LOL! I just got that. Titor.
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LOL. I really dislike comparing Titor to anything today, but the one main point was trading freedom for security. This was before 9-11 and the Patriot Act, though this has been a concern for longer than the Titor story, it has simply accelerated since 9-11 and gone exponential since Obama.
Secession Movement Growing For 51st State. "North Colorado"
July 12, 2013
When Colorado approved draconian new gun laws earlier in the year, there was an initial level of blow back that was somewhat expected by lawmakers in the State Capitol. What has followed is probably something they didn't anticipate.
Recall petitions have been successfully filled, the vast majority of CO Sheriffs have filed a lawsuit and major manufactures are fleeing the state.
Now, 10 counties are in the process of attempting to secede and form their own state. North Colorado.
The first step is a ballot initiative but it will be a long road and many hurdles will have to be overcome at both the state and federal level.
The revenue generated from some of these counties is substantial and it's unlikely 'old' Colorado will want to see those resources and tax dollars leave. Several of the counties looking to leave account for upwards of 80% of all the revenue generated from oil and gas in the state.
There will be other issues as well, including those relating to water rights.
If nothing else, hopefully some better representation in the State Senate can occur, where residents are hoping to change from 35 Senators to 64. One for each of Colorado's counties.
Something has to change in Colorado and it should be a move towards liberty and freedom. I hope the good people of Colorado can mobilize and get their state back. Several other neighboring counties are also considering joining.
States Seek To Nullify Obama Efforts
July 27, 2013
Infuriated by what they see as the long arm of Washington reaching into their business, states are increasingly telling the feds: Keep out!
Bills that would negate a variety of federal laws have popped up this year in the vast majority of states - with the amount of anti-federal legislation sharply on the rise during the Obama administration, according to experts.
The “nullification” trend in recent years has largely focused on three areas: gun control; health care; and national standards for driver’s licenses. It’s touched off fierce fights within the states, and between the states and the feds, as well as raising questions and court battles about whether any of it is legal.
In at least 37 states legislation has been introduced that in some way guts federal gun regulations, according to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The bills were signed into law this spring in two states, Kansas and Alaska, and in two more lawmakers hope to override a governor’s veto. Twenty states since 2010 have passed laws that either opt out of or challenge mandatory parts of Obamacare, the National Conference of State Legislatures says. And half the states have OK’d measures aimed knocking back the Real ID Act of 2005, which dictates Washington’s requirements for issuing driver’s licenses.
“Rosa Parks is the beacon of light: If you say no to something, you can change the world,” Michael Boldin, the Founder of the Tenth Amendment Center, which favors states’ rights, told POLITICO.
“Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be, ‘We, the people?’” he added. “Over the past few years you’ve seen this growing…People are getting sick and tired of federal power.”
In fact, the state-level anger at the nation’s capital has reached such a fever pitch that many of the bills do not even address specific federal laws, but rather amount to what is in effect “preemptive” nullification, wiping out, for instance, any federal law that may exist in the future that the states determine violates gun rights. The flurry of such efforts was spurred by fear on the part of states that in the wake of the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., that Congress would pass restrictive gun control legislation.
Supporters of nullification say it’s the best tool they have to try to beat back an intrusive federal government that they say is more and more trampling on the rights of states.
But critics respond that the flood of legislation to override the feds is folly that won’t stand up in court and amounts to a transparent display of the political and personal distaste for President Barack Obama. And in some cases, the moves in the states has provoked an administration counter-offensive: Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Kansas after it passed the “Second Amendment Protection Act” threatening legal action if necessary to enforce federal laws.
Even some conservatives - certainly no lovers of the Obama administration - warn that the states are going down the wrong path with nullification, distracted by a what lawmakers think is a silver-bullet solution, but that likely won’t stand up in the courts, when in fact there are much better (and legal) ways for the states to resist.
While most states have wrapped their legislative sessions for the year, the fight on these bills is taking only a brief pause. In Missouri, for example, lawmakers are preparing for a veto session in September, where supporters of a gun measure that would eviscerate any future congressional attempts to regulate gun ownership are planning to attempt to override the governor’s veto. The nullification battle has also spilled over into the courts, with more challenges and rulings expected during the year.
In Kansas, state Rep. John Rubin sponsored successful legislation that dictates that federal gun laws do not apply to firearms and accessories made in Kansas and that never leave its borders, and makes it a felony for any federal agent to enforce those laws within the state.
