This iconic picture of firefighters raising the stars and stripes in the rubble of Ground Zero was nearly excluded from the 9/11 Memorial Museum — because it was “rah-rah” American, a new book says.

Michael Shulan, the museum’s creative director, was among staffers who considered the Tom Franklin photograph too kitschy and “rah-rah America,” according to “Battle for Ground Zero” (St. Martin’s Press) by Elizabeth Greenspan, out next month.

“I really believe that the way America will look best, the way we can really do best, is to not be Americans so vigilantly and so vehemently,” Shulan said.

Sad, that.  We have been the greatest country in the world’s history and have most often been an agent for good than for bad.  I certainly disagree with this seemingly ‘blame America Firster”; I would hazard a guess that he’s of the same opinion as Obama – that America should not have the pre-eminence that it has historically had and still has.  The question to be asked, with Obama’s Determined Weakness strategy now in full bore, what will be left at the end of his term?  Will we have any social or financial capital left to pick ourselves up?  Or will the debt that Obama and the Democrats (with assists from Republicans), along with Obamacare and the other dependency programs that have been ridden hard lately (e.g., more people on food stamps than are earning a wage; the U6 unemployment rate approaching 15% (underemployed and those that have given up completely / no longer eligible for unemployment), forcing companies to be arms of the Government and crushed under more and more regulations instead of the wealth creators they should be.

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This week, both in posts and on GrokTALK!, I seem to be mentioning “language definition”.  Or, to be more precise, language REdefinition – especially by those on the Left in order to move a political agenda ahead.  They use common words and frequent phrases in what “seems” to be normal parlance – unless you listen and analyze their usage carefully.  “Abortion is “womens reproductive health”, “asking them to pay a little more” really means “The Democracy Mob is here to legislatively take your money – there is no asking”, and “judgementalism” simply means “how DARE you hold me accountable for my actions!”.

We’ve all heard about “food insecurity” – another manufactured crisis in which the Left defines this as “well, in the last year, if you had ANY concern about getting a meal during this past year, you are food insecure”.  Heck, that’s happened to me before – arrive late at an airport at night after a cross country flight and I have had “food insecurity” – as in “is there anyplace open here to get a meal before my next leg?”.  After all (to use another example of redefinition), if being Transgender is solely a manifestation of how one feels on a particular day with respect to school kids deciding which bathroom, locker room, or athletic team they will participate on (re: the “California Bathroom Bill”, or even the NH Bathroom Bill that was barely defeated a few years ago) – I may be a physical male but I’m opening that ladies room door right now.  After all, the end result of this perverse language redefinition will end up as “who are YOU to interpret or malign MY intentions?” and when applied to law and policy, it will come down to a Wonderland type definition: “a word means what I want it to mean – at least right now.  ‘Cause I can change my mind later and mean it to be something else later.”

As the AP is trying to do here.

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NSA Constitutional Breach

National Intelligence Director James Clapper has publicly acknowledged that the National Security Agency collects and stores private communications data (excepting content) from Verizon and other carriers involving hundreds of millions of ordinary American citizens. This has been ongoing since at least 2006.

Whistleblower and former AT&T technician Mark Klein has provided unrebutted evidence forming a key basis for litigation filed in 2008 charging that NSA has installed a “listening room” at AT&T’s San Francisco data communications hub (and likely a dozen or more additional such hubs around the US) from which NSA can route all phone and Internet traffic in realtime to its facilities for storage and data mining. This July, the court finally rejected the Obama Administration’s “state secrets” defense, ruling that the case may be litigated under the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

For the likely purpose of storing and mining this massive stream of past and realtime data, NSA is building a $2 billion data warehouse north of Provo, Utah, slated for completion later this year. Indicating its immensity, this facility will consume 65 megawatts of power and 1.7 million gallons of cooling water per day.

Constitutional breach

The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The framers included this provision in our Bill of Rights because British soldiers had been routinely issuing “general warrants,” allowing groundless searches of Colonists private homes.

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There is a joke in the software industry:

Why is a consultant like a seagull?

They both fly in, caw a lot, drop a load, and then fly off – and bring a whole flock back with them.

