ShallNotPerish

2009-08-18T22:44:00.002-04:00

I never made 300. 299 was all the posts everyone got out of me. *Sigh* That's sad. Well, then consider this a memorial Post # 300. And I wonder if my words ever swayed anyone's opinion or helped anyone decide, what I would consider, correctly in how they should view government and the politicians and various enablers that are apart of the old corrupt machine.

Consider, we have a President who's mentors were separatists and communists (no "conspiracy" necessary, these are things Barry willingly admits). We have Chicago-style politics being practiced on a national scale. We have true doublespeak. Protestors who show up to speak out against government takeovers of huge sections of the economy are called "astroturfers" because some of them might be organized and some professional activist groups are involved. Yet demonstrations full of multi-million dollar-funded lobbying groups that mix with union thugs and day laborers paid to carry protest signs (in some case who can't even speak the language printed on the signs) are treated like the true will of America.

I watch a commercial made by the unions which shows footage of their SEIU jackboots kicking a black man who happened to be selling flags near a protest that said "Don't Tread on Me" (I can only wonder if he appreciates the irony) and claims it's right-wingers actually kicking the black man and that unions were there to help even AFTER I saw the original video. And who speaks out? Only the regular citizen. Regular "journalism" no longer cares if it ever did for the citizenry. It cares for who it likes and everyone else is the enemy.

Hate speech is now described as anything not sanctioned by the power elite and their lacky lobbying groups. Being a minority that subscribes to Leftist philosophy allows you to be as racist as you like because after all "it's not really racism unless you're white".

Fascism was shouted at this country's executive for eight years because the guy in the Oval Office had an R after his name. Now that Sesame Street's new letter is D, no fascism, right?

From the Italian, Webster's describes fascism as:

1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

Take out the nationalism and that's our current government. The Left lives to divide people by class and race. It's all they do. When does the Right do that? Who were the Klansmen of the South allied with politically? Here's your hint. The same party has a minority in the White House now, but still has a bona-fide Klansman in the Senate. Ah the irony. As for the rest, autocratic government (approx. 30 unaccountable "czars"), attempts at economic and social control, and forcible attacks on opposition (not yet suppression, but it's been threatened) and you have the current administration. The previous administration barely breathed when it was being attacked. The few rare cases where it did stand up for itself I almost died of shock. So...fascism? Look in a mirror guys. The ones screaming it for eight years are now practicing it. I guess they were just getting in tune.

Piss on the Fascists who call themselves liberal. They're nowhere near true classical liberals. May they all rot in the Hell so few of them believe in.

2007-02-12T20:05:00.000-05:00

The media legend, Walter Cronkite, has come out of his retirement to provide his two cents on the state of nation, and lately the national media. Once called “the most trusted man in America”, Cronkite is hoping to broker that reputation into continued credibility for his tales of left-leaning fantasy.

His recent campaign involves telling tales of the loss of media independence. Corporate mergers and lax FCC laws have reduced the variety of opinion, he argues, as the stations must answer to their corporate sponsors. Fewer newspapers and fewer companies controlling those newspapers also mean that there are fewer and less diverse voices for the “people” to hear. This, at least, is how it is in Mr. Cronkite’s world.

He, of course, ignores the incredible explosion and diversity of opinions on the internet or even the increase of voices in cable news, sources that were not available in his heyday. There’s also the slight handicap of his tarnished legacy. Where once Walter Cronkite was looked to as the conscience of middle America, now he is seen for what he was; simply another leftist hack.

You need look no further than a review of history. During the Vietnam War, Cronkite was often seen as the best and most objective source of news regarding events there. What even he has admitted to, and what we can see from reviewing the actual events of the war, Cronkite consistently put a negative spin on events. He opposed the war, but felt the best way to express his opposition was to deceive the viewing public. His reason is a classic liberal argument. The ends justify the means, and he did it for our own good.

This came to a head with the reporting of the Tet Offensive. Cronkite famously pulled off his glasses and pronounced the war lost. Of course, now we know the war was far from lost. In fact, the Viet Cong was almost obliterated by their part in the Tet Offensive and the North Vietnamese Army divisions that had participated were mauled by U.S. Army and South Vietnamese divisions. There are still some, especially among the Left who view the Tet Offensive as the ultimate example of the failure of U.S. “imperialism”.

Now we hear Cronkite lament that “objective” reporting, you know, the kind he used to do when he was lying about U.S. success in Vietnam, is as scarce as hen’s teeth these days. I think it’s safe to say “objective” for Cronkite means left-leaning or flat-out left-skewed opinion. Even though there has been consolidation, there has been an explosion of news outlets, both professional and amateur. There has also developed an extremely diverse base of opinions, from the left to the right.

This is Cronkite’s imperfect America. Perhaps he could explain, if it’s not too much trouble for him to tell the truth, how all this true diversity is a bad thing. Maybe he’ll finally be able to own up to his past bias and take his place among the myriad and equally shrill voices of his darling Left.

And that’s the way it is.

2007-02-02T16:39:00.000-05:00

Federal Free For All On Guns

It didn’t take long for the new Congress to rediscover its pre-94 roots and levy a considerable amount of new gun control legislation. Perhaps they have already forgotten what helped cost the Democrats Congress all those many years ago.

It is widely believed that one of the key elements that turned voters against the Democrats in the ’94 midterm elections was the rush to pass the Brady Bill, a since discredited joke piece of legislation that was, at its heart, the first step towards more draconian gun control measures. Handgun Control, Inc., then sharing a bed with numerous other lobbyists at the White House, openly boasted that this legislation would merely test the waters. More bills were sure to follow. My own Congressman at the time, Andy Jacobs, a man who I had come to respect as a moderate with tempered views and a good conscience, turned raving leftist and cast the deciding vote in its favor.

For those who don’t remember, the key elements of the Bill were that it limited handgun ammo capacity to ten rounds per clip, it established a mandatory waiting period to buy a handgun until the National Instant Check System could be brought online, and it banned the manufacture of new “assault weapons”, a list of cosmetically similar weapons that “looked evil” to the person who didn’t know any better, but that were otherwise identical to a whole host of weapons that remained legal to manufacture.

Many of the Congressmen who voted for that Bill received early retirement in ’94 and Jacobs was nearly defeated in his very secure central Indianapolis Democrat district. He retired shortly thereafter of his own volition.

With the history lesson out of the way, let’s look at what’s new in the 110th Congress.

First, there’s the Child Gun Safety and Gun Access Prevention Act of 2007, H.R. 256. If it’s “for the children”, that’s code for “you can’t argue with us taking away your rights or we’ll make you look like a heartless killer”. Basically, it’s a law that will be used to prosecute anyone whose gun falls in the hands of a “child”, which the Left seems to want to classify as anyone under 25. In other words, if your gun is stolen and used in a crime by a youth or is used in a tragic accident in which another is harmed or injured, you go to jail. Well, it has that whole “personal responsibility” thing down pat, but given how forgiving the Left is of everyone from cop killers to rapists to child molesters, it’s a little harsh coming from the “Party of Forgiveness”. This Bill also raises the age of being able to own a rifle or shotgun from 18 to 21. Well, it worked for alcohol!

The edict “To require the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ban toys which in size, shape, or overall appearance resemble real handguns” clause in H.R. 428 is fairly straight forward. It means to ban toy guns. If toy guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have toy guns. Come on. Do we really have to be subjected to this nonsense? This lefty hippy feel-good ludicrous crap is the same thing they’re trying in England, where they’ve already banned most guns. It hasn’t done anything there to stop the rising rates of gun crime either.

The third piece of “legislation” being proposed by the Democrats is “The NICS Improvement Act”, H.R. 297. This Act is rather sinister. Its stated aim is to merely add lists of denied individuals who currently have not been added to the NICS system. This could rightly be seen as a “loophole”, because certain elements of the NICS aren’t complete. Certain databases of the mentally ill and some criminal databases have yet to be integrated, and this bill in its own feel good way will make sure they’re added.

The bad law part of this is that it also intends to add lists of individuals who are indicted, but not yet convicted, of felonies. It also promises to add everyone with a misdemeanor conviction or restraining order, which the infamous and Unconstitutional Lautenberg Amendment ensured would keep just about anyone from purchasing a new weapon. Indictments and restraining orders are about as easy to get as the chicken pox in kindergarten. Even though no conviction is in place, a person will be barred from purchasing a weapon because NICS will deny them.

But Rob, you say, Senator Lautenberg wanted to help battered women and stuff when he put in that clause about restraining orders. How is stopping evil wife-beaters from getting guns a bad thing? It’s not a bad thing. But a man can be called a wife-beater and not be one. It’s up for a court to decide, and until then the man is deprived of his rights. Oh, and for those feel-good leftist feminists out there, consider that a wife-beating husband can also get a restraining order against his wife, just so she can’t get a gun to defend herself. Care to guess the statistics on the number of women killed by their deranged ex-boyfriends or hubbies while waiting for the cops to show? The number’s rather high. That’s women’s lib for ya. You’ve come a long way, baby.

The last of the current gems is “The Gun Show Loophole Closing Act of 2007,” H.R. 96. This law will basically make it illegal to hold a gun show, anywhere, ever. It regulates “thought”, as in if you talk or even think about buying a gun without a background check, you’ve violated the law. And not only will you get it in the rear. , but the organizers of the gun show will go down with you. It’s yet one more way for gun sales to be more closely monitored and controlled and it’s usually one of the steps countries like Canada, Great Britain, and Australia (oh and let’s not forget the U.S.S.R. and Nazi Germany) used on the road to gun confiscation. So much for the Land of the Free.

Well, that’s just the first of anti-gun rights bills the “100 hour” brain trust could produce. Expect a lot more through the course of the next two years. It will be interesting to see if the anti-gun rights “moderate”, George W., is able to grow enough of a spine to veto any of this or if the Senate Republicans try to filibuster it. But then again, it may just hasten the Democrats exit from Congressional leadership once again. What a mixed blessing.

Hat tip to RightWingNews for the list.

2007-01-25T18:31:00.000-05:00

I Like Trees Too

A recent debate here in Indianapolis has crystallized for me an issue that’s been a pet peeve of mine for many years. Here in our fine city, the old city cemetery is called Crown Hill and it exists in what was once one of the more affluent parts of town. Now, much of those nice old houses are inhabited by low income or a few remaining middle income families. Crown Hill, not surprisingly, is very old. It is also large and has huge upkeep costs. Grounds keeping and maintenance aren’t cheap. The revenue Crown Hill has taken in recently isn’t really covering their bill, because there are not as many people being buried in the old cemetery. Competition has also taken its toll. So, the people who run it have to come up with new funding. They have in the form of a 70 acre parcel of old, wooded land that Crown Hill owns on its northern fringe.

This land can be prime development land, as the area is borderline decent. An affluent neighborhood could form the core of an area revival. It also will destroy most of the 70 acres of trees and habitat that now stands there. This is regrettable. I hate to see that. I like trees. I like wildlife habitat. However, it’s not my land, and unless I think I can get together the scratch to buy it, it’s not my business what happens to it. That’s the way of things. In a society where we allow people to do what they want to their own land, this is what you get. I find nothing wrong with that aspect.

I appear to be in the minority in this opinion. The local left-leaning news weekly and the editorials in the Indianapolis Star have been filled with protests from those who want to see this land preserved from the bulldozer. They are filled with colorful metaphors and fancy phrases that wax eloquent about how there is “another kind of death” at Crown Hill or how more of Mother Nature is being “raped” for the benefit of rich, cognac-swilling, cigar-smoking fat cats.

Their editorials and pontifications always end with calls for civic action. “Well, the city must DO something” and other such calls for government to stop a private land deal fill the media, especially the alternative media. This is the mentality of people who are still dead-set certain that Marx is applicable and can work. It doesn’t matter that it’s never worked to the benefit of the masses anywhere in the world. We just haven’t done it right yet. Part of doing it right, according to this train of thought, is when you don’t like what someone’s doing with their own land, you use the power of government to take it away from them.

Property rights are one of our oldest rights and along with those endowed to us by our Creator, they are pretty important. “A man’s home is his castle” and “the right to be secure in one’s home, effects and property” are indelible and unalterable aspects of who we are and how we define ourselves. If we let government decide what to do with our land, then the tyranny of the minority takes hold. Radical environmentalism is just the latest trend to exercise this principle.

Republican (not the party) ideals of personal freedom and responsibility have no merit if you say that our most fundamental material concern (property) is the “people’s business” and not private business. Not to mention, this power can be used in a grossly corrupt fashion to control any land for any reason, especially if you’re the one who wants to get your hands on it. If you could go back in time and ask the kulaks of the Ukraine under Stalin’s rule, they could have shown you many fine examples of this leftist philosophy in action.

The simple reality of it is this. In our society, my land is mine. It’s not yours. It’s not the government’s. It’s mine. If I want to do anything with it, as long as it doesn’t adversely affect my neighbor, then it’s nobody’s business, but mine. If I want to sell it to a private developer, it is my right. It is also Crown Hill’s right to sell it to who they think will pay the most for it. If these groups and individuals so desperately want to preserve it, they can form a foundation, raise money and buy the land. It’s as simple as that. Of course, that solution is never thought of because it doesn’t entail using “magic money” also known as taxpayer dollars to curtail such a basic capitalist transaction. I like trees too, but I like that everyone can have their liberty even more.

2007-01-18T20:28:00.000-05:00

Maybe Heading To Townhall, But First...

For a variety of reasons, I’ve decided to move my blog over to Townhall. I will cross-post for awhile, but then post exclusively to that address. I will also post a few of my “non-event” position blogs to help anyone who stumbles on my blog at Townhall understand a bit of where I stand on the big issues. With that burst of fanfare, let’s dig right in.

It was without much of a shock that the Democrats moved quickly to strip a rule the Gingrich Congress imposed on itself that required a 3/5 supermajority to raise taxes. This rule has held firm for years in keeping taxes down and allowing the cuts made in 2001 to continue unhindered. Unfortunately, the rule really needed to be something on the level of a Constitutional Amendment. It took the Democrats less than one truncated work week (so much for the five day a week Congress) to dispose of the rule. Nothing so crass as a vote to cancel the rule took place. No, that might be even difficult for the Big Three to ignore. The Democrats on party-line simply approved a rule that allowed them to bypass the old rule with a basic majority vote. Leave it to the Democrats to add another layer of bureaucracy that doubly screws the American public.

Moves such as these are causing many to speculate, and perhaps rightly so, that the Democrats will raise our taxes soon. In other news, a bear was seen taking a roll of Charmin into Yellowstone and the Pope it turns out is actually Catholic. The rhetoric to date of course has focused on the evil “rich” among us, with numbers like “half a million” and the like thrown around to reassure us plebes that of course they don’t mean us. No, our punishment will be far more base. The reinstatement of the marriage penalty for income tax, capital gains tax for bonuses we receive and should those of us middle class who dare to own stock try to gain anything from it, the Dividends tax will make sure to smack us hard. Also, despite what others say, I doubt the Democrats will do anything to soothe over the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) creep that will start hitting more and more middle class. They didn’t for the years up to the Republicans taking charge, and we couldn’t even get the Republicans to abolish it. What makes anyone think the Democrats are interested in dropping a tax?

Democrats see any tax cut as “costing” the government. The media usually obliges by reporting such tax cuts in terms of how much the federal government will lose as if it was their money to begin with. There is a fundamental disconnect with such people when confronted with the idea that tax revenues are the confiscated earnings and yield of hard work of millions of their fellow citizens. They see it as magic money, appearing from thin air or at least the Mint’s thick printing presses. Watch any nightly news broadcast or Democrats debating on C-Span with this in mind and you will be awe struck by how much this belief is almost religious in the nature of the Left.

Of course, Democrats weren’t voted in because the majority of Americans thought we weren’t being taxed enough. That is what we got, though. A bevy of corrupt Republicans who were showcased to the tune of a hundred fold over their equally corrupt Democrat brethren were cited by most polls as the primary reason voters turned to the Left’s offerings. Naturally, most of these Democrats had to run so far right of center, they’ll have no choice but to be hypocrites when Pelosi and Reid come calling. When the tax bills come, they’ll be faced with every freshman Congressman’s moral dilemma of following their conscience or their party. You’ll forgive me if I’m a bit pessimistic in assuming they’ll fold on their ideals like a bad hand at a riverboat poker match.

The “Pay as you go” or “pay it forward” or “Citizens pay because we play” system or whatever the Democrats are trying to sell it now as is equally worthless. While interesting in principle, it has no basis in reality. A system that supposedly requires you match every tax cut with a spending cut is novel. However, since neither party has show any interest in cutting any program ever (except the military), there will never be a situation in which they can or will have the desire to cut spending. Hence, I foresee this as a fool’s errand. It’s merely a way to ensure that there is never again such an abhorrent thing to the Democrats as another tax cut. Lucky us.

Until true fiscal conservatives are restored to Washington, if ever that indeed there ever were such animals in the swamp, we can expect this situation to worsen and worsen quickly. A Will Rogers quote was recently published in The Federalist (07-03 Chronicle). “Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.” When faced with that legacy, how on earth do we ever expect to catch back up?

2007-01-15T08:50:00.000-05:00

Peace In Our Time...Again?

It seems a mathematical certainty that intellectuals on the Left not only don't pay attention to the lessons of history, they seek to actively flaunt them at every turn. So goes Robert Rotberg's editorial in the Boston Globe yesterday. He initiates his piece with a bevy of choices for U.S. policy makers.

Only by accepting Iranian hegemonic pretensions, odious as they are, can the United States extricate itself somewhat honorably from Iraq.

I scarcely know where to start, there are so many options. This op-ed could just as easily have been written by Neville Chamberlain with Germany substituted for Iran. It is no secret that the Persians have wanted to regain political, economic and military dominance in the Gulf. They've been smarting over that ever since the armies of Mohammed rolled over them and forced them to convert to Islam. Arabs have dominated the region ever since. You can imagine what a blow to cultural pride all this has been. The Persians were masters of the region in one form or another for thousands of years before the arrival of Mohammed. To be in the subordinate position for so long has to have been distasteful.

This historical need, combined with the modern fusing of radical Islam with traditional Marxism by Khomeini back in the 70's has created a dangerous force in the region and one of the principle sponsors of world terror against the West. This doesn't stop Rotberg from wanting to cozy up with them, though.

