Musings of a Real Texas Cowgirl

This blog contains the thoughts of a real Texas cowgirl. They may pertain to politics, religion, or life in general. If anything herein offends you, please go to another blog. If you disagree with anything herein, kindly use facts and intelligent argument. Anyone making personal attacks against Cowgirl or any commenter will be banned.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

A Very Suspicious Influenza

I hope this doesn't come across as paranoid or conspiracy nuttish, but have you heard about the new combo swine/human/avian flu in Mexico? One article says, "The virus is an influenza A virus, carrying the designation H1N1. It contains DNA from avian, swine and human viruses, including elements from European and Asian swine viruses, said the CDC, which is already working on a vaccine."

The same article goes on to say that while at least 20 Mexicans have died from this virus, there may have been 40 other people who died from it as well. Plus, there are 1,000 "suspected cases" so far. Oh yes, and it seems to be killing people between the ages of 25 and 45.

Matt Drudge reports that the U.S. has no plan to close borders to Mexico.

So shall we look at this from a somewhat skeptical point of view?

1. Most influenzas affect the weakest among us: children and the elderly. This strain(s) seems to be deadliest to healthy adults. The Spanish flu which killed millions in the early 20th century, also affected this age group.

2. Mexico is on the verge of governmental collapse. What age group would be involved in fighting for or against the current government?

3. How would a 3 different deadly viruses combine in nature? Would such a deadly combo require human intervention? As I recall, the swine flu was transmitted from pigs to people in direct contact with them. Likewise, the bird flu was only transmitted to people in direct contact with the fowl. Apparently, none of the people diagnosed thus far with this virus has been in contact with either pig or fowl.

4. If, this virus is indeed the beginning of a pandemic, as the numerous reports suggest, why wouldn't the U.S. close our southern borders to protect its citizens?

5. This is very suspicious to me. If this story is true, then the virus would appear to me to be for the purpose of age-specific population control. Or, even more sneaky, a preventative vaccination allegedly developed specific to this virus combo, could contain God knows what, and the governments could mandate vaccination of entire populations.

I'm keeping a close eye on this one. Anyone who has ever trusted the Mexican government or the World Health Organization is an idiot, and now, sad to say, I don't trust my own government at all.

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Sunday, April 19, 2009

East Coast Disconnect

Peggy Noonan wrote a most bizarre piece this week, entitled Goodbye Bland Affluence. It appears that Peggy is bemoaning that people are choosing to "...give up credit cards, satellite television, high-tech toys and restaurant dining ... to become more self sufficient, and be 21st century homesteaders, raising pigs and chickens, planning a garden and installing a wood furnace."

Peggy seems to think that due to the economy, people will leave the cities, returning to the countryside to live a life of canning produce, working in gardens, raising animals, and their homes will no longer be showpieces, but rather "frayed" looking. What pomposity!

Are the cities the only places worth living? I think not. I wouldn't live in a city for any reason. Why would you want people always nearby. Other houses 10 feet away from your house would sure put a damper on the fun of the traditional howling at the full moon. Can you imagine what the neighbors would think and do (call 911) if they heard a family howling. I can't see another house from my house, and that's the way I like it.

Because we grow our own food, does that make us poor? Does that make us uneducated? Does that make us in any way inferior to the poor schmucks who live in a place more resembling an ant farm, and are completely dependent on strangers to provide food, shelter and clothing for them. Quite the contrary to my mind.

After I read Noonan's article I had my husband read it. His reaction was the same as mine. Where's the news here? We've been self-sufficient for almost 20 years. We chose to raise our child in the country, and we definitely didn't need things like gymboree. (which is another story, but bottom line, if a 2 year old can't figure out how to do a somersault, the kid has bigger problems than not being able to do a somersault.)

The fascinating part of this piece by Noonan is her prediction that many people will leave NYC in search of more "authenticity" in their lives. It would seem to be more accurate that people will at some point leave NYC in search of food and affordable housing.

I'm glad to be ahead of the game, Peggy. It's gonna be real interesting to watch people who think food originates at the grocery store find out what hard work is involved in producing the food they presently take for granted. And God help them if it ever gets to the point we have to spin and sew to make our own clothes.

