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Woman Tasered in Front of Daughter After Cutting McDonalds Drive-Thru LineBy Olivia Katrandjian | ABC News Blogs – 17 hrs ago **SNIP** Employees at the McDonalds in Hope Mills, N.C., refused to serve Evangeline Lucca and told her to go to the back of the line. Lucca, 37, refused to move, and blocked the drive-thru for 20 minutes before police arrived on the scene, authorities said. When deputies arrived, Lucca was "defiant," "would not get off McDonalds property," and was "threatening the deputies," according to Debbie Tanna, a public information officer for the Cumberland County Sherriff's Office. **SNIP** "Two or...

Rep. Dr. Ron Paul is the only Candidate now running who: 1.) Has a comprehensive platform that will cut BASELINE Federal spending. 2.) Insists that all of the planks in his platform are consistent with the US Constitution. 3.) Accepts the fact that the USA can no longer financially afford to be the World’s policeman. 4.) Fully understands how to dismantle the disastrous Federal medical “entitlements” of Medicare, Medicaid, and the illegal Obama”care.” 5.) Has a comprehensive plan to abolish or dramatically shrink 5 Federal Departments, or Bureaus. These positions set Dr. Paul apart from the rest of the Candidates...

Gov. Jerry Brown proposed Thursday slashing nearly $1.4 billion in welfare and child care aid for the poor while holding voters liable for $5 billion in education funding with a November tax measure. The Democratic governor announced his January budget plan this afternoon after his proposal was inadvertently leaked on his Department of Finance website. He estimates the state faces a $9.2 billion general fund deficit through June 2013, which he proposes to bridge with mostly cuts and taxes. Brown will ask voters to pass a $6.9 billion ballot measure in November that raises taxes on sales and income starting...

We Stand for Principle Over Politicsand the Establishment Can't Stand It December 21, 2011 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: "House Democrats tried Wednesday to force a vote on the Senate’s two-month extension of the payroll-tax cut, but Republicans gaveled the House closed to prevent them from having a chance, as top GOP leaders huddled down the hall to try to figure a way out of the mess. The House was set to hold a pro forma session, but two top Democrats, Reps. Steny H. Hoyer and Chris Van Hollen, demanded to be recognized to try to force a vote on the...

The U.S. Justice Department issued a scathing report Monday that chronicles what it says are numerous violations of the civil rights of Latinos by the police department in East Haven, Conn. The rebuke of East Haven police was released just a week after the Justice Department blasted the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona for unlawfully discriminating against Hispanics. The federal government also said last week that it has concerns about discrimination in the Seattle Police Department in a report that found its officers have engaged in a pattern of unconstitutionally using excessive force during arrests. The Justice Department's report...

The video of the savage beating at Dean College in Franklin, MA has not yet been scrubbed from this site. It's already being scrubbed from YouTube and, of course, the edited versions seen on the news do not convey the full story.

Nearly half of registered voters in California say they personally identify with the Occupy movement and an even larger number said they agreed with the reason behind the protest, according to a Field Poll released today. The poll found that among registered voters in the state, 46 percent said they identify with the movement while 58 percent said they agreed with the reasons that are fueling it. Pollsters did not ask about specific reasons, leaving respondents to decide those themselves. But California voters also have negative feelings toward the movement, with 49 percent answering "not much" when asked how much...

My father once told me a story about when he was a boy. He said there was a certain man who every now and again would visit his family and give him 10 cents for an ice cream soda each time. Well, one day this fellow came ‘a callin’, but for some reason, on this occasion the dime wasn’t offered. Being a little tyke who had become accustomed to the gift, my dad asked, “Where’s my 10 cents?” He never got that dime again. The man taught my father a moral lesson: Don’t develop a spirit of entitlement. It’s one...

...In the 19th century, even though capitalism had only existed for a short time, and had just started putting a dent in pre-capitalism’s legacy of poverty, the vast, vast majority of Americans were already able to support their own lives through their own productive work. Only a tiny fraction of a sliver of a minority depended on assistance and aid–and there was no shortage of aid available to help that minority. ... “Those in need,” historian Walter Trattner writes, “. . . looked first to family, kin, and neighbors for aid, including the landlord, who sometimes deferred the rent; the...

HONG KONG — Chinese political and business leaders are increasingly triumphant after two decades of rapid economic growth that lifted unprecedented millions of people out of poverty and turned the nation into an economic superpower, saying their success proves its political and economic system is superior to the Western model. In extensive talks with a series of Chinese leaders, an oft-cited point of criticism is the gridlock and “dysfunction” they see in Washington. They say fawning by U.S. political leaders seeking re-election has created an “entitlement culture” where the public has grown dependent on government largesse. Now, with the United...

