantra was "hope and change", what I thought about was a forward focused hope in what the country could be changed to. This is what Obama said, even a fundamental transformation of America. What America is currently is not good. There is no American exceptionalism--at least exclusively. He was "bold" enough to hope though that America could and would be transformed to something "better". This is what separates President Obama and Governor Palin both in terms of their books and their ideology. Governor Palin's book outlines American Exceptionalism as America was in its founding and what it still is today. There isn't a hoping for a better America. That exceptional America is already here, if we choose to recognize who we are as a nation and what our Founders intended for America to be. This is why Governor Palin said at the Restoring Honor rally that we need to "fundamentally restore America".

Governor Palin sees that a great America is nothing to be hoped for because it is already here, if we choose to live like that is the truth--the audacity of American Exceptionalism.

Cross posted here and here and here.

America by Heart : Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag

Fear Factor:  Palin Derangement Syndrome

Popular Sarah Palin makes book signing stop in Norfolk

The Perfect Storm is Here… (Update: SB510 Passes)

Remember that Perfect Storm you’ve been hearing about,  it’s here…

Update See Video 3 below):Hot mic picks up discussion on Senate floor: ‘It’s all rigged’

A hot mic left on during a Senate vote Tuesday morning on the Food Safety Act caught a senator complaining that process of setting the agenda during the lame-duck session is “rigged.”

“It’s all rigged. The whole conversation is rigged,” a currently unknown member on the Senate floor said. “The fact that we don’t get to a discussion before the break about what we’re going to do in the lame duck . It’s just rigged. ”

The remark was picked up live on C-SPAN 2, although microphones are usually turned down during voting times. An aide quickly realized the mistake, jumped up and had the sound cut off.

From the wide angle, it is difficult to immediately tell who exactly made the statement. We’ll have the video, and a confirmation on who said it, shortly.

Will keep you updated…

Video Updated:

Hot Mic Catches Senator Saying Lame Duck Agenda Rigged

h/t to The Daily Caller

Top-Down, Bottom-Up, and Inside Out… what Van Jones preaches is what caused Czechoslovakia to become a Communist Country

Do no get caught up in the chaos and beg the government to bail us out.  That is what they want.  It will be their reason, their license, to take away more freedoms and take more power for themselves.

Beck: “As usual the media are missing the important part of the Wikileaks story!”  The Wikileaks Crisis is not accident… It is part of the plan to create chaos!!! 

The attorney for the guy who leaked all the information does pro-bono work for Obama’s puppet-master and Hillary’s patriarch, George Soros

The Perfect Storm Is Here 1

The Perfect Storm is here… PART 1   -  CLICK FOR VIDEO

O’Reilly Livid Over WikiLeaks:  Nobody in the World Fears Barack Obama?

The Perfect Storm Is Here 2

The Perfect Storm is here… PART 2  -  CLICK FOR VIDEO

Food Modernization Act SB510

The Perfect Storm is here…PART 3   -  CLICK FOR VIDEO

Glenn Beck wrote Broke to help people understand, prepare and perhaps do the right things to brace for the Perfect Storm and come out at the other end.  If you haven’t read it, please do and find out about his special theatre presentation based on the book below:

Broke - Restarting the Engine of America
On Thursday, December 2nd, Glenn Beck brings his latest book to life on stage and on silver screens nationwide for the timely event, Broke - Restarting the Engine of America. More...

Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure

Ripped From the Pages of Broke…

Ripped from the Pages of BROKE

In 1948, 2 percent of Americans said they had "no religion." By 2008, 12 percent of Americans said that.


THE FACTS.

THE FUTURE.

THE FIGHT TO FIX AMERICA - BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

In the words of Harvard economist Niall Ferguson, the United States is “an empire on the edge of chaos.” Why? Glenn Beck thinks the answer is pretty simple: Because we’ve turned our backs on the Constitution.

Yes, our country is financially broke, but that’s just a side effect of our broken spirit, our broken faith in government, the broken promises by our leaders, and a broken political system that has centralized power at the expense of individual rights.

There is a lot of work ahead, but we can’t move forward until we first understand how we got here. Starting with the American Revolution, Glenn takes readers on an express train through 234 years of history, culminating with the Great Recession and the bipartisan recklessness of Presidents Bush and Obama. It’s the history lesson we all wished we’d had in school. (Did you know, for example, that FDR once made a key New Deal policy decision based on his lucky number?)

Along the way, you’ll see how everything you thought you knew about the political parties is a lie, how Democrats and Republicans alike used to fight for minimum government and maximum freedom, and how both parties have been taken over by a cancer called “progressivism.” By the end, you’ll understand why no president, no congress and no court can fix this problem alone. Looking toward them for answers is like looking toward the ocean for drinking water— it looks promising, but the end result is catastrophic.

After revealing the trail of lies that brought us here, Broke exposes the truth about what we’re really facing. Most people have seen pieces of the puzzle, but very few have ever seen the whole picture—and for very good reason: Our leaders have done everything in their power to hide it. If Americans understood how dire things really are, they would be demanding radical reform right now. Despite the rhetoric, that’s not the kind of change our politicians really believe in.

Finally, Broke provides the hope that comes with knowing the truth. Once you see what we’re really up against, it’s much easier to develop a realistic plan. To fix ourselves financially, Glenn argues, we have to fix ourselves first. That means some serious introspection and, ultimately, a series of actions that will unite all Americans around the concept of shared sacrifice. After all, this generation may not be asked to storm beaches, but we are being asked to do something just as critical to preserving freedom.

Packed with great stories from history, chalkboard-style teachable moments, custom illustrations, and Glenn Beck’s trademark combination of entertainment and enlightenment, Broke makes the case that when you’re traveling in the wrong direction, slight course corrections won’t cut it—you need to take drastic action. Through a return to individual rights, an uncompromising adherence to the Constitution, and a complete rethinking about the role of government in a free society, Glenn exposes the idea of “transformation” for the progressive smokescreen that it is, and instead builds a compelling case that restoration is the only way forward.

 

Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure

Broke - Restarting the Engine of America
On Thursday, December 2nd, Glenn Beck brings his latest book to life on stage and on silver screens nationwide for the timely event, Broke - Restarting the Engine of America. More...

Monday, November 29, 2010

‘TONIGHT SHOW’: DENNIS MILLER BASHES PELOSI TO RAUCUS CHEERS FROM MILITARY CROWD

Part I:

Part II:

Source: Breitbart TV

ACTION ALERT: 'Food Safety Modernization Act' (S510) Final Vote Pending -- CALL SENATORS NOW! (UPDATED)

The United States Senate is now in session, and they continue their 'consideration' of the 'Food Safety Modernization Act,' AKA S510. At the very best, this legislation will DRAMATICALLY increase the cost of our food supply here in America. At worst, it will give the federal government unconstitutional power and control over all farmland in America.

THIS MUST NOT PASS!!

Although is is a ploy to takeover the farmland in America, the way it is written (if they choose to enforce it)  Senate Bill S510 Makes It Illegal to Grow, Share, Trade or Sell Homegrown Food or seeds (especially non-GMO seeds) for any and all Americans.

Since the govtrack.us website page for S510 was down when I attempted to access it twice, here's the Google cache of their S510 page for more info.

UPDATE: The Hill is reporting that the vote has been postponed until tomorrow morning (Tuesday 11.30.10)  This is a huge vote on a bill that assaults our freedoms in many ways and is another step toward socialism, Big Brother and controlling our food supply, what is in it and how much is available.

Senate postpones food-safety bill vote

By Julian Pecquet - 11/29/10 03:02 PM ET
Senate leaders have agreed to postpone a vote on two amendments and final passage of food-safety legislation until Tuesday morning, congressional sources tell The Hill.

The move would give Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) time to debate the merits of his two amendments to the legislation. One amendment is a stripped-down substitute to the bill — the other is a moratorium on congressionally directed appropriations.

"A morning vote is the right move," a spokesman for Coburn told The Hill. "Reid would be sending the wrong message to have a late night vote on keeping the lights on at the earmark favor factory."
Votes on two other amendments to repeal the healthcare reform law's 1099 tax reporting requirements are still scheduled for Monday evening.

The Senate bill would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to recall tainted food, quarantine geographic areas and access food producers’ records.

