Daily Rant – June 1, 2009
June 1, 2009
I just re-read Animal Farm by George Orwell. I did read it in school and liked it enough to read it again. But this time through I could not help but notice the similarities to what is going on today with our government.
Just like the animals who rebelled to overthrow the farmer, our liberals could not wait to oust Bush and Cheney and usher in hope and change with their new, young leader! In both cases, all things would be rosy and everything would be sweetness and light from here on out. Unlike the animals who were all equal in the beginning, our elected leaders are anything but like us common folks. They fly around at will, spend our money to maintain their lavish lifestyles, but essentially the parallel to the book is close enough. Politicians have enough of us fooled to make us think they are one of us. However, as the book goes on, the inequality becomes more and more apparent with the ruling class (pigs, aptly enough!) getting more and more special treatment than the common workers.
In Animal Farm, the history of what actually happened is constantly being changed by the animals who can read and write for the ones who can’t. Our history books are busy being re-written by liberals who want to paint our founders as evil rich white guys when actually they gave up their personal fortunes to give everyone in this country a chance to achieve their dreams. But kids who know no better soak it up and regurgitate it back just as the animals bleated “four legs good, two legs bad” until it eventually became “four legs good, two legs better”. And like the dogs that are brought in to protect the “fearless leader”, so does our media constantly destroy those who tell the truth (Joe the Plumber) and protect the ones they favor with lies and distortions of the truth. What else would you call what is happening with the Sonia Sotomayor controversy? Had a white man said that because of his ethnicity it made him superior in decision making than a Latina woman there would have been outrage! Statements are constantly being made to blame the short comings of the current “administration” to the previous leader. In the book’s case it is Snowball. In current events it is Bush. Since the masses are dumbed down, nobody questions the assertions. This is true both in the book and in reality! Finally, the fact that Squealer falsely keeps reporting that things have never been better and there is more food than under the previous owner parallels closely to how the media is now talking about how things are finally getting better! Truth is, the worst is probably yet to come!
In the book the use of the word “comrades” is eerily similar to Obama’s choice of the word “czar” to talk about government people in charge of huge chunks of our economy that used to be privately held. The similarity is scary. Remember when communism and Russia was bad? Not anymore, I guess.
Just as a pig called Squealer secretly paints over the original commandments and adds or subtracts phrases as the need arises in the book Animal Farm, we have courts who legislate from the bench. They constantly rewrite the constitution to suit political correctness while ignoring the original intent of the Constitution, the document they are SUPPOSED to be protecting.
All in all, the book is worth the time to re-read. It is catchy and not too long for those of us who have enough time keeping up on current events.
- FedUpEditor
Cap and Trade Passes First Committee!
May 29, 2009
“After a one-two punch from Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney, House Minority Leader John Boehner and other Republican lawmakers worry that their party has overplayed its hand on Nancy Pelosi. The Republicans’ fear: Gingrich’s call for Pelosi’s ouster has set an unattainable goal, and Cheney’s jabs at her during a speech Thursday will allow Democrats to portray the controversy as a partisan attack by one of the GOP’s most polarizing figures. ‘If the story becomes about us and not her, it’s a problem for us,’ said a senior Republican lawmaker.”
“A bill to create the first national limit on greenhouse-gas emissions was approved by a House committee yesterday after a week of late-night debates that cemented the shift of climate change from rhetorical jousting to a subject of serious, if messy, Washington policymaking,” the Washington Post reports. “The 33 to 25 vote was a major victory for House Democrats, who had softened and jury-rigged the bill to reassure manufacturers and utilities — and members of their own party from the South and Midwest — that they would not suffer greatly.”
Read the article here.
Is this good law or is it political and designed to tax our behavior and punish us for being successful? It’s a shame that people who represent us would design something so harmful for our economy, especially when we are having such a tough time right now! – FedUpEditor
Resistnet Radio Show
May 29, 2009
Stop by and listen to the show! We give a good rundown as to what Resistnet is about. We have a great update from Steve Elliot on the Carbon Tax, Immigration and Sotomayer. Learn about the HR985 Media Shield bill, the couple in Ca who were forced to stop a home bible study or be fined big dollars and the 4th amendment with Gerry.
The second hour we had State Directors and Regional Coordinators sharing their tips for Grassroots Strategies, Fanning the Grassfire Flame! Very Informative!
The show was upbeat, full of content and educational! Please stop in and listen to the show archive and pass it on to your friends and family!
Here is a link to the Resistnet Radio Show from last Wednesday.
Running on Empathy
May 27, 2009
From the American Spectator -
President Obama has unveiled his first pick for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. While we are all caught up in the empathy, let us try a thought experiment. Perhaps it will raise our consciousness and add to our understanding.
Imagine the president nominated someone who helped bury the racial discrimination claims of 20 firefighters who say their city government tossed aside their promotional exam test results solely because they had the wrong color of skin. Imagine that a colleague of this judge — a Hispanic jurist appointed by Bill Clinton — found this decision a little mystifying.
