MR. SNOW: Well -- (break in video) -- "the perception is that you're trying to badger me into creating a fight between the White House and the legislative branch. And what we're trying to do is something pretty extraordinary. The legislative branch has no oversight responsibility over the White House." END 3:56 min into the video
Click here to view the video and read the transcript of this interview.
"If the public had the power to withdraw their money from govts the mad, far left politically correct schemes/"art" would never be funded. Leftists know this which is why they are against it but they also fail to realise that mad warmongers would not be funded either (at least not by an informed public). This is why all taxation should be voluntary - it stops tyrants and greedy politicians of either "side" taking advantage of compulsory coercion for political or personal gain."
As we all know, first cheap and now high-tech Chinese goods have saturated the US Market for well over a decade now.
This created a very large strain on the balance of trade between the US and China.
Additionally, the Chinese government to keep that imbalance running at full steam kept their currency the Yuan pegged to the dollar so that their currency would maintain at a fixed "low" rate to the dollar and thus their manufactured goods would remain cheap in comparison to US Goods where their currency would not appreciate to the dollar and thus cheaper Chinese products.
The US Government and manufactures here in the US were not happy with China's currency strategy and for the last several years put the pressure on China to stop pegging their currency the Yuan to the dollar and move to a basket of currencies to determine the Yuan's value. Well, after severe pressure exerted by the US Government, about six months ago China buckled and un-pegged the Yuan from the dollar and went to a basket of currencies pegged to the Yuan.
This left China holding about 2.5 trillion dollars now up for investment. Click here for more.
I find that most American's don't understand their own history. The public schools rewrite it. If only people knew the real reason why we don't have a law for an income tax in this country: Our forefathers designed it that way. I think that more people would be accepting of the idea that there is no law requiring individuals to pay income tax if they understood why our forefathers gave us the Constitution that they did.
Our American forefathers knew what they were doing when they made federal income taxes illegal. They were fully aware that history abounded with examples of governments encroaching on the liberties of its citizens. James Madison wrote, "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation." This is the reason why they only gave the federal government two means of collecting taxes, knowing full well that it is taxes that grow governments.
The first method allows the federal government to tax the states (direct taxes apportioned). This forces the federal government to negotiate with entities large and powerful enough to resist. This provides for the balance of power principle our forefathers valued so immensely and interwove so intricately into a government that has thus far withstood the test of time.
The second method allowed for the federal government to tax the individual, but only if the individual had the option not to pay those taxes, as is the case for alcohol, and tobacco (indirect taxes unapportioned). This allowed an individual to say within their selves, "I do not like the way my government is spending my money, so I am not going to give them anymore by buying this or that product that I would enjoy ordinarily." The decision to buy or not to buy is far easier and far more effective than hitching a ride on a horse and carriage to Washington and holding up placards. Our forefathers knew that the demands of life do not always allow us the time to formally petition our government. Besides, placards can be ignored. The purse ... not so easy.
Instead of our forefather's original vision, today we have the federal government railroading the individual into paying income taxes under threat of prison or the confiscation of their property. Just as our forefathers feared, the federal government has grown large and unaccountable to the people, sending "swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out of their substance." (Declaration of Independence.) And the federal government actively does all of this without ever having altered the Constitution (in other words, illegally). Click here for more.
RON PAUL HAS THIS MORNING ANNOUNCED HIS CAMPAIGN FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES ON C-SPAN.
March 12, 2007
In a 30 min interview on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Dr. Ron Paul (R –Tx) announced his campaign for the Presidency of the Untied States. Dr. Paul, a Lake Jackson Texas obstetrician announced that he would be making other announcements today but that C-SPAN was the launching platform for his campaign.
Ron Paul was born and raised in Pennsylvania, received his medical degree from Duke University, was drafted into the US Air Force where he served five years as a flight surgeon and settled in Lake Jackson Texas with his wife and family. Dr. Paul has been a Texas congressman for many years. Dr. Paul then took questions via telephone from C-SPAN's nationwide viewing audience. Dr. Paul responded to a broad range of questions in the constitutionally based direct and to the point responsive manner to which he is well known. His strong pro life, pro gold, pro constitution, anti Federal Reserve and anti Iraq war stance was clearly set out in his responses. He announced a campaign trip to Arizona this week with a trip to Iowa in coming weeks.