The House passed its version of food-safety legislation in July 2009. House leaders say the lower chamber could pass the Senate bill as is during this lame-duck session in order to get the bill to the president's desk before a new Congress is sworn in.
--------
This is a seriously bad bill. Glenn Beck said today the part making private home gardens illegal was apparently removed, so this version doesn't necessarily reflect that change, but we must assume it has tons of tyrannical structure.

Even Senator Hatch, who will be, in January, the most progressive of Utah's senators (Mike Lee was the Tea Party/9.12 Project candidate in the Primary election), knows this bill is bad news for America:

Food Safety Bill is a Dangerous Expansion of the Federal Government

November 29, 2010 - 13:56 ET
By Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)
The Food Safety Bill (S. 510) started out with the best intentions, to make our food supply safer. Unfortunately, even with the best intentions many in Congress will use any excuse to grow government and spend recklessly.
As a conservative on the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee I initially supported the Food Safety bill. At the time, I was clear that the bill needed significant improvements and if it did not continue to improve that I would stop supporting the bill. I hoped to use my cosponsorship to steer this legislation away from the big government expansion that I feared it would become. I made it clear that if there was a huge price tag to taxpayers that I would not support the bill.

That’s regrettably what happened. After the bill was approved by the committee, the legislation did not improve. It expands the federal workforce by the thousands. The federal workforce should be capped, which is why I introduced legislation this year to do exactly that. In addition this bill has a price tag of $1.5 billion, we simply cannot afford that. We need to balance the budget not continue to spend. Because of these concerns, I have voted against this legislation not once, but twice.

I will continue to oppose this bill. We need to return to the principles that make our country great: a limited federal government and balancing our federal budget by cutting spending.
--------
Here's Glenn Beck discussing the bill this morning on his talk radio program:

2010.11.29 - Glenn Beck on S510, The Potential Loss of America, and Tyrannical Big Government 1/2
2010.11.29 - Glenn Beck on S510, The Potential Loss of America, and Tyrannical Big Government 2/2

I copied/pasted the bill text into Microsoft Word, and it says there are nearly a quarter million characters in the bill, not including spaces (well over 280,000 including spaces). We can't take the chance that this bill will pass. We MUST defeat it!
First, call YOUR U.S. Senator. Then call the rest! Then let us know...

Source:  The 9/12 Project

Would You Vote for a Food Bill Monsanto Supports?

FASCIST CONTROL OF OUR FOOD SUPPLY?  THE S.510 FOOD SAFETY SCAM

Senate Bill S510 Makes It Illegal to Grow, Share, Trade or Sell Homegrown Food

Link to Bill:   S.510: FDA Food Safety Modernization Act 

Urgent Lame Duck Fax Reminder and Update

Urgent Lame Duck Fax Reminder and Update

Below is a letter written by a friend of mine that she faxed to her Senator (Senator Jon Kyl of AZ) about S.510, START Treaty, etc. Here are the numbers for Senator Jon Kyl’s offices (202-224-2207, 602-957-6838, 520-797-3232), in case he is your Senator. If not, here are some sources for contact information: Senators from your State.  *   U.S. Government on TwitterUnited States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121

Please feel free to copy or edit it and send it on to your Senator and then pass it on. 

The Dems in the present lame duck Congress have a long list of bills that they are going to try to pass even though the people have spoken and are now screaming STOP… most of those that the voters vehemently oppose. Yet they don’t seem appear to be interested in dealing with issues like extending the Bush tax cuts before the first of the year or perhaps dealing with the 4th Amendment violations of the present TSA procedures.  Each of us must continue to speak up! 

Please take a few moments to fax your Senator(s) and if possible please re-fax, call and email them throughout this session with the same message.

Related Posts and Information relating to fax:

Dems Want to Hand $44 Billion to Illegals Through Dream Act  -  Common Sense Look at Immigration by the Numbers – Stop the Dream Act!

Russia to Supply Spares to China as Military Cooperation Protocol Signed  -  What is the SCO? According to the organization’s own website: http://www.sectsco.org/EN/brief.asp

Fascist Control of Our Food Supply:  S.510 Food Safety Scam  -  Link to Bill: S.510: FDA Food Safety Modernization Act  -  Senate Bill S510 Makes It Illegal to Grow, Share, Trade or Sell Homegrown Food or Seeds

And as previously announced, the lame duck Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to move forward with censoring the internet via the COICA bill -- despite a bunch of law professors explaining to them how this law is a clear violation of the First Amendment.

Please feel free to copy and/or edit the short fax letter below and send it on to your Senator and then pass it on for others to do the same. 

URGENT FAX

Dear Senator __________,                                                                                                     November 27, 2010

Thank you so much for opposing the START Treaty.  I am so grateful to you for ensuring that this treaty is not ratified.  It must not be ratified.  I hope that you will take the time to educate uninformed Senators on the dangers of this treaty.

In addition to the threat it poses to our 2nd Amendment, Russia and China have joined together and both are now members of the SCO (see footnote on the Russia, China and India cooperative). And reported on 2010-11-09 “Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and the head of China's Central Military Commission, Guo Boxiong, on Tuesday signed an agreement on developing military cooperation between the two states.” http://www.defense19.com/reports-4761

Today’s Washington Post reported on China’s strengthened relationship with North Korea, and our President and Secretary of State seem to be unaware of the implications – or perhaps complicit.  Review U.S. policy toward North Korea” By Robert Carlin and John W. Lewis, Monday, November 22, 2010.

Please educate those in the Senate who do not understand what’s going on, and please continue to stand firm against ratification of the START Treaty.

S.510, the Food “Safety” Act must also be stopped. The President increased the FDA’s budget by 135% since 2008.  Adding more to grow the size of the FDA is something we cannot afford.  The bill is purposely vague and when regulations are written, we will learn that S.510 is a takeover of our food supply – not a bill regarding safety.  We already have agencies tasked with food safety and one must ask why Democrats are pushing S.510 so hard, and why armed raids of food stores have increased.  This bill must not pass.

The DREAM Act must also be defeated as well as the COICA bill, along with all bills introduced by Democrats in the lame duck session. The Democrats have made their intentions clear with each bill they’ve put forth (e.g. food, land, voting, Internet) - to do harm to the very fabric of our nation; to tighten the noose around the neck of liberty until America is no longer recognizable. Americans voted against that, please fight for us.

The noblest action Congress can take is to begin repealing existing legislation, not enact more legislation.

Thank you Senator ______ and know that tens of millions of awakened Americans are grateful to you!

[NAME] & Family

[ADDRESS, PHONE, EMAIL]

Hillary Clinton: Population Control Will Now Become The Centerpiece Of U.S. Foreign Policy

Official portrait of Secretary of State Hillar...

During remarks that she made for the 15th Anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the launch of a new program that according to Clinton will now become the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy.  This new program is known as the Global Health Initiative, and it is being incredibly well-funded at a time when the U.S. government is drowning in debt.  According to Clinton, 63 billion dollars will be spent by the U.S. to prevent pregnancies and to improve "family planning" services around the globe over the next six years.  In other words, the new centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy is all about eugenics and population control.

The following is an excerpt from Clinton's remarks....

In addition to new funding, we’ve launched a new program that will be the centerpiece of our foreign policy, the Global Health Initiative, which commits us to spending $63 billion over six years to improve global health by investing in efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality, prevent millions of unintended pregnancies, and avert millions of new HIV infections, among other goals. This initiative will employ a new approach to fighting disease and promoting health.

You see, whenever the global elite want to launch another new eugenics operation, they announce it as a great "humanitarian program" that will save millions of lives.  But their real goal is to control the population and prevent millions of lives from being born.

This was also reflected in Clinton's remarks about the United Nations Population Fund.  The United Nations Population Fund has been promoting abortion, forced sterilization and radical population control measures around the globe for decades, and Hillary Clinton was super excited to talk about how the U.S. government recently renewed funding for that organization....

This year, the United States renewed funding of reproductive healthcare through the United Nations Population Fund, and more funding is on the way. (Applause.) The U.S. Congress recently appropriated more than $648 million in foreign assistance to family planning and reproductive health programs worldwide. That’s the largest allocation in more than a decade – since we last had a Democratic president, I might add. (Applause.)

So what exactly is so bad about the United Nations Population Fund?