Oh, and Peggy, by the way, it is possible to live in the country, raise your own food, teach your children at home, take care of livestock, and still have a house that is a showpiece, and doesn't look the least bit frayed.

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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Investment?!?! Sheesh, why didn't I think of that??

In an article entitled "Fear and Greed Have Sales of Guns and Ammo Shooting Up", the increase in the purchase of guns and ammunition is accredited to, "...stocking up... in anticipation of new gun-control laws, while others say they're worried about deteriorating public safety as the economy worsens.....But it's also clear that part of the gun-buying rally is driven by people ... who are buying weapons the way others invest in a hot stock."

Well, dadgummit! Here I've been patiently explaining to people that the possibility of severe gun control laws is looming on the horizon, that as conditions break down in the country, people will turn feral, and, of course, you never know what the Feds have up their sleeves.

And, now I realize, all I had to say was, "Oh that AR? It's just an investment."

Note to self: Henceforth, "It's just an investment."

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Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Please define "rightwing extremist"

Here is the entire article. I have highlighted the things that apparently define a "rightwing extremist".

The Washington Times
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Federal agency warns of radicals on right

Audrey Hudson (Contact) and Eli Lake (Contact)

The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officials about a rise in "rightwing extremist activity," saying the economic recession, the election of America's first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias.

A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines "rightwing extremism in the United States" as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.

"It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration," the warning says.

The White House has distanced itself from the analysis. When asked for comment on its contents, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said, "The President is focused not on politics but rather taking the steps necessary to protect all Americans from the threat of violence and terrorism regardless of its origins. He also believes those who serve represent the best of this country, and he will continue to ensure that our veterans receive the respect and benefits they have earned."

The nine-page document was sent to police and sheriff's departments across the United States on April 7 under the headline, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."

It says the federal government "will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months" to gather information on "rightwing extremist activity in the United States."

The joint federal-state activities will have "a particular emphasis" on the causes of "rightwing extremist radicalization."

Homeland Security spokeswoman Sara Kuban said the report is one in an ongoing series of assessments by the department to "facilitate a greater understanding of the phenomenon of violent radicalization in the U.S."

The report, which was first disclosed to the public by nationally syndicated radio host Roger Hedgecock, makes clear that the Homeland Security Department does not have "specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence."It warns that fringe organizations are gaining recruits, but it provides no numbers.

The report says extremist groups have used President Obama as a recruiting tool.

"Most statements by rightwing extremists have been rhetorical, expressing concerns about the election of the first African American president, but stopping short of calls for violent action," the report says. "In two instances in the run-up to the election, extremists appeared to be in the early planning stages of some threatening activity targeting the Democratic nominee, but law enforcement interceded."

When asked about this passage, Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said, "We are concerned about anybody who will try to harm or plan to harm any one of our protectees. We don't have the luxury to focus on one particular group at the exclusion of others."

Congressional debates about immigration and gun control also make extremist groups suspicious and give them a rallying cry, the report says.

"It is unclear if either bill will be passed into law; nonetheless, a correlation may exist between the potential passage of gun control legislation and increased hoarding of ammunition, weapons stockpiling, and paramilitary training activities among rightwing extremists," the report said.

The FBI was quoted Monday as saying that, since November, more than 7 million people have applied for criminal background checks in order to buy weapons.

The Homeland Security report added: "Over the past five years, various rightwing extremists, including militias and white supremacists, have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, rallying point, and recruiting tool."

The report could signify a change in emphasis for Homeland Security under former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano. A German magazine quoted Ms. Napolitano as rebranding "terrorism" as "man-made disasters." Since its inception in 2003, the department has focused primarily on radicalization of Muslims and the prospect of homegrown Islamist terrorism.

Ms. Kuban said, however, that the department had published reports on left-wing radicalization as well, though she could not name one.

"These types of reports are published all the time. There have actually been some done on the other end of the spectrum, left-wing," Ms. Kuban said.

A similar headline was used in a report issued in January, Ms. Kuban said, although she could not provide the content of the headline.

Ms. Kuban said she did not know how long the new report had been in the making.

"The purpose of the report is to identify risk. This is nothing unusual," said Ms. Kuban, who added that the Homeland Security Department did this "to prevent another Tim McVeigh from ever happening again."