Yes, we have a heritage of a Christian nation. Our written institutions were created by men who imbibed the principles of liberty and freedom from the great Christian leaders of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fountainhead of our ideals was in English Protestantism, not French rationalism as some would have us believe. Our rules of conduct, both public and private, are based upon a Christian doctrine of man and society. Such rules will not work successfully when this philosophical base of our society is changed. We cannot play football with baseball rules. Our society cannot endure if pagans dominate it.
We have a mission. Not imperialism, whether it be political or economic, but a mission of enjoining the peoples of the world to live together in love, forebearance, and cooperation under the sovereign leadership of God. Never before in history has a nation been called upon to give so much of its substance and its talents to help other nations in need. When has a people been so magnanimous in its treatment of its former enemies? We have fed them and set them upon their feet to the point of making economic competitors of them. This is unique in history. Some of us do not like the way we have gone about it in our foreign aid programs, but demands are upon us, and we respond to these human needs because we are that kind of people. Who else is there who can or will do it?
We have a King. This Seal, this signature of the United States of America, identifies us as the people whose King is God. Is there any other ultimate interpretation of this symbol? Because we recognize that we operate under God's sovereignty, then we are stewards of a system of government intended to bring about the righteous ordering of society. Click here for more.
This is a speech Mr. Heston gave at the Harvard Law School in February, 1999. Sit back for a moment, friends.
This is worth your time:
I remember my son when he was five, explaining to his kindergarten class what his father did for a living.
"My Daddy," he said, "pretends to be people."
There have been quite a few of them.
Prophets from the Old and New Testaments, a couple of Christian saints, generals of various nationalities and different centuries, several kings, three American presidents, a French cardinal and two geniuses, including Michelangelo.
If you want the ceiling re-painted I'll do my best.
It's just that there always seems to be a lot of different fellows up here. I'm never sure which one of them gets to talk. Right now, I guess I'm the guy.
As I pondered our visit tonight it struck me: If my Creator gave me the gift to connect you with the hearts and minds of those great men, then I want to use that same gift now to re-connect you with your own sense of liberty ... your own freedom of thought ... your own compass for what is right. Click here for more. (Isaiah 5:20.)
20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and [into] many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil. Click here for KJV.
Greatness is having never intended it. It is the humility of heart and mind that remains unchanged by public disdain. It is a discovery of something valuable within the deepest source of being, and which fearlessly expresses itself although inconvenient and unfashionable to do so. It is the inspiration of the truth within and yet apart from the individual, and it is the act of knowledge which distinguishes popular acclaim from the profound voice of the soul within which says: Well done, my good and faithful servant. Greatness is the unaided event of the truth because a soul has listened to God rather than to man. It is the integrity of truth which has granted the individual his or her own integrity without supplication or solicitation. It is the transformation from a self-acclaiming and self-blaming person into someone whose only loyalty and allegiance is to the truth itself and for the sake of love.
Greatness of soul and character is not what one aspires to. It is what occurs within the person who makes himself ready for the truth. Greatness is the simple goodness which knows love and truth as the two inseparable attributes of the Divine itself, and it is the voluntary submission to become a part of this manifestation of God Himself, not as a dogmatist but as a person freed of his own inclinations toward a doctrinaire attitude, and one who has chosen to become a spiritual cosmopolitan in the midst of a provincial world. Click here for more.
Released by the delegates to the Secular Islam Summit, St. Petersburg, Florida on March 5, 2007
We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.
We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons.
We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights.
We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind.
We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called “Islamaphobia” in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights.
We call on the governments of the world to
reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms; oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostacy, in accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights;
eliminate practices, such as female circumcision, honor killing, forced veiling, and forced marriage, that further the oppression of women;
protect sexual and gender minorities from persecution and violence;
reform sectarian education that teaches intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims;
and foster an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation.
We demand the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxy.
We enjoin academics and thinkers everywhere to embark on a fearless examination of the origins and sources of Islam, and to promulgate the ideals of free scientific and spiritual inquiry through cross-cultural translation, publishing, and the mass media.
We say to Muslim believers: there is a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine;
to Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha’is, and all members of non-Muslim faith communities: we stand with you as free and equal citizens;
and to nonbelievers: we defend your unqualified liberty to question and dissent.
Before any of us is a member of the Umma, the Body of Christ, or the Chosen People, we are all members of the community of conscience, the people who must chose for themselves. Click here for more.
