NeoPro NeoCon

Speech by Geert Wilders, a Member of the Dutch Parliament.

2012-01-24T08:30:00.000-08:00

In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: "Who lost Europe ?" Here is the speech of Geert Wilders, Chairman, Party for Freedom the Netherlands, at the Four Seasons in New York, introducing an Alliance of Patriots and announcing the Facing Jihad Conference in Jerusalem ..

Dear friends,
Thank you very much for inviting me.

I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.

First, I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe . Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem .

The Europe you know is changing.

You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration.

All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe . These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe . With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.

Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseille and Malmo in Sweden . In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighborhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities.

In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.

Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear 'whore, whore'. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.

In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin . The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.

In England Sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan.

Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel . I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.

San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France . One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favor of a worldwide caliphate. Muslims demand what they call 'respect'. And this is how we give them respect. We have Muslim official state holidays.

The Christian-Democratic attorney general is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey .

Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behavior, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. I call the perpetrators 'settlers'. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies; they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.

Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries. Moreover, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behavior is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages - at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad.

Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means 'submission'. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.

Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam 'the most retrograde force in the world', and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran. The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel . First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz; second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense.

This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam's territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan, Lebanon, and Aceh in Indonesia . Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.

The war against Israel is not a war against Israel . It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.

Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a 'right-wing extremists' or 'racists'. In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat. Yet there is a greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem ....

Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe, American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe 's children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.

We have to take the necessary action now to stop this Islamic stupidity from destroying the free world that we know.

Governor Christie discusses the reform issues which will serve as the foundation for his February budget address.

2011-02-17T08:52:00.001-08:00

funny (genuine) obituary:

2011-02-04T12:22:00.001-08:00

Frederic Arthur (Fred) Clark
Frederic Arthur (Fred) Clark, who had tired of reading obituaries noting other's courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he lost his battle as a result of an automobile accident on June 18, 2006. True to Fred's personal style, his final hours were spent joking with medical personnel while he whimpered, cussed, begged for narcotics and bargained with God to look over his wife and kids. He loved his family. His heart beat faster when his wife of 37 years Alice Rennie Clark entered the room and saddened a little when she left.

His legacy was the good works performed by his sons, Frederic Arthur Clark III and Andrew Douglas Clark MD, PhD., along with Andy's wife, Sara Morgan Clark. Fred's back straightened and chest puffed out when he heard the Star Spangled Banner and his eyes teared when he heard Amazing Grace. He wouldn't abide self important tight *censored*. Always an interested observer of politics, particularly what the process does to its participants, he was amused by politician's outrage when we lie to them and amazed at what the voters would tolerate. His final wishes were "throw the bums out and don't elect lawyers" (though it seems to make little difference).

During his life he excelled at mediocrity. He loved to hear and tell jokes, especially short ones due to his limited attention span. He had a life long love affair with bacon, butter, cigars and bourbon. You always knew what Fred was thinking much to the dismay of his friend and family. His sons said of Fred, "he was often wrong, but never in doubt". When his family was asked what they remembered about Fred, they fondly recalled how Fred never peed in the shower - on purpose. He died at MCV Hospital and sadly was deprived of his final wish which was to be run over by a beer truck on the way to the liquor store to buy booze for a double date to include his wife, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to crash an ACLU cocktail party.

In lieu of flowers, Fred asks that you make a sizable purchase at your local ABC store or Virginia winery (please, nothing French - the *censored*) and get rip roaring drunk at home with someone you love or hope to make love to. Word of caution though, don't go out in public to drink because of the alcohol related laws our elected officials have passed due to their inexplicable terror at the sight of a MADD lobbyist and overwhelming compulsion to meddle in our lives. No funeral or service is planned. However, a party will be held to celebrate Fred's life. It will be held in Midlothian, Va. Email fredsmemory@yahoo.com for more information. Fred's ashes will be fired from his favorite cannon at a private party on the Great Wicomico River where he had a home for 25 years. Additionally, all of Fred's friend (sic) will be asked to gather in a phone booth, to be designated in the future, to have a drink and wonder, "Fred who?"

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/timesdispatch/obituary.aspx?n=frederic-arthur-clark-fred&pid=18382676

the great Dennis Miller

2011-01-27T20:15:00.001-08:00

Why The Gun In Civilization?

2011-01-12T22:25:00.001-08:00

By Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force.

If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force.

It removes force from the equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

"Chinese Professor" breaks it down for you

2010-12-09T18:37:00.001-08:00

WHAT DID LENNON REALLY THINK?

2010-12-07T23:05:00.000-08:00

SEEMS HE HAD QUITE A CHANGE OF HEART.

PLAYBOY: What about the suggestion that the four of you put aside your personal feelings and regroup to give a mammoth concert for charity, some sort of giant benefit?

LENNON: I don’t want to have anything to do with benefits. I have been benefited to death. Every one of them was a mess or a rip-off.

PLAYBOY: What about the Bangladesh concert, in which George and other people such as Dylan performed?

LENNON: Bangladesh was caca. It’s all a rip-off. So forget about it. All of you who are reading this, don’t bother sending me all that garbage about, “Just come and save the Indians, come and save the blacks, come and save the war veterans.” Anybody I want to save will be helped through our tithing, which is ten percent of whatever we earn.

PLAYBOY: But that doesn’t compare with what one promoter, Sid Bernstein, said you could raise by giving a world-wide televised concert—playing separately, as individuals, or together, as the Beatles. He estimated you could raise over $200,000,000 in one day. $200,000,000 to a poverty-stricken country in South America.

LENNON: Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give $200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn’t mean a damn thing. After they’ve eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles. You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I’m not ready for it. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

wisdom...

2010-11-23T21:42:00.000-08:00

When one becomes a liberal, he or she pretends to advocate tolerance, equality and peace, but hilariously, they're doing so for purely selfish reasons. It's the human equivalent of a puppy dog's face: an evolutionary tool designed to enhance survival, reproductive value and status. In short, liberalism is based on one central desire: to look cool in front of others in order to get love. Preaching tolerance makes you look cooler, than saying something like, “please lower my taxes” -- Greg Gutfeld

In their haste to be wiser and nobler than others, the anointed have misconceived two basic issues. They seem to assume (1) that they have more knowledge than the average member of the benighted and (2) that this is the relevant comparison. The real comparison, however, is not between the knowledge possessed by the average member of the educated elite versus the average member of the general public, but rather the total direct knowledge brought to bear though social processes (the competition of the marketplace, social sorting, etc.), involving millions of people, versus the secondhand knowledge of generalities possessed by a smaller elite group. -- Thomas Sowell

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. -- Charles Krauthammer

Michelle Malkin Interviews Mark Steyn

2010-11-22T22:56:00.001-08:00

http://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2010/11/michelle-malkin-interviews-mark-steyn.html

Castro worse than Stalin

2010-09-26T12:30:00.001-07:00

Castro--darling of the idiot left--guess what, the numbers show he is worse than Stalin!
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2010-09-22T11:45:00.001-07:00

This comes from the Republican Study Committee...

2010-08-31T22:37:00.000-07:00

2010-08-23T11:22:00.001-07:00

Quotes

2010-08-20T10:37:00.001-07:00

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty" - Thomas Jefferson

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." --Thomas Jefferson

"A nation of sheep will beget a government
of wolves". - Edward R. Murrow

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not..."
Thomas Jefferson

The penalty for wise men that refuse to concern themselves with the affairs of Government, is to be governed by unwise Men
-- Plato

Prager on American Exceptionalism

2010-08-14T09:23:00.001-07:00

Norman Podhoretz, on the legacy of George W. Bush

2010-08-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

Cordoba House?

2010-08-01T15:45:00.000-07:00

In giving that name to the structure, those seeking to construct an enormous mosque near Ground Zero are engaging in a provocation. Instead of making a gesture of goodwill toward American society, they are celebrating an ancient Muslim incursion into the West, reminding us, for no reason other than that they insist on doing so, of long centuries during which Islam reduced Christianity to subjection, and a major territory of Europe was ruled from the thrones of caliphs. Islam, they wish to demonstrate--for who could conclude otherwise?--is again on the move.

read it all...a little history lesson...
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Breaking: Roman Polanski Faces Another Rape Allegation

2010-07-27T15:58:00.001-07:00

by John Nolte
How many women have to claim they were raped and/or sodomized by fugitive director Roman Polanski before Hollywood starts to treat him with a tenth of the disdain they have for Mel Gibson? How many, Harvey? Woody? Marty? Ms. Rape-Rape? Natalie? Jeff Norman? Wes? Jeff Wells? Patrick Goldstein? Cinematical? S.T. VanAirsdale? Bertrand-Henri? And all of you who have lent your fame, wealth and support to this pig since he admitted to having sex with a 13 year-old girl?

What’s the magic number of victims before you withdraw your support?

This might surprise you, but to we unsophisticated types — no matter how awesome Chinatown was – one is enough; a guilty plea followed by a flight from justice is enough. But because you’re sophisticated, we have to ask.

For the record, if you care, if you’re bothering to keep track, the number is now three:

Another woman has come forward charging that Roman Polanski raped her in 1974, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned.

The woman, who was 21 at the time, reported the alleged sexual assault to the Los Angeles District Attorney in May and was interviewed by authorities.

(more…)
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Elton John's choice words for boycotting musicians

2010-07-26T18:25:00.001-07:00

By Cathalena E. Burch Arizona Daily Star

Elton John didn't mince words in slamming his fellow musicians for boycotting Arizona over the controversial SB 1070 immigration law. From the stage at his sold-out Tucson Arena concert Thursday night, John savored a few choice, not-so-family-friendly words:

"We are all very pleased to be playing in Arizona. I have read that some of the artists won't come here. They are (expletive)wits! Let's face it: I still play in California, and as a gay man I have no legal rights whatsoever. So what's the (expletive) with these people?"

John has never been one to cave into political pressure from his musical colleagues. He ignored an artist boycott of Israel in June over the flotilla fiasco and played a show in Tel Aviv. He also played Rush Limbaugh's latest wedding reception in early June, which drew the ire of gays and lesbians. Limbaugh is vehemently anti-gay marriage; John is married to his longtime partner David Furnish.

Hitler’s Arab wingman

2010-07-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

Hitler’s Arab wingman: Biography brings to light ‘evil’ Mufti of Jerusalem
by dan pine, staff writer

Haj Amin al-Husseini may be the worst S.O.B. you never heard of. But author John F. Rothmann hopes his new biography of al-Husseini -- aka the Mufti of Jerusalem -- will snag him a far more visible perch in history's Hall of Shame.

Often called the George Washington of the Palestinian national movement, the mufti was one of the most influential Arab leaders of the 20th century. In "Icon of Evil," co-written by Rothmann and David G. Dalin, a dark portrait emerges of a bloodthirsty anti-Semite and Nazi collaborator.

Though he died in 1974, the mufti's contributions to world chaos live on, notably his framing of the Arab-Israeli struggle in religious-political terms. He helped create the culture of jihad, urged the extermination of Jews and bequeathed hatred to subsequent generations —starting with his cousin, Yasser Arafat.

"He laid down those conditions in the 1920s and 1930s," said Rothmann in a recent interview. "He rejected any notion of Jewish rights in Palestine. He was indeed an evil man."

Given that the mufti cozied up to top Nazis, met with Hitler and even toured Auschwitz to study mass murder with the experts, pinning the "evil" label on him wasn't all that hard.

Rothmann, a KGO radio talk show host and political consultant, is a veteran cheerleader for Jewish causes. So to inoculate himself and Dalin against charges of self-serving bias, the co-authors conducted meticulous research and provide hundreds of footnotes. "We were precise and careful over every fact and every word," Rothmann said.

The book's origins stretch back 40 years, when the two writers were studying in Jerusalem. At Yad Vashem, a blow-up photo of the mufti meeting with Hitler caught their eye.

"We were intrigued," Rothmann recalled. "We were living in the Arab section of Jerusalem and we got to know the Arab merchants. There was always an undercurrent of disaffection and anger. There was no question it was deep-seated and went far beyond 1948."

Dalin, now the Taube Research Fellow in American History at Stanford University's Hoover Institution (and son of former Congregation Ner Tamid Rabbi William Dalin) worked with Rothmann on the book ever since.

They learned about the powerful al-Husseini clan, how the mufti dropped out of Islamic studies in Cairo yet arrogated to himself the imam's robes, and came to hate Jews.

Back in Jerusalem, the charismatic cleric persuaded the occupying British to declare him mufti. He used his new position to give spellbinding sermons over the radio. In one, he issued the infamous call: "Kill the Jews wherever you find them."

He meant it, too: Al-Husseini engineered multiple murder sprees against Jews during the 1920s and '30s. He further twisted anti-Semitism into a Muslim religious imperative; when Hitler came along, he found an ideological soulmate. With his blondish hair and blue eyes, the mufti was even made an honorary Aryan.

"This is a guy who goes to Berlin in 1941," Rothmann said, "meets with Hitler and dreams of the day when the Final Solution emerges in Palestine. He pushed for it, planned for it. He becomes the godfather of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah."

Had the war gone Hitler's way, the mufti expected not only a Judenrein Palestine, but the defunct caliphate to be re-established, and that he would become caliph, the leader of the Muslim world.

As poisonous as the mufti was, Rothmann insists he does not feel hatred toward his subject. Rather, he strived to present an accurate portrait. "He was a gentle man, soft-spoken, charming, a very nice guy. He was an advocate for his people."

Rothmann quickly added that the mufti also ordered rivals killed. He was close with an Iraqi man who would later be Saddam Hussein's uncle and foster parent. So the mufti obviously taught his lessons well.

Rothmann's fondest wish for the book is not that Jews learn better about their enemies, though he does hope for that. Rather, he wants Arab and Muslim readers to understand they've been fed a diet of anti-Semitic hatred for too long.

"We hope this generation of Palestinian nationals will understand and repudiate the hate which runs through the Muslim world today," he said. "That hatred must be exposed and expunged."

SINATRA'S SECRET

2010-07-21T08:28:00.001-07:00

FRANK SINATRA'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE JEWS
Francis Albert Sinatra (1915-1998) may have been one of America 's
most famous Italian Catholics, but he kept the Jewish people and the
State of Israel close to his heart, manifesting life-long commitments
to fighting anti-Semitism and to activism on behalf of Israel .
Sinatra stepped forward in the early 1940s, when big names were needed
to rouse America into saving Europe's remaining Jews, and he sang at
an "Action for Palestine " rally (1947). He sat on the board of
trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and he donated over $1
million to Jerusalem 's Hebrew University, which honored him by
dedicating the Frank Sinatra International Student Center . (The
Center made heartbreaking headlines when terrorists bombed it in 2002,
killing nine people.) As the result of his support for the Jewish
State, his movies and records were banned in some Arab countries
Sinatra helped Teddy Kollek, later the long-serving mayor of Jerusalem
but then a member of the Haganah, by serving as a $1 million
money-runner that helped Israel win the war.

The Copacabana Club, which was very much run and controlled by the
same Luciano-related New York mafia crowd with whom Sinatra had become
enmeshed, happened to be next door to the hotel out of which Haganah
members were operating. In his autobiography, Kollek relates how,
trying in March 1948 to circumvent an arms boycott imposed by
President Harry Truman on the Jewish fighters in Eretz Yisroel, he
needed to smuggle about $1 million in cash to an Irish ship captain
docked in the Port of New York . The young Kollek spotted Sinatra at
the bar and, afraid of being intercepted by federal agents, asked for
help. In the early hours of the morning, the singer went out the back
door with the money in a paper bag and successfully delivered it to
the pier.

The origins of Sinatra's love affair with the Jewish people are not
clear but, for years, the Hollywood icon wore a small mezuzah around
his neck, a gift from Mrs. Golden, an elderly Jewish neighbor who
cared for him during his boyhood in Hoboken, N.J. (years later, he
honored her by purchasing a quarter million dollars' worth of Israel
bonds). He protected his Jewish friends, once responding to an
anti-Semitic remark at a party by simply punching the offender. Time
magazine reported that Sinatra walked out on the christening of his
own son when the priest refused to allow a Jewish friend to be the
godfather. As late as 1979, he raged over the fact that a Palm
Springs cemetery official in California declared that he could not
arrange the burial of a deceased Jewish friend over the Thanksgiving
holiday; Sinatra again -- threatened to punch him in the nose.

Sinatra famously played the role of a Jewish pilot in Cast a Giant
Shadow, the 1966 film filmed in Israel and starring friend Kirk
Douglas as Mickey Marcus, the Jewish-American colonel who fought and
died in Israel's war for independence (Sinatra dive-bombs Egyptian
tanks with seltzer bottles!) He donated his salary for the part to
the Arab-Israeli Youth Center in Nazareth , and he also made a
significant contribution to the making of Genocide, a film about the
Holocaust, and helped raise funds for the film. Less known is Sinatra
in Israel (1962), a short 45-minute featurette he made in which he
sang In the Still of the Night and Without a Song. He also starred in
The House I Live In (1945), a ten-minute short film made to oppose
anti-Semitism at the end of World War II, which received an Honorary
Academy Award and a special Golden Globe award in 1946.
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The following was a letter to the editor of the LA Times.

2010-07-09T16:10:00.001-07:00

Hector,

I can't believe that a major metropolitan paper like the LA Times would publish drivel like your distortion-laden column I had the misfortune to read today. The citizens of Arizona passed a law that makes it necessary to prove you are in their state LEGALLY. They are tired of paying TWO BILLION taxpayer dollars a year in medical and educational benefits to people in their state ILLEGALLY. They are tired of the Mexican drug traffickers, kidnappings (389 last year), traffic accidents, and crime caused by ILLEGAL immigrants in their state. They are tired of citizens of a foreign country overcrowding and bankrupting their emergency rooms and schools. They have the ABSOLUTE RIGHT to defend their state when the federal government fails to do so so just like I have the right to put three hollow-points in the chest of the guy who's trying to kick in my front door when the cops don't show up.

It has been the law in this country since 1940 that foreign nationals be able to produce proof that they are here LEGALLY by way of visa, green card, etc. This "Produce your papers" and the allusions to Nazi Germany is a bunch of dishonest claptrap. If you took time to read the Arizona law (assuming you can read English) you would see that police officers may only inquire as to an individual's immigration status in the course of a "legal contact". The problem with you and Mexicans like you is the fact that you have this sense of entitlement that you can enter OUR COUNTRY as you please. You come from a culture and a country with no respect for the law or the rule of law. The United States is a sovereign nation with the ABSOLUTE RIGHT to decide who does and does not enter our country.

What amuses me the most is the fact that if our illegal immigration problem was due to the influx of SWEDES, you wouldn't have written ONE WORD in the defense of their rights? It is only because they are Hispanics like you that you leap to their defense. I find it ironic that you are truer to your Hispanic roots than you are to your American citizenship, especially since the Hispanic culture is a broke-dick, busted-ass, ignorant-ass, uneducated, going-nowhere culture and has been for the last 500 years, and in all likelihood, will be for the NEXT 500 years.

When I moved to California in 1969, Los Angeles was a clean prosperous city. Now it's broke under the weight of massive entitlements. Now we need concertina wire to protect our freeway signs from Hispano-moron graffiti "artists'. What an enlightened culture you come from that believes that vandalizing another's property is an art form. Over 400 California families have lost loved ones to ILLEGAL immigrant murderers. 40% of the criminals incarcerated in our prisons at CALIFORNIA TAXPAYER EXPENSE, are ILLEGAL immigrants. Thank you so much for our overcrowded ERs, schools and freeways. Thanks also for the gangs and the drive-by shootings. In all fairness though, I like the tacos.

If I want to enter Mexico, France, England, Germany or ANY country on this earth, I need to produce a passport to do so. It's THEIR COUNTRY and I need to ask permission to do so. HOW DARE you and your brethren think that they have some God-given right to flout our laws and come into our country of their own accord? You and people like you are the textbook example of why the fewer Mexicans we have in our country, the better our country will be. We manage to produce a steady supply of home-grown idiots on our own, thank very much (Exhibit A - Obama) good luck with your boycotts and our protests. Just remember amigo, 70% of the people in Arizona and 65% of Americans LOVE this law. Every time you put together thousands of protesters, you piss off MILLIONS of people like me.

Hasta la vista, baby

Tom Edwards

THE GREATEST GENERATION AND INCREDIBLE DOCS

2010-06-29T07:51:00.001-07:00

Medics have been my heroes from the first time I saw a "Doc" risk his life to patch up a wounded grunt. They're the bravest of the brave and the noblest of the noble. I've never known a more selfless or dedicated group of humans.

This, from an Army Airborne Ranger doctor, explains why I feel this way:

"As a military doctor I work long hours. One tends to become jaded by the lack of sleep and the endless parade of human suffering passing before you.

"With our large military-retiree population, it's often a nursing-home patient. I've caught myself groaning when the ambulance brought in yet another sick, elderly person. I hadn't stopped to think of what citizens of this age represented.

"I saw 'Saving Private Ryan.' I was touched deeply by the sacrifices of so many. I was touched most by the scene of the elderly survivor (Pvt. Ryan) at the graveside asking his wife if he'd been a good man. I realized that I had seen these same men and women coming through my hospital and hadn't realized what magnificent sacrifices they had made. The things they did for me and everyone else who has lived on this planet since the end of that conflict are priceless.
"Situation permitting, I now try to ask my patients about their experiences.

"They would never bring up the subject without the inquiry. I've been privileged to an amazing array of experiences recounted. These experiences have revealed the incredible individuals I've had the honor of serving in a medical capacity, many on their last admission to the hospital.

"There was a frail, elderly woman who reassured my enlisted medic trying to start an IV line in her arm. She remained calm and poised despite her illness and the multiple needle-sticks into her fragile veins. As the medic made another attempt, I noticed a number tattooed across her forearm. I touched it with one finger and looked into her eyes. She simply said 'Auschwitz.' Many of later generations would have loudly and openly berated the medic in his many attempts. How different was the response from this person who'd seen unspeakable suffering.

"There was a retired colonel who had parachuted from his burning plane over a Pacific island held by the Japanese. Now an octogenarian, his head was cut in a fall at home where he lived alone. His CT scan and suturing had been delayed until after midnight. Still spry for his age, he asked to use the phone to call a taxi to take him home, then realized his ambulance had brought him without his wallet. He asked if he could use the phone to make a long-distance call to his daughter. With great pride we told him that he could not, as he'd done enough for his country and the least we could do was get him a taxi home, even if we paid for it ourselves. My only regret was that my shift wouldn't end for several hours and I couldn't drive him myself.

"And there were the gentleman who served with Merrill's Marauders; the survivors of the Baatan Death March and Omaha Beach; the 101-year-old World War I veteran; the former POW held in North Korea; the former Special Forces medic. I remember these citizens. I may still groan when yet another ambulance comes in, but now I am much more aware of what an honor it is to serve these particular men and women.

"I am angered at the cutbacks -- implemented and proposed -- that will continue to decay their meager retirement benefits. I see a president and Congress who have turned their back on these individuals who've sacrificed so much to protect our liberty. I see later generations who seem to be totally engrossed in abusing these same liberties won with such sacrifice.

"It has become my personal endeavor to make the nurses and enlisted medics aware of these amazing individuals. Their response to these particular citizens has made me think that perhaps all is not lost in the next generation.

"My experiences have solidified my belief that we are losing an incredible generation and that this nation knows not what it is losing.

"We should all remember that we must 'Earn this.'"

Thanks Capt. Stephen Ellison, M.D... Well said.

OBAMA VS. PRESS FREEDOM

2010-06-17T10:01:00.001-07:00

By DICK MORRIS

Published on TheHill.com on June 15, 2010

Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of Obama's Federal Trade Commission, is at the epicenter of a quiet movement to subsidize news organizations, a first step toward government control of the media. In our book, 2010: Take Back America -- A Battle Plan, we reported that he had commissioned a study to examine plans for a federal subsidy for news organizations. Among the measures under consideration are special tax treatment, exemption from antitrust laws and changes in copyright laws.

Now Leibowitz has begun to pounce. A May 24 working paper on "reinventing" the media proposes that the government impose fees on websites such as the Drudge Report that link to news websites or that it tax consumer electronics such as iPads, laptops and Kindles. Funds raised by these levies would be redistributed to traditional media outlets.

While Leibowitz distanced himself from the proposals for the taxes, calling them "a terrible idea," his comments appear to be related only to the levies proposed in the working paper. Nobody is commenting on the other part of his proposal -- a subsidy for news organizations.

By now, the Obama MO should be clear to all. As he has done with the banks, AIG and the car companies, he extends his left hand offering subsidies and then proffers his right laden with regulations. Should the government follow through on Leibowitz's ideas and enact special subsidies and tax breaks for news organizations, it will induce a degree of journalistic dependence on the whims of government not seen since the days when the early presidents bestowed government advertising on favored periodicals.

Is it too difficult to imagine that the Democrats might pass laws favoring news organizations, only to question -- as former White House communications director Anita Dunn did -- whether or not Fox News is a news organization or an "arm of the Republican Party"? We can see a future in which news media are reluctant to be too partisan or opinionated for fear that they would endanger their public subsidy.

Once such a subsidy is extended to news organizations, every company in the business must have it. Otherwise, the competitive advantage for the subsidized companies would prove too steep an obstacle to overcome.

In all the attention that has been given to the idea of an Internet tax on news aggregation sites and on tech equipment -- trial balloons that would obviously be shot down -- very little attention has been focused on the expenditure side of the proposal -- the subsidy of news organizations.

But The Wall Street Journal reported six months ago that Leibowitz had commissioned a study to determine "whether the government should aid struggling news organizations which are suffering from a collapse in advertising revenues as the Internet upends their centuries-old business model." Among the steps under consideration are changing "the way the industry is regulated, from making news-gathering companies exempt from antitrust laws to granting them special tax treatment to making changes to copyright laws."

These are exactly the kind of subsidies that could and would trigger government oversight and control.

Look at how radio stations squirm when their licenses are up for renewal before the FCC. We can imagine news organizations pulling their punches in order not to antagonize the hand that feeds them.

The Leibowitz study, and the subsidy proposals that are likely to emerge from it, represent a chilling threat to the First Amendment and to our civil liberties.

New Book That should be part of our School's Curriculum

2010-06-13T23:08:00.000-07:00

Title: “A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror” – available at COSTCO or Wal-Mart.

Synopsis: For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of "dead white men."

As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin.

A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.

Review:

Four Stars: Comments from a College History Professor and former High School Teacher, July 9, 2005

I've been in the history business for over thirty years. Starting as an "educator" at the middle school and high school level. Though in short order I changed my own definition of self, saying I was a history teacher fighting against "educators" who were supremely ignorant when it came to real content knowledge of their subjects. I finally left secondary ed in disgust in the late 1980s, went back full time to grad school, got a Ph.D. in American History and went into the college classroom where at least, at my small private school, I still have intellectual freedom. I've also published a number of books on a national level, and that is how I first met one of the authors of this work when he commented on my latest book.

I think I therefore have a good foundation to comment here and my comment is. . .I wish across the last thirty years I had a book like this to use in my classrooms!

My own education was influenced by Beard and others like him when I was a student, and as a new teacher I taught the myths of a rather leftist perspective of our national epic. But as I matured and learned more I finally abandoned all textbook use in disgust. Anyone conversant on the subject knows my reasons, written by committees, written with a very clear bias to political correctness, outright distortions and numerous factual errors, written at times with a barely concealed disdain for our nation's story. It is made worst by alleged critics and commentators such as Loewen with his tirade "Lies my Teachers Told Me," which is riddled with factual errors and deliberate distortions, and pushes the rhetoric even further to the Left while claiming to be about getting the story right.

This book, however, is like a wind stirring up after a dark storm of bias and ignorance, which tries to set the record straight on so many points. For the first time I have a history book that calls into doubt the wisdom of FDR's New Deal, the myth that he ended the Depression (when in reality the punitive taxes of up to 90% and government interference made it worst), and spawned the real beginnings of run away government.

Their take on the anti war movement in the 1960s is absolutely scathing, and truthful. I was there and personally witnessed several of the events described. . . how the anti-war movement on college campuses was not an "enlightened" desire for peace, but rather a rampage gone wild, adroitly engineered by a small well trained cadre of ultra-leftists, a phenomena that still haunts our higher education system today, and has produced a generation of lies and text book distortions as well.

I could cite a dozen more examples from their book that left me grinning with delight, that the truth was finally out there to read again. My only criticism, some minor factual errors, but relatively few when compared to standard textbooks, and for a monumental work of this length.

I know the author's intent was simply to write an American history for the general public and do not want it type cast as a "textbook," and I go along with that. But, I will nevertheless forcefully recommend it as a textbook. . .and that recommendation comes from a college professor, with years experience in secondary education and for several years, even taught history teacher education (a nightmare experience dealing with the state and federal departments of education that I should write a book about some day. It was like dealing with Orwellian thought police!)

If you are a history teacher, and I choose that term deliberately. . .not an "educator," caught up in the system, but instead see yourself as a History Teacher, who takes pride in our country and wish to guide students to a sharing of that pride. . .this is your textbook.

It will work on the secondary level and most definitely on the higher ed level. But a warning, your colleagues will howl, harass and attack you over it and frankly you better have tenure if you wish to survive when you bring this book out. By the way, within this book you will read why you need that protection.

For home schoolers, this book is your dream. You left the system for so many reasons and this book will explain many of those reasons.

I hope this book is the first of many that will start to take back the ground dominated for too long by the Left, and beyond that an extremist element who actually hate the subject they write about.

If you are a parent with a student trapped in the system, make this book required reading at home and use it to "reeducate" and fight back. And finally, for the general reader, this one is a rousing good read, well written, great footnotes to follow up on (something you find lacking in nearly all textbooks) and worth studying.

America is not about national race, it is about an ideal. Ultimately we are all immigrants, be we born here or arrived just yesterday. All that holds us together is a shared identification with the dreams of our patriot forefathers and a belief in the ideals of the Declaration and Constitution. Disconnect from that dream for but one generation and the dream will die. This book can help to rekindle what nearly all of us know in our hearts, that though we might make mistakes, fundamentally America is, as Lincoln once said, "the last best hope of mankind."

Palestinian kids

2010-06-08T20:56:00.001-07:00

http://www.thatsrich.com/propaganda.htm
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LETTER FROM A RETIRED BORDER PATROL AGENT:

2010-06-06T10:04:00.001-07:00

This letter sent to Tennessee Senator Bill Frist from a retired border patrol agent, and it has more common sense than all the bull being spewed from the Senate, with the exception of a few sensible representatives.

Dear Senator Frist:

There is a huge amount of propaganda and myths circulating about illegal aliens, particularly illegal Mexican, Salvadorian, Guatemalan and Honduran aliens.

