How Low Can He Go?

One of the reasons why the Left hated all things George W. Bush - besides cutting taxes, halting Federal funding for stem cell research and nominating conservative judges to the Federal bench - was the way he conducted foreign policy. He started his Administration by skillfully negotiating the release of American naval aviators being held hostage by the Communist Chinese after their P-3 reconnaissance aircraft was damaged in a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter. While gaining the aircrew their freedom, Mr. Bush insisted that they were conducting lawful operations in international airspace and were the innocent victims of Chinese aggression, a position that while undeniably true, ran counter to the traditional liberal position that the United States is always to blame in any international incident. He refused to apologize to the ChiComs just as he refused to apologize to the Russians for abandoning the ABM Treaty, or to the UN for calling them a debating society while he liberated Afghanistan, or to the Europeans for waterboarding Al Qaeda thugs while they whined in outrage. George W. Bush was the Prince of Darkness as far as liberals were concerned because of his America First attitude and they longed for someone who would conduct foreign policy in a different way, the right way, the liberal way.

Enter Barack Obama, the answer to a socialist's prayer. He promised repeatedly and profusely during last year's campaign that he would break with George W. Bush's policies and handle our foreign affairs in a friendlier, more collaborative way, to negotiate directly with the Iranians over their nuclear program, to assure the Muslim world that the United States was not at war with them, to make nice with the Russians and the Chinese and the Cubans and the Palestinians and anyone else who hates us so they won't hate us anymore, and lead us into a brighter, friendlier, more peaceful future. Let's see how he's done so far:

• His first major press interview was given to Al Arabiya television on 26 January in an effort to reach out to Muslims. Since that interview, 273 American servicemen have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting Muslim extremists.

• At the Summit of the Americas in April, he was punked by Hugo Chavez.

• North Korea successfully tested a nuclear weapon on 25 May (Memorial Day), test-fired seven missiles on the Fourth of July and took two American journalists - both employees of Al Gore - hostage after they tried to sneak into the country, and demanded a personal visit by a high-profile American politician to release them. After criticizing George W. Bush's handling of North Korea during the Presidential campaign, Obama gave the pot-bellied syphilitic dog eater what he wanted and gave Kim Jong-Il a photo op with Bill Clinton.

• After personally appealing to Aleksandr Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, they refused to support further UN sanctions against Iran to stop their nuclear program. However, Obama did agree to cancel installation of missile defense radars in Poland and the Czech Republic, two of our NATO allies.

• A personal appeal to the Chinese Communists during his recent trip to Asia to support additional sanctions against Iran and to allow their own people greater freedom was ignored. His "town hall meeting" was broadcast into an electronic blind alley. However, the Chinese allowed Obama to walk the Great Wall for a photo op - alone. of course.

• Also during his Asia trip, Obama bowed to Emperor Akihito of Japan. This was a follow-up to his actions during the G20 Conference in London last April when he bowed deeply to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. To my knowledge, no foreign head of state has reciprocated.

It would seem, then, that Obama's approach to foreign policy has not advanced American interests one whit but has allowed hostile powers to advance theirs, which is why he was validated with the Nobel Peace Prize in October. You see, Barack Obama represents the America of a liberal's dream, a weak, servile, diffident oaf of a country, insecure, ineffective and desperate for the world's approval. He is ready to sacrifice his own citizens' best interests and is eager to please, qualities that may be repugnant to the average American but highly prized among the effeminate, socialist elite. Can you imagine George Washington or Andrew Jackson bowing to the monarch they defeated, George III? How about Theodore Roosevelt kissing the hand of the King of Spain? Or Ronald Reagan paying homage at Lenin's Tomb? Don't think so? Well, neither do I. The President of the United States leads the world's greatest nation and should acquit himself as such, bowing to no-one but Christ Himself. Obama's foreign policy insults the American people and invites the very disrespect and tension he claims to want to prevent, and it can also invite disaster, for as Jimmy Carter lost us the Panama Canal and gave us Soviet adventurism in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, and Desert One and 444 days of American hostages in Iran, and as Bill Clinton brought us successive failures in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Haiti, and - failure par excellence - Jimmy Carter giving nuclear reactors to North Korea, the Priest-King's fumbling has gained only contempt for America abroad and a nation that holds us in contempt will make dangerous decisions like invading Taiwan, launching missiles at Hawaii, attacking Israel, sending twenty million illegal immigrants across our borders or, God forbid, giving nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda.

Projecting weakness is a stupid and irresponsible strategy that has failed more times than we can count. If the Priest-King needs corroboration, have him ask Neville Chamberlain.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30271562/

Source: http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-2009-09-18-voa11-68664422.html

Source: http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/01/27/65087.html

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/casualties.htm

Source: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/press.html

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/04/AR2009080400684.html

Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/05/seven-fourth-of-july-missile-tests-defies-west/

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/5381109/North-Koreas-nuclear-activities-timeline.html

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/25/AR2009052501961.html

This Man Is A Muslim Terrorist Who Murdered Thirteen People

Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 118: Any person subject to this chapter who, without justification or excuse, unlawfully kills a human being, when he— (1) has a premeditated design to kill; (2) intends to kill or inflict great bodily harm; (3) is engaged in an act which is inherently dangerous to another and evinces a wanton disregard of human life; or (4) is engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of burglary, sodomy, rape, robbery, or aggravated arson;
is guilty of murder, and shall suffer such punishment as a court-martial may direct, except that if found guilty under clause (1) or (4), he shall suffer death or imprisonment for life as a court-martial may direct.

Last Thursday, 05 November 2009, MAJ Nidal Malik Hasan walked into the Soldier Readiness Center on Fort Hood, Texas, shouted, "Allahu Akbar!" at the top of his lungs and began firing, killing thirteen soldiers and wounding 31 others before he himself was shot by a brave civilian police officer, Kim Munley, who was herself wounded while trying to stop him. If not for her brave actions, MAJ Hasan would have continued killing his fellow soldiers until he ran out of ammunition and God knows how many that might have been.

This was a terrorist attack and MAJ Hasan is the terrorist who perpetrated it. It's that simple, and no amount of politically-correct hand wringing on the part of the Priest-King or his subordinates can change it. Here we have an active-duty commissioned officer who perpetrated an act of jihad against the United States, murdering the very soldiers he was sworn to lead, a betrayal of the highest order and one which must be strictly punished. If it is to have any meaning at all, MAJ Hasan must be held to account by the same Uniform Code of Military Justice under which all service members are subject, tried, sentenced and hanged like any other
murderer. To do otherwise is to strip it of its force, betray everyone wearing the uniform, undermine discipline and confidence in the chain of command and acknowledge that placating the very people who have been attacking us is more important than executing justice.

What else are we to believe? In remarks last Friday in the Rose Garden, the Priest-King stated blandly that, "We don't know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts," by which he meant, the fact that MAJ Hasan was a Muslim who had repeatedly contacted a rabidly pro-terrorist mullah in Yemen, who had repeatedly tried to contact Al Qaeda, who had railed against US policy in the Middle East to his superiors and advocated conscientious objector status for every Muslim in the US military and then shot 44 people does not mean he is a terrorist, which is just patently absurd. The Priest-King was then followed on Sunday by GEN George Casey, the Army Chief of Staff, who stated, "Speculation could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers," and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who opined, "This was an individual who does not represent the Muslim faith," which statements again are plainly idiotic but which were intended to soften the hurt feelings of the people who yearn for our destruction, which apparently is the highest calling of this embarrassment of an Administration.

...and they seemed to be working in at least one respect. According to Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council for American-Islamic relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group frequently critical of US policy - the policy of defending ourselves against bloodthirsty Islamic thugs - the muted reaction to MAJ Hasan's bloody rampage "...shows our society has matured in how it responds to these incidents." Wow, that's great. We've been attacked so frequently by Muslim terrorists that our leaders don't retaliate any more, which terrifies the living hell out of me but which gives great comfort to Mr. Hooper and his America-hating ilk.

The best and most effective tonic for this situation, to achieve justice for the victims of Fort Hood and send a clear and unmistakable message to other pro-jihadist sympathizers in the military, is the direct route: Death. MAJ Hasan violated his oath as an officer, he murdered thirteen fellow soldiers and tried to kill 31 more and he did so in furtherance of global Islamic jihad, whether in concert with Al Qaeda or not. He has proven himself an enemy of the United States, he has set his face against us and thus he deserves the same fate as other traitors from the past: Six feet of Texas soil and as much rope as it takes to hang him.