The six weeks allotted to save monetary union have expired. The G20 has come and gone, yet no workable firewall is in place as the drama engulfs Italy and threatens to light the fuse on the world’s third largest edifice of debt. As of late Friday, the yield spread on Italian 10-year bonds over German Bunds was a post-EMU record of 458 basis points. This is dangerously close to the point where cascade-selling begins and matters spiral out of control. The European Central Bank has so far bought time by holding a series of retreating lines but either it has...

Prime Minister George Papandreou will press forward with a referendum on the European Union's financing package and will win a vote of confidence, reports Bloomberg. "We’re not retreating and we haven’t retreated... http://www.breakingeconomics.com/2011/11/papandreou-will-press-on-with.html

Greece's startling decision to call a referendum on last week's EU summit deal has set off wild tremors across the eurozone, pushing Italy to the brink of a perilous downward spiral. The country's ruling Pasok party appeared to be splintering on Tuesdsay night, leaving it unclear whether the governent of premier George Papandreou can survive a parliamentary vote of confidence on Friday. Signs that the EU's pain-stakingly negotiated Grand Plan is unravelling within days has been a profound shock to confidence. A frantic search for safe havens led to the second biggest one-day fall ever recorded in Europe's AAA bond...

The family of a disabled Ugandan drug lord who had his carer killed because they feared he knew too much are threatening to sue the health service after the gangster died. Clifford Denty was given round-the clock treatment on the NHS after he was left paralysed in a nightclub shooting. No expense was spared for the Ugandan immigrant. Thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money was spent converting his council property and he was provided with a team of carers and given a converted Mercedes under a Government scheme. But, although he was confined to a wheelchair, Denty continued his drug...

The movement to grant amnesty and eventual U.S. citizenship to some 12 million illegal aliens has turned the issue from the sounds of silence to the sounds of entitlement. The entitlement mentality did not begin in America, but it has flourished here in the last century. The American claim on entitlements to health care, retirement income and seemingly any "right" one can conceive was birthed from the womb of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, reared by Kennedy's New Frontier and came of age in Johnson's Great Society. U.S. citizens, fanned by the flames of those who encourage class warfare, are increasing...

There was telling moment during the CNN Republican presidential debate: Asked about the possibility of repealing George W. Bush’s Medicare prescription-drug benefit, which is adding some $17 trillion to Medicare’s unfunded liabilities, every one of the candidates pledged varying degrees of fealty to the program. No one came out for significantly cutting this vestige of Bush-style big-government conservatism, let alone repealing it. This put the current crop of Republicans to the left of John McCain, who at least campaigned in favor of means-testing the program in 2008. The failure to stand up against one of the Bush administration’s most obvious...

Charles Ponzi after being released from prison, 1935 Part of FDR's statement upon signing the Social Security Bill: "We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family ..." History will judge the Social Security Bill to be the grandest Ponzi scheme in all of history; unless, the government continues on with the Anthropogenic Global Warming regulations. These may sound like wild ambiguous statements to you...

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels defended his description of Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme" Tuesday, wading into a debate about the popular entitlement program that has enveloped the Republican primary. Daniels describes the program as such in his yet-to-be-released book, Keeping the Republic, echoing a critique that Texas Gov. Rick Perry made in his own book last year. Leading Perry challenger and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has seized on the "Ponzi scheme" comments , arguing that Perry needlessly "scared seniors" by describing the program in that way.  But Daniels sought to downplay the significance of the descriptor Tuesday morning...

During the recent GOP presidential debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that Social Security is a "monstrous lie" and a "Ponzi scheme." More and more people are coming to see that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, but is it a lie, as well? Let's look at it. Here's what the 1936 government pamphlet on Social Security said: "After the first 3 years — that is to say, beginning in 1940 — you will pay, and your employer will pay, 1.5 cents for each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. ... Beginning in 1943, you will pay 2...

Note that the President began his Demosthenian peroration by flailing at a straw man. Nobody wants to dismantle government. Many people want it to function within well-defined limits as it's drawn up in the Constitution. Nobody wants to refund everyone's money. Many people resent as a usurpation the fact that the federal government should have laid claim to it in the first place, and put itself in the position to decide whether to refund it to the people who earned it or bestow it upon others whom politicians deem more worthy. Nobody is suggesting that everyone should write their own...