#1. Illegal aliens generally do NOT want US citizenship. Americans are very vain thinking that everybody in the world wants to be a US citizen. Mexicans, and other nationalities want to remain citizens of their home countries while obtaining the benefits offered by the United States such as employment, medical care, instate tuition, government subsidized housing and free education for their� offspring. Their main attraction is employment and their loyalty usually remains at home. They want benefits earned and subsidized by middle class Americans. What illegal aliens want are benefits of American residence without paying the price.

#2. There are no jobs that Americans won't do. Illegal aliens are doing jobs that Americans can't take and still support their families. Illegal aliens take low wage jobs, live dozens in a single residence home, share expenses and send money to their home country. There are no jobs that Americans won't do for a decent wage.

#3. Every person who illegally entered this nation left a home. They are NOT homeless and they are NOT Americans. Some left jobs in their home countries. They come to send money to their real home as evidenced by the more than 20 billion dollars sent out of the country each year by illegal aliens. These illegal aliens knowingly and willfully entered this nation in violation of the law and therefore assumed the risk of detection and deportation. Those who brought their alien children assumed the responsibility and risk on behalf of their children.

#4. Illegal aliens are NOT critical to the economy. Illegal aliens constitute less than 5% of the workforce. However, they reduce wages and benefits for lawful US residents.

#5. This is NOT an immigrant nation. There are 280 million native born Americans. While it is true that this nation was settled and founded by immigrants (legal immigrants), it is also true that there is not a nation on this planet that was not settled by immigrants at one time or another.

#6. The United States is welcoming to legal immigrants. Illegal aliens are not immigrants by definition. The US accepts more lawful immigrants every year than the rest of the world combined.

#7. There is no such thing as the "Hispanic vote." Hispanics are white, brown, black and every shade in between. Hispanics are Republicans, Democrats, Anarchists, Communists, Marxists and Independents. The so-called "Hispanic vote" is a myth. Pandering to illegal aliens to get the Hispanic vote is a dead end.

#8. Mexico is NOT a friend of the United States. Since 1848 Mexicans have resented the United States. During World War I Mexico allowed German spies to operate freely in Mexico to spy on the US. During World War II Mexico allowed the Axis powers to spy on the US from Mexico. During the Cold War, Mexico allowed spies hostile to the US to freely operate. The attack on the Twin Towers in 2001 was cheered and applauded all across Mexico. Today Mexican school children are taught that the US stole California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. If you don't believe it, check out some Mexican textbooks written for their school children.

#9. Although some illegal aliens enter this country for a better life, there are 6 billion people on this planet. At least 1 billion of those live on less than one dollar a day. If wanting a better life is a valid excuse to break the law and sneak into America, then let's allow those one billion to come to America and we'll turn the USA into a Third World nation overnight. Besides, there are 280 million native born Americans who want a better life. I'll bet Bill Gates and Donald Trump want a better life. When will the USA lifeboat be full? Since when is wanting a better life a good reason to trash another nation?

#10. There is a labor shortage in this country. This is a lie. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of American housewives, senior citizens, students, unemployed and underemployed who would gladly take jobs at a decent wage.

#11. It is racist to want secure borders. What is racist about wanting secure borders and a secure America? What is racist about not wanting people to sneak into America and steal benefits we have set aside for legal aliens, senior citizens, children and other legal residents? What is it about race that entitles people to violate our laws, steal identities, and take the American Dream without paying the price? For about four decades American politicians have refused to secure our borders and look after the welfare of middle class Americans. These politicians have been of both parties. A huge debt to American society has resulted. This debt will be satisfied and the interest will be high. There have already been riots in the streets by illegal aliens and their supporters. There will be more. You, as a politician, have a choice to offend the illegal aliens who have stolen into this country and demanded the rights afforded to US citizens or to offend those of us who are stakeholders in this country. The interest will be steep either way. There will be civil unrest. There will be a reckoning. Do you have the courage to do what is right for America? Or, will you bow to the wants and needs of those who don't even have the right to remain here? There will be a reckoning.

It will come in November of this year, again in 2012 and yet again in 2014. We will not allow America to be stolen by third world agitators and thieves.

David J. Stoddard

US Border Patrol (RET)

Hereford, Arizona

pay attention, comrades!

2010-06-05T07:31:00.001-07:00

from http://thepeoplescube.com/

Back on Uncle Sam's plantation

2010-06-04T16:19:00.001-07:00

Star Parker - Syndicated Columnist - 2/9/2009 8:00:00 AM

Six years ago I wrote a book called Uncle Sam's Plantation. I wrote the book to tell my own story of what I saw living inside the welfare state and my own transformation out of it.

I said in that book that indeed there are two Americas -- a poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism.

I talked about government programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS), Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children (EANF), Section 8 Housing, and Food Stamps.

A vast sea of perhaps well-intentioned government programs, all initially set into motion in the 1960s, that were going to lift the nation's poor out of poverty.

A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation. Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from "How do I take care of myself?" to "What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?"

Instead of solving economic problems, government welfare socialism created monstrous moral and spiritual problems -- the kind of problems that are inevitable when individuals turn responsibility for their lives over to others.

The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city schools, and broken black families.

Through God's grace, I found my way out. It was then that I understood what freedom meant and how great this country is.

I had the privilege of working on welfare reform in 1996, passed by a Republican Congress and signed 50 percent.

I thought we were on the road to moving socialism out of our poor black communities and replacing it with wealth-producing American capitalism.

But, incredibly, we are going in the opposite direction.

Instead of poor America on socialism becoming more like rich American on capitalism, rich America on capitalism is becoming like poor America on socialism.

Uncle Sam has welcomed our banks onto the plantation and they have said, "Thank you, Suh."

Now, instead of thinking about what creative things need to be done to serve customers, they are thinking about what they have to tell Massah in order to get their cash.

There is some kind of irony that this is all happening under our first black president on the 200th anniversary of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.

Worse, socialism seems to be the element of our new young president. And maybe even more troubling, our corporate executives seem happy to move onto the plantation.

In an op-ed on the opinion page of the Washington Post, Mr. Obama is clear that the goal of his trillion dollar spending plan is much more than short term economic stimulus.

"This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending -- it's a strategy for America's long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, healthcare, and education."

Perhaps more incredibly, Obama seems to think that government taking over an economy is a new idea. Or that massive growth in government can take place "with unprecedented transparency and accountability."

Yes, sir, we heard it from Jimmy Carter when he created the Department of Energy, the Synfuels Corporation, and the Department of Education.

Or how about the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 -- The War on Poverty -- which President Johnson said "...does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done. It charts a new course. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty."

Trillions of dollars later, black poverty is the same. But black families are not, with triple the incidence of single-parent homes and out-of-wedlock births.

It's not complicated. Americans can accept Barack Obama's invitation to move onto the plantation. Or they can choose personal responsibility and freedom.

Does anyone really need to think about what the choice should be?

Andrew Klavan: Fun With Anti-Semitism

2010-06-03T23:05:00.000-07:00

Gallup Poll shows largest Republican lead ever

2010-06-02T13:41:00.000-07:00

"November could be a painful month for President Obama and other party leaders."

With five months to go before the general election, a new poll finds that Republicans have opened their widest lead yet when it comes to which party voters prefer this fall. Gallup's generic congressional ballot finds that the number of voters who say they will vote GOP has jumped to 49 percent, compared with 43 percent for Democrats. That's not only the biggest lead Gallup has recorded for the GOP this election cycle, it's the largest lead Republicans have ever had in the poll, which Gallup has run since 1950.

Why are Republicans surging?

According to Gallup, the GOP gained 3 percentage points in the poll over the last week, while Dems fell 4 points. All of this happened as President Obama's approval rating took a hit, especially with his handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Gallup puts Obama's approval rating at 46 percent — not exactly in George W. Bush territory, but low for this White House.

No doubt critics will question how much a generic poll really reveals about what might happen in November. After all, it's often better to break down races locally for a more comprehensive picture of how the midterm elections might go. But generic ballots are very good at telling us where voter sentiment is nationally and how enthusiastic people are — or aren't — about the political parties.

One number that Democrats are surely not pleased about is what poll experts call the "enthusiasm" gap. According to Gallup, 39 percent of Republicans are excited about the 2010 elections, compared with just 24 percent of Democrats. That's one of the leading measures of how likely it is that voters will turn out to vote, and if Democrats can't find a way to close that 15-point gap, November could be a painful month for President Obama and other party leaders.

Red Cross aids Afghanistan Taliban

2010-05-30T16:29:00.001-07:00

Next time a Taliban pig kills a U.S. soldier, or pulls out a woman's fingernails for wearing nail polish, you can thank the Red Cross - they probably saved his miserable life. That's where your Red Cross donations are going, folks. That's $240 million+ per year from Americans.

"Red Cross aids Afghanistan Taliban," from UPI, May 26 (thanks to Block Ness):

KABUL, Afghanistan, May 26 (UPI) -- The International Committee of the Red Cross says it has provided basic training and first aid kits to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

A spokesman for the international humanitarian organization says about 70 members of the armed opposition were given first aid training last month, the BBC reported Wednesday.

"We treat and train people on the basis of medical necessity as an impartial organization, regardless of race or politics," the spokesman said....

How nice that must have been for the Nazis.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/05/red-cross-aids-taliban.html

no wonder Calif is broke

2010-05-27T15:29:00.001-07:00

"...another, perhaps unforeseen, effect of Prop. 13: Over time, it tends to place a greater tax burden on the young and the less wealthy, since the higher tax rates are levied on those with lower incomes and fewer assets.

DUH!

This was obvious to me immediately after that thing passed. Ok, not immediately, but soon after.

no wonder Calif is broke.

in this article you find out billionaires are getting off paying almost nothing:

http://goo.gl/7VoG
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Mexico's immigration laws?

2010-05-02T11:08:00.001-07:00

You get these idiots like "Shakira" who is from Columbia whining about Arizona. What happens if you sneak into Mexico? Anyone from South or Central America who dares to cross thru Mexico to get to the USA is extremely likely to be raped and or robbed, and often by Mexican police and military.

Mexico's immigration laws?

Mexico welcomes only foreigners who will be useful to Mexican society:
• Foreigners are admitted into Mexico “according to their possibilities of contributing to national progress.” (Article 32)
• Immigration officials must “ensure” that “immigrants will be useful elements for the country and that they have the necessary funds for their sustenance” and for their dependents. (Article 34)
• Foreigners may be barred from the country if their presence upsets “the equilibrium of the national demographics,” when foreigners are deemed detrimental to “economic or national interests,” when they do not behave like good citizens in their own country, when they have broken Mexican laws, and when “they are not found to be physically or mentally healthy.” (Article 37)
• The Secretary of Governance may “suspend or prohibit the admission of foreigners when he determines it to be in the national interest.” (Article 38)
Mexican authorities must keep track of every single person in the country:
• Federal, local and municipal police must cooperate with federal immigration authorities upon request, i.e., to assist in the arrests of illegal immigrants. (Article 73)
• A National Population Registry keeps track of “every single individual who comprises the population of the country,” and verifies each individual’s identity. (Articles 85 and 86)
• A national Catalog of Foreigners tracks foreign tourists and immigrants (Article 87), and assigns each individual with a unique tracking number (Article 91).
Foreigners with fake papers, or who enter the country under false pretenses, may be imprisoned:
• Foreigners with fake immigration papers may be fined or imprisoned. (Article 116)
• Foreigners who sign government documents “with a signature that is false or different from that which he normally uses” are subject to fine and imprisonment. (Article 116)
Foreigners who fail to obey the rules will be fined, deported, and/or imprisoned as felons:
• Foreigners who fail to obey a deportation order are to be punished. (Article 117)
• Foreigners who are deported from Mexico and attempt to re-enter the country without authorization can be imprisoned for up to 10 years. (Article 118)
• Foreigners who violate the terms of their visa may be sentenced to up to six years in prison (Articles 119, 120 and 121). Foreigners who misrepresent the terms of their visa while in Mexico — such as working with out a permit — can also be imprisoned.
Under Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony. The General Law on Population says,
• “A penalty of up to two years in prison and a fine of three hundred to five thousand pesos will be imposed on the foreigner who enters the country illegally.” (Article 123)
• Foreigners with legal immigration problems may be deported from Mexico instead of being imprisoned. (Article 125)
• Foreigners who “attempt against national sovereignty or security” will be deported. (Article 126)
Mexicans who help illegal aliens enter the country are themselves considered criminals under the law:
• A Mexican who marries a foreigner with the sole objective of helping the foreigner live in the country is subject to up to five years in prison. (Article 127)
• Shipping and airline companies that bring undocumented foreigners into Mexico will be fined. (Article 132)
All of the above runs contrary to what Mexican leaders are demanding of the United States. The stark contrast between Mexico’s immigration practices versus its American
immigration preachings is telling. It gives a clear picture of the Mexican government’s agenda: to have a one-way immigration relationship with the United States.
Let’s call Mexico’s bluff on its unwarranted interference in U.S. immigration policy. Let’s propose, just to make a point, that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) member nations standardize their immigration laws by using Mexico’s own law as a model.
J. Michael Waller, Ph.D., is the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Professor of International Communication at the Institute of World Politics, and is Vice President for Information Operations at the Center for Security Policy. He wrote this paper for the Center for Security Policy.
An authoritative English translation of the Constitution of Mexico, published by the Organization of American States, appears on http://www.citizensforaconstitutionalrep… Quotations in this document are from the OAS translation.

or check out this one.

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/13118

"I'm really scared for my children."

2010-04-28T08:43:00.001-07:00

Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka was on Hannity tonight and bashed President Obama. "I'm really scared for my children."

Human Rights Watch Exposed

2010-04-28T08:12:00.000-07:00

BY Daniel Halper
Benjamin Birnbaum has the dirt (and, yes, it's dirt) on Human Rights Watch in the latest issue of The New Republic. Some might recall the outrage directed towards the human rights group when it was discovered that a staffer, who had worked on Israel issues, had a gross obsession with Nazi paraphernalia. But that staffer, Marc Garlasco, turns out to be one of the few good guys on staff at Human Rights Watch, according to Birnbaum. The piece can be found here.

Texas gov. shoots, kills 'wily' coyote during jog

2010-04-28T07:47:00.000-07:00

By JIM VERTUNO, Associated Press Writer Jim Vertuno, Associated Press Writer

AUSTIN, Texas – Pistol-packing Texas Gov. Rick Perry has a message for wily coyotes out there: Don't mess with my dog.

Perry told The Associated Press on Tuesday he needed just one shot from the laser-sighted pistol he sometimes carries while jogging to take down a coyote that menaced his puppy during a February run near Austin.

Perry said he will carry his .380 Ruger — loaded with hollow-point bullets — when jogging on trails because he is afraid of snakes. He'd also seen coyotes in the undeveloped area.

When one came out of the brush toward his daughter's Labrador retriever, Perry charged.

"Don't attack my dog or you might get shot ... if you're a coyote," he said Tuesday.

Perry, a Republican running for a third full term against Democrat Bill White, is living in a private house in a hilly area southwest of downtown Austin while the Governor's Mansion is being repaired after a 2008 fire. A concealed handgun permit holder, Perry carries the pistol in a belt.

"I knew there were a lot of predators out there. You'll hear a pack of coyotes. People are losing small cats and dogs all the time out there in that community," Perry said.

"They're very wily creatures."

On this particular morning, Perry said, he was jogging without his security detail shortly after sunrise.

"I'm enjoying the run when something catches my eye and it's this coyote. I know he knows I'm there. He never looks at me, he is laser-locked on that dog," Perry said.

"I holler and the coyote stopped. I holler again. By this time I had taken my weapon out and charged it. It is now staring dead at me. Either me or the dog are in imminent danger. I did the appropriate thing and sent it to where coyotes go," he said.

Perry said the laser-pointer helped make a quick, clean kill.

"It was not in a lot of pain," he said. "It pretty much went down at that particular juncture."

Texas state law allows people to shoot coyotes that are threatening livestock or domestic animals. The dog was unharmed, Perry said.

Perry's security detail was not required to file a report about the governor discharging a weapon, said Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange.

"People shoot coyotes all the time, snakes all the time," Mange said. "We don't write reports."

The governor left the coyote where it fell.

"He became mulch," Perry said.

An Open Letter to American Jews

2010-04-28T07:25:00.000-07:00

Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Dear American Jews,

I write to you as a charter member of the tribe. I'm not only Jewish, I'm religious. I'm married to an Israeli girl (she'll receive her citizenship next year and she is a proud soon-to-be American). I go to synagogue regularly, keep kosher, keep the Sabbath.

American Jews, I have one request of you: please pull your heads out of your posteriors.

I mean that in all sincerity. Your continued support for Democrats and an administration that is openly anti-Semitic is a disgrace. Your embrace of a party that seeks to hamstring Israel in the name of a wholly fictitious Middle East peace process is contemptible. Your loyalty to a president who consistently sides with Palestinian and Iranian mass murder-supporters is disgusting.

Your backing of a man who has spent his life surrounding himself with the worst anti-Semites America has to offer -- Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khalidi (former Palestinian terrorist spokesman), Louis Farrakhan ("I don't like the way [Jews] leech on us"), Samantha Power, Robert Malley, to name a few -- is nothing short of reprehensible. Rahm Emanuel's presence in the Obama cabinet doesn't ameliorate Obama's anti-Semitism -- it just provides it convenient cover. Al Sharpton wrongly called Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell "house negroes"; Emanuel is a kapo.

Even as you continue to buttress a president who seeks the destruction of your co-religionists, you demonstrate your myopia by rejecting the tea party movement and evangelical Christian Israel-supporters.

The tea party movement is your ally for three important reasons. First, it supports capitalism against the forces of socialism -- and capitalism keeps America strong enough to provide Israel with a hand against its evil adversaries. Second, American Jews are, by far, the highest-earning religious group in the United States -- the tea party fights for your right to keep your money. Third, the tea party stands against government overreach -- and in an era when government overreach promotes anti-religious secularism, Jews must stand with the tea party.

Your rejection of evangelical Christians is even more idiotic. Evangelical Christians are the only major voting bloc preventing President Obama from breaking ties with Israel. When Janet Porter, an evangelical Florida talk show host, heard about Obama's anti-Israel tyranny, she responded by asking her listeners to buy dozens of yellow roses to send to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office as a show of support. The price per dozen: $19.48, in honor of the year of Israel's founding (1948). Over 14,000 flowers were delivered. Meanwhile, Adm. James Jones, Obama's national security adviser and the man who brought Jew-hater Zbigniew Brzezinski into Obama's inner circle, was busy telling anti-Semitic jokes before the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"But they want to convert us!" many American Jews shout. Not all Christians do. But for the rest -- so what? Would you sacrifice the support of millions of good-hearted Christians because they want to discuss Jesus with you? If your own belief system is so fragile, the weakness is yours, not theirs. While you expend energy whining about Jehovah's Witnesses who show up at your door with a Bible, Obama supports radical Muslims who would show up at your door with a gun -- or, as in the case of Daniel Pearl, a butcher's knife.

Now, I understand, American Jews, that most of you don't care about Israel.

I understand that you're more concerned about a woman's unconditional right to abort her unborn child (which Judaism rejects) than you are about Israel. Fine. Understand that you have removed yourself from the vast river of Jewish history in favor of a chimerical morality that values libertinism over liberty.

I understand that many of you -- all of you above age 70 -- still think FDR is alive. He isn't, but Jimmy Carter is.

I understand that some of you still think that conservatives and Republicans are the same folks they were during the 1950s, when they banned you from country clubs. They aren't.

The simple fact is this: There is only one mainstream political ideology in this country that asks you to check your principles and cultural history at the door in the name of the greater good -- leftism, the same ideology that virtually exterminated Judaism in Russia and Europe. While the left exploits your adherence to bagel-and-lox Judaism by appealing to your watered-down and perverted "tikkun olam" sensibilities, you are enabling your own destruction. The same people who urge you to reach out to terrorists will be the first to sacrifice you to those terrorists' tender mercies. The same people who urge you to worry about same-sex marriage rather than religious freedom will be the first to take your religious freedoms away.

I love you, my brothers and sisters. That's why I'm writing to you. Time is running out; the clock is winding down. Pick a side.
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Ronald Reagan Commercial From the 50s

2010-04-21T11:49:00.001-07:00

The great Lt. Col. Allen West - interview

2010-04-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

A New Fight: Lt. Col. Allen West Pursues a House Seat
In an exclusive interview, the candidate in Florida's 22nd Congressional District tells PJM that "you cannot repeal the health care bill as long as Nancy Pelosi is in charge of Congress."

March 22, 2010 - by Alyssa A. Lappen Back in 2003, few Americans had heard of Lt. Col. Allen West, then commanding a battalion of roughly 600 in Iraq.

Attacks on his platoon suddenly spiked, and his intelligence operations got wind of an Iraqi policeman having leaked their maneuvers, in advance, to Islamic terrorists. West got nowhere by interrogating the suspected collaborator for several hours. Ever mindful of his men’s safety — and of a rumored plot to assassinate him and attack the entire battalion — West drew his service revolver and fired near the man’s head. The policeman started talking.

West averted the plot, but also faced a potential court martial, and was called to testify before Congress. “I’d go through hell with a gasoline can” to save his men’s lives, a nonplussed West told Congress.

The Army merely fined West and relieved him of his command, ending his otherwise stellar 22-year Army career.

But to West, every day offers a new opportunity. After briefly teaching in a high school, then serving as a civilian military adviser in Afghanistan, West decided to seek to fulfill his yen for public service from another route. In 2008, he sought the congressional seat in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District, running against incumbent Ron Klein. West garnered 48% of the vote, despite raising only $500,000 against Klein’s millions. And in the tradition of his never-say-die, lower-middle class, Atlanta inner-city parents, the late Herman West Sr. and Elizabeth West, the 48-year-old retired lieutenant colonel is running again — more resolute than ever.

Alyssa A. Lappen: Is it ironic? You were relieved of your military command during a Republican presidency, yet you’re running for Congress as a Republican?

Lt. Col. (ret.) Allen West: No. I don’t see irony. What happened had nothing to do with politics. My running on a Republican ticket is basically due to my conservative politics, and in line with what should be the Republican policy platform.

AAL: Would it have been the same under any administration?

West: I don’t think the administration had anything to do with the decision of my field commander or the advocate general advising him. It was very helpful to have members of Congress and the Senate read out a resolution in support of me and my actions. I stand by what I did. It was based on my men on the ground, not political ramifications or anything like that.

AAL: What was the exact circumstance of this man who was attempting to assassinate you?

West: He was was an Iraqi policeman. We had human intelligence saying he was leaking information to the enemy. We had seen an uptick in ambushes and such things. The word on the street was, I was an enemy target. We were very successful and I was a visible and effective commander.

AAL: If elected, what might you change to affect future commanders facing the same situation?

West: Having been a person on this 21st century battlefield, from Desert Storm, Iraq, and also Afghanistan, I bring a wealth of knowledge from the tactical level that can help us shape our strategic level decisions. I would seek to be on the House Armed Services Committee.

We need to look at current rules of engagement. Are they stymieing the efforts of our men and women on the battlefield? Are they hindering our initiative against this enemy? We should look at things happening with the defense budget. For example, I am really upset about how we continue to put all these non-related amendments on defense appropriation bills. We need to clean that up.

Also, how do we move ahead to taper our force to combat this enemy — a non-state, non-uniformed belligerent on the battlefield? And pay attention to future threats. China continues to build what may be the largest naval force that we will ever know.

AAL: What other principles come from the military?

West: We seek to make a difference. I’m not from a political family or background. We have to reestablish the fact that any American can be a part of the process. In running for office, they have a shot at getting to Congress, and doing the business of being a citizen legislator. Our political system can accommodate people from every walk of life. Let Americans try to guide this thing in the right way.

People need to show it can be done. In 2008, we proved that someone resolute and focused, with a principled message, can get attention. We got 48% of the vote in the 22nd Congressional District of Florida.

This is huge. The key is for people to see this has to be done. Plato said, those who refuse to engage in politics will be governed by their inferiors.

AAL: An organization was started in Texas by Tim Cox, a former process manager at Dell Computers. He’s just fed up with Congress. Probably most Americans are.

West: Now wait, it’s interesting. Every cycle, people say they’re fed up with Congress. Last year, Congress had what then was one of the lowest approval ratings, maybe 20% or 21%. Yet 93% of incumbents were reelected. So people continue to say that. I hope finally the American people will stand up and bring those words to fruition. But let’s face it, there are districts where representatives will not be voted out. Folks are very happy with the person they have. It’ll be interesting to see if people go back with the courage to say Congress is terrible, but our congressman is okay.

AAL: One difficulty is beating incumbents. You have all this gerrymandering. Your home district is a good example — a long skinny north-south stretch through Florida, cutting out big sections of key towns through which it runs. And the House of Representatives maps such districts to protect incumbents.

West: It is very hard to get rid of them. You need a strategic perspective. If Americans want to take the gavel out of Nancy Pelosi’s hand, they have to look across the country and find 40 to 55 seats, maybe even 60, where you can be competitive and make a difference. Congressional District 22 is one of those. And for whatever reason, my district has gotten a lot of national attention.

AAL: Will incumbent Ron Klein run again?

West: Yes, absolutely. I don’t think he expected me to run again — he felt I was a one trick pony. When I was not successful he figured I’d go away. But I am committed to this country, and committed to continuing service to the people. People now know what I stand for. The name recognition has improved. The national level attention, for whatever reason, is humbling. But I think Klein is now in a very tough situation, running against someone like myself, who isn’t a career politician.

AAL: No doubt you’ll get lots of support.

West: And if in two years, West turns out to, you know, suck, then get me out of there. I am [a] guy [who] would understand that. That’s what I tell folks. You are sending me up there to prove myself as a capable legislator, statesman, and political leader. If I fail and let you down … just don’t support me. Just vote me out. That is what we have to do.

AAL: You’ve spoken about the love your parents instilled in you for God, country, and self-sufficiency. What are those principles, and why do you hold them so high?

West: It is important to honor our Judeo-Christian faith tradition — and notice I said faith tradition, I did not say state-sponsored religion. People get very confused about that. You can go back to the founding fathers and see that connection. I have faith and believe in something greater than myself. It comes back around to understanding this great country and service to something greater than yourself. My dad served in WWII. My mother did 25 years of civilian service with the Marine Corps. My older brother served in Vietnam, and now my young nephew is a U.S. Army Captain, following in my footsteps. I think that’s very important. It’s about giving back, about a great country affording you the opportunities to get out and, as the Army once said, be all you can be. It’s about your own internal individual responsibility and accountability, your own internal drive and desire … to be part of what and who we are in this country. That’s why people come to America. They see the opportunities here.

It’s just a shame that government creates victims, and victims become dependent. Government continues to grow because of this dependent entitlement class. That’s not what my parents raised me to believe. Never see anything as an obstacle. Never look at the color of my skin as a crutch. Always know the standards. Understand them. Work not just to achieve them, but to exceed the standards. Those are driving factors in my life, which I learned from parents who taught me faith, love of country, individual responsibility, and accountability.

AAL: Your parents died young.

West: My dad was 66 when he passed from a massive stroke. My mother was 63 when she died of liver cancer. I miss them very much, but each and every day that I go forth, I carry them with me.

AAL: Why was your father, Herman West Sr. from Ozark, Alabama, called “Buck”?

West: Well, it was the strength he exuded. As I said at CPAC, the most important thing was how I ended up on that stage to speak. It traced right back to their dreams, my father, my mother, what they wanted me to be in life.

AAL: I think [your parents] Buck and Elizabeth West would be very proud of you if they were here today.

West: Well, thank you.

AAL: Parenting definitely is important.

West: It is, and one of the problems you have in America is the breakdown of family, especially in the black community. Even Daniel Patrick Moynihan talked about how a lot of these liberal social welfare programs, if you started to pull the man out of the house and to break down the family in the black community, it is not going to be a positive thing. And we see that. In the black community now, you only have 30% to 35% of children being raised in two parent households. That’s appalling.

AAL: Well, yes. And I do not think it’s just in the black community, either. It is all over the place.

West: Yes, it has expanded. It really targeted the inner-city black community and now it has expanded. And you cannot have a strong country without strong families. We do not want to see America be reflected in Detroit, Michigan, or even in California.

AAL: Let’s discuss Tim Cox’ GOOOH (Get Out of Our House) organization. Do you know about it?

West: Yeah, absolutely. I visited their website. He did an interview with South Florida’s WFTL talk show host Joyce Kaufman and I had an opportunity to listen. I think it is a good citizen-based initiative. So I applaud Mr. Cox.

But you already have that system built in. Americans have never really understood, never really participated in this process, and never sat down and evaluated candidates and scrutinized them one-on-one. Not like we are starting to see now.

The great thing is the founding fathers set up our system with powers in the House of Representatives to make them the most powerful branch. So every two years, you get to do something about it. It’s just a matter of Americans educating themselves about the Constitution and understanding you can change this legislative body every two years. Come out and hold people’s feet to the fire.

Will the American people follow through on what they’re saying? Will their respective grassroots organizations follow through? I think when you talk about constitutional fundamentals and principles that make this country great, Americans will rally, and come to support you.

AAL: In current politics, have you read the revised House health care measure? What are your key concerns?

West: I have not read the entire revised measure. I’ve looked at certain pieces. The biggest thing: this is not about focusing on the health care problem in America. And we do have a problem. That is with lowering the costs. If you look at the system that makes costs too high, it drives you to some specific solutions to fix the problem. It’s not about creating 110 more government agencies. It’s not about expanding government health care supervision, or trying to take over one-sixth of our gross national production.

This directly affects us in Florida. It’s about catastrophic litigation. Doctors charge more because they are afraid, so tort reform is a first start. It’s about state insurance agencies and commissions, state by state, that have created monopolies all over the place. The one thing that drives down costs in a free market society is competition.

And it’s not about introducing government into this aspect of competition. Government can run itself in the red [at a loss]. If it wants to produce more capital, government just prints money or borrows money or raises taxes. That would be unfair competition.

It’s about putting Americans in charge of their choices. Now, the insurance companies cannot go jacking up rates because you’d have another company to buy insurance from. That is the great thing about our system. If people see the need, they’ll come into this market and meet the needs of consumers and American citizens [and profit].

Another thing no one talks about is the effect of illegal immigration on health care costs. Down in Miami-Dade, we have Jackson Memorial about to go under because of the rising [costs and expenses] from illegal immigrants. North of us in Martin County you see the same thing.

Health savings accounts are something that no one talks about. Everyone keeps throwing around [numbers]: 30 million, 45 million, 47 million [without insurance]. But it’s really a targeted group of maybe 9 to 10 million citizens that need affordable health insurance. Give them the tax credit.

We have got to transfer the wealth from Washington, D.C., back down to the people so they can take care of their [own] lives and their lifestyles. It’s a lie that increasing taxes increases revenues. At this time, I do not think we need to be creating programs to raise taxes on the American people.

AAL: I could not agree more. Having government control health care would be an unmitigated disaster.