If Iran, accused of funding and fomenting the Shi'ite militias, could dampen its enthusiasm for mayhem, so Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni powers could be prevailed upon to assist in reducing the Iraqi Sunni militancy. Any reduction in sectarian clashes should enable US and Iraqi forces to focus on the less dangerous Al Qaeda-related insurgency that now runs beneath the growing sectarian violence. Then we could slowly reduce US troop levels and leave. No "surge" would be required or desirable.

How this 'convincing' of Iran to do these things would be orchestrated, Rotberg obviously has no idea. You have a government in Iran that advocates the destruction of Israel and the United States. Is that what Rotberg is proposing to get Iran to come from the table? This is no run of the mill political pundit, by the way. This is the director of Program on Intrastate Conflict at the Kennedy School of Government. His leftist credentials (president of the World Peace Foundation) get mentioned also, but I mention his scholarly credentials for one reason. This is the prototypical example of a Leftist college professor in a position of extreme authority using that position to further his agenda, that we should treat with tyrants so that we may have some imagined peace.

How we do it is not his problem. Cookies and milk or the annhilation of entire nations may be required, but if it humiliates the U.S. and props up a world nightmare, then so be it! At least the ivory tower will have been listened to and thus we will all lead happier lives. I wonder if he has a book deal coming up.

No matter. The amusing thing about this editorial is that it shows a distilled version of the American Left in their natural habitat, that of assuming that the United States is the problem with the rest of the world, and that if we just would flagellate and humble ourselves before the world, the rest of the planet would play nice and live in peace and harmony.

It ignores the reality that the world is a dark and nasty place where most countries would rather rip out the throats of every last citizen of their neighbor country than ever tolerate their existence. It ignores that there are dangerous men with dangerous agendas and the money and weapons to back them up, with only the thin red line of governments like the U.S. who will stand up to them and thwart those agendas. Yet people like Rotberg demonize us and lionize the oppressors of the world. This editorial in the Globe should serve as a reminder of what we strive not to become, a nation of quislings, like Mr. Rotberg and his ilk would have us be.

2007-01-15T06:47:00.000-05:00

The First 100 Hours of Democrat-cy

I imagine no one is surprised by the progress of the newly minted Democrat-controlled 110th Congress in pushing a liberal agenda. It's who the citizenry elected and they've done their best not to disappoint. The two big "successes" of the Democrats in their first go at the House were the passage of federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research and raising the minimum wage. Very impressive.

First, let's start with the stem cell garbage.

After years and years of promising cures for everything from Alzheimer's and male-pattern baldness, not only can't embryonic stem-cell researchers get money from the wealth of private investors out there, perhaps the reason why is that they haven't put up result ONE on any of their fabled promises. Adult and umbilical stem cells make discovery after discovery and are already being used in successful trials. Embryonic stem cell research has led to dead ends and extreme failures. Amazing that no private investor would want to put their money in that! Enter the federal government, the last resort for junk science. For years the liberals in Congress have been trying to get this schlock funded, mostly after their campaign coffers get a nice fat donation from one of the principles trying to sell this snake oil.

And now they have their foothold.

Thirty-seven Republicans joined 216 Democrats to pass the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which would allow federal funding of research on stem cells from embryos slated for destruction at fertility clinics.

The 253 to 174 vote fell 37 votes short of what it would take to override the veto that Bush yesterday promised would be forthcoming, assuming the Senate passes the same bill, as expected. Bush vetoed the legislation after it passed last year.

Just goes to show that party affliation can't always guarantee how spineless, ill-informed, or susceptible to the almight dollar you are. It also furthers my old point that the Republican Party is NOT the conservative party. It's the party where the few conservatives who've been elected hang out.

One of those few bright spots with the President is that he might actually use that ancient and barely used veto pen to send this bill back to the trash bin where it belongs. More importantly, I'd love to see news outlets actually paint this in its real light, that of using taxpayer money for junk science because no one else will throw good cash at bad science. I've written about this ridiculous notion before. Embryonic stem cell research is a leftist political darling and as such it doesn't matter if it's as promising as the man-made global warming theory. It's theirs, they believe it, and we should spend our hard-earned money to support their quackery. At least, that's how I read it.

I don't think we're going to be as lucky on the minimum wage bill that just passed the House. The Senate will most likely clear it since it has the little nibbles they want and Bush will likely sign it. Yay for us. Naturally, Pelosi's ethically-soaked Congress missed the little provision that exempted some companies in Pelosi's district, but at least it's getting some ink now, after the fact. You'll also be hard pressed to find the major news outlets discussing arguments against the minimum wage like those of Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell or the CATO Institute. As Neal Boortz has said, we've already lost the battle on minimum wage. Its myths are go ingrained into our culture, that it would take a lot more than common sense, reasonable arguments, and historical fact to blow it out of the water.

The minimum wage increase raises wages for a small group of Americans (mostly part-timers and teenagers), aids a traditional leftist voting block , the unions, whose contracts tie their wage increases to any minimum wage increase and will result in many of those earners being laid off or to put it more bluntly fired because small businesses cannot absorb this hit to their bottom line. I'm sure, though, when these people lose their jobs, our unemployment rate increases, and business growth shrinks considerably, it will all be the Republicans' fault for running such a lousy economy. At least that's what I expect to hear out of Couric and Williams on the nightly news. I hang onto the hope that most people will see otherwise. Until that time of fantasy and legends, we'll have to continue living in the reality that is socialist America.

2007-01-15T06:23:00.000-05:00

Short Memory Or A Big Brass Set...You Decide

Everyone by now, I'm sure, has heard that U.S. forces in Iraq have captured five Iranians who were attempting to provide monetary and material support to the terrorists (in this case Shia groups) operating against Iraqi and U.S. forces. If you're Iran in a case like this, you either disavow them or you go all fire and brimstone. Well, they chose the latter.

Tehran denied the five detained Iranians had been involved in financing and arming insurgents in Iraq.

"Their job was basically consular, official and in the framework of regulations," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Sunday during his weekly media briefing. "What Americans express was incorrect and hyperbole against Iran in order to justify their acts."

Hosseini said the Iranian representative office where the five men worked was established in Irbil in 1992 to facilitate the visit of Kurdish businessmen and medical patients from Iraq to Iran.

"Then, both countries agreed to promote it to consular level," he said. "Agreement for formation of the Iranian consulate section was exchanged in the current (Iranian) year."

Hosseini accused the United States of resorting to "hostility and conflict toward neighbors of Iraq" because he said the country did not want to acknowledge it had failed to bring stability to Iraq.

"The United States should release all the five persons, prevent possible similar acts and compensate damages," Hosseini said.

So, just to clarify, the Iranian government's response is that the U.S. is violating consular rules by illegally seizing consular officials. Everybody get that? Is there a statue of limitations on irony? Could someone maybe hand a Wikipedia print-out to Hosseini or something?

I can't wait to see how this one plays out.

2006-12-27T14:32:00.000-05:00

Media Spins Another Assault on Taxpayers

It's only a short few days until the new Congress is sworn in and Pelosi's "Corruption Free" Congress gets to work for the people. Hard to write that without chuckling. We have already had previews on the quality of Congressional appointees to various Committees, but we are also getting a glimpse of the thinking of the bulk of the new leadership and what their being in power means to the average citizen.

Does it mean we'll all have free health care, "green" power and vehicles, tougher regulations and penalties on "greedy business" and more money to America's "crumbling schools"? Although it's likely some of the above are being dreamed about by the Democrats like little kids dream of presents at Christmas, it may be difficult for them to easily enact their far left agenda.

Not the least of the obstacles facing them is their own foot-in-mouth disease. See, many of them campaigned on a spend-happy Republican led Congress being part of the nation's problems. Getting in there and spending more might be seen as bad cricket and might quickly see Congress' polls drop to where they are for the 109th Congress. See this analysis from Newsbusters of a Washington Post puff piece on the Democrats' ever-growing agenda. One of the best lines in it is attributed to Senator Kent Conrad who said:

"Raising taxes would certainly be an option...The President this is his policy. He's got an obligation to pay for it."

Actually, strictly speaking to the Senator, he's saying WE have an obligation to pay for it, and any pork the new leading Dems want to tack on along the way. The title, "Democrats Pledge to Restrain Spending" reads more like a joke than serious news.

Naturally, the article was not "Democrats plan to raise taxes", because that's true. Can't print that if it hurts the guy with whom you agree. Still, there is the possibility that an attempt to raise taxes won't be tried, at least not for the next two years. Tim Graham, I believe, accurately predicts that the new Democrat Congress will use the Clinton "cutting government" method of strictly cutting military spending. Some of these cuts will likely come in programs meant to replace the Armed Services mainstay weapons, most of which were developed in the 70's (you read that correctly). However, it is not unheard of for cuts to come in military housing, support services and pension spending. The Democrat majorities and the last President were never very friendly to our fighting men and women.

On a related note, I did hear New York Congressman Charlie Rangel's going to push the draft issue again. A measure that he wrote last year and had to vote against is designed to bring back the draft. He plans to reintroduce it this year.

"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way."

Of course, the Left howls about being criticized for "politicizing the war". This is the most bare naked attempt of that you'll likely see. The idea for Rangel's draft isn't to help the military, which historically such a drastic measure is meant to assist. It's to make it harder for the President and Congress to go to war by making conscripts out of the majority of Americans. An army of conscripts, though, is not the sort of thing we should be rooting for. Consider this exchange between the late great Milton Friedman and General Westmoreland as retold by Walter Williams:

Friedman made a major intellectual contribution to the formation of a voluntary army. In testimony before President Nixon's commission on eliminating the draft, General William Westmoreland said he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. Mr. Friedman interrupted, "General, would you rather command an army of slaves?" Gen. Westmoreland replied, "I don't like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves." Mr. Friedman then retorted, "I don't like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries. If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher."

Conscription doesn't work, doesn't produce willing soldiers, stifles the economy and degrades the combat effectiveness of our armed forces. The sheer amount of training alone needed for soldiers to be as highly trained as the average U.S. soldier today would require that a person be drafted for years. And who will be exempt? Women? That's rather chauvinistic. Inevitably, such an institution would become rife with deferments, and most of those would favor candidates with ties to power or influence, the very people Congressman Rangel insists he's targeting by making the rest of us part of his new Army. I've said it before, this is bad comedy.

Whether it's your money or your life, expect the next Congress to at least touch on if not play the harbinger of things to come, should the Left (and largest) wing of the Democrat Party remain in power. Worse, watch the RINO's remaining in Congress to run right over the cliff with them.

2006-12-24T01:44:00.000-05:00

Adios Che

Michelle Malkin has been reporting on the superstore Target's fascination with Che Guevara merchandise. Well, apparently, Target got wind that quite a negative press bubble was building regarding ole' Che and pulled the material from their shelves.

Target had touted a music disc carrying case for Che admirers emblazoned with the Argentine-born guerrilla's iconic 1960 portrait by Alberto Diaz, or "Korda." A set of small earphones was superimposed on the image, suggesting he was tuned in to an iPod or other music player.

"It is never our intent to offend any of our guests through the merchandise we carry," Target said in a statement. "We have made the decision to remove this item from our shelves and we sincerely apologize for any discomfort this situation may have caused our guests."

I actually saw this item while Christmas shopping a week or two ago. I'm sure the avowed communist would be thrilled that his image is being exploited by the American capitalist society. Irony as always has a grand sense of humor.

I've seen Che's ridiculous face plastered all over Tshirts worn by coeds at our local college campus as well. I often wonder if they'd know or care that he was personally responsible for the deaths of over 2,000 people in the glorious Cuban revolution, many of them children. Given the vacuous nature of most young college students, though (and we were this way when we were that age, although admittedly I would never have worn a Che or "I love Uncle Joe Stalin" Tshirt), most probably don't even know who the hell he is, let alone his sordid history as a degenerate and murderer.

Consider this from the normally left-leaning online rag, Slate.

...Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims.

There are many apologists for pure evil in the world and Che is often the beneficiary of some of these apologists. Slate in this case couldn't perform for him, and it's a rare treat.

Personally, I say sell what you want. It's a capitalist society and if you want to sell things that are in extremely poor taste, you'll have lots of company. Still, if a communist icon misses another chance at immortality and idolatry, I also won't shed a bitter tear. On another personal note, I'm glad Che's dead and I'll be even happier when his revolutionary brother Fidel follows him into the fires of hell he so richly earned.

2006-12-22T15:13:00.000-05:00

Hoppe Knows Best?

Whenever a society is ill or has problems, you will always see the Leftists scurry out of the woodwork with a variety of plans to "fix" things. It's not so much just the hard Left, opinions are like, well, you know. We all have them. I have a blog full of them. The difference between the majority of people with opinions on how to fix society's problems and liberals or hard-core Leftists is that Leftists plans inevitably involve collecting more taxes to spend more money through government to solve the problem (which has never worked) or restricting certain freedoms that "Americans can no longer afford".

Those are possibly the two most common themes of the American Left these days. In central Indiana the mayor of Indianapolis, Bart Peterson, decided that one of the main reasons Indianapolis is having a bumper crop of murders this year is violent video games. Even more amusing, David Hoppe of the local lefty rag NUVO believes the mayor is a bit of a retard to believe so, despite agreeing that violent video games might be a symptom of a sick culture, by going the extra mile and saying it's not the games, it's the GUNS!

But before I get too off-topic, let's look at Mayor Bart. The Mayor, now president of the National League of Cities, is resurrecting an idea that he had and that was shot down by the City County Council in his first term. He thinks restricting or banning coin-operated violent video games might make a big difference in the criminal behavior of Indy's youths. Well, having been a youth and known even more, I'm here to tell you that that plan is about as brilliant as a lobotomized earth worm. Not a lot of grey matter in it.

I actually agree with Hoppe that overall things like violent video games are a symptom of the fact that our culture has turned overly sick and dysfunctional in the last four decades or so and that the likelihood is that if you took away the underlying influences for that ailment, you might actually stop things like violent video games and the like because they would no longer reflect society. Attempting to ban them is a knee-jerk reaction to a very serious problem and one that doesn't even come close to hitting the mark. His attempt reminds me of Tipper Gore's campaign against raunchy rock music lyrics.

I'm sure that Hoppe's and my opinions differ on what has caused this societal breakdown. He would likely say that we haven't done enough for the poor or the homeless, despite funding a trillion dollar "War on Poverty" with LBJ's Great Society for the last forty years. That's just not enough. For a socialist, it never is. I'm sure he believes if we gave these people decent houses, fixed the problem neighborhood's infrastructure, put more money into schools and scholarships and gave these kids better or guaranteed job opportunities when they got out of school, violence would shrink away. It's a very Marxist view. Notice also, it would require a lot of our tax money to accomplish with no guarantee that it would work. Hasn't worked yet and we already do all of the above to some extent.

Hoppe could debate me on the above points, but I think he'd agree that deep down he favors most of the above programs to help things out. That wasn't the topic of the rest of his article. The rest of it was gun control. See, more of your money or less of your freedom is the only way his world is gonna get fixed. Now, he does try to assuage the fears of the average NUVO reader and gun owner (of which, I'm guessing, there are but a paltry few).

If you think that I want to try and take your guns away, forget it. This has nothing to do with the right to bear arms. But that right has nothing to do with providing a gun to anybody who wants one, whenever they want it, in any number they choose.

Actually, saying that a gun shouldn't be provided to anyone that wants one is a "right to bear arms" issue. Who decides who gets one, Dave? You? People who share your values? How do you choose? We already restrict minors, felons, people with restraining orders against them and the mentally ill from getting them. Who else do you think, in your anointed state of champion of the people, should not be allowed to have one just if they want, whenever they want and in any number they choose? Your elitist snobbery really shows through in that paragraph.

Indiana, for example, does not have a one-handgun-per-month limit on gun sales. We have no limitations on assault weapons and magazines. Our police cannot limit the carrying of concealed handguns. Minors here are not restricted from possessing guns and no license or permit is required to buy a handgun. There is no waiting period on gun sales, no requirement that all guns be registered with law enforcement, no background checks required at gun shows or on private gun sales.

No, Indiana doesn't have those ridiculous laws, and the CDC, one of the most virulently anti-gun agencies in the federal government, has a fairly recent study that says NONE of those laws has any noticeable effect on gun crime. And all registration does is set a people up for confiscation. If you don't believe me, ask the former gun owners of many major metropolitan U.S. cities as well as citizens of Canada, Great Britain and Australia. Confiscation of their firearms was made easy because the police knew who had what. It's also resulted in the greatest crime waves any of those countries has ever seen. Really progressive, eh Dave?

and the tired old line...

In Indiana it's easier to get your hands on a gun than a driver's license.

Well, looking plainly at this statement, no it's not. You have to be at least 18 to buy a long gun and 21 to buy a pistol, and you can get a driver's license at 15 with restrictions in this state. You have to fill out extensive forms and if you want to carry your sidearm you have to be fingerprinted and go through a background check to get a permit to carry (which can take a few weeks to process). Having experienced both, I can tell you getting my license was monumentally easier. I took a dinky written test and then a short drive with a very nice man with a clipboard who directed me what streets to drive on, then told me to go get my photo for my license and congratulations. The people who did my background checks, with some exceptions, were nowhere near as cordial or as quick. Here, Hoppe suffers mostly from ignorance of the process, an affliction common among pseudo-intellectual liberals.

Of course, Dave Hoppe may already know all this and just have chosen to willfully misinform his readers just to make his case. That often happens when one starts with an opinion and needs to mold the facts to fit it. It happens every day with junk science and just as often in junk punditry.

If you're interested in writing Mr. Hoppe a note challenging or countering any of his ivory tower assumptions about gun control, make sure to be well-informed before you do. Sites like GunCite will provide you with considerable ammunition for your argument. Good luck to you and the next time you're at a gun show or in a gun store buying more than one handgun a month, an assault weapon, or a myriad of firearms, think of Dave and buy some more.

2006-12-22T14:41:00.000-05:00

The BergerMeister MeisterBerger

I would be remiss in my posting if I did not take the time to mention the recently revealed details of the convicted felon and defiler of the National Archives, Sandy Berger. The former National Security Advisor to President Clinton was only the latest in an extremely lengthy list of felons to come out of the Clinton White House.