The Homeland Security assessment specifically says that "rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat."

Jerry Newberry, director of communications for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said the vast majority of veterans are patriotic citizens who would not join anti-government militias.

"As far as our military members go, I think that the military is a melting pot of society. So you might get a few, a fractional few, who are going to be attracted by militia groups and other right-wing extremists," he said.

"We have to remember that the people serving in our military are volunteers, they do it because they love their country, and they believe in what our country stands for," he said. "They spent their time in the military defending our Constitution, so the vast majority of them would be repulsed by the hate groups discussed in this report."

The Homeland Security report cited a 2008 FBI report that noted that a small number of returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined extremist groups.

The FBI report said that from October 2001 through May 2008 "a minuscule" number of veterans, 203 out of 23,000, had joined groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Movement, the Creativity Movement, the National Alliance and some skinhead groups.

"Although the white supremacist movement is of concern to the FBI, our assessment shows that only a very small number of people with prior military experience may have an affiliation with supremacist groups," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Monday when asked about the FBI report.

A 2006 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that monitors white supremacists like the Klan, said that white-power groups had an interest in the kind of training the military provides.

Mark Potok, director of the center's intelligence project, said the Homeland Security report "confirms that white supremacists are interested in the military. There is some concern, and there should be, about returning veterans, one need only think of the example of Timothy McVeigh, who was in the first Iraq war."

Mr. Potok added that he was generally pleased with the report.

"Basically, the report tracks fairly closely with what we have been saying for some time now. They mention us a couple of times, though not by name," he said.

Wow! So..... if an American citizen believes:

In limited federal government

That our laws should be enforced (i.e. immigration)

That abortion is murder

That the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution means what it says

then, obviously, that person must be a member of some rightwing extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Movement, the Creativity Movement, the National Alliance and some skinhead groups.

OK. This is scary. Guess I'd better go inventory my ammo and weapons.


See more discussion at Texas Fred's.

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Friday, April 10, 2009

A MUST Read!

Click on the title of this post for an amazing MUST read, "I Apologize for my Nation".

This is an absolutely fantastic post from the Snooper Report.

Many thanx to Assoluta Tranquillita for the link.

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Tax Day Tea Party



April 15th is a big day this year, and not only because we have to pay our already confiscatory taxes. It is a big day, because for the first time in over 200 years, Americans have had enough of taxation without representation. Click on the title of this article to find a tea party near you. Then, on April 15th, you and everyone you know need to be at one of the tea parties helping send a big message to the Federal government that their jack-boot tactics may have worked in Nazi Germany, but they won't work here.

We are already taxed enough!

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Thursday, April 09, 2009

His Royal Highness a/k/a Comrade Obama

Armstrong Williams wrote a great post today as follows:


A Suboptimal Showing Abroad and At Home
Armstrong Williams
Wednesday, April 08, 2009

President Obama returns this week from his whirlwind, “It’s good to be me” tour through continental Europe and Asia. Many here stateside are beginning to whisper that Obama is the most arrogant leader this country has seen in a generation. He holds Americans and the Constitution in utter contempt.

He fires private sector CEO’s, wages class warfare on taxpayers (the top 1% income earners pay 40% of all federal income taxes, and the bottom 50% pay a minuscule 3%), and covets open-ended power to spend taxpayers money without check that would have made Gosplaners in the Soviet Union green with envy. He turns the Constitution on its head by describing the payment of taxes as a “patriotic duty” and staggering government spending as the beneficence of his band of Platonic Guardians. He has erased the vital distinction between public and private.

Mr. Obama has taken Narcissus to a new level. He is mesmerized by his own words. He wields no delusions of his own grandeur. However, when he goes abroad he can't be effacing enough for the bows and scraping to those luminaries around him. Remember the King of Saudia Arabia, to whom our President gave obeisance, is basica lly the leader of the Wahhabi branch of Islam. Bowing to this king signals submission to Islam. Indeed, “Islam” means “submission”. And in Saudi Arabia that means the suppression of Christianity or Judaism. President Obama has apologized for the United States history with Native Americans and blacks. He gazes at radical Islam with rose-colored glasses.

Are you getting this picture? Is it becoming clearer exactly what is beginning to happen to our beloved America?