West: The country is upside down. I saw a side by side comparison of public sector and private sector compensation a few weeks ago. At this point, public sector compensations exceed private sector compensations. Here in Broward County, we have city managers making more than the governor.

You cannot have 20% of federal government employees earning six-figure incomes. You can’t continue down the road where government continues to grow. Look, they run the finance industry; they have taken over the automobile industry. They are going after health care. If cap and trade were to go through, they’d control the energy sector. It just squashes out the innovation and ingenuity that comes from the private sector.

This is not efficient. Look at the four standing government medical programs — Medicaid, Medicare, the SCHIP, and the Veterans’ Administration. None of those four programs runs effectively or efficiently.

AAL: What’s SCHIP?

West: The State Children’s Health Insurance Program was started in 1997 to cover children at or below the poverty level. A lot of people didn’t notice last January, one of the first things the Nancy Pelosi crew did. It was signed by President Obama. They raised the age of children covered under SCHIP from 18 to 25, and the poverty level from $32,000 to $83,000 for a family of four.

AAL: $83,000? Oh goodness, we’re poor! (Laughs) That’s unbelievable.

West: Absolutely. So now you are paying free health care for children who are up to 25 years of age, in a household of four with $83,000 income. They are creeping their way to getting what they want. And SCHIP is a huge misnomer; it’s a federal program.

AAL: Assuming health care does pass, can it be repealed by the next Congress? What would that take?

West: The biggest thing — you cannot repeal it as long as Nancy Pelosi is in charge of Congress. So in November 2010, you’d need 40 to 50 seats to flip so she does not have the gavel. She is no longer speaker of the House of Representatives. Even more, you probably need to flip it so at least a two-thirds majority in the House sit on the other side. Then you can override any presidential veto. Americans need to strategically think about those key things if they want to reverse that, and some other dangerous pieces of legislation passed in the first couple of Obama administration years.

AAL: Such as?

West: Some of the spending. We have to get that under control. [We also] have to challenge and get rid of the czar stuff. This is not just from the Obama administration. It went on previously. But it has been exacerbated to epic proportions. Once again, it’s just expansive growth of government, and that’s not constitutional, having people make public policy who aren’t accountable to the people. We need to peel the onion back on all that. We need the checks and balances that the founding fathers established.

AAL: What about the effects of global jihad in the U.S. What concerns you most about domestic policies on this issue?

West: We have become so politically correct and so hung up on multiculturalism that our tolerance has become a one way street leading to cultural suicide. As you evaluate jihad, Islam, or whatever — it’s not about Muslims, not about individuals. It’s about an ideology. We need to study the history, from the 7th century, from Islam’s inception and after. How was it promulgated and disseminated across the world from the 7th century until today? We see that it’s not so much a religion, but more of a totalitarian, theocratic, political ideology.

We need leaders in Washington, D.C., with courage and confidence to stand and say so. So that we are not allowing ourselves to be infiltrated in cultural, educational, political, and economic operating systems by something really antithetical to our constitutional republic. As long as we continue letting people use our freedom to preach against what we are in America and indeed Western civilization — you can look to Europe and see what’s going on — we are hanging ourselves. We have to challenge this ideology, their belief system, to show us that they can be compatible with democracy and freedom, with our principles of individual rights and freedom.

AAL: Yes, but how can you control it? People see Islam as a religion, a faith, and the First Amendment allows freedom of religion.

West: It’s what I said. There will come a point where we cannot see it as religion. This enemy’s reality will have to become our own. It’s a sad truth. I want to coexist with all people. But when you look at it, we are accommodating an ideology that does not accommodate us. How many churches and synagogues are there in Saudi Arabia? A quote, unquote “infidel” cannot go to Mecca. Yet anyone can visit the Vatican. Anyone can go into a church here in the United States. Just yesterday I went to a Jewish temple and spoke to Jewish war veterans. There’s something inherently wrong that a lot of people don’t want to admit; they don’t want to face.

It requires leadership. Leadership has five components: courage, competence, commitment, conviction, and character. You need the type of people in Washington, D.C., willing to stand up and say these things. You may not like what I just said, but it is all true.

AAL: You’re preaching to the choir. I’ve been writing on this since 2000 or 2001.

West: Muammar Ghadafi last summer said something a lot of people missed. He said Islam will overtake Europe without firing a shot. They’ll do it by migration and an explosive birth rate. In a democratic society, the next thing you know, they’ll win by sheer numbers. Then they’ll start to impact domestic policies and programs.

AAL: So does the U.S. limit immigration or ban new mosque construction?

West: No, you challenge the ideology to show that it’s compatible. And if it’s not compatible, then you stem the infiltration. What I’m talking about has nothing to do with Muslims. I’ve been in that part of the world for some time, and helped three of my Afghani interpreters get green cards. But they had to prove to me that they understood the Constitution of the United States and what it meant to be a free people. That’s the onus we have to place on Islam and the Muslim community.

AAL: But even that is tricky because of the taqiyya doctrine. That commands Muslims to be good liars to advance Islam. While it’s horrible to generalize, the ideology allows and encourages such lying.

West: That’s why we have to force a reformation. It’s the same as Judaism, the same as Martin Luther in 1517. We went through a Reformation. The same needs to happen in Islam. After 622 A.D., after Mohammed’s Hejira [migration to Medina], everything became very violent. Until Muslims reject that, and [reinstate] all the abrogated verses from the first 12-year peaceful verses, we absolutely have to pressure them to make that happen.

I am not going to let someone lie to me and say this is a religion of peace. History shows that it is not.

AAL: You are the first person I’ve heard even contending for political office to say anything like this, never mind those already in office. And what is the reaction in the field?

West: People do listen. You only have to tune into the news and see exactly what’s happening. I’m not sitting by myself and preaching some heresy. I’m talking about fact, talking about history and current events. Let’s face it. Jihad Jamie. Jihad Jane. Look at Buffalo, NY. You have a guy on trial for beheading his wife because she wanted a divorce. In Arizona, a guy ran over his daughters because they were becoming too Western. Look at all these things. Fort Hood, Texas. The U.S. soldiers who were shot at a Little Rock recruiting station. We have a serious problem we have to deal with. We can’t continue putting our heads in the sand and saying these very trite terms like “moderate Islam” or “peace-loving Muslims” because we don’t want to confront it. So we have got to challenge them.

AAL: How does the president get away with it?

West: It’s very easy. He’s the president. But people are challenging him because he’s not dealing with this situation forthrightly. Look at his address at the Turkish National Assembly. Look at his address in Cairo, which was just replete with lies and platitudes not based upon fact. It was appeasement.

AAL: I lost a friend over that speech.

West: Understand. There are going to be 30% to 35% of Americans who are not comfortable dealing with this. But the majority of Americans want leaders willing to stand up and speak the truth. They really do.

AAL: How do you arrive at that percentage?

West: You have a third of folks ideologically very much at that far left extreme. There’s an unholy alliance between liberal progressives and this radical Islamic enemy. I don’t understand it. But it is what it is. But 65% to 70% of Americans are composed of the center right. And 65% to 70% of Americans understand the basic set of principles of limited government, security from external and internal threats, individual responsibility and accountability, liberty, free market solutions, leadership based on merit, and traditional values — our borders, our culture, our language, protecting the unborn, and also the sanctity of marriage.

AAL: How would you control these assaults, if elected? How do you convince peers in both parties (and frankly there are many problematic Republicans too)?

West: Look at Lindsey Graham who’s signing onto an amnesty bill. It comes down to leadership — and challenging people. You need an open forum and debate to throw light upon these issues. If legislators are serious about their oath to support and defend the Constitution, they have to do what is right for the American people. Now is a critical time.

Americans are going back to what we said. They’re starting to hold legislators’ feet to the fire; they’re looking for principled leaders, who aren’t self-serving or beholden to special interests or afraid to tackle hard issues. I’d have to sit down with fellow Republicans and educate them on the threats out there. They need to do what’s right and protect the American people.

AAL: Tim Cox’s group wants a law specifying that each new statute can address only one issue. That is, the House and Senate must limit new measures to one law on one issue. That’s it.

West: Absolutely. That’s it. We need people who understand the five basic mandates of the federal government: to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, promote general welfare, provide for the common defense, and secure the blessings of liberty. Also, the House of Representatives operates within the mandates of Article One of the Constitution. If we could get those people, then we’re going to be fine.

It’s not the government’s right or responsibility to start mandating to Americans that they must buy health insurance. That’s a prime example of a government gone totally awry. We have got to get people up there who understand that what’s best for Americans is that they have liberty to pursue happiness. We need people who set the conditions for the success of the American people, not people who try to engineer results and design the outcomes. It’s about making sure that Americans have opportunities for their life, for their liberties, and for their pursuit of happiness. It’s about getting back to fundamentals.

Honor, integrity, and character need to be reestablished in our country’s leadership, and you can do that with people who focus on what’s best for the country and not what’s best for themselves.

AAL: A great many people nationwide pin a lot of hope on you (not to use an overused word) to reform government and rekindle basic American principles in Washington, D.C.. Assuming you win, you’d be a junior congressman. What can supporters realistically expect?

West: They can expect me to go and give that age-old adage — 110%. There’s not a day when I don’t lay my head down without realizing the responsibility upon me — that a lot of people pin a lot of hope on me to turn things around.

I go back to Harry Truman, and what he was able to do. Here was a guy who had not been very successful. He was a haberdasher. Yet he took on the defense industry. And he got recognized. A person who stands resolute can make a difference. People rally around him. That is what you focus on. Not the special interests or the PACs or anything like that.

You focus on who sent you and what they’re looking for. The bigger thing: I will continue to pray for God to strengthen me; I will put together a top notch team to look at all the critical issues. It’s that important to me. I’m not saying I’ll hit a home run every time. But every time I’m at bat, I’ll seek to get on base. I am not going to let people down. And I am not going to be relegated to some back bench, to sit in a corner and just work on being reelected. That’s not why I am going to Washington, D.C.

Understand the kind of person I am and the stubbornness that, if my mother and father were alive, they would tell you about. People say, you gotta compromise and work with people. But I am not going to compromise my principles. When you start to do that, you start on the road to perdition. I will always stand for my principles. I will always stand on the beliefs in what made this country great, from the Declaration, to the Constitution and all the great thinkers and the worries of our founding fathers and framers. That’s the bedrock upon which we stand.

And I am absolutely humbled at the response we’re getting across the nation and beyond. Last week, we were sent a Dutch conservative blog that featured me on the front page.

AAL: That’s not surprising. You support freedom of speech and Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, charged with hate speech in his own country merely for filming and translating passages chanted from the Koran. Some supposedly conservative Americans deride him as a fascist. You, on the other hand, understand he’s fighting for Western civilization itself. Naturally, Dutchmen respect that.

West: It comes back to honor, integrity, and character. They need to be reestablished in the our nation’s leadership. You can do that if you get people to focus on what’s best for the country and not what’s best for themselves. For me, the honor and integrity are the payoff.

There is nothing fancy about me.

It can be taken away any day. That’s what keeps you humble. When you’re in a combat zone, and have a successful firefight and survive that day — you have to go back out the next day too. That keeps you humble. Each and every day is a new fight. What I have done today will not matter tomorrow. You have to stay humble and on focus.

But more than that, it’s how you were raised, those intrinsic characteristics that your parents gave you.

Anti-Gun Senator Shoots Intruder

2010-01-10T18:58:00.000-08:00

Long time Anti-Gun Advocate State Senator R.C. Soles, 74, shot one of two intruders at his home just outside Tabor City, N.C. about5 p.m. Sunday, the prosecutor for the politician's home county said.

The victim, Kyle Blackburn, was taken to a South Carolina hospital, but the injuries were not reported to be life-threatening, according to Rex Gore, district attorney for Columbus, Bladen and Brunswick counties..

The State Bureau of Investigation and Columbus County Sheriff's Department are investigating the shooting, Gore said. Soles, who was not arrested declined to discuss the incident Sunday evening.

"I am not in a position to talk to you," Soles said by telephone."I'm right in the middle of an investigation."

Soles, a top-ranking Democrat and the longest-serving member of the legislature, already was the subject of an SBI investigation over sexual misconduct allegations with former male clients. (FHW - Now, that sounds more like a liberal to me).

The Senator, who has made a career of being against gun ownership for the general public, didn't hesitate to defend himself with his own gun when he believed he was in immediate danger and he was the victim.

In typical hypocritical liberal fashion, the "Do As I Say And Not As I Do" Anti-Gun Activist Lawmaker picked up his gun and took action in what apparently was a self-defense shooting. Why hypocritical you may ask? It is because his long legislative record shows that the actions that he took toprotect his family, his own response to a dangerous life threatening situation, are actions that he feels ordinary citizens should not have if they were faced with an identical situation.

It has prompted some to ask if the Senator believes his life and personal safety is more valuable than yours or mine. But, this is to be expected from those who believe they can run our lives, raise our kids, and protect our families better than we can.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/national/article/74-year-old_n.c._state_senator_shoots_wounds_intruder_at_his_home/287987/P10/

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Camille Paglia on Rush...

2010-01-10T09:47:00.000-08:00

Though every novice administration makes blunders and bloopers, its modus operandi should not be a conspiratorial reflex cynicism.

Case in point: The orchestrated attack on radio host Rush Limbaugh, which has made the White House look like an oafish bunch of drunken frat boys. I returned from carnival in Brazil (more on that shortly) to find the Limbaugh affair in full flower. Has the administration gone mad? This entire fracas was set off by the president himself, who lowered his office by targeting a private citizen by name. Limbaugh had every right to counterattack, which he did with gusto. Why have so many Democrats abandoned the hallowed principle of free speech? Limbaugh, like our own liberal culture hero Lenny Bruce, is a professional commentator who can be as rude and crude as he wants.

Yes, I cringe when Rush plays his "Barack the Magic Negro" satire or when he gratuitously racializes the debate over Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, who is a constant subject of withering scrutiny for quite different reasons on sports shows here in Philadelphia. On the other hand, I totally agree with Rush about "feminazis," whose amoral tactics and myopic worldview I as a dissident feminist had to battle for decades. As a student of radio and a longtime listener of Rush's show, I have gotten a wealth of pleasure and insight from him over the years.

To attack Rush Limbaugh is to attack his audience -- and to intensify the loyalty of his fan base.

If Rush's presence looms too large for the political landscape, it's because of the total vacuity of the Republican leadership, which seems to be in a dithering funk. Rush isn't responsible for the feebleness of Republican voices or the thinness of Republican ideas. Only ignoramuses believe that Rush speaks for the Republican Party. On the contrary, Rush as a proponent of heartland conservatism has waged open warfare with the Washington party establishment for years.

And I'm sick of people impugning Rush's wealth and lifestyle, which is no different from that of another virtuoso broadcaster who hit it big -- Oprah Winfrey. Rush Limbaugh is an embodiment of the American dream: He slowly rose from obscurity to fame on the basis of his own talent and grit. Every penny Rush has earned was the result of his rapport with a vast audience who felt shut out and silenced by the liberal monopoly of major media. As a Democrat and Obama supporter, I certainly do not agree with everything Rush says or does.

read it all:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/03/11/mercury/index1.html
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quotes

2010-01-03T17:16:00.001-08:00

"We do not have to destroy America with missiles; America will destroy itself from within." - Nikita Kruschev, 1961

"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." – Ronald Reagan – September 25, 1987

more incompetence from Obama admin.

2009-12-31T11:25:00.000-08:00

...yesterday a White House official, in rebuttal to comments made by Dick Cheney that the Obama administration had made an error in dropping the "War on Terror" moniker, said "we are only at war with Al Qaeda not a concept called 'terror'"

Today, the Taliban, not Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the bombing of a CIA station in Afghanistan.

Hmmm.

CIA Director: 7 CIA workers killed in Afghanistan (AP)
AP - The Taliban claimed responsibility Thursday for infiltrating a CIA post with a suicide bomber who set off an explosion that killed seven American intelligence staffers and wounded six others in an attack believed one of the worst in the agency's history.

CLUELESS

2009-12-30T22:02:00.000-08:00

Ivana Trump Escorted Off Plane: Napolitano Declares 'The System Worked'
by Ann Coulter

In response to a Nigerian Muslim trying to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, the government will now prohibit international travelers from going to the bathroom in the last hour before the plane lands.

Terrorists who plan to bomb planes during the first seven hours of the eight-hour flight, however, should face no difficulties, provided they wait until after the complimentary beverage service has been concluded.

How do they know Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab didn't wait until the end of the flight to try to detonate explosives because he heard the stewardess announce that the food service was over and seats would have to be placed in their upright position? I can't finish my snack? This plane is going down!

Also prohibited in the last hour of international flights will be: blankets, pillows, computers and in-flight entertainment. Another triumph in Janet Napolitano's "Let's stay one step behind the terrorists" policy!

For the past eight years, approximately 2 million Americans a day have been subjected to humiliating searches at airport security checkpoints, forced to remove their shoes and jackets, to open their computers, and to remove all liquids from their carry-on bags, except minuscule amounts in marked 3-ounce containers placed in Ziploc plastic bags -- folding sandwich bags are verboten -- among other indignities.

This, allegedly, was the price we had to pay for safe airplanes. The one security precaution the government refused to consider was to require extra screening for passengers who looked like the last three-dozen terrorists to attack airplanes.

Since Muslims took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, every attack on a commercial airliner has been committed by foreign-born Muslim men with the same hair color, eye color and skin color. Half of them have been named Mohammed.

An alien from the planet "Not Politically Correct" would have surveyed the situation after 9/11 and said: "You are at war with an enemy without uniforms, without morals, without a country and without a leader -- but the one advantage you have is they all look alike. ... What? ... What did I say?"

The only advantage we have in a war with stateless terrorists was ruled out of order ab initio by political correctness.

And so, despite 5 trillion Americans opening laptops, surrendering lip gloss and drinking breast milk in airports day after day for the past eight years, the government still couldn't stop a Nigerian Muslim from nearly blowing up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day.

The "warning signs" exhibited by this particular passenger included the following:

His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

He's Nigerian.

He's a Muslim.

His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

He boarded a plane in Lagos, Nigeria.

He paid nearly $3,000 in cash for his ticket.

He had no luggage.

His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Two months ago, his father warned the U.S. that he was a radical Muslim and possibly dangerous.

If our security procedures can't stop this guy, can't we just dispense with those procedures altogether? What's the point exactly?

(To be fair, the father's warning might have been taken more seriously if he had not simultaneously asked for the U.S. Embassy's Social Security number and bank routing number in order to convey a $28 million inheritance that was trapped in a Nigerian bank account.)

The warning from Abdulmutallab's father put his son on some list, but not the "no fly" list. Apparently, it's tougher to get on the "no fly" list than it was to get into Studio 54 in the '70s. Currently, the only people on the "no fly" list" are the Blind Sheik and Sean Penn.

The government is like the drunk looking for his keys under a lamppost. Someone stops to help, and asks, "Is this where you lost them?" No, the drunk answers, but the light's better here.

The government refuses to perform the only possibly effective security check -- search Muslims -- so instead it harasses infinitely compliant Americans. Will that help avert a terrorist attack? No, but the Americans don't complain.

The only reason Abdulmutallab didn't succeed in bringing down an airplane with 278 passengers was that: (1) A brave Dutchman leapt from his seat and extinguished the smoldering Nigerian; and (2) the Nigerian apparently didn't have enough detonating fluid to cause a powerful explosion.

In addition to the no blanket, no computer, no bathroom rule, perhaps the airlines could add this to their preflight announcement about seat belts and emergency exits: "Should a passenger sitting near you attempt to detonate an explosive device, you may be called upon to render emergency assistance. Would you be willing to do so under those circumstances? If not we will assign you another seat ..."

found on a blog

2009-12-21T21:33:00.001-08:00

this blog:

http://www.gormogons.com/2009_11_01_archive.html

the guy is good....

Saturday, November 21, 2009
Prattle
Robert Wright, in the New York Times, writes that conservative writers like Charles Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg are right that the liberal media are trying to cover up Hasan’s crimes by dismissing them as a mere medical issue.
An important admonition, and the only one that explains the lunatic concepts of pre-traumatic stress disorder or second hand flashbacks.
But then Wright concludes that the whole thing is conservativism’s fault, because the right’s pro-military approach to fighting terrorism is what brought us to this.
Re-writing history that would be obviously corrected by the simple act of Googling, Wright says “The American right and left reacted to 9/11 differently. Their respective responses were, to oversimplify a bit: ‘kill the terrorists’ and ‘kill the terrorism meme.’” Perhaps that was the oversimplified bit among his circle of friends, but the Czar recollects that President Bush had a record-high approval rating of 90+ percent when he advocating killing the terrorists...and not their “meme” (a word used by people who are trying to sound hip, and really do not understand what a meme is).
He more than oversimplifies, if his Latin is good enough to translate reductio ad absurdum.
Wright is obviously a liberal—defined not by his position on terrorism, but on his fantasy notion that Hasan must have been created by someone or something. A monster like Hasan cannot come from nowhere: he must be a reaction to something. For liberals, there must be meaning, closure, and feeling.
A monster like Hasan cannot come from nowhere: he must be a reaction to something. For liberals, there must be meaning, closure, and feeling.Wright cannot conceive that a thing like Hasan can simply occur of his own accord and free will; Hasan, in fact, could just happen. A man could wake up one morning and decide that he wanted to follow a dangerous, violent path, and that he could easily select a soft target to carry out a murderous rampage. This cannot be for a liberal: he must have been influenced by the seductive talk of war, of guns, or violence. There must be a root cause for senselessness, and perhaps we could find it if we just think hard enough. No matter how stretched the theory is, the theory is better than the alternative.
Another revealing pot shot: “Contrary to right-wing stereotype, Islam isn’t an intrinsically belligerent religion.” And a delicious left-wing stereotype that right wingers would have such a stereotype. As they might say in Wikipedia...cite? Wright adds that the more right-wingers view Islam as violent, the more Islam turns violent. This backwards post hoc ergo propter hoc fair farting shows how unstable and weak Wright’s position is.
Wright concludes that bin Laden would have viewed September 11th as a minor victory: maybe bin Laden feels the real victory is in drawing Americans into Iraq and Afghanistan.
Why not just ask him what his feelings are. Bin Laden made it quite clear in a series of video and audio recordings: he wants all non-muslims and non-radical followers dead, and he has empowered armies of people to do it...people that our military is now killing before they kill us. Wright can fantasize all he wants about treating terrorists peacefully—which is ultimately what he is unwittingly arguing for—but he is ultimately begging to be spared when it is his turn.
And it makes no difference if the killer is a Muslim or not. He could simply be committing an act of war under orders of someone else, which is how Hasan is being assessed, how he was taken down, and how we will continue to face future threats. Wright needs to mature quite a bit in his assessment of what makes people do violent tasks.

A German's View of Islam

2009-12-07T12:32:00.000-08:00

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. 'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'

We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is "the religion of peace" and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.

The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:

Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.

Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts--the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

"Global Warming" scam exposed at last

2009-11-25T07:28:00.000-08:00

Controversy has exploded onto the Internet after a major global-warming advocacy center in the UK had its e-mail system hacked and the data published on line. The director of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit confirmed that the e-mails are genuine — and Australian publication Investigate and the Australian Herald-Sun report that those e-mails expose a conspiracy to hide detrimental information from the public that argues against global warming (via Watt’s Up With That):

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/20/do-hacked-e-mails-show-global-warming-fraud/

media ignored this one

2009-11-18T08:56:00.000-08:00

Had it been a Christian attacking a Muslim, it would have led the network news and been the headline in the NY Slimes.
Like, "Anti-Muslim Backlash"

Man arrested for 'anti-Christian mall disturbance' to appear in court again Thursday
Deputy DA keeps bail at $27K, orders Hasim to stay away from Stoneridge Shopping Center

by Emily West
Pleasanton Weekly Staff

Deputy District Attorney Ronda Theisen requested the bail for Abdul Walid Hamid stay at $27,000 as the 22-year-old man was arraigned Tuesday morning on charges of battery, grand theft, exhibition of a deadly weapon and a possible hate crime.

Police arrested 22-year-old Hamid of Hayward Wednesday evening after he reportedly robbed a man and scared others at Stoneridge Shopping Center.

Calling it a bizarre case, Theisen also asked that Hamid, who is still in custody, be ordered to stay out of the mall if he does post bail and leaves jail.

Through an interpreter, Hamid requested a public defender and was scheduled to appear in court at 9 a.m. Thursday where he is expected to enter a plea.

According to reports, Hamid was yelling "Allah is power" and "Islam is great" while holding a pen in a fist over his head and witnesses said he had been shouting anti-Christian comments.

Pleaanton Police Lt. Mike Elerick said the man was not provoked and didn't threaten violence, but he committed robbery when he grabbed and broke a crucifix off a man's neck.

Police said they weren't aware of a prior criminal history for the man.

"We had multiple people calling 911," Elerick said. "One female was crouching down and hiding from him. He definitely scared quite a few people."

what is it with rich liberals?

2009-11-14T10:59:00.001-08:00

according to the brilliant VDH:

There must be some syndrome at work of psychological compensation. For many who seek out the high life, but who are cognizant that the big house, the good vacations, the good schools, the nice night life and socializing, are beyond the reach of most, some sort of genuine guilt ensues. One way of squaring that circle is to go hard left in the abstract as a form of psychological penance that costs little in the concrete — the bloodthirsty medieval knight stopping in at the abbey to confess before the gore of battle.

The more Sean Penn praises Castro, the more the perks of Malibu become to his mind OK. Boat around New Orleans after Katrina and you can cruise around the Pacific Coast Highway with a good conscience. Being rich and left-wing is like a 16th-century sinner buying an indulgence through purchasing a few blocks for the dome at St. Peter’s. Moneyed liberalism allows one to feel good at very little personal expense — surely not having one’s child bussed to an inner-city school, or giving up your legacy slot at Princeton for someone more diverse, or waiting at the LA emergency room with a sick child.

more: http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson110909.html
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... Where has this woman been? Let's hear it for Sonja Schmidt

2009-11-06T15:23:00.000-08:00

2009-11-01T20:55:00.000-08:00

interesting assessment of Obama:

2009-10-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

He is our stranger in a land he doesn’t understand.

Americans are not war-like, nor does imperial ambition fill their soul. They have done almost nothing for which daily apologies are necessary. Their blood soaks the beaches of Normandy, their graves litter European towns. And their fortune saved millions from the plight of destitution. Americans do not appreciate a man so removed from their history, so out of tune with the American experience, that he reflexively expresses regret for the very conditions that should engender pride.

Perhaps this president will learn. But I am not confident that can happen. His life experience without a father in his home and a mother seeking adventure abroad is unstable. His closest associates vilified the nation he now leads. Is it any wonder his wife said she could take no pride in America till now? The past is to be rejected. Milestones in history are erased from memory as storage cast aside as unnecessary.

read it all here:

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=34159

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Democrats' Policies Based on Dogma, Hopes, Dreams, not Reality

2009-10-27T16:39:00.001-07:00

Dennis Prager
Tuesday, October 27, 2009

How is one to rationally explain the Democrats' belief that the government taking over another one-sixth of the American economy is a good thing?

The answer is religion.

Given the huge economic failures that the left itself attributes to Medicare and Medicaid and given the economic collapse or near collapse of these systems in other countries, the left's prescriptions can only be explained in one way: The left has made its views a form of religion.

Most individuals on the left are not religious, but virtually all people, secular and religious, liberal and conservative, yearn to believe in dogma, i.e., absolute beliefs that transcend reason. For people on the left in Europe, the United States and elsewhere, belief in the state -- the notion that the state can do a better job at helping people and making a good society -- is one such dogma. This applies especially to educating the young and to health care.

Examples of left-wing dogmas that transcend reason are as numerous as any religion's catechism. One example is the belief that men and women, boys and girls, are basically the same, that the vast majority of characteristics we ascribe to male and female natures are in fact socially induced. This irrational dogma was virtually universally believed and taught by the left-wing faculty when I attended college, and remains so today.

Another is the belief that manmade carbon dioxide emissions are heating the world to the point of imminent worldwide catastrophe, including island nations disappearing underwater, mass starvation, inundation of the world's major coastal areas and much more. The fact that the world has been getting colder for the last eight years is as irrelevant to most people on the left as the absence of archaeological evidence for the biblical exodus is irrelevant to believing Jews and Christians. That includes me; I do not believe in the Hebrew exodus from Egypt because of scientific evidence, but because of faith. But unlike the left's belief in manmade carbon emissions leading to unprecedented and calamitous heating of the planet, I admit my belief is a leap of faith. And my belief in the exodus will not ruin Western economies. In other words, my non-scientific belief in the Jews' exodus is innocuous while the left's non-scientific beliefs (though shrouded in scientific jargon and promulgated by scientists who put dogma over science) are forced on societies.

One cannot understand the left if one does not appreciate the world of dogmas in which most left-wing thinkers live. What the monastery is to monks, the university and the mainstream media are to the left.

That is the only way to explain the left's belief that government-run health care, having the government take over so much more of society, raising taxes yet again, expanding government even more and increasing the number of people employed by the government will all be good for America.

Dogma explains why it is useless to point out to the left how the left has economically crippled California, once the most prosperous, most adventurous, most successful "country" in the world (it has an economy that would make it about the seventh largest country in the world). Likewise, it does not matter to blacks what Democrats have done to their cities. As they watch their cities crumble, they will once again vote overwhelmingly for the party that oversaw this destruction.

None of these facts matters because religious-like dogmas are not derived from facts.

In addition to dogma, the left relies for its policies on "hope," which it often substitutes for analysis. People on the left rarely vote based on reality. They vote based on "hope." That's why the word "hope" is so much more significant to the left than to the right. The last two Democratic presidents ran as candidates of "hope." The right doesn't have "hope" candidates because conservatives don't live on hope. They live in reality, meaning that people are not born basically good; that investing men and women with great state power leads inevitably to abuse of that power; that people stop innovating if they are taxed too highly; and that a perfect health care system is understood to be impossible.

And, finally, the left dreams. Robert F. Kennedy often cited the statement first made by George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see things as they are and say 'why?' I dream things that never were and say 'why not?'" The left dreams of an America in which health care will constantly improve, health insurance will be given to every American at the same price irrespective of his or her health, doctors will be fairly reimbursed, there will be no waiting lines, and there will not be a dime's increase in the national debt for all of this.

Frankly, I don't yearn for what is unseen. Rather, having a realistic understanding of the limitations of human beings, I am in awe of what I already see -- the unique American achievement of affluence, liberty, decency, opportunity and medical innovations.

And I see this all being squandered for the sake of left-wing dogma, left-wing hopes and left-wing dreams.

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

America’s Obama Obsession

2009-10-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

Anatomy of a passing hysteria.

By Victor Davis Hanson

For 30 months the nation has been in the grip of a certain Obama obsession, immune to countervailing facts, unwilling to face reality, and loath to break the spell. But like all trances, the fit is passing, and we the patient are beginning to appreciate how the stupor came upon us, why it lifted, and what its consequences have been.