Not only does the United Nations Population Fund support and fund the forced abortion and infanticide of China's "one child" program, they also promote abortion, forced sterilization and brutal eugenics programs throughout the developing world.

To learn much more about the United Nations Population Fund, please watch the four short videos below.  They will leave you absolutely stunned....

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLkw01UaUes&feature=related

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISj1d9lNi-E&feature=related

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V8oWHAh_yo&feature=related

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myITaeV3Q2o&feature=related

The truth is that the United Nations Population Fund always has been and always will be about eugenics.

And thanks to Barack Obama, it is being funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

But that wasn't enough for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, so they have launched this new Global Health Initiative which will now be the "centerpiece" of U.S. foreign policy.

63 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars will be spent over the next six years to promote abortion, sterilization and "family planning" around the globe.

Sadly enough, there are people who are actually convinced that they will save the environment by reducing the population.  They think that while promoting abortion and sterilization may not be the most pleasant thing to do, it must be done for the good of the planet.

Of course they are dead wrong, but the "true believers" do not understand this.  All they know is that they have to keep all of the brown and black women in other countries from having babies so that we can save the planet.

We live in a world that is becoming more evil all the time.  Every person on this planet has a fundamental right to have as many children as they want, but the truth is that this right is being stripped away from an increasing number of people.

We live at a time when even our most fundamental liberties as human beings are under attack.  Let us hope that America wakes up and starts saying "no" to these kinds of policies.

We all realize that we need to be better stewards of the Earth and control our populations… the question is how, by how much and who makes the decisions.  For those of you who made of fun of Sarah Palin talking about the death panels under ObamaCare, maybe you owe her an apology!?!

Hillary Clinton:  Population Control Will Now Become the Centerpiece of U.S. Foreign Policy  is  an interesting since U.S. Population would be at zero growth if they would secure the borders, enforce our immigration laws and Congress would stop upping the quota numbers for people to enter the Country.  See:  Common Sense Look at Immigration by the Numbers – Stop the Dream Act!

NANP–National Association of Nutrition Professionals – 2005 Conference

Video: Population Reduction – PLEASE WATCH + SHARE

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ~" Bill Clinton (USATODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A)

Related:

Council On Foreign Relations

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Homeland Security Initial Move Against Internet and Seizes Domain Names

Following on the heels of this week’s domain seizure of a large hiphop file-sharing links forum, it’s clear today that the U.S. Government has been very busy. Without any need for COICA, ICE has just seized the domain of a BitTorrent meta-search engine along with those belonging to other music linking sites and several others which appear to be connected to physical counterfeit goods.

While complex, it’s still possible for U.S. authorities and copyright groups to point at a fully-fledged BitTorrent site with a tracker and say “that’s an infringing site.” When one looks at a site which hosts torrents but operates no tracker, the finger pointing becomes quite a bit more difficult.

When a site has no tracker, carries no torrents, lists no copyright works unless someone searches for them and responds just like Google, accusing it of infringement becomes somewhat of a minefield – unless you’re ICE Homeland Security Investigations that is.

This morning, visitors to the Torrent-Finder.com site are greeted with an ominous graphic which indicates that ICE have seized the site’s domain.

The message below is posted on the seized sites

Seized Servers

“My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!” the exasperated owner of Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak this morning.

“I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed. Godaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN,” he explained.

Aside from the fact that domains are being seized seemingly at will, there is a very serious problem with the action against Torrent-Finder. Not only does the site not host or even link to any torrents whatsoever, it actually only returns searches through embedded iframes which display other sites that are not under the control of the Torrent-Finder owner.

Torrent-Finder remains operational through another URL, Torrent-Finder.info, so feel free to check it out for yourself. The layouts of the sites it searches are clearly visible in the results shown.

Yesterday we reported that the domain of hiphop site RapGodFathers had been seized and today we can reveal that they are not on their own. Two other music sites in the same field – OnSmash.com and DaJaz1.com – have fallen to the same fate. But ICE activities don’t end there.

Several other domains also appear to have been seized including 2009jerseys.com, nfljerseysupply.com, throwbackguy.com, cartoon77.com, lifetimereplicas.com, handbag9.com, handbagcom.com and dvdprostore.com.

All seized sites point to the same message.

Domain seizures coming under the much debated ‘censorship bill’ COICA? Who needs it?

ICE Seizes Web Sites: What About Deporting Illegal Aliens???

Why are DHS resources not used to secure our borders from further invasions?

Janet Napolitano, boss lady at the Department of Home Land Security, has apparently expanded her sphere of influence beyond groping and fondling at U.S. airports to the new and vitally important horizon of seizing domain names.

As reported :

The investigative arm of the Homeland Security Department appears to be shutting down websites that facilitate copyright infringement.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has seized dozens of domain names over the past few days, according to TorrentFreak.

ICE appears to be targeting sites that help Internet users download copyrighted music, as well as sites that sell bootleg goods, such as fake designer handbags.

The sites are replaced with a note from the government: “This domain named has been seized by ICE, Homeland Security Investigations.”

With all due respect to Secretary Napolitano, why in the world are ICE resources being used in this manner, rather than to combat the invasion of America by millions of criminals from south of the border?

Why is ICE not being used in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other so-called “Sanctuary Cities” to root out leftist moon bats in government that deliberately shield illegal aliens from the rule of law in defiance of federal law?

Why is ICE not mobilized to process and execute deportation orders for the 12-40 million invaders currently here?

Why are DHS resources not used to secure our borders from further invasions?

The overall burning question: Why Is Janet Napolitano still on the federal payroll after two years of miserable failure?

Update: Below is an longer list of domains that were apparently seized. Most of the sites relate to counterfeit goods. We assume that the authorities had a proper warrant for these sites (as they had for RapGodFathers yesterday), but were unable to confirm this.

Update: A spokeswoman for ICE confirmed the seizures in the following statement. “ICE office of Homeland Security Investigations executed court-ordered seizure warrants against a number of domain names. As this is an ongoing investigation, there are no additional details available at this time.”

2009jerseys.com
51607.com
amoyhy.com
b2corder.com
bishoe.com
borntrade.com
borntrade.net
boxedtvseries.com
boxset4less.com
boxsetseries.com
burberryoutletshop.com
cartoon77.com
cheapscarfshop.com
coachoutletfactory.com
dajaz1.com
discountscarvesonsale.com
dvdcollectionsale.com
dvdcollects.com
dvdorderonline.com
dvdprostore.com
dvdscollection.com
dvdsetcollection.com
dvdsetsonline.com
dvdsuperdeal.com
eluxury-outlet.com
getdvdset.com
gofactoryoutlet.com
golfstaring.com
golfwholesale18.com
handbag9.com
handbagcom.com
handbagspop.com
icqshoes.com
ipodnanouk.com
jersey-china.com
jerseyclubhouse.com
jordansbox.com
lifetimereplicas.com
louis-vuitton-outlet-store.com
lv-outlets.com
lv-outlets.net
lv-outletstore.com
massnike.com
merrytimberland.com
mycollects.com
mydreamwatches.com
mygolfwholesale.com
newstylerolex.com
nfljerseysupply.com
nibdvd.com
odvdo.com
oebags.com
onsmash.com
overbestmall.com
rapgodfathers.com
realtimberland.com
rmx4u.com
scarfonlineshop.com
scarfviponsale.com
shawls-store.com
silkscarf-shop.com
silkscarfonsale.com
skyergolf.com
sohob2b.com
sohob2c.com
storeofeast.com
stuff-trade.com
sunglasses-mall.com
sunogolf.com
tbl-sports.com
throwbackguy.com
tiesonsale.com
timberlandlike.com
topabuy.com
torrent-finder.com
usaburberryscarf.com
usaoutlets.net

Related:

The Hill -  Hillicon Valley Technology Site:  Homeland Security Seized Domain Names

 

The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

from the free-speech-isn't-free dept

This is hardly a surprise but, this morning (as previously announced), the lame duck Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to move forward with censoring the internet via the COICA bill -- despite a bunch of law professors explaining to them how this law is a clear violation of the First Amendment. What's really amazing is that many of the same Senators have been speaking out against internet censorship in other countries, yet they happily vote to approve it here because it's seen as a way to make many of their largest campaign contributors happy. There's very little chance that the bill will actually get passed by the end of the term but, in the meantime, we figured it might be useful to highlight the 19 Senators who voted to censor the internet this morning:

  • Patrick J. Leahy -- Vermont
  • Herb Kohl -- Wisconsin
  • Jeff Sessions -- Alabama
  • Dianne Feinstein -- California
  • Orrin G. Hatch -- Utah
  • Russ Feingold -- Wisconsin
  • Chuck Grassley -- Iowa
  • Arlen Specter -- Pennsylvania
  • Jon Kyl -- Arizona
  • Chuck Schumer -- New York
  • Lindsey Graham -- South Carolina
  • Dick Durbin -- Illinois
  • John Cornyn -- Texas
  • Benjamin L. Cardin -- Maryland
  • Tom Coburn -- Oklahoma
  • Sheldon Whitehouse -- Rhode Island
  • Amy Klobuchar -- Minnesota
  • Al Franken -- Minnesota
  • Chris Coons -- Delaware

This should be a list of shame. You would think that our own elected officials would understand the First Amendment but, apparently, they have no problem turning the US into one of the small list of authoritarian countries that censors internet content it does not like (in this case, content some of its largest campaign contributors do not like). We already have laws in place to deal with infringing content, so don't buy the excuse that this law is about stopping infringement. This law takes down entire websites based on the government's say-so. First Amendment protections make clear that if you are going to stop any specific speech, it has to be extremely specific speech. This law has no such restrictions. It's really quite unfortunate that these 19 US Senators are the first American politicians to publicly vote in favor of censoring speech in America.

Update: Some people in the comments are claiming this is not about censorship, so I've put up a new post explaining in detail why this bill is all about censorship.

Chavez In the Process of Taking Over All Communications… Obama Right Behind Him

Fear Factor: Palin Derangement Syndrome (Worth the Read)

Fear Factor: Sarah Palin and 2012

by Dr. Gina Loudon

Recently, I attended the Conservatives for Palin, and I gained some insight I think conservatives want to consider moving forward. The group was not like any I have ever known. There were all kinds of people there—Christians, Jews, Hindus, women, men, black, white, Asian, and even Nordic! They were gay, straight, old, young, republican, democrat, libertarian, and independent, and they all had one thing in common…they believe the stringent adherence to the US Constitution is the answer to the problems we have today.

Even if they are quiet, there are those conservatives who struggle with a female president. Dr. Dathan Paterno, noted psychologist and author says the reality is, that there WILL be a woman president in the near future—that it is in the American psyche. What happens if conservatives choose NOT to nominate Sarah Palin? Certainly the liberals will nominate a woman soon, and then they continue the whining about sexism that has worked for them for so long.

Liberals and establishment politicians of all parties seem to have a special venom for the former Governor of Alaska. If she is really so “unelectable” then why all the fuss? “Thou doth protest…”. If she is really so laughable, then why do the jokes about her keep falling flat? Could it be that they obsess about her for the psychological reason that they can’t stand the threat she poses to them? Could it be because they see her as the greatest threat in recent history to their personal goals, and the establishment media and messaging they have used to control politics in this country for a generation? Could it be that the nomination of Sarah Palin for President is a revolution?

Her nomination presents a real conundrum for liberals and establishment parties of all stripes. If the Republicans nominate Sarah Palin, how will the liberals continue to accuse the right of being sexist? Where will the feminists go to find their beloved glass ceiling victim status? If she has outspoken gay supporters who don’t disagree with her stance that this is a Judeo Christian republic with a founding document that matters more than someone’s sexual preference, then how will the militant gays continue to relegate Christians to radical, homophobic, hating extremists? If a family woman, a mom, can (based on her Christian principle) in fact love someone that the liberals say she hates, then what do liberals do with that? If the constitutional conservatives progress this nation to nominate the first female nominee for president, then how do liberals continue to abuse labels like “progressive” and “tolerant”?

Conservatives have their own issues. First, from a GOP perspective, consultants use their experience with the apparatus to be hired by candidates to run their campaigns. How will they do that if someone climbed to the top on a different tree? Some conservatives may struggle with her rebuke of legalistic philosophy in lieu of one that favors real liberty, and Christ-like love, even for those who live or believe differently than you. Perhaps most difficult for some conservatives to admit–When a woman like Sarah Palin is President, how to we reconcile our own sideline behavior without tremendous guilt? I wish I had a good answer to that last one.

The militant liberals don’t like her, but interestingly she has attracted a broad group of people who do like her. Their loyalty has resulted in an organization that is so talented and proficient, it is difficult to comprehend, even to a seasoned campaign veteran. Her supporters are constitution loving, focused and very, very serious about supporting her (or whomever she taps with her magic winning wand)! Not everyone at the Conservatives for Palin were certain she would run, or that she should, but almost all that I talked to agreed that if she did run, the Country would be shocked at her savvy and self deprecating ability to do so. They all agreed that she is far stronger, far more capable than any of her opponents even know. She is certainly well vetted, beyond that of any other candidate. Most people would agree that no other candidate has endured the ridicule and jabs that Sarah has overcome.

Her critics say she does all she does for money, but with two books and a television show, that argument doesn’t hold any more water than the fame argument, or the power hound. She just won 71%+ of the elections she touched, and many were considered “unwinnable.” She has become a culture icon of sorts. She could take her lipstick, shoes, glasses, mama grizzly, and even barracuda labels, and she could probably start a fashion line and retire to an Alaskan island with a lovely view of Russia.

The liberals have always underestimated Governor Palin and she has continued to shock them as she seamlessly wins elections like a political Houdini of sorts.

All of the accusations about her motives tend to leave the listening public with one logical conclusion: She must be in this because she believes in what she is doing, and genuinely cares about this Country. That is not a half bad motive by most peoples’ standards, and it is hard to argue otherwise and sound rational.

If Sarah Palin runs and wins, it will certainly be a political analyst’s dream to observe. Fear is not a factor for the Palins, and they seem to enjoy the challenge of overcoming all the predictions about their family. They might just shock us again in the weeks to come–and the ones after that.

How Sarah Palin Could Beat Obama in 2012

Jon Wiener  -  November 22, 2010

Sarah Palin could win the presidency in 2012—that’s what Frank Rich said in the New York Times on Sunday—but not in a two-person head-to-head race. For Palin to beat Obama, a third-party candidate would have to run, and take votes away from Obama.

And we have a potential third-party spoiler, Rich says: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He’s got the money, and he’s got the ambition. He ran for mayor as a Republican in 2006 but changed his registration the next year and won re-election as an independent.

Obama’s hope is that Republicans will pick Palin in 2012. The latest CNN poll shows him beating her 52-44 percent, but losing to Mitt Romney 50-45 and to Mike Huckabee 52-44. But those are all two-person races.

According to the Palin-wins scenario cited by Frank Rich, Bloomberg takes away from Obama the votes of moderates who think he’s been too liberal, who think the country needs a president who’s truly a centrist. Obama loses New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to Bloomberg, and loses moderate votes that gave him the majority in 2008 in key industrial states—Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana--where the white working class never liked Obama anyway, but gave him a chance in 2008. In 2012 they go to Bloomberg and Palin carries those states. Palin takes office in January 2013.

The Bloomberg-as-spoiler scenario may seem unlikely, but Obama is already worrying about it. He’s been courting Bloomberg big time, as John Heilemann pointed out in New York magazine: Obama invited Bloomberg to play golf when he was vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard; he floated Bloomberg’s name as a potential Treasury secretary, he made a big deal of sending Joe Biden and Tim Geithner to “seek his economic counsel.” 

But how likely is it that Palin would be the beneficiary of a Bloomberg candidacy? Seems to me it’s more likely that Bloomberg would win the votes of Republicans who think Palin is a disaster, but couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Obama. They’d go for Bloomberg, who would thus serve as a spoiler for the Republican candidate rather than the Democratic one.

Evidence for that scenario comes from anxious Republicans, especially from Haley Barbour, Republican governor of Mississippi, who urged Bloomberg not to run. He told CNN on Friday that a third-party bid by Bloomberg would be "the best thing that can happen to President Obama" because he’s take votes away from the Republicans.

