BluegrassBulletin.com

Update On Obama's Reaction To State Sovereignty

Yesterday I commented upon the Obama administration's request for over $1 Billion to impose gun control.  Today I was alerted to this development:

The National Guard is following a direct order — but it’s not happy with it.

All of the Guard’s AH-64 Apache helicopters are scheduled to go to the active Army, and there’s nothing its top brass can do about it. [Washington Times]

Some have interpreted this move by the POTUS to have more sinister implications.

As if the Obama administration's purchase of more than 2 billion rounds of ammunition, and nearly 3,000 urban tanks, along with their unprecedented (and highly illegal) domestic spying program was not enough to convince you that the federal government is about to suspend the Constitution once and for all, the man who once vowed to run "the most transparent administration in history" has just rather inexplicably, ordered the U.S. Army to seize every Apache attack helicopter currently in use by the National Guard.

In all, the Defense Department will confiscate 192 Apaches from National Guard units around the country and give them to the active duty Army.

In exchange for the heavily armed and highly maneuverable choppers, Guard units will receive 111 UH-60 Blackhawktransport helicopters from the Army, Defense One reports.

Last week, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, claiming that the measure will save taxpayers $12 billion, over the next three years.

So, what could be another, more reasonable explanation?

The Apache, which began service in 1986, is armed with a 30 mm M230E1 Chain Gun (with 1,200 rounds), Hellfire anti-tank missiles, and 70 general-purpose 70 mm rockets. In short, it is capable of fending-off any enemy, foreign or domestic.

Obviously, these helicopters could pose a substantial obstacle to say, a tyrant drunk on his own power, with an army at his disposal. [Washington Examiner]

Time and time again this administration gives the impression that something is afoot which has bad written all over it.

According to one group the BLM agents at the Bundy ranch were in fact supposed to engage in violence in order to incite a larger scale crackdown centered around the expected death of some of the agents after a shootout.

Where does your state stand on the growing tension between "The People" and the Federal Government?  And perhaps to my fellow Kentuckians, which candidate for the US Senate has been tapped by none other than the First Lady as a reliable vote in favor of her husband's gun control efforts?

Stand Your Ground Update

When the Bureau of Land Management surrounded Cliven Bundy's ranch in Colorado in an effort to reclaim land upon which he and his family had been grazing cattle for generations, the armed forces of the United States took aim at citizens with their weapons.

Some say that revelations implicating Harry Reid and the Chinese in a plan to use the land for other purposes caused the BLM and the armed agents to stand down.  Not so says the rancher's son.

A show of force was necessary to stop the government seizure and sale of embattled cattle rancher Cliven Bundy's cows, his son said on Sunday, a day after an armed standoff between federal agents and hundreds of Bundy's supporters. [Reuters]

The armed standoff came after a contingent of militia groups headed for the ranch in support of Bundy and in opposition to the military like maneuvers of the BLM and other agents.

Under the Obama administration there has been a rise in the number of states which have created a separate militia unit under the control of the governor alone without any requirement that the  members treat the president as their commander in chief.

Obama is angered by the several State Governors who have reestablished “State Defense Forces.” These forces are described as: “State Defense Forces (also known as State Guards, State Military Reserves, State Militias) in the United States are military units that operate under the sole authority of a state government; they are not regulated by the National Guard Bureau nor are they part of the Army National Guard of the United States. [Politcalvelcraft.org]

And just how has the president responded in the face of the increase in militia groups, state military units and private citizens having the ability to defend themselves?

President Obama has requested $1.1 billion and the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked for $382.1 million for gun control "to protect Americans from gun violence." [Foxnews]

Is it just me or do you hear echoes of "The Concord Hymn"?

Your Land, My Land?

I'm not a big fan of Alex Jones or his hysterics, but I have been following this developing story and what you read below should give you a glimpse of how the government really sees you and me when we don't agree with them.  It also raises a question:  Is this land really your land, is this land really my land?