Of course, one of the most noticeable aspects of this latest revelation is the absolute lack of coverage by the major networks. Minimalist hardly does justice to the predigested twenty some second soundbites that ABC and CNN gave the story, but at least they covered it, unlike CBS and NBC. There's been greater back and forth when discussing what each prima Donna host had for breakfast that morning than there was over this story. FoxNews at least gave it some time.

In a nutshell, here's what we're looking at. We knew he stuffed several documents in his underwear and socks and lighted out with them from the National Archives. We also knew he cut several up and threw them in the trash can. After he was caught, he claimed first that he was just taking some documents home to review more thoroughly (without officially checking them out of the Archives - minor lapse) and later that he had "accidentally" cut them up and threw them in the trash thinking they were something else. Liar liar, pants on fire.

Now in the hindsight of that moment, after his full conviction, which was laughable in the sentencing aspect, we know a little more. He took not one copy, but five copies of one particular document. Five. That sort of screams trying to hide or destroy evidence. Willfull destruction, anyone? Then there's also the small note we now have discovered regarding him taking documents out, hiding them on a nearby construction site, then returning for more.

I must've missed where this could have been seen as innocent or minor. In the midst of all the screaming about how we needed a full and thorough documentation of who knew what and when they knew it with the 9/11 Commission, a Commission mind you that the antique media was screaming for and then cheerleading bigtime, we get a man who was closely linked to the inner circle of the previous administration and serving as advisor to another contender for the Presidency (Kerry). This guy, Sandy, who does look curiously like the BurgerMeister MeisterBurger of the old claymation Santa Claus specials, uses his security clearance as one of the highest remaining Clinton appointees not convicted of a felony and infiltrates the National Archives. There he proceeds to find certain documents that he especially would know could be damning of his former President. He then steals these historical documents in a premeditated fashion (you can't say it's an act of passion if you come back for more). Lastly, he destroys all these documents and lies about it until confronted with overwhelming evidence.

Did I miss anything? And this isn't worthy of a few stories. The Mark Foley pedo story generated hundreds of runs in the morning and nightly news shows, and the guy wasn't even convicted of anything, other than being a huge perv. Another guy steals critical intelligence documents that directly address his side's (the Left's) biggest beef over how 9/11 was allowed to happen, gets convicted, astonishing details come out about how he did it and we don't even get a yawn.

If you can figure that one out, let me know, because right now I'm at a loss.

What probably galls me the most is that in his sentencing, he was only banned from access to classified documents for THREE years! Three years! Did I say he could go back to the scene of the crime and easily do it again in THREE years?!!! Why don't we just purpose-build a time machine just for Sandy, give him some matches, and send him back to the Great Library at Alexandria? While we're at it, see if we can send him back to 1776 so that he can use the Declaration of Independence as a dinner napkin. Don't forget to get all the copies, Sandy!

Truthfully, if he destroyed those documents, what's next? And why do we let people like that near our national treasures? The man deserved to be marched out into the National Mall and stood up before a firing squad. All he got was a ridiculously small fine and a minor slap on the artist. Where are our priorities in this country?

Washington felons always seem to have an easy time of it, though. They get convicted and then go on the lecture circuit. I wonder what Sandy will lecture about? Boxers or Briefs when stealing incriminating memos? Tube socks or dress socks? Does one wear wingtips or high tops for best concealment? Yes, these topics and many many more will grace the marquees of colleges and think tanks across the land as Sandy gets away with his morally and criminally repugnant crime. Justice is not only blind, it would seem her book was taken and cut up as well.

2006-12-15T18:43:00.000-05:00

Why I Have Not Been Against The War

I am not now nor have I been against the United States’ involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. That puts me at odds with most of my libertarian brethren, and in the same league as the likes of Larry Elder. Although I am a strong advocate of limited government and individual liberty, I cannot pretend that our nation exists in a vacuum.

Isolationism has its attractions, there is no doubt. During the ‘90’s, I saw the allure of it as our greatest enemy was no more and we became entangled in U.N. “humanitarian” angles that cost us blood and treasure but saw no one any benefit. I count the U.N. action led by the U.S. to remove Iraq from Kuwait in this messy period. For the record, my initial thought with our current invasion and occupation of Iraq is that it’s something we should technically have never been involved in. We were operating under the assumption that we were the world’s policeman and that through the U.N. we could make everyone play nice. We had no idea what we were getting into and although I would certainly offer every ounce of my support to the poor ground pounders that had to fight that run, I wasn’t too keen on back H.W. Bush’s machinations.

In these actions, I agree with my good friend Mike Kole that we should’ve heeded Washington’s warning against becoming involved in foreign entanglements. We were, under an idealist non-leader of a President, engaged in feel-good police actions, assuming despots and tyrants would understand that because the paternalistic U.S. (under the U.N.) said something, they must do it. Well, the world never worked that way and it certainly still doesn’t. Most of the world only understands the language of war and those same feel-good policies made the U.S. look weak in their eyes.

Should we have cared? Normally, I might have said no, but 9/11 proved to me that we should not be so complacent. It wasn’t the start, just the waking up to what we had so blindly ignored for all those years, even through the 70’s and 80’s. Iran was fomenting world Islamic revolution with an odd combination of Marxist-Islamic apocalyptic thought. Al-Qaeda and to a lesser extent the other Sunni states (Syria, Arabia, Egypt, etc.) were all working to establish their own influence through a relic fascist-Islamic system. This is the basis for Palestinian terrorism that has flowed from that region. The European states, weak though they are due to the internal decay of socialism and atrophied militaries, still seek an edge against the United States. Russia fights to retain its importance while still trying to stick its proverbial finger in our eye whenever it can. And the inscrutable China has quietly been building an economic and military machine for its own reasons, not the least of which will require the economic and/or military collapse of the United States.

We ignored these threats at our peril. We still ignore most of them. If we were Paraguay or Kenya or even Luxembourg, the machinations of all these countries would mean little. But we are the United States of America, an economic juggernaut and the world’s current remaining Superpower. That means if any of the above entities want to see their dreams come to fruition, they must first get past our nation. That paints a big target on our back and 9/11 was the first noticeable dart in the ring.

We cannot ignore or avoid these threats. We can either appease them or defeat them. There is no compromise that I can see nor is any desired. Eventually, war had to be the answer. Historically, we should have known. When a rival comes at you spoiling for a fight, you rarely can talk them out of it. You either kneel and accept your fate or make sure you get in the first punch.

I want to see us get in the first punch. We haven’t even begun to face the myriad of threats to the future of this country, but we have stepped right in the middle of the hornet’s nest of the Islamic radicals, both those who used fascism as their base model and those who used Marxist-Leninist ideals. We cannot disengage, nor were we ever really disengaged. We have been engaged since Hezbollah blew up our Marines in ’83 and we are suffering for their victory to this day. What is necessary is for the United States to break the will of those who seek to do us harm and if the Islamic radicals that we fight have one thing in abundance, it’s will (one could say the same of the Chinese). That may require perception, or just straight-out fear, but it is possible short of glassing over the region. Most of that region understands power and might and they understand those who have the will to use it. They must be made to know that the United States is not to be trifled with and that they are slowly learning, either in this life or in the next.

I don’t pretend to be a national policy expert or a general or even one of the guys fighting and dieing on the front lines of this conflict, but I do try to understand what I can of it. What I understand is, Democrat or Republican or Libertarian, it doesn’t matter. Politics really does stop at the water’s edge. My stance on how our government is at best a necessary evil inside our borders is unchanged, but one of its basic functions is to protect us and sometimes it’s had to go outside our borders to do it. This is one of those times. Economically and militarily, government has to provide the tools to beat our foes and that’s why I can’t turn against the choice to go and fight in Iraq or anywhere else for that matter.

We may have started as simply a resolution to a failed U.N. endeavor from the early ‘90’s, but in Iraq and Afghanistan we have a chance to turn at least some of the tide in this region. We will never solve its problems or quench its hatred and intolerance of others, but we might redirect it, at least away from us and our allies. That is worth the attempt and we have the might to do it.

Victory should not be a dirty word.

2006-12-08T07:42:00.000-05:00

Worse Than I Thought

The release of the Iraq Study Group's report produced items far worse than I thought. When Hezbollah and Hamas began applauding the report, I knew we were in for even more trouble. It's not exactly been a secret in Washington that James Baker hates Israel. The whole lot of country club liberal Republicans that Bush Sr. had operating in his stall weren't keen on them, especially after they failed to make a working peace plan during 41's administration. But to see what came out of Baker's committee's report is shocking. James, Lee and company have advocated throwing Israel to the wolves while handing over Free Iraq to the two remaining biggest terror sponsors in the region, Iran and Syria (followed closely by the Saudis).

I'm not quite sure where to begin. We were in a war against Saddam's Iraq that we've won, and now are having to battle a mixed bag of Baathist/Sunni loyalists with a liberal sprinkling of foreign fighters (which we're kid gloving, unfortunately). This means we, the United States, possessor of the most powerful military in the world, are in danger of losing? To them??? I'd think it was just a really poor joke if I hadn't seen Baker's face when he read the punchline. They actually believe this crap.

And the only way to "win with honor" (man, Vietnam Vets should be screaming NO right about now) is to diplomatically engage the two terrorist nations who are sponsoring and arming most of the fighters coming into Iraq to kill both Americans and Iraqi's? What inmates made it out of the asylum? Can we check the cages? That's like us asking in 1945 the mostly defeated Germans and Japanese to sit at the table with the USSR and make sure we could exit honorably with no more American lives lost. There is zero difference. It is assinine and a bit insane to advocate this plan and to think anything other than more dead Americans, civillian and military, will be the result is equally delusional. Consider the quotes of the leaders of the terrorist organizations who are apparently open for interviews.

"The report proves that this is the era of Islam and of jihad," said Abu Ayman, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank town of Jenin.

"It is not just a simple victory. It is a great one. The big superpower of the world is defeated by a small group of mujahedeen (fighters). Did you see the mujahedeens' clothes and weapons in comparison with the huge individual military arsenal and supply that was carrying every American soldier?" exclaimed Abu Abdullah, who is considered one of the most important operational members of Hamas' Izzedine al-Qassam Martyrs Brigades, Hamas' declared "resistance" department.

"America must understand that with anti-American governments in Latin America and with Islam growing and reinforcing, including in the U.S. itself, the next step would be a total defeat on their (American) land, not a relative one like they are facing in Iraq," he said.

That's not just my ranting or predictions. That's not some conservative pundit or the President telling you that if we don't fight them there, we'll be fighting them here. That's them. That's the enemy and make no mistake the views they express are not in the minority. This has been the plan of such groups going back to the Muslim Brotherhood in the early part of the last century, and now they're getting the money, resources and followers to carry it out. Don't so naively accept the reformed Marxist view that everything in the world that's wrong is America's fault. There are plenty of monsters in the world ready to devour entire nations without one American having to set one foot outside the country or influence one other country.

And speaking of these particular monsters, Baker, the anti-Israeli, wants Israel to give up the Golan and the West Bank in order to play Neville Chamberlain and appease the terrorist nations of Syria, Iran and Arabia. I lump the Saudis in because most of the Wahhabist schools in the world and the most radical madrassah's are funded by the Saudi Royal family. That pretty much says it all about them.

It's unclear why the Palestinian problem is being lumped into the Iraqi conflict, but consider this. In light of all that's been done to Israel even in the last decade, it's hard to understand Baker's reasoning (other than his hatred for Israel) that Israel must be the one to give in, yet again and fall back once more before what really is evil in our time.

The current Hamas-led P.A. government had refused to recognize Israel, halt terrorism or abide by existing, signed agreements between Israel and the P.A., Steinitz noted.

According to the Oslo Accords, signed between Israel and the PLO in 1993, the Palestinians undertook to give up terrorism as a means of achieving their political goals.But terrorism never stopped, and P.A. security forces - established and armed under Oslo - were themselves frequently implicated in the violence against Israel, particularly over the past six years.

The Oslo Accords arose out of the process initiated with the Madrid peace conference in 1991 - a conference at which Baker played a key role and which the ISG wants to emulate: The report calls for "unconditional" meetings between Israel, Lebanon and Syria, and between Israel and the Palestinians "to negotiate peace as was done at the Madrid Conference."

Israel offered to give the Palestinians all that they wanted, and Arafat walked away, despite the revisionist history that is now spewed by the Left, because the Palestinian Arabs wanted Israel's destruction, and a small bit of land isn't going to be enough for them. This whole idea of "we'll give them a little more and a little more and a little more and eventually they'll be appeased" is how Constantinople fell to the Ottoman's and how Vienna almost fell. It's also how Israel will die and the United States, according to James Baker, should and will be the one to slit its throat. Who needs enemies when you have friends like the United States, eh?

Madness is all i can truly consider this as. There's no easier explanation. I hear Bush is defeated and stunned since November and that he's out of the loop. I hear these things will happen regardless now that the ISG has proposed them because they have a complicit Congress, an absentee President who has lost the will to fight and a willing, sleeping and ill-informed public. I'm going to have to try for being the optimist on this one and hoping none of that comes to pass and that the world steps back from the brink yet again. There's always faith to sustain us when reason can no longer and this time certainly does not show the mark of reason.

2006-12-07T06:17:00.000-05:00

Notable Quotables

You actually have to hear the Left sometimes to believe just how crazy they can get.

Remember this one?

"A cultist is one who has a strong belief in the Bible and the Second Coming of Christ; who frequently attends bible studies; who has a high level of financial giving to a Christian cause; who home schools their children; who has stored up survival foods and has a strong belief in the second amendment; and who distrusts big government.

Any of these may qualify a person as a cultist, but certainly, more than one of these would cause us to look at this person as a threat, and his family as being in a risk situation that qualifies for government interference."

Probably not. It was our former Attorney General, Janet “The arsonist” Reno giving an interview to Sixty Minutes on 6/26/99. In the words of the immortal Hans Gruber in Die Hard, I must have missed Sixty Minutes that night, what was she saying?

Looks to be that she’s saying if you’re anywhere near a devout Christian, believe you have freedoms endowed in you by your Creator, especially the right to defend yourself, distrust big government, tend to give to Christian charities or home school your children then you’re a cult freak and dangerous individual that the government should keep a close eye on, or possibly incinerate like she did the poor women and kids at Waco.

For all the harping I heard from my left-of-center friends back in the day about John Ashcroft and how he was going to be some jack-boot thug who would see all liberals and Muslims in death camps and being prayed over and persecuted by figures that would’ve made Torquemada blush, I never heard them utter a peep about the former Miami-Dade prosecutor who saw the citizenry as dangerous insects to be crushed if they stepped too far out of line. And at least he didn’t order the mass murder of people just because they were Christian. Janet holds that distinction. I wish to God (oh, look at me, Mr. Dangerous) more people would realize that, but perhaps it’s easier to forget history when it’s a part you’re either not proud of or when your side was in charge…or both. Right?

Here’s another good one. Stephen Breyer, one of our illustrious Supreme Court Justices and arguably one of the most left-leaning (after perhaps Ruth “Mao” Ginsburg) had this to say recently on his job regarding the Constitution of the United States, as excerpted from an article at NewsMax.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer says the Supreme Court must promote the political rights of minorities and look beyond the Constitution's text when necessary to ensure that "no one gets too powerful."

Nowhere do I recall in the Constitution where it lists the Supremes duties as above. They have no mandate to “promote the political rights of minorities” and they certainly don’t have any enumerated powers that allow them to “look beyond the Constitution’s text”. The Supreme Court has assigned itself powers since its creation (see: Judicial Review), but the likes of this sort of thinking borders on the insane. It does explain, though, why it’s a popular fad of the left-leaning Justices to pick and choose court decisions and laws from other countries.

They so despise their own and the Constitution which governs it, that they’ll use anything to tear it down. I don’t typically use the term in regular debate, but these are the truest forms of America-haters you will ever see on the Left.

And wouldn’t one assume that usurping that kind of authority, as Justice Breyer indicates he thinks he has, make one a bit “too powerful” in and of itself? That wreaks of a tyranny of the minority, a very small minority in fact as all he and his ilk has to do is convince “Shades” Kennedy to stand with them and they can write de facto laws of the land in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Congress should’ve impeached him when they had the chance.

2006-12-06T20:12:00.000-05:00

Are There No Prisons?

It should surprise no one that the alleged “culture of corruption” the Democrats spent the last several months beating the drums about extended to their side of the aisle as well. Well, it should surprise no one whose sole source of news wasn’t the antique media. To hear Brian Williams, Matt Lauer, Andrea Mitchell and like-minded empty suits, the Republicans were the only ones touched by the evil of criminal wrong-doing. As we see, if you have a capitol in a swamp, you breed a lot of vermin and it doesn’t matter if there’s an R or D after their name.

First and foremost, of course, there was William Jefferson, the corrupt bribe-taking Congressman from Louisiana. His stink was so bad, even the see-no-Democrat-evil media had to notice. Amazingly, he still has his seat in Congress and his party has not called for him to step down. I wonder if his lawyers are still trying to find a way for him to keep the $90,000 in bribe money he took from the federal sting operation that busted him.

Then there was ABSCAM Jack Murtha, a man who through sheer luck was not indicted almost three decades ago when several members of Congress (mostly Democrats, not surprisingly) were caught in a sting accepting bribe money. Jack survived as an unindicted co-conspirator by chance. See, the Speaker of the House at the time, Tip O’Neil, was also looking to be caught up in the same scandal, but a quick appointment to the right committee of someone who owed Tip a favor got the investigation into his office and Jack Murtha’s (who was next on the list) killed. So, Jack was not fully investigated, but the FBI still wasn’t letting him go without a label, hence “unindicted” co-conspirator.

The media seemed to forget about old Jackie, focusing only on his service in the military as they used him as a bludgeon to take on the President’s war strategy. His ABSCAM link only surfaced AFTER the election among the antiques when it was apparent Nancy Pelosi was going to back him as new Majority Leader. The antiques weren’t too crazy about that, so all of a sudden he’s damaged goods. Sorry Jackie, maybe next time.

Then Nancy “I’m going to rid Congress of Corruption” Pelosi pushed to get Alcee Hastings, one of the few federal judges in history to be impeached (his conviction still stands, by the way) on charges again of bribery and tampering with evidence, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. You have to have a security clearance to take a leak at the Pentagon, and here the new Speaker was seriously considering giving access to the nation’s most sensitive secrets a man who had already proven to be easily corruptible and very willing to take a bribe. Why not just truck the whole of the file system of our intelligence services over to the New York Times and Al-Jazeera and get it over with? A diligent new media made sure Alcee was exposed and people were reminded of how corrupt yet another Democrat truly was. Alcee won’t be getting that Chairmanship.