Arguing for en banc and Supreme Court review of the above case, Jose Cabranes wrote, “this case presents a straight-forward question: May a municipal employer disregard the results of a qualifying examination, which was carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality, on the ground that the results of that examination yielded too many qualified applicants of one race and not enough of another?”
Imagine further that the nominee in question had suggested that Hispanic women are hardwired, due to “inherent physiological or cultural differences,” to perform differently as judges than white men. In fact, the nominee expected people of one race and gender to “more often than not reach a better conclusion” than people of the other race and gender.
National Journal legal columnist Stuart Taylor imagined a nominee like Samuel Alito going on about how “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging” and ultimately reached a conclusion that doesn’t require much imagination: “Any prominent white male would be instantly and properly banished from polite society as a racist and a sexist for making an analogous claim of ethnic and gender superiority or inferiority.”
That is the only part of our little thought experiment that was hypothetical. The rest we don’t have to imagine: it actually applies to Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s choice for the highest court in the land. Unlike the “more often than not” inferior judges and a majority of the passed-over firefighters, Sotomayor is not a white male, prominent or otherwise. That’s where Taylor’s analogy breaks down.
Fortunately for Sotomayor, she did not share her thoughts about what kind of people have the “inherent physiological or cultural” advantages to be better judges with an audience of avowed racists and sexists. Instead she did so at a “cultural diversity lecture” on the campus of Berkeley.
Read the entire story here.
Daily Rant – May 26, 2009
May 26, 2009
Pelosi
She is too arrogant to apologize and as I feared, the media has let up on her. She says, “That’s all I am going to say about it,” and they comply. What a bunch of sniveling jerks they are. There is no integrity in reporting any more. They slavishly allow their Democrat pals get away with just about anything. I hope the CIA doesn’t let her off the hook. They have more credibility than Pelosi does anyway.
Sotomayor
You’ve got to be kidding. This woman was overturned many times because she didn’t follow the law. Imagine you are up against a litigant who is suing because you followed the laws and evicted your tenant because they were causing damage to your property. Sotomayor would look at it as, this person is a woman, a single mother and Hispanic. Obviously we have to take those things into consideration when I rule, regardless of what the law says.
What this says to me is she is a racist. It is discriminatory that anyone judging a case of right or wrong would also temper that decision with facts of someone’s race, gender, or other considerations. How fair is that? So in my opinion, there are judges and there are activists who go outside the law. Sotomayer has been recorded as saying appellate courts make law! I’ll bet the legislators love hearing that.
If this gets any traction, she will have to step away. But as we saw with Pelosi, the press is not willing to be critical of anything Obama or the Democrats do. And it only widens the gap of hatred in this country even more, even though we have been promised that Obama would bring us together. Bull Crap.
- FedUpEditor
Daily Rant – May 22, 2009
May 22, 2009
The Car I Want
This is a free country, or at least it used to be. If I wanted to buy a gas guzzling SUV it was my choice. But with President Obama now making the choices for all of us, is that what we really want? I think this plan will “backfire” if you pardon the pun.
Here in Northern California, we have a lot of active people. Even though about every seventh car is a Prius, my guess is their other car is probably an SUV. Most of these healthy types like to ride bicycles and some of them I see have several bikes strapped to the back of their SUV. Try that with a little “bubble” car. And what about the mountains? Ever try to get through a raging snow storm in a four wheel drive? It’s tough enough when you’re driving the right vehicle. Imagine all the hybrids trying to get through the mountains in four feet of snow. And where will you put your skis?
Look, I am all for energy efficiency, but if I want to use a vehicle that burns a little more gas and I can afford it, is it really the President’s business what I drive? My suggestion is for Obama to put together a domestic energy policy that includes nuclear so he can power all these electric cars of the future especially if he plans on getting rid of coal! God knows we have brown outs during the summer and flex alerts during peak hours of the day right now. Can you imagine what will happen when everyone has to start plugging in their cars? CHAOS!
Cap and Tax
This program is nothing more than a way to tax businesses and individuals. After all, there is no way to go through life without leaving behind carbon dioxide. But I wonder why tree-hugging environmentalists aren’t cheering CO2 because their plants love the stuff. More carbon dioxide, the more bigger and healthier plants.
If this passes we will see a HUGE increase in our energy costs. Democrats are just digging their graves for the 2010 election. I say good riddance.
- FedUpEditor
Cap And Trade Imminent! Massive Tax on Energy!
May 21, 2009
So, Waxman has hired a temporary worker to speed read the bill and rush it through committee.
The JOURNAL interviewed the newly hired staffer who said, “I can read a page about every 34 seconds.”- Liberal Democrats rejected a GOP amendment designed to protect middle-class families by stopping the national energy tax if gasoline prices hit $5 per gallon.
- They rejected an amendment that said if the U.S. unemployment rate should hit 15% or higher, the tax would end.
- They stopped an effort to end the new taxes if electricity bills increased more than 10 percent over 2009 rates.
Daily Rant – Part 2, May 21, 2009
May 21, 2009
Tell people in California that you are a Republican and they turn up their nose. Some people even get upset. I heard about one school teacher whose student’s mother found out she was a Republican. The mother told her, “I am not sure you can be trusted with my child.”
