Friday, April 17, 2009

Eagles, Eagles, Eagles, etc., etc, etc. - Beautiful! ...thought I'd share.

Source: WhatsInYourEmail

Update Note: If the pictures do not appear please click here:

Feeding the Eagles

In January the weather was so cold that the bald eagles were cruising over our houses looking for hapless cats to make a quick meal. Some kind souls decided to feed the eagles down at Goose Spit so they would survive the cold spell. Here’s what happened!
A former teaching colleague took these photos in front of his home. They are incredible!
Feeding the Eagles! Comox, B.C., Vancouver Island , Jan. 2009
A beautiful morning feeding the eagles. Jan.2009

Feeding the Eagles Jan.2009

Eagles fighting for the fish. Jan.2009

No zoom! I was this close! Jan.2009

Aren’t they funny! Jan.2009

Here are the men who were feeding them Jan.2009
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When we are all sucked into this whirlpool will you recall who it was that warned you? ...but then it will be too late!

Into the Maelstrom: Converging Crises
Can't you feel it? Events are moving faster and faster now. We're sailing into the whirlpool. Threats which once seemed faraway and merely hypothetical are now growing exponentially, swirling around us, drawing us ever closer into the vortex. And we seem helpless. We procrastinate and equivocate. We can't make up our minds. We're lost in a hopeless labyrinth of ambiguities and euphemisms.

Meanwhile, circling us like sharks sensing blood, our enemies are sensing our weakness. Ahmadinejad steps up his threatening rhetoric: They will become nuclear, they will have their bomb. The UN and NATO are either anti-American or useless. The hopelessly conflicted IAEA is impotent: pro-Muslim Al Baradi faults the West and sides with Iran. Kim Jong Ill drops out of the non-proliferation talks and give the rest of the world the finger. Russia and China sense their main chance and are eagerly building up their arsenals. All of the petty potentates are rattling their sabers. The ragtag Somali pirates, the motley teenage Al-Shabaab, are calling our bluff and threatening revenge. The reinvigorated Taliban is busy with their bloody Reconquista of Afghanistan. The crises are converging. Can't you feel it?

Alas, our captain and crew are woefully inexperienced and morally conflicted and the helmsman has lost his grip on the wheel. Are we really doomed to founder? Where is that brave pilot to guide us through this dark night and bring us into safe harbor? Where is that barely remembered voice of manliness and courage? Who will replace the fallen helmsman before it is too late?

We call out but no one answers. Are we really all alone? Abandoned by an incompetent captain and a useless crew? Are we, the passengers, our only hope of salvation? To save our great ship must we all become mutineers?

The great whirlpool is drawing us steadily into its deadly grasp. Soon our decisions will be made for us by forces beyond our control. Our enemies grow more emboldened while our nominal allies vacillate or turn their backs. Terror groups will become nuclear. Israel will be crippled or annihilated. North Korea will develop long range nuclear capability and blackmail the world. Russia and China will thwart us at every turn. Western Europe will fall to the Muslim menace and sharia law will be incorporated into our legal system. Our street gangs will run rampant and our borders will remain porous. Americanism will become a lost idea.

Is this how our great ship will founder? Are we truly helpless in the maelstrom? Someone please tell me I'm just being melodramatic, that things aren't as perilous as they seem, that the maelstrom is nothing but an overblown metafor. That we'll pull through somehow, we always do.

Someone?
Anyone?
Posted by Roger W. Gardner at 10:33 AM
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Ref: "The UN and NATO are either anti-American or useless." ...I would say, "Both!"
It is my opinion Roger, that since the time you posted this a few days ago, things are as perilous as they seem...Cicero was right; the enemy is within. - N.E.H.

Just gotta tell ya…"It makes a granddaddy proud!"

So I planned a little trip to Austin, Texas to visit my daughter and granddaughter at a time of both religious and political importance. Easter was approaching within the week followed by tax day April 15th and the 2nd coming of the tea party which was not exactly a duplication of the 1773 event…but pretty close!

We arrived in Austin on Good Friday a day later than the plan (pulling a camper trailer does slow one down some) and set up camp at Lake Travis.

Saturday evening the campground put on a barbeque for the residents topped off with some music for entertainment. All during this time my little seven year old granddaughter Isabella was singing to herself some song that she had trouble remembering the words. Forgetting the lyrics was not as important to me as it was to her for I was impressed that the song she was attempting came from the fifties era. In any event, I spotted the now lonely microphone over in the corner of the log cabin style pavilion and suggested that Isabella try singing the song over the loud speakers.

