Global Toad News

The EU constitution that was ressurrected as a treaty was written to be deliberately confusing.  According to the London Telegraph the author,Giscard d’Estaing,  (apparently there is one person that is considered the author of this abomination) says:

“What was done in the [Lisbon] Treaty, and deliberately, was to mix everything up. If you look for the passages on institutions, they’re in different places, on different pages,” he said.

Mr. d’Estaing further says that it shouldn’t matter what individual nations want, once they joined the EU, they no longer have the right to claim that they are soveriegn countries.

Sounds familar, and of course this was the argument that was made by Euro Skeptics before the EU got it’s current powers.  This is also the same argument that was made by the anti-federalists against the United States consitution.

Looks like people keep getting fooled the same way, again and again.

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Apparently the United States Federal Reserve Bank, (which has had minimal oversight from congress since it was created on December 23rd, 1913) is going to have finally have an audit, something the Congressman Ron Paul had been pushing for (Ron Paul would have liked to get rid of the Fed completely, but one step at a time).

Unfortunately for most Americans, this audit of the Federal Reserve system (a private bank that loans the money to the treasury in exchange for interest bearing bonds) is according to TheAge,com.au.

The fact that the IMF is knocking on the very doors of its parents and waving legal papers about who lost the house, the car and the kids will, if the past is anything to go by, be buried in the US by pom-pom waving on CNBC telling all what a great time it is to buy.

Of course the mainstream so called press doesn’t want to tell people about the true shape of the economy.  Once you take on advertisers, you have to dance to their tune to some extent.

The internet is the only real free press that has ever existed.  Before you could print pamphlets at your own expense, and then distribute them to people, but that all had a cost the prohibited many people from being able to express themselves.

And this is why you see certain groups trying to put prices on the use of words on the internet, because being free to express yourself is something that might let the serfs find out what is going on.

It’s sad that the United States, which used to have a currency that was based on gold, now has a currency that is based on wishes, and such is subject to a foreign entity coming in and examining our banking system.  But what can you expect, when it seems that almost no one cares about the economy or long term effects of decisions, and everyone lives moment to moment, or from one commercial to the next.

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Since the recent SCOTUS ruling on the second amendment, there have been many people from Chicago claiming that the miltia means some limited group of people.  People in Chicago (and Illinois) should know better from the Illinois State Constitution of 1970:

SECTION 1.  MEMBERSHIP
    The State militia consists of all able-bodied persons
residing in the State except those exempted by law.
(Source: Illinois Constitution.)

Now this isn’t some ancient document, the Illinois constitution was written in 1970 (there were other state constitutions before then, but the courts pretend those don’t exist for the purpose of protecting rights, so I won’t go into them). It’s amazing to me that Illinois has some of the most anti firearm laws in the country, and one of the clearest definitions of what the militia consists of, but as I found out, it doesn’t matter what the plain meaning of the laws are, if the judges say that black is white, then that is what people believe.

Which leads me to another point, it seems that we have an establishment of religion when a group of people who dress up in black robes can decide what is reality.

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The United States Supreme Court has ruled in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller (No 07-290)  according to the slip opinion (PDF, Supreme court web page):

1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
traditionally  lawful  purposes,  such as  self-defense  within  the  home.
Pp. 2–53.
(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but
does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative
clause.   The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it
connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms.  Pp. 2–22.
(b) The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation of the operative clause.  The “militia” comprised all males physically
capable of acting in concert for the common defense.  The Antifederal-
ists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in
order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing
army or a select militia to rule.  The response was to deny Congress
power  to  abridge  the  ancient  right  of  individuals  to  keep  and  bear
arms,  so  that  the  ideal  of  a  citizens’  militia  would  be  preserved.
Pp. 22–28.
(c) The  Court’s  interpretation  is  confirmed  by  analogous  arms-
bearing rights in state constitutions  that  preceded and immediately
followed the Second Amendment.  Pp. 28–30.
(d) The  Second  Amendment’s  drafting  history,  while  of  dubious
interpretive worth, reveals three state Second Amendment proposals
that  unequivocally  referred  to  an  individual  right  to  bear  arms.
Pp. 30–32.
(e) Interpretation  of  the  Second  Amendment  by  scholars,  courts
and  legislators,  from  immediately  after  its  ratification  through  the
late 19th century also supports the Court’s conclusion.  Pp. 32–47.
(f) None of the Court’s precedents forecloses the Court’s interpre-
tation.  Neither United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553, nor
Presser  v.  Illinois,  116  U. S.  252,  264–265,  refutes  the  individual-
rights interpretation.  United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, does not
limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes, but rather
limits the type of weapon to which the right applies to those used by
the militia, i.e., those in common use for lawful purposes.  Pp. 47–54.