“The federal government doesn’t have the authority to do a lot of what it’s trying to do these days, from regulating guns within state borders, as my bill deals with, or telling us what kinds of light bulbs to put in our lamps,” Rubin said.
He noted a rise in the number nullification bills.
“I think we have the Obama administration to thank for that.” Rubin said. “The more federal overreach in Obamacare and elsewhere, the more [the administration] chooses to act in ways we believe are unconstitutional, the more we’re going to push back. I would encourage any state to assert to the strongest possible extent against the Obama administration, or any federal administration, rights clearly reserved to the states.”
The Republican lawmaker told POLITICO his bill is about states’ rights — not gun rights.
“The federal government doesn’t have the authority to do a lot of what it’s trying to do these days, from regulating guns within state borders, as my bill deals with, or telling us what kinds of light bulbs to put in our lamps,” Rubin said.
He noted a rise in the number nullification bills.
“We have the Obama administration to thank for that.” Rubin said. “The more federal overreach in Obamacare and elsewhere, the more [the administration] chooses to act in ways we believe are unconstitutional, the more we’re going to push back. I would encourage any state to assert to the strongest possible extent against the Obama administration, or any federal administration, rights clearly reserved to the states.”
But opponents of sweeping nullification measures paint them as misguided, often politically motivated and likely unconstitutional attempts to zero out reasonable and well-intended federal initiatives.
And that’s not just coming from the left. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, argues that nullification is not the answer to states’ concerns.
“There are a rising number of people who are frustrated with what Washington is doing, which is a perfectly legitimate and, in my opinion, correct view of ‘how do we push back?’” Matthew Spalding, vice president of American Studies for Heritage, told POLITICO. “Unfortunately, there’s a minority in that group that thinks nullification is the answer, by which they mean good old-fashioned, South Carolina, John C. Calhoun nullification. That’s deeply mistaken and unfortunate.”
Spalding said states’ better options include legal challenges, not funding federal laws or even refusing to enforce them — but not overruling federal laws with state ones.
“Ironically, the people who say they are trying to defend the Constitution are doing something to undermine it,” he added. “This is sort of a Hail Mary pass. These are in most cases state legislators who are very frustrated. They’re figuring out how to stop these things, how to turn the course of the nation, in my opinion, for good reason, and they’re being told the Supreme Court just upheld [Obamacare]; this guy has been reelected; what can we do? And someone comes around and says, ‘Ah, you can nullify law.’”
Another nullification opponent, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said it’s prepared to fight the recent crop of state gun bills in the courts.
“They are outrageous,” said Brady Center legal director Jon Lowy. “It’s disturbing that there are [state] legislators who are so willing to violate the [U.S.] Constitution but also that they have so little concern for public safety. [Nullification measures] would greatly threaten public safety if they weren’t so patently unconstitutional, so we expect that courts will rather quickly wipe them off the books.”
Robert Levy, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute, told POLITICO that the wave of nullification bids is the result of a “highly polarized” political atmosphere in the country.
“When you get that polarization, you’re going to get these sort of radical proposals,” he said. “So you’re seeing an increase in these sorts of things. A state, or a city, for that matter can refuse to enforce a federal law and even refuse to expend any money to help the feds enforce any law, but that doesn’t mean that they can stop the feds from enforcing their own laws.”
Looking ahead, the next skirmish over nullification will most likely be in the Midwest this fall. Missouri lawmakers are gearing up for a contentious September veto session with opponents of the state’s gun nullification bill hoping to keep it off the books and proponents saying they have enough votes to override the governor’s veto.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Doug Funderburk, predicted a bipartisan override and said the law was needed to push back against the long arm of the federal government encroaching on Americans’ rights.
“It’s time for the states to assert their authority … as the parent in the relationship with the federal government, to take back that role,” Funderburk said.
On the other side, state Rep. Jill Schupp, a vocal opponent of the bill, said, “If we overturn the governor’s veto, I think what we’re saying is Missouri is its own sort of Wild West state. When extremists get involved and put forward legislation like this, it makes all of us come to a grinding halt in terms of reasoned discussion. To make a move that precludes us from having reasoned gun legislation and is an attempt to nullify federal law certainly makes us look like a laughingstock on this issue.”
Will America break up?
I sure as hell HOPE SO.
It sure as hell ain't working in its current mutation.