So it occurred to me we are not asking enough questions when challenged:
- Are you for lower taxes?
- Are you for more freedom of choices?
- Do you think government should be smaller?
- Are you for a balanced budget?
- Do you believe we need to develop our own domestic energy?
- Do you think we should close our borders?
- Should we cut off funding for illegal aliens?
- Do you think people should pay into the Social Security system to be allowed to collect money from it?
- Do you think the law should be passed where only children born to legal citizens of this country become citizens automatically?
I know a lot of Democrats who would answer yes to all of these questions, yet they consider themselves liberals. Yet these ideals are core conservative principles. So being a Republican should be seen as a good thing, don’t you think?
- FedUpEditor
And You Think Doing Business in the US is Tough!
May 21, 2009
Chevron Denounces Campaign To Push For Ecuador Settlement
HOUSTON -(Dow Jones)- Chevron Corp. (CVX) on Wednesday sent shareholders a letter asking them to turn down a proposal the company said is part of a ” campaign” directed by U.S. trial lawyers to pressure the oil giant into the out- of-court settlement of a multi-billion dollar legal battle with indigenous tribes in Ecuador.
Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company by market value after Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), will hold its annual meeting next week, where shareholders will vote on a series of proposals. One of them asks the San Ramon, Calif., company to produce a report on the policies and procedures Chevron uses to assess the adequacy of host country laws to protect human health, the environment and the company’s reputation.
The proponents, which include U.S. state and municipal funds, raised concerns about a $27 billion claim Chevron is fighting in an Ecuadorian court, with a verdict expected this year. In the letter filed with the Securities Exchange Commission, Chevron Chief Governance Officer Lydia Beebe said the proposal has been used “as a platform for carefully orchestrated media campaigns…all of which appear to occur at the direction of the American trial lawyers in the ( Ecuador) case.”
Chevron also said that Trillium Asset Management, a co-sponsor of the proposal, of conspiring with the Ecuador plaintiffs to help raise the profile of their campaign against Chevron.
Plaintiffs’ lawyer Steven Donziger said Chevron’s letter is “a continuation of managements’ campaign to mislead shareholders about the company’s true financial risk in Ecuador.” He added “Every single assertion in the letter is either demonstrably false, misleading, or incomplete.”
Shelley Alpern, a spokeswoman for Trillium Asset Management, denied Chevron’s allegations, saying that the company is misleading shareholders and trying to intimidate the proponents of the resolution. “They are making this charge that it is a coordinated public relation campaign but they don’t have evidence to substantiate that,” Alpern said. “It’s meant to be a tactic to scare shareholders.”
Chevron is facing a lawsuit filed by indigenous people in the Nueva Loja court in Ecuador for alleged contamination in the Amazon region of Lago Agrio by Texaco, which Chevron acquired in 2001. Plaintiffs accused the company of having used out-of-date technology that led to environmental damage.
In November, a court-appointed expert told the Nueva Loja court that Chevron should pay more than $27 billion for environmental damages.
A verdict in the case, which was moved to the Nueva Loja court in 2003 after a decade in U.S. courts, is expected later this year.
Chevron Chief Financial Officer Patricia Yarrington told analysts earlier this month that the company expects a verdict “any day” and that Chevron plans to appeal any unfavorable ruling. Yarrington added that she believes the case won’t have a “significant financial impact” for shareholders.
Read the entire story here.
Read the Chevron letter to the shareholders here.
Sign Petition for FREE Speech!
May 21, 2009
Whereas, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution clearly states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”;
Whereas, members of Congress are recently on record saying they want to re-impose the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” on U.S. broadcasters, or else accomplish the same goal of censoring talk radio by other means, and thereby establish government and quasi-government watchdogs as the arbiters of “fairness” rather than the free and open marketplace of ideas;
Whereas, the U.S. experimented with the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” for 38 years—from 1949 through 1987—during which time it was repeatedly used by presidents and other political leaders to muzzle dissent and criticism;
Whereas, the abandonment of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987, thanks to President Ronald Reagan, resulted in an unprecedented explosion of new and diverse voices and political speech—starting with Rush Limbaugh—that revitalized the AM radio band and provided Americans with a multitude of alternative viewpoints;
Whereas, talk radio is one of the most crucial components of the free press in America, and is single-handedly responsible for informing tens of millions of Americans about what their government leaders are doing;
Whereas, it is a wholly un-American idea that government should be the watchdog of the press and a policeman of speech, as opposed to the uniquely American ideal of a free people and a free press being the vigilant watchdogs of government;
Whereas, the so-called “Fairness Doctrine”—either under that name, or using a new name and even more devious methods—represents a frontal assault on the First Amendment, and its re-imposition would constitute nothing more nor less than the crippling of America’s robust, unfettered, free press:
We, the undersigned, assert our rights as citizens of the United States in demanding that Congress immediately drop all legislative efforts to re-impose the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” and that the president of the United States veto any so-called “Fairness Doctrine” legislation approved by Congress and that the U.S. Supreme Court overturn as unconstitutional any so-called “Fairness Doctrine” legislation approved by Congress and signed by the president.
Sign the petition here.