Apparently, crooks are like roaches in Congress, because another one has scurried out into the light seeking a Chairmanship from Incorruptible San Fran Nan. Representative Alan Mollohan of West Virginia, a long-time Democrat Congressman (wonder if he’s attended any of Sen. Bob Byrd’s (aka Conscience of the Senate and longest serving Senator) Klan barbecue’s) is currently in line to take over the House panel that oversees the budget of the FBI. That in itself is not that remarkable until you consider that Al’s finances are being investigated by that same FBI. Sort of a proverbial fox guarding the chicken coop kind of story isn’t it? Well, that’s the Democrats for you.

When Republicans are corrupt, we can usually expose them quickly and get them out of office just as quickly. It helps that the antique’s are more than eager to pounce on any Republican who shows a character flaw, regardless of its magnitude. Most hang their heads in shame and move on and rightfully so, especially if their flaw directly impacts their ability to serve their constituents. Democrats seem like a pack of ticks. You can’t pull them loose of their seat. In cases like the Democrat candidate who lost in Katherine Harris’ old district in Florida, you can’t even seem to pry them loose even if they lost and never had the seat.

If you’re unsettled by corruption in Washington, and you voted out your Representative or Senator with that in mind, know that you just switched well-documented corrupt Congressmen for shadier corrupt Congressmen and women. Congratulations…to you.

Most of the corruption is in the true veterans of Congress, the ones who will be getting all those Chairmanships and Panel assignments. The same thing happened in ’94 when Republicans took over. Older, liberal Rockefeller Republicans from the ‘70’s took Chairmanships that had been won for them by young turk conservative Republicans. Now far left Democrats are getting those Chairmanships based on the efforts of moderate to conservative Democrats who campaigned on more accountable and conservative government all across America. Wonder when the next batch will cycle through.

My greatest concern, I suppose, is that the examples above are the ones we’ve heard about. How many are we not hearing about?

Update #1: CNS News has a good piece on this very issue.

2006-11-30T23:13:00.000-05:00

New Tone In Washington Says We Should Kiss Thugs And Flog Friends

Well, now that the news media is the official policy arm of the Democrats, it's nice to see all the punditry out there as well as several members of Congress saying that a) we have to play nice with the Syrians and Iranians and b) spank the Israelis for being big bad meanies.

The prime example has to be the media's new love affair with former President Jimmy Carter. The man was a failure of a President and was not only paralyzed by an inability to deal with the Islamic radicals that took over Iran in '79, but who by his own admission was caught unawares by something he thought inconceivable, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It is from Carter's presidency that we have his legacy of Stagflation economics. And yet, here is Blitzer interviewing him with the reverence usually reserved for a Clinton.

Carter seems to challenge what we actually know of Clinton's attempt to get Israel to acceed to the Palestinian's demand for territory only to both be rebuffed by the terrorist Arafat to tell all of us that that is wrong. We apparently will find in Carter's new book that Arafat actually wanted nothing but peace and love until those dirty Jews lied and said he rebuffed their peace offer. Oh, and Clinton didn't lie about anything else, but apparently he did lie about this. Again, I'm sure Carter will make sure we realize it was only the Jews that made him do it through their seductress and stereotypical "Jewish Princess" Monica Lewinsky.

I like writing conspiracy theories. They're effortless, take nothing to prove, and actually are just as entertaining if not moreso than Carter's historical rewrite.

Why couldn't he just stay on the peanut farm and occasionally build a home for Habitat for Humanity? At least there he was actually doing America some good.

As if President Carter being trotted as a the conscience of diplomacy isn't pure comedy (Orwell is just spinning like a jet turbine, I'm telling you) the recent spate of genuflections toward the terrorist regimes of Syria and Iran by the Left border on being the Rosetta Stone of why "Peace In Our Time" isn't just your grandpa's surrender slogan anymore. It's bad enough that "experts" are being dragged out to let us know we need to talk with the outlaw regimes of Iran and Syria, but now we are having it spoon fed to us daily that the "Iraq Study Group", a haven for leftists, "moderate" to liberal Democrats and country club Republicans who know foreign policy much better than us plebs thinks it could be a good idea as well.

I'd love it if someone could explain to me the benefit of this course of action. How does speaking with two countries that have American blood on their hands and a desire to have even more, especially more Israeli blood on their hands, and sit down at a table to "talk peace" with them. I don't know if that's or Ahmadinejad's "Letter to America" and it's Marxist-Islamist psycho babble is more ridiculous or less worthy of our taking it seriously.

On top of that, we simultaneously hear that Israel must play nice and give into the demands of the Palestinians. The madness of this is that somehow it's been the Israeli's who have been causing all this trouble for the last sixty years. Sort of like us selfish Americans refusing to roll over and die so the U.S.S.R. could run the world. The nerve of some countries.

I think I'd like to understand the logic of someone who believed these things, if there was any actual logic to it. If I have to listen to one more moral equivalency argument or a "who really knows who started things argument, I do believe I'll hurl. The Iranian and Syrian governments, Hezbollah, Hamas and most of the Palestinian leadership share in common the belief that Christian America and predominantly Jewish Israel need to just whither and die. They believed it before the U.S. supported Israel of Americans and they believed it of Jews before the U.N. formed the state of Israel. It's just a matter of making up ridiculous excuses, a task at which they excel.

To meet with a criminal on equal terms is to legitimate that criminal. To negotiate from a position of weakness shows you are weak and to treat our allies like enemies is to invite our real enemies to hover at our back, knife poised. My response to the idea of treating with such thugs is that I'll see them in Hell first.

2006-11-30T22:46:00.000-05:00

Britain to U.S.: Rape and Assault Increases Show We're More Civil Than You

Actually, it wasn't the whole of Britain or Australia or any of the realm actually that said this. The true teller of the tale is Rebecca Peters, director of the International Action Network on Small Arms.

“Those two campaigns have now come together to bring the strength of both communities, the disarmament community, and the women’s rights communities together in order to stop armed violence against women, recognizing that the disarmament conversation, too often does not involve women, and that the women’s rights movement has too often not realized the importance of taking away the weapons.”

She goes on to describe how her collection of "civil society organizations" are allowing women to live in a civil society by helping to ensure that they have no way to defend themselves.

Howard Nemerov in his wonderful article has done the math in a spectacularly plain way.

By 2005, the rate of sexual assault in Australia increased 36% from its pre-ban 1995 rate, while the U.S. rate decreased 14.6%. Women are now raped over three times as often in Australia as they are in the United States.

The rate of sexual crimes against women in the UK increased 63.0% since pre-ban 1995.[5] Women are raped and sexually assaulted nearly twice as often in the UK as the U.S. Meanwhile, British police ignore Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “civil,” as in: “orderly; well-governed.”[6] The detection rate for sexual offenses dropped from 39% in 2003-2004 to 34% in 2004-2005, indicating poor governance: a 13% lower efficiency by police in bringing perpetrators to justice.

Well, at the very least, though they may be assaulted, raped or dead, at the very least they can "be British" knowing that at least groups like Ms. Peters' have eradicated guns in their country, well except of course the guns the criminals are using. It turns out that criminals don't play fair and smuggle illegal weapons into the country to keep committing their crimes. Bad cricket old sports...Or, it could be that groups like Ms. Peters' are fascist, power-hungry and couldn't care an iota about the safety of one woman if it means they'll get the power they crave.

One could argue that it is insanity to insist upon a certain course even though the known quantity of that course is failure and death. Even as these advocacy groups try to spread their tendrils through the United Nations into the few remaining free nations (including ours), they willfully ignore these facts and assume that next time it'll be perfect. The next time, it'll work. The next time, their Chutes & Ladders Candyland world will emerge with them at the helm and all of us signing their praises. I think I found out why these sorts of folks aren't willing to bash Mohammed or radical fundamentalist Islam. Something to do with sharks and lawyers.

Their one overriding goal is to eventually limit your freedom and mine. That's all people like that want. They don't want anything "for the children". They want raw power and they'll squash any pathetic liberty or citizenry brazen enough to stand in their way, that is, unless we stop them cold and kick them back across the ocean to the lunatic asylum that is Western Europe. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

2006-11-30T22:19:00.000-05:00

Schumer Smoking Latest Herb Off The Boat

The only way I can think to justify Senator Chuck Schumer of New York's latest line of totally insane commentary is to assume he's rockin' the ganj. Check this from NRO.

Chuck Schumer went to visit the New York Daily News today, Ben Smith reports, and declared that the GOP doesn't comprehend the trouble it's in because "they don't realize that Reaganomics is dead, that the Reagan philosophy is dead."

According to Schumer, "The old Reagan theory which dominated — which is, 'Government is bad, it's out of touch, chop off its hands as soon as it moves.' — is over."Interestingly, he contrasted this supposed blindness with his party's own philosophical weakness: "We realize that New Deal democracy, which is still our paradigm, which is sort of appeal to each group ... that doesn't work any more."

Yes, that's the same Reaganomics that has given us the lowest unemployment in a decade, a period of growth that surpasses even the "Roaring '90's" and the largest tax receipts ever seen. Apparently, Chuck's version of "dead" doesn't quite square with the average coroner.

The Reagan philosophy of limited government, personal responsibility and increased individual liberty, which by the way was pretty much how we lived until his beloved "New Deal" is anything but dead and is more relevant today than it ever has been, even as people like Schumer try to strip it from us. Perhaps it is his threat to us, that we'd better kiss goodbye the thought of individual freedom, because now the Democrats are going to show us what a true nanny state really is.

Oh, but he said New Deal democracy doesn't work anymore, you say. Doesn't that mean he's turned over a whole new leaf? Looking at his leftist voting record, I'm left to conclude that he figures it didn't go far enough. Now you're going to see what their Real Deal will do to you. And if you think you had high payroll taxes, property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes and vice taxes before, wait til you see what they've got in store for you!

2006-11-30T22:04:00.000-05:00

So, Michael Richards Hates Hecklers?

This seems to be consuming a lot of talk radio and blogger time these days. The whole video of Michael Richards blowing up at his mediocre stand-up act and usually racial slurs to heckle his hecklers is cute and all. I never liked the guy. I never liked Seinfeld. I wasn't even real crazy about the SNL-lite show Fridays he was part of back in the 80's. And so now we find he knows how to use ethnic slurs. SO WHAT?

Well, money's to be made, so that's so what. Professional racists and hucksters like Al Sharpton need incidents like this to stay relevant and pretend that they speak for anyone with any melanin in their skin pigment. That is obvious to anyone who doesn't buy into the fairy tale that only whites can be racist. However, one thing out of this did escape me.

Why should anyone have to apologize to hecklers? If anything, the hecklers should apologize to all the people who paid to get into the comedy club and then who, instead of listening to Richard's act, had to listen to these pathetic losers make total jackasses out of themselves. They should also apologize to all of America, because we have been forced to listen to this crap day in and day out. They should apologize to all those people who are going to be forced to hear or read stories in the news and magazines about how they can be more racially sensitive than Richards. And they should get a gift basket from Mel Gibson who is thanking Yahweh that he's not the only one in the doghouse anymore.

Should it impress me that a bunch of certified geniuses went to a club and acted like the morons they were and then were attacked by a semi-stable performer for treating him like garbage? Not really. Do I care to see the video? No, I need those couple minutes of my life for something important like waiting in line at the BMV.

It's times like these I wish we still had public floggings...

2006-11-22T07:12:00.000-05:00

The New Congress

Already, the new Congress is making waves and they're not even sworn in yet. You'd have thought power has already changed hands to hear it in the antique media. Still, we see the fallback to the same old tired way of doing business that the Democrats were known for pre-1994. It seems, in addition to the Republicans not learning from their defeat by electing the same failed doing-business-as-usual House leaders, the Democrats think the last 12 years didn't happen, or at the very least were not a reflection of the nation's desire NOT to be inflicted with their age-old socialist claptrap.

The antique media acts as always as their eternal cheerleader. Peripherally related is the "Big 3" auto manufacturer meeting with the President. They sought and did not receive help in bailing them out from their pension and health concerns. The industries long ago let themselves be bullied in to every expensive contracts that they are finding it almost impossible to dig themselves out of. Their solution, and one they hoped the President would help them with (being that he is such a big government fan and all) is to get you and I to pay for their liabilities. Honestly, I like Ford's product line and have owned nothing but, but I'm not going to subsidize, nor do I think anyone else should, their compact with the UAW. They made their bed and now they and their workers can lie in it together. Don't invite the U.S. taxpayer for some sort of sordid, kinky threesome. We're not interested.

Getting back to Congress, though, let's look at some of the items being proposed, though. Charles Rangel (D-NY), is once again trotting out his Draft nonsense. Not only is his own Party trying to distance themselves from his ridiculous rhetoric and blatant canard of only poor and minorities serving (he'd have been very much at home in the USSR's propaganda departments), but even he has trouble admitting if he's serious or not. And wasn't it those self-same Democrats who only two years ago SWORE that Bush would reinstitute the Draft if he won reelection? Wow, Nostradamus they ain't. The security of this nation is something that the Democrats do not now, have not and will not take seriously. That's why they throw up political issues like "the Draft" to try and score a few points against the opposition, then accuse the opposition (in this case, Republicans) of the very same tactics they just used. Hypocrites.

Rangel also wants to see ALL the tax cuts of the last five years repealed and he thinks he now has the votes to do it. That includes the child credit and repeal of the marriage penalty. But they said they wouldn't hurt the middle class! If you believe that I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. They live for hurting the middle class.

Carl Levin wants all U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq, because if it's anything to do with the military, that's the one area of spending that a Democrat can't and won't tolerate (unless it's for a useless unneeded defense contract in his or her district).

Barbara Boxer wants an American "Kyoto Accord" as she single-handedly tries to save us from global warming. First, prove to me that global warming is man-made or even different than it has been through the late Cenozoic and we'll talk. Second, she wants to cripple U.S. industry in the face of burgeoning Asian juggernauts like China and India, who by the way will NOT be cutting any emissions anytime soon and who will soon be surpassing the U.S. in same.

Chucky Schumer is vowing to never see another Justice like Sam Alito on the Supreme Court. Kiss any hope of having Constitutional Constructionists on the bench again. At best, we'll get another Kennedy. Yay. Another vacillating "moderate" is not what we need. Unfortunately, the American voters ensured last Election Day that that's the best any of us can hope for. At worst, we'll get another Breyer or Souter.

And let's not forget Madame Hillary. Mrs. Clinton says "Health care is back on the table." This is a woman who almost single-handedly wrecked health care when she wrested the job from her husband's administration thirteen years ago. Clinton may be using her husband's old tactic of fake right and then run left, but she's got 20 years of quotes dogging her regarding just what a rank socialist she has always been. Any person who lives their life by Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" is someone we should be very concerned about having a place at the table to decide Senate policy.

So, that's a glimpse at what we have to deal with for the next few years. We fight the battle from the bottom of the slope again, perhaps a little wiser and perhaps better armed and maybe this time we can counter some of the Left's agenda.

Update: Although not entirely related, some of the numbers are in and, SURPRISE, there's more to state that it wasn't Democrats flashing their gams that won them the election and it certainly wasn't a voter embrace all of a sudden of Democrats' bread and butter issues. Emily's List candidates, those who strongly favor the courts telling the states what they can and can't legislate (in this case, abortion) faired quite poorly.

2006-11-21T23:03:00.000-05:00

Read A History Book Other Than "Hug A Commie For Mommy" Howard Zinn's Please!

So I heard Keith Olbermann on Monday mouth off this little ditty regarding Bush's visit to Vietnam. In the middle of yet another in a long line of vomitous diatribes designed to mimic the bogus "Have you at long last no decency, sir" line of the McCarthy hearings, Keith chided Bush on his "failed policy" and linkage of war on terror by trying to link it to the old "Domino theory" of the Cold War by saying this.

"That stable, burgeoning, vivid country you just saw there is there because we finally had the good sense to declare victory and get out! The domino theory was nonsense, sir. Our departure from Vietnam emboldened no one. Communism did not spread like a contagion around the world."

I think, after reading that, I nearly spit up my tea. You heard it from Keith, master of history (at least the Howard Zinn version of it). Vietnam is a thriving, "vivid" country because we left. No mention of course of the dissidents still under house arrest or forbidden from communication from the outside world, the political prisoners whose only crime is disagreeing with the communist oligarchy in Vietnam, the 100's of thousands who were sent to reeducation camps and many of whom who did not make it back, the 1-2 million Cambodians who were exterminated like insects when the Khmer Rouge, in "DOMINO" fashion toppled Cambodia's government or the thousands who lost their lives in Laos for the same reason.

No, none of that happened, you see, because the U.S. left and the Domino theory was wrong and communism was really "agrarian reform". Oh--My--God. And this man has a TV show, on MSNBC granted but still. Dozens of people get their news from Keith. You think he'd at least have the good sense to give them honest history instead of communist agit prop. Or maybe he's just a historical idiot himself and doesn't known any better. Too bad ignorance is not a viable defense when it comes to history.

How anyone could be this blatant or this blind is beyond me. What aids him is our failing educational system, which produces like-minded drones who gobble this up as "the way it was". It's always U.S. = bad and leftist killers = good in the minds of such individuals and that would be sad if it wasn't so detrimental to our country as a whole. We need to become more mindful of teaching real U.S. history over much of this 60's and 70's leftist revisionist garbage that has infiltrated the schools where the next generation of citizens is being "educated". Start early and start often. It's the only true way to combat simpleton's like Keith.

2006-11-21T22:57:00.000-05:00

Passing Of A Giant

Much has been written in the past week of the passing of a true economic genius, Milton Friedman. The man who had tirelessly and at some times almost single-handedly led the charge against the New Deal/Keynesian style of government interference in the economy helped define much of what is considered modern conservative and libertarian philosophy. He was as much the economic father of our philosophy as Barry Goldwater was the political father, if not more so.

The Federalist Patriot has a very thoughtful and well-written reflection of his life and I would encourage anyone to read it to get a better understanding of the man and his legacy. His most notable legacy, what won him the Nobel Prize, was his prediction of a failing of the Keynesian style of economics that would eventually produce the phenomena that would be coined stagflation.