Rural Coloradans To Vote On Breaking Away As 51st State, Angered By Liberal Policies On Guns, Energy
August 19, 2013
You’ve got North Carolina and North Dakota, so why not Northern Colorado?
Voters in several rural Colorado counties will be asked whether they want to form a new state tentatively named Northern Colorado in the November election, a reaction to the Democrat-controlled state legislature’s “war on rural Colorado.”
The Weld County Commissioners voted unanimously at Monday’s meeting to place a measure on the Nov. 5 ballot asking voters whether they want the county to join other rural counties in forming another state.
“The concerns of rural Coloradans have been ignored for years,” William Garcia, chairman of the Weld County Commissioners, said in a statement. “The last session was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many people. They want change. They want to be heard.”
Three other rural counties — Cheyenne, Sedgwick and Yuma — also plan to place the 51st state referendum on the fall ballot. At least three more counties plan to consider the proposal this week at their commission meetings, said Jeffrey Hare, spokesman for the 51st State Initiative.
Known for its agriculture and oil and gas production, Weld is the largest of the Colorado counties exploring a break with the state after the legislature’s sharp turn to the left with bills restricting access to firearms and doubling the state’s renewable-energy mandate for rural areas.
Democrats control both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office. Two Democratic state senators — Angela Giron and John Morse — are facing Sept. 10 recall elections in response to the legislature’s gun control votes.
Forming a state isn’t easy: Even if the ballot measures pass, the Colorado state legislature would be required to amend the constitution to configure the state’s borders and refer a request for a new state to Congress.
Approving a 51st state would require a majority vote of both houses of Congress, although the Constitution doesn’t require the signature of the president, Mr. Hare said.
“Again, folks say this can never happen. However, we are starting to hear from disenfranchised groups all over the country,” said a post on the 51st State Initiative’s website. “We are truly a divided nation. It is possible, if not likely, that we may not be the only group requesting from Congress the formation of a new state.”
This isn’t the first time disgruntled residents have explored the option of a state split. In the past few decades, movements have sprung up in favor of carving California and Washington into two states.
New York has had a host of proposals aimed at peeling off jurisdictions, including New York City, upstate New York and western New York. The most recent effort was in 2008, when the Suffolk County comptroller proposed splitting off Long Island.
Since the boundaries of the newly independent Colonies were finalized in the 1790s, two states have gained that status by breaking off from extant states. Maine was part of Massachusetts until 1820, and West Virginia seceded from Virginia during the Civil War.
Given the complexities involved with creating a state, Mr. Hare said, the Northern Colorado movement is considering two other options: asking Wyoming to annex Colorado’s northern counties or requesting that the state legislature redraw its Senate districts to give a senator to each of the state’s 64 counties, analogous to how the U.S. apportions seats by state, regardless of their populations.
Colorado now has 35 senators in districts drawn by population, giving the state’s urban areas far greater sway in the state legislature.
“People are looking for hope because they feel like the government is out of control,” said Mr. Hare. “They feel kind of hopeless.”
Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway called Monday’s vote “a very positive move forward” that “gives us a chance to address our grievances from the last legislative session.”
The Greeley Tribune came out against the statehood movement in an Aug. 7 editorial, “Time to drop 51st state idea.”
“While we understand and agree with the message commissioners are trying to send to Denver — rural counties feel disenfranchised — we think Weld residents would be better served if commissioners drop the 51st state idea and focus on engaging the state’s political leaders in a constructive dialogue that addresses their issues,” the editorial said.
They announced it would be on the state ballot in a few weeks (November or might be September, I forget). We also have the special recall election for Giron and Morris - and the Left is up in fucking arms about "wasting money on a special election, JUST BECAUSE the reps 'didn't' vote like the people wanted them too".
LOL
Take em down and break em up!!
Freaking California liberals in Colorado.
Reps are supposed to represent. If all the Representatives did represent their local interests as each areas populace wants to be heard, then Congress would be more wildly debating overall but it would be aligned with the actual intent of the job. I like my current Rep, but not my current Senator.
Sorry to say this Phil, even the ones you like need to go.
Fire them all.
We MUST get out of the mindset that we "like" the "local guy". This is why Pelosi, Reid and the rest of the traitors are still in power.
I dunno. If a House Rep is actually representing their own slice of a states people with their actual wants, they are doing right by their constituents. What has to go is special interests and backroom deals.