HOW OBAMA WON
Barack Obama was elected rather easily because, in perfect-storm fashion, five separate trends coalesced last autumn.

1) Obama was eloquent, young, charismatic — and African-American. He thus offered voters a sense of personal and collective redemption, as well as appealing to the longing for another JFK New Frontier figure. An image, not necessarily reality, trumped all.

2) After the normal weariness with eight years of an incumbent party and the particular unhappiness with Bush, the public was amenable to an antithesis. Bush was to be scapegoat, and Obama the beginning of the catharsis.

3) Obama ran as both a Clintonite centrist and a no-red-state/no-blue-state healer who had transcended bitter partisanship. That assurance allowed voters to believe that his occasional talk of big change was more cosmetic than radical.

4) John McCain ran a weak campaign that neither energized his base nor appealed to crossover independents. McCain turned off conservatives; many failed to give money, and some even stayed home on election day. Meanwhile, the media and centrists who used to idolize McCain’s non-conservative, maverick status found Obama the more endearing non-conservative maverick.

5) The September 2008 financial panic turned voters off Wall Street and the wealthy, and allowed them to connect unemployment and their depleted home equity and 401(k) retirement plans with incumbent Republicans. In contrast, they assumed that Obama, as the anti-Bush, would not do more bailouts, more stimuli, and more big borrowing.

Take away any one of those factors, and Obama might well have lost. Imagine what might have happened had Obama been a dreary old white guy like John Kerry; or had Bush’s approvals been over 50 percent; or had Obama run on the platform he is now governing on; or had McCain crafted a dynamic campaign; or had the panic occurred in January 2009 rather than September 2008. Then the trance would have passed, and Obama, the Chicago community organizer and three-year veteran of the U.S. Senate, would have probably lost his chance at remaking America.

OBAMA'S ASSUMPTIONS
I note all this at length because Obama seems to act as if this right-center country — one that polls oppositely to his positions on most of the major issues (deficits, spending, nationalized health care, homeland security, Guantanamo, cap-and-trade, etc.) — has given him a mandate for a degree of change not seen in nearly 80 years.

Apparently, Team Obama figured that with sizable majorities in both the House and the Senate, Obama would snap his fingers, Congress daily would pass bills redefining America, and Obama would stay in perpetual campaign mode to hope and change the country to accept his agenda. Governing would be like campaigning, as audiences fainted hearing the details of a 1,500-page health-care bill or of ever more sins from America’s past.

But, after just a few months in office, that proved not to be the case. Just as a number of planets had to line up precisely to allow an inexperienced hard-left ideologue to be elected president, so there would have had to be a similar configuration to allow him to govern successfully.

BITTER TRUTHS
1) Obama had to match his unity rhetoric with brotherly action. In fact, he has done the opposite.

At one time or another, Obama and his supporters have, rather scurrilously, insulted doctors, insurers, the police, tea-partiers and town-hallers, opponents of his health-care plan, non-compliant members of the media, and a host of other groups as either greedy, dishonest, treasonous, unpatriotic, moblike, racist, or in general worthy of disrespect.

Fewer and fewer Americans now believe that Obama — after just nine months of governance — is a uniter. In Obama’s world, doctors carve out children’s tonsils for profit, racist morons rant at legislators about losing their private health care, and trillions in borrowed money must be paid back by the greedy rich whose capital was unearned in the first place.

When his base supporters lambaste him for softness, they are lamenting his inability to become an effective partisan — not a lack of partisanship in general. In surreal fashion, liberals demand that the ideologue Obama become more ideological precisely at the time his ideologically driven agenda is souring millions of non-ideological Americans.

2) His opposition is no longer ossified, but decentralized and grass roots. One of the oddest proofs of that statement is the sudden leftist furor at tea parties, town halls, the media, dissent, and free speech. As long as Obama was opposed by calcified Republicans in Congress, there was no real danger to him. But once the opposition proved populist, panicked liberal elites started demonizing populism — and Obama now finds himself opposed to the popular grievance-mongering that was once the mother’s milk of our Chicago organizer’s existence.

3) Obama campaigned on the notion that even if voters might not like his policies, they most assuredly would like him. Even that spell is now lifting. The more the American public gets to know Barack Obama, the less they find him appealing.

On matters racial, their campaign-season unease with his connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his toss-offs like “typical white person,” and his stereotyping of rural Pennsylvanians has not been allayed; rather, it has been amplified by Eric Holder’s Justice Department, Obama’s own statement that the Cambridge police acted “stupidly” in arresting Professor Gates, and the use of the race card by prominent Democrats from the likes of Rep. Charles Rangel to Gov. David Paterson of New York.

Much of the newly stirred public suddenly assumes two things from the Obama administration: that the president himself will periodically say something racially insensitive or unwise; and that his supporters will call opponents of his policies racist. If we have wearied of all that in nine months, think what four years of it will do to the public mood.

In just nine months the phrase “Chicago style” has gone from something old-time that evokes Al Capone or Mayor Daley to something very real, contemporary, and scary — as David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and others try to strong-arm the opposition, demonize the media, and manipulate government largesse to either penalize or reward recipients on the basis of their degree of support for Obama.

Could the most imaginative right-wing political operative have invented the idea of a National Endowment for the Arts official gleefully considering quid pro quo grants, administration officials trying to persuade other media outlets that a network critical of Obama is “not a news organization,” or an administration communications director bragging about how her team sandbagged the American media and took them to the cleaners? We can believe there might be one statement like Van Jones’s slander of “white people,” or Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” boast, or Anita Dunn’s lengthy praise of the mass-murdering Mao, but not an entire series of them. At some point, the American public snaps out of it, and sighs, “Wow, these people really are nuts!”

4) “Bush Did it” was the IV drip of the Obama campaign, always there to infuse a fresh life-saving excuse into every Obama fainting spell. But the problem now is that it has been more than nine months since Bush left office, and Obama’s “mop up” metaphors are getting stale. Worse still, the reasons the public soured on Bush are precisely the reasons it may well sour more on Obama, inasmuch as he took Bush’s problems like deficits, soaring federal spending, bailouts, and unemployment and made them far worse.

Yet Obama has given no credit for the good that Bush did, and therefore must remain mum about the other “Bush Did It”s, like quiet in Iraq; the homeland-security protocols, from renditions and tribunals to wiretaps and intercepts; AIDS relief for Africa; friendly governments in Britain, France, Germany, India, and Italy; and domestic safety since 9/11. If Bush is at least partly responsible for all these things as well, were they therefore bad?

NOW WHAT?
Obama very soon is going to have to make a tough choice, far tougher than his current “present” votes on the option of sending additional troops to Afghanistan.

As the midterm elections near, and his popularity bobs up and down around 50 percent, Obama can do one of two things.

He could imitate Bill Clinton’s 1995 Dick Morris remake. In Obama’s case, that would mean, abroad, cutting out the now laughable apologies for his country, ceasing to court thugs like Ahmadinejad, Chávez, and Putin, keeping some distance from the U.N., and paying closer attention to our allies like Britain and Israel. At home, he could declare victory on his sidetracked agenda and then start over by holding spending in line, curbing the deficit, stopping the lunatic Van Jones–style czar appointments, courting the opposition, and tabling cap-and-trade. I think there is very little chance of any of the above, whatever voters may have thought during the campaign.

Or, instead, Obama could hold the pedal to the floor on the theory that, as a proven ideologue, he must move the country far left before the voters catch on and stop him in his tracks in November 2010. That would mean more of the “gorge the beast” effort to spend and borrow so much that taxes have to soar, and thus redistribution of income will be institutionalized for a generation. He would push liberal proposals no matter how narrow the margin in the Senate. He would keep demonizing Fox News. In Nixonian fashion he might continue to hit the stump, ratcheting up his current “they’re lying” message and energizing his left-wing base by catering to the unions, gays, minorities — and liberal Wall Street special interests.

If he chooses the former, he might well be a more successful version of Bill Clinton given that his appetites are far more in check.

But if, as is likely, he chooses the latter, he will polarize the country in a way not seen since 1968, set back racial relations to the 1960s, do to the reputation of big government what LBJ did from 1964 to 1968, and, in the manner of what Jimmy Carter wrought, turn voters off liberal foreign policy for a generation.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Mister Tough Guy

2009-10-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

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Who are the real “Untouchables” here?

By Mark Steyn

Benjamin Disraeli’s most famous advice to aspiring politicians was: “Never complain and never explain.” For the greatest orator of our time, a man who makes Churchill, Lincoln, and Henry V at Agincourt look like first-round rejects on Orating with the Stars, Barack Obama seems to have pretty much given up on the explaining side. He tried it with health care with speech after speech after exclusive interview for months on end and the more he explained the more unpopular the whole racket got. So he declared that the time for explaining is over, and it’s time to sign on or else.

Meanwhile, to take the other half of the Disraeli equation, Obama and his officials and their beleaguered band of surrogates never stop complaining. If you express concerns about government health care, they complain about all these “racists” and “domestic terrorists” obstructing his agenda. If you wonder why the president can’t seem to find time in his hectic schedule of international-awards acceptance speeches to make a decision about Afghanistan, they complain that it’s not his fault he “inherited” all these problems. And, if you wonder why his “green jobs” czar is a Communist 9/11 truther and his National Endowment for the Arts guy is leaning on grant recipients to produce Soviet-style propaganda extolling Obama policies, they complain about Fox News.

The most recent whine — the anti-Fox campaign — is, apart from anything else, unbecoming to the office. President Obama is the chief of state of one of the oldest free societies in the world, but his official White House website runs teasers such as: "For even more Fox lies, check out the latest ‘Truth-O-Meter.’” It gives off the air of somebody only marginally less paranoid than this week’s president-for-life in some basket-case banana republic ranting on the palace balcony because his interior security chief isn’t doing a fast enough job of disappearing his enemies.

George W. Bush: Remember him? Of course, you do. He’s the guy who’s to blame for everything, and still will be midway through Obama’s second term. It turns out he’s in exile abroad. Presumably he jumped bail and snuck across the border on the roof of a box car. But, anyway, he was giving a speech in Saskatoon. That’s a town in Saskatchewan. And Saskatchewan’s a province in Canada apparently. And in the course of his glittering night playing the Saskatoon circuit, he was asked about media criticism of him, and he told the . . . Saskatoonistanies? Saskatchewannabees? Whatever. He told them the attacks never bothered him although his dad used to get upset: “He’d read the editorial pages, he’d watch the nightly news, and I didn’t. I mean, why watch the nightly news when you are the nightly news?”

That attitude, while raising a bunch of other issues, is psychologically healthier. If you’re going to attack the press, you need a lightness of touch, not a ham-fisted crowbar such as the White House wielded on Thursday, attempting to ban Fox from the pool interviews with the “pay czar.” Another bit of venerable Disraelian insouciance, on the scribblers of Fleet Street: “Today they blacken your character, tomorrow they blacken your boots.” For two years, the U.S. media have been polishing Obama’s boots, mostly with their drool, to a degree unprecedented in American public life. But now it’s time for the handful of holdouts to make with the Kiwi — or else.

At a superficial level, this looks tough. A famously fair-minded centrist told me the other day that he’d been taken aback by some of the near parodic examples of leftie radicalism discovered in the White House in recent weeks. I don’t know why he’d be surprised. When a man has spent his entire adult life in the “community organized” precincts of Chicago, it should hardly be news that much of his Rolodex is made up of either loons or thugs. The trick is identifying who falls into which category. Anita Dunn, the communications director commending Mao Zedong as a role model to graduating high school students, would seem an obvious loon. But the point about Mao, as Charles Krauthammer noted, is that he was the most ruthless imposer of mass conformity in modern history: In Mao’s China, everyone wore the same clothes. So when Communications Commissar Mao Ze Dunn starts berating Fox News for not getting into the same Maosketeer costumes as the rest of the press corps, you begin to see why the Chairman might appeal to her as a favorite “political philosopher.”

So the troika of Dunn, Emanuel, and Axelrod were dispatched to the Sunday talk shows to lay down the law. We all know the lines from The Untouchables — “the Chicago way,” don’t bring a knife to a gun fight — and, given the “pay czar”’s instant contract-gutting of executive compensation and the demonization of the health insurers and much else, it’s easy to look on the 44th president as an old-style Cook County operator: You wanna do business in this town, you gotta do it through me. You can take the community organizer out of Chicago, but you can’t take the Chicago out of the community organizer.

The trouble is it isn’t tough, not where toughness counts. Who are the real “Untouchables” here? In Moscow, it’s Putin and his gang, contemptuously mocking U.S. officials even when (as with Secretary Clinton) they’re still on Russian soil. In Tehran, it’s Ahmadinejad and the mullahs openly nuclearizing as ever feebler warnings and woozier deadlines from the Great Powers come and go. Even Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is an exquisite act of condescension from the Norwegians, a dog biscuit and a pat on the head to the American hyperpower for agreeing to spay itself into a hyperpoodle. We were told that Obama would use “soft power” and “smart diplomacy” to get his way. Russia and Iran are big players with global ambitions, but Obama’s soft power is so soft it doesn’t even work its magic on a client regime in Kabul whose leaders’ very lives are dependent on Western troops. If Obama’s “smart diplomacy” is so smart that even Hamid Karzai ignores it with impunity, why should anyone else pay attention?

The strange disparity between the heavy-handed community organization at home and the ever-cockier untouchables abroad risks making the commander-in-chief look like a weenie — like “President Pantywaist,” as Britain’s Daily Telegraph has taken to calling him.

The Chicago way? Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight? In Iran, this administration won’t bring a knife to a nuke fight. In Eastern Europe, it won’t bring missile defense to a nuke fight. In Sudan, it won’t bring a knife to a machete fight.

But, if you’re doing the overnight show on WZZZ-AM, Mister Tough Guy’s got your number.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn

'Radio Free America'

2009-10-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

By: Cal Thomas, Worthington Daily Globe

WASHINGTON — During the Cold War, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were among the broadcast entities that effectively penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver truth to the “captive nations” that were being fed a steady dose of propaganda by their communist rulers.

WASHINGTON — During the Cold War, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were among the broadcast entities that effectively penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver truth to the “captive nations” that were being fed a steady dose of propaganda by their communist rulers. Those dictators did everything they could to “jam” the signals so that their people would only hear what their unelected overseers wanted them to hear. Contemporary versions of jamming and other forms of censorship occur today in Venezuela, Cuba and many other places where dictators believe public ignorance is essential to their unchallenged rule.

While the Obama administration is the product of an election, its approach to Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio and possibly the Internet appears similar to dictators who desire control over the flow of information in order to enhance their power.

The administration’s primary beef appears to be that Fox is doing the job the broadcast networks and big newspapers should be doing were they not still deeply in the tank for this president and his policies.

Like those Cold War truth-tellers, Fox is simply delivering information to a rapidly growing audience (partly due to criticism from the White House) that wants to see and hear what the other media are not telling them. Fox — and talk radio — are reporting on the backgrounds and statements of Obama administration officials. Fox didn’t create the statements and actions of Van Jones, the now former “energy czar,” who signed a petition questioning whether Bush administration officials allowed 9/11 to happen as a possible pretext for going to war. Fox didn’t force Jones to advocate for cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, or associate himself with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a left-wing radical group with Marxist roots.

No Fox News employee wrote the speeches and comments of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, who told graduating high school seniors that one of her “favorite philosophers” is the mass murderer Mao Zedong. Neither did they compose her boast during the campaign that the Obama people “controlled” the news media.

ACORN might never have been exposed for its possibly illegal activities had not an enterprising young duo gone to their offices with a hidden camera and recorded some ACORN workers who were happy to assist them in breaking the law.

As one who appears on Fox as a contributor, I have seen the network grow from its beginning more than a decade ago to its current position of holding accountable those in power. That was once the calling of all journalists until the Kennedy years when reporters started cheerleading and socializing with the people they were empowered to question and cover. This shift in responsibility has greatly enhanced the status and income of too many journalists and commentators. It has also shortchanged the profession and the public it is supposed to serve.

It is no mystery why the White House has made Fox News a target. If its reporting and commentating were not effective in exposing things the administration does not want the public to know, Fox would be ignored. But it is increasingly effective because the public is sensing that the administration has a lot to hide about its personnel, ideology and objectives.

Rather than boycott Fox — if the administration were smart — it would flood the network with its spokespeople. The administration apparently believes it needs an enemy to avert scrutiny from its socialist agenda, the undermining of free speech and the corruption of the U.S. Constitution. Because Republicans have no credible national leader, the administration has settled on Fox News.

Political leaders, going back to our founding, have criticized the press. It never works, because after the politicians leave office, the press remains. If the administration is seeking approval for its policies, it should go on the only channel that will confront, examine and question those policies. If the policies are valid, they will stand; if not, they won’t and they shouldn’t. But perhaps, like those dictators, the administration would rather jam Fox’s “signal” because they don’t want the public to know the truth about what they are doing.

Confessions of a Cultural Drop-out

2009-10-20T23:18:00.001-07:00

By Victor Davis Hanson
October 17, 2009
I have some confessions to make, not because any of you readers are particularly interested in my views; but rather because I think some of you are in the same boat: Have you stopped reading, listening, watching, and paying attention to most of what now passes for establishment public or popular culture? I am not particularly proud of this quietism (many Athenians did it in the early 4th century BC and Romans by the late 3rd AD), but not really ashamed of it either.
Shut up and see a movie?
Take Hollywood protocol—make a big movie, hype it, show it at the mall multiplex. But I went to one movie the last year. Maybe three in the last four years. There is not much choice here—car crashes, evil white men killing the innocent, some gay or feminist heroes fending off club-bearing white homophobic Mississippians in pick-ups. Or you can endure the American war-machine kidnapping, torturing, or murdering even more of the helpless abroad—with Robert Redford, glassed down, tweed in display, or snarly George Clooney sermonizing, like the choruses of Euripides’ tragedies.
The usual themes—some evil corporation is destroying something (fill in the blanks: the environment, the neighborhood, the small town, etc.), some CIA conspiracy is out to ruin a crusading heroic journalist, or some brave professor or writer is exposing a massive cover-up—are, well, boring, even with the sex, the blow-em-up explosions, and some nice scenery. (And all this from a corporate Hollywood—reliant on the security of the American military, crass in its high tastes and destructive in its behavior, and all the while profit and status obsessed! [The world of Halliburton makes the world safe for Botox?])
If it is not all that, we get instead some neurotic suburban psychodrama about a senseless midlife crisis of some aging yuppies, wondering whether their empty lives really have meaning. Then there are always the “action” movies about tomb-robbing, treasure-hunting, or Zombie killing, but even they try to mask emptiness with a politically-correct throw-away line now and then. Can’t they make one movie of the Lewis and Clark expedition or Lepanto, and one less with Tom Hanks as the anguished and caring postmodern man?
Why not DVDs?
If I watch DVDs, they surely are not of recent vintage. I couldn’t tell you a single release in the current most rented 100. I rewatch instead Westerns—Peckinpaugh, John Ford, the classics like Shane and High Noon, the greats like Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Lee Marvin, George C. Scott, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, John Wayne, etc., and, as I wrote a few months ago, almost anything with a brilliant, but now forgotten character actor such as a Jack Palance, Richard Boone (cf. Cicero Grimes in Hombre), Ben Johnson, or Warren Oates—if only for their accents, ad-libbed lines, and carriage. Only the greats like DeNiro or Pacino, or a Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, and a few others (a Hackman, Eastwood, or Hopkins) approximate the old breed. (A Mickey Rourke, Gary Oldman, or John Malkovich are at least originals and, like real people, look the worse for it). So I find myself replaying something like a Das Boot or Breaker Morant, or supposedly corny 1930s and 1940s classics like How Green Was My Valley or The Best Years of Our Lives. If I want to watch a film that failed at the box-office, I’ll take One-Eyed Jacks or Major Dundee or Pat Garret and Billy the Kid; their failures are better than today’s “successes”.
Today’s under thirty American male actors sound like they either have sinus congestion, or are trying to convince someone they are not as effeminate as their contrived appearance otherwise suggests. If my life depended on it, I could not identify any of the current leading actresses. The country needs a screen presence of a Burt Lancaster or Frederic March and it gets instead a Ben Affleck or Leo DiCaprio.
Musical Time Warp
Ditto music. I don’t know the name of a single rapper. Don’t follow rock anymore. Don’t want to. I like a Mark Knopfler or Coldplay, but mostly missed music’s 21st century. I’m so lost that I think a Bob Seeger and Bruce Hornsby are contemporary mega-stars, though I couldn’t identify a recent hit of either. I haven’t seen any of the kids write as well as Springsteen or Van Morrison. One Otis Redding had more talent than the entire hip-hop industry.
Who is Katie Couric?
Add in television. I haven’t watched a network newscast in 10 years. If I want to see a 60-Minutes hit piece, I’ll watch a You Tube video where the amateurs are far more interesting and honest about their ambush journalism. Do the CBS hit-men still try to jump in and cross-up some poor official, as he stammers while they hammer on? Is Andy Rooney still around?
I don’t know which anchor is where. I bump into them in their re-aired interviews like the Couric/Palin disaster or Gibson with his eyeglasses on his nose as if were a professor of Romance Languages grilling Sarah the Idaho co-ed, but other than that could care less.
I’d take an old paleo-liberal like Eric Sevareid, John Chancellor, or David Brinkley any day over the most conservative on NBC or CNN. The old guys had style, even class; today’s crowd spends more on teeth-whiteners than on books.
Obama is perfect for the age. Like Bush, he had the Ivy-League degrees; unlike Bush he had the pretension that they meant something, even though in his mind the Berlin Airlift, the German language, Auschwitz, World War II, Cordoba, the geography of the U.S., almost anything dealing with history, geography, literature, or well, knowledge in general—well all that is stuff that others less relevant than he learned in college.
Commercial-free TV?
I like C-Span and have always admired Brian Lamb. I used to be a big fan of PBS and PR, but no more. The laudable shows are far outweighed by the race/class/gender agendas, usually someone in a soft drone, talking scarcely above a whisper, about some new heretofore unnoticed pathology of the US military, corporation, or government (pre-Obama) that a particularly angry but heroic professor or investigative reporter is going to enlighten us about.
Well, There’s Always Sports
Next confession: I have not watched a single NFL game–including the Super bowl–for more than 10 minutes during the last decade. In the 1980s I was a big fan. I could not be pried loose from the 49ers and Bill Walsh or Jim Plunkett’s numerous Raider come-backs. Out here Deacon Jones, Dick Bass, and John Brodie were sorta football greats. Not now such heroes. Somewhere around 1990-5 everything went wrong with the big money, big hype, and big egos.
Maybe it is the airs of the sportscasters, and the pseudo-intellectual exegesis of the “analysts.” (I’ll take a Russ Hodges or Dizzy Dean any day, or, god help me, a young Howard Cosell before his decline in the Clay/Ali days). The constant criminality of the players and the egocentric outbursts didn’t help. Then there’s the pretensions of the buccaneer owners, and the extravaganza of the spectacle of the Roman arena, all that turned me off it—despite the courage and drama involved in football, and the science and tension of baseball. But one can find that watching high school or college sports.
Ditto the NBA. I have not watched a complete game in 15 years. Here too I could not name 5 current NBA players. I quit with the old Lakers/Celtics rivalries of the late 1970s and 1980s. (But then I have never played a video game either, and the two now seem to the distant ignorant bystander as about the same thing).
I watched 2 baseball games on television the last 3 years. Again, the melodrama of the sportscasters and writers (a slick Bob Costas as would-be Aristotle in his analyses and Sophocles in the supposed serious tragedy of his modulating voice) assumes the players are Olympians when of course they more or less resemble ego-centric multimillionaires.
Just a dozen selfless players, who keep quiet when they score, give credit to others when they pitch a shut-out, or pass rather than shoot could help things. I don’t mind the constant therapy of the coverage—the personal interest story of the athlete who lost his mother during training, who conquered polio as a child, or who saved a little boy from a surging stream—but it does not make up for the absence of manners and sportsmanship.
Print
Like most of America I do not read the New York Times–maybe once at an airport this year, but not more. (The only Times headlines I see are in history books, and pre-1970 they were quite good). It’s not that just I get most of my news on the Internet, but rather there is no there at the Times. A void. The front-page stories are thinly disguised op-eds and poorly written and sourced, and the op-eds are not disguised first-person rants by Dowd, Krugman, Herbert, Rich, etc. largely embarrassing confessions from a group of well-off, well-connected, status-obsessed elites lecturing the nation outside New York and Los Angeles on its various sorts of illiberality. Life is too short for ground-hog day reads, the same angst over and over.
International Awards
Nobel Prizes I stopped noticing a while back. Literature and Peace Prizes are awarded mostly on either race/class/gender considerations or utopian pacifism; that a Toni Morison won and a John Updike or Philip Roth (neither of whom I was all that fond of) never did, says all you need to know.
Petraeus is a true peace-maker and saved thousands of lives; Carter was not, and his timidity gave the green light to the Soviets who killed over a million in Afghanistan. If Al Gore had found a way to allow the world’s poor to survive malaria epidemics through DDT spraying, or invented a miracle strain of rice, or a new long-life battery, then one could justify the peace prize for world ecological achievement, but not for screaming about global warming climate change while making $100 million in medieval offset penances as the climate cools down the last decade.
So what’s left of the life of American culture? I try to read novels, the older the better—Knut Hamsun, Conrad, James Jones. Historians like a Gibbon, Prescott, or Churchill, they could write. I read everything John Keegan writes. Martin Gilbert is excellent. Andrew Roberts is as well. I’ve reread Weinberg’s A World at Arms twice this year. The memoirists like E.B. Sledge are riveting. I review a lot of books on classics—the best are not written by academic classists. One does what one can.
The Thin Veneer
A final, odd observation. As I have dropped out of contemporary American culture and retreated inside some sort of 1950s time-warp, in a strange fashion of compensation for non-participation , I have tried to remain more engaged than ever in the country’s political and military crises, which are acute and growing. One’s distancing from the popular culture of movies, TV, newspapers, and establishment culture makes one perhaps wish to overcompensate in other directions, from the trivial to the important.
Lately more than ever I try to obey the speed limit, overpay my taxes, pay more estimates and withholding than I need, pay all the property taxes at once, pick up trash I see on the sidewalk, try to be overly polite to strangers in line, always stop on the freeway when I see an elderly person or single woman with a flat, leave 20% tips, let cars cut me off in the parking lot (not in my youth, not for a second), and patronize as many of Selma’s small businesses as I can (from the hardware store to insurance to cars). I don’t necessarily do that out of any sense of personal ethics, but rather because in these increasingly crass and lawless times, we all have to try something, even symbolically, to restore some common thread to the frayed veneer of American civilization, to balance the rips from a Letterman attack on Palin’s 14-year-old daughter or a Serena Williams’s threat to a line judge, or the President’s communication director’s praise of Mao, civilization’s most lethal mass murderer, or all of what I described above.
I don’t fathom the attraction of a Kanye West (I know that name after his outburst), a David Letterman, Van Jones, Michael Moore (all parasitic on the very culture they mock), or the New York Review of Books or People Magazine (they seem about the same in their world view). So goodbye to all that.
Horace called this reactionary nostalgia the delusion of a laudator temporis acti, the grouchy praiser of times past for the sake of being past. Perhaps. But I see the trend of many ignoring the old touchstones of popular entertainment and life as a rejection of establishment culture—a disbelief in, or utter unconcern with, what elites now offer as valuable on criteria that have nothing to do with merit or value. I was supposed to listen to Dan Rather because Murrow once worked for CBS? I am to go to the Cinema 16 because Hollywood once made Gone With the Wind or On the Waterfront?
I don’t particularly like the idea that I want little to do with contemporary culture. But I feel it nonetheless—and sense many of you do as well.
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American Jews and Obama’s Abandonment of Israel

2009-10-13T11:13:00.000-07:00

Many American Jews place their commitment to leftist politics before the survival of the Jewish state.

by Abraham H. Miller

When the Israel Bonds appeal was made in many synagogues this year, congregants heard something that would have been unnecessary a generation ago: a strong reminder of the ties that bind American Jews to Israel. Given a choice between ties to Israel and commitments to leftist politics, American Jews will choose their politics. Nowhere is this more evident than in the support among Jewish Democrats (92%) for the policies of Barack Obama and their contrasting rejection by Israelis (4% support Obama’s policies). The explanation for the divergence is typical of the hubris of leftist Jews. They see themselves and President Obama as the embodiment of Democratic and Jewish ideals, while Israeli Jews, especially the Orthodox and Russian immigrants, have moved decidedly to the right and spurned both Jewish and Democratic values. In the boardrooms of Jewish organizations, discussion of “divergence,” as it is being called, takes place with the consummate acceptance of this explanation. I will not dispute the numbers, but as any undergraduate with an exposure to the logic of inference will note, there is no concatenation between the data and the explanation. What exists is a bunch of brain-atrophied liberals sitting around a table indulging smug notions of their political self-esteem. The strange thing about leftist Jews, who are generally secular, talking about Jewish values is those values are always aligned with Democratic policy positions. Perhaps in their version of Exodus, Franklin Roosevelt led the Israelites out of Egypt, climbed atop Mt. Sinai, and returned with two tablets, on which were etched the New Deal. The policy implications for divergence is that the Israelis had better return to the same Jewish values as leftist American Jews, or there will be no affinity between the two communities and no support for Israel. The hubris of this is seen in just what Jewish values the Obama administration represents. I never thought that the intrusion of government into every private sphere was somehow a Jewish value. Tzdaka (charity) isn’t socialism. If it were, the Orthodox Jews, who appear to know something about Jewish values, wouldn’t have voted disproportionately Republican. Centralization has never been a democratic value. If it were, Stalin, not Jefferson, would be the paragon of democracy. An administration that in nine months created more czars than the Romanovs were able to create in three hundred years does not seem to embrace democratic values. What liberal American Jews don’t want to confront is they have helped put into power an administration that is more vexed over a Jew building a home in Jerusalem than a Muslim building a nuclear bomb outside of Tehran. Liberal Jews don’t want to admit that in Cairo and again at the United Nations, President Obama not only recited the Arab narrative of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute; he embraced the Palestinian position a priori before forthcoming negotiations. As Poland and the Czech Republic were taking the knives out of their backs after Obama’s abrogation of American commitments on missile defense, Israelis were finding they were next on the list of Obama’s betrayal. But liberal American Jews lusting after Obama as some political messiah who will bring peace to the Middle East can’t deal with the dissonance of what they are witnessing. Like all true believers who end up facing what sociologists call the “crisis of non-appearance,” liberal Jews simply have increased their zealotry and sought a convenient scapegoat, Israel. It is not that liberal American Jews helped elect one of the most intrusive and authoritarian administrations to ever come to Washington or one of the most anti-Israel. It is that those stiff-necked Israelis, especially those Russian immigrants, just haven’t been properly socialized into Democratic values the way America socializes its immigrants. Have you been to the parking lot of a Home Depot lately? Take a look and then tell me about the glories of America’s immigration and socialization policies. I’m sure all that exploited day labor is just bursting over with concerns for democracy, especially if ACORN signs them up to vote. I wonder, do you press “8” in Tel Aviv for Russian? What explains divergence is that on the one hand you have a group of Jews living in the security and luxury of American suburbia, whose primary existential threat is whether the crabgrass will take over their backyard. On the other hand, you have Israeli Jews living in a state of perpetual war, who worry about where the next missile or suicide bomber will come from. The Jews living in such upscale suburbs as Evanston, Illinois, pontificate about moral equivalence and what the body count in Sderot should be in order to justify a military incursion into Gaza. All the time, they worry about what they need to say to stay in the good graces of their interfaith neighbors and colleagues. Leftist American Jews should realize that there is no rationale that will make the Obama administration anything other than the political fiasco it is. It is an administration honed in the machine politics of Chicago, where perpetuating power is the paramount goal. It is an administration that buys every leftist shibboleth about the causes of and solutions to the Middle East conflict. It is the most treacherous and anti-Israel administration ever to come to power. American Jews need to stop blaming Israel for their own political failures. If American Jews are the embodiment of Democratic and Jewish values, where is the Jewish value in scapegoating one’s brethren? The Jewish community has made a terrible political mistake. Among the delegations that had no shame, no decency, and no commitment to truth and listened to Ahmadinejad spew his venom at the UN was an American delegation that accepts his narrative of Middle East history. It is time for American Jews to face the reality of what they have created.

