Thanks to Paulie Cee for directing attention to this picture elsewhere...and the big white circle was probably unnecessary, but sometimes you see something so unbelievable you want to make sure everyone else can see it and not believe it too.

Honestly, can you believe that someone could seriously be proposing this?

The one thing you can count on from the 'huggers is their penchant for hysterics. Since the imminent demise of Mother Earth hasn't brought the majority of rational thinking people to their side, they need to pump up the volume. Now according to Australian "climate change" whackjob Tim Flannery, we're heading toward war over global climate change.

IF the world fails to reach agreement on tackling climate change soon then it could end in war, climate scientist Tim Flannery has warned.

Like many others, he is concerned at a lack of progress ahead of a crucial UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

If there is no deal some time in the next year then there is a risk of momentum fading and the problem getting beyond the reach of world leaders, said Prof Flannery, who is in New York for climate talks.

"My greatest fear is that once people stop negotiating, once diplomacy fails, that's potentially a prelude for war."

That could mean conflict over carbon tariffs, over the mass migration of climate-affected people or over serious water shortages, Prof Flannery said.

It might not happen for decades but it was a real threat if Copenhagen failed. "The triggers are there for conflict," the former Australian of the year said.

I'm anxious to see what they're going to threaten the world with next...maybe one of those "if we can't take care of the planet, aliens from outer space will invade and take it away from us because we don't deserve it" movie plots or something.

Of course, this is the same guy who advocates pumping sulphur gas into the atmosphere to combat global warming.

Since the 1990's we've been receiving dire warnings of impending doom due to global warming/climate change...we're fast approaching 20 years on the subject. All I want to know is when some of it is going to start coming true? When can we start dismissing this b.s. out of common sense? I mean, those of us who haven't already been doing that for the past 20 years...

Why on Earth would someone think they could get away with taking down & burning a VFW flag...especially one that had been flown in Iraq? The method of justice enacted (and that's exactly what it was) will make you smile.

VFW Flag Burner Pilloried

VALLEY FALLS -- The young man was given three choices: get turned over to the police, go one-on-one in a fight with a seasoned war veteran, or be duct-taped to a flagpole for six hours with a sign around his neck identifying his alleged crime: flag burning.

It was the third option that would still have the small town buzzing a week after a 21-year-old was hunted down and forced to endure a public humiliation with its roots dating to the Middle Ages. Members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1938 were incensed enough to tie up the man last Sunday after they accused him of setting the flag in front of their building on fire.

Post Commander Nick Normile, a Vietnam War veteran, said the man came into the post's bar Sept. 18 on Poplar Avenue and was eventually turned away for not having a proper ID.

Apparently angered, the young man, who Normile did not want to name, cut the rope of the American flag flying overhead and used a cigarette lighter to set it on fire, Normile and others said.

The man sat pilloried as the village had its fall youth soccer picnic with a long parade of children passing in front of him.

"He'll never disrespect the flag again, I can tell you that," Normile said.

Normile said the flag had at one point flown over U.S. troops in Iraq had special significance.

Veterans, both local and nationwide, responded to the event as accountings were posted online to the official VFW Facebook page and national Web site. Comments posted supported the act and added ideas for further punishment.

Other nearby business owners said they knew of the event but refused to give an accounting. Unconfirmed reports by citizens said the alleged flag-burner was a relative of a previous commander of the post.

Calls made to the alleged flag burner and a spokesman for the national VFW organization for comments were not returned. The Rensselaer County Sheriffs office confirmed knowledge of the event, but said they were not involved. State Police in Brunswick were contacted, but a trooper said no record of the event could be found.

The flag will be disposed of at a formal ceremony, Normile said.

Before the defenders of hippydom rally around this dumbass and defend his "First Amendment rights", please note that he cut down the VFW's flag and burned it, not his own. If he'd brought his own flag and burned it on the VFW's property, he'd only be guilty of complete lunacy and not vandalism, which is why the threat was made to call the police.

What were the guy's motives in burning the flag? Was he making a protest, just plain pissed off, ? No one knows at this point...but it's not surprising that when given a choice between an arrest, a sound thrashing or public humiliation, a coward will take the third one every time.

