Obama Over and Out!

Published: Sat, 06/22/13

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In This Issue:
Pig States at the Federal Trough By E.J. Smith
VIDEO: Top Three Accessories for Your AR-15 By E.J. Smith
The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth By Richard C. Young
How Can You Prevent The Obama Government from Spying on You By Richard C. Young
It’s All in the Original Articles of Confederation! By Richard C. Young
Obama Over and Out! By E.J. Smith
America Is Not a Democracy By Richard C. Young
EMP Attack: No Power for Two Years By E.J. Smith
WHAT I LEARNED IN PARIS PART IV By Richard C. Young
Happy, Happy, Happy By E.J. Smith

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Happy, Happy, Happy

Happy, Happy, Happy should sum up how Phil Roberston feels these days. He is the patriarch on the A&E show “Duck Dynasty” which is about his family duck call business, Duck Commander. His #1 bestselling book “Happy, Happy, Happy” came out this Spring and is in its 13^th printing having already sold 680,000 copies. The season finale had 10 million viewers. And it all started with a simple duck call. The Wall Street Journal reports:

“Happy, Happy, Happy” chronicles Mr. Robertson’s rough upbringing in rural Louisiana, where his family farmed and hunted their food and lived without indoor plumbing; his conversion to evangelical Christianity after years of hard drinking, bar fights and philandering; and his rags-to-riches success story as an entrepreneur who turned his patented “Duck Commander” duck calls into a multimillion-dollar business. The book is breezy and conversational, packed with bits of advice for simpler and happier living, such as, “Suck the head off a crawfish. You’ll want to do it again and again,” and “What makes me happy is going out and blowing a duck’s head off.”

The book, like the TV show, seems to resonate with people who long for a less-hectic life, one that is grounded in faith, family and nature. It targets multiple demographics, including hunters and fishermen, entrepreneurs and small-business owners, and evangelical Christians. It features the kind of self-made success story that has always appealed to American readers. Still, no one anticipated how big a hit it would be.

Phil’s take on how it all started.

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WHAT I LEARNED IN PARIS PART IV

Visit Paris like a bohemian. Eschew the swells, the faux art nouveau, the posers and the limousine liberals. Visit Paris like Oscar Wilde and Hemmingway visited Paris.

In fact Oscar Wilde’s last home in the 6^th arrondissment is my first recommended hotel for you. You will be settled in at graceful rue des Beaux Arts just off rue de Seine, one of our primo favorite streets in all of Paris. L’Hotel is quintessential French and features its highly favored starred Le Restaurant. And L’Hotel’s location on the Rive Gauche is ideal. For example, you’re about a 4 minute walk to Pont des Arts footbridge that allows you to cross the Seine to the Cour Carree of the Louvre.

You need only roll down the street for some of the best eating in Paris. We recently had the opportunity to meet and speak with New Zealander Drew Hare, who Debbie and I kiddingly refer to as the unofficial mayor of rue de Seine. When you meet Drew, as you will (he is always in residence at one of his three outstanding rue de Seine eateries), you will quickly see why we have tabbed Drew, a gregarious and pleasant gentleman, mayor of Rue de Seine. If you have time, he will give you the top-down story about how he and partner Juan Sanchez have become two of Paris’ most revered and successful restaurateurs.

We first meet Drew while Debbie and I were having lunch at the bar (the way to go) at Drew’s Fish la Boissonnerie at 69 rue de Seine. Ollie, the English bartender, who appears to knew every local’s life story, helped make a fine time even finer. Needless to say the house specialty was fish. While eating, we couldn’t help noticing the non-stop line in front of a little place named Cosi located directly across the street. In the past we had previously noted the regular lines and were puzzled as to why. Well, Drew quickly filled us in. It turns out that Drew and Juan own Cosi as well as Fish la Boissonnerie. The mystery was solved with three words from Drew—focaccia-like bread! In that we had some focaccia with our lunch, we already had a good idea why. Made-to-order foccaci sandwiches are stuffed with fresh from the market veggies, cheese and jambon fillings and are a huge hit with local sandwich aficionados.

As we were getting ready to settle up, Drew and Ollie mentioned that we might like to return that evening for dinner at Semilla, next door to Cosi. We did and glad is an understatement. This mellow bistro is filled with locals and visitors like us on the advice of Drew or Ollie or perhaps the one and only Patricia Wells. Do not venture to Paris without a full day’s scrolling of Patricia’s website. OK then, three awesome Drew Hare establishments literally within an eight iron shot from your commodious accommodations at L’Hotel.