No Laughing Matter

2009-10-12T07:53:00.001-07:00

By MARK STEYN
10/09/2009
The most popular headline at the Real Clear Politics website the other day was: “Is Obama Becoming A Joke?” With brilliant comedic timing, the very next morning the Norwegians gave him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Up next: His stunning victory in this year’s Miss World contest. December 12th, Johannesburg. You read it here first.
For what, exactly, did he win the Nobel? As the president himself put it: “When you look at my record, it’s very clear what I have done so far. And that is nothing. Almost one year and nothing to show for it. You don’t believe me? You think I’m making it up? Take a look at this checklist.”
And up popped his record of accomplishment, reassuringly blank.
Oh, no, wait. That wasn’t the real President Obama. That was a comedian playing President Obama on “Saturday Night Live.” And, for impressionable types who find it hard to tell the difference, CNN — in a broadcast first that should surely have its own category at the Emmys — performed an in-depth “reality check” of the SNL sketch.
That’s right: They fact-checked the jokes. Seriously. “How much truth is behind all the laughs? Stand by for our reality check,” promised Wolf Blitzer, introducing his in-depth report with all the plonking earnestness so cherished by those hapless Americans stuck at Gate 73 for four hours with nothing to watch but the CNN airport channel.
Given the network’s ever more exhaustive absence of viewers among the non-flight-delayed demographic, perhaps Wolf could make it a regular series: Who was that lady I saw you with last night? That was no lady, that was my wife.
“In fact, our sources confirm, his wife is, biologically speaking, a lady. Joining us now is our Medical Correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, we all like a joke, but how much truth is behind the laughs?”
Fortunately, the Nobel Committee understands that President Obama’s accomplishments are no laughing matter. So they gave him the Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
I assumed this was a reference to his rip-roaring success in winning the Olympic Games for Rio, but as it turns out the deadline for Nobel nominations was way back on February 1st.
Obama took office on January 20th. Gosh, it’s so long ago now. What “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy” did he make in those first 12 days? Bowing to the Saudi King? Giving the British Prime Minister the Wal-Mart discount box of “Twenty Classic Movies You’ve Seen A Thousand Times?”
“Er, Barack, I’ve already seen these.” “That’s okay. They won’t work in your DVD player anyway.”
For these and other “extraordinary efforts” in “cooperation between peoples,” President Obama is now the fastest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in history. Alas, the extraordinary efforts of those first 12 days are already ancient history.
Reflecting the new harmony of US-world relations since the administration hit the “reset” button, The Times of London declared the award “preposterous” and Svenska Freds (the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society) called it “shameful.”
There’s something almost quaintly vieux chapeau about the Nobel decision, as if the hopeychangey bumper stickers were shipped surface mail to Oslo and only arrived last week. Everywhere else, they’re peeling off: The venerable lefties at Britain’s New Statesman currently have a cover story on “Barack W Bush”.
Happily, there are still a few Americans willing to stand by Mister Saturday Night. “I am shocked at the mean-spirited comments,” wrote Judi Romaine to The Times in protest at all the naysaying.
“I’m afraid I’ve registered into a very conversative (sic), fear-based world here, but I’d like to suggest the incredible notion we all create our worlds in our conversations. What are you building by maligning rather than creating discourses for workability? Bravo to Obama and others working for people, however it appears to cynics.”
If that’s the language you have to speak when you’re “working for people,” I’d rather work for a cranky mongoose. Yet to persons who can use phrases like “creating discourses for workability” with a straight face, Obama remains an heroic figure.
Like Judi Romaine, he works hard to “create our worlds in our conversations”. Why, only the other day, very conversationally, the administration floated the trial balloon that it could live with the Taliban returning to government in Afghanistan. A lot of Afghans won’t be living with it, but that’s their lookout.
This is — how to put this delicately? — something of a recalibration of Obama’s previous position. From about a year after the fall of Baghdad, Democrats adopted the line that Bush’s war in Iraq was an unnecessary distraction from the real war, the good war, the one in Afghanistan that everyone — Dems, Europeans, all the nice people — were right behind, one hundred per cent.
No one butched up for the Khyber Pass more enthusiastically than Barack Obama: “As president, I will make the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban the top priority.” (July 15, 2008)
But that was then and this is now. As the historian Robert Dallek told Obama recently, “War kills off great reform movements.” As the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne reminded the president, his supporters voted for him not to win a war but to win a victory on health care and other domestic issues.
Obama’s priorities lie not in the Hindu Kush but in America: Why squander your presidency on trying to turn an economically moribund feudal backwater into a functioning nation state when you can turn a functioning nation state into an economically moribund feudal backwater?
Gosh, given their many assertions that Afghanistan is “a war we have to win” (Obama to the VFW, August 2008), you might almost think, pace Judi Romaine, that it’s the president and water-bearers like Gunga Dionne who are the “cynics.”
In a recent speech to the Manhattan Institute, Charles Krauthammer pointed out that, in diminishing American power abroad to advance statism at home, Obama and the American people will be choosing decline.
There are legitimate questions about our war aims in Afghanistan, and about the strategy necessary to achieve them. But eight years after being toppled, the Taliban will see their return to power as a great victory over the Great Satan, and so will the angry young men from Toronto to Yorkshire to Chechnya to Indonesia who graduated from Afghanistan’s Camp Jihad during the 1990s.
And so will the rest of the world: They will understand that the modern era’s ordnungsmacht (the “order maker”) has chosen decline.
Barack Obama will have history’s most crowded trophy room, but his presidency is shaping up as a tragedy — for America and the world.
© Mark Steyn, 2009

Links

2009-10-09T23:23:00.001-07:00

The American Center for Democracy
American Daily Review
American Thinker
Andrew Bostom
Atlas Shrugs
The Brussels Journal
The Business Insider
CNSnews.com
Counterterrorism Blog
Daniel Pipes
Davids Medienkritik
Defend the Defenders
euobserver.com
EURSOC
Expatica
Frontpagemag.com
EuropeNews
Galliawatch
Gates of Vienna
The Gertrude Bell Project
IMRA
International Free Press Society
Islam in Europe
The Jawa Report
Jihad Watch
Klein Verzet.com
Media Watch Watch
MEMRI
Michelle Malkin
Melanie Phillips
Netherlands Info Services
Newsbusters
Pat Crowley's Penheads
Powerline
Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)
Outpost
Real Clear Politics
Refugee Resettlement Watch
Shariah Finance Watch
Stand Up America
Townhall.com
Transatlantic Intelligencer
Vdare.com
Victor Davis Hanson
View from the Right
Western Resistance
ZOA

Irving Kristol - What the master taught his apprentices

2009-10-09T23:11:00.000-07:00

My Irving Kristol and Ours
What the master taught his apprentices.
by Mary Eberstadt
10/05/2009, Volume 015, Issue 03

A young woman came by to visit the Policy Review offices a few weeks ago. Fresh out of a prestigious graduate school, enamored of both philosophy and creative writing, she'd been sent by a mutual friend and was looking for work. How, she wondered, might someone who loved reading and writing, but had no background in publishing or anything else of professional relevance, break into what used to be called "the higher journalism"--and make a living at it?

Though not exactly the stuff of Proust's madeleine, her question did send me wandering back in time. Twenty-five years ago, in 1984, I'd been a girl much like her--straight out of college with similar interests and questions, as eager to make a mark as a writer as I was unqualified for any such thing. Unlike her, however, I'd gotten lucky--about as lucky under the circumstances as it was possible to be. Back when I was in her shoes, I'd had the fantastic good fortune of putting that same question--and as it later turned out, many more as well--to an already legendary writer and editor named Irving Kristol, who died last week at the age of 89.

"More than anyone alive, perhaps, Irving Kristol can take the credit for reversing the direction of American political culture." These words taken from the Nation a few years back signal the Irving Kristol the world knows best: the godfather of neoconservatism. As that other titan of neoconservative thought, Norman Podhoretz, has suggested, "grandfather" may be the better label, given the generations of writers influenced by that family of ideas. For years now, at least since Peter Steinfels's 1979 book The Neoconservatives, articles and books and documentaries--including several essays by Irving himself--have wrestled with the question of his singular and manifold influence, in the process turning Kristol-gazing into a minor industry of its own.* Cold Warrior, ex-Trotskyist, coeditor with Stephen Spender of Encounter, coeditor with Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell of the Public Interest, founder with Owen Harries of the National Interest, public intellectual for nearly seven decades, contributor during those same years to the most influential journals and magazines of the day, from Commentary and the New Leader half a century ago to the New York Times Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, member of countless boards and all-around intellectual impresario: These are just some of the faces of Irving with which critics and fans alike must reckon.

Yet if history has given us two, three, many Irving Kristols, it has also stinted on the Irving whom I and many other people were privileged to know best. That is the amusing, avuncular, sometimes delphic boss we saw day in and day out thanks to the unique system of apprenticeship that he devised for the Public Interest. For almost two years between 1983 and 1985, I was one of the interns privileged to toil for great profit (if little salary) in the tiny, smoky, one-room magazine office in New York--that "halfway house," as David Skinner accurately dubbed it in these pages a few years ago, "for dozens and dozens of young assistants, who typically arrived fresh out of college and stayed a year or at most two before leaving for grad school, or government, or other jobs in journalism."

Only slightly larger than a college dormitory room, that Public Interest office was as stuffed with manuscripts and books and magazines as it was with people maneuvering around all the obstacles, including two or three interns, a managing editor, Irving's longtime (and universally adored) secretary Rita Lazzaro, and of course Irving himself, issuing a steady stream of wisecracks, phone calls, and dictated correspondence into the chaos. There were also the phones ringing on everyone else's desks, the banging Selectric II typewriters, the coffee cups, ashtrays, and cigarettes; some of the interns (like Irving too, back then) puffed away incessantly. Everyone including the boss ate lunch at their desks most days, adding further to the clutter and assault on the senses; and any authors or other hapless types visiting the magazine were further shoehorned into our hazy, bustling little office cubby. In truth, an environment more inimical to concentration and privacy can scarcely be imagined. On the other hand, as many were to find out, neither could a more fascinating or rewarding place to pass the days.

I arrived on the fabled doorstep in 1983. At that moment Irving was 63, the magazine, which later moved to Washington, was still in New York and it was roughly halfway through a tenure as remarkable for its longevity (40 years) as for the enduring high quality of its pages. Like most such hopefuls who made their way to Irving, I'd been sent by someone else who knew the shop--in this case Jeremy Rabkin, a professor at Cornell--and also shared the same simple if grandiose ambition of the other interns: We all wanted to be writers when we grew up.

Unlike most of the other helpers hired for the place, though--and herewith my perversely unique credential for offering an essay about Irving--I was unqualified for any such thing: no published work whatsoever to my credit, no background in economics or public policy, no understanding of urban planning, welfare initiatives, or other subjects for which the magazine's pages were renowned. Similarly did I lack any editorial or fact-checking experience, unless one counts a job in college spent poring over the footnotes in that undiscovered masterpiece of opinion journalism, The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. And when asked by then-managing editor Mark Lilla to produce a piece of writing for Irving to read, I proudly brandished one document that has probably never been used as an entrée to journalism either before or since: a 40-page college paper on "Immanuel Kant's Theory of Aesthetic Judgment." Book Three.

As Irving cheerfully pointed out during the job interview, such was not exactly the stuff of which Horatio Alger stories in journalism are made, and he further observed that he could see no good reason to hire me. But he just as cheerfully did it anyway, thus fortuitously throwing me into the company of a number of other apprentices who by contrast had begun making marks of their own. This cast in 1984 included Tod Lindberg, who had cofounded a magazine at the University of Chicago and was already a paid contributor to numerous magazines (and subsequently an author, columnist, newspaper editor, Hoover Institution research fellow, and now editor of Policy Review). Managing editor Mark Lilla would go on to become a professor of social thought at the University of Chicago (and, as it turned out, an itinerant professional critic of his former boss). Thomas J. Main, another assistant editor, had already transformed thinking in public policy circles about a critical social issue, with a seminal essay in the Public Interest on "The Homeless of New York."

Those both ahead of and behind us in the intern line showed similar seriousness of purpose. Foreign policy strategist Robert Kagan had passed through the place earlier, as had at various times Steven Lagerfeld (editor of the Wilson Quarterly), author and publisher Robert Asahina, defense expert Seth Cropsey, journalist and Reader's Digest editor Rachel Flick Wildavsky, the late magazine editor and author Michael Scully, and a slew of others launched into a life of journalism or politics or both by their time at the PI. The masthead in the years to follow would witness a similar procession: Richard Starr (now deputy editor of this magazine), columnist and author Diana West, speechwriter and political consultant Daniel Casse, and David Skinner, editor of the National Endowment for the Humanities' magazine Humanities, among others. All these and more had Irving Kristol to thank, whether they ever did so or not, for their first and formative experience of what it meant to read and edit and write their way into the world.

This track record is all the more striking because Irving's intern "program" was less an actual curriculum than a glorified system of learning in a far more effective way--mainly, by grappling with the work of the distinguished authors the magazine published, and by eavesdropping on Irving's dictation and phone calls in that teeny-tiny office. Such eavesdropping, consisting as it did of listening to Irving talk with some of the most interesting and influential people around, turned out to be essential to our crash course in journalism.

So was the Public Interest's salary, which was so low that it was practically guaranteed to jump-start our literary ambitions. To be fair, the workload of a quarterly journal was light enough for Irving to grant us the boon of a four-day work week. But those Fridays off were meant to be used productively, reading and writing. Interns were expected to publish--if not in the PI then elsewhere, and if not for literary glory then because it was the only way of paying the rent. Getting a piece into the hallowed precincts of Norman Podhoretz's Commentary (where Norman's deputy Neal Kozodoy policed the pages with a legendary editorial ferocity) was a particular coup for those who managed it; so too was any appearance in Bob Tyrrell's American Spectator or Bob Bartley's Wall Street Journal. Writing and publishing as Irving expected his interns to do also meant making more connections in the wider world, of course. It was this fact, and not the sinister imaginings of subsequent critics of some neoconservative "cabal," that helped Irving's apprentices end up where they did.

Fortunately for us, Irving could no more help teaching young people than we could help taking his extraordinary interest in us for granted. Be brief: This was something we learned (or tried to) from Irving's dictations; long before email and instant messaging, his many letters covering all kinds of ground were typically just one or two sentences long. About editing: Always just cut the text if you have to, he advised, never add to what's there. How well he understood that most writers over-think and over-write, typically burying the lamp of their thought under bushels of dead words. About responding to critics en masse in a published venue: When answering letters written in response to something you've written, don't use the authors' names. Just lay out their common themes. That way you won't get caught up personally and can just stick to the ideas.

He taught a thing or two about religion and philosophy, too, to the long line of twentysomethings, some of whom outside the office lived a creed of personal nihilism whose origins he understood better than we did. A student of Gnostic movements throughout history, he recognized far better than we their reappearance on the world stage in modern and postmodern guises. "Think right, live left," we used to joke--though not around Irving; it was, we sensed, probably the one joke he wouldn't have shared.

In fact, though, he seemed to find just about everything else amusing--including some things that we interns did not think amusing at all, such as our all-too-serious ambitious young selves. This brings us to another fact about Irving's intern program: It worked because of his profound understanding of what young people are made of. He knew--and often wrote about--just how deeply modern and postmodern mores had penetrated into young souls. Decades before anyone but George Gilder and Midge Decter were saying so, he knew also that the sexual revolution had been a nearly unmitigated disaster for many people and their families, especially though not only the poor, and especially though not only young women. He knew, in other words, just how consequential the social changes from the 1960s on had been for one particularly vulnerable subset: the young.

That was how he could speak with such authority about "their turbulent sexuality, their drug addiction, their desperate efforts to invent new 'lifestyles,' and their popular music, at once Dionysiac and mournful." I remember those words leaping from the page upon reading them years later. In New York in the 1980s, new wave and punk rock were still reigning but on the way out, hip-hop and techno on the way in, and like everyone else I'd spent plenty of time slumming in clubs and other waystations of the popular culture, imbibing nihilism. Yet here was Irving, a 65-year-old bookworm who probably couldn't have found CBGB's if he were dropped off in front of it on a Friday night (and certainly wouldn't have gone in if he had), managing a decade later in just a few words to speak more truth about the scene than any of its itinerant habitués.

Irving understood what few in our post-authority age understand, which is that a great deal of contemporary youthful anomie is a cry of frustration against the disappearance of orthodoxy itself--and a substitute search for something higher than the low down, dirty, stifling counterculture. "Young people," he observed to a group of divinity professors and students back in 1979, "do not want to hear that the church is becoming modern. Go tell the young people that the message of the church is to wear sackcloth and ashes and to walk on nails to Rome, and they would do it." Furthermore, "young people, especially, are looking for religion so desperately that they are inventing new ones. They should not have to invent new ones; the old religions are pretty good." These knowing words, incidentally, were written on the cusp of the evangelical explosion, and well before the unforeseen turn to neo-orthodoxy by small but significant numbers of young Catholics and Jews.

Working for Irving at the Public Interest was an education in other unexpected ways. In particular, it left most of us permanently immune to at least two prominent stereotypes about neoconservatism that have been making the fevered rounds of commentary ever since. One of these was the charge that those on the right were somehow in it for the money--that nefarious corporate largesse rather than actual conviction accounted for the swelling ranks of young neoconservatives and conservatives. Two-thirds of my Public Interest salary, I remember smartingly to this day, went to rent a fifth-floor walk-up in a neighborhood that kids today would call "sketchy" if they were given to understatement. During those years the assistant editors lived off the free lunch Irving provided at Hamburger Heaven (often eating like trenchermen to make the food last into the night) and, many nights, on the free meatballs at happy hour at O'Lunney's bar on Second Avenue. Sometimes for entertainment in the most thriving city on earth, we'd get together and play the board game Jeopardy late into the night--because at least that was something we could do for free. (When one of the players, John Podhoretz, became an actual Jeopardy champion years later, it was clear that something good had come from our penury.) So much for the neoconservative gravy train!

Irving and his wife Bea, for their part, lived in an inviting and book-stuffed apartment near the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South--in which cozy quarters they made a habit of generously entertaining the interns alongside established writers and other prominent guests. For that reason among others, Irving's interns felt as warmly toward Bea Kristol as they were simultaneously in awe of her public persona, Gertrude Himmelfarb, historian. Irving himself encouraged such intimidation via his omnipresent adulation of her; he made sure we interns were aware of her many distinguished works, and remarked more than once in the office that in a hundred years' time, Bea would be the intellectual whose oeuvre would be left standing. Like Midge Decter, whose offices at the Committee for the Free World were at that time another hangout for young conservatives in New York, Bea took both a personal and an intellectual interest in Irving's apprentices, reading our fledgling writing and unfailingly extending to all the pleasure of her conversation and company.

A couple of times a year the mail would bring individual invitations, set out in Bea's perfect and perfectly tiny handwriting, for a soirée at the Kristols' apartment. There the office team got to meet the regulars on their social and intellectual list--Walter and Irene Berns, Martin and Sydnee Lipset, Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Robert Nisbet, H. J. Kaplan, Roger Starr, George Will, Bob Bartley, and many other writers and editors who would be influencing ideas and politics for years to come. And these are just names from an aperture of two years in the mid 1980s; one can only imagine the parade in full across the decades. Also in the Kristols' apartment, of course, the PI interns met the rest of the family. Their children Bill and Liz knew most everyone on the masthead, and many interns over the years became personal friends. Such are among the true and apparently terrifying origins of the "neoconservative media machine" that has since given so many swooning critics a case of the vapors.

The second stereotype that anyone who actually worked around Irving finds very funny in retrospect is the conflation of neoconservatism with Zionism. Going through piles of mail in the hobbity Public Interest office, one would occasionally come across a crazy letter--the kind that, back before email made all communications look alike, was identifiable by caked glue and cutout letters, say, or elaborate scrawling script running over both sides of the envelope (always a bad sign). Often such missives turned out to be passionately executed exercises in anti-Semitism, undertaken by correspondents who knew all too well that somewhere between the Trilateral Commission and the Public Interest offices lurked a conspiracy of Jews trying to rule the world. In fairness to them, of course, these correspondents may just have been ahead of their time; after all, any number of authors complaining about neocons in recent years have managed to make related, feverish cases, and in some of the best publications--rather than, say, in red magic marker on a dirty envelope.

Sometimes whichever intern was lowest on the totem pole would read aloud these ravings about how the Public Interest magazine was the red-hot center of one or another Jewish conspiracy--a ritual that we junior editors found all the more entertaining since most of us during those particular years were cradle Catholics. If the offices of neoconservative magazines really were what so many hysterical critics before and since have insisted, i.e., treacherous tools doing Israel's bidding, it was clear from the kind of people working in them that these Jews must be a lot dumber than their enemies otherwise seemed to think.

A one- or two-year berth at the Public Interest also enabled the apprentices to study Irving Kristol in one other way that demands to be mentioned, because it is the most significant of all: as a writer and man of letters par excellence, a virtuoso of his chosen literary form.

None of which is to say that Irving comported himself thus. As Nathan Glazer notes in his essay in The Neoconservative Imagination, Irving himself never kept track of his own publications, and "responded with disdain that he keeps no bibliography of his writing, that he leaves that to the scholars, who do indeed keep coming up with pieces he has forgotten" (it is one of many virtues of that book that compiler Mark Gerson has appended his own best stab at a thorough bibliography at the end). Nor did Irving write books proper, which might have made following his chain of thought somewhat easier (though he once told Tod Lindberg and me of having written, and then burned, a youthful novel). Rather, his chosen vessel throughout the decades was the essay--that deceptively limited-seeming form that is nevertheless, as Aldous Huxley once put it, "a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything."

And so Irving did, in one venue after another, as the piles of magazines around the office went to show--in Commentary, the Reporter, the New Leader, Encounter, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Magazine, and other venues where one could then measure out one's thoughts in thousands rather than mere hundreds of words. These essays are almost invariably pithy, but they stood on the shoulders of prodigious reading and learning. Irving read incessantly--not only magazines but books, and not only books but good and deep ones--as well as murder mysteries and English novels, Straussian arcana and business lore, everyone else's manuscripts, and a great deal else. That depth is part of why his essays reveal not one writerly virtue or two, but the whole tool kit: epigrams, irony, sustained logical argument, humor, dramatic closings, a knack for translating arcane points of argument into lively prose.

So many of Irving's one-liners have passed into the vernacular that even some of his admirers may not recognize their origins: "The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism." "An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence." "The danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them." "The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism." "Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions--it only guarantees equality of opportunity."

Yet the flair on display in this body of work goes beyond such bons mots. His regular Wall Street Journal essays, for example, are easily among the best the newspaper has ever published, as are those he did for the New York Times Magazine. Many of his longer essays in the "higher journalism" genre, the ones that show up in the collected volumes, are truly great, far outlasting their immediate moments and capable of being read and re-read with profit long after whatever ostensibly occasioned them had passed from the scene. This is true whether the occasion was the American bicentennial ("Adam Smith and the Spirit of Capitalism," 1976), say, or a chance gathering of professors and students of divinity ("Christianity, Judaism, and Socialism," 1979), or even--witness numerous articles on socialism and Freudianism--an entire intellectual movement.

In "God and the Psychoanalysts," for example--written in 1949, a moment when Freudian thought was preeminent, and decades before it would finally be forced into intellectual exile by the accumulated weight of criticism from all sides--Irving not only anticipates the coming psychoanalytic crackup, but also foresees why it is coming: because the understanding of human nature on which the Freudian edifice depends is itself fundamentally cracked. Man's "flight from God," he observed in this essay written six decades ago, "has also been a flight from his true self, which had been made in His image. So it was that Freud could build a theory of human nature on the basis of his experience with hysterics and neurotics." This fact, Irving could see clearly, was "a unique and strange achievement which testifies to our modern psychic equilibrium."

It is this gift for penetrating through any number of epiphenomena to the real fault lines beneath that transforms so much of Irving's writings from opinion pieces into lasting essays and at times profound meditations. Consider as one more example a Commentary essay written almost fifty years later, in 1994, humorously (if also bitingly) titled "Why Religion Is Good for the Jews." Ostensibly occasioned by a now-forgotten news blip--a prominent fundamentalist's remark that only Christians would get into heaven when the time came--it makes points far less transient than the event. First comes a gentle if rather obvious religious lesson ("As it happens, Jewish theological teachings do not recognize the doctrine of a second coming of Jesus (or a first), so it is hard to see why Jews should take such offense at these statements"). And second comes the inevitable wisecrack: "It is almost as if Jewish organizations, having fought (quite successfully) against Jewish exclusion from country clubs, now feel it necessary to take on the specter of discrimination in that Great Country Club in the Sky." Both moves are vintage Irving.

Reading through them again now suggests that two features of these essays have gone chronically under-appreciated by critics. One is the importance of religion to even his earliest thought. "I was born 'theo-tropic,'" Irving observes in his autobiographical memoir written in 1995, "and not even my dismal experience of a decadent orthodoxy could affect this basic predisposition." At another, earlier point in his writing he describes religion as always his favorite subject. It is from religion that Irving reasons time and again to the conservative conclusion that politics is not everything--one of several convictions unifying his thought across the years.

This fact also gives the lie to the frequently thrown contemporary jab about neoconservatism being somehow "messianic," an idiocy that no one actually reading the written record could pen with a straight face. Irving himself specified several times over the decades that neoconservatism was not a movement but a "persuasion" or "impulse" ("more descriptive than prescriptive," as he put it once). Moreover, his most explicit writing on the subject--his introduction to the 1983 collection Reflections of a Neoconservative--discusses several points he deems integral to neoconservatism, not one of which concerns foreign policy, which is where the bugaboo about "messianism" is typically lodged.

"The real trouble," he wrote in surveying American society for another jewel of an essay, a 1972 piece called "About Equality,"

is not sociological or economic at all. It is that the "middling" nature of a bourgeois society falls short of corresponding adequately to the full range of man's spiritual nature, which makes more than middling demands upon the universe, and demands more than middling answers. . . . [The critics of bourgeois society] may speak about "equality"; they may even be obsessed with statistics about equality; but it is a religious vacuum--a lack of meaning in their own lives, and the absence of a sense of larger purpose in their society--that terrifies them and provokes them to "alienation" and unappeasable indignation. It is not too much to say that it is the death of God, not the emergence of any new social or economic trends, that haunts bourgeois society. And this problem is far beyond the competence of politics to deal with.

If these are the words of a messianic thinker, then he is writing himself out of a job.

Similarly, not nearly enough has been made of Irving's sense of humor (perhaps not surprisingly, given the dour critics who have made themselves neoconservatism's Monday morning quarterbacks). Many essays sparkle with good-natured wit--as did Irving in person--and never more than when he is self-deprecating. "I really cannot believe that Americans are a historically unique and chosen people," he observes drolly in one example. "I am myself a Jew and an American, and with all due respect to the Deity, I think the odds are prohibitive that He would have gone out of His way to choose me twice over."

This comedic flair is evident early in Irving's writings. Two of his first Commentary essays are overt treatments of humor, one of them the magnificently wistful "Is Jewish Humor Dead?" (1951). Then there are the covert treatments. Another early essay in Commentary notes of some forgotten American humorists that "they may not be entirely out of mind, but they are quite out of print--deservedly so." Similarly, in an essay written in 1979 (itself slyly titled "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed--Perhaps the Only--'Neoconservative' "), he issues his opinion of Peter Steinfels's The Neoconservatives thus: "I do not wish to suggest that the book is without merit. There is, for example, an excellent couple of sentences on page 4."

To write about Irving Kristol without understanding either his ineradicable respect for religion or his liberal sense of humor is like trying to describe food without tasting or smelling it. Facts not always being stubborn things, many self-appointed critics of neoconservatism have nonetheless done just that in absurdly offering up the portrait of a godless neoconservative ideologue. Even so, one suspects another, deeper reason for why certain detractors have failed to give Irving his literary due: their resentment of his longstanding and resolutely unapologetic attack on the counterculture and its legacy.

This is the Irving whom critics have truly wanted to hate: Irving the social conservative. As he put it in one 1993 essay that made waves called "My Cold War," what saddened him above all were "the clear signs of rot and decadence germinating within American society--a rot and decadence that was no longer the consequence of liberalism but was the actual agenda of contemporary liberalism. . . . It is an ethos that aims simultaneously at political and social collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the other. It cannot win, but it can make us all losers." Today, of course, many on the right as well as the left would drive social conservatives from the fold if they could. How quickly they have forgotten just which opinion writers consistently delivered the sharpest and most knowing critiques of modern morals during the past several decades--Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, and other prominent neoconservatives. Social conservatism itself has been a bigger tent than is typically appreciated.

All of which brings us back to that little smoky office a quarter century ago. One day shortly before leaving the Public Interest for good, I was treated by Irving to one other rite of passage in the program, a lunch away from our desks at the New York Athletic Club. He mentioned something that seemed surprising--that, in the long run, he thought the internship program would prove more influential even than the magazine itself. I thought at the time he was referring to the careers that many of his former apprentices would go on to, and maybe he was. A quarter century later, though, I like to think that there may have been another, deeper way in which we interns had given something back to Irving.