And to compound matters, our President now craves the elimina tion of nuclear weapons. Does he not remember that atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved millions of both American and Japanese lives and brought a terrible war to an instant conclusion? Does he not know of the history of arms control cheating by closed and despotic nations, like the Soviet Union, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Libya, Iraq, and otherwise. Does he not know that the elimination of nuclear weapons immediately strengthens nations with massive land armies like China’s People’s Liberation Army?

Mr. Obama’s national security follies are matched by his contempt for the Constitution which he is pledged to defend and support.

He has claimed Czar-like powers to detain indefinitely both citizens and non-citizens without accusation or trial or access to courts on his say-so alone by dispatching them to Bagram prison in Afghanistan. There, he has authorized procedures for determining who should be detained as “enemy combatants" that would be more fitting if adopted by Iran’s Mullahs.

The initial judgment is made “in the field.” It is reviewed within 75 days, and then at six month intervals. The reviewing body is the Unlawful Enemy Combatant Review Board (UECRB), a panel of three commissioned officers. It examines “all relevant informatio n reasonably available.” The detainee has no access to a personal representative or lawyer. He has no access to the government’s evidence. He has no opportunity to respond in person. He is limited to submitting a written statement without knowledge of either his accusers or the allegations that must be rebutted.

There are many terms that might describe Bagram procedures, but due process of law is not one of them. The Executive Branch decrees that “enemy combatant” status justifies detention, enfo rces the decree through executive detentions, and decides whether its enforcement decisions are correct. That combination was what the Founding Fathers decried as the “very definition of tyranny” in The Federalist 47.

In addition, the dispositive evidence and accusers are secret; and, the deciders are military persons the detainee is accused of desiring to kill, which may imbalance their judgments. It is no surprise that United States District Judge John H. Bates on April 2 held the procedures unconstitutiona in Fadi al Maqaleh v. Gates.

He has invoked state secrets to deny remedies to individual victims of constitutional wrongdoing, including torture or assassination. He has claimed the right to pick and choose which laws to enforce based on political convenience, and evaded the accountability that comes with a presidential pardon. He has frustrated congressional oversight by the invocation of executive privilege.

In the Senate, he voted against the Military Commissions Act of 2006 as running roughshod over constitutional rights. In the White House, he finds nothing objectionable about the Act’s crowning him with monarch-like authorities. He has enlisted 800,000 state and local law enforcement officers to spy on Americans under the beguiling umbrella as “fusion centers,” while the murder clearance rate remains a dismal 61%.

Alex de Tocqueville, writing in Democracy in America , forecast a world in which Russia and the United States would dominate. But he sharply distinguished between how the two would assert their influence:

“[T]he conquests of the American are made with the plowshare of the laborer, those of the Russian with the sword of the soldier.

“To attain his goal, the first relies on personal interest and allows the force and reason of individuals to act without directing them. The second in a way concentrates all the power of society in one man,

“The one has freedom for his principle means of action; the other servitude.”

That distinction is rapidly diminishing to the disadvantage of the United States under President Obama.



Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

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Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Shades of Jimmy Carter?

UPDATE! The BBC reports that, without waiting for rescue, the American crew is back in control of the ship, and have 1 pirate in custody. Seems like the other 3 pirates jumped into the water.

Bravo Crewmen! 20 Americans vs. 4 pirates = 3 pirates in the water and 1 in custody.

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Original post:

Apparently, the Somali pirates have captured yet another ship, this time a United States -flagged cargo ship along with its crew of 20 Americans in the Gulf of Aden.

The White House press secretary said that the White House was monitoring the incident closely and "assessing a course of action."

It should be interesting to see how our comrade president handles this one.

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Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Mean People

There are some really mean people out there.

For anyone who read the obscene comments left by someone called Mary, I apologize for not checking sooner.

To Mary and anyone else who is a very mean-spirited person, this is my blog. You may intelligently disagree with me, or say something humorous. You may NOT make uninformed, mean, personal attacks on me.

Cowgirl

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Friday, April 03, 2009

An American President?




"Yesterday I spoke about this with my new comrade President Barack Obama," Medvedev told reporters travelling with him to the London summit.

Seems pretty clear to me. Apparently Texas Fred is right. The Manchurian Candidate.

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