So the Second Amendment is an ANCIENT right, that free people have had for centuries, that current elements in the government want(ed?) to abridge.  Hopefully this will stem the flow some what, though the state of Illinois will still try to stomp out this ANCIENT right.

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According to WND.com:

a North Carolina superintendent is pushing for a $10 million budget that includes a plan for a school where only Spanish is spoken.

At the moment, it seems that there are public schools that teach mostly in Spanish with only some English being used, that is too much English for some of the people, so the superintendent is pushing for Spanish only schools.

Is it any wonder why the schools are failing the children that are sent to them?

According to this article, only 1/2 of the students who go to school these days graduate.  Is it any wonder why the students feel that are part of some sick joke that is being played at their expense when you have superitendents who don’t care if the children ever even learn to write in English or read the constitution?

It would be funny if it wasn’t true.

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That’s the question I had to ask myself when I saw this picture in Rolling Stone Magazine:

With these words:

For all his frantic recanting of the many embarrassingly bipartisan episodes from his Senate past, McCain has never betrayed even a nanosecond’s worth of memories from the central catastrophe of his life: his capture and torture in a Vietnamese prison. But now that he is finally pitted, in the great battle of his life, against a smooth-talking peacenik nearly half his age who wants American troops to withdraw instead of pressing on for “victory” in an unpopular war, McCain can keep reliving all those old hurts and all those old battles over and over again, in front of sympathetic crowd after sympathetic crowd.

Now I don’t like McCain, and I would rather see Obama win than McCain, and supposedly so does Rolling Stone Magazine.  That said, writing pieces like this, which is just a little too over the top for many people will cost Obama votes.

There are lot’s of things to attack McCain about.  Making fun of his time as POW is not something that most people will appreciate.  Of course, the sad thing is that the only thing that Rolling Stone doesn’t like about McCain seems to be his position on military issues.

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According to Global Research:

Paul says Pelosi’s first act as House Speaker in 2006 was to “deliberately” remove a portion of a legislative spending bill which said the United States “can’t go to war with Iran without getting approval from Congress.”

According to Paul, Pelosi and her allies in the chamber’s Democratic leadership initially accepted the bill designed to outline an Iraq exit strategy, but during a revision of the legislation excluded the statement regarding the need for congressional approval of any military assault on the neighboring country of Iran.

“She [Pelosi] removed it deliberately,” Paul says. “And then, the astounding thing is, when asked why, she said the leadership in Israel asked her to. That was in the newspaper, that was in ‘The Washington Post,’ that she was asked by AIPAC and others not to do that.”

It makes you wonder who the people running this country really answer to.

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According to MSNBC:

The men underwent three months of major lifestyle changes, including eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and soy products, moderate exercise such as walking for half an hour a day, and an hour of daily stress management methods such as meditation.

As expected, they lost weight, lowered their blood pressure and saw other health improvements. But the researchers found more profound changes when they compared prostate biopsies taken before and after the lifestyle changes.

After the three months, the men had changes in activity in about 500 genes — including 48 that were turned on and 453 genes that were turned off.

That’s right, in as little as 3 months, these men had their genes modified.  This throws a wrench in the whole “genetic” theory that certain things are predetermined, regardless of what you might do.

Of course, that puts a lot of the responsibility for our lives back on us.  Somehow I think a lot of effort will be spent to remove that burden from our minds.

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According to the Courier Post in New Jersey, over 10% of gas stations in the state have been fined for violating the laws regulating the sale of gasoline.   Some stations would have different prices on different pumps, “bad” calibration, and even change the price several times a day.