After all, for years and years that one-room office amounted to a two-way eavesdropping street. In some sense that we didn't understand, we interns were all babbling Londoners to his pacing Dickens, the background voices to many a passing or written thought. Maybe listening to us was part of how Irving came to know what many people, including many people fighting over neoconservatism today, did not. The figurative kids of the world after the social revolutions of the sixties weren't quite all right after all--but they were worth trying to reach anyway, in whole or in part, one essay, one argument, at a time.

One afternoon in 1985 we were all sitting around the office when a call came in from one of the television networks. Someone was putting together a panel show on censorship, and they were interested in hearing Irving discuss one more essay that had turned into a lightning rod, "Pornography, Obscenity, and the Case for Censorship." Would Irving care to make an appearance on the show? they asked. No, he told them, Irving would not. Why not? Because, Irving deadpanned to us, he never did television. He had done it just once before and regretted it--because "when I saw myself on film, I couldn't believe it. I did not in fact look anything like what I know I look like, which is Cary Grant."

In a way that seems impossible to convey, he was just such an outsized, witty, urbane, and perpetually amusing gentleman to his apprentices--and by extension to the many other people he advised over the years, from his business students at NYU to the parade of writers and editors and politicians and more who sought his counsel. Such is even true of the readers who never knew him, but who found in his literary company a most agreeable and persuasive companion.

The critics who have charged neoconservatism with "selling out" its intellectual pedigree have gotten one thing right: Any writer following in Irving's footsteps would likely look inferior by comparison. But that does not make his intellectual heirs and beneficiaries wrong. When all is said and done about the contested particulars--the neocons, the magazines, the Jews, the Irvings both real and imaginary about whom his biographers may quarrel till the time comes when we find out who really does get into that Great Country Club in the sky--we are left with the same Irving who's been there all along. That's the writer whose lightning pen willed a whole new political world to life and made a great many people proud to consider themselves his fellow conservatives. Neither his personal nor his literary example will likely be matched in the higher journalism, or what's left of it, ever again.

Mary Tedeschi Eberstadt is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution, consulting editor to Policy Review, contributing writer to First Things, and author most recently of The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death and Atheism, forthcoming in spring 2010 from Ignatius Press.

Polanski

2009-09-30T23:24:00.001-07:00

Andy Levy of Fox News’ Red Eye show tweets, “Shocking: Woody Allen signs petition demanding Polanski’s release.”

...and these gliterati also proudly signed in support of Polanski:

http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2009/09/29/well-glad-we-cleared-that-up/

FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE

2009-09-14T11:45:00.001-07:00

1. "Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for thosewho do not." ~Thomas Jefferson

2. Those who trade liberty for security have neither. ~John Adams
3. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.

4. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.

5. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.

6. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.
7. You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.

8. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.
9. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.

10. Assault is a behavior, not a device.

11. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.

12. The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights Reserved.

13. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.

14. What part of 'shall not be infringed' do you NOT understand?
15. Guns have only two enemies; rust and politicians.

16. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.

17. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.

can there be hope for one of the nets?

2009-09-03T09:08:00.000-07:00

Only ABC Highlights the Scope of How Fast Obama's Poll Numbers Are Falling

Of the three morning shows, only ABC's Good Morning America on Wednesday highlighted just how quickly and severely Barack Obama's approval ratings have fallen. In a report on the subject, correspondent Jake Tapper bluntly explained, "Since taking office, President Obama's approval ratings have fallen more steeply than any other newly-elected president in modern history."

The Best Quotes From Mark Steyn's 2008 Columns

2009-08-31T23:56:00.000-07:00

Killing thousands of people in Manhattan skyscrapers in the name of Islam does, among a certain narrow-minded type of person, give Islam a bad name, and thus could be said to be "anti-Islamic" -- in the same way that the Luftwaffe raining down death and destruction on Londoners during the Blitz was an "anti-German activity." But I don't recall even Neville Chamberlain explaining, as if to a five-year-old, that there is nothing German about the wish to terrorize and invade, and that this is entirely at odds with the core German values of sitting around eating huge sausages in beer gardens while wearing lederhosen.

Certainly, not all Muslims want to fly planes into the Pentagon. But those that do do it in the name of their faith. And anyone minded to engage in an "anti-Islamic activity" will find quite a lot of support from leading Islamic scholars

But, by insisting on re-labeling terrorism committed by Muslims in the name of Islam as "anti-Islamic activity," Her Majesty's government is engaging not merely in Orwellian Newspeak but in self-defeating Orwellian Newspeak. The broader message it sends is that ours is a weak culture so unconfident and insecure that if you bomb us and kill us our first urge is to find a way to flatter and apologize to you.

In contrast to Giuliani's take-charge attitude, the incompetent boob presiding over New Orleans, Ray Nagin, raged as wildly as Katrina: "To those who would criticize, where the hell were you?" roared Mayor Culpa, pointing the finger in all directions. "Where the hell were you?" In a town you're not the mayor of, happily.

To be born a U.S. citizen is, as Cecil Rhodes once said of England, to win first prize in the lottery of life.

Forty-nine years ago, (William F. Buckley) wrote, "We must bring down the thing called liberalism, which is powerful but decadent, and salvage a thing called conservatism, which is weak but viable." It is an unending struggle because, while the facts of life are conservative (as his friend Margaret Thatcher put it), liberalism is eternally seductive.

Geraldine Ferraro acknowledged a simple truth about Barack -- that a white guy with this thin a resume would be hooted off the stage -- and she's the one who got hooted off the stage. This week, Randi Rhodes, the excitable anchorette of the flailing liberal radio network Air America, dismissed Mrs. Ferraro as "David Duke in drag," and for good measure called Hillary "a big f***ing whore." Senator Clinton was the establishment candidate running in a party addicted to novelty (in candidates, that is; its policies remain mired in the Sixties). Hill calculated that, given the Dems' deference to identity politics, her gender would give her enough novelty to sail through. But Obama trumped that...

Sixteen months ago, a school official in Texas accused a four-year-old of sexual harassment after the boy was observed pressing his face into the breasts of a teacher's aide when he hugged her before boarding the school bus. Fortunately, the school took decisive action and suspended the sick freak. By the way, is that the first recorded use in the history of the English language of the phrase "accused a four-year-old of sexual harassment"? Well, it won't be the last: In the state of Maryland last year, 16 kindergartners were suspended for sexual harassment, as were three pre-schoolers.

This week Michelle Obama called for Americans to pony up even more dough for their public school system. The United States already spends more per student than any other developed nation except Switzerland, and at least the Swiss have something to show for it. By any reasonable measure, at least a third of the cash dumped into American schools is entirely wasted.

In my book America Alone, I note a global survey on optimism: 61 per cent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 per cent of the French, 15 per cent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least "bitter" people in the developed world. Secular gun-free big-government Europe doesn't seem to have done anything for people's happiness.

If you want a public culture that reeks of indestructible faith in its own righteousness, try Europe -- especially when they're talking about America: If you disagree with Eutopian wisdom, you must be an idiot. Obama and far too many Democrats have bought into this delusion, most thoroughly distilled in Thomas Frank's book What's The Matter With Kansas?, whose argument is that heartland voters are too dumb (i.e., "moronic muppets") to vote for their own best interests.

Europeans did "vote for their own best interests" -- i.e., cradle-to-grave welfare, 35 hour work-weeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc -- and as a result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic stagnation, and declining human capital that's left them so demographically beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they're being remorselessly Islamized with every passing day. We should thank God (if you'll forgive the expression) that America's loser gun-nuts don't share the same sophisticated rational calculation of "their best interests" as Thomas Frank, Obama, too many Democrats and the European political establishment.

A while back, I was struck by the words of Oscar van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay humanist (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool). Reflecting on the Continent's accelerating Islamification, he concluded that the jig was up for the Europe he loved, but what could he do? "I am not a warrior, but who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it." Sorry, it doesn't work like that. If you don't understand that there are times when you'll have to fight for it, you won't enjoy it for long.

For the last ten years, we have, in fact, been not warming but slightly cooling, which is why the eco-warriors have adopted the all-purpose bogeyman of "climate change."

The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death.

By most measures, the Jewish state is a great success story. The modern Middle East is the misbegotten progeny of the British and French colonial map-makers of 1922. All the nation states in that neck of the woods date back a mere 60 or 70 years -- Iraq to the Thirties, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel to the Forties. The only difference is that Israel has made a go of it.

On a tiny strip of land narrower at its narrowest point than many American townships, Israel has built a modern economy with a GDP per capita just shy of $30,000 -- and within striking distance of the European Union average. If you object that that's because it's uniquely blessed by Uncle Sam, well, for the past 30 years the second largest recipient of U.S. aid has been Egypt: Their GDP per capita is $5,000, and America has nothing to show for its investment other than one-time pilot Mohammed Atta coming at you through the office window.

Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing -- chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking.

President Bush knows where he stands. Just before the words that Barack Obama took umbrage at, he said: "There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemnly responsibility to take these words seriously."

Here are some words of Hussein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." Are his actions consistent with those words? Amazingly so. So too are those of Hezbollah's patrons in Tehran.

(Barrack Obama is a) pretty boy with a resume you could print on the back of his driver's license, a Rolodex apparently limited to neo-segregationist racebaiters, campus Marxist terrorists and indicted fraudsters, and a rhetorical surefootedness that makes Dan Quayle look like Socrates.

In China, the state-enforced "one child" policy has brought about the most gender-distorted demographic cohort in global history, the so-called guang gun -- "bare branches." If you can only have one kid, parents choose to abort girls and wait for a boy, to the point where in the first generation to grow to adulthood under this policy there are 119 boys for every 100 girls. In practice, a "woman's right to choose" turns out to mean the right to choose not to have any women.

By midcentury, when today's millions of surplus boys will be entering middle age, India and China are expected to account for a combined 50 percent of global GDP. On present trends, they will be the most male-heavy societies that have ever existed. As I wrote in my book America Alone, unless China's planning on becoming the first gay superpower since Sparta, what's going to happen to all those excess men? As a general rule, large numbers of excitable lads who can't get any action are not a recipe for societal stability.

"I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after one of the senator's speeches. "I mean, I don't have that too often." Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for over six months, see your doctor.

(Sarah Palin) hasn't voted 397 times against this or that in the U.S. Senate, because she's been running a state, and a town, and a commercial fishing operation. She's a doer, not a talker, which is why so many of my fellow professional talkers disdain her.

The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it. Why can't the government sort out my health care? Why can't they pick up my mortgage?

More to the point, the only reason why Belgium has gotten away with being Belgium and Sweden Sweden and Germany Germany this long is because America's America. The soft comfortable cocoon in which western Europe has dozed this last half-century is girded by cold hard American power. What happens when the last serious western nation votes for the same soothing beguiling siren song as its enervated allies?

In the Cold War, the world did not stand as one. One half of Europe was a prison, and in the other half far too many people -- the Barack Obamas of the day -- were happy to go along with that division in perpetuity. And the wall came down not because "the world stood as one" but because a few courageous people stood against the conventional wisdom of the day. Had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan been like Helmut Schmidt and Francois Mitterand and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy Carter, the Soviet empire (notwithstanding its own incompetence) would have survived and the wall would still be standing.

For many of his supporters, Barack Obama is an idea. He offers "hope, not fear". "Hope" of what? "Hope" of "change." Okay, but "change" to what? Ah, well, there you go again, getting all hung up on three-dimensional reality, when we've moved way beyond that.

In his Wednesday-night infomercial, Obama declared that his "fundamental belief" was that "I am my brother's keeper." Back in Kenya, his brother lives in a shack on 12 bucks a year. If Barack is his brother's keeper, why couldn't he send him a ten-dollar bill and near double the guy's income? The reality is that Barack Obama assumes the government should be his brother's keeper, and his aunt's keeper

It's hard for Republicans to hammer Obama as a socialist when their own party's nationalizing the banks and its presidential nominee is denouncing the private sector for putting profits before patriotism.

If you went back to the end of the 19th century and suggested to, say, William McKinley that one day Americans would find themselves choosing between a candidate promising to guarantee your mortgage and a candidate promising to give "tax cuts" to millions of people who pay no taxes he would scoff at you for concocting some patently absurd H G Wells dystopian fantasy.

In political terms, the message of the gazillion-dollar bipartisan bailout was a simple one: "Individual responsibility" and "self-reliance" are for chumps.

I don't need Barack Obama's help to "spread the wealth around." I spread my wealth around every time I hire somebody, expand my business, or just go to the general store and buy a quart of milk and loaf of bread.

We are told that the "vast majority" of the 1.6-1.8 billion Muslims (in Deepak Chopra's estimate) are "moderate." Maybe so, but they're also quiet. And, as the AIDs activists used to say, "Silence=Acceptance." It equals acceptance of the things done in the name of their faith.

I wrote in my book, America Alone, that "reforming" Islam is something only Muslims can do. But they show very little sign of being interested in doing it, and the rest of us are inclined to accept that. Spread a rumor that a Koran got flushed down the can at Gitmo, and there'll be rioting throughout the Muslim world. Publish some dull cartoons in a minor Danish newspaper, and there'll be protests around the planet. But slaughter the young pregnant wife of a rabbi in Bombay in the name of Allah, and that's just business as usual.

Whether wars start depends on the intended target's ability to deter.

Klavan nails it. They want you to shut up.

2009-08-14T23:10:00.000-07:00

Michele must just be irreplacable...

2009-07-24T16:53:00.000-07:00

At the top right hand corner of Page 17 of the New York Post of January 24th, 2009 , was a short column entitled "Replacing Michelle" in the National Review's "The Week" column. Here it is, word for word, as it appeared:

Some employees are simply irreplaceable. Take Michelle Obama: The University of Chicago Medical center hired her in 2002 to run "programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity, and minority contracting."

In 2005, the hospital raised her salary from $120,000 to $317, 000, nearly twice what her husband made as a U. S. Senator..

Oh, did we mention that her husband had just become a US senator? He sure had. And that immediately after he was elected he requested a $1 million earmark for the UC Medical Center.. You betcha, by golly. He surely did. Way to go Michelle..

But now that Mrs. Obama has resigned, the hospital says her position will remain unfilled. How can that possibly be? Especially if the work she did was vital enough to be worth $317,000?

Oh, by the way, let me add that Michelle's position was a part time, 20-hour-a-week job at $317,000..00 per year. And to think they were critical of Blagoyovich's wife for taking $100,000 in fuzzy real estate commission.

The real question is: How did this bit of quid pro quo corruption escape the sharp reporters that dug through Sarah Palin's garbage and kindergarten files?

Love the Brits!!!

2009-05-18T17:49:00.001-07:00

An incident occurred in a supermarket recently, when the following was witnessed:

A Muslim woman dressed in a Burkha (A black gown and face mask) was standing with her shopping in a queue at the checkout. When it was her turn to be served, and as she reached the cashier, she made a loud remark about the English Flag lapel pin, which the female cashier was wearing on her blouse.

The cashier reached up and touched the pin and said, 'Yes, I always wear it proudly. My son serves abroad with the forces and I wear it for him'.

The Muslim woman then asked the cashier when she was going to stop bombing and killing her countrymen, explaining that she was Iraqi.

At that point, a Gentleman standing in the queue stepped forward, and interrupted with a calm and gentle voice, and said to the Iraqi woman: 'Excuse me, but hundreds of thousands of men and women, just like this lady's son have fought and sacrificed their lives so that people just like YOU can stand here, in England, which is MY country and allow you to blatantly accuse an innocent check-out cashier of bombing YOUR countrymen'.

'It is my belief that if you were allowed to be as outspoken as that in Iraq, which you claim to be YOUR country, then we wouldn't need to be fighting there today'. 'However - now that you have learned how to speak out and criticise the English people who have afforded you the protection of MY country, I will gladly pay the cost of a ticket to help you pay your way back to Iraq '.

'When you get there, and if you manage to survive for being as outspoken as you are here in England, then you should be able to help straighten out the mess which YOUR Iraqi countrymen have got you into in the first place, which appears to be the reason that you have come to MY country to avoid...'

Apparently the queue cheered and applauded.

Support Our Troops.

The great Dennis Prager on why America is unique

2009-05-07T07:26:00.000-07:00

Thanks for nothing, Barack

2009-04-27T09:50:00.001-07:00

The Wall Street Journal's Dan Henninger asked a former Eastern European dissident imprisoned by Communists: "If you were sitting in a cell in Cuba, Iran or Syria and saw this photo of a smiling American president shaking hands with a smiling Hugo Chavez, what would you think?"

The former dissident responded: "I would think that I was losing ground."

http://tinyurl.com/czfarp
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Spector guilty

2009-04-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

I watched the Ramones docu, and they all said Spector was a raving lunatic, threatening with guns, etc.

Spector, perhaps the most famous producer in the history of rock 'n' roll, was on Monday found guilty of second degree murder for the 2003 death of actress Lana Clarkson. It was the second trial for Spector after the first, held in 2007, ended in a deadlocked jury, and as verdicts go, it was something of a doozy: the 69-year-old producer may face life in prison when sentencing takes place on May 29th. Spector's been a part of some of the biggest recordings in the history of pop music, and controversy for him has been nothing new.

2009-04-17T10:29:00.001-07:00

There's a large country to the south where you can fly your Mexican flag at the top of the pole.
You are here because Mexico is a failed state. See below:

Patriot appears with Cavuto

2009-04-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

President George W. Bush has saved more than a million lives

2009-04-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

You decide if the NYTimes and CBS news, et al, are incompetent, or just steeped in bias.

from FoxNews

Life Saver

It is a story you probably won't hear about in too many other places. A program launched by former President George W. Bush has saved more than a million lives.

A study by two Stanford University doctors states that Mr. Bush's AIDS-fighting campaign reduced deaths by 10 percent in targeted African nations, saving roughly 1.2 million people.

The study tracked AIDS deaths and HIV infections in 12 African nations getting aid under the president's emergency plans for AIDS relief. The $15 billion, five-year effort was launched in 2003.

Last year Congress extended it for another five years. Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino who just returned from volunteering in Africa says: "Good news stories are not always reported because there is always bad news that drives coverage. But Americans should be proud and President Bush deserves a lot of credit."

LONDON TIMES REPORT - U.S. Wins!

2009-03-31T15:10:00.000-07:00

Winning Isn't News!!

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Iraq: What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.

London's Sunday Times called it 'the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.' A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has in over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul .The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare.

We can thank President Bush's surge Strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering. We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare.
And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and AQI their enemy.

Al-Qaida's loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Province, which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there. Now, in Operation Lion's Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S.
3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left. More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended.
Sunday Times (London) reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.

Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has achieved 'satisfactory' progress on 15 of the
18 political benchmarks 'a big change for the better from a year ago.' Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates , which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad, an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq .

But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, 'the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN's Anderson Cooper
360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks 'that signaled political progress.' The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because President Bush stuck to his guns.
Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don't seem to consider this historic event a big story.

Copyright 2008 Investor's Business Daily. All Rights Reserved.

Addendum: The reason you haven't seen this on American television or read about it in the American press is simple--journalism is 'dead' in this country. They are controlled by Liberal Democrats who would rather see our troops defeated than recognize a successful Republican initiated response to 9/11. Media probably were holding 'til after coronation of BHO in order to give BHO the credit. God bless our troops, God bless President Bush and God bless the U.S.A.

How many will you forward it to? We need to get it known around the country ASAP. Over 10 million people will have read this by March 30, 2009. With all your help we can reach well over 30 million world wide. Thanks,let the truth be known thru-out the world!!!

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MORE SAYET!!

2009-03-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

Evan Sayet -- HERITAGE FOUNDATION: "How Modern Liberals Think"

2009-03-28T17:02:00.000-07:00

Israel is a Lamb Among Wolves

2009-02-16T10:53:00.000-08:00

Burt Prelutsky
Friday, February 13, 2009
When I was very young, people were accustomed to saying that the only two certainties were death and taxes. Over the years, there’s a third item that could be added to the list: Every American president will try and fail to bring peace to the Middle East. Obama is merely the latest to put it at the top of his to-do list. My guess is that four or eight years down the road, long after he has managed to cure the leper and raise the dead, it will still be at the top of his list.

I hate to be a pessimist, but I see no reason not to be. While the folks in Gaza didn’t have two great choices during their last election, much like the electorate here in the U.S., they opted for the greater of two evils, much like the electorate here in the U.S.. They voted for Hamas, a terrorist group sworn to wipe Israel off the map -- the actual map, that is, not merely the fantasy maps they use in their schoolbooks.
It confounds me when people in America and non-Muslims in Europe attempt to find a moral equivalency between Israel and her enemies. For one thing, they invariably find Israel culpable. Israel may not always be right, but that’s far better than always being wrong. I mean, how does anyone living in a civilized nation dare argue on behalf of people who treat their women as chattel and who treat Christians and Jews even worse?
The same bigots who condemn Israel for killing Arab children when they respond to countless missile attacks never seem to condemn the Arabs for either firing those missiles or for using women and children as shields when Israel finally retaliates.
Israel has had nuclear weapons for a good number of years, but has never once used them. Is there anyone anywhere who honestly believes that if Israel’s enemies had nuclear capability, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would be anything but moonscapes by this time?
Those who claim to find a moral equivalency between the two sides in the Middle East are those who, themselves, have no sense of morality. Decades ago, Abba Eban observed that Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. He was of course referring to their failure to seek a peaceful resolution. But it isn’t peace the Palestinians want. Neither is it statehood. Even Clinton, who had Yasser Arafat sleeping in Lincoln’s bedroom far more often than Lincoln ever had, got the Israelis to offer up 97% of what Arafat was demanding. The way Arafat stormed off, you would have thought the Israelis had asked to have sex on a first date.
People who believe that Israel was wrested from the Arabs by the U.N. in 1948 are simply ignorant of the facts. Zionists had been buying up desert property at wildly inflated prices for several decades by then. All that happened in 1948 was that the U.N. recognized Israel as a sovereign state. Although the Arabs were invited to remain where they were, they were told by Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq, to leave so that the invading forces wouldn’t have to worry about collateral damage when they eradicated the Jews. The departing Arabs were assured that they’d soon be free to return and share in the spoils. At the time of the invasion, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, left no room for doubt when he declared: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” That was 61 years ago and the grandkids and great-grandkids of those who fled and wound up in Gaza are still waiting for that Great Come and Get It Day.
Recently, Pat Buchanan, sounding, as usual, an awful lot like Jimmy Carter, wrote a piece advising Israel to surrender still more land for peace. Well, why not? It’s always worked so well in the past. Whenever I read Buchanan on the Middle East conflict, I find myself wondering if his solution to the problem of illegal immigration in America would be to hand Texas, Arizona and California, over to Mexico.
Perhaps next time, just as a change of pace, Mr. Buchanan might consider giving the Arabs the benefit of his wisdom. Perhaps something along the lines of “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s 2009, not 1009. Stop behaving like bloody savages!”

Who is REALLY like Lincoln?

2009-02-15T10:42:00.001-08:00

History Will See Lincoln-Like Greatness In... George W. Bush

Abe Lincoln fought for victory. Barack Obama chose defeat.
Obama hesitates to make decisions. He stands firm in his positions until he doesn't. Unlike Lincoln, Barack Obama suffers poor judgement in choosing mentors and friends. Unlike Lincoln, Obama turns his back on those who are suffering and would rather appease evil than confront evil.
Already, it is obvious that Barack Obama lacks the same integrity of Abe Lincoln. Abe Lincoln was a friend to the downtrodden and weak. Barack Obama is a friend of thugs and despots.

Certainly, George W. Bush is more like Abraham Lincoln.
The left-leaning CQ Politics noted the similarities:

His administration rid the world and a nation of Sadaam Hussein, a despot whose sordid, tortuous crimes against humanity are well documented.

He paved the way for democracy in Iraq and other countries. It is still too early to tell if democracy will stick in any of those places, but people who have never voted are voting and, among others, women have new found rights to education and liberation.

If we begin to expect that any chief executive of anything — be it a country or a Fortune 500 company — cannot make a mistake or two among the hundreds, perhaps, thousands of decisions they make, then our standards have reached the point of ridiculousness.

Looking at Lincoln and Churchill and how they were viewed both in and out of office indicates how difficult it is to pre-judge history’s final assessment of a leader.

Both men were criticized for making quick and sometimes impulsive decisions against the advice of advisers. At times both were pilloried for decisions regarding war.

Lincoln bore the brunt of criticism for war casualties. More soldiers died at the Civil War battle at Antietam in one day — more than 7,000 — than the number American soldiers who have been killed in the war in Iraq. That number is about 4,500, which is not to imply those deaths are inconsequential or without great heartaches to their families.

Lincoln was criticized, as Bush has been, for running afoul of the Constitution and civil liberties. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, which allows imprisoned persons to challenge the legality of their arrests and there were over 10,000 “arbitrary arrests” while Lincoln was in office.

Bush lacks the eloquence of both men.

Churchill was not only a galvanizing and witty speaker, he also wrote a book that won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, “The History of the Second World War.” Lincoln earned immortality with his address at Gettysburg.

We know for virtual certainty that Bush’s speeches will not go down in history. He will not be known for a public display of intellectual depth. What we do not know, however, is how he will be ultimately judged. We know there has not been a foreign attack on our land since 9/11. Is it because of Bush’s policies?

If it is proven he kept our nation safe, we will begin to see him differently as leader.

ROURKE: 'BUSH WAS IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME'

2009-01-13T22:54:00.000-08:00

Actor MICKEY ROURKE sympathises with U.S. President GEORGE W. BUSH - insisting he doesn't know how any politician could have successfully navigated America after the 9/11 attacks on New York.

The Hollywood tough-guy spoke out about his political views in a candid interview with Britain's GQ magazine, and admits he doesn't understand why so many people blame Bush for a string of world issues - including Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in the West.

And the actor, who claims he didn't follow last year's (08) historic U.S. election battle between Barack Obama and John McCain, urges the public to consider the tremendous pressure the controversial president was under following the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

He tells the publication, "President Bush was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I don't know how anyone could have handled this situation.

"I don't give a f**k who's in office, Bush or whoever, there is no simple solution to this problem... I'm not one of those who blames Bush for everything. This s**t between Christians and Muslims goes back to the Crusades, doesn't it.

"It's too easy to blame everything on one guy. These are unpredictable, dangerous times, and I don't think that anyone really knows quite what to do."

Rourke also confesses he was so angry after 9/11, he wanted to fight the war on terror himself.

He adds, "I'm not politically educated. But I do know that after 9/11 I wanted to go over there, you know what I'm saying?"

And the star is baffled by the U.K.'s approach to fundamentalists - insisting he was taken aback by the freedom of speech allowed in the U.K.

He explains, "I was in London recently and I couldn't believe all these hate-talking fanatics you have over here who are allowed to carry on doing their thing even when a bus full of women and children gets blown to pieces.

"I know you've deported one or two of them, but it seems crazy. I think there is worse to come, something terrible will happen to either America or the U.K., or France even. I don't think these fundamentalists should be allowed to talk all this crap, and brainwashing these young kids."

Hollywood Conservatives Encouraged to Come Out of the Closet

2009-01-06T17:03:00.000-08:00

A once-timid group of social outcasts is emerging from the shadows in Hollywood. If the past year is any indication, Tinseltown may have to get accustomed to the loud presence of a growing minority.

After years of silence, conservatives are coming out of the closet.

Andrew Breitbart, the conservative founder of Breitbart.com and author of "Hollywood Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon," is launching a Web site he hopes will help challenge the status quo in what he believes has been a one-party, left-tilting town. Set to debut on Jan. 6, "Big Hollywood" will be a place where center, right and libertarian-leaning celebrities and industry-insiders can weigh in on Hollywood politics, offer film, television and movie reviews, and have an open forum for political discussion.

"Our goal," says Breitbart, who lives in Los Angeles, "is to create an atmosphere of tolerance — something that does not exist in this town."

Breitbart has invited a number of conservative politicians, commentators and journalists to write regularly about the cult of celebrity, liberalism in popular culture, and politics. Among the names who will be contributing, he says, are Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va), political commentator Tucker Carlson, and former Tennessee Senator and Republican presidential contender Fred Thompson.

The site will also feature the punditry of some well-known Hollywood actors, directors, producers, and writers, Breitbart says.

As celebrities like Jon Voight, Gary Sinise, Charlton Heston, Patricia Heaton, Stephen Baldwin and Kelsey Grammer came out publicly with their political ideas over the past few years, the news that there were, in fact, conservatives in Hollywood, had many wondering who would be next.

Recently, there have been rumors that Robert Downey Jr. is a closet Republican, though his publicist will neither confirm nor deny it, saying only, "We unfortunately have no comment, as RDJ does not comment on political matters."

But Breitbart says the goal of Big Hollywood is not to "out" conservative celebrities, and he will not pressure celebrities like Downey to jump into the fray. He says conservative celebs who aren't comfortable with full transparency will be allowed to write under an alias.

"I want them to come on their own volition," he says. "'Big Hollywood is going to have to be a compelling daily read that speaks to Hollywood conservatives' unique burden before some will stick their necks out and choose to speak up for what they believe."

Sticking their necks out has not always been good for business. Mark Vafiades, president of the Hollywood Congress of Republicans, says, "I'm hoping that one day politics won't make a difference in Hollywood. But because there is still subtle intolerance here, conservatives remain somewhat shy.

"If you come to an audition wearing a Bush or McCain button, the casting director will most likely pick another actor. Just being on a set you hear people bashing Bush and the right, because they assume everyone agrees."

Some have suggested the purported anti-conservative tilt in Hollywood is overstated — if it exists at all. Perez Hilton, the self-proclaimed "Queen of All Media" and author of his eponymous gossip site, said, "I think Hollywood is very tolerant. They may mock you for your political beliefs, but at least they'll do it to your face!

"It won't ever interfere with people getting a job. Kelsey Grammer still works!"

But some conservatives in the entertainment industry say there may not be a literal blacklist in Hollywood, but there is pressure to keep silent.

"Conservatives don't necessarily have to be covert about their politics, but in many cases they are because the liberals aren't fair and balanced towards those with differing points of view," says Jerry Molen, the Oscar-winning producer of big Hollywood hits like "Schindler's List," "Jurassic Park" and "Rain Man."

"In too many cases, conservatives are immediately labeled racist, homophobic, bigoted, hateful, demonic, or even un-American without the benefit of debate, and are locked out of the hiring process, with a few exceptions."

But the doors may be slowly opening "An American Carol," a conservative parody that lampooned liberal Hollywood this year, galvanized conservative celebrities like Robert Davi, Dennis Hopper, Kevin Farley, Voight and Grammer, all of whom had roles in the film.

And conservative film festivals, including the American Film Renaissance and the Liberty Film Festival, have also helped bring to market conservative projects that a few years ago might have had a difficult time getting made.

Some industry insiders credit John McCain with helping to embolden Hollywood conservatives during this year's presidential election. Andrew Klavan, a conservative author and screenwriter of psychological thrillers including True Crime and Don't Say A Word, said, "For people who had a lot to lose, McCain gave them some cover. He wasn't a true Republican like Bush was. He was someone even the left liked, whereas Bush was demonized. Hollywood conservatives could support McCain without necessarily supporting the GOP."