Federal snipers with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) trained guns on members of a family yesterday after they dared to stop and take video footage of cattle outside the bounds of a designated “First Amendment Area,” before arresting one of the men for non-compliance.

The cattle were being rounded up by BLM officers as part of a crackdown on Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who has refused to pay “grazing fees” demanded by the feds as a result of a re-classification of 600,000 acres of federal land in northeastern Clark County which Bundy claims has been in his family for generations.

Fears that the confrontation may turn violent and concerns that Bundy is drawing increased support from liberty activists and the local community prompted the feds to tape off two ridiculous “First Amendment Areas,” outside of which free speech in support of Bundy is banned. A sign placed inside the area reads “Welcome to Amerika – Wake Up” alongside a hammer and sickle logo.

When Bundy’s family members violated that rule yesterday in an attempt to peacefully document the cattle roundup, they were met with a barrage of loudspeaker warnings and four BLM snipers with their guns trained on the dissenters.

None of the family members were armed, but as soon as Dave Bundy began filming the cattle in the distance, 11 BLM vehicles each with two agents arrived and surrounded him.

“They also had four snipers on the hill above us all trained on us. We were doing nothing besides filming the area,” said Ryan Bundy.

The family were told to leave the area via loudspeaker because they had violated the crudely established “First Amendment Area”. [Infowars]

Obama Fires Direct Attack On Liberty

This my friends is a direct attack on Liberty.

From Forbes:

"President Obama’s Kansas speech is a remarkable document. In calling for more government controls, more taxation, more collectivism, he has two paragraphs that give the show away. Take a look at them.

there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes–especially for the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

Even you, dear reader, are probably wondering how on earth anyone could challenge things like Social Security, government schools, and the FDA. But that’s not the point. The point is: these statist, anti-capitalist programs exist and have existed for about a century. The point is: Obama is pretending that the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society were repealed, so that he can blame the financial crisis on capitalism. He’s pretending that George Bush was George Washington."

Here's How To Gain The Right To Arrest Law Abiding Citizens

From the Hartford Courant:

Everyone knew there would be some gun owners flouting the law that legislators hurriedly passed last April, requiring residents to register all military-style rifles with state police by Dec. 31.

But few thought the figures would be this bad.

By the end of 2013, state police had received 47,916 applications for assault weapons certificates, Lt. Paul Vance said. An additional 2,100 that were incomplete could still come in.

That 50,000 figure could be as little as 15 percent of the rifles classified as assault weapons owned by Connecticut residents, according to estimates by people in the industry, including the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation. No one has anything close to definitive figures, but the most conservative estimates place the number of unregistered assault weapons well above 50,000, and perhaps as high as 350,000.

And that means as of Jan. 1, Connecticut has very likely created tens of thousands of newly minted criminals — perhaps 100,000 people, almost certainly at least 20,000 — who have broken no other laws. By owning unregistered guns defined as assault weapons, all of them are committing Class D felonies.

"I honestly thought from my own standpoint that the vast majority would register," said Sen. Tony Guglielmo, R-Stafford, the ranking GOP senator on the legislature's public safety committee. "If you pass laws that people have no respect for and they don't follow them, then you have a real problem."

Any doubts as to why you need to oppose any gun registration legislation of any sort that comes down the pike?

How will Connecticut deal with all of the unregistered guns owned by the thousands of new felons they just created?

The problem could explode if Connecticut officials decide to compare the list of people who underwent background checks to buy military-style rifles in the past, to the list of those who registered in 2013. Do they still own those guns? The state might want to know.

So how would the government arrest and detain so many gun owners?  That would be a good subject for conspiracy theorists to discuss, but in reality disarming the people by making them felons isn't really all that hard.  Felons cannot own guns, legally.

In 1763 [General Thomas] Gage was appointed commander in chief of all British forces in North America—the most important and influential post in the colonies. Headquartered in New York, he ran a vast military machine of more than 50 garrisons and stations stretching from Newfoundland to Florida and from Bermuda to the Mississippi. He exhibited both patience and tact in handling matters of diplomacy, trade, communication, Indian relations, and western boundaries. His great failure, however, was in his assessment of the burgeoning independence movement.