Phil, both the people being recalled took money from New York, from Bloomberg to get in office. They ran on other platforms then they went after the guns and because they were the people who tipped the legislature over to Liberal, they took our guns away.
They are NOT representing a majority of anyone. There is a small, vocal and obnoxious anti-gun crusade here in the state. The majority of this state wants their guns. There was no vote put to the people. These laws were put in place by these two people and some in the legislature. They were two most vocal and public figures.
Today almost a million dollars have been given to THEM from Mayor Bloomdickhead for fighting the recall.
The NRA and GOA have given roughly 150,000 dollars to the side trying to kick these fuckers out.
Now, tell me... when two people are the driving force for taking YOUR rights (along with millions of others) - who are they representing?
In my state Rob Bell is a true representative and is currently mine. I have personally written to and received replies from him. I have a picture of him and his family on my desk in fact.
Ken Cuccinelli is running an honest campaign against Terry McAulife. Terry has million from outside groups and superpacs. Ken, not so much. This is the gov race.
Sorry Phil. I don't agree. NONE of them represent us any more. They all have to go. Period. We start over.
Everyone argued with me a few years back about this, about "Fire them All!" and you know what? We still have the same stupid fucks in office. They ALL HAVE TO GO.
Seems to me that Congressional and Senatorial term limits, combined with a repeal of the 17th Amendment that created popular election of Senators, would go a long way towards recreating genuine Republican (and I don't mean GOP) and Constitutional rule in this Country.
Northern California County Board Votes For Secession From State
September 4, 2013
A far Northern California county where residents have complained they lack representation at the state capitol wants to separate from California.
The Record Searchlight of Redding reports (http://bit.ly/1cFTqUG) that the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on Tuesday in favor of a declaration for secession.
According to the newspaper, residents of the majority Republican county lobbied the board in August to consider secession. In addition to a lack of representation in Sacramento, they cited concerns about water rights and a rural fire prevention fee approved by the legislature.
Supporters want other rural counties in Northern California and Southern Oregon to join them in the creation of a new state.
But splitting from California would not be easy. Siskiyou County would have to gain the approval of the state legislature and U.S. Congress.
huh... North Colorado and now North California.
makes sense
Collapse of American Influence Recalls Dis-Integration of Soviet Union, Fall of France
September 7, 2013
Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and prior to that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States.
The Soviet Union crumbled jurisdictionally: In 1990-1991, one country became the 16 formerly constituent republics of that country, and except perhaps for Belarus, none of them show much disposition to return to the Russian fold into which they had been gathered, almost always by brute force, over the previous 300 years.
The cataclysmic decline of France, of course, was the result of being overrun by Nazi Germany in 1940. And while it took until the return of de Gaulle in 1958 and the establishment of the Fifth Republic with durable governments and a serious currency, and the end of the Algerian War in 1962, and the addition of some other cubits to France’s stature, the largest step in its resurrection was accomplished by the Allied armies sweeping the Germans out of France in 1944.
What we are witnessing now in the United States, by contrast, is just the backwash of inept policy-making in Washington, and nothing that could not eventually be put right. But for this administration to redeem its credibility now would require a change of direction and method so radical it would be the national equivalent of the comeback of Lazarus: a miraculous revolution in the condition of an individual (President Obama), and a comparable metamorphosis (or a comprehensive replacement) of the astonishingly implausible claque around him.
Until recently, it would have been unimaginable to conceive of John Kerry as the strongman of the National Security Council. This is the man who attended political catechism classes from the North Vietnamese to memorize and repeat their accusations against his country of war crimes in Indochina, and, inter alia, ran for president in 2004 asserting that while he had voted to invade Iraq in 2003, he was not implicated in that decision because he did not vote to fund the invasion once underway. (Perhaps Thomas E. Dewey would have been an upset presidential winner in 1944 if he had proclaimed his support for the D-Day landings but advocated an immediate cut-off of funds for General Eisenhower’s armies of liberation.)
As has been touched upon here before, the desire to avoid America in another foreign conflict is understandable. But if that is the policy, the president of the United States should not state that presidents of countries in upheaval (e.g., Bashar Assad) “must go,” should not draw “red lines” and ignore them, should not devise plans to punish rogue leaders but not actually damage their war-making ability, should not promise action and send forces to carry out the action, and then have, in current parlance, a public “conversation” with himself about whether to do anything, and should not thereby abdicate his great office in all respects except the salary and perquisites.