Source: http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/army_board_study_guide_topics/military_justice/punitive-articles-of-the-.shtml




Source: http://www.wiredprnews.com/2009/11/08/obama-urges-nation-to-not-jump-to-conclusions-after-shootings_200911086849.html

This Is What He Fought For?

Mark Saturday, 07 November 2009, folks. Mark it in red on your calendar and anywhere else where you'll remember it, because it's one of those dates that will stand in the annals of infamy. Yesterday was the day that the liberals who currently control the levers of government in this country decided to give the finger to America, to trade the promise of prosperity for the certainty of failure, to swap their freedom and ours for the swamp of mediocrity, and we don't know if it can be undone.

The vote was 220-215 to pass HR 3962, the 1990-page, $1.2 trillion monstrosity that, if passed by the Senate and signed by the Priest-King, will grant the Federal government unmitigated control over the country's health care system from top to bottom. That the vote was so close - the Democrats hold a 258-177 majority in the House - tells us several things about the current state of affairs. First, there is a very real wave of anger growing in this country over how the Democrats are governing. The TEA parties last Spring, the bitter town hall meetings of August and September and the protest at the Capitol last Thursday are indicators of that anger. Ordinary people are furious that their government is hell-bent on taxing, spending and regulating them into Third World status and the more conservative Democrats in the House are feeling it. Despite a personal visit by the Priest-King to the Capitol yesterday morning and a hurried speech at the White House yesterday afternoon, 39 House Democrats nonetheless opposed the bill. Second, it illustrates how tenuous the liberals' grip really is, that with months of lobbying by President Obama preceded by years of lobbying by such boobs as John Dingell and Ted Kennedy, with large majorities in the House and Senate, the measure only passed by two votes. Third, it provides a valuable insight into the liberals' real motives. In the teeth of such vehement public opposition as I mentioned above, despite unemployment remaining the voters' number-one concern (the Labor Department announced on Friday that the nation lost another 190,000 jobs in October, bringing the total lost under the Obama Administration to 5.7 million), despite getting a clear signal from the citizens by losing the governorships in New Jersey and Virginia last Tuesday, the Democrats decided nonetheless to push ahead with health care reform. They did this because health care reform and check-card voting and global warming and gays in the military are only milestones on the way to their true objective, which is the transformation of the United States into a true socialist state.

The American people were handed the checks for the $160 billion stimulus package and the $700 billion TARP package under President Bush, and have been handed the checks for the $850 billion stimulus package, the $1 trillion bank bailout bill and a $3.5 trillion FY2010 Federal budget under President Obama, to what result? Unemployment continues to climb as I said - 10.2% now - proving that simply spending huge amounts of money doesn't solve that problem. But spending huge amounts of money, including seizing the nation's health care system, redistributes wealth from those who have earned it to those who haven't. Since the Federal government has already taken over the investment banking industry (Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, etc.), the insurance industry (AIG), the home mortgage industry (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac), and the automobile industry (except for Ford, who refused bailout money and actually turned a $1 billion profit in 3Q2009), and already provides entitlements through Social Security, Medicare, prescription drugs and Medicaid, it stands to reason that the liberals would want control over health care in toto. They want control over our medical records, our diet, how much exercise we get, which doctor we see, where we see him or if we see one at all, what we serve our children for dinner and how much TV they watch, which drugs we can have and how much they'll cost, how long we can live ("end of life options") and whether we live at all (taxpayer-funded abortions) and through this control, create an American proletariat, a classless society in which everyone -except the libs at the very top, the Politburo, if you will - lives the same, hopeless, miserable life. Barney Frank said as much during an appearance on MSNBC on the 26th, saying, "We are trying on every front to increase the role of government." Wake up, folks, this is what we're facing.

Let's look at just two provisions in HR 3962. First, there would be an age limit placed on insurance premiums such that someone 64 years old could not be charged more than twice the premium of an 18 year-old. Sounds great if you're a senior citizen, right? But since seniors consume about five times as much in health care costs, the money to pay for that would have to come from the 18 year-old, who would see his health insurance premiums skyrocket. Second, families earning up to 400% of the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) would receive taxpayer-funded subsidies to purchase health insurance through a new federally-regulated "health exchange," while families at 300% of FPL who buy their health insurance through their employer would receive no assistance at all, the effect being to punish people who refuse to go with the government plan. Again, these are just two of the measures by which the liberals will assert totalitarian control over our lives if they have their way.

There is still a fight to be fought in the Senate and lots of opportunities to stop this insanity before it's too late. Seeing Nancy Pelosi cheerfully, even gleefully announcing the surrender of our liberty should stir us to action, but seeing her do so in front of the man who fought so hard and sacrificed so much to get it enfuriates me. My fellow patriots, STAND UP AND TAKE BACK YOUR COUNTRY BEFORE THERE'S NOTHING LEFT TO SAVE!

Source: http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20091105/US.Health.Care.Overhaul/

Source: http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm2648.cfm

Source: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/11/06/obama-jobs-deficit-hits-77-million-and-climbing/

Source: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/27/barney-frank-we-are-trying-on-every-front-to-increase-the-role-of-government/

What's Wrong with Baseball

I'm sure that the story line from Major League Baseball's communications department today is the wild finish early this morning in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series between the Yankees and the Angels, with the Yankees pulling off yet another of their comeback victories. (Who ever thought that Jerry Hairston, Jr. would score the winning run in the 13th inning?) But the storyline they want everyone to ignore and to keep ignoring is the weather. The weather in Yankee Stadium was 45 degrees Fahrenheit at game time with rain and wind, and with the championship series in both leagues yet to be completed, we stand a very good chance of playing the World Series in November which, I'll just state the obvious, is just a plain stupid idea: If you like playing baseball in the winter, go to the Caribbean.

We've reached this point because Major League Baseball is trying to generate as much revenue as possible by lengthening the season, and they have to generate revenue because, for one, player salaries have been on a rocket ship for 34 years. In 1975 when Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally won their landmark arbitration case, the average major leaguer made $45,238 for the season - this season, the average Yankee made over $7,748,000 on the highest-paid club in the majors. Even with record attendance and high TV and merchandising revenues, Major League Baseball is desperate for cash and will do anything, even extend the season past Halloween, to make more, even though this generates something else the owners would rather do without: Scorn.

Baseball is a summer sport. For 65 years, the World Series was played the first week of October when the weather was as near-perfect as possible and fan interest was high. Then, in 1969, baseball decided to add a best-of-five League Championship Series which the calendar could still support, and which helped extend the season of two more teams. This scheme was changed to a best-of-seven format in 1985 and then, in 1995, a best-of-five Division Series was added in both leagues, meaning that eight teams made it to the postseason rather than the original two. In 1903 when the first World Series was played between the Boston Pilgrims and the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Pilgrims managed to beat the Pirates five games to three but yet the season was over by 13 October and neither team played more than 148 games total. The following year, because of the interest the Series generated, the regular season was lengthened from 140 to 154 games which was acceptable since the playoffs were still limited to the Series, and in 1961 when the regular season was lengthened yet again to 162 games, it was still OK: The regular season was over by the end of September with the World Series concluded the same time it always was.

But beyond simply lengthening the season, baseball has changed the way most games are played. In decades past, teams traveled by train from city to city and needed more time in the schedule to accomodate it, and thus played more doubleheaders. Now the clubs fly, need less time for travel and play more three- and four-game series. In the old days, most games were played during the day. Now, most games are played at night to allow more fans to watch the game in person (preferably) or on cable TV (not as preferred but still OK since baseball gets a cut). We are therefore left with a baseball season that has been stretched at least three weeks past its normal limits and which is played at a leisurely pace, all to generate as much revenue as possible, a ludicrously long season that unnaturally overlaps football, hockey and even basketball and instead of creating more fan buzz, playoffs that create more material for late-night comedians, e.g., "C.C. Sabathia tried to master a new pitch the other night but just can't get the hang of the split-finger snowball."

What to do about this ridiculous situation? I have a few ideas. First, the regular season exists to eliminate those teams that just can't compete at a high level, and an extra eight games don't make much difference where that is concerned. Thus I would start by returning to the old 154-game schedule with Opening Day no later than 02 April. Second, I would schedule at least seven more doubleheaders during the regular season for each team, since travel time isn't the factor it was 75 years ago and every day saved in May and June would then be available in September and October. Third, scale the Division Series and League Championship Series back to best-of-five games each - eight teams could still make the playoffs but would have to prove very quickly who deserved to play in the World Series. And last, I would dictate with absolute certainty that the seventh and deciding game of the World Series would be played not later than the fifteenth of October, network rights or marketing schemes or anything else notwithstanding. Baseball has survived scandals and wars and integration and strikes, but baseball cannot survive the image of playing in the snow and has to find a way out of this mess, and quickly.

