Saturday Links – Cigar Box Guitar Edition

America, today your Individual Rights have been officially transformed into privileges. Today the HHS Mandates that you must comply. You have no rights not to.

Today the official government policy is, by law, that you no longer have the Right to choose. You no longer have Freedom of Choice. You in fact no longer have Rights, only privileges, which you retain at the governments pleasure.

(If thisisn’t covered by the “right to pursue happiness” then nothing is.)How did we get to this point? To the point where a friggin’ chicken sandwich is at the nexus of an epic ideological battle? I, LibertyAtStake, shall now give you the answer.

In Archbishop Charles Chaput’s keynote address at the Napa Institute he answered a question from a friend of his who wondered if the religious freedom debate had “crossed a Rubicon” in our country’s political life. From Archbishop Chaput: The Rubicon is a river in northern Italy. Its small and forgettable, except for one thing.

As regular readers of this blog are aware, I have been covering the vicious campaign of ongoing harassment against Conservative Bloggers which attempts to silence them, and I have also focused on the nasty attacks directed at The Lonely Conservative and myself.

good for them.

H/T to Terry at Abbey Roads

From the Thomas More Website:

Why is DHS  and the US government now in the business of censoring copyright infringement on Youtube?

Then, when gas tax receipts drop due to drivers using less gas (I mean, who could see that one coming?) politicians are looking for alternate ways to pry money out of tax payers.

Like most of my readers, I, the Manhattan Infidel cannot tolerate dairy products hatred. And after a clip in the news yesterday showing a purposeful man, Adam Smith, CFO and treasurer of Vante of Tuscon, Arizona taking his outrage to the drive-in window at a Chick-fil-A I became inspired.

Of course, instead of facing this and holding politicians accountable, our media will continue to play to the distractions, the nonsense and the irrelevant instead of asking the hard questions, demanding answers and informing voters.

That is right, we are not making it up, the emblematic action of this transition into the past by the President of Bolivia is the official prohibition of Coca-Cola. Anybody that has been in this South American backwater for reasons other than running from the law, like Che Guevara, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, knows well that no other people live in conditions any closer to the time of the Mayas of 2,000 years ago than the Bolivians; so it doesn’t take much to push them all the way back to the Mayans with some good old fashioned sacrifices at the altar of credulity.

Now, here’s an interesting idea, courtesy of the whizkid at Political Math: using Bureaus Of Labor Statistics figures, where does President Obama rank among modern U.S. presidents on job creation and unemployment?

The latest issue of Colonial Williamsburg magazine offers an article by Gil Klein about The Use of Myths in History. Klein discusses the power and possible inevitability of historical myths.

It has been 12 days since the terrible shooting event in Aurora Colorado and I cant help but think if there was just one armed citizen in that theater the injuries and deaths may have been greatly reduced. One well-placed shot by a law abiding citizen exercising their 2nd amendment rights may have made a […]

Dan Cathy the person does not support same sex marriage. Neither does a large portion of the American population.So why has Dan Cathy been singled out as the enemy by the LGBT community? For remarks made on some obscure radio show?

Earlier this week Harry Reid made a claim, based on no evidence and with only some anonymous source, that Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes for ten years. He was asked if he wanted to walk back this baseless claim and not only did he refuse to do so, he actually doubled down on the accusation.

When it comes to faithfully executing the law, a key part of his constitutional mandate, Barack Obama is the pick and choose president, selecting the laws he wants to enforce and ignoring the ones he does not like.

76% support Arpaio’s “tough on crime” stance The desperation of the Peridico de la Repblica de Arizona (Arizona Republic) provides our Friday humor break. The headline screams: Arpaio’s approval rating sinks to 53% amid birth-certificate probe.

Semi-News A Satirical Look at Recent News In recent elections less than 5% of the ballots cast by active duty military personnel serving overseas arrived in time to be counted.

John F. Kerry, the not-so-swift slanderer of U.S. troops, tax-dodging yachtsman supreme, and — along with the despicable Jane Fonda — the best friend the Viet Cong ever had (See comment below by aJey at the Khmer connection), has reported for duty once again, this time aiming his AK at everyone who’s had the unmitigated gall to expose the global warming scam of the international socialists.

Laws don’t stop people from trespassing or stealing. A moment’s thought will tell you that’s true. They don’t prevent murder either. So why the clamor for tougher gun laws after a high profile incident like Aurora, CO? In part, it’s scale and location. Sabotage a car so it crashes and it’s reported locally. But set off bombs on trains in Madrid? Poison your spouse and it’s a piece in the local paper. But release sarin gas in the Tokyo subway?If a Chicago banger kills an infant in a drive by, it might not even make the front page. But kill 12 in a suburban theater? Lawful people try to make sense of tragedy. We do things for reasons and want to understand why the lawless do what they do. But the lawless don’t follow rules or laws; they’re lawless. They may also be truly insane or duped by idealogues or something else. We may even learn their reasons eventually. But having an explanation and understanding a motivation are not the same. What’s important is to recognize that whatever else they may be, they are lawless.

I’ve been thinking along these lines for a long time now; might have even posted on it here, I can’t remember. But no matter, because Richard Fernandez says it better anyway. What self respecting liberal would want to live in a world where maybe only Rush Limbaugh is playing on the radio?