I had received an email yesterday about this problem, but failed to follow up on the issue.   The email had suggested checking the 10 gallon price and see if it matched correctly with the posted price.  This might be a good idea, though it won’t catch all the ways that stations apparently are cheating customers.

While I understand that things are tight, and I don’t really like government regulation, I don’t see that there is any other way to police businesses.  What is really sad about this is that at least 10% of gas stations in New Jersey appear to think that they can mislead the public.  I hope that the number is better elsewhere.

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Former Reagan Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts, has recently written:

When Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, the average price of oil that year was about $27 per barrel, or about $31 in inflation adjusted 2007 dollars. The price rose another $10 in 2004 to an average annual price of $42 (in 2007 dollars), another $12 in 2005, $7 in 2006, and $4 in 2007 to $65. But in the last few months the price has more than doubled to about $135. It is difficult to explain a $70 jump in price in terms other than speculation.

I have long thought that the U.S. economy was weak.  And it does seem that the high price of oil is the weak link in the U.S. economy.  Of course it’s easy to think that somehow the U.S. can reign in the oil companies but the reality is a little different, as this article points out:

For many it came as a shock that Big Oil had transformed into the ”five little brothers”. Today, the world’s seven largest oil companies are completely outside the Senate’s control. Those that today hold the conductor’s baton for oil are: Saudi Aramco (Saudi Arabia), NIOC (Iran), NOC (Iraq), KPC (Kuwait), ADNOC (United Arab Emirates), PDVSA (Venezuela) and NOC (Libya). When considering natural gas, (that has increasing importance for energy security) there are an additional two companies that force their way in amongst the seven largest: Gazprom (Russia) and Qatar Pet (Kuwait). All these companies are controlled by their national governments.

What we in the United States see as the “oil companies” have become more like car dealers than car manufacturers, and the powers that be know this as well as anyone.  It’s just more political theatre for the masses.

The sad thing is that people still buy this junk.

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According to the Times of London,

Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.

Now, I am not a fan of Geneticly modified foods, but this isn’t for eating and it’s an idea that  has merit.  And it might be what is needed to reverse the whole economic slide that we are currently on.

Of course, we have to wait and see if it actually comes into being.  Back in 2003 the big thing was oil from turkey waste.  You think a technology that was just about ready 5 years ago would be going full throttle with oil at $140/barrel, but I haven’t seen anything about that lately.

But here’s hoping.

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I recently was talking with someone who works closely with Home Depot.  I was told that Home Depot had sales drop as much as 50% this year.  You might recall that last year Home Depot had reported 15% decrease in sales.

This isn’t an isolated event, I have had discussions with other business owners who have indicated the same decline in sales (at least 50%).  I find it hard to believe that all these businesses are trying to act like nothing is happening while behind the scenes everything is falling apart.

Recently a friend of mine went to Kentucky Fried Chicken with a coupon, you know the ones in the Entertainment book, that because of gas prices, that the coupon was no longer good.  That said, those Entertainment book coupons have a habit of being canceled by companies at a whim.

Another person has told me that the major banks have a plan to call in mortgages that has various steps:

1. In the next few months, start calling in mortgages where there are three mortgages
2. Then two
3. Then single mortgages

I don’t think that calling in the single mortgages will work, unless the house is worth less than the value of the mortgage.  Unfortunately there are houses like that.  I was talking with a person who told me that the bank has canceled their equity line of credit, because their house had declined in value.  What many people don’t realize is that the equity line of credit is another mortgage on the home.

Of course we could just be going through a temporary realignment phase.

But somehow I doubt that.

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Apparently the Associated Press has a new target, bloggers.   According to Cadenhead.org:

The Associated Press filed seven takedown requests under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act on June 10, 2008, for six user blog entries and one user comment published on the Drudge Retort.

One Alleged Infringement: The user’s blog entry links to an AP story published by Yahoo News using 18 words from the story, a 32-word quote by Hillary Clinton from the story and a user-written headline.

That’s right the Associated Press believes that “Fair Use” restricts you to < 18 words.

It’s frightening what is happening in America, once the land of the free.  This is one reason why I have to ignore requests to put paid links on this site, though that doesn’t necessarily stop anyone, it is a little higher bar to jump.

