marioblog2

Sunday, February 26, 2012

To My Friends in Arizona and Michigan: It's Time to Take a Stand

Before I begin this rant, let me make my stance regarding Mitt Romney perfectly clear.

I will walk on broken glass to vote for Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum or a radioactive goat over Barack Obama in the general election.

That said, did the Tea Party go away? Did it disappear into the ether after the GOP's crushing victories in the 2010 midterms? Did it shatter after a million internecine battles?

Or is it merely simmering at a low boil while grassroots groups canvas for its primary favorites?

To my friends in Arizona and Michigan

The time for action is now. The situation our country faces is too dire and the stakes too high to sit on the sidelines. You may, as I do, feel the fatigue of negative attacks, experience anger at the proctological scrutiny of your favorite candidates, or disgust at the blatant bias of the Democrat-media complex.

But you must, like an Olympic athlete, put all of that aside and vote on Tuesday.

If I could vote in one of your states, I would be casting my vote for Rick Santorum. Praised by no less a set of conservative luminaries like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and Sarah Palin, Santorum has been a consistent conservative throughout his career.

Architect of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, a proponent of the original Balanced Budget Amendment and an expert at national defense issues, Santorum's appeal is far wider than legacy media would have you believe.

This election will be about the future of America

Do Americans want a nation flooded with food-stamps and welfare payments, a European-style decline, and an out-of-control president who flouts the very Constitution upon which he took an oath to uphold?

Or do they want a return to founding principles, fiscal discipline and respect for the rule of law?

This election will be about founding principles, the most important of which are faith, family, private property rights and individual liberty. Those tenets were foundational to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Our rights are God-given, not offered in a bill by some bureaucrat in Washington. How can someone articulate the nature of American exceptionalism without a grounding in our founding document and our highest law?

The "Great Society" proved the defective nature of the Democrats' philosophy. Even if they were inspired by altruistic desires, Democrats have utterly destroyed the two-parent family, especially in the urban core.

Dozens of studies have proven that easy access to food stamps and welfare payments inflate the percentage of single-parent families. And single-parent families are linked directly to violent crime: in fact, no matter what race you are, you have the same chance of going to prison if you are raised in a single-parent household.

As for private property rights and the rule of law: the Constitution means what it says. To the extent that temporary politicians dismiss the genius of the Framers; strip away the bonds on the federal government placed explicitly upon it; and confiscate more and more private property in pursuit of a Utopian, benificent state that can't be and never was; they are corrupt and lawless. A government that takes your private property for purposes other than those specifically enunciated in the Constitution is operating outside of the law.

These lines are crystal clear and it will take an articulate conservative grounded in the founding principles to draw the sharpest contrast between the European nanny state that Obama seeks and the kind of government our Framers created.

You can cherry-pick the man's record all you want, but Santorum's record is one of consistency.

Santorum has a legislative record...

Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)
Voted YES on $40B in reduced federal overall spending. (Dec 2005)
Voted YES on prioritizing national debt reduction below tax cuts. (Apr 2000)
Voted YES on 1998 GOP budget. (May 1997)
Voted YES on Balanced-budget constitutional amendment. (Mar 1997)

Rated 25% by CURE, indicating anti-rehabilitation crime votes. (Dec 2000)
Rated 27% by the NEA, indicating anti-public education votes. (Dec 2003)
Rated 0% by the LCV, indicating anti-environment votes. (Dec 2003)
Rated 100% by CATO, indicating a pro-free trade voting record. (Dec 2002)
Rated 0% by APHA, indicating a anti-public health voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 0% by the AFL-CIO, indicating an anti-union voting record. (Dec 2003)
Rated 81% by NTU, indicating a “Taxpayer’s Friend” on tax votes. (Dec 2003)

--Source: Issues 2000 Legislation Tracker

Rick Santorum is a true, God-fearing, Constitutional conservative in the mold of Ronald Reagan. If we are to begin repairing this country, we need him or someone like him as President.