Rue de Seine is an open air market street loaded with markets and shops that you will want to check out, whether for a glass of Cote de Rhone or a French draft 1664 beer at Le Palette, a café-bar frequented by Hemingway and Picasso as well as Jim Morrison. You’ll want to stop by Da Rssa for, among many other delicacies, some of Spain’s finest Jamon Iberique de Bellota, to nosh there or take on a picnic. Across the street, you can pick up a rotisserie chicken (hopefully Breese or Landes, but a red label notation is a must), or a bottle of Côte-Rôtie or Châteauneuf-du-Pape from Juan Sanchez’s fabulous wine shop around the corner from Semilla and Cosi. As you can see, Rue de Seine is a great ‘hood.

I am just getting started with my 6^th arrondissment intelligence for you. In front of part five in my 2013 Paris series, I would have you consider Hotel Lutetia, but be forewarned: this illustrious belle époque hotel is slated for renovations soon. Des Saints Peres and Hotel St. Germain-des-Pres are other fine options in the arrondissment of Paris’ original lost generation—the 6^th.

Warm regards,

Dick

P.S. To ice the cake on a potential visit to what is simply the most fascinating city in the world, I advise you rent on your Apple TV ( a lifesaver if you have grandkids) Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris and Julie & Julia, featuring Meryl Streeps’ astonishing performance as Julia Childs.

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EMP Attack: No Power for Two Years

The government needs to either privatize the nation’s electric grid or get to work securing it. The grid is woefully exposed to the risks of an EMP attack or a solar flare. In a recent report Lloyds of London estimates power outages of two years! The Washington Examiner reports:

Dubbed the Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage Act, the legislation would push the federal government to install grid-saving devices such as surge protectors to protect against an attack.

“It is critical that we protect our major transformers from cascading destruction. The Shield Act encourages industry to develop standards necessary to protect our electric infrastructure against both natural and man-made EMP events,” said Rep. Trent Franks, the Arizona Republican who is offering up the bipartisan bill.

Electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, has come into focus because of fears the sun is pushing out unusually big solar flares that can disrupt the electric grid. Defense officials are also worried about a terrorist attack, possibly in the form of a small nuclear bomb exploded overhead.

“This is serious stuff,” said former Pentagon official Frank Gaffney, who heads the Center for Security Policy. But, he added, there is a growing bipartisan consensus to protect the electric grid.

Any EMP attack could be damaging, said Gaffney. He cited a new Lloyds of London report that determined that the area from Washington, D.C., to New York could be without electricity for up to two years in a major solar flare-up.

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America Is Not a Democracy

America Is Not a Democracy. The Word Democracy Does Not Appear in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. The Founders Gave Us a Federal Republic.

Walter Williams writes, “Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead government is a protector of rights…. It’s Congress that poses the greatest threat to our liberties.”

Based on our recent trip to Washington, I would say it is well past the time Americans can turn the ship of state around and return to the republican form of Government intended by the Founders and spelled out in the Constitution. If you are counting on Democrats or Republicans to turn things around, it just ain’t going to happen. If you have not been to Washington in a while, you will be slack jawed by the size of the infrastructure: massive federal government buildings one block after another and a never ending array of huge office buildings crammed with tens of thousands of lawyers, accountants and lobbyists. Deeply entrenched Democrat and Republican House and Senate members have zero interest in the wishes of the Founders, the Constitution, or, for that matter, Dick Young or you.

The job of forcing Washington to alter course is now in the hands of individual states. If Americans mean to shrink the federal government, junk the tax code, repeal Obamacare and Dodd Frank, and build a wall around the Second Amendment, the states are going to have to do the heavy lifting. Vermont and Colorado, to name two, are in an active phase to reverse. Your sheriff can play a big part. Your sheriff is responsible to you and cannot be overrun by federal officials. Your governor can help. Obviously I am looking to small- and medium-sized red states, especially southern ones. The clock is ticking and a broad-based national states’ rights effort is the best way to knock back the beast that is the unconstitutional federal government in Washington. How ironic to pass by the IRS, the Department of Education, and the Federal Reserve all on or near Constitution Avenue. The Founders and the Constitution intended none of these gigantic institutions. And yet, all squat menacingly on Constitution Ave. I would shutter all three as part of an initial re-vamping in Washington. What’s your guess as to how many Senators would be on ball with such constitutional house cleaning?