Source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_MLB_go_to_154_game_season

Source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_MLB_always_have_a_162-game_season

Source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipsa/A0112331.html

Source: http://www.hickoksports.com/history/reservec.shtml

Source: http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/salaries

Source: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/news/2000/12/22/free_agency_ap/

The Body, The Body, The Body!

FOOTNOTES OF HISTORY DEPT.: On 30 April 1976, at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, two-time heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali defended his title against the little-known Jimmy Young of Philadelphia in a fight widely viewed as just another payday for the champ - he would make $2 million for the bout and was expected to dominate his less-experienced, less-talented opponent. However, Young, whose record stood at 17-4-2, had no intention of being yet another Ali victim. Having beaten Ron Lyle in a straight-up fight and having fought the powerful Earnie Shavers to a standstill, Young was a cagey, crafty fighter who was difficult to hit. For fifteen rounds, Young dodged, weaved and counterpunched the champion silly, avoiding most of the heavy blows while scoring repeatedly himself. Ali never seemed to get a clean shot at him and for many of the fans in the arena and watching on TV, it seemed that they were witnessing an upset. Yet in a surprise announcement, Referee Tom Kelly scored the fight 72-65; judges Larry Barrett and Terry Moore had it 70-68 and 71-64, respectively: Amid a chorus of boos and insults from the capacity crowd, Ali was declared the winner in a unanimous decision and retained his title. Ken Norton (who was calling the action ringside for NBC and who had beaten Ali and broken his jaw two years previous) thought that Young had clearly outduelled the champion. Confirming popular opinion, Ali refused a rematch with Young, unwilling to face such a cunning opponent - and further embarrassment - ever again.

Why was there such outrage over the decision? Why was there such a disconnect between the fans watching the fight and the officials who decided it? Because Young's style of boxing, designed to frustrate and confuse his opponent, to protect himself from Ali's deadly combinations while allowing him to score with jabs and straight rights, was not what makes a champion. Simply surviving didn't impress anybody - if Young really wanted to beat Muhammad Ali and take his belt, he had to be the aggressor, he had to take the fight to him and whip him on national TV. Against a legend like Ali, Jimmy Young would have to take risks, get in close and knock the champ out at point-blank range, something he was clearly unwilling to do. That being the case, the judges saw no justification for giving him Ali's title: Jabbing and counterpunching just weren't good enough.

We now have a situation in Afghanistan that bears some resemblance to my pugilistic example. LTG Stanley McChrystal, President Obama's hand-picked commander in that theater, has requested 40,000 additional troops to augment his current force of 68,000, over and above the 17,000 personnel he received in the Spring. LTG McChrystal is convinced that without these reinforcements, he will be unable to counter the current Taliban offensive and may not be able to hold the country; that is, the United States might lose the war. He wants the strength to get in close, take the fight to the enemy and knock them out, yet President Obama is notably reluctant to approve LTG McChrystal's request as this contravenes his party's 45-year aversion to military action and his own liberal instincts. Having repeatedly stated that the war in Afghanistan was the one we had to win, the President now searches for a way to abandon it. (Recall that then-Senator Obama vehemently opposed President Bush's troop surge in Iraq in 2007, claiming the war was already lost. Since that surge actually worked, His Serene Loftiness is reluctant to validate conservative military strategy yet again.) He hesitates, he considers shifting away from defeating the Taliban and toward pursuing Al Qaeda, away from Afghanistan altogether and toward Pakistan, he commissions a review of LTG McChrystal's plan and floats trial balloons through his surrogates like negotiating with the Taliban rather than destroying them, he has SecDef Robert Gates rebuke LTG McChrystal and CENTCOM chief GEN Petraeus for publicly advocating for McChrystal's strategy, he rebukes LTG McChrystal on board Air Force One personally, his willing accomplices in the news media publish opinion polls and reports indicating the American public's fatigue with the eight-year war and their doubts as to whether continuing the fight is worth it, he does everything possible to avoid simply approving LTG McChrystal's request. He considers withdrawing most American combat troops and relying instead on armed Predator drones, special operations forces and airstrikes to do the job, jabbing and counterpunching from a distance like Jimmy Young did, keeping the enemy off-balance and avoiding the big knockout punch.

...instead of delivering the big knockout punch. President Obama, like Jimmy Young, instinctively chooses a defensive strategy that assures personal survival but surrenders the initiative to his opponent, thereby guaranteeing defeat. If we are not actively pursuing the Taliban and attacking them first, we are inviting them to do the same to us, and with Taliban forces gaining momentum throughout Afghanistan, we must do everything possible to stop them, regain the initiative and crush them, or else risk losing the war, which we cannot afford to do. Bill Clinton relied on cruise missiles and airstrikes for nearly three months against Serbia in 1999 but the only thing that drove the Serbs to the bargaining table was the threat of ground invasion, so Obama has that example from his immediate Democrat predecessor from which to draw inspiration. We cannot lose Afghanistan. That is a simple, undeniable fact and one which His Serene Loftiness claims to understand. If that is indeed the case, Mr. President, then answer LTG McChrystal's request, commit the troops, fight America's enemies toe-to-toe and win the war...or slink away, disgraced and defeated, to your eternal shame.

Source: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1897542,00.html

Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/10/white-house-furious-at-gen-mcchrystal-for-going-public.html

Source: http://www.upiasia.com/Top_News/2009/09/24/Petraeus-urges-linking-anti-terror-efforts/UPI-23211253766119/

Source: http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2009/09/mcchrystal_to_resign_if_not_gi.php

Never Mind...

BIG SURPRISE: After forcefully and repeatedly stating that he would close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a candidate last year and signing an Executive Order to that effect two days after his Inauguration, it now appears very likely that President Obama will fail to make good on that promise. The White House says that poor recordkeeping by the Bush Administration is to blame for the mess but the real reason, the real problem driving this development is what I mentioned in this space eight months ago: Whatever the President and his fellow liberal true believers may think, you can't close Gitmo because there's nowhere else for these guys to go. They're the most dangerous people on Earth and nobody wants them, not Obama's socialist friends in Europe nor his other socialist friends here in America. No Congressman, no Senator and no city councilman, no matter how solid their Leftist credentials, wants a bunch of Al Qaeda thugs living in the same ZIP code as their constituents and they'll do whatever they have to do to keep that from happening - have you noticed that with the avalanche of spending from Obama and the Congressional Democrats on everything else that there's not one penny approved for closing Gitmo? No conicidence there, my friends, no coincidence at all.

His Serene Loftiness is learning a hard lesson with Gitmo just as he has with health care reform, that is, simply wanting things to work according to socialist dogma isn't good enough. With health care, many millions of people resist the thought of being ordered into a government-run program that will be more expensive, more wasteful, more corrupt, more regimented and less free than anyone can predict, and are letting the Messiah-in-Chief know it. With Guantanamo Bay, the possibility of Al Qaeda suicide bombers running loose in America freezes the blood of the diest of die-hard liberals. They may have railed against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzalez, and demanded the closure of Guantanamo Bay and civil rights for terrorists but when asked to keep those terrorists in their own districts, they rediscover the old mantra of NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard. (Remember how the dear departed Ted Kennedy, ever the champion of clean energy and the environment, quashed a wind turbine project off Cape Cod three years ago because it would ruin the view?) Obama would do well if he would simply admit his mistake and reverse his order, if he would demonstrate an ability to think objectively and keep Gitmo open, but to do so would require intelligence, character, a sense of leadership and humility, and nothing in Obama's past suggests he is capable of such greatness: Too bad for us.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/25/ap-guantanamo-close-january/?test=latestnews

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30860366/

Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/20/white_house_closing_gitmo_a_hasty_decision_96593.html

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Briefing-by-White-House-Press-Secretary-Robert-Gibbs-8/13/09/

Source:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/27/kennedy_faces_fight_on_cape_wind/

Dear Leader

Dear Leader Comrade Generalissimo Barack Obama the great peerlessly brilliant President of all the Americas is a great unequaled inflexible political genius of a large caliber always on the offensive to stiffen the steel-strong rock-hard ranks of the American Democratic Socialist Workers Proletariat into a match-for-a-hundred invincible force of strong patriotic anti-Republican anti-imperialist revolutionary spirit with a zeal of defending the Leader with their own lives at one stroke.