Unfortunately, under current U.S. law, you have to prove yourself innocent when you are accused of violating copyright law, which costs money and time, something that we all could use more, not less, of.

The AP is in the process of “rethinking” how it’s going to deal with quotations in the future.  But don’t count on something being there in the future, just because you had it in the past.

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Police in the U.K. have now arrested a man for having a sign with CU*T at a protest about Scientology.  This was following the charges being dropped against a person who had a sign that said Scientology was a cult.  Apparently the new order is arrest the people, charge them, and if the charges are later dropped, just arrest the people again.

This is what passes for justice now, arresting people for the same non crime, as long as you arrest random people it’s not harrasment.  It’s in keeping with the United States Supreme Court rulings that allow the police to harrass people, just as long as they do it without regard to race, color, sex or national origin.

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I have to wonder what the purpose of DHS is?  Instead of “Deparment of Homeland Security” it could stand for “Don’t Help Serfs”.  According to jim Kirwan:

Take a long hard look at Iowa. Did the US ever develop mobile medical facilities that could have been flown in, by what the Air Force used to call MATS (Material Air Command) – MATS could fly in a small city within 24 hours anywhere in the world. That was back in the 1950′s though, so Rummy must have scrapped that capability along with everything else about the military that used to work. The old FEMA would have been ahead of the storm, and ready with whatever food and water was needed and they would have had the national-guard to fill sandbags, and to evacuate the population.

It’s interesting that Homeland Security (parent organization for FEMA) has entire fleets of black helicopters and attack helicopters with all the weapons that both require, yet FEMA has no rescue helicopters, no firefighting planes of their own and virtually no backup arrangements with hospitals to bolster their capabilities in emergencies on any level. Where DHS has trains and rebuilt prisons, and truck fleets to transport prisoners, FEMA has nothing to transport anything, whether for people or supplies

Yes, the department of the federal government has a lot of resources to keep the people in line, but no resources to help people when they need it.

For instance when people tried to return to their homes in Iowa, this is what they were greeted with:

A police officer draws his weapon after a resident tries to pass a checkpoint Monday in Cedar Rapids.

There’s a reason why police cars tend to no longer have “Serve and Protect” on them anymore.  More and more the government views the majority of people as chattel, something that has to be herded and cataloged.   Arizona Senator Karen Johnson had this to say about some of the federal plans to catalog people:

“It’s misguided to think that identification equals security,” says Johnson. “Identification is just identification ­ it doesn’t prove intent and it doesn’t stop terrorists. Indeed, terrorists will forge documents ­ as they always have ­ to obtain the identification they want to commit crimes. Making U.S. citizens carry identity papers to board a plane or enter a government building stinks,” says Johnson. “It’s odious, onerous, and a violation of our civil liberties.”

“I refuse to be tagged and numbered,” said Johnson. “Requiring people to carry papers takes away their freedom. There are other, better ways to stop terrorism and to protect us against criminals. The federal government needs to butt out and let the states handle driver licensing. It’s not the business of the Dept. of Homeland Security to tell us how to run our state.”

But despite numerous people working to protect our freedoms, the vast majority of people, like good citizens of the state, are trying to be patriotic, and support the government in it’s ever expanding war on freedom terror.

The reality is that throughout history, the war has been over the minds of the people, and just as Caesar sold his dictatorship for the slogan “tranquility for Italy, peace for the provinces, and security for the Empire.” (Matthias Gelzer, Caesar: Politician and Statesman)

Today people are more “sophisticated” so the means to control them are also more elaborate.  In the end though, we are the ones responsible for our choices.

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His brother thinks he was, and is proud of the fact, according the Israel Insider:

Apparently the Obamas of Kenya have been reading those scurrilous emails to which Barack likes to refer, because they have no doubt — contrary to the claims of the Obama campaign, that the presidential candidate was raised a Moslem. They take that as a given.

As the Jerusalem Post reports, “Barack Obama’s half brother Malik said Thursday that if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background. In an interview with Army Radio he expressed a special salutation from the Obamas of Kenya.”