Amazing that, despite the historical evidence, and the realization that Keynes' model worked only successfully only when all competitor's markets were devastated by the Second World War. After those economies has spent the better part of 20 years pulling themselves back up and the U.S. began facing real competition for its markets and goods, only then did the folly of a government bureaucracy trying to manage something as dynamic and fast-paced as the economy come to light. And still, liberals refuse to learn this lesson. Still, they assume that just enough control, not too much, but just a pinch here and a smidge there, will make for a utopia.

Their utopia also exists in the vacuum of magic money that falls from the sky and a benevolent government that can do no wrong. The reality of the onerous nature of taxation and human fallibility seemingly escapes most people who have stood against Friedman's principles and beliefs. Sadly, with him gone, it makes it all the harder to combat their like, but he does leave a rich legacy of writings and thoughts that we can delve back to. We can never replace him. We can only hope to succeed him and learn from what he has left us.

2006-11-17T06:35:00.000-05:00

The Republicans Got What They Deserved...And So Did We.

Last week, the Republicans received the whipping that had been forecast and in many cases assisted by the antique media and its punditry. In many ways, it was a whipping of their own making. Historically, of course, it was to be expected and it would have taken a far different Congress to buck the trends of history.

However, even though the Republicans lost control of Congress, we got exactly the comeuppance we deserved by the Democrats taking control. It is widely acknowledged by those who don't have a donkey emblem and portrait of Mao tatto'ed on their rear that the Republicans biggest losses came from scandal and big-government spending. Exit polls showed that many voters actually saw the Democrats as the party of fiscal responsibility and smaller government as well as the less corrupt of the two arms. Yay for the rest of us.

How did a party that has defined itself since the Reagan Revolution as the party of limited government, fiscal responsibility and usually the more ethical choice fall so far? Again, you will hear a myriad of reasons.

The ones you should ignore are any stating that the voters felt the Democrat message was better, because the Democrats purposefully didn't have one. Well, they did, just not one they were willing to crow about too loudly. How many votes do you think the Democratic challengers would have gotten if people fully realized that their Party wanted to abolish all the tax cuts of the last five years, raise additional taxes on everyone (especially the Middle Class they pretend to adore), adopt a defeatist and appeasement-based foreign policy, treat our enemies as mere "criminal problems" to be dealt with by a politically correct law enforcement apparatus that spends more time looking at Americans than foreign terrorists (if you don't believe me, simply review the FBI, IRS, and BATF actions under the Clinton administration) and pour more money into failed socialist programs designed to further eradicate the individual and herald the growth of the State.

Think that'd get a lot of votes outside New York, Massachusetts or California? I'm guessing it'd be on the shy side of accepted.

Now, back to the wherefore's and the why's. Consider that in the '94 Republican sweep of Congress, those who came in as freshmen were in no way capable of influencing policy. Those spots were reserved for the new Chairmen, because that sort of thing is seniority-based. All the '94 revolution did was ascend to the Chairmanships Ford and Rockefeller-style '70's Republicans who tended to be of the liberal country-club variety and more in agreement regarding policy with their Democrat brethren than the new Turks. To this day, I think perhaps one Congressman from that wave ascended to a Chairmanship. Their "Contract with America", while a good start, never stood a real chance against Congressional bureaucracy.

Also, all Congressmen regardless of party affiliation tend to become "institutionalized" after a few years in Washington. With some exceptions, the bulk tend to identify more with their Washington brethren than those in their home districts. It's the old "1 tyrant 1000 miles away or 1000 tyrants 1 mile away" motif. You trade a absolute monarch for an elected oligarchy that generally (again with exceptions) loses touch with the voters and values that got them elected. This argument works best on moderate to conservative members of Congress. Liberals are in their natural habitat as Washington since the New Deal has been decidedly Leftist in its bent and bureaucracy, perhaps even before that.

Combining abandoment of your principles, what got you elected in the first place with a decided lack of ability to really change direction of the Congressional Titanic made for a combination few seemed willing to acknowledge until now. Conservatives and libertarian types were doomed from the start. The big government machine has proven, for this round at least, to have better staying power.

And although we did throw much of the baggage out, it was mostly Republican baggage. The most corrupt of the Democrats, from ABSCAM Murtha to Freezer Cash Jefferson are not only still in Congress, many of them are jockeying for leadership positions.

This more than anything makes Pelosi's claim that she will bring ethics and integrity back to Congress make me want to vomit Day-Glo. Sorry for the visual. It's about the only way I can truly capture my disgust with her hypocrisy. And yes, a woman who's probably one of the richest if not the richest PERSON in Congress who professes to be for the working man and Union labor (and who won the 2003 Chavez award from the fruit workers union) while using only non-union labor in her $25 million Napa vineyard, 30+ restaurants and hotel (most of which is likely illegal immigrants) should have her picture in the dictionary next to the word. To spell it out for those who haven't been beaten enough over the head with it yet, she DEFINES hypocrisy.

Now, going back to us getting what we deserved, that the liberal Democrats control Congress is entirely our fault. We didn't demand better acountability from the Republicans and we didn't support the alternatives like Libertarians enough to make a dent. We tolerated their corruption and the money and the scandals enough that these guys stayed in office long enough that we'd have no choice but to toss them out on their ear. Notice, of course, again that corrupt Republicans were sent packing by their constituency, not the myriad of corrupt Democrats. Just a reminder. What's that say about those Democrat constituencies?

And because we didn't weed out these corrupt schmucks in the Primaries and the Left doesn't mind corruption if it gets them power, we got exactly what we deserved. The interesting thing will be to see if anyone of us learns from this and either reforms the Republicans into a leaner and more conservative party or uplifts and supports the more conservative Midwestern Libertarians.

Your alternative is to have a Left-leaning Congress with perhaps a Left-leaning president who sees your freedom and individual liberty as an impediment to their agenda. Sure, you'll be able to marry if you're gay and you'll still live off the government teet if you're a welfare bum, but you'll be as free as a caged lab rat. It's not like you'll have to conform to government rules of behavior or do what they tell you if you take the stolen tax money they offer you(oh wait, that already happens) or have to fork over billions for fraudulent research (embryonic stem cells) or bogus junk science (man-induced global warming), surely. Is it? And for those of you working, surely another 10% or 20% increase in your payroll tax is something you can tolerate "for the public good", right?

Or...we can all get our acts together and go about fixing the mistakes we allowed to happen on our watch from our chosen representatives. Time to roll up the sleeves.

2006-11-07T07:08:00.000-05:00

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

That old colloquialism is something you should keep in mind as you go to the polls today. In fact, it's good to remember every Primary and Election Day. Though candidates may promise you the moon, they will rarely deliver even a piece of green cheese. We routinely hear of better funding for more social programs designed to give us just enough, but not too much money or sustenance. We hear of keeping money from greedy defense contractors. We hear about the millions our Congressman or woman has brought home to our district from the Feds. The bottom line is, none of it is free and neither are you or I, because of it.

As we are taxed for these things, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Ted Kennedy's drink umbrella budget, and as these taxes derive from our productivity, we will never be free. Those who don't want to be productive, we must pay for. Government has mandated that they will be our primary charity, assuming they get their "cut".

There really ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Government programs are funded by someone else's hard-earned dollars and we all are a little guilty in being complicit with the government as it does that. Listen to the biggest proponents of more programs, more money and more social welfare. They are eyeing your pocket book as they sing that song and they will use the force of a gun to get it from you. Remember, the IRS has more powers to seize and strip you of your assets than any other arm of the federal government. The only other group that comes close to being as good at stealing as the IRS is organized crime.

So, remember, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch and if someone tells you there is, make sure their hands aren't lodged firmly in your pocket.

2006-11-05T23:45:00.000-05:00

More Election Thoughts

Well, it's getting close to the wire, isn't it? I'm starting to see campaign ads on almost every channel and certainly the news shows are giving the event their full attention. Take Good Morning America, this morning, which pulled a "random sampling" (one might imagine they would have used the words "Heartland" and "mainstream" if they thought they could get away with it) of voters to pose questions to representatives of both the Republican and Democrat parties.

The questions, unsurprisingly, were as one-sided as the chosen "voters". The last one slickly asked how she, a working woman holding down three jobs, could be helped in health care coverage by Congress. The Democrat of course pushed raising the minimum wage and using the federal government as a negotiator for the umpteen million uninsured Americans. It almost looked like an SNL skit it was so comical and I'd have sworn it was staged if I didn't think GMA would be so blatant. The Republican just talked about saving the tax cuts, because as she rigthly pointed out, the Democrats have already indicated they want all those cuts and credits, many for middle income people, to go away. She didn't get to say much more, though, as the host cut her off.

This is what we get every election cycle. The same assinine questions posed the same trite way skewing the issues so that Left issues equal good and Right issues equal bad. It's not a wonder they're losing viewership and credibility by the month. Our mainstream networks act as propaganda arms for anyone who follows their line of bigger government, more taxes on anyone they deem "rich" (read: holding down a job) and more giveaways to their special interests. It amazes me that anyone buys this stuff after all these years.

On a different "already picked the horse" note, Mike Kole mentions on his site how the Indianapolis Star not only disregarded him in their "Voter's Guide", but every Libertarian candidate. Now there's no telling as to why, but my guess would be that the gods of the Star have in their wisdom already decided that since no third party has a chance in Hell of winning, they don't need to list them. The paper copy of the Star definitely left them out, but I see now they've got Mike and others on the online version. Ok, so either it was an oversight or they got enough negative feedback to make them clean up their mess. Either way, very shoddy work.

Please be courteous and provide feedback to the would-be overlords of the Star editorial board and remind them that it is the citizenry and not the media that controls the elections in this country. This behavior is nothing short of disgraceful. I would've expected such a tactic from Pravda back in the Soviet Communist Party's heyday, and not from a local paper allegedly providing accurate election coverage.

I hear Julia Carson is still chugging along in the 7th District. Probably the best editorial I've yet seen on her asks how she can be the helpless innocent soul when it comes to attack ads approved by her campaign wailing and even drawing first blood from her opponent Dickerson and in the next breath be the strongest Democratic politician in Indiana. Folks, she didn't get to be Jacobs' hand-picked successor for nothing. She was the iron-fisted tyrant of a Trustee in Marion County and has used it effectively over the years to roust the welfare rolls to get out in sufficient numbers to vote for her. Not that she needs it as much in the continuing to grow Democrat bastion of the 7th, but there it is nonetheless.

Most of my amusement has been in watching the major media outlets call the race weeks before it happens, but the true test of their prognosticative skills will be Tuesday. If what we already know of their current polling is taken into account, we don't really know what's going to happen on Election Day. Oversampling Democrats, not always polling likely voters, sampling heavily from urban and largely liberal districts all lead to incorrect or skewed polling data. The American electorate has never been more than minority self-described Democrat and is certainly not very liberal leaning. Still, expect the news media to push their canard for all its worth until the last poll booth closes. All the easier to suppress the vote in areas that are heavily contested.

Something to keep in mind is that rarely will you get the whole story and unfortunately it takes a lot of reading and a lot of research as well as being exposed to a lot of bipartisan BS before you can even begin to make sense of it. Still, if you're questioning what information you've been given and are trying ot sort the fact from fiction, perhaps just over your morning coffee, then you have a good chance of making some sense out of your vote on Tuesday.

2006-11-01T05:05:00.000-05:00

General Thoughts On The Election

Well, if you watch ABC or CBS, even CNN, it appears the election has already been decided and the Democrats apparently control both Houses already. There's already talk of Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid. I suppose a more paranoid person might call that "bias", but that's such an overused term these days.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the media telling me how the election will occur months before it happens, but I expect it. The Fourth Estate has made it clear, although they've been somewhat schizophrenic in their admission of it, that they will consistently side with the far left elements of the Democrat Party and if they have to sacrifice one or two of the pet liberal Republicans to do it, then so be it (that means you Chaffee and McCain).

Since I don't have them, I'll have to rely on other sources, likely just as biased, but a bit more open and obvious about their agenda. I'd advise you all do the same and take in a few of the left and right sites out there once in awhile. It's an eye opener no matter how you slice it.

For example, a popular topic seems to be that Libertarians will spoil the November election for many Republicans, even in more conservative areas. How dare the Libertarians, it is said, just handing the election to the more liberal Democrats. There's a point to that. It has happened before and it will likely happen again. The same happened on the left-leaning Democrat side of the aisle with the Greens. For the Republicans, I will only say this, if you had been half as conservative in your actions and your rhetoric as the Libertarians in the MidWest, you'd be worrying not one iota for your jobs come next week.

Sadly, the Libertarians have proven the far more conservative of the two between them and the majority of Republicans. When it comes to tax cuts, smaller more efficient government and things like "the Constitiution in exile", you'll find a lot more Libertarian candidates supporting it than Republicans. Well, I'm sure many Republicans and even some Democrats will tell you they're for such things, but their record doesn't bear it out. And it's insanely easy to get ahold of a voting record these days. Worse, the alternative is even more left-leaning nanny-state-loving and tax-friendly. So the dilemna, do you try and keep the devil you know or the devil you don't? Not much representation if you ask me.

I do have one thing still puzzling me about that, though. Why, if both Republicans and Democrats have to run right to get elected do we end up with so many damn left-leaning politicians? Politicians who believe the state should be running our lives from cradle to grave and who believe we should pay for the priviledge are the norm on Capitol Hill. How the hell did they get there? If the country is so ready and so enamored with the prospect of a Democrat Congress, why then are they all running to the far right of what they've been railing on about for the past two years? Because it's all a con job. Democrats and the antique media and even Republicrats can argue that the people want all this nanny state garbage, but read how they run if you want to know the real will of the American people. They'll only speak truth when they think they're among friends and if what they say is going to get a wide audience, then they all want to be the reincarnation of Barry Goldwater. What a joke, but then again, we all seem to vote for the jokes, don't we?

Then there's the whole trend lately of showing how "middle class mainstream Heartland voters" are all jumping ship and going to vote Democrat (LEFT) now that the Republican-controlled Congress and White House has disillusioned them somehow. I've had my suspicions that most were in left-controlled strongholds in said "red" states, and ABC proved it for me when they visited LaPorte for their latest piece. It's geographic and political ignorance to think that conservative-leaning states in general don't have bastions of liberal power. Indiana has Bloomington, Indianapolis and the ancient Democrat fortress of Northwest Indiana outside of Chicago. LaPorte is in that control zone. Republicans up there in general tend to be the old liberal Rockefeller-kind and not quite the hard-nosed conservatives you find in the northeast and north central parts of the state. So, finding people who don't like the President isn't too hard in such areas.

It's like going to Chihuahua, Mexico and asking the transients heading north if they're upset with the conservatives' stand on illegal immigration to the United States. Look, conservative leaning districts will likely vote conservative again and liberal districts will do the same. It all depends on who gets more people to the polls. Every unbiased survey for the last 30 years has shown the country in general to be almost evenly split between conservatives and liberals with a slightly larger "moderate" or "undecided" population. That hasn't changed. What changes from election to election is who has a better get-out-the-vote system and who has more money. That's all politics ever boils down to.

I can safely guarantee you this, though. Regardless of my feelings regarding this President and the areas I believe has has succeeded and the areas I believe he's failed, I wouldn't vote for a Leftist to replace him or sit in Congress ever or for any reason. Their agenda is to further erode and destroy the America I really want to protect. They want to drastically increase the withholding and hidden taxes to fund their pet socialist programs, which means even less money for us and our families, they want to grow the nanny state, let illegal immigrants in ahead of legal ones, strip the government of one of its most basic functions (defense) and give it a bunch of new ones never authorized it by the Constitution. Not to mention, you won't see another conservative Supreme Court justice for at least the next decade. Yeah, count me out on that agenda. The media has it about as right as a dime store horoscope can tell you your winning lotto numbers.

2006-10-31T23:00:00.000-05:00

And This Guy Was Almost President?

I still find it hard to believe that anyone voted for John Kerry after everything he did to lie about and demoralize the U.S. citizenry (and as a mild side amusement his former fellow soldiers) during the Vietnam War. I think the guy is a slimy opportunist that follows the leftist wind when it suits him. A "senator" like him could only survive and thrive in the same state that regularly reelects a criminal like Teddy Kennedy.

Is it any surprise, then, when he continues to say the same things, over and over in an attempt to portray U.S. soldiers as ignorant, hapless lower-class morons? It's unlikely you've been able to miss his latest foible, but I'll print it below.

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

The antique media is doing its level best to blow this off. The quote is damaging to their Chosen Few to say the least. Kerry, for his part, at first wouldn't apologize for the comment, and then when it became apparent that the right-wing bloggers weren't going to let it slide, he said he was "only referring to the President". That doesn't, however, fit the context of the rest of his speech.

Ok, if you stretch it, you can say he felt he didn't need to let anyone know he was referring to the President, because we should all be mind readers. Or you can take his comments as they are and in the context of the general loathing he's shown since "Winter Soldier" and before of men in uniform.

He's gone from resistance to feigned apology to imagined outrage in his defense, now blaming everyone else for being out to get him. Nixon anyone? Admit it, John. You said it. 'Fess up. It's not like Massachusetts citizens are going to think ill of you for it and vote you out. You're guaranteed your cushy job to keep pushing socialism on the rest of the United States, so why the outrage? And this "if you haven't been in a uniform you have not right to say anything" crap is just that, a big steaming pile. This country is not a military dictatorship and we don't have to serve in uniform to have a say in criticizing our elected officials, Republican or Democrat. Kerry's been reading too much Heinlein.

And this man knows as much about true soldiers as I know about brain surgery. I've heard of it, but I doubt I could reproduce it. Just because he served a couple of months in country on a boat, and under dubious clouds of performance at that, doesn't give him the right to lecture the rest of us on what we can and cannot criticize about him and his fellow Lefticrats.

Face it, the antique media isn't the only show in town anymore and the right isn't the only group that's going to get bashed when someone says something stupid. You just suck it up, admit you screwed the pooch and carry on. No free rides JFKerry.