Once again Dear Leader Comrade Generalissimo Barack Obama has found the perfect way to uplift the capability of the American Democratic Socialist Workers Proletariat, delivering an inspirational and historic speech of decisive strategic power value to the boy schoolchildren and girl schoolchildren of the invincible mighty relentless unstoppable American Marxist Unified People next Tuesday. Hearing the cry of the people for his unique invaluable priceless wonderful leadership, the Mighty Sun of the 21st Century will uplift their joyous hearts with this immortal feat, propagating his glory and inspiring them to struggle forward with revolutionary fervor:

Menu of Classroom Activities
President Obama’s Address to Students Across America
(Pre-K6)
Produced by Teaching Ambassador Fellows, U.S. Department of Education
September 8, 2009

Before the Speech
Teachers can build background knowledge about the President of the United States and his speech by reading books about presidents and Barack Obama. Teachers could motivate students by asking the following questions:
Who is the President of the United States?
What do you think it takes to be president?
To whom do you think the president is going to be speaking?
Why do you think he wants to speak to you?
What do you think he will say to you?
Teachers can ask students to imagine that they are delivering a speech to all of the students in the United States.
If you were the president, what would you tell students?
What can students do to help in our schools?
Teachers can chart ideas about what students would say.
Why is it important that we listen to the president and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?

During the Speech
As the president speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note]taking graphic organizer such as a "cluster web;" or, students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children could draw pictures and write as appropriate. As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:
What is the president trying to tell me?
What is the president asking me to do?
What new ideas and actions is the president challenging me to think about?
Students could record important parts of the speech where the president is asking them to do something. Students might think about the following:
What specific job is he asking me to do?
Is he asking anything of anyone else?
Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?
Students could record questions they have while he is speaking and then discuss them after the speech. Younger children may need to dictate their questions.

After the Speech
Teachers could ask students to share the ideas they recorded, exchange sticky notes, or place notes on a butcher]paper poster in the classroom to discuss main ideas from the speech, such as citizenship, personal responsibility, and civic duty.
Students could discuss their responses to the following questions:
What do you think the president wants us to do?
Does the speech make you want to do anything?
Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?
What would you like to tell the president?

Extension of the Speech
Teachers could extend learning by having students:
Create posters of their goals. Posters could be formatted in quadrants, puzzle pieces, or trails marked with the following labels: personal, academic, community, and country. Each area could be labeled with three steps for achieving goals in that area. It might make sense to focus first on personal and academic goals so that community and country goals can be more readily created.
Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short]term and long]term education goals. Teachers would collect and redistribute these letters at an appropriate later date to enable students to monitor their progress.
Write goals on colored index cards or precut designs to post around the classroom.
Interview one another and share goals with the class to create a supportive community.
Participate in school]wide incentive programs or contests for those students who achieve their goals.
Write about their goals in a variety of genres, such as poems, songs, and personal essays.
Create artistic projects based on the themes of their goals.
Graph individual progress toward goals.

Menu of Classroom Activities
President Obama’s Address to Students Across America
(Grades 7-12)
Produced by Teaching Ambassador Fellows, U.S. Department of Education
September 8, 2009

Before the Speech
Conduct a "quick write" or "think/pair/share" activity with students. (In the latter activity, students spend a few minutes thinking and writing about the question. Next, each student is paired with another student to discuss. Finally, the students share their ideas with the class as a whole). Teachers may choose to ask the following questions:
What ideas do we associate with the words "responsibility," "persistence," and "goals?"
How would we define each term?
Teachers then may choose to create a web diagram of student ideas for each of the words.
Have students participate in a "quick write" or brainstorming activity. Teachers may ask students:
What are your strengths?
What do you think makes you successful as a student and as a person?
Teachers may engage students in short readings. Teachers may post in large print around the classroom notable quotes excerpted from President Obama’s speeches on education. Teachers might ask students to think alone, compare ideas with a partner, or share their thoughts with the class. Teachers could ask students to think about the following:
What are our interpretations of these excerpts?
Based on these excerpts, what can we infer that the president believes is important in order to be educationally successful?
Create a "concept web." Teachers may ask students to think of the following:
Why does President Obama want to speak with us today? How will he inspire us?
How will he challenge us?
What might he say?
Do you remember any other historic moments when the president spoke to the nation?
What was the impact?
After brainstorming answers to these questions, students could create a "cause]and]effect" graphic organizer.

During the Speech
Teachers might conduct a "listening with purpose" exercise based on the following ideas: personal responsibility, goals, and persistence. Teachers might ask pairs of students to create a word bank at the top of a notes page that has been divided into two columns. On the right]hand side, students could take notes (trying to capture direct quotations or main ideas) while President Obama talks about personal responsibility, goals, or persistence. At the end of the speech, students could write the corresponding terms from the word bank in the left]hand column, to increase retention and deepen their understanding of an important aspect of the speech.

Teachers might conduct a "listening with purpose" exercise based on the themes of inspiration and challenges. Using a similar double]column notes page as the one described above, teachers could focus students on quotations that either propose a specific challenge to them or that inspire them in some meaningful way. Students could do this activity individually, in pairs, or in groups.
Transition/Quick Review
Teachers could ask students to look over their notes and collaborate in pairs or small groups. Teachers might circulate and ask students questions, such as:
What more could we add to our notes?
What are the most important words in the speech?
What title would you give the speech?
What is the thesis of the speech?

After the Speech
Guided Discussion:
What resonated with you from President Obama’s speech? What lines or phrases do you remember?
Whom is President Obama addressing? How do you know? Describe his audience.
We heard President Obama mention the importance of personal responsibility. In your life, who exemplifies this kind of responsibility? How? Give examples.
How are the individuals in this classroom similar? How is each student different?
Suppose President Obama were to give another speech about being educationally successful. To whom would he speak? Why? What would the president say?
What are the three most important words in the speech? Rank them.
Is President Obama inspiring you to do anything? Is he challenging you to do anything?
What do you believe are the challenges of your generation?
How can you be a part of addressing these challenges?

　
The brilliance of Dear Leader knows no bounds and this stroke of invincible genius boosts the effective invincibility of the American Democratic Socialist Workers Proletariat a thousandfold, sending the criminal Republican imperialists reeling in a panic, smashing their frantic anti-Revolutionary schemes at one stroke. Hail victory! Hail the Leader!　
　

Source: http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/lessons/7-12.pdf

Source: http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/lessons/prek-6.pdf

Worse Than The Disease

In his second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln reached the pinnacle of American oratory. A backwoods lawyer without the polish and training of his privileged Eastern counterparts, he nonetheless saw straight to the heart of the war then raging across the country and put it more brilliantly than anyone ever had: “It may seem strange that any men would dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not that we be not judged.” Here was the core of the argument that had divided the country philosophically and then violently, the idea that the South could base its economy, society and culture on the enslavement of other human beings and insist that such enslavement was justified. Mr. Lincoln, in a moment of perfect clarity, refuted that idea. No-one has that right, he said; no-one has the right to force others to work for them and live off the gains of that labor, and that principle was vindicated on the field of battle and by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

One hundred forty-four years later, things have changed. We’re not facing a shooting war as Mr. Lincoln did but rather a political war that could be even more destructive in its own way, a war over the way we live our lives in this country. On the one side are the forces led by Mr. Obama, forces that claim the right that Mr. Lincoln so eloquently denied, that they are entitled to the profits earned by others and which they indignantly demand: Home mortgages subsidized by others, automobiles subsidized by others, jobs subsidized by others and now health insurance subsidized by others. The system is unfair, they cry; it’s time to restructure the United States to favor the poor and damn the costs, hence this quote from Nancy Pelosi at a news conference last June:

“First of all, the health care bill will be paid for. Second of all, we have to reduce cost. Cost must be reduced as we go forward. We know there are many initiatives of prevention and wellness and the rest that may not score down. But, nonetheless, we have to try to keep the number a containable one, an affordable one, one where waste, fraud, abuse, other aspects of -- well, as the President has already indicated, there's money to be found in Medicare and Medicaid, not that that's waste, fraud, and abuse, but just in how it is managed and -- administratively it's okay, but how the money is spent.