But will Bloomberg run? He considered running in 2008. He’s “surrounded by people urging him to run,” according to Heilemann. Reports are that he sees 2012 as his last chance, because he will be 68.

The hard part for any third-party candidate is getting on the ballot in all fifty states. But there’s already a potential path for Bloomberg, called Americans Elect. It has a website promising a third-party candidate who would represent “the vital center of American public opinion.” According to Heilemann, it’s funded by “a wealthy private investor,” Peter Ackerman, who has already put $1.5 million into the project.

If the economy doesn’t recover, if Obama doesn’t rebound in the opinion polls and if the Republicans pick Palin, Bloomberg could conclude that neither party has what American voters want and need. He could spend a billion dollars of his own money on a campaign, or even two or three billion. No one is sure what would happen—that’s why both Haley Barbour and Barack Obama are trying to keep Bloomberg from running.

Palin Derangement Syndrome: Catching Halibut Makes Her a “Female Serial Killer of Animals”

by SHEIKYERMAMI on NOVEMBER 26, 2010

What the halibut? Palin ’snuff film’ outrages animal rights advocates

Tofu slurping moonbats go apeshit over a real woman

US Republican darling Sarah Palin is under fire for apparently clubbing a fish to death, then holding its still-beating heart in her hands for television cameras in what a US animal rights group calls a “snuff video”.  (Sydney Moonbat Herald)

If it was the Obamessiah the gushers would be all over him with tingles up their legs……

Here on Facebook,  Palin rips the Manchurian moonbat and his armies of gushing tinglers a new one:

My fellow Americans in all 57 states, the time has changed for come.

With our country founded more than 20 centuries ago, we have much to celebrate – from the FBI’s 100 days to the reforms that bring greater inefficiencies to our health care system. We know that countries like Europe are willing to stand with us in our fight to halt the rise of privacy, and Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. And let’s face it, everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma and they end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment, and ah, a breathalyzer, or an inhalator. I mean, not a breathalyzer, ah, I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for that…

Of course, the paragraph above is based on a series of misstatements and verbal gaffes made by Barack Obama (I didn’t have enough time to do one for Joe Biden). YouTube links are provided just in case you doubt the accuracy of these all too human slips-of-the-tongue. If you can’t remember hearing about them, that’s because for the most part the media didn’t consider them newsworthy. I have no complaint about that. Everybody makes the occasional verbal gaffe – even news anchors.

Obviously, I would have been even more impressed if the media showed some consistency on this issue. Unfortunately, it seems they couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a simple one word slip-of-the-tongue of mine into a major political headline. The one word slip occurred yesterday during one of my seven back-to-back interviews wherein I was privileged to speak to the American public about the important, world-changing issues before us.

If the media had bothered to actually listen to all of my remarks on Glenn Beck’s radio show, they would have noticed that I refer to South Korea as our ally throughout, that I corrected myself seconds after my slip-of-the-tongue, and that I made it abundantly clear that pressure should be put on China to restrict energy exports to the North Korean regime. The media could even have done due diligence and checked my previous statements on the subject, which have always been consistent, and in fact even ahead of the curve. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story? (And for that matter, why not just make up stories out of thin air – like the totally false hard news story which has run for three days now reporting that I lobbied the producers of “Dancing with the Stars” to cast a former Senate candidate on their show. That lie is further clear proof that the media completely makes things up without doing even rudimentary fact-checking.)  UK Telegraph: Sarah Palin Defends Herself After North Korea Slip

“Hope springs eternal” as the poet says. Let’s hope that perhaps, just maybe, they might get it right next time. When we the people are effective in holding America’s free press accountable for responsible and truthful reporting, then we shall all have even more to be thankful for!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

- Sarah Palin

Mainstream America loves Sarah Palin because she represents them and everything that America stands for.  And a growing number of so called “elites”, who actually listen to what Sarah Palin has to say  and are doing some independent thinking are realizing that the media (controlled by the Progressive elites) are wrong about her and consistently demonize her out of fear (as our Country is crashing down around our ears).  If you are not a Palin fan I can only encourage you to ask yourself… what is it really about Sarah Palin that you don’t like?  And how much do you actually know about her that hasn’t been fed to you by a media machine intent on destroying her!

Sarah Palin has much more experience, including executive experience, than Barack Obama ever had when he ran for President, including: head of the PTA to City Council, Mayor of Wasilla and Governor of Alaska, and has been on a non-stop learning junket since tapped for VP in 2008.  She is now a major force in the Republican Party and Tea Party Movement.  And Sarah and her husband Todd have owned their own businesses as well as working a long list of blue collar jobs; and have raised 5 children, including a Down Syndrome son.  Sarah has a degree in journalism, worked her own way through school… which is why she entered a ‘beauty’ contest; and can hunt, fish and then can cook it when she gets back home while always looking great.  She electrifies a room or a rally of thousands when she speaks, but cleans her own house.  She supports our military and has a son fighting for America; supports our allies like Israel and believes in securing our borders and protecting America first;  she believes in the American Dream; and  Sarah is willing to speak out like nobody else.   Sarah Palin loves America and respects the American people (of which she is one) as well as their their will rather than wanting to fundamentally transform her, is a Constitutionalist, and believes in God… just like approximately 83% of Americans.  So ask yourself… what is so wrong with Sarah Palin… especially after you strip away the lies told about her?  Why do we allow the media to shun every new independent bright light that just might really change what is going on in Washington?  And why wouldn’t you like her or want a real average American who loves our Country, the Constitution and God in the White House?

We keep wanting things to change… yet we keep re-electing the same people, from the same pool.  What was that definition of insanity again?

Ask Marion

God Rest Ye Merry Merchants

“The Celebration of Christmas in America is not Just a Christian Holiday,  but a Celebration of our National Past and Our Collective Wishes and Psyche as a Nation!”

clip_image001In his mawkish 1942 hit "White Christmas," Bing Crosby yearned for a holiday "just like the one I used to know." The extraordinary popularity of Crosby's nostalgic longing (the all-time top-selling single until it was eclipsed by "Candle in the Wind 1997," Elton John's mawkish tribute to Princess Diana) suggests the holiday's tremendous power to revive memories--perhaps only imaginary, idealized memories--of childhood and Christmases past.  According to Karal Ann Marling, "Christmas is the universal memory" for contemporary Americans (whether they're Christian or not), an event in which "virtually everybody has played a part." By telling the story of Americans' celebration of Christmas, she promises to uncover a surprisingly neglected piece of not only our national past, but our collective wishes and psyche.

Marling, a prolific and inventive cultural historian at the University of Minnesota who has written books on topics ranging from George Washington (George Washington Slept Here: Colonial Revivals and American Culture, 1876-1986) and Norman Rockwell to Disneyland (Designing Disney's Theme Parks: The Architecture of Reassurance) and Graceland (Graceland: Going Home with Elvis) and As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s, now turns her attention to the history of America's most lavishly celebrated holiday. Marling has a keen eye for offbeat topics, arresting detail and original interpretations, and refuses "to plug the contents of the national Christmas stocking into the socket of orthodox historical discourse" (certainly that sounds unadvisable). She insists instead that her goal is to unwrap the hidden meaning of quotidian, but telling objects and practices to reveal the holiday's deeper significance.

Myriad "scraps of Christmas detritus"--and Christmas generates loads of detritus--supply Marling with ample material: Shortly after Halloween, America's shopping malls and stores are festooned with red and green and stocked from floor to ceiling with Christmas gifts. In the days after Christmas, discarded trees, still dangling tinsel, lie amid trash bags stuffed with discarded wrapping paper and packaging on curbs across the nation. Somewhere in between the shopping bags and the trash bags, millions of Americans attend their annual office party, endure children's pageants, spend billions of dollars buying presents, cook traditional feasts, and gather with family and friends to exchange gifts and celebrate the nation's most extravagant holiday. Wrapping paper, lights, ornaments, store window displays, trees, cards, Santas and cookies fill the thematic chapters of Merry Christmas! The history of Christmas, as Marling observes promisingly, is in the details.

