This C-SPAN video is from 1992:

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After proven to be a liar Olbermann, used his sick dad as an excuse not to attend a Tea Party meeting in Dallas.

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Texas Independence Day was yesterday,  March 2nd.  It is an easy day for me to remember not only because I am a proud Texan but also because it is the day that many years ago my first ex-wife (actually the only one but you never know how long this internet fad, and thus this post, is going to last) told me that she no longer loved me. So you see that for us Texans and me in particular March 2nd is all about emancipation and freedom from tyranny.

Like the United States before it, the Republic of Texas made a Declaration of Independence. In it the new republic listed its grievances with Mexico. My ex offered a similar declaration and continues to list grievances to this day, but I digress. Below is an excerpt from the Texas Declaration of Independence.

It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defense, the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyrannical governments.

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From: Google Public Policy

The U.S. and other countries have been negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, known as ACTA, for the last two years. A number of consumer advocates and technology companies, including Google, have raised serious concerns about ACTA’s potential reach and the impact it could have on Internet users’ rights and innovation.

From: Michael Geist

Monday March 01, 2010

On the heels of the leak of various country positions on ACTA transparency, today an even bigger leak has hit the Internet.  A new European Union document prepared several weeks ago canvasses the Internet and Civil Enforcement chapters, disclosing in complete detail the proposals from the U.S., the counter-proposals from the EU, Japan, and other ACTA participants.  The 44-page document also highlights specific concerns of individual countries on a wide range of issues including ISP liability, anti-circumvention rules, and the scope of the treaty.  This is probably the most significant leak to-date since it goes even beyond the transparency debate by including specific country positions and proposals.

The document highlights significant disagreement on a range of issues.  For example, on the issue of anti-circumvention legislation and access controls, the U.S. wants it included per the DCMA, but many other countries, including the EU, Japan, and New Zealand do not, noting that the WIPO Internet treaties do not require it.

A brief summary of the key findings are posted below, but much more study is needed.

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More fun facts about those lovable Coke-sharing Ursus of the north. This from the Discovery show Survivorman.

Pond Inlet, on the northern reaches of Baffin Island, is one of the most challenging landscapes on the planet. More than 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it’s surrounded by grinding, ever-shifting flows of sea ice where polar bears roam in search of meat. It’s mid-May and the polar bear threat is extreme, so Les is forbidden from venturing out onto the ice without a rifle for protection.

Why can’t he just arm himself with a Sierra Club membership card and a case of delicious soda.

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I don’t think Keith Olbermann knows how to use a computer or the internet because if he did he would have found videos like this one:

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From: John Stossel

Government is taking us a long way down the Road to Serfdom. That doesn’t just mean that more of us must work for the government. It means that we are changing from independent, self-responsible people into a submissive flock. The welfare state kills the creative spirit. F.A. Hayek, an Austrian economist living in Britain, wrote ‘The Road to Serfdom’ in 1944 as a warning that central economic planning would extinguish freedom. … Hayek meant that governments can’t plan economies without planning people’s lives. After all, an economy is just individuals engaging in exchanges. The scientific-sounding language of President Obama’s economic planning hides the fact that people must shelve their own plans in favor of government’s single plan. At the beginning of ‘The Road to Serfdom,’ Hayek acknowledges that mere material wealth is not all that’s at stake when the government controls our lives: ‘The most important change … is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.’ This shouldn’t be controversial. If government relieves us of the responsibility of living by bailing us out, character will atrophy. The welfare state, however good its intentions of creating material equality, can’t help but make us dependent. That changes the psychology of society. According to the Tax Foundation, 60 percent of the population now gets more in government benefits than it pays in taxes. What does it say about a society in which more than half the people live at the expense of the rest?

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Remix of the State of the Union address by reason.com

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From: Reason

And many people classified as millionaires aren’t millionaires at all. Out of the 300,000 or so joint tax filers earning more than $1 million, about 90 percent have small business income. That’s because 75 percent of America’s small businesses are structured as pass-through entities and pay their business taxes at the individual level. So the $1 million isn’t going into those individuals’ pockets; it’s money they use to run their businesses. To avoid the new tax, those businesses would have to adopt a new structure and start paying the complicated corporate income tax.

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Don’t think Google is protecting Islam? Watch this.