"And we can wring out money, and we must. We can't just say, "Well, we want the health care bill we want and we'll pay for it and how are we going to do that?" No. We have to reduce cost, establish priorities, and then go forward with how we pay for it."

“Wring out money.” For anyone not familiar with liberal jargon, that means higher taxes. Not for everyone, mind you, but only for the top ten percent of Americans who already pay 65% of all Federal income taxes. Speaker Pelosi wants to knock them down and steal their lunch money and then give it to the people she represents – the bottom fifty percent of wage earners who pay only 4% of Federal income taxes, those who want to “wring their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.”

On the other side are conservatives who resist the notion of a national health care system like they would resist the plague, who resist the higher costs, higher taxes, invasive regulation, fraud, waste and corruption such a system would bring. A recent Congressional Budget Office study indicates that Mr. Obama’s plan, though costing an additional $1.6 trillion over ten years, would only cover ten million of the estimated 47 million Americans lacking health insurance, meaning that if he truly wants universal health care in the United States, Mr. Obama will have to find $7 trillion that he hasn’t already spent. Second, his claim that the creation of a new Federal health care plan would lower costs because of competition with private health companies is a blind alley. Private health insurers would quickly realize that they lacked the resources to compete with the Federal government and would collapse, especially as businesses realized they could unload the cost of insuring their employees to the Feds: Thus the competition Mr. Obama envisions would result in a single, gigantic national plan and stratospheric expenses, which might suit his socialist philosophy but not the long-term interests of the country.

Third, as I’ve mentioned in this space before, even if Mr. Obama establishes a national health care plan and finds the money to pay for it, he will simply be adding another 47 million patients to the existing infrastructure. As far as I know, he doesn’t plan on buying one more bed, building one more hospital or hiring one more doctor, meaning that America will have rationed health care if his plan is adopted.

Fourth, the government never runs anything efficiently, thus it is amazing that the same people who complain bitterly about the DMV or the Post Office or the IRS ardently support Mr. Obama’s plan to establish a national health care program costing trillions of dollars. The current high costs of health care result in large part from Americans’ desire to get something for nothing, so if national health care is established and private insurers are driven out of business, there will truly be no incentive to save money anywhere and the country will be bankrupted.

Fifth, Senator Kent Conrad is urging the taxation of employee health insurance benefits as a method of raising money for the Democrats’ health reform plan. Since World War II, offering employee health benefits has been a way for businesses to attract and keep the best workers without increasing basic salaries. Taxing these benefits would push people into higher tax brackets and punish them for their success, but beyond raising money for universal coverage though, such taxation would discourage enrollment in private health care plans and drive people toward the single national program Mr. Obama is advocating. Once again, the liberals are obsessed with forcing everyone in America into one monolithic system and are willing to sacrifice our freedoms to do it.

Sixth, tied to the point I make above, is that after having unloaded their employee health coverage to the Federal government, businesses will want to do the same with their employee retirement plans. Health insurance and retirement are hugely expensive and the opportunity for a business to dump these costs on the Federal taxpayers will be too enticing to resist, so the American people will be funding the total cost of medical care and pensions for every worker in America and their families.

Seventh, the health care benefits paid to union workers would be exempt from the taxes imposed on non-union workers. This would encourage higher union enrollment and, together with the check-card voting system proposed by the Democrats, might reverse the 30-year decline in union membership which is essential to the establishment of a true socialist state. However, I doubt that any of Mr. Obama’s devotees have thought this approach through to its logical conclusion: As more workers join the union ranks, tax receipts from private health benefits would plummet while health care costs would climb. Since the money for the new Federal health program would have to come from somewhere, these new union members (as well as their veteran colleagues) would find their benefits eminently taxable by the same government they trusted.

Eighth, and this is quite taboo among the legacy media and the liberal intelligentsia, prosperity is the product of risk. A doctor with ten years’ training took greater risks and thus is entitled to a higher salary than the drive-thru guy at McDonald’s. Someone who starts a billion-dollar software company took greater risks and is entitled to a higher salary than an associate at Best Buy. And by and large, the top ten percent of wage earners in America have taken greater risks and thus earn higher incomes than the bottom fifty percent. They didn’t cheat the bottom fifty percent of their just due, they didn’t defraud anyone, they just worked harder and made better decisions and that enfuriates His Serene Loftiness. Some people have the unmitigated gall to succeed on their own in a difficult career while others take fewer risks, earn lower incomes and bitch about being cheated. These latter are Nancy Pelosi’s constituents and Mr. Obama’s, the millions who want to make very safe choices or none at all, who aver higher education or tough technical training, who never move or want to change jobs or invent something useful or start a business but yet want the rewards of such risk-taking: A guaranteed income, a guaranteed home, guaranteed pensions and now, health care for life guaranteed by the American taxpayer. They want to enslave America to their dream of a safe, worry-free life, yoking everyone else to their burden and draining the coffers dry, forcing everyone to the same level of mediocrity for as long as life endures. They don’t object to slavery as long as someone else is the slave, and the first African-American President of the United States is whipping us onward to that particular cliff. “Ironic” doesn’t quite characterize that scenario and neither will “catastrophic” if this nightmarish plan isn’t soundly and permanently defeated.








Source: http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/06-18-2009/0005046655&EDATE=

Source: http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/health_care/

Source: http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm2448.cfm

Cruel Torments of the Devil

Transcript of exchange between Perez Hilton and Miss California USA Carrie Prejean at the Miss USA Pageant, Las Vegas, Nevada, 19 April 2009

Perez Hilton: "Vermont recently became the 4th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?"

Carrie Prejean: "Well I think its great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you very much."

There were four other contestants at that point but Perez Hilton knew what he was doing by saving that particular question for Carrie Prejean. He knew that she was a Christian and he wanted to put her under some pressure: Live TV, the desire to win, the desire to give the acceptable answer. He wanted to put her faith to a test - if she dodges the question, or equivocates, or agrees with him, he can exult in the knowledge that another Christian can be bought with fame and fortune, that faith isn't real and neither is God, and a flaming homosexual who mocks the Almighty is on the winning side.

She fumbled a bit, caught off-guard by the potent question but quickly realized that she was being ambushed and found her courage. With everything on the line, with victory so close, she gave not the answer that Perez Hilton wanted to hear but the answer that he and America needed to hear. She didn't attack him or homosexuals in general, but stated her case and said, "Thank you very much." Doing so cost her the crown she had worked so hard to win but Carrie Prejean can look herself in the mirror today knowing that her conscience is clear.

The crowd in the Planet Hollywood theatre booed. The title went to Miss North Carolina. Perez Hilton ranted hysterically on his blog, insulting Prejean with language both crude and revealing: For his fans, this is what he's really like. The left-wing press has excoriated Carrie Prejean for accepting breast implants provided by the Miss USA pageant, for posing for topless photos now splashed across the Internet, for appearing in a commercial supporting traditional marriage, for not going away broken and silenced. She has discovered how angry Satan can be when Christians oppose him.

While not diving for the gutter, Perez Hilton has expressed "disappointment" that Prejean "didn't leave her politics out" of her answer. He and his morally naked allies have smugly announced that Miss California USA represents all of that state and should be more inclusive, by which they mean that when Carrie Prejean leaves her politics out, their politics are left in and the millions of Californians who agree with her and who twice approved constitutional amendments have no right to be heard. But beyond beauty pageants and free speech lies a larger issue, one that the press ignores and Perez Hilton, in his malignant glory, doesn't comprehend: The reversal of order that is at the heart of Satan's war with God.

Let's say that tomorrow a Constitutional amendment is passed legalizing gay marriage throughout the United States. TV cameras would pan across throngs of homosexual couples queueing up at the courthouse, champagne bottles would pop all over the country, liberal politicians would give excited speeches about civil rights and liberty and lofty ideals, thousands more children would be adopted into the homosexual lifestyle. Then a little movement would be felt. Some chatter would race across the Internet, advocacy groups would be formed, money would be raised, more speeches about civil rights and liberty and lofty ideals. Bills would be introduced and lawsuits would be filed, and eventually, polygamy would be legalized. After all, if traditional marriage is no longer the standard, then why exclude polygamists? Then we would see similar demands by pedophiles, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, groups wanting to marry groups, siblings and so on, obliterating the traditional view of marriage until only a confused, chaotic mish-mash is left, reversing the institution that God established and which has sustained human civilization for 7000 years. With the decision to move the line having been made, there will exist no reason not to move it a hundred times and certainly not for some moral objection, and America will disintegrate. That's why Carrie Prejean spoke up and why buffoons like Perez Hilton persecute Christians like her.

