Woodlands II on the Creek? You're On Notice.

(Compiler's note: Want to bet this one will not last long? Please click on the title above and read the entire article and the notes of the growing sounds of "marching" Marines in Texas.)

So today, just a few scant days after Memorial Day, we get James Ragland's column about vet Frank Larison, who is in trouble with his HOA at Woodlands II on the Creek for having the temerity to ... (have Marine Corps stickers on his car). ....

Frank Larison's homeowners association in Woodlands II on the Creek has threatened to tow his car if he doesn't remove the decals on the back windshield, including the Marine Corps emblem and a diamond-shaped 1st Marine Aircraft Wing insignia. ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5dD4PAgfng

Obama promises Arabs Jerusalem will be theirs

Official: President said Palestinian state with holy city capital 'in American interest' .... Nimer Hamad, Abbas' senior political adviser.

"Abu Mazen (Abbas) heard from Obama and his administration in a very categorical way that a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is in the American national and security interest," Hamad said. ....

The Incredible Shrinking Clintons

(Compiler's note: A very interesting read on political leadership.)

Big Brother asks: 'Do you have a flush toilet?' Mandatory Census survey inquires about citizens' difficulty undressing, bathing

(Compiler's note: This advanced information is an absolutely must read. It makes me mad just to think about what they will try to "force" on the American people. Somebody please show me the authority for such a required survey by any level of government, let alone our federal government. This will simply NOT stand. They simply have NOT been given this power by the American people -- see The Constitution of the United States.)

By Chelsea Schilling

The federal government

is forcing 3 million Americans to disclose sensitive, personal information about finances, health and lifestyle in a 14-page survey – including questions about availability of household flush toilets and difficulty with undressing and bathing.

The 2009 American Community Survey, an annual supplement to the decennial Census, asks about residents' personal relationships and whether a home has hot and cold running water, a flush toilet, bathing facilities, appliances and phone services. It also asks how many rooms are in a home and what vehicles are used at each household.

The new questionnaire asks respondents what they pay for electricity, gas, water and sewer every month and whether residents receive food stamps.

Question 16 asks, "About how much do you think this house and lot, apartment, or mobile home would sell for if it were for sale?"

Respondents are required to disclose costs associated with rent or mortgage, annual real estate taxes on and fire, hazard and flood insurance expenses.

For each person in the household, the questionnaire asks for citizenship status, education level, whether that person attends private or public schools. It also features questions about health coverage, hearing and vision impairment and physical, mental or emotional conditions.

It asks if residents "have difficulty dressing or bathing" or "doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor's office or shopping" or whether they have difficulty making decisions. Respondents must indicate if they have served in the military, their current marital status and whether they have been married or given birth to children in the last 12 months. The Census Bureau claims its question is used as a "measure of fertility" and is used to "carry out various programs required by statute, including … conducting research for voluntary family planning

programs."

The letter asks where residents worked last week and whether they drove a car, rode a bus, subway railroad, ferryboat, taxicab or bicycle to get there. It then asks what time they left for work and how long their commute lasted.

Respondents are also required to disclose their place of employment, duties and income.

While many recipients may consider the questionnaire to be tedious and meddling, the Census Bureau warns that citizens are required by law to complete it and may be fined as much as $5,000 for willfully refusing. While an individual may feel uneasy about answering each question truthfully, the fine for filing false information can be as much as $500.

The Census Bureau estimates that the form takes an average of 38 minutes for each household to complete.

While the U.S. Constitution allows Americans to be counted for purposes of taxation and political representation, Jim Harper, a privacy expert at the Cato Institute, told the New York Post the survey is "a classic example of mission creep over the decades – this constitutional need to literally count how many noses are in the United States has turned into a vast data-collection operation."

Rep. Ron Paul blasted the government for spending "hundreds of millions of dollars" on the survey and called the questionnaire "insulting" in his Texas Straight Talk column.

"The questions are both ludicrous and insulting," he wrote. "The survey asks, for instance, how many bathrooms you have in your house, how many miles you drive to work, how many days you were sick last year, and whether you have trouble getting up stairs. It goes on and on, mixing inane questions with highly detailed inquiries about your financial affairs. One can only imagine the countless malevolent ways our federal bureaucrats could use this information. At the very least the survey will be used to dole out pork, which is reason enough to oppose it."