2006-10-24T18:52:00.000-04:00

Must Be Election Season

I’ve written about stem-cell research and my thoughts on it before. My thought is, embryonic stem-cell research is a voodoo science at best designed to bilk money out of the only contributor it hasn’t yet scared away, government. It has produced no promising results. The actual tests done with embryonic stem cells have shown either no results or have shown horrible side effects like tumors and runaway growths. Still, the snake oil salesmen who’ve been peddling it have been able to add a whole cavalcade of celebrities to their carny show. The late Christopher Reeve and Michael J. Fox are likely the most prominent promoters of embryonic research. It’s sad that the hucksters trying to siphon off money have picked on the most desperate such as these celebrities with their sensational and to date un-provable claims of miracle cures.

The reason I mention it is because it’s election season and once again the Democrats have drug out the old carcass of embryonic stem-cell research as another crutch to their “Republicans are heartless” campaign. Yes, Republicans are heartless and Democrats are spineless and we are reminded of it every two years. However, issues like this one really get under my skin; partly because I detest junk science and partly because I hate bold-faced lies at election time.

The first to earn my ire has to be David Orentlicher, who fired the opening salvos in the local District 86 election for the state legislature. Even Matt Tully of the Indianapolis Star, a proponent of embryonic stem-cell dallying, even took umbrage with Orentlicher’s ads. From his column:

"There's nothing worse than turning your back on someone with Alzheimer's," the mailer reads, next to a picture of an old man with his old head buried sadly in his old hand. "Kathryn Densborn is the kind of extremist who opposes the stem cell research that could cure Alzheimer's disease."

You've probably heard about Orentlicher's other ad -- the one with a pretty but sick-looking thirtysomething woman on the cover and a sheet-covered corpse on the flip side.

"We could cure her," it reads. "But Kathryn Densborn opposes life-saving stem cell research."

The ad is boilerplate election-year garbage, but what really gets me about it is the fact that Orentlicher, a doctor mind you, doesn’t think anyone understands that there are promising and better-proven stem cell lines (adult and umbilical) that may actually cure or at least better treat the conditions the shysters have been claiming embryonic stem cells will cure. The major difference is with embryonic stem cells you have to destroy a fetus to get them. Adult and umbilical stem cell harvesting doesn’t require that anyone be killed for them. So either he’s not a very good doctor or he assumes you and I are sub-morons who can be easily duped with a little fancy medical jargon. Either way, you couldn’t pay me enough illegal campaign contributions from the Chinese Army (no matter how many Buddhist monks you sent) to want to vote for such a cretin.

Now, I’m not excusing Kathryn Densborn from that type of ad as well. She apparently has ads suggesting Orentlicher is soft on child abusers. Yes, yes, at election time everyone either coddles criminals, beats children or makes old people and the handicapped live on dog food with nothing but cardboard boxes for homes. You’d never guess this is the most prosperous nation in the world each even-year’ed November, but then again, positive ads don’t win elections.

But I digress. The other recent occurrence of this I’ve come across regards the Senate race in Missouri between Jim Talent and Claire McCaskill. Apparently, Senator Talent opposes a Missouri amendment on the ballot that would allow cloning, especially for the purpose of generating embryos to destroy for their stem cells. McCaskill has played it much like Orentlicher, claiming that Talent wants to leave old people to rot with their diseases and that he doesn’t care for the infirmed. My beef with her is, that’s not what the bill is even about! How moronic does she think Missouri voters are? What does that suggest to Missouri voters?

I mean, it isn’t as crass as the Democrats’ assumption that all blacks will vote for them simply by playing the race card every two years or the Republicans’ assumption that conservatives can be fooled with a few speeches on “limited government”, but it’s close. Needless to say, I do hope you all do your research this month before going to the polls, wherever you are and whatever your political persuasion. There’s no sense in falling pretty to last-month politicking, especially given the easily accessible news sources these days.

And should you choose to vote against them if you’re in McCaskill’s state or Orentlicher’s district, make sure you send them a personal letter mentioning this as one of the reasons why you chose to send them out to pasture. Like I always say, baby steps…

2006-10-18T07:17:00.000-04:00

Starve Washington D.C.

Want to cure a lot of political ills? Stop feeding the federal government. Do you want to get the money out of federal elections? Do you want real election reform? Shrink the federal budget. There, I’ve solved some of the biggest problems in the nation. Let me explain. No, that is too long, let me sum up (Points if you can name the actor and movie of that line).

With election season fast approaching we are being hit with every possible scandal that could possibly be dredged out and thrown at us. While the Left has the edge on mudslinging (it’s a natural gift, it would seem), the Right is firing back with its own water-enriched clay. Most of the scandals seem to revolve around money and undue influence on Congress. Congressmen from both sides of the aisle taking bribes, exhibiting unethical influence, fraudulently hiding “fast money” gains, and taking perks and favors from lobbyists fill our front page newspapers daily.

Do you know why? I already answered that one. Money. Congress controls trillions of dollars of spending power. Congress writes the laws that not only govern where that money will go, but who the federal government will collect it from. You will never be able to completely remove graft and corruption from the body, because even stripped it will need money to operate the necessities of federal government (defense, etc.). However, by vastly reducing the money in federal coffers, you remove the lion’s share of the corruption. It isn’t perfect, but it will at least work. Compared to attempts like the freedom-shackling McCain-Feingold boondoggle, it’s a heavenly gift.

One area that could easily see improvement is subsidies, for example. Stop subsidizing industry and agriculture. Give the money back to the states and the people. Industry and agriculture will survive or die on its own, but it will inevitably meet the needs of us Americans. People lose jobs, get laid off (I certainly have been) and businesses fail. Things inevitably get better, though. We have over 200 years of trial and error to prove that healthy competition without government meddling works. We don’t need to subsidize every industry that thinks it needs our money to stay afloat, though. That alone should put a tremendous amount of lobbyists out of a job, another group we’re subsidizing, by the way.

Foreign aid is another major drain on our economy. I see strategic reasons for aiding certain countries in reasons where we have a vested interest. Giving aid to countries that are ripped apart by civil war or whose leaders are corrupt or tyrannical (Hey ex-Pres Clinton, did you know that Kim Jong-Il was a dictator who intentionally starved his own people when you gave him those nuclear reactors and oil?) The Marshall Plan has been demonstrably proven to have stunted several countries’ economic recovery. While it might’ve been a short stop-gap to keep communists from overrunning those countries, it didn’t gain us as much as we put into it. And any country that you can regularly hear “Death to America” chanted out in the streets loses cash. Sorry Egypt. Although I understood the reason for going into Iraq (ultimately a giant U.N. fiasco), I’m not crazy about all the money we’ve put into a country rich in its own natural resources. I don’t care for that at all. Most of that money could’ve gone back to the U.S. taxpayer and been better spent here.

And while we’re on the topic of the U.N., not only could it be moved to Caracas, where Hugo Chavez wants it, but we can stop paying dues. There’s some more savings and a nice shrinkage in the federal budget. I will miss, though, getting to see John Bolton tell U.N. diplomats where they can stick the top few floors.

Welfare, Medicaid and Medicare along with Social Security are the giant hidden tax we all pay. Actually, it’s not that hidden. Look at the FICA listing on your paycheck. That’s part of what you’re paying for those very ill-conceived programs. Again, these programs have arguably and drastically increased the cost of health care to levels unheard of. They have conned a bunch of the populace into thinking the federal government needs to be their safety net and they keep Democrats and liberal Republicans elected. I see no advantage to it. Unfortunately for us, there’s no way to wean the current generation off of it. They will die still on it and there’s little we can do to stop that. We will likely end up paying for the mistakes of the 60’s for a very long time or until the Baby Boomer retirement cripples the U.S. economy by draining it to pay for their retirement. Joy for me, I’ll be around to see it.

Well, that’s a quick brainstorm of what could be done to help keep Washington honest, to drain the proverbial swamp. Simple ideas are sometimes the best ones. No nuance is needed to understand that the federal government is not the one the Framers of the Constitution intended it to be. Although many on the Left would argue that’s a good thing, I challenge them to show me how states and individuals couldn’t do better than the massive failure that is our federal bureaucracy. Come on. I dare you. For everyone else, keep these things in mind when you consider who to send back to Congress this November. No one is making a secret of what they’ll do once they get there in regards to your money. Guaranteed.

2006-10-17T07:09:00.000-04:00

A Rare Voice In The Wilderness

Patrick Hynes and Jeremy Lott had an editorial in USA Today's blog section that relates well to some of the pieces I’ve written lately. I highly recommend giving it a read. One of the more interesting aspects of the editorial was the framing of how the religious right portion of the Right has been assaulted in an attempt to hamstring their arguments. To actually argue from a point they might be willing to argue is seen as incomprehensible to figures on the Left. They explain:

In a recent monograph, former senator and Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart claimed to know exactly what "today's religious right has in mind." They want to "return America to a pre-Enlightenment age, an age in which the church, in this case in the form of one wing of evangelical Protestantism, dictates terms to the political process and sets the boundaries of what can and cannot be legislated and regulated by the state."

This sort of suspicion and insinuation makes it all the more difficult for the pious to participate in politics. Worse, critics such as Dartmouth College's Lucas Swaine, an assistant professor of government, have demanded that Christians not frame their arguments with reference to the Bible, a book that millions of Americans believe to be the inspired word of God, because that wouldn't square with "public reason." And any pronouncements on "values" are treated with scorn, at best.

Both men also argue that religious conservatives are “demonized”, if you’ll pardon the pun and charged with all sorts of nefarious motives while the religious left is embraced and celebrated. This despite the religious left doing exactly what the religious right is often accused of, trying to frame election issues in religious terms.
Consider, for example, the “What Would Jesus Drive” campaign or their noting of Alabama Governor Bob Riley’s attempts to create a large progressive tax system on the wealthy in his state to help fund “projects for the poor” and his enlistment of the religious left to help sell it.

It is easily demonstrable that anytime you have elements of the (admittedly small) religious left propose a policy issue or endorse a certain left-leaning issue, they are vaulted to the forefront of that debate and cited as an unassailable authority. The same can never be said of how the religious right is treated. It has been abused, bruised, battered, ridiculed and ignored.

I would ask the same people that argued in favor of Reverend Jim Wallis’ strong suggestion that national and state taxation should follow “God’s vision of a good society” and soak the rich (usually including the middle class) to fund government programs to serve the poor if they favor equal time or support to the religious right (at least to be heard) in their attempt to retain religious morality in government and schools. The answer would likely be no, but then when has hypocrisy been out of bounds for the Left?

I’m not advocating that the religious left has anything less to offer to the national debate than the religious right. I would just like to see that in action, and I doubt I ever will. Fundamentally, it comes down to this. The Left and the large bloc of media they control will use any argument to flavor their cause célèbre and the religious left provides a decidedly juicy vehicle to deliver that argument. I’m not saying that the Right doesn’t do the same. I’m just saying they’re not treated fairly and it would help when you see such an argument if you consider that. It’s all a smoke and mirrors game anyway. I say bring a fan and a sledgehammer and you might see things a tad more clearly.

2006-10-16T07:08:00.000-04:00

With Deep Reservations...

That's how the Indianapolis Star describes its endorsement of another term for the Democrat 7th District Representative, Julia Carson. The list this year was not very impressive and the Star's motives for choosing some of its annointed candidates was even more muddled than in past years. However, their reasoning for backing Carson seems to be that they don't like that her opponent, Eric Dickerson, lied to them.

Carson's response was described thusly.

During an hour-long interview with The Star's Editorial Board, Carson frequently rambled and was disjointed in her responses to questions.

Carson should have planned to retire from Congress at the end of the current term. Her decision to seek another two years in office deprived voters of the opportunity to choose from several potential successors who could have provided dynamic leadership for this urban district.

Rep. Carson is in poor health and as the Star rightly noted she shouldn't even be running again. Her frequent absence for key votes in Congress is well-documented and her ability to serve her constituents has degraded significantly over the years. At the very least, she should have stepped down so a capable Democrat could have run and actually given her constituents something resembling a choice.

That of course is not to say that I would consider any Democrat successor of Carson better. Carson is a hard core socialist and apparently her predecessor Andy Jacobs Jr. was a (not-so) closet socialist himself. The odds of the next Democrat being the same or worse are good to damn near certain.

Although I can't say I'm as impressed with Mr. Dickerson either, Carson has had some extremely credible opponents in the past and STILL the Star has endorsed her. When Andy Horning, likely one of the most articulate and knowledgable men on issues of the day and regarding the Constitution ran against her, the Star and the rest of the Republican apparatus seemed to abandon him thinking that apparently no one in the Old Center would vote for (even a local) white boy. Marvin Scott, another credible Republican opponent and a man who truly tried to reach out to the voters was equally hung out to dry.

What is with this woman that makes even moderates so unwilling to stand against her? The woman is an unapologetic leftist and formerly wielded control of the Indy district (going back to her time as County Trustee) with an iron fist. She is a prime example of a Representative who not only thinks the law doesn't apply to her, but who sees the law as a malleable structure that can be molded and reformed to fit her leftist agenda.

If this is the kind of candidate the Star and for that matter the Republicans think is qualified to sit in Congress and possibly to be part of a new majority, then there is little hope for our Constitution or what's left of its framework in defining our government. As we strive and struggle to bring to the forefront conservative politicians who want small, limited government and greater individual freedom and responsibility, we are cut off at the knees by out-of-touch journalistic types like the Star and old-Guard parties like the Democrats and Republicans who can't seem to make up their mind about much other than how many of our freedoms to take away and how much they're going to charge us for the priviledge.

The Star, frankly, disgusts me when it makes such an assinine and irresponsible choice and the Republicans who are complicit in her previous and current election bids are equally not worthy of our praise, our money, or even our consideration.

There are forthright men and women out there who seek to limit government and to make it more responsive to its citizens. They seek to return power to the states and shrink the federal juggernaut and they want to see your personal liberties and responsibilities in our society protected and enshrined. We need to give these people our support and our praise and we need to give the likes of the Indianapolis Star's editorial board, the Democrats and Ms. Carson's campaign, the complicit Republicans and the rest of the old Guard a swift boot up the rear and a shove off the train.

2006-10-12T21:59:00.000-04:00

Losing Their Religion

Couldn't help the title. The New York Times, always the far-Left trendsetter, has fired a big out-in-the-open salvo against religion in the United States. Julia A. Seymour and Amy Menefee write a brilliant critique of it in the above-cited link and I do not presume to able to improve on what they have already written.

I'd actually like to address, though, the coordinated and unrelenting nature of this, just one of the more open attacks on organized religion, specifically Christianity. For whatever their reasons, many on the Left look upon organized religion and most notably Christianity as no longer relevant in the modern world. To them, it is an archaic institution that tries to stifle social advancement and expression on the one hand while reminding us of an intolerant and dark past on the other.

Ask many to speak on Christianity frankly and they will speak of Inquisitions, forced conversions, colonialism, Creationism, and just about anything negative the Church can be remotely tied to in history. The popular ones are "silent consent of the Slave Trade" and Vatican inaction during the Nazi occupation of Europe. Your typical writer and editor for the New York Times will fit neatly into this category, and I don't even have to stretch to suggest that.

Setting aside that the last two points are popular "historical" fallacies of the Left, there is no denying that the Church often dabbled too much on the secular side, especially after it gained power following the fall of the Roman Empire. Some might argue (myself included) that these points have been overemphasized versus all the good that Christianity has accomplished and still accomplishes to this day. This promotion of a negative legacy and the consistent teaching of it over other aspects of Christianity were merely the first steps in an overall plan to eliminate Christianity from the bulk of American society. What I'm talking about doesn't even reach wide-eyed conspiracy theory proportions. It's simply historical fact.

Since the Renaissance, there has always been an effort to redefine morality and to divine its true nature. Who's morality applies? Who is to say what is moral and what is not? While the philosophers of that day worked within the framework of the Christian God to work out their moral puzzles, in the last century there was an increasing trend to define morality without the troublesome framework of a deity.

This has evolved through primarily Marxist thought and walked hand in hand with the development of communist totalitarianism and national socialism during the early part of the 20th Century. Whenever confronted with the idea of trying to replace the Christian God, many of the great Leftist thinkers of that age (and even today) were forced to come up with an equally (to them) powerful force that could replace that God, but be moldable to their desired needs and social agendas.

The State provided perhaps the best vessel for this need and the worst regimes of the 20th Century bear witness to the true evil that can be bred by putting all faith and moral power into its hands. Nazi Germany, usually falsely declared Christian, was a state-worship socialist society with Hitler as its Godhead. The U.S.S.R. had the Communist Party with occasional anti-Christ figures like Stalin to guide its people. China had Mao as its anti-Christ and his legacy is a death toll that stretches to an estimated 100 million plus lives. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia with their over 3 million dead through the 60's and 70's are almost a sideshow compared to the damage those philosophies caused elsewhere, though no less tragic.

With this history, and perhaps it is truly our own ignorance that allows it to fester, there is still a determined effort by many on the Left that such a philosophy can be made to work here and throughout the West if only the right people are in charge and making the laws. True angels of light, it is assumed, and many of those same leaders on the Left undoubtedly see themselves as such, can shape and form a more benevolent society that cares for all its people from cradle to grave, more than any Christian God ever could.

Enter the Church and organized Christianity. Although other religions exist and thrive in the United States, it is from the Judeo-Christian tradition that our culture attained its moral compass and on which our original society was built. I find that a difficult point to argue. Unfortunately for the Left in the West, it doesn't have the tools that Mao, Hitler and Stalin had. It cannot forcibly close churches and imprison priests and reverends, well, not yet at least. The Left must resort to other forms of attack on religious institutions and we see them daily.

The pedophile homosexual priest scandals rocked the Catholic Church, arguably one of the strongest world Christian institutions. Whatever possessed leaders of the Church to hide these criminals will haunt them until they have to answer for it in the afterlife, but to blame the whole Church seems rather scurrilous. Any scandal that arises which has at its base some figure of Christianity is pounced upon by the Left and trumpeted for all the world to see by a media whose editors and reporters largely subscribe to the philosophy of the Left.

Certainly, the major spread in the Times fits into this framework combining two of its favorite things: taxes and religion-bashing. Part of the philosophy of the Left is that taxes are good because they allow the State/god to take care of its minions. Organized religion flies in the face of this by enjoying tax-free status in most areas and freedom from most regulations. Would that the rest of us were so lucky.

But that is not the argument in this case. The argument is that we are "owed" what the churches are stealing from us in the form of money we can't take from them. Those immune from the Left's desire to redistribute income are the enemy and churches are the worst of all. Imagine a group whose goal is to reshape society in their own image rather than the one using the foundation of Judeo-Christian religion. How are they any better? Is not their own argument useful against them?