There have been other buffoons and other persecutions. Read on:

Letter from Pliny the Younger, Governor of Bithynia-Pontus, to Trajan, Emperor of the Romans, 112 AD:

It is my practice, my lord, to refer to you all matters concerning which I am in doubt. For who can better give guidance to my hesitation or inform my ignorance? I have never participated in trials of Christians. I therefore do not know what offenses it is the practice to punish or investigate, and to what extent. And I have been not a little hesitant as to whether there should be any distinction on account of age or no difference between the very young and the more mature; whether pardon is to be granted for repentance, or, if a man has once been a Christian, it does him no good to have ceased to be one; whether the name itself, even without offenses, or only the offenses associated with the name are to be punished.

Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserve to be punished. There were others possessed of the same folly; but because they were Roman citizens, I signed an order for them to be transferred to Rome.

Soon accusations spread, as usually happens, because of the proceedings going on, and several incidents occurred. An anonymous document was published containing the names of many persons. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ--none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do--these I thought should be discharged. Others named by the informer declared that they were Christians, but then denied it, asserting that they had been but had ceased to be, some three years before, others many years, some as much as twenty-five years. They all worshipped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ.

They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.

I therefore postponed the investigation and hastened to consult you. For the matter seemed to me to warrant consulting you, especially because of the number involved. For many persons of every age, every rank, and also of both sexes are and will be endangered. For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms. But it seems possible to check and cure it. It is certainly quite clear that the temples, which had been almost deserted, have begun to be frequented, that the established religious rites, long neglected, are being resumed, and that from everywhere sacrificial animals are coming, for which until now very few purchasers could be found. Hence it is easy to imagine what a multitude of people can be reformed if an opportunity for repentance is afforded.

Letter from Trajan answering Pliny the Younger:

You observed proper procedure, my dear Pliny, in sifting the cases of those who had been denounced to you as Christians. For it is not possible to lay down any general rule to serve as a kind of fixed standard. They are not to be sought out; if they are denounced and proved guilty, they are to be punished, with this reservation, that whoever denies that he is a Christian and really proves it--that is, by worshiping our gods--even though he was under suspicion in the past, shall obtain pardon through repentance. But anonymously posted accusations ought to have no place in any prosecution.

For this is both a dangerous kind of precedent and out of keeping with the spirit of our age.

In Pliny's day, it was a capital offense simply to be a Christian and that is where we are headed today. As long as there have been Christians, there have been people who hated them, whence Perez Hilton's vulgar rage, but someday the most important question that moron will ask will not be, "What do I think of Christ?" but rather, "What does Christ think of me?"

Good Riddance

So Arlen Specter is a Democrat again - big deal. For 28 years the man has had it both ways by getting huge support from the GOP during election season (like when the RNC supported him against conservative Pat Toomey in 2004 even when Specter had opposed President Bush's tax cuts) but voting whith the Democrats on stuff like the Obama stimulus package, illegal immigration and check-card voting for union elections. He's pro-abortion, pro-affirmative action and he joined John McCain's Gang of 14 four years ago that hijacked the review process for President Bush's judicial nominees. With friends like him, who needs enemies?

Sen. Specter admits that the political situation in Pennsylvania had the greatest influence on his decision. Mr. Toomey is mounting a serious challenge for Specter's seat and the senator believed that he would lose the GOP primary next Spring and, if he declared as an Independent like Joe Leiberman, the general election. Given that he doesn't want to retire, the only option left was to switch back to the Democrats he abandoned in 1965 and count on massive support from President Obama and the DNC next year which he's sure to get. So at least Senator Specter is honest enough to say that craven political survival drove his announcement and not some highfalutin philosophical reason like the tax policies of the Club for Growth.

The Democrats are exultant, of course. With Al Franken near to closing the deal in Minnesota, Specter's defection brings them a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (at least on paper) and no real threat to their agenda through next year. They can run through every wild-eyed piece of legislation they've dreamed of submitting for the past forty years but which was simply too dangerous to consider until now: passage of the Kyoto Protocols, cap-in-trade limits on industry, mandatory union membership for every job, citizenship for illegal immigration, Federal legalization of gay marriage and euthanasia, outright government ownership of every major industry from airlines to real estate. The future is bright if you're a socialist now that Arlen Specter is on your side.

For the Republicans, Specter's betrayal is both a kick in the groin and an opportunity. They are weaker in the Senate than at any time since 1976 and have virtually no chance of even slowing down the radical agenda I described above, yet are closer to their conservative core. The country club Republicans who chafed at Ronald Reagan and who sneer at the NASCAR dads who voted for them have pushed the Party to the left for years, away from the principles that brought them victory after victory and toward bigger government, higher taxes and spending, acceptance of abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, illegal immigration and so on, blurring the distinction between Republicans and the Democrats they ostensibly opposed. These misguided blue bloods thought by emulating the liberals and differing in policy only by degree, they could avoid the bitter debates that are at the heart of American democracy, get along with their enemies and keep their jobs longer. However, as was demonstrated in the past two elections, becoming more like the Democrats only gave more power to the real Democrats, and as Dr. Phil is fond of saying, "How's that workin' for you?" The answer, of course, is disastrously. The American people want and deserve a real choice when they go to the polls, not two shades of gray. By abandoning the Republicans, Arlen Specter gives them a chance to rediscover the power of conservative ideas: Let's hope they take it.

Gag Reflex

BIG STORY OF THE DAY #1: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, BB&T and other big American banks are trying to pay back their share of Federal TARP money early and the Treasury Department doesn't want them to do that - the Feds want to maintain government control over the financial system until they decide to let go. See also the Treasury Department's decision to convert the government's TARP investments in these institutions into common stock, meaning the Feds would literally own America's major banks and dictate the flow of capital wherever they wanted, and also the DJIA tanking almost 290 points as a result: How much punishment does the market have to absorb before the morons in the Obama administration get it?

BIG STORY OF THE DAY #2: Hugo Chavez rants about American imperialism at the Summit of the Americas, gets in a photo op shaking hands with Barack Obama and boosts his popularity even higher among the hate-America-first crowd. President Obama lets a two-bit Commie buffoon pee on his shoes and calls it diplomacy.

BIG STORY OF THE DAY #3: The Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans that they could be recruited by "right-wing militias" without specifically naming any right-wing militias or why, exactly, combat veterans would be more susceptible to racism or the violent overthrow of the country they swore to protect. A report issued by DHS in January detailed specific left-wing terror groups, specific crimes they had committed and specific people they might recruit, illustrating the predisposition of our government and the legacy media to believe the worst about conservatives whether they have proof or not. How reassuring it is to know that you're suspected by the very people you're defending at the risk of your life. "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it." Colonel Nathan R. Jessup


Source: http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/treasury-convert-tarp-shares-common/

Source: http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/futures-remain-red-despite-bofas-results/

Source: http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/finance/american-bankers-association-fed-tarp/

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/04/19/napolitano-veterans-targets-right-wing-extremist-recruiters/

Resist

On the evening of 16 December 1773, a group of Bostonians dressed as Indians boarded three British cargo ships then docked in the harbor and over the course of several hours, broke open and dumped some 350 chests of tea into the water. This act of rebellion, since called the Boston Tea Party, was a response to an attempt by the British Crown to impose taxes on the American Colonies even though the colonists were not represented in Parliament - in short, tyranny. Following the Stamp Act, the Townsend Acts and the Boston Massacre and followed by the closure of Boston Harbor, the quartering of the King's troops in private homes and summary arrests of leading dissidents, the Boston Tea Party was one of the signal events leading to the American Revolution and eventual independence, a display of defiance triggered directly by the arrogance of the British Empire.