Trust me on this. When did the I-dont-have-the-patience-to-deal-with-my-own-children thinking become the norm? What has persuaded us, at one time had persuaded me, that we dont have the wherewithal to handle the very blessings many of us begged God to give us? Read this earlier on a homeschooler website called “Hip Homeschool Moms.”

Welcome to Amerika!
Amerika, the almost former land of the free, still the home of the brave and the second amendment.

I’ve written more than once about Anthony Weiner. In case you forgot who he is, he’s the U.S. Representative who tweeted nude pictures of himself, and, of course, initially denied they were pictures of him and eventually had to resign from Congress when the evidence was stacked up against him.

In the wake of his hate becoming viral YouTube fodder, bully Adam Smith (CFO and treasurer of medical supplies manufacturer Vante) has been (no pun intended) –pink slipped. First video of Christian h8er Adam Smith harassing a young female Chick-Fil-A employee at the drive-thru window.

Are actually anti-intellectuals. In other words, many of them lack a fundamental understanding of America’s founding and the legitimacy of its modern application. Others understand it, but despise it.

  The Wyblog has just one example of how the feds are pissing our money away Forget crumbling infrastructure, Feds send NJ millions of dollars for bike lanes Yes,bike lanes. Millions of dollars in federal grants were announced today for New Jersey and elsewhere to pay for a wide range of highway improvement projects.

LD Jackson Obama Campaign Gets Personal With Attacks On Romney

Much has already been said during this campaign about the negative advertising that is filling the airwaves. For the time being, the Obama campaign is outspending Mitt Romney. That will change after the convention and Romney becomes the official Republican nominee, but while it lasts, it may be doing some damage. I believe it is important to note that many of these attacks are not only negative, but personal .

After the nightmarish shooting incident in the Colorado movie theater a couple weeks ago, the issue of gun control has been brought up a lot by the main stream media and liberal politicians.  A lot of the criticism has been targeted at assault weapons, and how we dont need the amount of firepower provided by these military style rifles.

I’m outraged. Gabby Douglas, affectionately known as the Flying Squirrel, is going to make millions of dollars after her gold medal Olympic performance. This should not be. First, she didn’t do it on her own. You know, “you didn’t build that.” She had help from other people.

Is there any political cartoonist as talented as Michael Ramirez?

I think not.

I touched on this the other day in passing, but it needs more attention. Stanley Kurtz summarized his new book Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities in an article in National Review. If you live in the suburbs, pay attention. President Obama is not a fan of Americas suburbs. Indeed, he intends to abolish them. With suburban voters set to be the swing constituency of the 2012 election, the administrations plans for this segment of the electorate deserve scrutiny. Obama is a longtime supporter of regionalism, the idea that the suburbs should be folded into the cities, merging schools, housing, transportation, and above all taxation. To this end, the president has already put programs in place designed to push the country toward a sweeping social transformation in a possible second term. The goal: income equalization via a massive redistribution of suburban tax money to the cities.

You’ll probably want the bad news first: The unemployment rate rose to 8.3 percent in July, a number in which the New York Times desperately seeks to find good news for Obama, which would actually be bad news for everybody else, because if the New York Times deceives people into thinking Obama’s policies aren’t a complete failure, his policies — which are, in fact, a complete failure — might continue another four years.

The use of the word “gaffe” is getting on my last nerve. “Journalists” are paid to say what their words mean. Using he word “gaffe” among “journalists” who consider themselves on the other side of center from the speaker, it is usually characterized as a “gaffe,” and obviously an embarrassing gaffe. When the speaker is on the same side of center as the journalist, it is only “misspeaking.” Well, misspeaking my foot. When one misspeaks it is obvious, i.e. Obama arrives in Kansas and says it’s good to be back in Texas. With so many travel stops, we can forgive it if he had his schedule mixed up, and we can forgive him if he simply turned the words around. When you have a gaffe, you intentionally or unintentionally say what you really think or believe. G.W. Bush had a list of “gaffes” daily, as interpreted by the same media which interprets Obama’s gaffes as misspeaking. Now the target is Mitt Romney and particularly his recent trip to London and Israel.

Congress has headed off for its long vacation-and-campaign season, fleeing Washington as the unemployment rate rises. According to the Labor Department’s July jobs report, the unemployment rate ticked up to 8.3 percent, 12.8 million Americans are out of work, and 5.2 million have been out of work for at least a half a year.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”

A very simple statement that has been twisted and misconstrued into something it is not.  Mostly by progressives on the left, but also by the fringe Libertarian movement on the far right.  Within its original intent it means that the US Congress cannot make a law that establishes a State religion or prohibits the free exercise of a religion.  Nothing more.  But as I have written on many occasions, progressives have turned the US Congress into anyone, and a law establishing a religion into the mere mentioning of Jesus’ name outside of a Church building.  And unfortunately there are Christians who are supporting this agenda.  If they realize it or not.  Hopefully if you are one of those Christians you will change who you vote for and who you support after reading this post.  By the end I think you will understand.

Yes, bike lanes.

Have you ever been so moved by a cause or a movement that you have signed your name to it? Maybe it was a petition to get a measure on the ballot or it was to protest against infringement on your rights. Now ask yourself if you could do the same knowing that by signing the document you were committing treason; knowing that it would make you an enemy of the state. Could you do it? Would you have the courage to stand on principle? Would you hesitate or would you pen you name without any reservation?
Well 236 years ago today 56 men did exactly that. It was on this day in 1776 that delegates representing the 13 colonies signed the Declaration of Independence. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for the cause of liberty.