Well, some do. Some are probably referring to her as "Her Highness, the Royal Stuck-Up Bitch" now.

Courtesy of Politico.com, complete with video and everything.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) didn't like a Brigadier General calling her "ma'am" at an EPW hearing yesterday.

"Do me a favor," she said, "could say 'senator' instead of 'ma'am?' It's just a thing, I worked so hard to get that title, so I'd appreciate it, yes, thank you."

"I worked so hard to get that title"...no recognition of the fact that it's common military courtesy to use "sir" and "ma'am" in these sorts of situations, and no cognizance of the fact that using a title of office to address someone should be in deference and respect to the office and not the individual. Nah, just "I worked so hard to get that title." I'm sure you did, Barb...I'm sure you did.

Via MSNBC.com:

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea may fire a long-range ballistic missile toward Hawaii in early July, a Japanese newspaper reported Thursday, as Russia and China urged the regime to return to international disarmament talks on its rogue nuclear program.

The missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles, would be launched from North Korea's Dongchang-ni site on the northwestern coast, said the Yomiuri daily, Japan's top-selling newspaper. It cited an analysis by the Japanese Defense Ministry and intelligence gathered by U.S. reconnaissance satellites.

The missile launch could come between July 4 and 8, the paper said.

Last week, it was the threat of "nuclear war" on the Korean Peninsula, despite the glaringly obvious facts that a) the U.S. doesn't have "thousands" of nuke warheads in South Korea as the North claimed, and b) two barely credible nuke tests in the single kiloton output range do not a nuclear arsenal make. Despite all this, the sawed off star of Team America: World Police continues to press on with the "look at me Look At Me LOOK AT ME!!!" campaign.

Next comes this blurb from Foxnews.com:

The U.S. military is tracking a flagged North Korean ship suspected of proliferating weapons material in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last Friday, FOX News has learned.

The ship, Kang Nam, left a port in North Korea Wednesday and appears to be heading toward Singapore, according to a senior U.S. military source. The vessel, which the military has been tracking since its departure, could be carrying weaponry, missile parts or nuclear materials.

"It is believed to be 'of interest,'" a senior U.S. official told FOX News.

This is the first suspected "proliferator" that the U.S. and its allies have tracked from North Korea since the United Nations authorized the world's navies to enforce compliance with a variety of U.N. sanctions aimed at punishing North Korea for its recent nuclear test.

The ship is currently along the coast of China and being monitored around-the-clock by air.

The apparent violation raises the question of how the United States and its allies will respond, particularly since the U.N. resolution does not have a lot of teeth to it.

Aye, there's the rub, my friends...one wonders what could be done about that.

If the sarcasm dripping off that title isn't enough for you, you should read the CNN piece on the statements made by Muhammad Abdulhakim's lawyer. You'll be happy to know that his client was "brainwashed" and tortured in Yemen while incarcerated during an immigration problem, and that everyone else in the world besides Abdulhakim is responsible for his shooting attack outside an Army recruiting station.

"My client is a young man, I think, brainwashed," attorney Jim Hensley told CNN. "What else could be explained for a young man who's a true American, plays football, helps his grandmother and mows the lawns of his neighbors? Comes back and then finds himself in this situation? That is not a normal situation in my book."

Just a red blooded American lad...

In September 2007, Muhammad left Tennessee State University in Nashville, where he was studying business, and traveled to Yemen to teach English to children and to learn Arabic.

There, "he felt at peace with these people," even marrying a Yemeni, Hensley said.

But things began to change when his client was detained for a minor visa violation in Yemen and sent to prison, where he was housed with radical Islamic fundamentalists, Hensley said.

...who just happened to fall in with a bad crowd...

There is disagreement about the time he was incarcerated. The lawyer said Muhammad told him he had served four months in prison.

Hensley said Muhammad told him that, during the last two weeks he was held, he was deprived of sleep and food and "was slapped around a little bit," enduring beatings on the backs of his legs.

During Muhammad's time in the prison, an FBI agent visited him not as an ally but as an interrogator, Hensley said.