A Senate committee has voted President Obama the authority to attack Syria. But he is the commander-in-chief. He has that authority already, and what he is doing is implicitly making the exercise of that power dependent on Congressional approval. How does that square with the presidential oath, which requires of the inductee that he “faithfully execute the office” and that he “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”?
President Truman famously said, “The buck stops here,” and he was right. The American public despises Congress, with good reason. Most of the members are venal, politically cowardly, and incompetent; the idea of those 535 log-rolling gas-bags sharing the command of the United States armed forces does not bear thinking about.
And if the United States is effectively blasé about countries using chemical weapons on their people, as it apparently is about the formerly “unacceptable” development of nuclear weapons by Iran, this depressing news should be imparted to the world explicitly by the administration and not left to be surmised from the waffling of the Congress.
What is more worrisome than the fact that the United States has an inadequate president, is that the public still accords the incumbent a significant degree of support. If the American people, who have responded to intelligent leadership so often within living memory, has become so morally obtuse that it buys into this flimflam, the problem is more profound than I imagined.
What American will need in 2016 is a new president who enunciates a clear policy: foreign intervention only to prevent genocide, to avenge extreme provocations, or to preserve world peace, and in accord with constitutional and international law. That policy would have cut post-Korea war-making to evicting Saddam from Kuwait, the Taliban from Afghanistan, modestly assisting the opponents of Gaddafi and Assad, (as leaders who had monstrously provoked the West), and would have spared everyone the chimerical extravagance of nation-building in hopeless places. Vietnam and the second Iraq War would have been sidestepped altogether.
The Americans show no sign of wanting their country to be regarded as absurd in the world, and they are so America-centric, and so suffused with the heroic mythos of America, that they seem unable to grasp the possibility that it is.
There is a contagion that makes the condition less startling: The United Kingdom suddenly has begun to appear ridiculous, too. The British replaced leaders who did not conduct wars effectively, during the Seven Years’, American Revolutionary, Napoleonic, Crimean, and both World Wars. But never in their history until last week have they had a prime minister who summoned Parliament to seek authority to make war and then was denied that authority. The Grand Alliance of Churchill and Roosevelt, the Special Relationship of Thatcher and Reagan, is reduced to slap-stick, farce.
The country that could pick up the slack and lead is Germany, but it is psychologically incapable. A third of its voters are communists, eco-extremists or cyber-nihilists calling themselves “pirates.” They are still in attrition-therapy over the after-effects of Nazi and communist rule. And the European power that can’t take the lead, because it is almost bankrupt, over-centralized, suffocating in pettifogging regulations and governed by idiots, is France (though it yet has the superb, often misplaced, feline confidence of a Great Power, and admittedly has been magnificent on Libya, Mali and Syria).
Canada could play a role — but first it must acquire an aircraft carrier and the other equipment necessary to project power. For starters, we should buy one of these splendid aircraft carriers the United States is retiring because of the gridlock-fed deficit and the idiocy of sequestration, rename it H.M.C.S. Canada, recruit the 6,000 people necessary for the crew and partner with other countries in the aviation industry that can help provide it with the aircraft it would carry, and show the aid and defense flag in the world. Nearly 70 years ago, recall, we had two — admittedly much smaller — aircraft carriers despite having a population of just 11.5-million. At the least we could get a helicopter carrier.
The United States is a hard-working, patriotic country with a talented work force and a political system that can generate policy and govern and lead effectively. Unless the environmentalist extremists who predicted that by now Manhattan would be underwater, the average temperature in Toronto in February would be 20 centigrade, and that we would all be gasping for oxygen, find richer electoral sugar daddies than the oil industry and get political control of that country (almost impossible), the United States will be self-sufficient in energy in a few years.
This will end the suicidal U.S. balance-of-payments deficit, cut the worst terrorist-supporting, oil-producing regimes in the world off at the ankles financially, and drastically reduce the federal government budget deficit.
I have always thought this. Republican or Democrat they're all the same. They want their share of pork and they want the populace cowed into not being angry about it. But only a revolution would accomplish what you're suggesting and I'm not sure weakening our nation at this point is the best way to go. A second civil war or revolution would be the lit fuse that starts WWIII because China or Russia would make their move during that weakened state. On the other hand I sometimes wonder if maybe it's time for the world to reboot as it were.