I took a road trip up to Tehachapi yesterday since it’s the height of apple season. This morning, I came up with a wonderful treat:
Take a lightly toasted slice of fresh Vollkorn bread (from Kohnen’s Country Bakery), melt on a bit of Kerrygold Dubliner cheese then add slices of Winesap apple fresh from the tree (mine were from Pulford’s Appletree Orchard).
Heavenly!
The following is the statement issued Monday by Edward Snowden, as released by WikiLeaks:
“One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.
On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.
This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.
For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country.
The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.
In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised – and it should be.
I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.”
There is a great evil in the world: the government of the United States of America as currently established. How much more tyranny are we going to put up with–while politicians from BOTH parties try to justify what they’re doing in order to save their phony-baloney jobs? Is this the kind of “Hope and Change” YOU were expecting?
— Charles Krauthammer
So—which side are YOU on? The media is now filled with daily revelations of the cesspool of corruption the Obama administration has created and nurtured. Civil Liberties? Constitutional protections? Due process? Basic fairness? None of it seems to apply anymore in this brave new world of “Hope and Change”.
America is getting just what it deserves. This is precisely what big government brings you and modern technology only makes it worse and more dangerous. This is why we need to shrink government in our lives, not grow it. This is why we need to return to the original constitutional principle of Enumerated Powers.
–K.T. McFarland in a very trenchant opinion piece
What a coincidence that I’ve read two excellent pieces recently by Ms. McFarland. And this one goes right along with an earlier post of mine wherein I mused about the evils of politics infecting our daily lives to such an extent that it trumps all sense of propriety. But then what else would you expect from a man who gives the Queen of England an iPod?
“Evil does not come from an object or a substance or anything else outside of ourselves…Controlling or eliminating these things will never eliminate evil. And evil is never satisfied. Evil works overtime. Evil does things purely for their own destructive ends.”
–Charlie Broadway, from a post on his blog
Way to state the case, Charlie! And way to call out our elitist political classes and their sycophants in the press–not to mention a large-ish segment of American society–on being so willing to piss around with trying to “fix” the problem to suit their own political ends without ever getting to the root causes.
I can hardly wait until congress introduces legislation to regulate and/or ban the ownership and purchase of pressure cookers…
I read quotes like this and it only serves to reaffirm the clueless arrogance most Americans (and I’m not referring to K.T. McFarland here, but rather our populace at large) display on the topic: why is it that other countries wouldn’t want to obtain nuclear weapons to protect themselves from the nuclear-armed, 900-pound gorilla known as the United States of America? If we’d quit shoving other nations around when we have no business doing so, then perhaps they’d not have to waste their toil and treasure trying to get the bomb and we’d all be safer. This indictment also applies to the other nuclear “almost-superpowers” like Russia, China and–if we stretch the definition to the breaking point–the Euro countries with nukes.
No, I’m definitely not saying that it’s a good thing that the current despotic psycho of the Kim dynasty has laid his hands on the nuclear golden ticket, just that it’s a not inconceivable reaction to our decades of military adventurism and knuckle-headed foreign policy.
For years I’ve thought that the greatest blessing another country can receive is to simply be ignored by the US government. If the Americans just leave you alone then perhaps you can get on with your own life. In international relations–as well as our personal lives–what’s wrong with just minding our own business? Besides, just think of all the money we’d save…
–Charles Krauthammer speaking about the POTUS
Never mind the person or the party, this is what politics gets us. No matter who it is, the only thing they really want to do is hold onto their phony-baloney jobs for as long as possible–all while lining their pockets with as much other people’s money as they can get away with. As taxpayers, we are those “other people” and I for one am getting extremely tired of bending over and grabbing my ankles while the ruling class…ahem…grabs my wallet.
This is precisely why the older I get, the more Libertarian I become. Let us joyfully get rid of them all–or at least as many as humanly possible. I feel especially sad for the younger generations who are being sold down the river into tax slavery by–and am I the only one to see the bitter irony–the nation’s first black president and his cronies. After all, it’s the generation of my niece and nephews that are going to be stuck having to clean up following this destruction.
But then again, it’s the younger generation that has sown the seeds of their own future doom by allowing themselves to be fooled into voting these charlatans into office, lured by promises of their own share of other people’s money parceled out in dime-bags by the politcrits–whether for “free” healthcare, college tuition, legalized pot, gay marriage or any other cause célèbre.
I guess I was just in a mood today… 😉
journey, not destination 