Paul continued, "The founders never authorized the federal government to continuously survey the American people. More importantly, they never envisioned a nation where the people would roll over and submit to every government demand. The American Community Survey is patently offensive to all Americans who still embody that fundamental American virtue, namely a healthy mistrust of government. "

This Country is Failing Because President Obama is Succeeding

(Compiler's note: Absolutely must read.) by RUSH LIMBAUGH: Ladies and gentlemen, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has warned all of us to be very, very careful how we say what we say about the Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. I want to apologize for shouting in my latter parts of that opening monologue. I will admit here to just being frustrated as I can be. We're watching the greatest economy in the world crumble right before our eyes. Every promised fix is failing right before our eyes. We have thrown trillions of dollars that no doubt cannot be tracked at all of these failing industries and the industries continue to fail and get worse. We have authorized a Porkulus bill of near $1 trillion to get shovel-ready projects going, to get the economy going, it's not working. There's no new employment to report out there, unemployment at 25-year high last month. None of it is working. And what angers me is I think this is by design. Nobody in their right mind, I don't care, liberal, socialist, communist, everybody with half a brain knows that what is being done right now to fix the economy doesn't fix an economy. But it does a lot of other things. It empowers the people who are spending the money. It keeps the people who are the supposed recipients of the money impoverished. It keeps them nervous, it keeps them on edge. Those people are happy and very, very comforted that the government is trying to do something. And so far it hasn't worked and so Obama said, "We're working on this, you ain't seen nothing yet," so they're going to be content to sit there and wait for more assistance to come and it won't come because it cannot come. This economy is simply too large as it was to be supported by a single entity, the United States government. It simply cannot be. The math doesn't work; the ideology doesn't work; the philosophy doesn't work; the theory doesn't work. So, yes, I was angry, and I still am. This is the equivalent of a huge insult to my intelligence and to yours. It isn't working. It can't work. It will not work. It will fail. As I scour the Internet for show prep or as I occasionally listen to the television news, I hear more and more people referring to my comment "I hope he fails," referring to the president, still being very upset about this, "Oh, what a dumb political comment that was," people are saying, "how silly, how stupid, that's really going to bring moderates to the cause, right, because everybody, when they hear Limbaugh say, 'I hope Obama fails,' they think that Limbaugh wants the country to fail." Now, let me say something to you right here and right now. And look at me. It's this: Virtually everybody -- I don't care whether they're conservative, liberal, independent, moderate, or Martian -- virtually everybody who heard my comment, "I hope Obama fails," knows exactly what I meant. There is not a sane person in this country who genuinely believes I want this country to fail. Ladies and gentlemen, this country is failing because President Obama is succeeding. I don't care how you choose to measure it. There is no hope on the horizon for a job. There is no hope on the horizon for renewed prosperity. There is no hope on the horizon for economic growth. It's not there. It's been promised. It has been said that the only entity that can guarantee all the things I just mentioned is the federal government. The federal government has thrown trillions of dollars at failing entities, industries, and they're still failing and getting worse. President Obama's policies will not fail in one regard: They will not fail in impoverishing and enslaving more and more Americans the longer his policies succeed. This that is happening to us, all of us at this moment, unemployment, record high since 25 years ago, one out of seven homes being foreclosed on, the automobile business basically bankrupt after trillions of dollars in bailouts now owned by Obama, Wall Street is an abject mess, the state of California is bankrupt, the state of New York soon will be. All of these places are talking about raising taxes further on people, which will reduce the number of people who are able to hire other people -- in other words, create jobs. This is the exact kind of success I wanted to fail. And everybody who heard me say it knew exactly what I meant. It is being used by people on our side of the aisle who are scared to death of conservatives. It is being used by them to say that I'm driving moderates away. It's being used by people on the left to say that I want America to fail, when everybody in their brain knows exactly what I meant, just as everybody with a brain, everybody with a modicum of education knows that what President Obama is doing will not do what he promises, will not do what he says, it will not revive this economy. We are soon going to be approaching the one-year mark. In fact, the first stimulus package occurred over a year ago. And it was offered by President Bush, and it was rebate checks for the American people. This was to help us buy things. And then some months later there was a second installment of this same rebate plan, checks from the federal government. And then came, as we approached the one-year anniversary of the beginning of massive bailouts starting with TARP, then to the auto companies, and Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the mortgage industry. A year, my friends, if stimulating these industry sectors with this amount of money has only made it worse, at what point does somebody have the guts to stand up and say, "Stop it. It has failed. It isn't working, and it shows no signs of working," and everybody with a brain, with a modicum of education, knows it can't work. It never has worked throughout the history of human civilization. It's unsustainable whether it be the mental health hospital in Sacramento, whether it be the economy of the state of California, whether it be the automobile industry, whatever government takes on outside of the government sphere, outside of its constitutional role, whatever it takes on that's in the private sector, with the intention of fixing it, only gets worse. In fact, so do the things they do fix that they think are legitimately theirs to fix. They create the war on poverty; it's worse than ever in terms of percentages. They create the great Great Society and all of these programs which have featured an $11 trillion transfer of wealth over the past 30 years or so, and these problems have not been abated, they have not been solved, they have not been reduced; they exist. It could be said that the federal government's involvement in the massive welfare state has served to destroy families, minority families, because the government took over the role of the father. The father no longer had to hang around because the government was there every week or month or however often the checks come. So it isn't working. This kind of failure is exactly what I wanted to avoid. I was hoping that Obama would not succeed in further destroying the United States economy. So there he is, in the middle of a bankrupt state, telling people there they ain't seen nothing yet to rounds of applause and the standing ovation from, of course, the wealthy Hollywood elites.