Shift to 15 April 2009. At some four hundred venues, from Boston to Juneau and everywhere in between, tens of thousands of ordinary people gathered to protest the tax-and-spend policies of President Barack Obama and his Democrat allies: 1000 people in Des Moines; 2000 in Beaumont; 4000 in Lansing; another 4000 in Cincinnati. These were honest, hard-working, law-abiding citizens who were mad as hell that their government is blowing their tax dollars in the trillions and sticking them - and their great-grandchildren - with the check. They understood that the President's agenda has nothing to do with "middle-class tax cuts" or "fairness" or "putting money in the pockets of deserving Americans" but with remaking America into a socialist workers' paradise. They understood that the bottom fifty percent of wage earners, who pay only four percent of all Federal income taxes right now, will receive free health care, subsidized mortgages, jobs, car loans and insurance under this new regime, while the top ten percent of wage earners who pay 65% of the total bill will pay even more and be represented less. And they understood the lesson of the original Boston Tea Party, contrary to pinheads like Janeane Garofalo and Keith Olbermann, that tyranny by a lawful government is tyranny nonetheless and must be opposed. They are not stooges of the Republican Party as the liberal media has opined, they're not being manipulated by FoxNews or Rush Limbaugh or the "vast right-wing conspiracy." They are exercising their rights as American citizens to lawfully protest the reckless behavior of the government that claims to represent them but which really represents the interests of the most radical elements of the American Left.

...which not only misunderstands them but ridicules them as well. Here is an exchange between Ms Garofalo and Mr. Olbermann on last Wednesday's Countdown:

Ms. Garofalo: "Let’s be very honest about what this is about. It’s not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks."

Mr. Olbermann: "If you spear your television network … towards a bunch of guys who are just looking for a reason to yell at the black president, eventually you will marginalize yourself out of business, won’t you?"

So we first have Janeane Garofalo, a hardcore liberal and Hollywood C-lister whose flagging career has been given a boost by her appearance this season on the decidedly conservative 24, a mainstay of the Fox Network she bitterly criticizes. (She apparently understands the business well enough to ride the best horse in the race.) Ms. Garofalo dismisses the stated objectives of the nationwide TEA Parties, insults the intelligence of those who participated - a typical liberal tactic - then labels them racists and rednecks, the boilerplate epithet of the Left thrown at anyone who disagrees with them, as if people who go to church, work hard, pay their taxes, raise their children without welfare, watch NASCAR and own guns do not have the right to complain about their taxes being wasted. It doesn't occur to her that people could honestly disapprove of President Obama and the agenda he's advancing simply on political grounds: For her, it's literally black and white. She was then answered by the equally liberal host of Countdown, whose show has been regularly trounced in the ratings - The O'Reilly Factor has been the number one cable news program for 100 months in a row and FoxNews outpolls CNN and MSNBC combined. Keith, for his part, simply accepted his guest's ludicrous accusation at face value and wondered aloud if FoxNews' coverage of the TEA Parties would torpedo their ratings, which I can't help but assume was wishful thinking on his part. (He has to understand the business well enough to know that when he consistently sucks against the opposition, cancellation awaits.) Together they form a perfect microcosm of the sheer intellectual and ethical nakedness of the Left, hence the popularity of the TEA Parties: As long as idiots like these defend Barack Obama and his spendthrift policies, resistance will deepen.





Source: http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/teaparty.htm

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/15/anti-tax-tea-party-protests-expected/

Source: http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/04/17/janeane-garafalo-says-tea-parties-were-for-rednecks/

One Doesn't Follow The Other

America has suffered a welter of violence over the past five weeks. From Alabama to Oakland, from North Carolina to Binghamton, New York, lunatics with guns have killed and wounded police and civilians alike, destroying the lives of hundreds of innocent people:

• Saturday, 04 April 2009 - Pittsburgh, PA
  Three police officers killed


• Friday, 03 April 2009 - Binghamton, NY
  Thirteen people killed, four wounded


• March 29: Robert Stewart, 45, shot and killed eight people at Pinelake Health and Rehab in Carthage, N.C., before a police officer shot him and ended the rampage.


• March 29: Devan Kalathat, 42, shot and killed his two children and three other relatives, then killed himself in an upscale neighborhood of Santa Clara. Kalathat"s wife was critically injured.


• March 21: Lovelle Mixon, 26, shot and killed four Oakland police officers after a traffic stop. Mixon was killed in a shootout with SWAT officers.


• March 10: Michael McLendon, 28, killed 10 people including his mother, four other relatives, and the wife and child of a local sheriff"s deputy across two rural Alabama counties. He then killed himself.

Sometimes the perpetrators have survived to face justice, sometimes they took the coward's way out to avoid that justice (only to usher themselves into the presence of Almighty God to face His justice, and that eternally) but they've always managed to assume ultimate power for a short time and inflict terrific damage, exacting revenge for whatever wrongs they blamed society for doing them and then leaving grief-stricken communities to clean up the mess and figure out how to go on. These maniacs have also provided the rabid ant-gun Left in this country with fresh incentive to ban guns, as if they needed any more. ABC News, for their part, immediately broadcast two stories on the Obama administration's low priority on gun control to try to stir up "righteous anger" over the issue and will broadcast a special tomorrow night featuring Diane Sawyer, who will refute the reasons commonly cited for owning guns. The major line of reasoning they employ is that these mass shootings could be prevented by banning private ownership of firearms altogether, or at least making it so hard that no-one will try. They also paint as irrational the very desire to own a gun, as if no government anywhere at any time in the United States has acted tyrannically, stripping the citizens of their rights, their guns and their lives - we know both arguments to be patently and even laughably false:

• There are approximately 20,000 laws governing firearms in this country at all levels of jurisdiction. Private ownership of firearms is one of the most heavily-regulated activities in our society but contrary to the liberals' thesis, the areas where guns are most tightly controlled usually suffer the highest rates of crime. It is also no coincidence that crime is usually lower in the areas where guns are more available to honest citizens - guns are successfully used to defend lives and property over two million times a year and for every life taken by gun crime, 25-75 lives are saved.

• Washington, DC, where I work, had banned privately-owned handguns since 1976 until the District of Columbia v. Heller decision last summer but suffers from violent crime at three times the national average. In their zeal to ostensibly prevent crime, the liberal city government actually did the criminals a favor by guaranteeing that they would have a permanent and lethal advantage over their intended victims. From Detroit to St. Louis, from Oakland to Baltimore, from Atlanta to Newark, the cities where liberals rule and guns are banned are also ridden by violent crime, and in the event that a felon can't get a gun, he'll simply resort to some other weapon.

• The incident that sparked the Revolution - the Battle of Lexington - was precipitated by a British attempt to seize privately-owned firearms and ammunition stored at Concord, Massachusetts. Since then, our history is littered with examples of oppressive governments and outgunned citizens: the Johnson County War in Wyoming in 1892, the massacres of coal miners and their families from Ludlow, Colorado, in 1914 to Matewan, West Virginia, in 1920, and perhaps most infamously, the incident at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992. In this latter episode, Federal agents relentlessly hounded Gary Weaver for seven years before surrounding him at his ranch. After shooting the family dog to try to lure Mr. Weaver out of his house, they killed his son Samuel as he defended himself, shot Mr. Weaver in the back and killed his wife Vicki while she held their infant son in her arms. While Mr. Weaver was largely exonerated of the charges levelled against him, twelve Federal agents were disciplined and FBI Director Louis Freeh admitted to Congress that Ruby Ridge was "synonymous with the exaggerated application of federal law enforcement." (NOTE: It is interesting that no Federal agent involved at Ruby Ridge was ever prosecuted. Lon Horiuchi, the sniper who killed Vicki Weaver as she stood behind a door - he couldn't even see who or what he was shooting at - was protected by a Federal assertion of sovereign immunity.) It is this last incident that so starkly reminds us that governments in our country aren't to be blindly trusted and that stripping the citizens of their most potent safeguard is literally suicidal.

Despite our own history and the clear, explicit and unmistakable intent of the Founding Fathers as expressed in the Second Amendment, liberals want to exploit these recent tragedies to eliminate the Right to Keep and Bear Arms for precisely the reason I cite above. The advancement of a socialist state or any other authoritarian government can be checked by a population that is intelligent, well-informed and well-armed, thus the liberals will stop at nothing to eliminate our capacity to defend ourselves. The nutcases who have perpetrated these murders must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, make no mistake, but to erase a Constitutional right guaranteed every citizen to prevent its abuse is absurd. Last year, when it became apparent that ACORN had facilitated voter fraud in ten states, the Left never proposed eliminating the right to vote. It is ironic in the extreme that the same people who emphatically advocate for rights that appear nowhere in the Constitution - abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, legal rights for terrorists at Gitmo - are just as emphatically trying to kill a right deliberately and specifically included, and they must be resisted with all the strength and determination we can muster.