Thus Gage is chiefly remembered in the U.S. as the protagonist of the British cause while he served as military governor in Massachusetts from 1774 to 1775. In this capacity, he ordered the march of the redcoats on Lexington and Concord (April 1775), which was intended to uncover ammunition caches and to capture the leading Revolutionary agitator, Samuel Adams who escaped.

As the folks over at Truthaboutguns.com reminded us:

First they came for the ARs
and I didn’t speak out because I had other guns.

Then they came for the high capacity magazines,
and I didn’t speak out because I wanted to keep my guns.

Then they came for all semi-automatics,
and I didn’t speak out because I had a revolver.

Then they came for my revolver,
and I couldn’t speak out because I’d lost my ability to speak.

What Happens In California Comes Here In .....

No doubt you've heard it said that what happens on the west coast happens here in the heartland 10 years later.  Well let us hope and pray that what is happening in Los Angeles county never happens anywhere else.

Residents are complaining that the police, dressed in military armor, have a pattern of behavior "oppressive" to the people they are supposed to be serving.  And as in this case, many times the police raids are based upon "anonymous" tips.

You will recall how law enforcement behaved after the Boston Marathon bombings.  Now, in this video, you will see how an innocent 80 year old man was gunned down in his bedroom.

I've asked these questions of you before, but now you need to be asking yourself again, when will we take back our country?  What will you do?

Here's the 7 minute video that should wake you up.  It is very hard to do damage control once the flood breaks out of its banks.

 

Re-Writing History In Texas Textbooks

In case you didn't know it, most of the textbooks in the nation are based upon what Texas wants them to say.

No matter where you live, if your children go to public schools, the textbooks they use were very possibly written under Texas influence.

Texas originally acquired its power over the nation’s textbook supply because it paid 100 percent of the cost of all public school textbooks, as long as the books in question came from a very short list of board-approved options.

As a market, the state was so big and influential that national publishers tended to gear their books toward whatever it wanted. [NYBooks.com]

Well, hold your seats Moms and Dads, and liberty loving constitutionalists across the nation, guess what Texas is doing to the Second Amendment.

The authors of United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination have taken it upon themselves to change the Constitution of the United States. The high school textbook contains a summary of each Amendment that alters the initial intent in which they were created.

The textbook notes the Second Amendment as, "The people have a right to keep and bear arms in a state militia."

The actual Second Amendment reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Guyer High School and numerous others have assigned the book for an "Advanced Placement History" course. By assigning anti-factual literature, the only advanced placement the school has ensured for their students is in the world of biased academia. [Breitbart]

It's hard to unlearn things, which is why it is so important to keep an eye on what we are teaching in the first place.

The Problem Isn't Republicans, It's The Hated View Of Republicans

EDITORIAL RANT

I was once asked by a news paper editor if I was a Republican, or a TEA partier.  I told him that I prefer to avoid labels because they are over-broad.  I am who I am, think what I want and try to have good reason for what I think always willing to be persuaded, if possible, where I am wrong.

As Emerson once said "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."  I would emphasize the word "foolish" in that quote as I do not believe that there is anything inherently wrong in being consistently wise.

I know many people who are registered to vote under different banners who think very much alike on many issues.  The Republicans certainly have no special claim to the "right to life" issue, the "right to bear arms" issue, the right to be free from intrusive government regulations issue or many other issues that are of real concern to people regardless of their party registration.

But listen to the haters and you would think that all Republicans are evil.  Such thinking is over broad, over inclusive and born of a little mind.

Dea Riley, former candidate for Lieutenant Governor with the late Gatewood Galbraith recently posted this to her Facebook page:

Come on Dea.  Do you really think that all persons in the Republican Party openly embrace exclusion, elitism and social categorization?  That we are all radical fascists seeking to impose a specific ideology/theology on everyone, embracing intrusion into individual rights?  That certainly doesn't define me, and neither does it define or describe many of the republicans I know. That is an insult.