This was received by, Nance, a supporter from California:
"Amongst all of the junk we get over the internet, occasionally we get something like this. It's just too good not to send around. If a dog has time to pray so should we!!!"
The marvel of "hive mind" is that no one is in control, and yet an invisible hand governs, a hand that emerges from very dumb members. The marvel is that more is different. To generate a colony organism from a bug organism requires only that the bugs be multiplied so that there are many, many more of them, and that they communicate with each other. At some stage the level of complexity reaches a point where new categories like "colony" can emerge from simple categories of "bug." Colony is inherent in bugness, implies this marvel. Thus, there is nothing to be found in a beehive that is not submerged in a bee. And yet you can search a bee forever with cyclotron and fluoroscope, and you will never find the hive.
This is a universal law of vivisystems: higher-level complexities cannot be inferred by lower-level existences. Nothing -- no computer or mind, no means of mathematics, physics, or philosophy -- can unravel the emergent pattern dissolved in the parts without actually playing it out. Only playing out a hive will tell you if a colony is immixed in a bee. The theorists put it this way: running a system is the quickest, shortest, and only sure method to discern emergent structures latent in it. There are no shortcuts to actually "expressing" a convoluted, nonlinear equation to discover what it does. Too much of its behavior is packed away.
That leads us to wonder what else is packed into the bee that we haven't seen yet? Or what else is packed into the hive that has not yet appeared because there haven't been enough honeybee hives in a row all at once? And for that matter, what is contained in a human that will not emerge until we are all interconnected by wires and politics? The most unexpected things will brew in this bionic hivelike supermind.
Freedom Force International is a network of men and women from all parts of the world who are concerned over loss of personal liberty and expansion of government power. They are not mere complainers. They have a plan to do something about it. They also share a common belief in The Creed of Freedom, which is a statement of principles that guide them in their mission to build a better world.
THE CREED OF FREEDOM
INTRINSIC NATURE OF RIGHTS I believe that only individuals have rights, not the collective group; that these rights are intrinsic to each individual, not granted by the state; for if the state has the power to grant them, it also has the power to deny them, and that is incompatible with personal liberty. I believe that a just government derives its power solely from the governed. Therefore, the state must never presume to do anything beyond what individual citizens also have the right to do. Otherwise, the state is a power unto itself and becomes the master instead of the servant of society. SUPREMACY OF THE INDIVIDUAL I believe that one of the greatest threats to freedom is to allow any group, no matter its numeric superiority, to deny the rights of the minority; and that one of the primary functions of just government is to protect each individual from the greed and passion of the majority.
FREEDOM OF CHOICE I believe that desirable social and economic objectives are better achieved by voluntary action than by coercion of law. I believe that social tranquility and brotherhood are better achieved by tolerance, persuasion, and the power of good example than by coercion of law. I believe that those in need are better served by charity, which is the giving of one's own money, than by welfare, which is the giving of other people's money through coercion of law. EQUALITY UNDER LAW I believe that all citizens should be equal under law, regardless of their national origin, race, religion, gender, education, economic status, life style, or political opinion. Likewise, no class should be given preferential treatment, regardless of the merit or popularity of its cause. To favor one class over another is not equality under law. PROPER ROLE OF GOVERNMENT I believe that the proper role of government is negative, not positive; defensive, not aggressive. It is to protect, not to provide; for if the state is granted the power to provide for some, it must also be able to take from others, and once that power is granted, there are those who will seek it for their advantage. It always leads to legalized plunder and loss of freedom. If government is powerful enough to give us everything we want, it is also powerful enough to take from us everything we have. Therefore, the proper function of government is to protect the lives, liberty, and property of its citizens; nothing more. That government is best which governs least. THE THREE COMMANDMENTS OF FREEDOM
The Creed of Freedom is based on five principles. However, in day-to-day application, they can be reduced to just three codes of conduct. I consider them to be The Three Commandments of Freedom:
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS Do not sacrifice the rights of any individual or minority for the assumed rights of the group.
EQUALITY UNDER LAW Do not endorse any law that does not apply to all citizens equally.
FREEDOM OF CHOICE Do not use coercion for any purpose except to protect human life, liberty, or property. THE THREE PILLARS OF FREEDOM
Another way of viewing these principles is to consider them as the three pillars of freedom. They are concepts that underlie the ideology of individualism, and individualism is the indispensable foundation of freedom. Click here for more.