Americans commonly assume that Christmas endured for centuries as a solemn religious holiday, before being corrupted by consumer capitalism. As early as the 1870s, critics of Christmas were engaging in "breast-beating over soulless American materialism." In 1949, opponents of the holiday's excess launched a crusade to "restore" its "original" character. Billboards, posters and bumper stickers urging Americans to "Put Christ Back into Christmas" were a common sight during the holiday season throughout the 1950s. Like many tales of decline, this Christmas story proves a fable. In colonial America, Christmas was either not celebrated at all (it was actually illegal to celebrate the holiday in many Puritan communities), or an occasion for boisterous, drunken revelry.

In fact nearly all of Americans' Christmas rituals and icons are 19th-century inventions, created to venerate home and family, not the birth of Jesus. Christmas trees, artfully bedecked with ornaments, became the focal point of Americans' Christmas celebrations in the 1850s. Santa Claus became an icon in the 1860s and 1870s, springing from the pen of cartoonist Thomas Nast. Gift-giving became commonplace in the 1870s and 1880s, as more Americans adopted the practice of purchasing inexpensive, factory-made trinkets--"gewgaws" and "gimcracks"--and wrapping the presents to produce surprise. By century's end, Christmas had become a legal holiday in every state, and the year's most eagerly anticipated holiday for millions. In the 1920s, advertisers transformed Santa into a jovial salesman, whose girth and cheerfulness embodied consumer abundance: According to Marling, St. Nick, not that gangly, gaunt Uncle Sam, best personifies America.

As Marling observes, Americans' celebration of Christmas grew along with material abundance and consumer culture, and the department store window, not the Nativity scene, has always furnished the holiday's central icon. "Christmas," she writes, "is all about stores and shopping." Conversely, stores and shopping rely heavily on Christmas. Last year, Americans spent a record $184 billion during the Christmas shopping season (officially, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas), and many retailers depend on Christmas sales for one quarter of their annual revenue.

But Marling is most interesting when she discusses the holiday's paradoxes, which mingle materialism and generosity. Retailers and advertisers deliberately have exploited holidays to encourage consumption, but they have by no means stripped these "holy days" of their deeper meaning altogether. Marling notes that our most materialistic holiday is also ironically "the primary occasion for considering the harsh realities of the world, and those who have no trees and puddings."

As a result, charitable giving to the poor has accompanied the holiday since the 19th century. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, which has ranked among Americans' most beloved Christmas stories since its publication in 1843, offers a largely secular plea on behalf of the less fortunate. Funding charity dinners for the poor at Christmas time became an annual ritual of penance for the well-to-do in American cities in the late 19th century. Wealthy benefactors congratulated themselves for bestowing feasts and presents on their less fortunate neighbors, but could not have failed to recognize the troubling gulf, let alone the connection, between their abundance and others' privation. Christmas' mixture of materialism and charity remains paradoxical to our own day: Each December, as it has since 1912, the New York Times juxtaposes full-page advertisements for luxury gifts with small-font reminders urging readers to "Remember the Neediest."

If Christmas provides a "universal memory" for Americans, it is in large part because advertising and celebrating the holiday are so ubiquitous; even Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, railing against the evils on modern technology in his Montana cabin, took time to write Christmas cards to his neighbors each December. Christmas is so omnipresent that many nonbelievers celebrate the holiday, and even members of other faiths cannot altogether ignore it, try as they might. Stephen Nissenbaum, for example, prefaces his own history of the holiday, The Battle for Christmas, with a touching reminiscence of his boyhood memories of Christmas as an outsider growing up in an Orthodox Jewish household.

But surely different groups of Americans have distinct recollections of the holiday. Protestants and Catholics, rich and poor, white, Asian, black and Latino--all have celebrated on December 25, but they have not celebrated alike. Marling's attempt to delineate the diversity of Christmas traditions, a grab-bag chapter on "Somebody Else's Christmas," lumps together Christmas in warm climes, white Northerners' sentimental but patronizing fascination with black Southerners' humble Christmas celebrations in the 19th century, immigrants' Christmas traditions, even Kwanzaa. A more systematic discussion would fulfill Marling's ambition of recasting our understanding of the holiday. And yet, though Merry Christmas! does not completely transform our view of the Christmas we "used to know," it does detail the little gestures and objects that supply the stuff of which Christmases are made.

Chris Rasmussen teaches American history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. During this holiday season, he urges Americans of all faiths to "Put the Christ Back into Christmas."It is part of American heritage and tradition! (Originally Posted in December 2009)

By Karal Ann Marling – Author of Merry Christmas! : Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday

On Glenn Beck’s Post-Thanksgiving Review Program Rabbi Daniel Lapin (who founded the American Alliance of Christians and Jews) said:  Although I am Jewish and do not celebrate Christmas I respect the traditions and the holiday and like the holiday for two good reasons:  It helps the economy and it makes people better… (95% of the money spent at Christmastime is for others… rather than for ourselves).

Lapin has spoken against the secularization of Christmas, saying that "We see obsequious regard for faiths like Judaism and even Islam, while Christianity is treated with contempt". He is opposed to replacing the "Merry Christmas" greeting with "Happy Holidays", saying instead "Let us all go out of our way to wish our many wonderful Christian friends a very merry Christmas... Nationwide, Christmas Nativity scenes are banned from city halls and shopping malls but Chanukah menorahs are permitted

Related:

Save Christmas - Kentucky Wins Christmas Tree Battle

No-No-No Instead of Ho-Ho-Ho: Post Office Drops Santa Letters

Losing Our Religion

Council On Foreign Relations - Please Read

CFRDuring his presidential campaign, Barack Obama consistently promised Americans “change.” Such promises aren’t new to the voting public.

When Jimmy Carter ran for president, he said: “The people of this country know from bitter experience that we are not going to get … changes merely by shifting around the same group of insiders.” And top Carter aide Hamilton Jordan promised: “If, after the inauguration, you find a Cy Vance as Secretary of State and Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of National Security, then I would say we failed. And I’d quit.” Yet Carter selected Vance as Secretary of State and Brzezinski as National Security Adviser; the “same group of insiders” had been shifted around; and Jordan did not quit.

Carter’s administration was dominated by members of the Trilateral Commission, which had been founded by Brzezinski and David Rockefeller. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was campaigning against Carter, he protested:

I don’t believe that the Trilateral Commission is a conspiratorial group (but many do) , but I do think its interests are devoted to international banking, multinational corporations, and so forth. I don’t think that any Administration of the U.S. Government should have the top nineteen positions filled by people from any one group or organization representing one viewpoint. No, I would go in a different direction.

Yet after his election, President Reagan picked 10 Trilateralists for his transition team, and included in his administration such Trilateralists as Vice President George Bush, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, U.S. Trade Representative William Brock, and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. Yet the entire North American membership of the Trilateral Commission has never numbered much over 100.

The reason that presidential candidates’ promises of “change” go largely unfulfilled once in office: they draw their top personnel from the same establishment groups — of which the Trilateral Commission is only one.

Chief among these groups is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most visible manifestation of what some have called the American establishment. Members of the council have dominated the administrations of every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the cabinet and sub-cabinet level. It does not matter whether the president is a Democrat or Republican. As we will later see, Barack Obama is no exception to CFR influence.

Power Behind the Throne
In theory, America’s government is supposed to be “of the people, by the people, for the people.” While this concept rang true in early America, and many individuals still trust in it, the last century has seen the reality of power increasingly shift from the people to an establishment rooted in banking, Wall Street, and powerful multinational corporations. Syndicated columnist Edith Kermit Roosevelt, granddaughter of Teddy Roosevelt, explained:

The word “Establishment” is a general term for the power elite in international finance, business, the professions and government, largely from the northeast, who wield most of the power regardless of who is in the White House. Most people are unaware of the existence of this “legitimate Mafia.” Yet the power of the Establishment makes itself felt from the professor who seeks a foundation grant, to the candidate for a cabinet post or State Department job. It affects the nation’s policies in almost every area.

Roosevelt added that this group’s goal is “a One World Socialist state governed by ‘experts’ like themselves.”

David Rockefeller, the longtime chairman (and now chairman emeritus) of the CFR, acknowledged the role of the establishment in trying to lead America in the one-world direction in his 2002 book Memoirs:

For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.

Two major means the establishment employs for controlling government policy: (1) through its influence within the two major parties and the mass media, it can usually assure that both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates will be its own hand-picked men; (2) by stacking presidential cabinets with CFR members at key positions — especially those involving defense, finance, foreign policy, and national security — it can assure that America will move in the direction it wants. Since the council’s founding in 1921, 21 secretaries of defense or war, 19 secretaries of the treasury, 17 secretaries of state, and 15 CIA directors have hailed from the Council on Foreign Relations.