I've often heard it argued by those who oppose organized religion that they do not wish to be governed by someone else's morality. In the very next breath, though, they often talk about how society should be through the eyes of their own personal morality. How is that any different? Well, it's a lot different if you think along the lines of the Left, which sees their overall philosophy as their god and themselves as the enlightened demi-gods of that new religion. Call it socialism or secular humanism or naturalism. Whatever.

The attempt to redefine morality from the Baby Boomers through the current generation has been a disaster and has led to a society where violence and what was once considered immorality run amuck. Society breaks down as the structures of the Left meant to replace the Church fail. Like mad captains of a ship fast sinking, though, they will not admit defeat. A little more tar will seal the hole and we must throw our life preservers overboard to reduce weight. More money and less adherence to the morality of old is demanded as payment for seeing the true fruition of their grand vision of a New Morality.

Thanks, but I'll stick with that tried and true old morality. It may not be perfect, but it is a morality that values individual liberty, personal responsibility, humility and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you and it sounds a lot more appealing than the alternative being thrust upon us by the likes of the Left. I think you can count me in the column of those who think the churches are more necessary than ever and also in the column of allowing them to keep their favored status. If anything, I think the rest of us should enjoy that status to a great degree as well. There's an idea for a Great New Society.

2006-10-11T08:51:00.000-04:00

Random Thoughts

There's a great review of an anti gun-rights article at Newsbusters today by Howard Nemerov. What makes it unique is that the writer is a woman struggling with the decision on whether or not she should carry a handgun for self-protection. The shoddy reasoning of the anti gun-rights activist she cites is well countered by Nemerov, and he does a fine analysis of why her decision, ultimately, to stick by her fists and loud scream as her best defense may not have been the best choice, or at least a choice arrived at through faulty reasoning. Interesting how a woman's right to "choose" at least according to the general "reasoning" of the Left is limited only to whether or not she can terminate a pregnancy, but not how she should protect herself.

Robert Spencer's new book, The Truth About Mohammed, is available on Amazon. The writer of the Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam covers new ground and quite well in this latest work. Be sure to check out the reviews for an interesting mix of leftist apologism, unreasoning criticism and the occasional honest assessment. Some are even amusing. There are, of course, any number of books you could read to try and learn a bit about the man who started the religion that has over a billion followers in the world. It's difficult with such a charged topic, though, to find works that are of much quality. I would hold this one up as one that is.

No one else wants to talk about it, certainly not on the TV news or in the papers and Spencer has, by his own admission, received numerous death threats for his attempt to discuss it. Do the man a favor and read what's put him in the same category as Salman Rushdie and others who have tried to expose the face of "modern" Islam.

YouTube just can't get enough of censoring anyone who isn't way Left of center. First they banned Michelle Malkin altogether, and now their site has put a restriction on the viewing of David Zucker's latest spoof of Clinton and his former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright. One would think if the vast number of Bush parodies can so easily be accessed, it would be only fair if others were so conveniently accessed. But being as they were purchased recently by Google, YouTube likely wanted to keep in the good graces, and in the tradition of its new parent company and censor political views it doesn't like.

On a side note, Google itself certainly doesn't have a problem with censorship. Look how it's so willingly played Useful Idiot to the Chinese attempt to censor news from their own population.

Probably one of the funniest items I've seen so far this week is NBC's back and forth banter before one of Bush's speeches where the talking heads actually claimed that Bush had "ruined" all the work Clinton and Albright had done with North Korea. Take this amusing quote from NBC heavyweight Andrea Mitchell.

You know Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright were progressing in October and November of 2000 towards the restoration of diplomatic relations and if the Democrats had won that election that probably would've happened. Colin Powell recommended very strongly as the new Secretary of State in 2001 that, that policy be pursued. But it was cut short in March of 2001 by President Bush, overruling his new Secretary of State, some people said, cutting him off at the knees.

Yes, all communist dictators, especially Korean ones, have a longstanding reputation for keeping their word and honoring international agreements. That dastardly Bush always has to force people to be evil when all they really want to be is a good Leftist who can be a "man we can do business with". This is bad comedy. That such major journalists are so naive about the intentions of cutthroat killers, bandits and petty tin-pot tyrants is not only telling about the state of the antique media, but a sad reminder of what spews daily across our TV airwaves to those who don't take the time or have the common sense to understand such evil.

Lastly, Jawa has a whole slew of statistics on why you (don't) want Nancy Pelosi as your next Speaker of the House. Enjoy.

2006-10-09T20:48:00.000-04:00

Welcome To The World

I've spent the last few days listening to talking heads on the radio and TV, reading editorials and perusing several internet news and blog sites. In rare instances, I find someone from the political left who, although he differs with his conservative counterparts on a number of issues, agrees it's a brave new world out there and just about everyone is looking to take a shot at Number One (currently the U.S.).

The majority, however, from the lowly left-leaning blogger to the editorial columnist to the DNC Chair to members of Congress seem to want to live in the wonderful fantasy land that is the U.S in a bubble. Let's examine the cause and effect.

If you operate from the position that everything the U.S. does (especially on the international scene) is inherently bad or evil, you have to make several other assumptions. First, you have to assume that all other countries are just out there trying to survive amid U.S. global hegemony. You also have to assume that they somehow exist as restive provinces under the yoke of American military and economic might. This is the view of the average neo-Marxist these days. These countries, you see, can easily be forgiven their "hate America" or at least "hate conservative America" attitudes because of all the injustices America has leveled on them. Oppression flows from the United States and therefore the rest of the world is just a bunch of happy cultures trying to survive in its wake.

That is boilerplate philosophy for any Democratic Underground reader or most Kos diarists. It also exhibits a naivete about the world and its history. To accept much of this, you first have to believe that nothing happened in the world prior to the U.S. becoming a superpower. You also have to believe that all other superpowers, like the late U.S.S.R., were just responding and counter-moving to American moves. There is a complete breakdown in this logic when one realizes that all these regimes, especially the inherently fascist and communist regimes, have their own agendas and goals detrimental to their neighbors and even their own people. There is also a failure in that logic when one realizes that most of these same states view countries like the United States as the chief impediment to the implementation of their petty schemes.

Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, the Chinese politburo, Ahmadinejad, Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi, even the likes of Vladimir Putin all have aspirations that are independent of the fact that there is a United States of America in the world. If the U.S. didn't exist, something seemingly wished for by many on the Left, these countries would still pursue (perhaps more successfully) their agendas and still seek to do things detrimental to their neighbors and perhaps even their own people. Oppression, they say, starts at home.

Keep such things in mind as the talking heads discuss the big issues, like the North Korean nuclear test, this week. No matter what is said, North Korea didn't attempt a nuclear test because they felt threatened by the United States or because we didn't pay them enough from their attempted extortion. They attempted the test because they want a little independence from the only country they're really dependent on, China, and because they wish to bully and dominate the other Pacific Rim nations, most especially South Korea and Japan. A surging China and a nuclear-armed mini-me are enough to cause an arms race in East Asia with the United States supporting Japan and South Korea as China, North Korea and Russia make their plays for regional dominance in this new economic hot zone.

These are just thoughts to keep in mind as you're flipping between the networks, CNN, MSNBC and Fox. Just remember, it's a big world out there and the U.S. is only one player, not the sole player.

2006-10-04T22:07:00.000-04:00

NPR For Dummies

Just when you hope for at least one reasoned outlet in the political discourse, along comes the most faux-intellectual of them to remind you that there is no such thing. NPR's weekend game show, "Whad'Ya Know" interviewed New York Times columnist Frank Rich on his new anti-Bush book, "The Greatest Story Ever Sold on Earth." Between Rich and the host of the show, Michael Feldman, the discourse went from bad comedy to freakish delusion.

I occasionally like to get a true glimpse of what the other camp believes, and this show played that out in spades. Take for example, one of Feldman's openers.

"Also, that 'Islamofascism' thing they keep saying, which is so annoying, first of all because none of these governments are fascist, really. But the government is acting in a way which is quite fascistic, really, because it’s corporate, it’s authoritarian, it’s you know, it’s anti-liberal. That’s the definition of fascism, but they’re using this, this is a phrase they’ve decided to use."

Although many would likely take the learned and scholarly Feldman at his word, I decided to go to that dusty old dictionary for the definition of fascism. Call me old fashioned. What I found was...

a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

Although the paranoid fantasies of the left might hold that this does in fact represent our current government and some tin pot dictatorships the U.S. might support, I think for those of us not high on mescaline at the moment, well perhaps even those people, the U.S. doesn't easily fall into the above definition. Certainly the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the former government of Iraq (which I'll give them credit for half-mentioning), the current government (and most definitely the leader) of Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Pakistan all easily meet that definition. Jordan might be a little lighter and Lebanon I'd say not really. However, controlled economies, tyrannical rulers, and lack of any freedoms whatsover are stereotypical of what you would find in the Middle East and I think you would find.

Fascism is not a new phenomenon to the Middle East either. The fascists controlled the officer corps of the native armies during WWII. Most had to be jailed by the British for fear that they would side with the Nazis and possibly plot a coup. After the war, surviving Nazis, including Otto Skorzeny, better known as Hitler's favorite commando, trained the first PLO terrorist groups. The Baath party in Syria and Iraq is textbook fascist and is described as such by just about anyone to the right politically of Mao.

And our government is authoritarian? Someone needs to start taking their anti-depressants again. That or they really need to reinstate butterfly-net asylums. And regimenting and controlling the economy? That's another knee slapper. If anything, the Left side of the aisle has been instrumental in their attempts to control and convert the economy over to socialism. You literally have to stand in awe of such brazen ignorance.

The rest of the commentary was just as assinine. If you really must, Newsbusters has compiled the jist of it. One has to wonder if these two are saying such things for comedic value or if they actually believe them. Regrettably and from past experience, I believe they do.

And here's the kicker. These represent the cream of the Left. A Times columnist and although only a game show host, an NPR game show host. My final comment on them is, thank God they're on the Left's side.

2006-10-03T18:35:00.000-04:00

As Common As Hen's Teeth

You must understand my surprise when I noticed on RightWingNews that the infamous Markos Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos and a legend in his own mind, wrote an editorial on The Case for the Libertarian Democrat. Now I know many of you are thinking "Libertarian + Democrat?" and wondering how oil and water are supposed to mix. I wondered that myself as I read Markos' editorial at cato-unbound.

Like many such editorials or blog posts, it is an extremely lengthy and heavily-reasoned editorial that rests on many a shaky principle. Of course, you can derive all sorts of conclusions if you're willing to accept pliant or fraudulent facts as your base.

Kos makes the first generalization by assuming there are major "swaths" of America that are just Democrats who want a little individual freedom. His definition of those individual freedoms compared to most, though, reads like a traditional Democrat.

Like me, these were people who didn’t instinctively reject the ability of government to protect our personal liberties, who saw government as a good, not an evil, but didn’t necessarily see the government as the source of first resort when seeking solutions to problems facing our country. They also saw the markets as a good, not an evil, but didn’t necessarily see an unregulated market run amok as a positive thing. Some of these were reluctant Republicans, seeking an excuse to abandon a party that has failed them. Others were reluctant Democrats, looking for a reason to fully embrace their party. And still others were stuck in the middle, despairing at their options—despondent at a two-party system in which both parties were committed to Big Government principles.

That's a liberal, not a libertarian, but Kos has that answered also. Although he does have a good write-up of where Libertarians stand, especially next to conservatives, he veers wildly, but with assuredness that he's 100% on target.

The fundamental reason that "libertarian" has become "libertarian democrat" is that corporations are becoming more powerful than governments. This fundamental fact has created a union between those with libertarian tendencies and those with those who believed all along that government can be a force for good.

And this is where he completely jumps the tracks. The standard take by most on the Left is that corporations are untamed and evil behemoths and only a benevolent and (Left-leaning) socialist-style government can tame them. That is nowhere near a libertarian philosophy. Until Kos' editorial, this was called being a "progressive". Changing the name time and again doesn't change the fact that it's still a Leftist philosophy. Libertarians, real ones, abhor the idea of government intervening to control the economy (and make no mistake, when they say corporations, small businesses have historically found themselves lumped in with the evil greedy corporations every time. Just check out the mostly Democratic-generated tax code.

He can't stop there, though. He needs some more bent and warped cards for the increasingly unstable house of a premise he is building. Consider:

As hekebolos further noted, defense contractors now have greater say in what weapons systems get built (via their lobbyists, blackmailing elected officials by claiming that jobs will be lost in their states and districts if weapons system X gets axed). The energy industry dominates the executive branch and has reaped record windfall profits. Our public debt is now held increasingly by private hedge funds. Corporations foul our air and water. They plunder our treasury.

Defense contractors have profited ever since our war machine geared up before World War II. They have continued to profit despite brief lulls in the late 40's, early 60's and early 90's. Given current United States military philosophy, defense contractors are going to make money. There's no way around it. Now, the obvious answer by the Kossacks is that these contractors are manipulating the government to keep their profits high through their lobbies. The lobbies didn't send us to war, didn't cause the rise of the Soviet war machine and didn't spark Islamofascists no matter which ancient Marxist is spouting off at the podium. Should they be watched carefully because of all the cash involved? Absolutely. Should they be shut out of figuring which avenues of weapon research are the best to choose over a Congressman who knows ZERO about most defense systems? That's just naive and a bit unrealistic. Money for defense (or offense) is a necessary evil, but one that fills a basic need of government, to protect its citizenry.

Then there's the energy industry. The petroleum industry is another one of those 800 pound gorillas. Kos' "progressives" are as much to thank for them as any. By decrying attempts to escape some of the dependence by at least generating electricity with something other than oil and natural gas fired plants like nuclear energy, were and much of the world are more dependent than ever. These same energy companies, knowing they don't have a limitless supply of oil, funnel those very profits back into energy research development. But no, obviously the "libertarian Democrat", read progressive answer is to tax them. That's the only language they really understand. Nothing new and exciting about that, but you won't get Markos to admit it.

Public debt is because of runaway spending by both Republicans and Democrats who have no fiscal control, acting like hormone-OD'ed teenagers, their self control is equal to that of the average dog in heat. The Republicans and Democrats who have spent us out of house and home, created social program after social program, failed in reforming education, welfare, Medicare/Medicaid and "social security" by funding and expanding them are not conseravtive or libertarian in their leaning. They're liberals. Perhaps they are well-meaning liberals, but they are liberals all the same.

The "foul our air and water" line is quite telling itself. Radical environmentalists like to see any corporation suffer, and the eleventh and a half hour Clinton regs were designed to do just that, punish corporations and cost them a bundle by going beyond already draconian restrictions on certain toxins in the air and water. The regs often, of course, ignore that natural concentrations of such toxins are in the air and water, but let's not cloud such an impassioned debate with trivial facts.

Quoting the above "hekebolos" blogger, Kos mentions

and government is the only thing that can stop them from recklessly exploiting the people and destroying their freedom.

to make the point

That, in essence, is why I am a Democrat

Could it be any more clear? Yes, you are a regular Democrat Markos, one of the new and cooky Left in the country who think they can coopt others who don't share their beliefs by throwing a few false facts, incorrect assumptions and the occasional flat-out lie into a pretty speech. Clinton used to use the same tactic, and well, he still does today.

The only thing that can stop anything, governments, corporations, NGO's, from exploiting the people and destroying our freedom, is the people. THAT's what it means to be a libertarian and even to be a conservative and I'll guarantee you that Markos not only knows that, he knows he can't sell his own "progressive" line on its own merit, so he's come over to coopt names and some basic slogans of the other side to redress his pig and try to whore her out again.

Suffice it to say, although he notes some parts of the free market work, they're only in his priceless bastion of Leftists, silicon valley, to him the only true bastion of "equality" left. What he fails again to realize is that his own example demolishes his whole theory. The free market works whether its in Silicon Valley or Los Angeles or Cleveland. It just works and we have more proof than you could ever hope to discount in 1000 editorials.

Lastly, to make his case for the "libertarian Democrat" (it really turns my stomach to write that), he cites all the vast local victories and some threatening Congressional races that Democrats have made as examples of his "new New Democrats". Or is that newer...anyway. Totally discounting that there are many other and obvious reasons Democrats and Republicans are fighting it out over a variety of seats in "swing" states, even states with fairly conservative populations, local elections are never a telling factor for national elections.

I offer this basic example. Indiana, arguably one of the most conservative of the conservative states, just spent the last 16 years with Democrat governors and often had a Democrat-controlled legislature. Yet, its Congressional caucus has been overwhelmingly Republican and the Democrat Senator it does have owes much of his career to lip service to conservatism and the fact that his daddy was a Senator as well. Who is in the governor's mansion or in the legislature or even in the Senate rarely is a predictor of how a people will vote for Congress or how a state will vote for President. It's just not a truism.

To sum up, Markos is certainly the darling of the far Left because he continually comes up with great, if ridiculous, theories to explain how the Democrats will rise again. Everyone loves a fairy tale, and the best fairy tales are often told by the truly unhinged.

2006-10-02T18:14:00.000-04:00

Faith Is Not A Political Weapon

Although faith and religion are a part of my life, I normally don’t write about them. Although I have stated in the past that morality is a big part of my political thinking, I don’t try to use religion to explain why someone should be of a certain political leaning. I occasionally find that same ethic to have failed among members of the Left. Despite a desire not to be proselytized to by the likes of me, there seems to be an almost eagerness to do the same to prove the “correctness” of their cause.

What’s got me worked up this week is a review by Newsweek editor John Meacham in the Washington Post of a newbook by Obery Hendricks, Jr., The Politics of Jesus. Although I have not read it, the review gives a fairly good idea of what it’s about. The sickeningly sweet review by Meacham is bad enough.

The Politics of Jesus joins John Danforth's Faith and Politics and Jim Wallis's God's Politics as essential reading for Americans trying to move beyond the corrosive standoff between the religious right and the secular left. One need not agree with Hendricks's liberalism to appreciate that his book is a useful contribution to a conversation that seems ever more urgent: how to manage and marshal religion's influence over our public lives.