But you are in good company.  MSNBC which has turned out to be the great hater of all things republican made up out of thin air a claim that "conservatives" hate bi-racial families. 

My God!  First of all there was no "conservative" backlash last year which the facts prove and which caused MSNBC to amend it's tweet to remove the word "conservative".  But that doesn't cure the problem.

The far left, the liberals in the democratic party and yes, even some of the TEA party liberals who are hiding out under the banner of "constitutional conservatives" hate republicans so much that they refuse to see that we are all individuals, with individual thoughts, feelings and beliefs.

As a republican I still believe in individual freedom, and that is because like our founders I believe that my life is a gift from God and that I am endowed by Him with inalienable rights.

As a republican I still believe that when a government fears the people there is hope for liberty, but when the people fear the government we have tyranny.

As a republican lawyer I defend the constitution every day, which on some days means that I defend the rights of people to do things, and say things with which I might personally disagree, but they have the right to do and say them.

And as a republican I have no compelling desire to see that we control people through a particular theology.  I am a Christian and my faith teaches me that I am to love my neighbor, introduce them to God when the chance arises, but recognize that they operate with free will and their choices are their own.  Do I want everybody to be a Baptist, or a Catholic, or a Methodist, or a Quaker or a Mormon or a Pentecostal?  Of course not.  As a Christian I would like everyone to know and accept Christ and I think the best way to do that is to live what I believe to the best of my ability and introduce them to each other.

But as an American, who believes that people should be free from government dictates as to whether and how they worship, I do oppose the goal of radical Islam to force the world to capitulate to their twisted worship of a pedophile prophet or be killed or enslaved.

And likewise I oppose any effort, by any person or group of persons to enslave people under any ideology, including the disgusting political game that addicts people to government hand outs, destroying their sense of self worth, de-incentivizing them to reach their full potential and thus enslaving them to the masters who they eventually think are the only ones who can provide for them.

The problem in this nation isn't republicans, it's the irrational, unsupportable, off the chart hatred OF republicans.  And THAT my friends is not an accident. 

Hating republicans is not the natural consequence of an honest study of history.  It is not the result of deductive reasoning.  Hating republicans is the cold and calculated strategy of those who wish to fundamentally transform America into the kind of nation our founders and thousands upon thousands of our best and brightest ever since have fought to prevent.

It is unfair to say that all democrats are far left liberals.  It is unfair to say that all republicans are cracker-assed racists.

We are all Americans.  We all have the right to want and pursue different paths to happiness.  But hatred of others is destructive.

You may assign to me a desire to run things by my theology, but only on this one point.  In my view, hatred has no place in America.  I would prefer that we love each other, and all people, as we love ourselves. 

If that was our guiding principle, I believe everything else would fall into place.

Government Cartoon Training Children To Submit

When the communists in the 50's vowed to take over America without firing a shot they focused on indoctrinating the next generations with propaganda via the schools and universities.  The technique has now re-educated our nation into being very much more accepting of socialism and other government controls.

The same techniques are now being used to make children more compliant with government intrusions into their personal privacy and away from the concepts embodied in the Fourth Amendment and the remainder of the Bill of Rights.  Here is just one example of how kids are being taught to think.  Removing distrust of government and teaching submission to government are the lessons of this cartoon.

 

Does Rand Paul's Support Come From The "Hate America" Crowd?

Representative Peter King of New York had this to say about Rand Paul:

The New York Republican accused Rand Paul of “lies” and “misperception” :

“So Rand Paul does not know what he’s talking about. And, Rand Paul is really spreading fear among the American people. And, he also today, I understand on the show, he was also was comparing General Clapper to Snowden. To me, he’s either totally uninformed or he’s part of that hate America crowd that I thought left us in the 1960s. In any event, he doesn’t deserve to be in the United States senate for spreading that type of misperception and absolute lies to be honest with you.“ [Gateway Pundit]

What he was referring to was a comment by  Rand on the  Sunday shows discussing his lawsuit against the NSA over illegal snooping.  In some of those comments he had this to say:

"I don't think Edward Snowden deserves the death penalty or life in prison; I think that's inappropriate, I think that's why he fled, is that's what he faced," Paul, a possible 2016 contender for the Republican presidential nomination, said on ABC's "This Week." "Do I think it's OK to leak secrets and give up national security [information] that endangers lives? I don't think that's OK, either. But I think the courts are now saying he revealed something the government was doing that was illegal."