Background
Prior to the CFR’s founding, what Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr. (the father of the famous aviator) called the “Money Trust” — a cabal of international bankers including the houses of Rockefeller, Morgan, and Rothschild — conspired to create the Federal Reserve System. Their agents, such as Paul Warburg and Benjamin Strong, who had secretly planned the Fed at a nine-day meeting on Jekyll Island, were then put in charge of the system itself. This gave them control of American interest rates, and, by virtue of this, control of the stock market, as well as the capacity to have the U.S. government spend without limit by having the Fed create money from nothing. The result has been decades of inflation and skyrocketing national debt. (For full details, see the April 13, 2009 New American or www.thenewamerican.com/history/american/946.)

Not just an accumulation of wealth, but a consolidation of political power was involved. The Money Trust had backed Woodrow Wilson in the presidential elections, and then controlled him through their front man, Edward Mandell House, who lived in the White House. The trust recognized how the power of government could be used to advance their own interests.

Wilson, surrounded by the bankers, traveled to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which was settling the aftermath of World War I. His chief proposal there, of course, was the League of Nations — a first step toward world government. However, although the League was established by the Versailles Treaty, the United States did not join because the Senate refused to ratify the treaty.

In response to this rejection, the bankers’ circle, still in Paris, held a series of meetings and proposed to establish a new organization in the United States, whose purpose would be to lead America into the League. This organization was incorporated in New York City two years later as the Council on Foreign Relations.

Architects of a New World Order
The CFR’s goal was formation of an incrementally stronger world government. Admiral Chester Ward, former Judge Advocate of the U.S. Navy, was a CFR member for 16 years before resigning in disgust. He stated: “The main purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting the disarmament of U.S. sovereignty and national independence, and submergence into an all-powerful one-world government.”

After World War II, the League’s successor, the United Nations, was born. Contrary to what the public is commonly told, the UN was not founded by nations who had tired of war. The UN was conceived by a group of CFR members in the State Department calling themselves the Informal Agenda Group. They drafted the original proposal for the UN, and secured the approval of President Roosevelt, who then made establishing the UN his highest postwar priority. When the UN held its founding meeting in San Francisco in 1945, 47 of the American delegates were CFR members.

Though the UN was not initially set up as a world government, the intent was that it would develop into one over time. John Foster Dulles (CFR), an American delegate to the UN founding meeting who later became Secretary of State under Eisenhower, acknowledged as much in his book War or Peace: “The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization.”

Two other postwar institutions, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, were technically created at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference. But the initial planning was done by the CFR’s Economic and Finance Group, part of their wartime War and Peace Studies Project. The World Bank and IMF act as a loan-guarantee scheme for multinational banks. When a loan to a foreign country goes awry, the World Bank and IMF step in with taxpayer money, ensuring that the private banks continue to receive interest payments. Furthermore, the World Bank and IMF dictate conditions to the countries receiving bailouts, thus giving the bankers a measure of political control over indebted nations.

Despite what Americans were told, the postwar Marshall Plan was not invented by General George Marshall, though he did announce it in a 1947 Harvard commencement speech. The Marshall Plan was dreamed up at a CFR study group with David Rockefeller as its secretary. Marshall was simply selected to announce the plan because, as a general, he would be perceived as politically neutral and help garner bipartisan congressional support for the plan. Unknown to the public, Marshall Plan funds were circuitously rerouted by John J. McCloy — appointed U.S. High Commissioner to Germany — to Jean Monnet, founder of the Common Market, which evolved into today’s European Union, a microcosm of world government. McCloy returned home to become chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1953.

The tragic Vietnam War was run almost entirely by CFR members. William P. Bundy (CFR) drafted the Tonkin Gulf Resolution before the now-discredited Tonkin Gulf Incident even took place. Bundy’s father-in-law, Dean Acheson (CFR), as leader of a senior team of advisers nicknamed “the Wise Men,” persuaded Lyndon Baines Johnson to dramatically escalate the war beginning in 1965. And Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (CFR) helped develop the “rules of engagement” (e.g., preventing the Air Force from attacking critical targets) that guaranteed the war’s disastrous prolongation. This generated a huge slide to the left among American college students. When Bundy left the State Department, David Rockefeller appointed him editor of the CFR’s journal Foreign Affairs. And McNamara, one of the leading architects of the Vietnam War debacle, became president of the World Bank.

Broadening the Scheme
The CFR is not a uniquely American phenomenon. It has counterpart organizations throughout the world — e.g., the Royal Institute of International Affairs in England, the French Institute of International Relations, etc.

To help coordinate policy on an international scale, CFR chairman David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973. “Trilateral” refers to the coordination of three global regions: North America, Europe, and Asia. The commission’s meetings allow the gathering together of heads of state, banks, multinational corporations, and media. Republican Senator Barry Goldwater called the commission “David Rockefeller’s newest cabal,” and said, “It is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States.” The commission, like the annual secretive meetings of the Bilderbergers and the notorious Bohemian Grove, enables the international power elite to privately assemble and plan our destiny.

Jimmy Carter was a member of the commission, hand-picked to be president after meeting with Brzezinski and Rockefeller at the latter’s Tarrytown, New York, estate. Carter filled his administration with CFR members and Trilateralists. Indeed, Brzezinski noted in his memoirs that “all the key foreign policy decision makers of the Carter Administration had previously served in the Trilateral Commission.” Carter then embarked on a destructive course of foreign policy that included betraying the Shah of Iran, leading to the installment of Ayatollah Khomeini and the U.S. hostage crisis; betraying President Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, resulting in a Marxist dictatorship under the Sandinistas; and betraying Taiwan in order to recognize Communist China — a move previously set up by Richard Nixon’s overtures to China, dictated by his own CFR advisers.

Under Bill Clinton (a CFR member who selected 12 CFR members for his cabinet), the United States enacted NAFTA, an economic alliance with Mexico and Canada. This arrangement was created by the establishment, not by the American people, who did not suspect the game being played on them. Not only did NAFTA swamp us with cheap, job-destroying imports, but it was designed to be the foundation for a continental economic union leading to political union. Robert Pastor (CFR), a key architect of North American integration, acknowledged in the January/February 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs: “NAFTA was merely the first draft of an economic constitution for North America.” And Andrew Reding of the World Policy Institute said: “NAFTA will signal the formation, however tentatively, of a new political unit — North America. With economic integration will come political integration. By whatever name, this is an incipient form of international government. Following the lead of the Europeans, North Americans should begin considering formation of a continental parliament.” [Emphasis added.]

A similar stratagem had been used against the peoples of Europe — by first deceptively hooking them into an “economic” alliance called the Common Market, which then, requiring common laws to regulate trade, transformed via a series of steps into the European Union, the super-national government of Europe that is swallowing up national sovereignty.

Following the initial step enacted under Clinton, President George W. Bush, whose father was a CFR director, moved toward politicizing the NAFTA alliance. On March 23, 2005, he met Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to launch the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), the rudiments of a North American Union. CNN’s Lou Dobbs said of it: “President Bush signed a formal agreement that will end the United States as we know it.”

Furthermore, regional alliances such as the European Union and proposed North American Union are not ends, but only steppingstones to world government. As CFR/Trilateralist Zbigniew Brzezinski stated: “We cannot leap into world government in one quick step. The precondition for genuine globalization is progressive regionalization.”

In furtherance of this, on April 30, 2007, President Bush stood at the White House beside Angela Merkel, president of the European Council, and José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, and announced the signing of a new agreement to “strengthen transatlantic economic integration.” It called for “joint work in the areas of regulatory cooperation, financial markets, trade and transport security, innovation and technological development, intellectual property rights, energy, investment, competition, services, and government procurement,” and various other steps toward economic integration. But as usual, “economic integration” is the predecessor of political integration. CFR members have dreamed of a political union between the United States and Europe since the 1950s, when the CFR-dominated Atlantic Union Committee promoted a merger they called “Atlantica.”