END TRANSCRIPT

Birth certificate issue No. 1 at Fox News Obama eligibility most talked about topic on news website

Federal advisory board: Bring privacy laws up to 21st-century speed

The Privacy Act of 1974 has been outstripped by technology and does not provide agencies with appropriate guidance in handling personal information or individuals with adequate safeguards to their privacy, according to a federal advisory board. ....

Robert Gates: The Bureaucrat Unbound

(Compiler's note: A long, but interesting read.)

By JOE KLEIN

A few weeks ago, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates trooped up to Capitol Hill to answer questions about the new Pentagon budget. This is an unseemly spectacle under the best of circumstances. Even reasonable members of Congress have been known to empretzel themselves shamelessly, attempting to defend weapons the Pentagon doesn't want or need, but which provide jobs for their constituents. Usually, they win, too. It is just too difficult for a Secretary of Defense to argue against shiny new weapons systems with subcontractors in 46 states, even if they are fantastically over budget and designed to counter a missile threat that the Soviets never perfected 30 years ago.

But this is a different year, and Gates is a different sort of Defense Secretary. He warned the legislators that each decision was "zero sum." Any money that went to things he didn't want would come out of programs necessary to support the troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Read "Can Robert Gates Tame the Pentagon?) ....

Cybersecurity report said to offer few details

The Obama administration's release Friday of a report on the state of the federal government's cybersecurity posture will not offer specific recommendations for action, sources who reviewed the document .... The report lacks any mandates for heavy-handed Internet regulation, but it states the government has the ultimate responsibility to protect all IT networks ....

Taliban's Foreign Support Vexes U.S

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN

WASHINGTON -- U.S. officials recently concluded that the Afghan Taliban may receive as much money from foreign donors as it does from opium sales, potentially hindering the Obama administration's strategy to rehabilitate Afghanistan by stopping the country's drug trade.

Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said in a recent interview that the Taliban has three main sources of funding: drug revenue; payments from legitimate businesses that are secretly owned by the armed group or that pay it kickbacks; and donations from foreign charitable foundations and individuals. ....

Video shows Taliban hit in Afghan strikes -Petraeus

By JoAnne Allen

WASHINGTON, May 29 (Reuters) - A video of air strikes in early May in western Afghanistan supports the U.S. military's assertion that most of the casualties were Taliban fighters, the top U.S. commander for the Afghan war said in an interview airing on Friday. ....

More centrifuges said in operation

TEHRAN | President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran has boosted its capacity to enrich uranium, another sign of anti-Western defiance by the leader seeking re-election in a vote next month.

Mr. Ahmadinejad said last month that Iran had 7,000 centrifuges at its uranium enrichment facility in Natanz in central Iran. The figure marked a significant boost from the 6,000 centrifuges announced in February. In his latest comments, reported by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency on Thursday, he did not give a specific new figure. ....

Black Panthers had wielded weapons, blocked polls

By Jerry Seper

Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.

The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.

Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.

The lawyers also had ascertained that one of the three men had gained access to the polling place by securing a credential as a Democratic poll watcher, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Times.....

Defense contractor with ties to Murtha suspended

By DAN NEPHIN and PETE YOST

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) - A Pennsylvania defense contractor who got millions of dollars in congressional earmarks from Rep. John Murtha has been blocked from doing business with the Navy amid allegations of fraud.

Word of the suspension came during an annual defense contractor trade show in Johnstown, Pa., the heart of Murtha's congressional district. Seven of the world's largest defense contractors, who have been among the veteran Pennsylvania Democrat's biggest campaign contributors over the years, are helping to bankroll this week's "Showcase for Commerce."

During a brief news conference Friday at the trade show, Murtha turned aside questions about the suspension of Kuchera Defense Systems Inc., a family-run business that has supported him with $60,000 to his campaign and to his political action committee since 2002. ....

Straight from the Communist’s Mouth

(Compiler's note: Seems to me this man has it pegged. Absolutely must read.)

By Cary Wesberry

Direct from Pravda in Russia. America is descending into Marxism:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Stanislav Mishin