An American Revolution on the Way?

I had an interesting conversation, yesterday, with a gentleman who came in to the place I work.  I'm not going into details about how the subject came up, but at one point, he mentioned that he has been "running into" a lot of people who are arming themselves in preparation for martial law.

I wasn't sure what to make of this at first.  But after doing some research online, apparently this is really happening out there. 

A significant number of Americans believe that Obama is going to take us so far to the left, that at some point martial law will be declared and America will fall into chaos.

The point isn't whether or not this will actually happen, but rather the fact that a large number of people out there believe it will happen.  Gun sales have been through the roof.  Some gun manufacturers that had sluggish sales over the past decade or so, now have a 3 to 4 year backlog of orders that they are having trouble filling.

Recently, a Russian political scholar predicted the fall of the American government within the next 24 months.  

Again, I'm not sure what to make of this.  I must say that I hesitate to predict this sort of thing.  (I run this blog as a non-prophet organization, so to speak).  But the idea of large numbers of Americans arming themselves for such an eventuality, is indeed, alarming. 

Thoughts?

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Textbooks Whitewashing Islamic Extremism

An education expert has warned that some American textbooks have presented a biased view of Islam and offer a sugar-coated picture of Islamic extremism, a trend that has parents worried about what’s being taught in public schools.

In numerous history textbooks, ‘key subjects like jihad, Islamic law, the status of women are whitewashed,’ Fox News quoted Gilbert T. Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, an independent group that reviews history books and other education materials, as saying.

Cindy Ross, the mother of a junior high school student in Marin County, Calif., said she couldn’t believe her eyes when she read her son’s textbook last school year.

‘I was very shocked by what I saw, looking through the book,’ she said — shocked at how Islam was portrayed in her son’s seventh grade history text.

‘What did strike me was that all the other religions seemed to be lumped together, where there is an inordinate emphasis on Islam specifically,’ Ross said.

(Read the article...)

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Auditors Doubt GM Can Survive

General Motors Corp.'s auditors have raised "substantial doubt" about the troubled automaker's ability to continue operations, and the company said it may have to seek bankruptcy protection if it can't execute a huge restructuring plan.

The automaker revealed the concerns Thursday in an annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

"The corporation's recurring losses from operations, stockholders' deficit, and inability to generate sufficient cash flow to meet its obligations and sustain its operations raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern," auditors for the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche LLP wrote in the report.

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AP Slants Auto Sales Slump News

For the second month in a row, taxpayer-bailout beneficiary General Motors fared worse than every one of its non-bailed-out competitors.

The Associated Press's Tom Krisher and Bree Fowler didn't totally hide that fact, but it took them until the 22nd paragraph of their report, which was supposedly about the February performance of the entire auto industry ("Auto sales slump persists as consumers stay scared"), to mention the specifics of the sales declines at Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. Those declines "just happened" to be smaller than those at General Motors, fellow bailout bud Chrysler, and non-bailout recipient Ford. The AP pair stated in an early paragraph that "Japanese makers fared only slightly better." Readers will, I believe, question Krisher's/Fowler's definition of "slightly."

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The Media's Whitewashing of HHS Nominee

Back during confirmation hearings in 2001 for former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson Dan Rather reminded Evening News viewers of Thompson's "hardline anti-abortion stand."

Eight years later, there's a whitewash of President Barack Obama's HHS' nominee abortion record.

As a Democratic governor in red-state Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius has vetoed several bills that would modestly restrict abortion. She supports late-term abortion. She's socialized and taken money from well-known abortion extremists, and she has been unofficially ostracized from the Catholic Church for her stance. But you'd have to go out of your way to learn much about that from the news reports that followed the Feb. 28 announcement that Obama planned to nominate her as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

This is a position that controls a $700 billion budget and, according to the New York Times, "would have considerable influence over government policy on abortion."

The MainStreamMedia also wants to portray the governor as a "popular Democrat in a conservative, Republican state."  This isn't exactly true.  The Kansas governor has won two terms in office.  However, anyone who knows anything about Kansas politics knows that even though the state is dominated by Republicans, it is divided ideologically.  The state is about 2/3 Republicans, but only about half of those are conservative, Reagan Republicans.  The rest are moderates and RINOs (Republicans In Name Only).  Liberal leaning moderates who might otherwise be inclined to be democrats know that in order to influence primaries in the state, they have to register as Republicans.

In both of the Sebelius' runs for governor, she ran as a moderate centrist while facing known fiscal and social conservative opponents.  Many moderate Republicans voted for her knowing she couldn't push a liberal agenda with the (mostly) conservative and moderate state legislature. 

Expect her repressed liberal core values to surface in full force in Washington.

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Obama Picks HHS Secretary

Obama has announced his choice to lead Health and Human Services (HHS).  Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas has been chosen to lead the post.

"As a governor she's been on the front lines of our health care crisis. She has a deep knowledge of what the burden of crushing costs does to our families and businesses," Obama said.

Of course, just a few months ago, the Governor of Alaska was incapable of doing anything in Government because she has only been a "Governor" and a woman.  

That aside, however, this couldn't be worse news for moderates and conservatives.  

Sebelius is being touted as a good choice because she is a Democrat "working with a Republican state legislature."  Supposedly, this gives her the experience needed to help the administration reach across the aisle.

