Saturday, January 05, 2008

Is the US, Once Again, Importing Slaves?


Is the US Importing Slaves, or Serfs, by Continuing to Allow the Flood of Illegal Immigration?
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Is it just me… or has anyone else noticed the Mainstream Media seems to have dropped the word “illegal” when writing a story about illegal immigrants. I have noticed that the MsM is referring to them as strictly “immigrants”, not “illegal immigrants” as they actually are. The MsM is also referring to those of us who are againts illegal immigration as "anti-immigrant" rather than "anti-illegal immigrant"! See what I mean! Now, this is not surprising to those of us who have been a part of the media, and been media watchers, for a few decades. The MsM is a vast propaganda machine for the political left in the US... and around the world.

This nation is only 232 years old! In the grand scheme of things, including the history of nations on this globe, the US is still a child, having not reached puberty yet. And already we are on a downward slide into obscurity, or as Reagan called it the “dust bin of history”. Liberalism has stripped the dignity of self-dependence and hard world from us and made us into a socialist welfare state. Welfare states never, I repeat never, make their mark on world history. They are, forever, simply a note in the margins of history. That is where we are headed and our national leaders are more than happy to grease the skids with their “National Nanny” schemes.

And now the US is importing a slave culture, or a “serf" culture, if that is more acceptable to your sensitivities. The Mexicans, the Latinos, have become the lowest class in America… and we are actually importing them by allowing them to cross illegally into our territory. By doing this we are once again demonstrating our national government’s approval of slavery. (Call it Serfdom if it makes you feel better.)

But, Longstreet, you say, you are being too harsh calling the importation of illegal labor “slavery”!

Oh, am I? Gee. The truth hurts, doesn’t it? Hey, I’m a conservative and conservatism deals in reality, not Nirvana.

We are importing a ready-made underclass, which will become wards of the government as soon as they cross into US territory. Being a ward of the government means two things: You and I will have to support them and take care of their needs, and it also means… the liberal government will guarantee "the wards" pay them back for all this national largesse by keeping them in office with their votes!

Beginning to see the big picture here?

Look, it boils down to this: the GOP wants the cheap labor and the Dems want the cheap votes! That is the bottom line. Always follow the money!

As the US is STILL paying for the last batch of slaves we brought into the country, you’d have thought we learned something. Apparently not!

Longstreet


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Friday, January 04, 2008

The Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb... The Light Bulb from Hell!

What You Are NOT Being Told About Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs
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The US Congress recently passed a bill to ban incandescent light bulb use in the United States by the year 2012. (The President signed it into law.) What will replace them? The compact fluorescent light bulb. Why does this upset me? WHY, indeed?!

I’ll point you in the direction of some evidence that the fluorescent bulbs may not be as helpful and energy efficient as claimed and might even damage American’s health and contribute to pollution of the earth. You decide, for yourself, if you really want to put them in your home, where you and your children will be exposed to them, or if you want to raise hell with the Congress until they repeal this ridiculous law and give us back our tried and true incandescent light bulbs.

Did you know it required a special exemption from the Environmental Protection Agency of the US government to allow fluorescent lamp bulbs to be sold to the pubic in the US in the first place? Why? Mercury, that’s why!

“Fluorescent lights are filled with a gas containing low-pressure mercury vapor and argon, or sometimes even krypton. The inner surface of the bulb is coated with a fluorescent coating made of varying blends of metallic and rare earth phosphor salts. Fluorescent
light bulbs are more energy efficient than incandescent light bulbs of an equivalent brightness, and the efficiency of fluorescent lighting owes much to low-pressure mercury photon discharges. But fluorescents don't produce a steady light, and they burn out more quickly when cycled frequently; they also contain items such as fluorine, neon, and lead powder as well as mercury.” (From: “Compact fluorescent light bulbs contaminate the environment with 30,000 pounds of mercury each year” at http://www.newstarget.com/021907.html . (This article was written by Mike Adams a natural health researcher and author with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company.)