...brutalized by his American puppet captors and abandoned by his government...

The FBI agent "believed that Carlos was some kind of hardened terrorist hellbent on doing violence to America," Hensley said.

...profiled...

After he was released in January, Muhammad returned to Nashville, Tennessee, where his parents noticed their son was "fidgety, frustrated, can't sit still," Hensley said.

The same FBI agent approached him and threatened to put him under surveillance, "to do everything we can to cause you trouble," Hensley said.

...harrassed by law enforcement...

Hensley added that Muhammad's parents told him that, once he returned to Nashville, "he was a different human," one who blamed the United States for the war wounds suffered by some of the children whom he had taught, children without arms or legs.

...haunted by visions of the victims of American imperialism...

He also blamed U.S. immigration policy for his inability to bring his bride back to the United States with him, Hensley said.

...denied the love and understanding of the love of his life by blatantly racist immigration policy...

"A first-year psychology student would be able to see that this young man needed some help, and that wasn't offered him by anyone," Hensley said.

...denied the help he needs by The System...

Federal agents said Wednesday that they were looking into whether Internet searches of various locations in several other U.S. cities were a sign that Muhammad was seeking "additional targets." The cities investigators included Atlanta, Georgia; Louisville, Kentucky; New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Memphis, Tennessee, where Muhammad grew up.

Hensley told CNN that his client was not the only person who was using the computer.

...and, in the end, wrongfully accused and a patsy in a larger, obvious conspiracy.

Where did they find this lawyer, advertising on late night t.v. during an all night kung fu movie marathon? Is there a race, culture or sympathy card out there that this guy missed playing? Every statement from the guy sounds like something you'd expect out of a bad parody movie.

It seems that this is destined to be turned into a circus by this dirtbag's lawyer, who pled "not guilty" on behalf of his client after his client already admitted to the shootings to police afterwards. Pvt. Long and Pvt. Ezeagwula deserve better than a media circus; they deserve justice.

Courtesy of MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - The National Rifle Association is asking the Supreme Court to strike down strict gun control laws in the Chicago area, setting the stage for another high court battle over Second Amendment protections for gun owners.

The NRA wants the court to rule that last year's gun rights decision invalidating a handgun ban in the District of Columbia applies as well to local and state laws.

The appeal to the Supreme Court comes almost immediately after a federal appeals court in Chicago said Tuesday that it is bound by earlier Supreme Court decisions which held the Second Amendment applies only to federal laws. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was part of an appeals court panel in New York that reached a similar conclusion in January.

Judges on both courts — Republican nominees in Chicago and Democratic nominees in New York — said only the Supreme Court could decide whether to extend last year's ruling throughout the country. Many, but not all, of the constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights have been applied to cities and states.

The framers of the Constitution intended "to protect the right to keep and bear arms and other rights from state infringement," the NRA said in a filing made available at the court Thursday.

It is hard to imagine a situation where a state would put restrictions on the freedom of speech, or the freedom from illegal search and seizure, or most any of the other individual rights guaranteed by our Bill of Rights and have that restriction upheld at the Supreme Court level, but that is exactly what is being discussed here. These follow up cases to the Heller ruling will be crucial in establishing much about our Constitution even beyond the Second Amendment.

Also from the article:

In the case now pending at the Supreme Court, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld ordinances barring the ownership of handguns in most cases in Chicago and suburban Oak Park, Ill.

Judge Frank Easterbrook said that "the Constitution establishes a federal republic where local differences are to be cherished as elements of liberty rather than extirpated in order to produce a single, nationally applicable rule."

"Federalism is an older and more deeply rooted tradition than is a right to carry any particular kind of weapon," Easterbrook wrote.

Someone pointed out to me that asking for the Second Amendment to apply to the states and locales went against my "anti-big government" leanings. I immediately searched my desktop for a very hard, very heavy copy of the Constitution to hit that person over the head with. Both they and Judge Easterbrook are obviously missing the point of our Constitution, which is not to establish a heavy handed set of rules that apply to all, but to establish liberties of the individual and place restrictions on government. The Second Amendment is an important (arguably the most important) part of those limits on government, and those limits should be enjoyed by all Americans equally no matter where they reside.