Klavan suggested that a spate of recent political movies like "Rendition" and "Redaction" also strengthened the conservative cause.

"These movies are genuinely anti-American. Never before have we had anti-war movies made while our troops were at war. Many people like me were ashamed of the industry, and there's been a bit of a backlash."

Vafiades says increasing numbers of conservatives have joined his organization in the past year, and more organizations like his are sprouting up.

But hush-hush groups like "Friends of Abe," a secretive society of Hollywood conservatives, still operate well under the radar. And the increased spotlight on conservative celebrities has not changed the political climate as much as Breitbart, Vafiades, Molen and Klavan would like.

They say liberal celebrities still have an easier time "being political" than conservatives do.

"Sean Penn is out dancing with dictators, and no one gives him flak. Instead they give him Oscar nominations," says Klavan. "Jon Voight may have some semblance of job security, but he still has to be careful about what he says."

Why Does Hollywood Hate the Suburbs?

2008-12-27T16:33:00.001-08:00

America's long artistic tradition of claiming spiritual death by station wagon
By LEE SIEGEL

"Revolutionary Road," based on Richard Yates's 1961 novel of the same name, is the latest entry in a long stream of art that portrays the American suburbs as the physical correlative to spiritual and mental death.

The movie's opening scene could serve as a precis of over 50 years of antisuburban sentiment in American culture. Frank and April Wheeler (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet with misdirected intensity like two Titanics passing in the night) pull their car over to the side of the road. They've been fighting, and now they both jump out into the dark of the night. When April's needling escalates to downright cruelty, Frank pulls back his arm as if to hit his wife and then slams his fist into the car. She's been tormenting him, he cries, "ever since we came out here to the suburbs." In the naturalistic novels of Emile Zola, Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser, economic forces inexorably destroyed the protagonists. In "Revolutionary Road," the two principal characters are brought down by lawn sprinklers and station wagons.

But Sam Mendes, the film's director, is just getting started. Flashbacks emphasize the chilling role the tortured couple's environment has played in the disintegration of their lives: Against a background of sunlit, leafy yards, we see Kate Winslet taking out the garbage; Kate Winslet doing the laundry; Kate Winslet making small talk with a neighbor. The tree-lined streets are empty and eerily quiet. The beautiful house is tastefully furnished and eerily quiet. You are meant to think of the Wheelers' suburb as "a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime," to borrow Van Gogh's description of an equally alienating milieu (except that Van Gogh was talking about an urban café).

Still, the film's hostility toward the suburbs pales when compared with its source. Yates's novel, cherished by literary intellectuals and Paris Review interns to this day, expresses American suburban-phobia with crude explicitness. Describing the Wheelers' new neighborhood, Yates writes: "The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy.... [The neighborhood] was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves.... A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place."

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Revolutionary Road' Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Revolutionary Road' Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Revolutionary Road' No literary critic that I know of has ever challenged Yates's puerile social perceptions. The reflexive reverence for "Revolutionary Road" is a testament to the degree to which antisuburban sentiment is one of the most unexamined attitudes in American culture. For what might a neighborhood that had been designed to accommodate a tragedy possibly look like? For a man running down the street in desperate grief to fit right into the landscape, he would have to be hurtling through a place where vampiric towers blocked out the sun and corpses hung from the lampposts.

Yates's rage against the suburbs had all the subtlety of adolescent rage against authority (this indiscriminate anger might account for the novel's fatal deficiency: Frank and April's total lack of talent or substance makes their ultimately thwarted attempt to leave the suburbs for Paris less the stuff of tragedy than irritating farce). Yet "Revolutionary Road" -- the name fatuously meant to imply that America's revolutionary promise withers and dies in the suburbs -- caught the reflexive attitudes of many readers. Postwar writers and intellectuals overlooked the book's flagrant shortcomings, lit up from within by their shared opposition to a single place. X might be a Stalinist, and Y a fellow traveler and Z a closet Republican, but they could all agree on one thing -- they'd rather perish in a nuclear holocaust than move to Westchester!
video Scene from 'Revolutionary Road'

American antisuburban sentiment is often comically absurd. In his 1955 poem "Howl," Allen Ginsberg elevated suburb-phobia to the level of myth. He excoriates the "invisible suburbs" -- i.e. they are so spiritually dead that they are hidden from a living eye -- as one of the pernicious manifestations of Moloch, the destructive god of soulless materialism. Sylvia Plath added some spine-tingling details. In her 1963 autobiographical novel, "The Bell Jar," Plath's heroine steps off a train and has this infernal experience: "The motherly breath of the suburbs enfolded me. It smelt of lawn sprinklers and station wagons and dogs and babies. A summer calm laid its soothing hand over everything, like death." The pleasures of a station wagon's aroma are open to question, but summer calm, the smell of wet grass, the scent of dogs (if they're clean) and babies (clean or dirty) -- are, it could be argued, some of the least horrifying experiences in life.

For Yates, Plath, Ginsberg and less gifted suburb-phobes like the novelists Sloan Wilson and John Keats, as well as hugely influential liberal sociologists and writers like David Riesman, William Whyte, Paul Goodman and Betty Friedan, it went without saying that the suburbs could transform the people who had committed the error of moving to them into the walking -- make that driving -- dead.

Yet the Wheelers live in a safe and protected middle-class town with intact, well-to-do families; efficient services; and happy children gamboling in sprinklers and running among the trees. How did such an environment come to acquire qualities previously associated with Dante's "Inferno," Dickens's Victorian workhouses and Solzhenitsyn's gulags?

In the '50s and early '60s, the postwar exodus from the cities to the suburbs was just beginning. Veterans of the Second World War and then the Korean War sought inexpensive homes of their own, far from the urban scrimmage that must have been, for some, a cramped extension of real combat. Enterprising builders eagerly obliged, throwing up houses in a matter of months, modest Cape Cods and ranches that returning veterans were able to safely buy with little or no down payment, thanks to the GI bill.

It's easy to see why artists and intellectuals felt that they had to alert the general public to the emergency of these sudden new places' peaceful, leafy streets. For one thing, the suburbs seemed not to offer the primary experiences of either country or city. The backyard is but the reminder of a meadow; the tree-lined intersection is but the faint echo of a busy urban intersection. The suburbs were the embodiment of that period's fashionable existential fear: "inauthenticity."

More important, suburban houses were often designed along unsightly cookie-cutter lines. The archetypal suburb, Levittown on New York's Long Island, was constructed between 1947 and 1951 using assembly-line methods; at one point, 30 houses were springing up a day. In 1950, when builder William Levitt, who created Levittown, appeared on the cover of Time magazine, the conversation in the cafés of Greenwich Village must have sizzled with frightening visions of totalitarian sameness. And no doubt the depiction of the suburbs as brainless utopias on the television sitcoms of the time -- shows like "Leave it to Beaver," "Bewitched," "Father Knows Best," "The Dick van Dyke Show" -- also incited intellectual revulsion, as much against the sinister new mass medium of TV as against the suburbs themselves.

There were two overarching reasons for condemning the suburbs, during the '50s and early '60s, as the most rotten locale in civilized life: class and money. Most of the people leaving the cities for the suburbs in the 1950s were tradespeople, modest businessmen, teachers and the like. They were, in other words, members of the middle-class, the impassioned rejection of which has been the chief rite de passage of the modern American artist and intellectual. With the growth of suburban towns, the liberal American intellectual now had a concrete geography to house his acute sense of outrage.

Yet if the suburbs were becoming the headquarters of the American middle-class, they were also becoming associated with the enviable characteristics of upward mobility: a decent salary, home ownership, access to superior public education and services. "We're going to have to move back to the city," the callous but suddenly redeemed advertising man grimly says to his wife after quitting his job in disgust in the popular 1959 film "The Last Angry Man" -- moving from suburban Connecticut to hardscrabble Manhattan being proof of his redemption. (What a socioeconomic difference 50 years makes!)

Art and intellect are solitary vocations, and their practitioners often require a common enemy to sustain the lonely effort. The suburbs continued to serve that purpose, but the type of antipathy toward them changed in the late '60s and '70s.

Just as during the '30s the Depression had polarized every issue along moral lines, in the Vietnam-era artists and intellectuals grew impatient with mere esthetic considerations. Now the suburbs were stigmatized not only by materialism, lack of imagination, and conformity. From that moment -- and up to our own -- the suburbs were portrayed in every type of art as non-communities that signified ugly moral choices.

The cultural chasm between liberals and conservatives that first appeared in the '60s was largely one between the city and the suburbs. The liberal "idealism" that had created the catastrophe in Vietnam now got blamed, unfairly or not, for failing economic and social policies. For marginalized conservatives, the suburbs were living refutation of the crumbling ethos that had guided the crime-ridden, decaying urban centers. For embattled liberals, people leaving the cities for safer and cleaner outlying towns were racists and cowards who had no respect for shared public space.

One of the most glaring ironies of American life is that, a quarter-century later, the cities have metamorphosed into the suburbs -- sans trees and grass. The cities' fabled diversity has devolved into global chain stores and the electrolyte-enhanced water bottle and the branded baseball cap have become the accessories of a universal comfort and conformity. In a social and cultural sea change, the cities' rented apartments, once the guarantor of diversity and fluid, exciting movement, have been converted into exclusive co-ops and condominiums. Yet as the cities have become a new type of suburb, suburb-phobia has become an ever more acceptable cultural attitude. The suburban person is considered too meek, too asphalt-challenged to inherit the earth. In the urban centers, on the other hand, desperate ambition makes bad manners respectable, and the chic of perverse taste covers up Philistine cluelessness. The decent, suburban person is regarded as contemptible because he has not learned to reach beyond his talents and pick life's pockets.

In the last couple of decades, the antisuburban film has become as much a staple of Hollywood as the Serious Crime Drama With an Incomprehensible Plot. A few prominent examples: Todd Haynes's "Safe" (which has suburban people inexplicably bleeding from every pore of their bodies); the 2004 remake of "The Stepford Wives" (where Viking range + Sub-Zero refrigerator = robotic wife, death of feminism and extinction of human rights); "The Ice Storm" (just in case you ignored the urgent alarm sounded by the antisuburban novel by Rick Moody on which the film is based and moved to Larchmont); the British Sam Mendes's very own "American Beauty" (of which "Revolutionary Road" is simply a reiteration -- take a sprinkler, add a dollop of anomie, and presto! you're an authentic American filmmaker). Television, once home to the idealistic vision of the suburbs, has gotten in on the act, too, with the antisuburban satires "Desperate Housewives" and "Weeds," not to mention the "Real Housewives" franchise, which opens a fake-appalled window onto a world of midday margaritas and $18,000 sleepover parties.

It could be that suburb-phobia has been a necessary attitude for ex-suburbanites living in urban centers. It may well help them to feel that the increasingly anodyne and homogenous cities are still adventurous and challenging places to live. In any case, suburb-phobia has even made its way into the visual arts' most rarefied sanctums: in the paintings of Eric Fischl and the photographs of Jeff Wall (one of his most famous works: rifle-holding men stalking an invisible prey in an anonymous suburb).

Of course there is a small but stubborn counter-tradition to suburb-phobia, most famously in the stories and novels of John Updike and John Cheever. For these two writers, the suburbs are not just a determining environment, but an unpredictable one of unfolding circumstances -- like every other place on earth. As Johnny Hake, the hero of Cheever's story "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill," puts it: "Shady Hill is, as I say, a banlieue and open to criticism by city planners, adventurers and lyric poets, but if you work in the city and have children to raise, I can't think of a better place."

Hake becomes a thief, has something like a nervous breakdown, and finally gets an inkling of his surprising destiny. Which only means that life's complexity and surprise follow you everywhere, even over the city-line, across the river and into the suburban trees. You wonder why the creators of the film "Revolutionary Road" are blind to such an obvious fact of human existence. But, then, Hollywood is the most illusion-soaked, soul-hardened and materialistic suburb in the world.

Lee Siegel's most recent book is "Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob."

Enough of Radical Islam

2008-12-03T08:48:00.001-08:00

Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Enough with the pseudonyms. Western civilization isnt at war with terrorism any more than it is at war with grenades. Western civilization is at war with militant Islam, which dominates Muslim communities all over the world. Militant Islam isnt a tiny minority of otherwise goodhearted Muslims. Its a dominant strain of evil that runs rampant in a population of well over 1 billion.

Enough with the psychoanalysis. They dont hate us because of Israel. They dont hate us because of Kashmir. They dont hate us because we have troops in Saudi Arabia or because we deposed Saddam Hussein. They dont hate us because of Britney Spears. They hate us because we are infidels, and because we dont plan on surrendering or providing them material aid in their war of aggressive expansion.

Enough with the niceties. We dont lose our souls when we treat our enemies as enemies. We dont undermine our principles when we post more police officers in vulnerable areas, or when we send Marines to kill bad guys, or when we torture terrorists for information. And we dont redeem ourselves when we close Guantanamo Bay or try terrorists in civilian courts or censor anti-Islam comics. When it comes to war, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Enough with the words. Talking with Iran without wielding the threat of force, either economic or military, wont help. Appealing to the United Nations, run by thugs and dictators ranging from Putin to Chavez to Ahmadinejad, is an exercise in pathetic futility. Evil countries dont suddenly decide to abandon their evil goals -- they are forced to do so by pressure and circumstance.

Enough with the faux allies. We dont gain anything by pretending that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are true allies. They arent. At best, they are playing both sides of the table. We ought to be drilling now in order to break OPEC. Building windmills isnt going to cut it. We should also be backing India to the hilt in its current conflict with Pakistan -- unless Pakistan can destroy its terrorist element, India should be given full leeway to do what it needs to do. Russia and China, meanwhile, are facilitating anti-Western terrorism. Treating them as friends in this global war is simply begging for a backstabbing.

Enough with the myths. Not everyone on earth is crying out for freedom. There are plenty of people who are happy in their misery, believing that their suffering is part and parcel of a correct religious system. Those people direct their anger outward, targeting unbelievers. We cannot simply knock off dictators and expect indoctrinated populations to rise to the liberal democratic challenge. The election of Hamas in the Gaza Strip is more a rule than an exception in the Islamic world.

Enough with the lies. Stop telling us that Islam is a religion of peace. If it is, prove it through action. Stop telling us that President-elect Barack Obama will fix our broken relationship with the Muslim world. They hate Obama just as much as they hated President George W. Bush, although they think Obama is more of a patsy than Bush was. Stop telling us that we shouldnt worry about the Islamic infiltration of our economy. If the Saudis own a large chunk of our banking institutions and control the oil market, they can certainly leverage their influence in dangerous ways.

Enough. After the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the plane downed in Pennsylvania, the endless suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks in Israel, the Bali bombings, the synagogue bombing in Tunisia, the LAX shootings, the Kenyan hotel bombing, the Casablanca attacks, the Turkey synagogue attacks, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, and the repeated attacks in India culminating in the Mumbai massacres -- among literally thousands of others -- its about time that the West got the point: were in a war. Our enemies are determined. They will not quit just because we offer them Big Macs, Christina Aguilera CDs, or even the freedom to vote. They will not quit just because we ensure that they have Korans in their Guantanamo cells, or because we offer to ban The Satanic Verses (as India did). They will only quit when they are dead. It is our job to make them so, and to eliminate every obstacle to their destruction.

So enough. No more empty talk. No more idle promises. No more happy ignorance, half measures, or appeasement-minded platitudes. The time for hard-nosed, uncompromising action hasnt merely come -- its been overdue by seven years. The voice of our brothers blood cries out from the ground.

Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Blacks spurn gay marriage fans

2008-11-08T07:07:00.000-08:00

re: Propostion 8, the gay marriage ban in Calif.

According to exit polls, whites opposed the amendment 53-47. But blacks supported it 70-30, and Latinos supported it 51-49. The polls have blacks at 10 percent of the electorate for this issue, with Latinos at 19 percent and whites at 63 percent. (Asians, at six percent, opposed the proposition 53-47.)

And of course the gays went and picketed the Mormon church in SoCal to show how pissed off they were. Notice they weren't pissed off enough to picket churches in black neighborhoods.

Who Will Run America?

2008-11-05T06:47:00.000-08:00

John Stossel
Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Some of you think you went to the polls yesterday to pick someone to run America.

"Who do you want to have run this country?" Chris Matthews asked repeatedly on MSNBC.

"One of these guys is going to be running the country," said Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News.

Really? Run the country?

"That has to be a joke -- or a misunderstanding," said George Mason University economist Walter Williams on my recent TV special, "John Stossel's Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics".

Williams pointed out that the White House doesn't govern what happens in your house. And a president certainly cannot control the economy. We, all of us, run the country.

"Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good," Williams says.

The failure to understand this is at the root of many of our problems.

"Most of life is outside the government sector," says David Boaz of the Cato Institute. "Most change in America doesn't come from politicians. It comes from people inventing things and creating. The telephone, the telegraph, the computer, all those things didn't come from government. Our world is going to get better and better, as long as we keep the politicians from screwing it up."

It's easy to find examples of government screwing up what it should have left alone.

Take farming. Every year politicians promise to save the family farm, and this year, Congress passed another $300-billion farm bill. More subsidies after generations of subsidies. John McCain opposed the bill, saying that it will "do more harm than good." But Barack Obama and most of Congress supported it.

"Small farms are important," Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas, told me.

"I don't think we want anybody in this country to starve," Rep. Randy Kuhl, a Republican from New York, added.

People would starve?

"They go out of business, and then they'd be forced to move elsewhere and find different jobs," Kuhl replied.

That's not starving. That's finding a different job.

"But if they don't have a job, then they're going to starve."

Please.

He and others in Congress also claim that subsidies "insure a food supply for this nation."

That's more nonsense.

It's the free market that "insures" the food supply. You may not know that most farmers get no subsidies. Growers of apples, bananas, broccoli, cabbage, cantaloupe, carrots, cauliflower, grapes, lemons, limes, lettuce, onions, oranges, peaches, pears, pineapples, potatoes, spinach, squash, tangerines, tomatoes and dozens of other crops are on their own. There's no cabbage crisis or pineapple panic.

The farm bill doesn't even keep its other promise: saving family farms.

It's why although Nebraska corn farmer Mike Korth received about half a million dollars in subsidies, he's still against the farm bill. "We sold this on the fact that this is helping the family farmer and the small beginning farmer. It's not. It's hurting them."

That's because most subsidies go to those that are best at manipulating government: the agribusiness giants. Small farms can't compete.

A Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City study found that the more farm aid a county gets, the more likely it is to lose population.

So not only do farm subsidies cost every taxpayer $550 per year, they also raise food prices by paying farmers not to grow certain crops. Other crops are subsidized and exported, destroying the livelihoods of poor farmers in the Third World.

"This is just a crazy system," said the Cato Institute's David Boaz (www.cato.org). "It's left over from the 1930s, left over from the Depression. And it's a great example of how nothing is as permanent as a temporary government program."

Of course, without subsidies, some farms would go out of business. That's OK, says Walter Williams. It's the creative destruction that makes America strong.

"The guy who delivered ice to my house, he doesn't have a job because we have refrigerators. We're better off. We would have been held back if we had tried to save his job."

I said to Congresswoman Jackson Lee, "If this works so well, why don't we just subsidize everything?"

Her answer? "You don't want to push us."

Singing the Blues in a Blue State

2008-08-29T12:04:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

I have no idea who decided that liberal states would be called blue and conservative states would be red, but I suspect it was a left-winger because it makes absolutely no sense. Red, after all, has always been the color associated with the far left. Thanks to the flag of the late, unlamented, Soviet Union being the hammer and sickle on a field of red, Communists have always been referred to as reds, except of course when they were referred to, even more appropriately, as morons and imbeciles.
Be that as it may, I live in California, a state that is bluer than the blue Pacific. My state is not only on the left side of the map, it’s to the left of Barack Obama. This is a state that is represented in the U.S. Senate by Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, for crying out loud! Allegedly, we have a Republican governor, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is only slightly more conservative than his wife, Maria Shriver.
But things are in such a sorry state in my sorry state that the two guys in the wings, eager to replace Schwarzenegger are the pretty boy mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco, Antonio Villaraigosa and Gavin Newsome. Frankly, I don’t know on what basis the voters will decide between the two of them. Both of these scofflaws, after all, have made their cities sanctuaries for illegal aliens. Both have come out in favor of same sex marriages and, for good measure, both men have had adulterous affairs in the past couple of years -- Villaraigosa with a TV news reporter half his age, and Newsome with the wife of his chief aide, who was also allegedly his best friend.
Quite honestly, I haven’t the foggiest notion what makes liberals tick. For instance, why do they so vehemently object to making English our official language? It’s not as if people who speak it badly -- people such as Robert Byrd and the aforementioned Ms. Boxer -- would have to relinquish their Senate seats. I neither know nor care if other countries print their ballots in more than one language, but it seems obvious to me that if you’re unable to read English, you have no business voting in our elections. I feel the same way about people who don’t pay income taxes. If you’re still getting an allowance from mom and dad, I really object to your vote canceling out mine.
On a related subject, what’s the deal with dual citizenship? How can you simultaneously swear allegiance to two different countries? It sounds to me like a form of bigamy.
Liberals are forever denying that the mainstream media is predominantly left-wing. That’s because the MSM mirrors their own prejudices so closely that everything they read in the New York Times or see on CBS or CNN strikes them as factual and impartial, whereas the rest of us view it as leftist propaganda. But there are times when the truth is so blatant that you’d think that even the most besotted lefty would have to acknowledge that widespread journalistic bias is more than an idle rumor.
For instance, didn’t it seem a little odd that even though the National Enquirer broke the news about John Edwards and his tootsie late in 2007, it wasn’t until about a week after the Enquirer ran a second story about the scuzzy affair eight or nine months later that the MSM deigned to mention it? Does any liberal seriously believe that if it had been, say, Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee who’d been shacking up with Rielle Hunter that the media would have buried the story for even a single day?
Perhaps it’s time that the New York Times surrender its boastful motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” to the far more responsible National Enquirer. Heck, if the Enquirer got the scoop on John Edwards tomcatting around with Ms. Hunter, just maybe they’ve been right all along, and we actually have been invaded by space aliens and perhaps there really are herds of three-headed cattle roaming the range.
Mainly because I have friends and relatives who are liberals, I dislike making blanket statements about them and their apparent lack of patriotism, intellectual honesty and intestinal fortitude. But, really, don’t you sometimes get the idea that there’s a huge scientific experiment taking place, with half of us, the left-wingers, being tested with meds whose side effects included galloping gullibility and a loss of nerve and commonsense, while the rest of us are in a control group taking placebos.

What is a NeoCon?

2008-08-13T22:46:00.000-07:00

Read the Wikipedia entry on NeoConservative

The Myth of Moral Equivalency

2008-08-08T06:24:00.000-07:00

Those on the left regard themselves as the moral, as well as intellectual, superiors of those on the right because they claim to see shades of gray whereas conservatives see only black and white. The problem is that most things are black and white, and the inability to realize that doesn’t suggest clearer vision, but only lack of courage and conviction. So, while those on the right are convinced that capitalism, for instance, is better than communism and socialism, and have no problem saying as much, liberals go around parroting sound bites. They would have you believe that Guantanamo is the same as Buchenwald, Bush is the same as Hitler, and that the members of the U.S. military are either the same as storm troopers, in the words of Sen. Dick Durbin, or merely uneducated suckers, according to Sen. John Kerry.

http://townhall.com/columnists/BurtPrelutsky/2008/08/08/the_myth_of_moral_equivalency

The Islam Conspiracy

2008-04-16T07:36:00.000-07:00

Interesting stats on Islam:

Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system.

Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components.

Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called "religious rights."

When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to "the reasonable" Muslim demands for their "religious rights," they also get the other components under the table. Here's how it works (percentages source CIA: The World Fact Book (2007)).
As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:
United States -- Muslim 1.0%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1%-2%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%

At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:
Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. ( United States ).
France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslim 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%
Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world. When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions ( Paris -- car-burnings). Any non- Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats ( Amsterdam -- Mohammed cartoons).
Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 10-15%

After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:
Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%

At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:
Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%

From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:
Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%

After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:
Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of "Dar-es-Salaam" -- the Islamic House of Peace - there's supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:
Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 99.9%

Of course, that's not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons. "Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel. -- Leon Uris, "The Haj"

It is good to remember that in many, many countries, such as France , the Muslim populations are centered around ghettos based on their ethnicity. Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. Therefore, they exercise more power than their national average would indicate.

Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat..

www.frontline.org.za/books_videos/sti.htm

Was Lincoln Jewish?

2008-04-09T19:18:00.001-07:00

On the twelfth of February, 1809, nearly 200 years ago - a young, poor illiterate woman from Virginia, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, gave birth to a son in a log cabin built along the banks of the south fork of Nolin Creek, near what is now Hodgenville, Kentucky. That baby, whom she named Abraham, grew to become one of our greatest, and most tragic, national leaders.

Lincoln was a man of great spiritual conviction. Yet, and I find this fact fascinatingly instructive, Abraham Lincoln was the only American president not to have declared himself a member of any particular religious faith. That fact has given rise to a great deal of interesting speculation. In fact, there are those who believe that Honest Abe was Jewish.

After all, his name was Abraham. His great-grandfather was named Mordechai. Lincoln was the only President not to have a formal religious affiliation. He was neither raised in a church nor did he ever belong to a church.

And there's more... the town of Lincoln, in eastern England, whence his ancestors came, has an interesting Jewish history. A Jewish community was established there in 1159. During Crusader riots, the Sheriff of Lincoln saved the Jews by giving them official protection. St. Hugh, the great Bishop of Lincoln, taught love of Jews to his parishioners. His death was marked by an official period of mourning among Lincoln's Jews.

Rabbi Joseph of Lincoln was a scholar mentioned in the Talmud; Aaron of Lincoln was a financier whose operations extended all over the country. In 1255, Lincoln's Jews were accused of ritual murder. Ninety-one Lincoln Jews
were sent to London for trial and 18 were executed. Notwithstanding, the Lincoln Jewish community flourished until 1290, when they were forcibly expelled by edict.

Most Jewish historians assume that all the Jews of Lincoln left in 1290. But could it be possible that some remained, practicing their Judaism in secret... passing the family secret from generation to generation? The more we learn of the secret life of Spanish Jewry following the Expulsion of 1492, the more we must at least consider the possibility of the same thing occurring elsewhere.

When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, whole Jewish communities sat shivah. Rabbis all over the country eulogized the fallen President. Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the man who created Reform Judaism in this country, began his eulogy with the words... "Brethren, the lamented Abraham Lincoln believed himself to be bone from our bone and flesh from our flesh. He supposed himself to be a descendant of Hebrew parentage. He said so in my presence."

Lincoln was often questioned about his religious beliefs. Time and again, he told of a special passage from Scripture that summed up his theology. It was the twentieth chapter of the Book of Exodus he recommended that every
American study, learn and follow. In English it is usually referred to as the Ten Commandments.

Rabbi Jeff Kahn
Temple Har Shalom, Warren, N.J.:

10 More of the Greatest Pieces of Conservative Wisdom

2008-03-28T08:52:00.001-07:00

By John Hawkins
Friday, March 28, 2008

"A measure of hypocrisy is necessary to a functioning society. It's quite possible, on the one hand, to be opposed to the legalization of prostitution yet, on the other, to pull your hat down over your brow every other Tuesday and sneak off to the cat house on the other side of town. Your inability to live up to your own standards does not, in and of itself, nullify them. The left gives the impression that a Republican senator caught in a whorehouse ought immediately to say, "You're right. I should have supported earmarks for hookers in the 2005 appropriations bill." That's the reason why sex scandals take down Republicans but not Democrats: Sex-wise, the left's standards are that whatever's your bag is cool – which is the equivalent of no standards. Thus, Monica Lewinsky was a "grown woman" free to make her own decisions on the carpet of the Oval Office. Without agreed "moral standards," all you have is the law. When it's no longer clear something is wrong, all you can do is make it illegal." -- Mark Steyn
The flesh is weak and we human beings often do foolish things that conflict with our own moral values. Not to excuse the hypocrisy of that, but who's the better person -- the fellow who advocates high moral standards and falls short occasionally or the person who never falls short because he advocates living an immoral life? Clearly, the former is the better husband, the better father, the better Christian, and just plain old better for our society. Hypocrisy is a notable failing, but there are still far worse things than hypocrisy.

"The virtue of a federalist, republican form of government is that the more you push these decisions down to the level where people actually have to live with their consequences, the more likely it is they will be a) involved and interested in the decision-making process, and b) happy with the result. Federalism is also morally superior because it requires the consent of the governed at the most basic level. Sure, your side can lose an argument, but it's easier to change things locally than nationally. And, at the end of the day, if you don't get your way, there's always the highway. It's easier to move to the next state than it is to move to Canada." -- Jonah Goldberg
The likelihood of a decision being wise is often inversely proportional to how far removed the decision maker is from the person directly affected by the decision. This is why it's so disturbing to see the federal government trying to regulate everything from what kind of TV we can own to the sort of light bulbs we have in our homes.

Even the most dull-witted bunglers in the mountains of Appalachia or the outskirts of Berkeley probably have a much better handle on their own individual circumstances, how to make themselves happy, and how to spend their own money than a Ph.D from Harvard with a genius level IQ who's sitting in Washington, D.C.

"Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families." -- Benjamin Rush
It is patriotism that helps transform a mere stranger to a countryman that, under the right circumstances, a man will help and defend, sometimes at the cost of his own life. For love of country, people will donate money, toil for countless hours in the most thankless of jobs, and even take up arms if necessary. Such a noble urge should be encouraged, taught to our children at every opportunity, and honored for the good it does for our society.

"The accumulation of wealth is a process which is of itself morally neutral. True, as Christianity teaches, riches bring temptations. But then so does poverty." -- Margaret Thatcher
Too many people in our society have been persuaded that most rich people have, at worst, done something immoral to become so wealthy or at best, that they're merely lucky. Although there are some people who fit that description, most affluent people got that way by serving their fellow man in some form or fashion. Moreover, these successful people often tend to pay enormous sums in taxes and employ large numbers of people directly or through their purchases. That is something to be admired and encouraged, not frowned upon, lest we learn the tragic lesson of Aesop's farmer, who killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

"It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the Arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but he who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great devotion; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat." -- Teddy Roosevelt
We live in a "microwave" society where we expect everything right now, exactly the way we want it, with zero mistakes. That's not the real world. Human beings are not robots, and, yes, we make mistakes, fall short, and disappoint.

It's not a bad thing to have high standards, but there's very little to be said for destroying men's entire careers for a single thoughtless statement, demanding that politicians address our every problem to make us happy, or expecting soldiers to never make an honest mistake in the middle of a war zone.

Put another way, excellence is achievable, but perfection is not.