This election won't be about access to condoms. It's going to be about freedom. What it means to be an American. And Rick Santorum would be an outstanding choice as president.

So, to my friends in Arizona and Michigan: I urge you to consider supporting Rick Santorum for president. Send a message to Washington: the era of big government is over. The time for action is now.

We have a country to save.

Photo Sequence: Ryan Seacrest Gets Doused in Ashes by the Dictator

Think what you want about Sacha Baron Cohen, but the man knows how to market himself. Initially banned from attending the Academy Awards in costume, Cohen was later granted permission to stroll down the Red Carpet.

Interviewed while portraying the character from his forthcoming movie The Dictator, Cohen "accidentally" spilled the ashes of Kim Jong-Il all over Ryan Seacrest.

Turns out that that Kim had always wanted to visit the Red Carpet.

Cohen closed the sequence with a prepared punchline to Seacrest, delivered in a stilted accent: "Now, Brian, when someone asks what you're wearing, you can tell them Kim Jong-Il!"

Democrats dismiss importance of elections: Obama, Hillary see absolute certainty of SCOAMF reelection

Apparently, your voice means very little to those with dictatorial sensibilities.

• President Barack Obama promised five more years of SCOAMF leadership.

President Barack Obama, expressing confidence he will win re-election in November, told a Hispanic audience he would use a second term to seek comprehensive immigration reform.

'My presidency is not over,' Obama said in an interview with Univision Radio when asked about his failure so far to push through an immigration bill.

'I've got another five years coming up. We're going to get this done.'

• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience in Tunisia to ignore the rhetoric coming from the Republican presidential primary process and assured them that Obama's reelection was certain.

"...a lot of things are said in political campaigns that should not bear a lot of attention...

...There are comments made that certainly don't reflect the United States, don't reflect our foreign policy, don't reflect who we are as a people. I mean, if you go to the United States, you see mosques everywhere, you see Muslim-Americans everywhere. That's the fact. So I would not pay attention to the rhetoric...

...watch what President Obama says and does... He's our president. He represents all of the United States, and he will be reelected president, so I think that that will be a very clear signal to the entire world..."

As Nancy Pelosi once said, "the fact is that elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do."

If Democrats had their way, elections wouldn't matter at all.

Which seems a curiously similar attitude to other hard left, totalitarian Statists humanity has suffered with over the last century, from the Leninists, to the Nazis, to the Stalinists and Maoists, Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Putin.

Apology accepted: Iran says White House should be burned down, officers hung over Koran-burning incident

This appeasement strategy is working out beautifully, eh?

JPOST.COM, 2/26/2012

'US officers should be hung over Koran incident'

Al Arabiya: Iranian commander says White House should be burned; Afghan ministry worker suspected of killing US officers.

A top Iranian military commander said Saturday that nothing but burning the White House and hanging US commanders could remedy the pain caused to Muslims by the burning of Korans at a US military base in Afghanistan, pan-Arab Al Arabiya news channel reported Sunday.

"The US has committed such an ugly act and burned Korans because of the heavy slap it has been given by Islam," Basij (volunteer forces) Commander Brig.-Gen. Muhammad Reza Naqdi [said] ... “Their apology can be accepted only by hanging their commanders; hanging their commanders means an apology." ...

US President Barack Obama sent a letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday apologizing for the incident, which occurred last week, and saying that it wasn't intentional.

In a continuation of events, two American officers were killed as rage gripped the country for a fifth straight day over the burning of the Muslim holy book, despite Obama's apology.

Afghanistan's interior ministry said on Sunday it suspects one of its employees may have killed the two US officers inside the ministry a day earlier...

Hey, if you liked the Iranians during the Carter hostage crisis, orchestrating the Beirut Marine bombing, and fomenting Iraq's civil war, you'll love 'em when they have nukes!

Thanks, President Obama!