Also from the same article we learn this:

“According to
www.lightbulbrecycling.com, each year an estimated 600 million fluorescent lamps are disposed of in U.S. landfills, amounting to 30,000 pounds of mercury waste. Astonishingly, that's almost half the amount of mercury emitted into the atmosphere by coal-fired power plants each year. It only takes 4mg of mercury to contaminate up to 7,000 gallons of freshwater, meaning that the 30,000 pounds of mercury thrown away in compact fluorescent light bulbs each year is enough to pollute nearly every lake, pond, river and stream in North America (not to mention the oceans). “


Then, there is this. The CFL bulb “…. can cause people with epilepsy to experience symptoms similar to the early stages of a fit. There have also been complaints of discomfort from people with lupus”. Read more about this in The Daily Mail at:
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=463911&in_page_id=1774

Now… what if you accidentally drop and break one of the CFL’s? Well, you could be looking at a $2000.00 plus “professional clean-up job”. I mean… they do contain Mercury, remember? Don’t believe me? Check this story out:
The CFL mercury nightmare [break a compact fluorescent, face $2000 in cleanup costs] at:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1825609/posts

Add to this the fact, and I do mean fact… that there certainly appears to be less light output (lumens) from the CFL than from an incandescent bulb. Now… all the research I have done tells me that the CFL’s produce the same lumens as a comparable incandescent bulb. But, in practice, I have found that replacing a 60 watt incandescent with a 60 watt CFL will not produce the same amount of lighting. The area I am trying to light is dimmer, not lighted nearly as well, with the CFL as it was with the incandescent. I have found the same true with 75-watt bulbs and 100-watt bulbs. I have even swapped the 60’s out for 75’s and the 75’s out for 100 watt CFLs and I STILL don’t see the crisp brightness I get from the old incandescent bulb.

Now, I am not an engineer. I’m just an old country boy, who has been around the block few times, and experience tells me there HAS to be something different about the lumens emitted by an incandescent and the lumens emitted by a CFL. Is it a different KIND of light? Is that what the matter is?

OK... so I did a bit more research and this is what I found:

A 100-watt incandescent light bulb will produce about 1200 lumens. I read that a 20 t0 25 watt CFL will produce the same amount of lumens... but… if the light fixture you are using isn’t DESIGNED for CFLs you will get a "dingy looking" light. Not nearly as bright as the old incandescent bulb! It seems someone forgot to inform us that CFLs radiate their light differently. What that means is... that even though the CFL is producing the same amount of lumens, it may not be producing the same amount of light to the lighted area! AHAAA! I knew it!

Read more on this at:
http://lighterfootstep.com/how-to-live-with-cfls.html

So besides the fact that CFLs don’t work well in cold climates… or just plain old cold weather, they don’t work well, at all, in overhead fixtures, they don’t work, at all, with dimmers, they contain poison, they do not produce the same amount of light as the incandescent light bulbs… in today's light fixtures, and ...they must be treated as hazardous waste material when you get ready to toss one out, … why… they’re just GREAT!

Why do I get the feeling I’ve been scammed… yet again?

As I write, I am in my office, and I have five different light fixtures on right now. I have CFLs in all five of them and, frankly, it is as through I am sitting here, in front of this computer, working by the light of a number of oil lamps situated around the room! The light is that bad! If I drop something on the floor, I have to get up and turn on the overhead lights, which have incandescent bulbs in them, so I can find the dropped item on the floor.

This is madness! I’m at the point, with the CFL bulbs, that I would happily see the oceans boil and keep my incandescent bulbs!

Between now and 2012, I’m going to horde as many incandescent light bulbs as I can get. Every trip to the store I intend to buy light bulbs and store them.

Damn the Compact Fluorescent Light bulb to hell!

Longstreet



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Thursday, January 03, 2008

This Election is Over! The Republicans LOST!


None of the Above!
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“None of the Above” is the best choice for Republicans in the upcoming Primaries (Primary Elections).