Enter Obama
Candidate Barack Obama revealed he would proceed with the Bush initiatives. In a speech in Berlin on July 24, 2008, he stated:

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.... Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together.... In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more — not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

Obama had only been president for a little over two months when he traveled to Europe for a series of meetings with European leaders. He attended the G20 Summit, which ended with a tentative agreement to launch a new global financial system, using as the rationale for this major step toward global government the recent Fed- and government-spawned financial meltdown.

Henry Kissinger — foreign policy mouthpiece of the establishment for four decades — wrote an article for the January 12, 2009 issue of the International Herald Tribune entitled “The Chance for a New World Order.” He stated:

As the new U.S. administration prepares to take office amid grave financial and international crises, it may seem counterintuitive to argue that the very unsettled nature of the international system generates a unique opportunity for creative diplomacy...

Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources. Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being...

The alternative to a new international order is chaos.

Kissinger also stated on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”: “The president-elect is coming into office at a moment when there is upheaval in many parts of the world simultaneously.... His task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when, really, a new world order can be created. It’s a great opportunity, it isn’t just a crisis.”

Past statements reveal that the establishment wants a single currency for the world, just as the EU has consolidated its currencies into the “euro.” As far back as the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, John Maynard Keynes proposed a world currency he dubbed bancor. Richard L. Gardner (CFR) wrote in the Fall 1984 Foreign Affairs: “I suggest a radical alternative scheme for the next century: the creation of common currency for all the industrial democracies and a joint Bank of Issue to determine that Monetary Policy.”

In March of this year, Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown met with reporters at the White House. Brown announced that “there is the possibility in the next few months of a global new deal that will involve all the countries of the world in sorting out and cleaning up the banking system.” Obama added that

Globalization can be an enormous force for good.... But what is also true is … we still have a 1930s regulatory system in place in most countries designed from the last great crisis, that we’ve got to update our institutions, our regulatory frameworks, so that the power of globalization is channeled for the benefit of ordinary men and women.

If trends continue, however, the changes can be expected to benefit a tiny handful of the global elite, not “ordinary men and women.” Further evidence that Obama’s administration will simply continue the globalist agenda is indicated by his appointments.

CFR Domination Continues
During his campaign, Obama selected the ubiquitous Zbigniew Brzezinski (CFR), promoter of the “regional” approach to world government, as one of his top foreign policy advisors. Obama called Brzezinski “one of our more outstanding thinkers” and “somebody I have learned an immense amount from.” Presumably Brzezinski’s teachings included the world government he advocates.

For Treasury Secretary, Obama chose Timothy Geithner: Senior Fellow in International Economics at the CFR, Bilderberger, former head of the New York Federal Reserve, and former employee of both the IMF and Kissinger Associates. One doesn’t get more establishment than that! It is Geithner who is managing the bailout of Wall Street with taxpayer dollars. Assisting Geithner at Treasury in overseeing the auto industry bailout is fellow CFR member Stephen Rattner.

For Director of the National Economic Council — a U.S. government agency created by a Bill Clinton executive order — Obama selected Lawrence Summers (CFR, Bilderberger). Former Chief Economist at the World Bank, his last position was at the investment firm of D. E. Shaw & Co, where he earned $5.2 million in one year while working one day per week. Henry Kissinger had said Summers should “be given a White House post in which he was charged with shooting down or fixing bad ideas.”

For Defense Secretary, Obama elected to continue with Bush pick Robert Gates (CFR, Bilderberger). During the Carter administration, Gates served as a special assistant to Zbigniew Brzezinski. In 2004, he co-chaired a CFR Task Force on Iran with Brzezinski, who lauded Gates in Time in 2008. Joining Gates in the Defense Department are fellow CFR members Michele Flournoy (Under Secretary of Defense for Policy), Jeh C. Johnson (Defense Department General Counsel), and Kathleen Hicks (Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Forces).

For Secretary of State, Obama chose Hillary Clinton, who has attended the top-secret Bilderberger meetings. Hillary is not a CFR member, but husband Bill is, and her State Department is laden with CFR members, including James B. Steinberg (Deputy Secretary of State), William J. Burns (Under Secretary for Political Affairs), Susan Rice (U.S. Ambassador to the UN), Jacob J. Lew (Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources), Todd Stern (Special Envoy for Climate Change), and many others.

The Department of Homeland Security, which many Americans fear may turn our country into an Orwellian surveillance society, was conceived before 9/11 by a task force called the U.S. Commission on National Security, nine of whose 12 members belonged to the CFR. The administration of the department under Obama is particularly heavy with CFR members, including Janet Napolitano (Secretary), Jane Holl Lute (Deputy Secretary), Juliette Kayyem (Assistant Secretary, Office of Intergovernmental Programs), and Alan Bersin (Assistant Secretary, Office of International Affairs).

Thus the CFR continues to dominate our government’s key areas: finance, defense, foreign policy, and security. To this may be added various other Obama CFR appointees, such as Mona Sutphen (White House Deputy Chief of Staff), Paul Volcker (Chairman, Economic Recovery Advisory Board), Peter Cowhey, (Senior Counsel, Office of U.S. Trade Representative), and Eric Shinseki (Secretary of Veterans Affairs).

The Future
The idea that Barack Obama became president from a “grass-roots” movement is illusory. American government policy continues to be largely dictated by the rich and the few. This is generally unknown to the public — not because it is a bizarre conspiracy theory, but because the same power elite who run our government, mega-banks, and multinational corporations also run the major media, as an inspection of the CFR membership roster would reveal.

Membership in the CFR, of course, is not an automatic condemnation. A few people are added as “window dressing” to give the group distinction and a veneer of diversity. An example is movie star Angelina Jolie. No one suspects Jolie knows much about foreign affairs or is a conspirator for world government. But within the CFR are hardcore globalists who, linked with their foreign counterparts through the Bilderbergers and Trilateral Commission, head the drive for one-world government.

Though numerically small (less than 1,000 members during the Kennedy years, less than 4,500 today), this organization has dominated every administration for over seven decades.

As long as the CFR controls our government, we can anticipate more of the same: diminishing national sovereignty; free flow of immigration (which confuses national identity and weakens national loyalties); increasing jobs losses through multinational trade agreements; further internationalization of law (Law of the Sea Treaty, Kyoto Protocol, World Court, global taxation, etc.); increasing loss of freedoms in a “surveillance society”; progressive organization of the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a North American Union; and ultimately, broader merger into a world government where all power will be concentrated in the hands of the elite.

Eternal vigilance continues to be the price of freedom.

Written by James Perloff and Originally Posted  on Thursday July 23, 2009 01:00  - New American

Until we educate ourselves and others about these groups and stop electing people to office from this same group, things will never change!!  It is why we need to look at some of the fresh Independent faces that they fear and lobby againstWe need to stop buying into their orchestrated lies and demonization of people and ideas that they don’t like… and why we need to keep standing up and speaking with ever louder voices and in larger numbers!

Video:  The Federal Reserve Scam

Related:

Globalism, Think Tanks, and the “New World Order”

International Bankers (dubbed the Bilderburgers) Gather to Celebrate 100 Years of Federal Reserve Dominion

Lethal Engagement

Unveiled:  Constitution for New Socialist North America

A Letter Addressed to  “The Sheeple” From “The Globalist New World Order 

A Cornucopia of Corruption and Treason…*Multiple Articles Within*

International Bankers Gather to Celebrate 100 Years of Federal Reserve Dominion

Read the Beck TV Background Guide to George Soros

Dumbing Down Society Part I:  Foods, Beverages, and Meds

Kissinger in 2008:  There Will Be “Bipartisan” Push for New World Order, Whoever is Elected President

Brief Introduction of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

Hillary Clinton:  Population Control Will Now Become the Centerpiece of U.S. Foreign Policy  -  Interesting since U.S. Population would be at zero growth if they would secure the borders, enforce our immigration laws and Congress would stop upping the quota numbers for people to enter the Country.  See:  Common Sense Look at Immigration by the Numbers – Stop the Dream Act!

sorosjonestrumka

And, Guess Who Showed up to a Closed-Door Dem Funding Meeting in D.C.

There are some good resources online and books written about these groups.  Here are a fewDavid Rockefeller, Council on Foreign Relations and Bilderberg Group by Heinz Duthel (1), The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline, Foreign Affairs, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy,, The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ~" Bill Clinton (USATODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A)