Paul, who's pushing a class-action suit against the National Security Agency over its data collection tactics, has said that Snowden and Clapper should "share a prison cell," charging that Clapper lied to Congress.

"It is a grand tradition," he said. "Part of that tradition is, you pay the consequences. If you break the law because your conscience says you have to, you stand trial." [POLITICO]

So the question I have for readers today is this: Does some part of Rand Paul's support come from the "hate America" crowd that Congressman King mentioned?

Let's take a look.

Clearly there is a portion of the Obama support group that one could argue hates many things about America.  Dinesh D'Souza has made the argument that Obama is out for revenge over what his father hated which is "colonialism", the kind of attitude he attributed to the United States participation in "raping" third world countries of their riches to make Americans rich.

In addition Obama has aligned himself with radicals and domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers who clearly hate many things about America.

So, is Rand Paul courting those folks?  I think not, but on the other hand he might find some support among the less militant among the remaining sixties liberals who like his stance on personal freedom and pot and the kind of things Richie Havens and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were singing about.

But who among the GOP crowd might be pegged as part of the modern day "hate America" crowd?  Well, that depends upon which America you are talking about.

The "big business" America which has become the controlling interest in most legislation and regulations over the past thirty years has its share of supporters.  They don't hate America.

But the small business, ultra conservative TEA party crowd does have its share of "hate America" folks.  At least they seem to hate the incumbent elected officials who they view as ruining America.  They see America headed in the wrong direction.  And some of them even hate many of the institutions of America such as party politics, checks and balances and the orderly interpretation of the Constitution through the court system.

Some of the more militant among this last bunch seethe with contempt for the "mainstream", which of course is the American mainstream and tend to lean very far toward the very liberal philosophies of Libertarianism and even anarchy.  They hate that America won't let them steer the ship of state, are angry about it and do in fact pose some threat to our national security.

And then out there on the real fringes are those who are systematically plotting against America, the true enemies of our way of life, whether driven by religious extremism or a desire to consume our resources even if it means war.  They are the ones who stir up civil unrest, engage in acts of terrorism to disrupt society and take advantage of every opportunity to destroy America because they truly, to their core, hate us.

Obviously Rand Paul is not courting the support of any of the fringe or the near fringe.  But, and I say this with obvious respect for Senator Paul, the razor's edge he walks in order to build his own constituency on his way to a 2016 run for the White House is a topic of frequent discussion in the media.  Clearly any divergence from the hard line of the TEA party gets him nailed by its members.  Any time he leans toward a more moderate position his TEA party friends try to pull him back.  And then he goes and tries to win them over again by standing firm on issue after issue of greatest concern with them, like his lawsuit against the NSA.

I'd like you to weigh in on this, but in my humble opinion, Rand Paul does in fact get some of his support from those who hate the way America has been run, who hate the excesses of our government and hate the fact that they seem to be fighting the very people they entrusted with the reins of power.  Is this what Peter King was referring to?

Those of us who have been standing up for civil liberty, freedom from government overreach, demanding accountability and honesty from our elected officials for as long as I have don't consider ourselves as hating America, but rather loving all that is good about America and hating that those are the very, most precious things about the America we love which we seem to be losing.

Rand has the chance to stand very tall in this fight, but he needs to be very careful not to give in to the other forces at work on the fringes and in the shadows.  The closer he becomes with what can be labeled "extreme" positions the more frequently he will have to face accusations like those of Peter King and though his TEA party friends might rush to his defense he will have to work that much harder, and spend that much more money to discredit people like King than he needs to.