However, I can tell you (from living in the state of Kansas), Sebelius is an extremely liberal Democrat who has no intentions of reaching across the aisle.  In the state of Kansas, she had no choice because the state legislature is decidedly conservative and Republican.  Even then, she has pushed a liberal agenda, vetoing projects that would benefit the state economy because they violate her liberal agenda, supporting illegal abortions taking place in Kansas, and blaming state Republicans for all of the states difficulties. 

She should fit right in with others in the Obama administration.  For the rest of us, I'd suggest we watch out.

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Oil Prices Drop Due To Economic Pessimism

Oil fell more than $2 a barrel to below $43 today, as a deteriorating world economy threatened to cut further into fuel consumption and make OPEC's tight compliance with supply curbs look insufficient. 

Economic woes were also battering financial markets and making it likely the IMF would downgrade its global growth forecasts into negative territory.

Meanwhile, the price per gallon of gas at the pump has remained steady.  I thought having Obama in office would "show" those evil oil companies.  I guess I was wrong.  On the other hand, it's only been a couple of months.  I'm sure by the end of the year, they will be firmly under government control.

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Near-Collision with Asteroid

A small asteroid buzzed by Earth today, though only real astronomy geeks in the Pacific would have noticed.

The rock, estimated to be no more than 200 feet wide, zoomed past our planet at an altitude of 40,000 miles at 1:44 p.m. universal time — or 8:44 EST.  Dubbed 2009 DD45, it was discovered only on Friday by Australian astronomers.

Forty thousand miles may sound like a lot, but it's only about one-seventh of the way to the moon, and less than twice as far out as many telecommunication satellites.

Had 2009 DD45 hit the Earth, it would have exploded on or near the surface with the force of a large nuclear blast — not very reassuring when you consider humanity had only about three days' notice.

According to the Australian news Web site Crikey, the asteroid is likely to be drawn in by Earth's gravity, meaning it may return for many more near misses in the future.

Congressional Democrats were mixed in their response.  About half complained that there wasn't enough of a notice to pass an Asteroid tax, while others complained that it was supposed to pass by four months earlier in order to provide another opportunity to blame Bush for something that almost might have wiped us out.

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Clinton Doubtful About Negotiations with Iran

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton "expressed doubt" Monday that Iran would respond to the Obama administration's diplomatic initiatives toward Tehran on nuclear and other issues, a senior State Department official said.

Clinton made the statement in a private meeting with the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who had expressed to Clinton a concern among Persian Gulf nations that Obama might make a deal with Iran without full consultation with U.S. allies. The official who described the exchange spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private.

Of course, PRIOR TO THE ELECTION, Bush was an idiot for suggesting that you can't negotiate with Iran. 

Negotiating with Iran on the issue of nuclear weapons (or any other issue, for that matter) is like trying to negotiate with a 2 year old over a lollipop.  You can talk 'till you're blue in the face, and you might even get a nod of agreement.  But just try and take away the sucker.....

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Security Breach of Marine One

A Pennsylvania company that monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks discovered a potentially serious security breach involving President Obama's helicopter.

Sensitive information about Marine One was reportedly found by Tiversa employees at an IP address in Tehran.

Tiversa CEO Bob Boback said a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file sharing program on one of their systems that contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One and financial information about the cost of the helicopter.

"We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One," Boback said.

Boback said the issue most likely stemmed from someone downloading the file-sharing program without realizing the problems that could result.

"When downloading one of these file-sharing programs, you are effectively allowing others around the world to access your hard drive," Boback told WPXI.

"We found where this information came from. We know exactly what computer it came from. I'm sure that person is embarrassed and may even lose their job, but we know where it came from and we know where it went," Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, an adviser to Tiversa, told WPXI.

And I'm sure that if Wesley Clark asks really, really nice, the person in Iran possessing that information, who obtained it completely by accident, will be more than happy to give it back and not pass it along to any terrorists, who don't exist in Iran, anyway.

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Iranian Rebukes U.S. Counterpart

A passing remark from the new American ambassador to the unUnited Nations, Susan Rice, prompted a rebuke from her Iranian counterpart. 

Toward the end of a speech to the Security Council about the situation in Iraq, Ms. Rice said the United States would “seek to end Iran's ambition to acquire an illicit nuclear capability and its support for terrorism.” She said Washington would also encourage Iran and Syria to become “constructive actors” in the region. 

In a letter to the president of the Council, Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee of Iran called the accusations baseless. “It is unfortunate that, yet again, we are hearing the same tired, unwarranted and groundless allegations that used to be unjustifiably and futilely repeated by the previous U.S. administration,” the letter said.

They'll continue to deny that they are trying to build nuclear weapons until they detonate one.  Let's hope it's not on U.S. soil.

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St. Louis Riverfront Rally Draws Protesters of Obama Pork Package

By Tim O'Neil

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

02/28/2009

ST. LOUIS — Critics of President Barack Obama's stimulus plan gathered beneath the Arch Friday to cheer speeches over a bullhorn and toss tea into the Mississippi River.

A few conservative activists organized and promoted the rally, with help from talk-radio hosts. Pleased with the turnout in 35-degree bluster, leaders said they had stolen a page from liberal tradition by taking to the streets with homemade signs.

"If I had known this many people would show up, I'd have charged admission," said Bill Hennessy of Ballwin, the lead organizer. "We'll do this every chance we get until Congress repeals the pork — or we retire them from public life."

(Read the article)

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