A few days ago, a friend of mine, Texas Fred,(
http://texasfred.net/ ) said the same on his blog site … and I agreed with him. If anything, the situation is about as bad as it has ever been for Republican voters! Without doubt, it is the “Worst of Times” for Conservative Republican voters. I count myself among the latter.

Look, there is simply no Republican candidate, currently running, I can support or vote for. I am hearing this over and over again from my Republican friends and associates.

Conservatives are the “backbone” of the current Republican Party. If Conservatives desert the party this November, the Republican Party doesn’t stand a “snowball’s chance in hell” of winning the Presidential race! It is as simple… and… as frightening… as that. What is even MORE frightening? THAT is EXACTLY how the election is shaping up! The Republicans are headed for certain defeat in the Presidential election. Why? Because Conservative Republicans are going to stay home in November, or write in the name of a candidate they can vote for in good conscious, and in non-violation of the tenents of their faith!

It is bad enough that the hierarchy of the Republican Party is taking the party straight to defeat this election cycle, but now... they have added insult to injury with their attempt to redefine “conservative”. They have produced a handful of candidates, for the party faithful to choose from, and billed them as conservative. Trouble is… they’re not! And let it be known… and clearly understood... we conservatives are not going to vote for a "liberal to moderate" Republican candidate just to save the country from Hillary Clinton! That is what "the powers that be" in the GOP are banking on, and betting on, and it is NOT going to happen!

We conservatives know who we are, and we know what we believe, and no amount of juggling semantics and mis-direction, by the GOP, will change that. It is a futile attempt by the liberal “blue-bloods” in the Republican Party, to “rescue” the party from the “Bozo’s”, “Bubbas”, “Rednecks”, and evangelical and fundamentalist “Holy Rollers”. For that is how they see conservatives in their own party. You see, they are embarrassed by those of us who find ourselves currently between Country Club memberships. They have conveniently forgotten it was the conservatives who SAVED the Republican Party from oblivion and delivered both Houses of Congress, and the Presidency, to the Republican Party. Instead, they have snubbed (and worse!) the conservatives in the party.

Back in 2006 conservatives warned the hierarchy of the GOP that if they did not return to conservative principals we would stay home in November of 2006 and hand the reins of power over to the Democrats. They didn’t believe us. The Democrat Party now controls the Congress.

The Republican Party is at a crossroads. They have to make a choice. Either, continue the current course… and “go the way of the Whigs” (GONE), or return to a “conservative course” and have the reins of power, in both Houses of Congress, returned to them. Conservatives have the power to do that.

On the other hand, I don’t see ANY move the Republican Party can make, at this late date, to save the Oval Office for a Republican in 2008. Like it, or not, that’s the way I see it.

The GOP is in DEEP trouble! The Party has wounded itself badly. It may be a mortal wound. That’s OK. If, as a result of the death of the Republican Party, we can develop a truly CONSERVATIVE PARTY, then I will happily send flowers to the GOP memorial service!

In the meantime, forget about this election. It’s over, already!

Longstreet









Wednesday, January 02, 2008

The Challenge of 2008 and Beyond... by Alan Caruba

The Challenge of 2008 and Beyond
By Alan Caruba


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The beginning of a new year is a good time to consider the many things that differentiate this new century from the last.

I’d like to recommend that everyone read “It’s Getting Better All the Time: Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years” by Stephen Moore and the late Julian L. Simon. It was published in 2000 by the Cato Institute and is singularly the best reference for anyone and everyone who assumes we have always had electricity, global telecommunications, abundant food, and extraordinary medical treatment.

By way of comparison, consider the American Civil War that cost the lives of 620,000 men who fought on both sides of the conflict. On December 24, 1864, Gen. Sherman sent President Lincoln a message by telegraph offering him Savannah, Georgia as a Christmas present. By April 1865, Gen. Robert E. Lee would tender his surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. All the parties arrived on horseback and while the use of rail travel played a minor role, there were no trucks, no tanks, nothing that involved the invention of the internal combustion engine.