Way cool: new smartphone has built-in projector, throws 50" display

Daddy like:

The concept is simple: take a full-powered 4-inch Galaxy smartphone and add a 15-Lumens LED-powered, nHD projector. The result is a yellow and black phone that at first glance looks like a slightly fatter version (it’s 12.5mm thick and weighs 145.3 grams) of any of today’s top 3G phones.

Samsung didn’t skimp much to squeeze in the projector or, potentially, keep the price down. The Beam has a 5 MP camera (a tad less than the 8 MP we’re now used to), 8 GB of storage (upgradeable via micro-SD card to 32 GB) and 768 MB of RAM. It’s also running Android 2.3. The 480×800 screen looked clear and bright, but those specs and the screen are not the real story here. It’s reasonable to assume that the only reason someone would buy the Galaxy Beam is if you desperately wanted a dual phone/projector.

In operation, the Galaxy beam appeared flawless. It’ll play virtually anything you run on the small screen, and had no trouble shining a roughly 3-ft image onto an 8- or 9-ft ceiling. Images in a fully darkened room were very sharp and bright, but since it relies on the smartphone speakers for sound, you’ll want to hook up external speakers. Samsung execs told us that they’re working on a variety of docks and accessories.

The phone also worked well in presentation mode. Samsung execs projected a presentation on a nearby screen and changed slides by touching the Galaxy Beam’s screen.

The Telegraph asserts that the Beam "can show films and pictures at up to 50"."

You can easily envision salespeople clamoring for this type of device.

Hat tip: BadBlue.com.

The nauseating employment chart that President Obama and the Democrats don't want you to see

Via MetricMash comes this stunning chart that depicts just how dire the employment situation has become under the SCOAMF.

As this chart illustrates:

• Over the last 30 years, we have never seen the kind of sustained decline in the labor-force participation rate we're experiencing under Obama. More people are dropping out of the labor force at a faster clip than during any recent stretch and, worse, there's absolutely no sign of recovery.

• The unparalleled success of the Reagan tax cuts is on full display: not only did unemployment drop, but the labor-force participation rate increased at a phenomenal angle. All Americans benefited from these tax cuts and the job creation spurred by Reagan went well into the Clinton years.

Which is why Democrats and the media -- but I repeat myself -- shield you from information like this. There is only one way out of this economic mess: unleashing the private sector by slashing taxes, minimizing the size of government, and obliterating the out-of-control regulatory state. But Democrats prefer failure, so long as they get to control you, the individual. Because they're power-hungry statists, trying to maintain a white-knuckled death grip on the reins of government.

Larwyn's Linx: The Perversion of Rights

Have a news tip or great story? Drop me an email. Bloggers: you can install a Larwyn's Linx blog widget!

QOTD: "We have officially lost our minds.

The New York Times reports that President Obama has sent a formal letter of apology to Afghanistan’s ingrate president, Hamid Karzai, for the burning of Korans at a U.S. military base. The only upside of the apology is that it appears (based on the Times account) to be couched as coming personally from our blindly Islamophilic president — “I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. . . . I extend to you and the Afghani people my sincere apologies.” It is not couched as an apology from the American people, whose frame of mind will be outrage, not contrition, as the facts become more widely known.

The facts are that the Korans were seized at a jail because jihadists imprisoned there were using them not for prayer but to communicate incendiary messages... Also understand this: In sharia societies, non-Muslim religious articles are confiscated and destroyed every single day as a matter of policy. In Saudi Arabia, where sharia is the law of the land, where Mecca and Medina are closed to non-Muslims, government guidelines prohibit Jews and Christians from bringing Bibles, crucifixes, Stars of David, and similar artifacts emblematic of their faith into the country. When that prohibition is violated, the offending items are seized and burned or otherwise destroyed. " --Andrew C. McCarthy

Sunday, February 26, 2012

To my friends in Arizona and Michigan

This election will be about the future of America

'US officers should be hung over Koran incident'

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