By the time I had adjusted the settings on the microphone’s amplifier and Isabella’s approach some changes unbeknown to me occurred. Isabella began her singing. No, not the fifty something song that I expected but instead, The Star Spangled Banner! Wow! I was impressed!

So I began taking pictures forgetting for the moment that my camera can also take videos I snapped away. By the time Isabella was ending her patriotic contribution to the evening’s festivities I switched the camera over to the video function and caught the last few lines with just a bit of the standing ovation she received from the strangers out of view of the camera’s lens.

A young man approached me afterwards and said, “That little girl brought tears to my eyes as she sang those wonderful words…Oh say can you see…” Just gotta tell ya…It makes a granddaddy proud!

Monday, April 13, 2009

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 - Obama the would be dictator... Did I say, "Would be" ???


Note: This post is yet another wake up call to all Americans.
Just how many wake up calls do you need?
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Where’s the Outrage for the Cybersecurity Act?

Our government will control everything on the Internet, under the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, introduced by Senators John Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe. If enacted, this “big brother” law would allow government scrutiny over everything posted to the Internet, while granting the White House “unprecedented control over computer software and Internet services” and powers “to access private online data, regulate the cyber security industry and even shut down Internet traffic.”

Under the guise of safety, the bill would grant a White House appointed cybersecurity “czar” unprecedented authority to shut down private domestic networks or limit Internet traffic in a “critical” information network during a cybersecurity emergency. What distinguishes a critical information network or constitutes a cybersecurity emergency would be determined by the president. The act would also impart authority to the Commerce Department to track cybersecurity threats and override any existing laws, regulations, rules, or policies restricting access to security data from private networks.

The bill would not only make the president more powerful, but it would also allow the Secretary of Commerce access to all information on a network, which could make the network less safe and more vulnerable to intruders or terrorists. Yet the senators remain resolute to remedy their perceived crisis. Rockefeller insists on protecting “critical infrastructure at all costs” and Snowe demands swift action to avoid “a cyber-Katrina.” Their rhetoric of a looming crisis matches the fearmongering manufactured for the bailout and stimulus bills, given that the bills required drastic intervention and immediate action with little or no consideration for a downside or potential harm.

The proposed legislation “would empower the government to set and enforce security standards for private industry for the first time.” The president could use the authority granted in the proposed law to suspend the effective use of the Internet to circulate information or coordinate activities outside mainstream media outlets or government-approved channels. Such a law could lead to a network police force that would levy fines and shut down private Web sites that government officials determine inappropriate or offensive. The act could also open the door for more Internet censorship legislation, and follow the path taken by Australia and China.

In November, more than half of America’s electorate handed Barack Obama and the progressives carte blanche power to rule over the lives of all Americans, and now they are using that power by attempting to manage and control the flow of information through the only remaining medium capable of resuscitating personal freedom and individual liberty. The Americans who voted for the progressives have put the lives of all Americans in the steely grip of Leviathan, and no Chicago Tea Party, 9-12 Project, or surge in talk radio listeners will prevent the government from wielding its power.

Once again, a host Republican has engaged in parasitism to sacrifice her party for a perceived symbiotic relationship that in fact benefits only the Democrat Party. Snowe and her progressive colleagues in the Republican Party have transformed the party into a sacrificial organism to nourish and support extreme socialist objectives. And the corporate magpies on TV and talk radio seem to be too preoccupied with hawking books, espousing inane, meaningless platitudes, bathing in laudatory praises from fawning sycophants, and acting magnanimous in damning both political parties, to make their listeners aware of this transformation.

Ronald Reagan, Henry David Thoreau, and Thomas Paine understood that a government works best only when it governs least, and that big government inevitably increases servitude, restrains liberty, and destroys freedom. While the Republican Party languishes, the approaching tyranny is poised to lead humanity headlong into what will become a deeply bloodstained century. Yet, there is no outcry from the fourth estate, which was traditionally the guardian of liberty, in opposition to the introduction of the Cybersecurity Law.

Will the media raise its collective voice against this new Orwellian power play as it did when the progressives touted the new Fairness Doctrine and advocated enforced localism? Not likely, because progressives’ outrage reaches a resounding crescendo only when the buttering of their bread is involved.

Open Congress, a project of the Sunlight Foundation, has posted the full text of this bill here. On their website, you can comment on this legislation by line item. You can fight this impending police state control by writing, faxing, emailing, and calling your Senators. Tell them to oppose S.773, the Cybersecurity Act of 2009.

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