Via the English version of Pravda, with translation spelling & grammar errors intact (warning, there's plenty of typical Russian over-exaggeration and conjecture and a pretty good heap of gay bashing in this article):

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.

...

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.

...

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.

Pretty much every expansion of power (or changeover in power to a more expansive government) in the history of the world has been cleverly disguised as being "for the people." The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution is a perfect example of this. Marxism was supposed to be the ultimate cure-all for everything that ailed the Russian working man. Instead, they got 70 years of slavery that they were tricked into fighting for. History is filled with examples of "be careful what you wish for" in this regard. Once, we Americans were wiser as a whole than to take what we are taking right now without a fight, much less with barely a question.

Liberty is the most precious of commodities on the global scale. The currency of acquiring it was blood; words and policies are not something that it should be dealt away for. Once lost, it is the hardest of all things to replace.

Thankfully, we as Americans also have a mechanism in place to stop its erosion and regain our bearings: our representative democracy...but only if we heed the call and use it wisely.

It needs to begin in 2010. We need to send a clear message that this expansion of government power is not in the interests of America or liberty and needs to be halted. An all encompassing central government is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind. We have strayed far from the course and need to get back on bearing again, before the costs get too high.

Buh bye, courtesy of CNN:

LONDON, England (CNN) -- British troops killed a "most dangerous" Taliban leader responsible for the deaths of two British service members and likely hundreds of civilians, the defense ministry said Tuesday.

Mullah Mansur is described as "one of the most dangerous Taliban leaders in Helmand," the province where British troops are based. He was killed on Monday by troops in British Apache helicopters northeast of Lashgar Gah, Helmand's capital.

Mansur is believed to be behind the May 7 suicide attacks that killed Sgt. Ben Ross of the Royal Military Police and Gurkha Cpl. Kumar Pun in Gereshk in southern Afghanistan.

Mansur is also thought to be behind other suicide attacks that killed Afghan police and civilians, including one on May 11 that killed 13 Afghan police and civilians and wounded 27 other people. He is also implicated in a March attack that killed 9 Afghan policemen and two civilians, with 28 people wounded.

Mansur was believed to have links to insurgent commanders from the Baluch tribe in the south and acted as the link between the insurgency in the south and central Helmand.

The defense ministry said the Monday attack is also thought to have killed and wounded other insurgents.

Mansur was reportedly the #3 man in the Taliban heirarchy. Three huzzahs and pints to all the Brits involved all around.

Via the NY Times:

NAIROBI, Kenya — Somalia is once again a raging battle zone, with jihadists pouring in from overseas, preparing for a final push to topple the transitional government.

The government is begging for help, saying that more peacekeepers, more money and more guns could turn the tide against the Islamist radicals.

But the reality may be uglier than either side is willing to admit: Somalia has become the war that nobody can win, at least not right now.

Wait a minute...now it's the war that nobody can win? That "news" is secondary though to the moneyshot of the article:

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the top United Nations envoy for Somalia, said that there were now several hundred foreign jihadists fighting for the Shabab. He noted that they were “more motivated, better organized and better trained” than typical Somali street fighters, who tend to be teenagers paid a few dollars a day to charge blindly into battle with rusty Kalashnikov rifles. These young combatants know as much about military tactics as they do about school, which is not a lot. Class has essentially been out for the past 18 years, since Somalia’s central government collapsed.

Is a U.S. presence back on the Horn of Africa almost preordained at this point? If it has to do with another disastrous U.N. orchestrated "peacekeeping" expedition, let's hope not. As these Muslim-on-Muslim powergrab conflicts become more and more prevalent across the globe, the real question will be if the current administation is capable of dealing with the expansion of the Long War, since apparently they don't even want to call it that.

Muslim-on-Muslim conflict is going to increase, and we're going to have to deal with it or risk having another half dozen Afghanistans and Pakistans popping up in different parts of the world over the next decade or so as the radical Islamists consolidate their positions.