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Obama Over and Out!

Americans have finally awoken to the fact that our country is adrift and leaderless. CNN polls show:

President Barack Obama’s approval rating dropped 8 percentage points over the past month to 45%, the president’s lowest rating in more than 18 months, according to a CNN/ORC International survey released on Monday.

And Obama’s disapproval rating soared 9 points to 54% since mid-May.

Even more surprising: The overall decline in his approval rating was partially fueled by a plunge in support from younger Americans, a huge base of Obama’s support.

Nial Ferguson, author of “The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die”, writes in today’s Wall Street Journal how in 1883 Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the power of the individual in America. And notes that If Tocqueville was still with us today he would think that France conquered America.- E.J. Smith

Jefferson, Mason, Henry and the founders organized the United States as a states rights first Federal Republic, not a central government-centric democracy. Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville wrote profoundly on the subject.

American presidents since Reagan have governed in total disdain and disregard for the wishes and intent of the founders.- Dick Young

Nial Ferguson writes:

Genius that he was, Tocqueville saw this transformation of America coming.

Toward the end of “Democracy in America” he warned against the government becoming “an immense tutelary power . . . absolute, detailed, regular . . .

cover[ing] [society's] surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way.”

Tocqueville also foresaw exactly how this regulatory state would suffocate the spirit of free enterprise: “It rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces [the] nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”

If that makes you bleat with frustration, there’s still hope.

My search engine provider Ixquick has, for fourteen years, been very outspoken about protecting people’s privacy and civil liberties. Ixquick rightly believes that programs like PRISM undermine our privacy, disrupt faith in governments, and are a danger to the free Internet. Ixquick has never provided a single byte of user data to the U.S. government, or any other government or agency. Ixquick, unlike Facebook, Google, etc., has not been involved in the web of PRISM. Ixquick does not store any user data, record your IP address, does not track cookies. As such, there is literally no data to access about you on Ixquick’s servers. I have a lot more big time info for you coming up in part three of this series.

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The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth

Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., has created one of the most vital books on the health of your family you will ever find. The lavishly illustrated, 358-page weighty tome gives you more vital information on foods that can keep your family healthy than any other publication I have ever come across. And I am always on the look out. I have given the book to family members and often advise it for others.

I have now selected a “Great 10” list of food choices to share with you. My goal here is pass on ideas that perhaps you did not previously know about. OK then, here is the first of my 10 selected healthiest foods.

Celery. That’s right, Johnny rates celery “number one for treating high blood pressure” Jonny explains that his hypertension go-to-guy, Dr. Mark Houston, head of the Hypertension Institute at St. Thomas Hospital and Medical Center in Nashville, has celery at the top of his list of foods for his patients with high blood pressure.

Your best approach to self-defense is to keep-it-simple. I’ve trained with Adam Painchaud, Director of Sig Sauer Academy. Here are his top three accessories for your AR-15.

SIG SAUER Academy students and Pro Shop customers often ask us how to set up and trick out the AR15 rifle. All of us on the instructor staff maintain the same philosophy: keep it simple and practical. Bottom line, there are tons of great accessories for the AR15 including triggers, stocks, mags, grips, sights, scopes, rails, bi-pods, etc. However, for most common rifle tasks these “top three” accessories will get the job done. These three are in no particular order and are all equally important for a good functional AR setup.

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Pig States at the Federal Trough

The Tax Foundation does a great job in getting its point across fast. In this piece they show which states depend most heavily on federal aid as a percentage of state general revenue. I was surprised by some of the Red States on this list such as Mississippi which relies on the fed for 49% of its general revenue. If there’s going to be a states right movement then these states need to stop eating so much from the federal trough. Richard Borean of The Tax Foundation illustrates that truth here:

This week, our Monday Map illustrates what percentage of a state’s general revenue is made up of federal aid. Mississippi relies more heavily on federal assistance than other states, with 49% of its total general revenue coming from federal aid. Close behind are Louisiana at 46.5% and Arizona at 45.7%. On the other end of the spectrum, Alaska relies on federal aid for only 24% of its general revenue, followed closely by Delaware at 25.9% and North Dakota at 26%.