The inventions we take for granted would largely wait until the 20th century. In the 100 years between 1900 and 2000, the improvement of the human condition would progress at a rate unknown in the whole history of mankind.

Ironically, the automobile, which is blamed for “pollution” and as a contributor to the bogus “global warming”, brought to an end an era in which cities and towns were filled with horse dung and garbage. Before the modern era of sewage systems and plumbing, cities were places of pestilence. In 1918-1919, an epidemic of influenza killed more than 700,000 Americans and another 20 million to 100 million around the world.

In 1900 Americans had barely a 50-50 chance of surviving a trip to the doctor or, worse, the hospitals of the time when the simple act of washing one’s hand before surgery was unknown.

At the beginning of the last century, life expectancy was barely into the 40’s. Today, Americans can expect to live to an average of 78 years and, as anyone can see, Americans are living routinely into and beyond their 80’s. The “obesity epidemic” is the result of an economy that produces more food than ever before. The invention of genetically modified seeds not only insures that more crops will be grown but that forests will not be sacrificed to produce it.

The authors note that, “Most important of all, almost every great tragedy of the 20th century has been the result of too much government, not too little…Nazism, socialism, communism, Marxism, and apartheid were all simply fancy names for statism—for unreasonable government control over the lives and liberties of the citizenry.”

The last century marked a major departure from previous ones becoming one of widespread abundance in almost every sector of life. “Today’s farmer feeds three times as many people with one-third as many total farmers on one-third less farmland than in 1900.” American farmers are about 40 percent more productive than their European counterparts.

Few, if any, Americans can think of a time when there was no radio, but it only came into being in the 1920s. Television didn’t begin its claim on our attention until the 1950s. As recently as the 1960s, most shows were in black and white and Americans had only three or four channels from which to choose.

While the nation goes through the problems associated with the failures of the banking system to take greater care in lending for mortgages, in 1900 about 50 percent of Americans owned their own homes. Today that has risen to about two-thirds. One of the primary goals of environmentalism is to drive people back into cities and off the roads, but such progress cannot be thwarted. What the nation—now with more than 300 million citizens—requires is housing development, not a return to an era when one in five families lived in housing with three persons per bedroom.

To demonstrate how idiotic the demand is that we “conserve” electricity instead of developing more sources, such as nuclear power, Congress recently passed an “energy” bill that bans the sale and use of incandescent light bulbs beginning in 2012. By contrast, in 1900 barely two percent of homes had electricity. Progress demands more electricity, not less, nor will it be supplied by such notions as wind or solar power that are utterly dependent on whether the wind is blowing and sunlight is constantly available.

What today’s American takes for granted is largely the result of an incredibly inventive 20th century. Its major inventions included refrigeration, aspirin, electric heating, the telephone, the electric railroad, movies, radio, television, air conditioning, fuel efficient automobiles and so much more that they cannot be listed, but can be found at prices that make them available to working people throughout the nation.

Today we live with pollution myths spun by environmentalists, but our air and water is cleaner as the result of regulations introduced in the 1970s. Despite a five-fold increase in population, the percentage of land space that is covered by our forests has remained constant at about one-third of the land area of the United States. This is generally true throughout the world as well, but in the nation today vast efforts are being made to put more and more land off-limits to every form of development, whether it be for mining or the extraction of oil and natural gas. They take the form of so-called “heritage” areas.

What Americans are not doing is the job of maintenance. When a bridge can fail in Minnesota and hundreds more are at risk, we are failing to maintain the nation’s vital infrastructure. This is especially true of the electrical transmission system—the grid— that is in urgent need of upgrade and expansion. Too many of our highways, many built in the 1950s, are in need of improvement. Some American roadways are being put on the auction block to foreign ownership.

The great task of this new year is to remove the nation’s educational system from the death grip of the federal government and the teacher’s unions that have imposed a system that renders America’s children ignorant of the fundamentals needed for an advanced society and economy. Education must be returned to local governance.