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From: Ann Coulter

…Also prohibited in the last hour of international flights will be: blankets, pillows, computers and in-flight entertainment. Another triumph in Janet Napolitano’s “Let’s stay one step behind the terrorists” policy!

…This, allegedly, was the price we had to pay for safe airplanes. The one security precaution the government refused to consider was to require extra screening for passengers who looked like the last three-dozen terrorists to attack airplanes.

Since Muslims took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, every attack on a commercial airliner has been committed by foreign-born Muslim men with the same hair color, eye color and skin color. Half of them have been named Mohammed.

The rest of the story.

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From: StarTelegram

OLYMPIA, Wash. — In a decision that could give momentum to other efforts to expand voting to inmates, a federal appeals court ruled that incarcerated felons should be allowed to vote in Washington state.

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I was reading a recent article on Reason.com and came across this quote that hits my feelings like the proverbial nail’s head:

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place(d) under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.

-Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

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A male polar bear carries the head of a polar bear cub it killed and cannibalized

But wait, there’s a reason for this horrible act. Can you guess?  That’s right,  “climate change”.

Climate change has turned some polar bears into cannibals as global warming melts their Arctic ice hunting grounds, reducing the polar bear population, according to a U.S.-led global scientific study on the impacts of climate change.

Climate change turned this peaceful, lovable, cuddly creature into a cannibal. And its humanity’s fault. Its your fault, your SUV driving, thermostat cranking, meat eating, Fox News watching fault. Merry Christmas.

More from: MS-NBC

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This is bull shit. Americans and coalition forces are dying because McChrystal and Obama want to win a PR war. If a Taliban sniper takes up a position in your mud hut and you don’t run out the back and hide in a ditch, you are the enemy and your mud hut is enemy infrastructure.
Solution? Apply liberal amounts of US air power and adios sniper, adios mud hut, adios goat-herding Taliban sympathizers. The Marines shoot everyone that stumbles out of the smoke with a weapon and voila. Otherwise bring everyone home right now! Then later if we need to we can follow the corporal Hicks protocol from Aliens, ” dust off and nuke the site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”

From: Wired

…with a single stroke, McChrystal took the US’s biggest technological advantage off the table. The military would have to make do without one of its most potent weapons.
It hasn’t been easy. While accidental civilian deaths dropped by 87 percent in the eight weeks following the order, American fatalities have more than doubled from 2008 levels.

…While the debate rages in Washington, the Marines on the ground are mostly on their own. Even with Paz’s squad being attacked from three sides, a bombing run is not automatic. The Marines not only have to prove that civilians won’t be hurt, they also must guarantee that the bombs won’t so much as scratch civilian homes.

Read it all

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This is alleged to have happened on an AirTrans flight from Atlanta to Houston just after push-back. If true, it is unbelievable. The email from Tedd  Petruna that started this is bouncing all over the Internet.  I received a copy today.

From: Debbie Schlussel

I begin with the caveat that I don’t know whether or not this is true.  However, it certainly sounds like it is, and the guy-Tedd J. Petruna of NASA–has his e-mail address and home and work phone numbers plastered all over the internet as does his friend, A. Gene Hackemack, who sent this out.  I’m glad he did.  People need to know about this stuff, which the FBI, TSA, and every other fed in the alphabet soup of the “We’re Here to Help You” Souffle is trying to keep under wraps.  I think it’s probably true.

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From: USASOC News

“The fire came from our 12 o’clock and then maybe a couple of seconds later from our right and left,” Norton said.

Behind the first enemy rocket-propelled grenade team, a medium machine gun on elevated ground to the northwest engaged them with highly effective fire. Two more enemy combatants were on the slope of the valley to the west, engaged the Ranger squad with an AK-47 and rocket-propelled grenades along the long axis of their formation, while another group of enemy fighters were on elevated terrain to the east, raked them with small arms fire from the rear of the Ranger squad formation.

The multiple enemy positions had effectively enveloped Norton’s squad from multiple directions at a distance of 25 to 50 meters, leaving Norton and his element pinned to the floor of the valley by the intense and accurate small arms fire.

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Brilliant Analysis from Mark Steyn:

…What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best trained, best equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that’s the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy – in Afghanistan and in Texas.

Read it all.

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