Source: http://www.nraila.org/GunLaws/Federal/Read.aspx?id=74

Source: http://www.nraila.org/heller/proamicusbriefs/07-290_amicus_aaps.pdf

Source: http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?id=245

Source:http://www.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_12068204?nclick_check=1

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,512560,00.html

Source: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/offenses/violent_crime/index.html

Source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0921299.html

Oh, For Mr. Benny!

Some excerpts from George Stephanopoulos' interview with Tim Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, on ABC News This Week, 29 March 2009. Try not to choke:





STEPHANOPOULOS: But even if we come out of that, a lot of economists worry that this recovery is going to feel like a recession, that we're going to have a jobless recovery. Very -- I see you nodding your head. You believe that?
GEITHNER: I think a lot -- people worry about this. You have a recession like this, which is born out of a period where people borrowed too much, and we let our financial system take on too much risk. The risk in that conduct is you have a longer, slower, more gradual process of adjustment and recovery.



SO...Mr. Geithner admits that our current economic crisis emerged from an excess of liquidity in the market, as I've discussed at length in this space. What he doesn't explain is how that excess of liquidity was started - by the left-wing social engineers on the Hill.




STEPHANOPOULOS: So do Americans have to get used to the idea that the boom times really aren't coming back?
GEITHNER: Well, we're going to emerge out of this stronger. And we're going to do that because the president and the Congress are going to make sure that we have the government doing a better job of things it needs to do.
So we have a more productive economy in the future, better education outcomes, better health care system, better energy policies, stronger infrastructure.

Mr. Geithner tells us that the Federal government is putting the economy in a headlock and that incomes, education, health care and energy will be rationed.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Stronger, but as affluent as we were in the past?


GEITHNER: Well, you know, we want to have sustainable growth. We don't have -- we don't want to have a recovery which is going to be artificial and short-lived, just produce the seeds of the next crisis.
We want to have a durable recovery based on a stronger foundation that has a stronger, more productive economy emerging through it where the gains are more broadly shared across the economy as a whole.

Remember how Mr. Obama answered Joe the Plumber's question on that campaign trip in Ohio last October, about how he wanted "to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance at success, too…" and "I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody"? Remember how everybody on the Left from Joe Biden on down excoriated Joe for daring to ask such an impudent question? Here's Tim Geithner saying that's exactly what Obama's doing.


STEPHANOPOULOS: So income inequality goes down?
GEITHNER: It should go down. Again, you know, if you look at the record of performance in the '90s, you know, we had very strong productivity growth during a period of fiscal discipline, fiscal responsibility, strong private investment, and the gains were shared much more broadly.
We can do that as a country, but it requires getting this government to do a better job of doing things only governments can do. That's why I assume important we get better outcomes. That's why fixing our health care system and get costs growing more slowly is so important. That's why we need a better energy policy. And that's why infrastructure needs to be improved.

Mr. Geithner assures us that income distribution in the Obama administration will flatten, not from a result of making low- and middle-income people more prosperous but by punishing the hell out of people in upper income levels. He also paints a rosy picture of the 1990's under Bill Clinton, who inherited an economy coming out of recession but raised taxes anyway, who didn't face 9/11, the economic shock it administered, the Global War On Terror and multiple natural disasters simultaneously.

Mr. Geithner also repeats his earlier assurance that the Federal government, invested with ultimate national power, will force us into a centralized, planned economy - the "better outcomes" he mentions.


STEPHANOPOULOS: And you are obviously trying to do that with your plans to shore up the banking system. You laid out what to do about these legacy toxic assets in the banking system this week. And a lot of people are wondering, will it actually work? The stock market definitely seemed to like it, so did a lot of experts. As you know, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman was not a fan. And I want to show what he wrote this week in The New York Times.
He said when he read this plan, it gave him a sense of despair. And he went on to say: "Financial executives literally bet their banks on the belief that there was no housing bubble and the related belief that unprecedented levels of household debt were no problem. They lost that bet and no amount of financial hocus-pocus, for that is what the Geithner plan amounts to, will change that fact."
Financial hocus-pocus.
GEITHNER: George, this is a piece of a series of initiatives we've put in place to help get the financial system doing what it needs to do, which is to provide the credit necessary for recovery. You know, economies depend on financial systems. They're what is -- provide the oxygen, the blood that economies need to grow.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But he says it's just not going to work, that these banks are insolvent, and that even if you put more capital in them, eventually you're going to have to take them over.
GEITHNER: But I just wanted to -- let's step back for a sec. So this is piece of a broad framework of initiatives we're undertaking to help restore the strength of the financial system. Part of our plan -- a core part of our plan involves making sure banks have enough capital to provide the lending we're going to need to get recovery back on track.

Mr. Krugman correctly observes that the home mortgage industry and by extension, the American financial system, trusted the Federal government would not allow a collapse of the housing boom they created and were disastrously wrong. Therefore, it's small wonder why American investors distrust anything Washington tells them now. Mr. Geithner answers Mr. Krugman's criticism by saying the Obama administration's answer to the financial crisis, which he already said was the result of too much credit, too much borrowing in years past...is to spur more borrowing. Is there any wonder why so many people - let alone conservatives like me - think Mr. Geithner is simply a fool? How does dumping more liquidity into the market solve the problem when the market is already drowning in liquidity?


GEITHNER: Absolutely. Our obligation now, again, is to defuse and help unwind this deeply complicated problem that AIG presents. But we want to work with the Congress to put in place stronger tools, stronger resolution authority, so the government can come in more quickly, earlier, before things have passed the point of no return, contain the damage, prevent the fire from spreading, restructure the firm, have it emerge stronger, at less risk to the taxpayer. That's what we need. We should have had this before this crisis, but we didn't. But we need to move quickly now.

Secretary Geithner now says that he wants authority not granted him, the Federal government or anyone under the Constitution, authority to regulate, interfere with and assume control of private institutions. Any private institution. If you weren't scared before, you'd better be scared now.


STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's talk about government debt. A lot of Americans more and more are concerned about that. According to the Congressional Budget Office, in 10 years, the government debt will be 82 percent of GDP. And I'm going to read a question that came in from one of our viewers, Bruce Gower of Rock Hill, South Carolina. He asks, "how do you justify printing money out of thin air and the amount of debt you are subjecting future generations to with this budget? Who cares if roads are smoother if I or my children can't afford a car to drive because of the hyperinflation that had taken away all their spending power?"
Are you worried about hyperinflation down the road?
GEITHNER: That's not going to happen in this country, will never happen.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Why?
GEITHNER: Will never happen. Because we have a strong, independent Fed, with a clear authority from the Congress to keep inflation low at -- stable at low levels going forward.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The Fed has been putting so much money into the system.
GEITHNER: But that's not going to create the risk of hyperinflation in the future.
We have a strong independent Federal Reserve with a very strong mandate from the Congress, and they will do what's necessary to keep inflation low and stable over time.



I dare you to name a more asinine Treasury Secretary among Mr. Geithner's 74 predecessors.
He is presiding over the second half of the $700 billion TRAP package approved last Fall, the $787 billion stimulus package, the $1 trillion bank rescue package and Obama's $3.6 trillion FY2010 Federal budget, yet he says that all this spending - the cure for the excessive spending he already blamed for starting the financial mess, mind you - will never cause inflation. That by itself defies logic, but he explains himself by saying that inflation will be strangled by an aggressive, proactive Federal Reserve who "will do what's necessary to keep inflation low and stable over time." Tell us. Mr. Geithner, how does the Federal Reserve plan to do that? How has the Federal Reserve controlled inflation in the past? By increasing interest rates so high that they discourage borrowing. Now I'm just the product of western Indiana public schools but that's just absurd. He admits the financial crisis was caused by too much borrowing but he and His Serene Loftiness want to stimulate more borrowing and then slam the brakes on borrowing. Who besides an economically illterate buffoon proposes an idiotic scheme like this? Imagine Jimmie Johnson flying down the straightaway at Talladega and rather than slowing down into Turn 1 to maintain control, he jams the accellerator to the floor. As his car screams toward the wall and he realizes he's going too fast, Jimmie then decides to plant both feet on the brakes. What would be the likely result of this scenario? The #48 car and Jimmie Johnson smeared all over the track, the wall, the stands and everything else, that's what. God save us from Tim Geithner and his demagogic boss and give us Jack Benny, because he might have made us laugh but he sure took good care of his money.

P.S.
HSL fired the CEO of General Motors today but didn't fire the head of the UAW. What do they call it when the workers own the means of production?


Source: http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/story?id=7201898&page=1





Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Business/story?id=7206475&page=1