When the new century began in 1900, America was not committed to a vast military whose presence is now found throughout the world. The maintenance of peace has become the job of the United States as nations relinquished this necessity while guarding themselves with the development of nuclear weapons. This is occurring as our military has shrunk in size and become entirely voluntary.

At the same time, we have witnessed the growth of international institutions like the United Nations that has not only failed to meet its original goal, but evolved into a corrupt organization of self-serving bureaucrats more interested in lavish conferences than the hard work of real progress versus the fairy tales of “global warming”, i.e., tending to refugees, and bolstering democracies. Similar groups like the European Union further enlarge governance over sovereign nations that should be more responsible for their own affairs and agreements that serve their own interests. Globalization is coming with a price that reduces individual liberty and freedom.

The scourge of communism—another term for big government—has been pushed aside by the evident failure of this and other socialist economic systems, though it remains a threat. It has been replaced by the resurgence of Islam, a religion invented in the seventh century to serve the interests of Bedouin societies for whom conquest and theft was a way of life. Today, a large portion of Islam feels under attack at the same time it strikes out against modernity and its benefits. It must either reform itself or continue its long record of failure to move into this and preceding centuries.

The new century is at war with the past and its weapons are those of mass destruction. While there is much for which to give thanks, given the progress of the previous century, there is much to fear that such progress will be either reversed in a global holocaust or that massive governmental institutions will strangle it in favor of exercising authoritarian power over the lives of everyone on earth.


Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, http://www.anxietycenter.com/. His blog is http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/.

© Alan Caruba, January 2008

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

New Year's Resolutions... NOPE!

New Year’s Resolutions... NOPE!
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The truth is… I don’t do resolutions. Never have. I do not believe in deliberately playing the role of Tantalus, or hanging the Sword of Damocles over my head purposely! Actually, I suppose, at some point in my younger years I DID make a resolution. That was…. I resolved never to make New Year’s Resolutions! New Year’s Resolutions date back to ancient Babylon, some 4,000 years ago. I suppose when one considers the history and the staying power of New Year’s Resolutions one would have to conclude that I am “bucking the tide”! One would also have to note that I am well within familiar territory in doing so.

I find “zest for life” if you will, in going my own way. It’s nice when others choose to accompany me, but it is certainly not a prerequisite for me to set a course into the wind.

During my broadcast career, I chose to work without a contract. Didn’t want one. At first my employers loved it. Then they grew to hate not having me tied to them in writing. Tough! I came and went pretty much as I pleased. I drove one employer out of his gourd by refusing to furnish the home office with sales projections for each month. I flatly refused to do it. My answer to the home office threats was… that my sales staff always performed at peak efficiency and they did not need the worry of not meeting a sales quota to get in the way of their thinking ability. I needed sales people who were thinkers AND doers. I did not need sales people who were worriers and I did need nor want the worry myself. After about four years that company and I parted ways. It was amicable but it was an untenable situation for both of us. I was not giving an inch and neither were they. So, they went their way… and I went mine. If I had it to do over again… I’d do the same thing.

I tell you this simply to say that I feel the same way toward resolutions of any kind. I was reared never to make promises I couldn’t keep… not to myself… not to anyone. I don’t do it… and it drives me nuts when others do it. If I tell you I will meet you someplace, at a given time, if I am not there, and you have not heard from me, you may reasonably assume I am dead.

Point is… if I were to make New Year’s Resolutions I would spent the next year obsessed with fulfilling those resolutions to the detriment of everything else and everyone around me. (Move over Mr. Monk!) So I don’t do it.

No, I have never needed public ridicule, as a result of failure, to spur me into making a more concerted effort toward reaching a stated goal. There’s something in that which strikes me as being, well, a little ‘sick”. And that is the lens through which I view New Year’s Resolutions.

Here you will find no resolutions. But… you will find best wishes for much happiness and prosperity in this New Year!

Longstreet

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