DBV – is it legal? And if so, is it moral? And does YOUR vote count if the State Or, to use that word that Progressives oft use –  “fair” (and I use that in the traditional meaning – not as Progressives wish to redefine this word as well)?  Especially in relation to voters who live here, work here, and depend that others like them to make the decisions that affect them via their elected representatives?  Yet, they already have been betrayed by the Law and by those they elected to make that Law.  In NH’s Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan’s own words (emphasis mine):

In general terms, unrelated to the allegations against Fuller Clark, Scanlan said voter fraud “is a significant crime.”

Problem is, over the last few years, his office has done diddly squat.  Ditto the Attorney General’s.

He also said state law allows a person to move to the state one day, with the intention of staying in New Hampshire and registering to vote the next day, then moving out-of-state the third day because of a life change.

A life change.  As in, perhaps, “my work here is done!” ?

But if someone moves solely to vote, he said, “that’s something completely different.

Which speaks to intent.  The intent to win for “your side”?  The intent to to make the other side lose?  Simply a “means”, as Alinsky Progressives believe, “to obtain the greater good” which for them, results in “The Bigger the Government, the smaller the citizen”.  Screw over the actual inhabitants of that particular State by ‘stealing’ a vote?  Meh – merely that a few eggs got cracked, merely some are collateral damage to “Lean Forward” in progressing The Collective.  Onward Workers!  Your Paradise awaits!

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Jim Rubens spoke to the Pemi Baker Valley Republican Committee dinner this evening, Saturday July 27, 2013.  He spoke of his political experience which interested people can review at his web site, http://jimrubens.com/.   Below are my notes and commentary.

He supports replacing Federal Income taxes with the FAIR Tax.  He opposes the Senate Immigration bill because it depresses wages.  He likes the approach taken by the House to have multiple immigration related bills including border security, and he understands that the children of illegals are rightly citizens.  He opposes energy subsidies and corporate welfare.  He supports the Second Amendment and would not restrict gun rights any more than NH currently does.  He is concerned about our national debt and unfunded liabilities (I’m fairly happy with these positions except for citizenship for the children of illegals and questions on the details of his immigration bills) and believes he can work with others in the Senate to address healthcare, Medicare and social security problems (naïve).

He opposes Senator Lee’s proposal to pass a continuing resolution that funds all of government except Obamacare, he feels we have many healthcare problems to solve and apparently we should do it within Obamacare.  He thinks the Federal Government’s share of GDP is appropriately about 19%.  He is not sure about Senator Lee’s proposed Balanced Budget Amendment although I think he believes we should not spend more than we take in.  He wants to impose a cap and trade system to restrict carbon emissions, so apparently he believes in man-made global warming (I didn’t get a chance to ask).  (He lost my support when he admitted opposition to Senator Lee’s proposal and things didn’t get any better.)

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This is from the Facebook page of one of the “young people” (she’s 26) that was staying at Martha’s Motel in Portsmouth; the congressional staffer who was paid by her Congressman while she voted in New Hampshire and claimed to live in Democrat State Senator Martha Fuller Clark’s home, but whose commitment to New Hampshire Martha could not predict.

Maybe Martha should have checked Andrea’s facebook page?  And maybe Facebook needs to add another detail to the About feature to accomodate New Hampshire’s radical domicile rules…

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“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”

– President Barack Obama, Inauguration, 1/20/09

Sychophants of Obama and apologists for Obamacare came out of the gate swinging hard when companies started to announce that they were not hiring new people, especially if they were near the 50 person limit that would trigger the Obamacare Mandate fine (and dropping people if close).  They went ballistic as companies also started to slash the hours of their workers.  Again, the Obamacare Mandate was that all full time employees must be furnished with “affordable” health insurance or be fined – and then promptly redefined what a full time worker was (from 35-40 hours down to 30).  The Progressives went nuts as they realized that the Obama Administration was making us a nation of part time workers that had to work two jobs – and that people actually were reacting to the letter of the law?