Apparently the Obama campaign didn’t bother talking to Obama’s family before writing the statement:

Obama Spokesman Robert Gibbs Issued A Statement Explaining That “Senator Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, Was Not Raised As A Muslim, And Is A Committed Christian.”

But the sad part is that Americans don’t care about facts, it’s all about image, and Obama has that.

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The N.Y. attorney general has reached an agreement with the major ISP’s to limit access to a broad swath of discussion groups that have been around for years, because some child porn was found on them.  From CNet:

That amounts to an odd claim: stopping the spread of child porn on a total of 88 newsgroups necessarily means coercing broadband providers to pull the plug on thousands of innocuous ones.

If this precedent continues, it could be used to shut down all “unlicensed” web sites because there was child porn on some (whether there really was or not we might not know).  Even more troubling is that the government actually creates honey pot child porn sites and then prosecutes people if their computer hits the site.

What is more troubling than the fact that the government is doing this, is that people actually believe that this is a good thing.

And that is a sad commentary on the state of mind of the people of the United States.

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A lot of people refuse to believe that cars can run on water.

According to Gizmdo (and Reuters), the company Genepax has a working vehicle.  As this site says:

Meanwhile, the 300W fuel cell system is an active system, which supplies water and air with a pump. In the demonstration, Genepax powered the TV and the lighting equipment with a lead-acid battery charged by using the system. In addition, the 300W system was mounted in the luggage room of a compact electric vehicle “Reva” manufactured by Takeoka Mini Car Products Co Ltd, and the vehicle was actually driven by the system.

It’s sad that once again, American car companies are letting other countries jump ahead of them in technology.  The fact that fuel costs was a weak point in the U.S. economy has been known for over 30 years, but there has been no meaningful effort to resolve this problem in this country.

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According to HeraldNet:

There’s further proof that this spring has been uncomfortably and depressingly cold — the coldest in memory, the coldest since 1917.

Of course, in the heat of summer we will be subjected to all sorts of weather related propaganda.  Al Gore and Obama (likely next president) are pushing the “Make Americans Pay” agenda.  Supposedly because some people in America have more than other people, we need to pay some tax for heating up the planet, or is it for cooling down the planet, it’s hard to figure out what we are going to be punished for.

Personally I don’t understand why anyone thinks that we need some law to “punish” us or reduce our energy usage.  Obviously the inflation that we are seeing is going to curb that, and that is due to the actions of the private “central” bank, though the government goes along with the whole destruction of America for some reason (I’d guess power and money).

Most politicians really do live in a fantasy world, where money grows on trees, and all the problems are like those that we see on television, in other worlds, the problems of the real people don’t effect them.

Now I know that people like to point out the “poor” roots of Obama.  Ok, maybe so he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he believes the myth that Americans have this unlimited pool of money that can just be spent without any restriction.

I don’t blame Obama for his deeply held beliefs, they seem to be the same of most of the people of the religious community that he was associated with for the last 20 years.  And it’s true that Americans have a comfortable standard of living.  But it’s also true that the standard of living is in danger of collapsing, and instead of figuring out ways to help improve life for Americans (and the rest of the world as well), Obama seems determined to send the entire country back to the standards of his childhood.

I have to wonder why people support this.

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Apparently at least one Senior UK government offical hints that they it is.  On Friday the BBC was reporting:

Mr Barosso called on other members states to continue ratifying the treaty, insisting it was “alive and we should now try to find a solution”.

Today, the Times of London says:

A Downing Street source said: “The legal position on this is very clear: the treaty cannot come into force until all 27 countries have ratified it.”

One senior government official said anyone who thought the Irish vote could be ignored was “living in cloud-cuckoo-land”.

I think that the Irish did the best thing for them.  Their economy is on a downturn, and every indication was that the treaty would increase taxes in Ireland.

The EU treaty would have been similar to the change from the Sovereign States under the Articles of Confederation to the strong central government that we currently (at least for now) have.  I don’t see how it is needed for the people of Europe to given up their national identities.

Of course the EU treaty wasn’t sold as that, but I believe that would have been the end result.

The real question is, does it really matter if the process is entirely legal, after all doesn’t the end justify the means, and surely a less free European Union is worth bending a few rules for.

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