"Tolerant, but not stupid! Look, just because you have to tolerate something doesn't mean you have to approve of it! ..."Tolerate" means you're just putting up with it! You tolerate a crying child sitting next to you on the airplane or you tolerate a bad cold." -- South Park
For all of us to live in an open, free society with a wide variety of different views, we have to be able to tolerate a variety of widely diverging opinions. However, this is not enough for some people, who insist that we treat every opinion and lifestyle choice as equally valid and healthy for society. But, what they are failing to understand is that there is a difference between tolerance and acceptance. Just because you can do something doesn't always mean you should.

"Diversity worship and multiculturalism are currency and cause for celebration at just about any college. If one is black, brown, yellow or white, the prevailing thought is that he should take pride and celebrate that fact even though, just as in the case of my eye color, he had nothing to do with it. The multiculturist and diversity crowd see race as an achievement. In my book, race might be an achievement, worthy of considerable celebration, only if a person was born white and through his effort and diligence became black." -- Walter Williams
Race-based groups like the NAACP, the KKK, La Raza, and the American Nazi Party do very little good and much harm to our country. In fact, the very idea that something as arbitrary as skin color should determine people's actions, beliefs, and political party is odious and un-American. Moreover, it has long been apparent that the sort of ethnic tribalism inevitably displayed by people in these race-based groups is actually more of a source of strife in our country than the racism they are supposedly combating.

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." -- Winston Churchill
There are many reasons why people should prefer capitalism over socialism. One of the most compelling is that it is better to be poor while still having the opportunity to become wealthy through your own efforts than to be poor and have little opportunity to advance, but to share your fate with almost everyone else.

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -- George Orwell
Because we humans are such short-lived creatures, we tend to have a myopic view of the world. We think that because we're civilized, everyone else is just as civilized. However, the truth is that nations like America are the exception and the rule, historically, has been little more than the law of the jungle.

The world is full of evil men with bad intentions who will take more than a mile if you give them an inch. When we forget that and think we can just talk out every difference with our foreign enemies who have sworn to kill us -- or begin to treat home grown criminals in our jails like they're victims of society instead of victimizers who got where they are by preying on their fellow citizens -- there is always a heavy price to be paid.

"When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don't need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken." -- P.J. O'Rourke
It's always amusing to hear a politician rail against "special interests" because when they begin naming names, you'll notice that they always seem to be the groups that are influential with THE OTHER political party. So, what inevitably happens when a different political party takes power? The old special interests are shoved to the side, people cheer, and then shortly thereafter the new special interests are catered to and the cycle starts anew. The key to stopping this behavior isn't to change parties or put some new rule in place; it's to get the government out of the business of handing out favors in the first place.

John Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Conservative Grapevine and Right Wing News.

Statements by Democrats on Iraq

2008-03-25T18:25:00.000-07:00

What the Dems said back then. How soon they forget. Will you?

The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness

2008-03-21T21:59:00.000-07:00

By Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr, MD
Monday, December 4, 2006

Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.,a forensic psychiatrist, explains the madness of liberalism in his new book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. You can read an excerpt below, and read more at his website libertymind.com.

Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history’s lessons on the evils of collectivism.

What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice. Those who occupy this world are “workers,” “minorities,” “the little guy,” “women,” and the “unemployed.” They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character. None of the victims’ plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the “root causes” of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism. In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: “Big Business,” “Big Corporations,” “greedy capitalists,” U.S. Imperialists,” “the oppressors,” “the rich,” “the wealthy,” “the powerful” and “the selfish.”

The liberal cure for this endless malaise is a very large authoritarian government that regulates and manages society through a cradle to grave agenda of redistributive caretaking. It is a government everywhere doing everything for everyone. The liberal motto is “In Government We Trust.” To rescue the people from their troubled lives, the agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. Through multiple entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal politician promises to ensure everyone’s material welfare, provide for everyone’s healthcare, protect everyone’s self-esteem, correct everyone’s social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all class distinctions. With liberal intellectuals sharing the glory, the liberal politician is the hero in this melodrama. He takes credit for providing his constituents with whatever they want or need even though he has not produced by his own effort any of the goods, services or status transferred to them but has instead taken them from others by force.

It should be apparent by now that these social policies and the passions that drive them contradict all that is rational in human relating, and they are therefore irrational in themselves. But the faulty conceptions that lie behind these passions cannot be viewed as mere cognitive slippage. The degree of modern liberalism’s irrationality far exceeds any misunderstanding that can be attributed to faulty fact gathering or logical error. Indeed, under careful scrutiny, liberalism’s distortions of the normal ability to reason can only be understood as the product of psychopathology. So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche. The modern liberal mind, its distorted perceptions and its destructive agenda are the product of disturbed personalities.

As is the case in all personality disturbance, defects of this type represent serious failures in development processes. The nature of these failures is detailed below. Among their consequences are the liberal mind’s relentless efforts to misrepresent human nature and to deny certain indispensable requirements for human relating. In his efforts to construct a grand collectivist utopia—to live what Jacques Barzun has called “the unconditioned life” in which “everybody should be safe and at ease in a hundred ways”—the radical liberal attempts to actualize in the real world an idealized fiction that will mitigate all hardship and heal all wounds. (Barzun 2000). He acts out this fiction, essentially a Marxist morality play, in various theaters of human relatedness, most often on the world’s economic, social and political stages. But the play repeatedly folds. Over the course of the Twentieth Century, the radical liberal’s attempts to create a brave new socialist world have invariably failed. At the dawn of the Twenty-first Century his attempts continue to fail in the stagnant economies, moral decay and social turmoil now widespread in Europe. An increasingly bankrupt welfare society is putting the U.S. on track for the same fate if liberalism is not cured there. Because the liberal agenda’s principles violate the rules of ordered liberty, his most determined efforts to realize its visionary fantasies must inevitably fall short. Yet, despite all the evidence against it, the modern liberal mind believes his agenda is good social science. It is, in fact, bad science fiction. He persists in this agenda despite its madness.

Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr, MD is the author of The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago and served for two years as a psychiatrist in the United States Army. He is currently in private practice in the Chicago area.

The Secret to the Suicidal Liberal Mind

2008-03-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

Jack Wheeler
Freedom Research Foundation
Monday, Jan. 21, 2002
What do Harvard president Larry Summers, Taliban John Walker, Delta Airlines officials and the editors of the New York Times have in common with Yanomamo tribeswomen in the Amazon jungle?
To answer this question is to understand the root cause of liberal "white guilt." Lakes of ink have been splashed on newspaper, magazine and journal pages ruminating and anguishing over the bottomless guilt that pervades the liberal soul.

Paul Craig Roberts, economist and columnist, writes eloquently about the anti-white racism endemic in American universities that demonizes white males as the font of all evil. Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institute explained in the Wall Street Journal recently how white guilt empowers racist frauds such as Cornel West.

The self-loathing of the white American liberal is as well-established and documented as Einstein's Special Relativity theorems. A typical example is writer Susan Sontag's denouncement of the white race as "the cancer of human history."

A racist hatred of one's own race – auto-racism – has become a defining characteristic of the liberal mind. Yet the source of such suicidal guilt remains a mystery.

Clearly understanding what disables liberals from wanting to defend their culture is today a mortal necessity – an absolute requirement if America is to be preserved and protected from Moslem terrorists and other folk desirous of her demise.

Exploitation and Black Magic

For such understanding, we need to travel to the Amazon. Among the Yanomamo and other tribes deep in the Amazon rain forests still adhering to the ancient hunting-gathering lifestyle practiced by our Paleolithic ancestors, it is an accepted practice that when a woman gives birth, she tearfully proclaims her child to be ugly.

In a loud, mortified lament that the entire tribe can hear, she asks why the gods have cursed her with such a pathetically repulsive infant. She does this in order to ward off the envious black magic of the Evil Eye, the Mal Ojo, that would be directed at her by her fellow tribespeople if they knew how happy she was with her beautiful baby.

Anthropologists observe that for most primitive and traditional cultures, "every individual lives in constant fear of the magical aggression of others ... there is only one explanation for unforeseen events: the envious black magic of another villager."

Reflect for a moment on the extent to which tribespeople in a tribal, "primitive" culture suffuse their lives with superstition, witchcraft, sorcery, voodoo, "black magic," the "evil eye." The world for them is teeming with demons, spirits, ghosts and gods, all of whom are malicious and dangerous -- in a word, envious.

A great many, if not the majority, of tribal or traditional cultures, whether in the Amazon, Africa or the Pacific, have no concept of natural death. Death is always murder.

For the Shuara Jivaro of the eastern Amazon, the first tribe I ever stayed with, there are three ways to die: actual murder (such as a spear through your stomach); demon-murder (accidental death, such as being killed by a falling tree in a storm or by snakebite, which the Jivaros see as perpetrated by a demon); or witchcraft murder (death by illness or unexplained causes, perpetrated by an envious sorcerer).

The Jivaro, just like the Tiv in Nigeria, the Aritama in Colombia, the Dobua in Micronesia, the Navaho in the Southwest U.S. and the tribal mind in general, attribute any illness or misfortune to the envious black magic of a personal enemy.

Envy is the source of tribal and traditional cultures' belief in Black Magic, the fear of the envious Evil Eye.

The fundamental reason why certain cultures remain static and never evolve (e.g., present-day villages in Egypt and India that have stayed pretty much the same for millennia) is the overwhelming extent to which the lives of the people within them are dominated by envy and envy avoidance: as anthropologists call it, the envy barrier.

For the Mambwe in Zambia, for example, "successful men are regarded as sinister, supernatural and dangerous." In Mexican villages, "fear of other people's envy determines every detail of life, every proposed action."

Members of a Hispanic "ghetto" in a community in Colorado "equate success with betrayal of the group; whoever works his way up socially and economically is regarded as a 'man who has sold himself to the Anglos,' someone 'who climbs on the backs of his own people.' "

It is an ultimate irony of modern times that left-wing Marxist-type intellectuals consider themselves to be in the progressive vanguard of sophisticated contemporary thought -- when in reality their thinking is nothing but an atavism, a regression to a primitive tribal mentality. What the Left calls "exploitation" is what anthropologists call "black magic."

As sociologist Helmut Schoeck summarizes in his seminal work, "Envy: A Theory of Human Behavior" (and who collected the above anthropologists' observations):

A self-pitying inclination to contemplate another's superiority or advantages, combined with a vague belief in his being the cause of one's own deprivation, is also to be found among educated members of our modern societies who really ought to know better. The primitive people's belief in black magic differs little from modern ideas. Whereas the socialist believes himself robbed by the employer, just as the politician in a developing country believes himself robbed by the industrial countries, so primitive man believes himself robbed by his neighbor, the latter having succeeded by black magic in spiriting away to his own fields part of the former's harvest.
The primitive atavism of left-wing bromides like "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is best illustrated by arguing that one can be healthy only at the expense of others. That in order to be in superior health, bursting with energy and vitality, one has to make someone else sick or in poor health -- just as in order to be rich you have to make others poor.

The healthy are healthy because they unjustly exploited and ripped off the sick, spiriting away the sick's fair share of health with black magic. In fact, the sick are sick because the healthy are healthy. If this is absurd, then claiming the poor are poor because they have been exploited by the rich is equally absurd.

Fear of Being Envied

Pandering to the envious, and intimidating those who are afraid of them, has been the path to power of all modern demagogues, from Lenin and Hitler to Yassir Arafat and Osama bin Laden.

The three great political pathologies of the 20th century are all religions of envy: Nazism, preaching race envy toward "rich, exploitative Jews"; Communism, preaching class envy toward the "rich, exploitative bourgeoisie"; and Moslem terrorism, preaching culture envy toward the "rich, exploitative West."

Envy-mongering has always been and continues to be the underlying strategy of all variants of the political Left, such as the Democratic Party. What a Yanomamo woman calls "black magic" and a Marxist professor at Harvard calls "exploitation," Tom Daschle calls "tax break for the rich."

So here we discover the secret fear at the source of the suicidal liberal mind. It is envy that makes a Nazi, a Communist or a terrorist. It is the fear of being envied that makes a liberal and is the source of "liberal guilt."

This is most easily seen in the children of wealthy parents. Successful businessmen, for example, who have made it on their own normally have a respect for the effort and the economic system that makes success possible.

Their children, who have not had to work for it, are easier targets for guilt-mongering by the envious. So they assume a posture of liberal compassion as an envy-deflection device: "Please don't envy me for my father's money -- look at all the liberal causes and government social programs I advocate!"

Teddy Kennedy is the archetype of this phenomenon.

This is also why Hollywood is so liberal. The vast amounts of money movie stars make is so grossly disproportionate to the effort it took them to make it that they feel it is unearned. So they apologize for it. The liberal's strategy is to apologize for his success in order to appease the envious.

Liberalism is thus not a political ideology or set of beliefs. It is an envy-deflection device, a psychological strategy to avoid being envied.

Then there are those who are terrified of envy even though they have earned success themselves. Many Jews are liberals because such lethal envy has been directed at Jews for so many centuries that it is little wonder they consider avoiding envy to be a necessity of life.

One definitive characteristic of both envy and the fear of it is masochism. Envy is not simply hatred of someone for having something you don't -- it is the willingness to masochistically give up any chance of ever having that something yourself as long as the person you are envious of doesn't get to have it either.

Similarly, the more one fears being envied, the more one is driven to masochistic self-humiliation in attempts at envy appeasement.

The Masochism of Liberals

It is possible to perceive the passions of the Left as frenzies of masochism. What could be more idiotic and masochistic than to oppose missile defense? This opposition cannot be understood unless one dispenses with its rhetoric and rationales and realizes that these folks at their emotional core do not want their country defended.

The lunacy of the "global warming" hoax cannot be comprehended other than that its masochistic advocates do not want their civilization to prosper. The culture-destroying immigration policies that Pat Buchanan warns are causing "The Death of the West" were put in place by those who do not want their culture to survive.

The lethality of liberal envy appeasement is that personally felt guilt is projected onto the various social or tribal collectives to which the liberal belongs and are a part of his self-identity. Self-loathing is transformed into a loathing of one's society or race.

White male liberals become auto-racist and auto-sexist: racist toward their own race, sexist toward their own sex. Dime-store demagogues like eco-fascist environmentalists, feminazis, animal and homosexual rights types, race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton all get their strength from the liberals' fear of their Evil Eyes.

As the Amazon tribeswoman who says her baby is ugly, so the white male liberal says his gender, his race, his country, his civilization and even his entire species is ugly.

I began to realize how liberal envy appeasement is the root of the problem when I was speaking at colleges back in the 1980s about anti-Soviet resistance movements in Soviet colonies such as Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique and Afghanistan.

Students would invariably turn a discussion of Soviet imperialism into an assertion of moral equivalence between the USA and the USSR: "How can you criticize the Soviets when we're just as bad? What about what we did to the Indians?" I would be asked.

"I haven't done anything to the Indians," I replied. "What have you done to them?"

"But we stole their land!"

"OK -- let's give it back. And let's start with your property. To what tribe do you want your family's home to go? What tribe gets your stereo?"

Once I couldn't stand being heckled by a particularly loud and petulant student leftist any longer. I lost my temper and said to him: "Look, man, if you're into masochism, find some chick with long black hair who's into whips and chains and have her beat the hell out of you. Just don't take it out on your country."

Rejecting Envy

The future of our economy, our culture and our civilization depends on an antidote to the corrosive social poisons of envy and envy appeasement. That antidote was first provided by Aristotle in the 4th century bc.

The antidote to envy is emulation.

In the "Rhetoric" (ca. 350 bc), Aristotle distinguishes the two: "Zelos, emulation, is a good thing and characteristic of good people, while phthonos, envy, is bad and characteristic of the bad; for the former, through emulation, are making an effort to attain good things for themselves, while the latter, through envy, try to prevent their neighbors from having them." ("Rhetoric," 2.10.1)

Aristotle invokes the ancient wisdom of his 8th century (bc) predecessor Hesiod:

There is not one kind of Eris (Strife), but all over the earth there are two. One fosters evil war and battle, being cruel. The other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil. For a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbor, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order. Thus neighbor vies with neighbor to hurry after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. ("Works and Days," 11-24)
Aristotle concludes that "Whereas phthonos, envy, is censured because it seeks to harm another, zelos, emulation, is praised because it encourages a person to attain excellence on his own merits." ("Rhetoric," 2.11.1)

Fear of envy is very deep-seated in the human psyche. It can prevent a culture from progressing for thousands of years. Only a youthful culture full of vigor and confidence can shrug it off, enabling that culture to flourish. The road to cultural ruin lies in the fear of envy reasserting itself from the primordial depths.

America once had that youth, vigor and confidence, culminating in history's single greatest achievement, putting a man on the moon.

After the triply debilitating debacles of Vietnam, Watergate and Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan resurrected America's self-confidence, with America's resultant victory in the Cold War.

Yet America lost her way once more, indulging in a cultural debauch epitomized by the Clintons. America's response to the atrocity of Sept. 11 provided overwhelming evidence that her reserves of vitality and self-assurance remain abundant.

Those reserves are nonetheless depleted. America's most elite universities have degenerated into fascist cesspools of envy appeasement. They survive only on the inertia of their prestige. Delta and other airlines compromise passenger security by harassing people at random rather than racially profiling Arab and other Moslem men.

Indeed, the entire phenomenon of political correctness -- perhaps best exemplified by the New York Times editorial page -- is nothing but a massive exercise in envy appeasement.

One of the most positive results of Sept. 11 is that it has made the American people mad enough to reject envy. They now could care less if Moslems or the French or whomever are envious of them. That rejection must now be applied to the envy panderers and envy appeasers within America herself.

Rejecting envy is the key to preventing "The Death of the West," the key for America to continue to prosper. I suggest that this rejection begin with you.

Fear of the Evil Eye is the only thing that gives the Evil Eye any power. Without fear of it, the Evil Eye is impotent. So, the next time Evil Eyes are directed at you and demand you apologize for your existence, you might suggest that they indulge in S&M by themselves and leave you out of it.

Copyright 2002 Dr. Jack Wheeler and the Freedom Research Foundation

another liberal sees the light - Mamet!

2008-03-14T08:56:00.000-07:00

David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'
An election-season essay
by David Mamet
March 11th, 2008

John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"

My favorite example of a change of mind was Norman Mailer at The Village Voice.

Norman took on the role of drama critic, weighing in on the New York premiere of Waiting for Godot.

Twentieth century's greatest play. Without bothering to go, Mailer called it a piece of garbage.

When he did get around to seeing it, he realized his mistake. He was no longer a Voice columnist, however, so he bought a page in the paper and wrote a retraction, praising the play as the masterpiece it is.

Every playwright's dream.

I once won one of Mary Ann Madden's "Competitions" in New York magazine. The task was to name or create a "10" of anything, and mine was the World's Perfect Theatrical Review. It went like this: "I never understood the theater until last night. Please forgive everything I've ever written. When you read this I'll be dead." That, of course, is the only review anybody in the theater ever wants to get.

My prize, in a stunning example of irony, was a year's subscription to New York, which rag (apart from Mary Ann's "Competition") I considered an open running sore on the body of world literacy—this due to the presence in its pages of John Simon, whose stunning amalgam of superciliousness and savagery, over the years, was appreciated by that readership searching for an endorsement of proactive mediocrity.

But I digress.

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I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed.

But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.

The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it's at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.

As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."

This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

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I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.

And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.

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Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.

What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.

But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?

I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.

The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.

Strand unacquainted bus travelers in the middle of the night, and what do you get? A lot of bad drama, and a shake-and-bake Mayflower Compact. Each, instantly, adds what he or she can to the solution. Why? Each wants, and in fact needs, to contribute—to throw into the pot what gifts each has in order to achieve the overall goal, as well as status in the new-formed community. And so they work it out.

See also that most magnificent of schools, the jury system, where, again, each brings nothing into the room save his or her own prejudices, and, through the course of deliberation, comes not to a perfect solution, but a solution acceptable to the community—a solution the community can live with.

Prior to the midterm elections, my rabbi was taking a lot of flack. The congregation is exclusively liberal, he is a self-described independent (read "conservative"), and he was driving the flock wild. Why? Because a) he never discussed politics; and b) he taught that the quality of political discourse must be addressed first—that Jewish law teaches that it is incumbent upon each person to hear the other fellow out.

And so I, like many of the liberal congregation, began, teeth grinding, to attempt to do so. And in doing so, I recognized that I held those two views of America (politics, government, corporations, the military). One was of a state where everything was magically wrong and must be immediately corrected at any cost; and the other—the world in which I actually functioned day to day—was made up of people, most of whom were reasonably trying to maximize their comfort by getting along with each other (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury room, on the freeway, even at the school-board meeting).

And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.

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"Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

At the same time, I was writing my play about a president, corrupt, venal, cunning, and vengeful (as I assume all of them are), and two turkeys. And I gave this fictional president a speechwriter who, in his view, is a "brain-dead liberal," much like my earlier self; and in the course of the play, they have to work it out. And they eventually do come to a human understanding of the political process. As I believe I am trying to do, and in which I believe I may be succeeding, and I will try to summarize it in the words of William Allen White.

White was for 40 years the editor of the Emporia Gazette in rural Kansas, and a prominent and powerful political commentator. He was a great friend of Theodore Roosevelt and wrote the best book I've ever read about the presidency. It's called Masks in a Pageant, and it profiles presidents from McKinley to Wilson, and I recommend it unreservedly.

White was a pretty clear-headed man, and he'd seen human nature as few can. (As Twain wrote, you want to understand men, run a country paper.) White knew that people need both to get ahead and to get along, and that they're always working at one or the other, and that government should most probably stay out of the way and let them get on with it. But, he added, there is such a thing as liberalism, and it may be reduced to these saddest of words: " . . . and yet . . . "

The right is mooing about faith, the left is mooing about change, and many are incensed about the fools on the other side—but, at the end of the day, they are the same folks we meet at the water cooler. Happy election season.

Okay, Burt will spell it out for you...

2008-03-11T08:30:00.000-07:00

A 12 Step Program for Recovering Liberals
By Burt Prelutsky
Friday, March 7, 2008

Most 12-step programs start out by requiring that people have to understand that they’re powerless over their addiction and that only by turning their lives over to a Power greater than themselves can they be restored to sanity. Far be it from me to suggest that I am that Power, but clearly someone has to step in and try to rescue these poor liberal souls. Even the most harebrained among them deserves that much.

First, though, they have to acknowledge that Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, Dick Durbin, Charles Rangel, Harry Reid and Charles Schumer, are not moderates, but, rather, leftists with a Socialist agenda. Furthermore, they must recognize that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN, the three major networks, the news magazines and the New Yorker, are not objective in their reporting of political events, and neither are Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher, in their commentary. If these entities and individuals are not on the payroll of the DNC, they certainly should be. They certainly put in longer hours than Howard Dean.

Step #1: It is high time that every American be guaranteed the right to speak freely. It is not reserved solely for left-wing college students who wish to take advantage of the first amendment to shout down conservatives. At the same time, they must not construe the conservative’s right to dismiss them as arrogant idiots as censorship.

Step #2: Affirmative action argues that African Americans and Latinos are intellectually inferior and are unable to compete academically unless other students are handicapped because of their race. Interestingly enough, when blacks and Hispanic students are given these unfair advantages, it’s rarely at any cost to white students, whose rate of college admissions remains constant; instead, it’s nearly always another minority group, Asians, who pay the price. This is what left-wingers refer to as leveling the playing field.

Step #3: Liberals always claim to be in favor of higher taxes, agreeing with Bill Clinton that the government invariably spends money more wisely than those who actually earn it. However, such prominent proponents of higher taxes as George Soros, Ted Kennedy and Mr. and Mrs. John Kerry, protect their own otherwise taxable income through trusts and offshore accounts. Obviously, any American who believes higher taxes are a good thing can do the honorable thing by spurning all deductions and paying Uncle Sam everything up to 100% of his income.

Step #4: Even the most secular of liberals seems to believe that Jimmy Carter is a saint. The evidence for this seems to be that he has on occasion posed with a hammer in his hand at Habitant for Humanity building sites and is constantly walking around with a expression on his face that suggests he has just forgiven Pontius Pilate for betraying him. This is the same fellow, let us never forget, who called Yasser Arafat his good friend and who has accepted untold millions of dollars from Arab cut-throats, who ask nothing in return except that he go on insisting that there would be peace in the Middle East if only those darn Israelis would disappear from the face of the earth.

Step #5: Stop insisting that all wars are bad. It only makes you sound daft. Carrying signs that equate a U.S. president, any U.S. president, with Adolph Hitler is not only rude, but suggests you’re certifiably nuts. Every president has left office right on schedule. Aside from FDR, who just happened to get elected four times, not one of them has remained in office beyond eight years. On the other hand, Hitler ran Germany for 12 years and only death and the allied forces brought that to an end; Stalin ran the Soviet show for 31 years; while that hero of the left, Fidel Castro, held the reins, not to mention the whip, for about 50 years.

Step #6: Repeat after me, “Separation of church and state” exists nowhere in the Constitution. The first amendment does not require the removal of Christmas trees from the village green, the 10 Commandments from court house walls or “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. All it does is forbid Congress from establishing a state religion, such as the Church of England, and anybody who tells you otherwise is a liar and, most likely, a card-carrying member of the ACLU.

Step #7: Stop using the word “big” as a pejorative. There is nothing intrinsically bad about big oil, big agriculture or big pharmaceuticals. Overall, they do a very good job of keeping our cars on the road, food on our tables and most of us over 50 alive and functioning. On the other hand, big government, which so many liberals simply adore, represents a usurpation of the allegedly inalienable rights of individuals. A quick perusal of the Constitution should convince you that beyond declaring war, forging treaties, overseeing patents, printing money, running the post office, collecting taxes and protecting our borders -- and a few other things that Washington doesn’t do at all well these days -- the federal government has very limited responsibilities.

Step #8: Acknowledge that the United Nations is, in the main, an aggregation of venal diplomats who live high off the hog in New York City while representing the most corrupt and vicious regimes in the history of the world. Only a fool or a diplomat would continue to suggest that this gang of well-dressed thugs possesses anything resembling moral authority.

Step #9: Do not keep insisting that at a time when nearly all the large scale evil in the world is being perpetrated by Muslims that racial profiling is anything but a sensible approach to airport security. During WWII, Swedish Americans were not suspected of performing espionage for the Axis powers and for a very good reason; namely, because they weren’t performing espionage for the Axis powers. These days, their Swedish American children and grandchildren are not suspected of trying to blow up airlines, but the smarmy bureaucrats insist on pretending that they’re every bit as likely to be up to mischief as a bunch of 25-year-old Osama bin Laden look-alikes from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Step #10: Stop trying to pretend that illegal aliens are the same as legal immigrants just so you can claim the moral high ground and accuse those of us who are opposed to open borders of being racists.

Step #11: Once and for all, stop forgiving murderers. Whether or not you’re in favor of capital punishment, only the victim of a crime has the right to grant forgiveness. And inasmuch as the killer has deprived his victim of that ability, don’t take it upon yourself. It doesn’t prove how compassionate you are, only that you’re as sanctimonious and as self-aggrandizing as, say, Jimmy Carter.

Step #12: Stop bashing the U.S. military and the Boy Scouts. The only reason you have the ability to shoot your mouth off is because men and women braver and better than you sacrificed life and limb for your right to do so. As for the Boy Scouts, they are absolutely right to keep homosexuals from taking youngsters on camping trips. While it’s true that many gays are perfectly fine people and that very few homosexuals are pedophiles, there’s no reason on earth to take unnecessary risks just so we can all prove how broadminded we are. For what it’s worth, as decent as most Catholic priests are, I wouldn’t let them take youngsters into the woods, either. It’s fine to be compassionate and understanding, but let the gays among us be understanding for a change and acknowledge that, every so often, commonsense should trump political correctness.

And, finally, making this a baker’s dozen, Step #13: Let us all agree that while being a woman, a black, a Jew, a Catholic, a Mormon or even a gay, for that matter, should in no way preclude anyone from being elected president of the United States, none of those things constitutes a very good reason to vote for someone.

W. Burt Prelutsky is an accomplished, well-rounded writer and author of "The Secret of Their Success: Interviews with Legends and Luminaries."

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Groups call for handgun-ban reversal in D.C.

2008-02-13T18:59:00.000-08:00

Gays and women among filers to Supreme Court
By Michael Doyle, McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
Article Created: 02/13/2008 02:47:28 AM PST

WASHINGTON — Gay gun-owners, who call themselves the Pink Pistols, say they'll be safer if the Supreme Court strikes down Washington, D.C.'s strict handgun ban.

They aren't alone. Jewish gun-owners, women and disabled veterans, among others, also contend that they're vulnerable and need the protection that only firearms can provide.

More than 65 groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the gun case, surpassing the attention paid even to such hot-button issues as affirmative action and abortion.

The case, scheduled for oral arguments on March 18, challenges a District of Columbia handgun ban that was imposed in 1976. Only retired district police officers can legally possess handguns. District residents must keep rifles unloaded and either disassembled or secured with trigger locks.

"Even in their homes, (gay) individuals are at risk of murder, aggravated assault and other forms of hate violence because of their sexual orientation," the Pink Pistols declared in its amicus brief. "Thus, for certain (gay) individuals, the possession of firearms in the home is essential for a sense of personal security."

Some of the groups have been assembled to crank up the volume for this case. Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, for instance, has rallied Vice President Dick Cheney and 304 other members of Congress in opposition to Washington's gun law.

University of North Carolina at Pembroke sociologist Fran Fuller has joined Idaho state
legislator Maxine Bell, California Assemblywoman Jean Fuller and 123 other women to stress the necessity of gun ownership.

"The district's current prohibition against handguns ... effectively eliminates a woman's ability to defend her very life and those of her children against violent attack," the women said.

Some longstanding groups also have weighed in, including Wisconsin-based Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and, supporting the ban, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Bar Association.

In the case, the first of its kind to reach the Supreme Court since 1939, a handful of Washington residents claim that the district's gun law violates the Second Amendment, which says:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Gun rights advocates argue that the Constitution guarantees an individual's right to own firearms. If the Supreme Court agrees, some but not all gun-control laws could be struck down.

Supporters of gun control say the Second Amendment's language protects only a collective right to own firearms, as with a state militia.

"Until (recently) prosecutors have been able to enforce criminal firearms laws with a settled understanding, reinforced by a long line of cases, of their constitutionality," Jeffrey Tuttle, the district attorney for California's rural Calaveras County, wrote in a legal brief signed by 18 prosecutors.

Some briefs make a bigger splash than others do. The Bush administration, in particular, raised hackles on the right with a split-the-difference brief that supports an individual right to own firearms but also a government's authority to regulate them.

Other briefs promote more esoteric analyses, as with three linguistics professors who've grammatically parsed the Second Amendment for its real meaning.

"The amendment's first and third commas signal a pause for breath and can be omitted without affecting the meaning," they say.

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(c) 2008, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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