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The news is freckled with absurd stories about the malbehavior of political candidates and elected officials.  So what’s new?  Well, the absurdity that lies in the details and what it portends for our society for one. There are many freckles, but let’s stick with one.  The one that keeps darkening with daylight surfacing more salacious and repugnant details almost daily this past week.

The Weiner.

Talk about symptoms of civilizational decay and desiccation. We’re witnessing decay reified in the mouldered buildings of Detroit and the wilted fruits from our interminable civic insouciance and our cultural solipsism. Indulge in self fetishization and ignore all else. What can go wrong?

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Democrats watered down the voter ID and domicile laws  in the naughts to give them a big pool of college kids to vote for them.  They watered down what you had to put on a same day registration card as well, so someone would have a harder time tracking down transient same day voters after the fact.  And the Democrats defended and continue to defend those changes  fiercely, even lining up to prevent those same students from getting in-state tuition rates when voter fraud activists tried to save these kids some scratch.

Democrats opposed voter ID and changes to domicile law at every turn, and just passed a new law allowing college ID to vote.

Democrats wanted the LWV /ACLU and four ‘college kids’ to file suit against the domicile and ID law and backed them up when they did.

When Liberal NH Judge John Lewis punched a hole in the domicile law, they cheered becasue they new they could exploit it and did.

And now they want to argue that there were not just Democrats but some Republicans from out of state who may have voted here in 2012 as well?

I say Great!

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I’m still waiting for that press release from the New Hampshire Democrat party denouncing Bob Filner–the San Diego Mayor who skips the tweets and is more ‘hands on’ with the ladies; and another one denouncing the  Democrat Party that knew about Bob for years and did nothing.  Sure, Filner was sexually harassing women, dare we say engaging in a predatory sexual war on women (with and without binders), complete with verbal abuse, sexual intimidation, and hand shaped “drone strikes,” but Filner was advancing The Progressives Agenda™ so the Democrats said screw those harlots.

That’s the long and short of it, and women had best take note.  If you get harassed, groped, hazed, used, or in any way mysognized (by anyone with a D next to their name), suck it up babe.  The man is doing the Democrats work.  Politics and power always come first.  You are a Liberal victim class, learn your place.

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As Grokster Steve pointed out here:

When asked about the legitimacy of their domicile status, Clark said:

“By and large, the young people who stayed with me were committed to New Hampshire, but given their age, whether they intended to stay is impossible to predict.”

Talk about a total BS answer.  State Senator Clark was housing professional campaign workers who do not live here but voted here.  Who very likely voted for her and every other Democrat up and down that ticket.  Then they left because that is why they came.  To vote for Democrats.

When one looks at the Portsmouth check list / voting list, here is NH State Senator Martha Fuller Clark:  Martha Fuller Clark residence, 152 Middle St. Portsmouth.  Which is fine – that is her legal residence.

Sidenote: As opposed to a secondary or tertiary “Mobile Domicile”, brought to us courtesy of  Judge Lewis’s signature on the NH ACLU’s adaptation of Burger King’s “We want it our Progressive Voting way” DBZVV (“Drive By Zombie Voter Vehicle”) Title order put into Lewis’s seemingly willing hands.  That’s right, they wrote the hole into the Voting ID act that single handedly created these Zombie Voters: lumber in, drop a few body parts on a ballot, and lumber away, never to be seen again.).  It also seems that like every Progressive outfit in the State is as scared of people having to show ID to prove that they DO live here AND that they are who they say they are just about as much as Unions will do ANYTHING to ensure that there is a law forcing union members dues to be taken out of their pay before it goes into their bank accounts.  How is one like the other? They are the base of Power for each – Zombie Votes and forced dues; each is scared witless that their jigs are all but up.  So each supports the other in a stupendously incestuous Circle of Progressive-Back-Scratching-Progressive Life.

However, as Steve points out, there were a number of others that have been residing at the Martha Motel.   Or should we think of it as Martha’s Home for Wayward Progressive Voter Cheats? Either / Or – same deal.  And Steve already talked about Andrea Marie Riccio.  Well, here’s another of Martha Fuller Clark’s “special snowflakes” – meet  Bryan Gregory Griffith

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