I’ve rarely heard the philosophical and theological battles between the “religious right” and “secular left” described as “corrosive”. How they’re corrosive is a good question, but hardly an original one when considering the source. The belief by many on the Left that Jesus at best should be left in the realm of an obscure historical figure and at worst should be co-opted to the Liberal agenda defies their logic that “conservatives are obsessed with Jesus”. On the contrary, such works seem to indicate that it is the Left that is obsessed with deconstructing Christ and his impact on our lives through our faith and our religion.

Christ’s message was one of forgiveness, love and respect for all mankind. He cared nothing for the politics of the time. In fact, it could be argued that one of the things that most angered the leaders of the various sects of Judaism at the time was that Christ was not political. “They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.” couldn’t say it more plainly (that's Matthew's version from the KJB).

Jesus could not be described as a “political revolutionary”. His was a revolution of the spirit and our redemption of same. It is often perverted by a figure on the Left to indicate that the established order and what have become conservative principles are at odds with His message. I’ve seen Jesus invoked for everything from gun control to welfare. Take Meacham’s own words from his review as the latest example.

To practice the politics of Jesus means practicing humility, an exercise that might well begin by bearing this story from the gospel of Mark in mind: The disciples had been traveling to meet Jesus, debating among themselves "who should be the greatest" -- a classically political undertaking. Learning of the bickering, Jesus would have none of it, saying: "If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all." And so may our politics, whether connected to the examples and words of Jesus or of Plato or of Machiavelli, be informed by charity and grace, not by self-righteousness. Then, and only then, will we come close, I think, to anything like "the politics of Jesus."

I think it would be hard to miss that Jesus is saying that the truly great among us are those that care most for our fellow man. Those who serve, unquestioningly and without expectation of accolade or reward are the best of us. Note, though, that Meacham, as many on the Left do, believes that charity and grace can be achieved through government. Meacham’s tacit endorsement of this practice, that the Leftist principles of income redistribution are the same as Christian charity, smack of someone who completely doesn’t get it. Christ did not say “Pick from the pocket of the man next to you to give to the needy” or “If a man will not give, hold a sword to him and threaten his life and family until he does”. How is that “redemption”? How is that becoming a better person? Where in any part of the New Testament is that recommended? It cannot be found. You cannot find salvation by being forced to “be good”. You can only choose to be good. Otherwise, what is Free Will?

Being good, by the way, does not entail taking someone else’s money and then redistributing it to your idea of charity or pet project. That’s called thievery and trying to play Robin Hood doesn’t make you closer to God. It just means you’d rather spend someone else’s money than your own; not very Christian, if you ask me. Nor is it very Christian to try and denigrate the political leanings of others by informing them that they’re violating the tenets of their faith, when you haven’t the slightest idea of what it truly means to have that faith. I don’t expect them to understand that, but for once I’d like to see someone call them on it. That, perhaps, more than anything is why I chose this rare occasion to discuss faith, religion and politics and why they don’t always combine together very well.

Hat tip to Newsbusters for the story.

2006-09-28T06:35:00.000-04:00

“You Think You’re So Clever…”

Everybody else has weighed in on the Clinton blow-up in his Sunday interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News, so why not me? Well, although I think it’s received exhaustive coverage elsewhere, what are a few more sentences driving the point home, right?

I certainly can say this. I feel vindicated. College sort of breeds a distrust for authority (reinforced by most professors). Governmental authority, specifically, is looked upon negatively. Interestingly, the professors never seemed to include themselves. Perhaps they should’ve. With George HW Bush, I found myself looking at a near Rockefeller Republican, an old New England liberal, trying to play at being conservative. He failed, but he also failed to convince the liberals he was one of them. Perhaps the Gulf War didn’t help. I didn’t like his endorsement of taxes and his social agenda left much to be desired. I found no shortage of support in my discontent with his Presidency on campus. When Clinton took office, though, that discontent vanished. Everyone acted as if we were living in Camelot.

Within a year or two, the “New Democrat” from Arkansas proved to be more liberal than any New England Democrat could have hoped to be. He also proved to be more lacking in ethics or ability to efficiently run government and hopelessly corrupt regarding monetary contributions and the running of the White House. Not a peep echoed from the hallowed halls of academia that I walked. The only opposition voice I heard was mine. The same people who were telling me to “Question Authority” one minute were praising our great new President the next. Didn’t seem right then and it still doesn’t.

With people of quantifiable integrity like Barbara Olsen and Gary Aldrich weighing in on the Clinton White House and the real scandalous behavior, the travesty he had made of the office, and the utter failure in foreign policy, I found it impossible to understand why the mainstream media of the day wasn’t putting these stories up nightly. Clinton was so protected from any negative press, it was ridiculous. He didn’t get hard questions, not about his foreign and domestic policies. Only when the cheap and tawdry scandal of sex with an intern was broached, something no media pundit worth his Harvard diploma could ignore, were questions asked, and then they STILL ignored his failed foreign policy.

His domestic policy didn’t help either. Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, Mogadishu, the first WTC bombing, Khobar Towers, the Tanzania and Kenya embassy bombings, the Chinese Army/Intel campaign contributions, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole and the complete failure of this weak man to LEAD his government went on virtually ignored. When his administration was confronted with even the hint of impropriety in these matters, well, someone else was always to blame. Clinton came to personify the “always the victim” mentality of the 90’s. The guy was practically its poster child and the mainstream media was his nursemaid.

Ever since 1999, his same aggressive crew has done everything in their power to reshape history and try and build a fake legacy out of even more fake history by again blaming everyone but Clinton for the failures of his administration. More felons came out of his administration than Nixon’s, but we’re supposed to believe even now that overall he wasn’t so bad? Even his own National Security Advisor, Sandy “Pants” Berger, was convicted of stealing documents that could have made Clinton look bad regarding his handling of the terrorist threat from the National Archives. Frankly, as an aside, I think anyone who destroys anything kept at the National Archives should be shot, burned, and hung from the Washington Monument as an example to other Vandals of history, and not necessarily in that order.

Back to Clinton, though. Somehow, the former President has managed to avoid any tough questions since 9/11 on how royally he screwed the pooch on his watch. Hmm…I’m not even sure that’s just a metaphor. Regardless, that he finally got confronted with even a simple question from Chris Wallace, that inquired as to what Clinton thought of those who said he failed in Somalia, especially bin Laden himself, who saw it as a sign that America could be beaten, was a magical moment for me. That he couldn’t help but explode, showing a fraction of that rumored temper his aides have always tried to deny was even more priceless. And that all he could do was lie repeatedly, even about the one source, Richard Clarke’s book on the subject, was even more telling of the moral vacuity of the man.

His use of phrases like “little conservative hit piece” and “you’ve got that little smirk on your face…you think you’re so clever…” and my favorite “You did Fox’s bidding on this show” are phrases I would’ve expected from a fifth grader who got caught peaking into the girl’s locker room, not of a former President. The man wasn’t worthy to be President or even shine the President’s shoes and he sure as hell didn’t do our country any good while he played pretend at the job. Even with this little schoolyard tantrum, the Left can’t help but hold this up as an example of how they should “fight back” when challenged by the Right. Yes, don’t stand on the merits of your arguments or beliefs. Throw a tantrum and almost physically assault the person who questions you. Act like a big ass baby and then people will really take you seriously.

This is the best the Left can do these days? This is still their standard bearer? I can plainly say that I’m glad I was around to see it, and I’m even more glad that he has continued to show, even more openly than before, what a pathetic excuse of a man he is and the real legacy of his pretend Presidency. Thank God for small favors.

2006-09-27T18:24:00.000-04:00

Do You Have Any ID?

There have been lengthy discussions about several states’ new requirements that you have some form of picture ID before you are allowed to vote. Interestingly, conservatives have fallen almost squarely on the “show your ID” side while liberals have almost roundly condemned any means of confirming identity. Liberal attacks have even gone as far as equating calls for showing ID with the return of Jim Crowe or poll taxes.

I suppose when you have no better argument, crying racism is the easiest retort. It’s also the most ridiculous. Even the New York Times, which long ago gave up any claim of objectivity or respectability, is using the “little old lady” defense in a recent article against verifying your vote, as it were. They highlight the requirement in Arizona of buying a $12 ID as unduly harsh and a burden on a little old lady, who by the way did you know has a son on active duty in the Army? It seems the only time any major paper will mention active duty military is if they believe it gives them some sort of heart-string-pulling leverage over middle America.

Now, to be fair, I will say that I’m on the fence with paying for an ID that allows me to exercise my right to vote. I don’t mind it, but I think it could be a burden. To Indiana’s credit, it provides free ID’s for just this reason. Funny, that still didn’t seem to pacify the local liberal crowd, like the ACLU and Democrats, who thought that having to pick up a free ID card was an unbearable burden.

I digress, though. I fail to see, and perhaps someone can help me understand, how being able to help curtail voter fraud is inherently a bad thing. I wasn’t alive for it, but I’ve read several accounts of the Chicago voter fraud that handed the presidential election to Kennedy in 1960. Never has one candidate had some many dead people vote for him. Amusingly, though, it seems Republicans are the ones typically cited for voter fraud, although I have yet to see any of the modern allegations proven. There was Florida in 2000, where several recounts, including many by decidedly left-leaning partisan entities, gave the election to Bush, not Gore. The election wasn’t “stolen”. Bush wasn’t “appointed”. He won it thanks to the Founders’ rather impressive intercession in the Electoral College. Never intending mob rule, they had wisely decided to minimize the average citizen’s say in who was President. Remember, the idea was not to have a vulgar democracy, but a representative republic.

Again, not to digress, but the same issue arose in 2004, mostly due to the same people unwilling to believe that Chimpy McBushHitler, as he’s so lovingly referred on the Left, could possibly win over the majority of American voters (the first to do so since Reagan, by the way). This is sort of becoming a post of tangents, but don’t you find it ironic that a political group (the Left) that complains so loudly about defamation from the Right uses the above moniker so readily for our current President? Maybe it’s not irony, just the regular hypocrisy we’re so used to seeing in politics these days.

Ok, so back on track. Why the backlash? Why the fear? When there were concerns that “butterfly” ballots were too difficult to count, the industry that creates voting machines came up with electronic voting, which was at the insistence of the Left, I might remind all again. What do we have to do? Go back to writing our candidates on paper? Or do we have to type them so they’re legible? Do we need to file our votes in triplicate? Or could it just be that those crowing loudest feel they might actually be the ones to primarily benefit from voter fraud and don’t really want to see it go away? Perhaps that’s a bit conspiratorial, but just as readily it could be a true motivating force.

I see only good things coming from a better and more easily verifiable voting registry. With the rolls purged of dead voters and with the remaining voters actually having to prove they are eligible (as opposed to say illegals or those wishing to vote early, vote often), there can only be greater accountability in the practice. That it’s so decentralized still also means the likelihood of widespread fraud is greatly reduced. If there is a downside to this, I can’t see it.

Hat tip to Rightwingnews for the article link.

2006-09-26T19:02:00.000-04:00

‘Sensible’ Discomfort With Freedom

A popular slogan of the Left in regards to gun control laws is that they only wish ‘sensible’ restrictions. Everything they want is ‘sensible’, thus by proxy it connotes that those who oppose such ‘sensible’ restrictions are witless, rash, out of control or dangerous. English really is a remarkable language isn’t it?

Well, the same battle cries have come flying fast and free from a variety of journalists (all who obviously know better than you or I) in regards to Indiana DNR Commissioner Kyle Hupfer’s 1-year lifting of handgun restrictions in Indiana state parks. The first rumblings came from the Democrats, no great surprise there. Matt Pierce of Bloomington suggested the move was political, aimed (no pun intended) to win the support of the powerful NRA in a time when the governor’s numbers are sagging. For the record, I’m not a member of the NRA, but I used to be. They’re often demonized as the quintessential lobby or special interest group, but they are one of the only ones that tries to protect a fundamental inalienable right and one of the only ones that can boat around 4 million members who have no interest other than seeing the continuance of those rights. Would that all lobby groups were that representative of the people.

The Brady Bunch, known in their headier days as Handgun Control Inc. (doesn’t that sound like a 70’s comic villain group?), had their own quote from their current chairman who the Indianapolis Star likes to remind us was a “Republican” mayor of Fort Wayne. Paul Helmke, who apparently although he is a leftist, because he was Republican we’re supposed to assume he’s the final authority on the matter (didn’t these people ever hear of Rockefeller Republicans?), interjected the following crass statement.

“I know I won’t feel safer going to a state park thinking everyone could be carrying a gun.”

Well, thankfully Mr. Helmke doesn’t speak for the majority of Hoosiers who do feel safer, especially the ones carrying. See, it “makes no sense” to him why anyone would feel safer. Nor does it make sense to the likes of the Indianapolis Star’s own Jane Lichtenberg, who in Sunday’s Expresso section of the Star informed her readers that:

“…this goes too far. And please don’t insult our intelligence by suggesting that this wasn’t timed to nail the votes of the National Rifle Association. Members attending a forum on gun rights in Lawrenceburg. It sure won’t win votes of families planning visits to state parks.”

See? Families = Sensible. Then she plays the murder card. Indianapolis is currently experiencing a horrible string of murders, mostly drug related, but obviously it’s because people can legally carry guns, if you just follow her logic.

“Hupfer’s decision was especially dubious considering the recent epidemic of murders and gun violence in Indianapolis. Kids can’t play safely on many inner city streets. Will their parents now have to worry about visits to Harrison State Park too?"

This relativism and refusal to see that downtown Indy’s drug-ridden crime-filled neighborhoods are no different than a state park are disingenuous if not downright purposefully misleading. And, not to stereotype, but having lived in such neighborhoods for a time (where I was very glad to be able to carry a firearm for protection), not many of my neighbors were planning vacations to Harrison or any other state park that I recall. Most were just happy if all their utilities got paid on a given month. Maybe Jane should get out more.

And don’t forget accidental shootings. ‘Sensible’ people always remind us that there can always be accidental shootings. And you can also get cancer, get hit by a bus, struck by lightning or drown in a bath tub. Accidents happen. Responsible adults, especially responsible parents, do their best to minimize the chance of such accidents. I’ll take ‘responsible’ over ‘sensible’ any day.

It might be worth also discussing exactly what all this hoopla is about. Consider what our reality was like before the Commissioner’s decision. Previously, carrying a firearm beyond a small and limited class of calibers and models which were expressly for use by hunters with a license was prohibited. You carried what you were going to hunt with and no more.

There were problems with this equation. Having gone out hunting myself, I can tell you there still are such things as poachers. The DNR Conservation Officer’s plaque of those who’ve died while active officers, includes an officer lost to poachers. They are a serious threat. Poachers can even poach another’s kill. This itself is not unheard of, especially in the more “remote” parks. If you’ve just fired, you’ve identified where you are and worse, you probably didn’t reload as you moved in or tracked your kill. This can possibly leave you on the wrong end of someone else’s weapon who hasn’t had that good of luck that day or who’s luck is very good, depending on if he was looking for a buck or someone like you. Having the ability to protect yourself against poachers or as Commissioner Hupfer noted, from meth producers that litter the rural areas of the state, is a valuable and more relevant-than-ever right.

Then there’s the small matter of what to do if you're not going hunting, but still want to go to the state parks. What do you do to protect yourself then? Have there never been robberies in parks? What about coyotes or their half-dog hybrids that have no fear of humans and have been known to attack dogs and children? Are we to exercise our duty to retreat then or should we be allowed to defend ourselves? How about the aforementioned meth labs? Should we run from those people as well or perhaps engage them in a philosophical discussion on the vices of the illicit drug trade? Frankly, I’ll take the more “aggressive” form of diplomacy any day.

I applaud Commissioner Hupfer’s decision in this regard, and am glad to see Indiana now one of the leading states in reestablishing these freedoms to its citizens. Although the voices arrayed against him don’t have the strength they once had, they’re still ‘sensible’ enough that this issue still deserves much attention and scrutiny. Eternal vigilance isn't just a catchy phrase.

2006-09-21T18:30:00.000-04:00

Arrogant Presumption

Being a major leftist newspaper means never having to treat anyone as better than you. Such is the case with the New York Times. Since the Pope’s remarks on Islam at Regensburg on September 12th, the Times has gone from simple reporting of the speech “Pope Assails Secularism, with a Note on Jihad” to pompous demands for an apology and a need to meet with “high-level experts on Islam” to help him submit and humble himself before the Islamic world.

To define this as it is, an outrage by an organization that understands religion about as much as a three year old understands quantum physics, truly doesn’t encompass the scope of arrogance and pomposity that is the New York Times. I would imagine if anyone, the Pope understands quite well what Islam is and what its followers are capable of.

Certainly his predecessor did after being shot by one of the practitioners of the “Religion of Peace”. Even that same fellow has warned Benedict not to travel to Turkey as planned for fear of Benedict’s life. When your predecessor’s would-be assassin starts giving you security advice, perhaps that’s a sign to worry.

I’m still at a loss exactly as to what Pope Benedict is required to apologize for. The Times erroneously implies that he has “apologized” by offering his regrets at his “ill-considered comments”. Interestingly, others are clarifying the Pontiff’s position a little differently than the times. Consider this from quote from an article on the continuing demands for the Pope's "apology".

George Weigel, author of "God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church," said the pope expressed regret over the way his words have been twisted and misunderstood, but did not back away from them.

"The over-the-top reaction in the Muslim world simply underscores the truth of what he said at Regensburg, which is that unless Islam develops the capacity to be self-critical -- unless Islamic leaders take responsibility for saying to their extremists that violence in the name of God is wrong -- then there can be no genuine interreligious dialogue," Weigel said.

"There has been not the slightest backing off of that, and there can't be, because it's true," he added.

One would get from that the Pope meant what he said and feels his remarks were vindicated by the response he has received. The irony is quite thick in even referencing a historical figure who calls a certain group mindless thugs and getting a reaction from representatives of that same group that speaks to mindless thuggery. Sometimes these just write themselves.

If anything, the Pope’s remarks and inference of historical perspective on the current situation, a situation which completely does NOT entertain “genuine communication” (and by the way, what “leader” is he supposed to genuinely communicate with considering the Pope has no Islamic analog?) between Christianity and Islam, say things that needed to be said many years ago, but either out of fear or neglect haven’t been voiced. There is a danger here that has been allowed to fester and grow.

As Islam has seen a reformation, it has not been towards liberalism or enlightenment as happened with the Christian reformations, but towards a return to a more fundamentalist understanding of early Islam and to the time when Mohammed wrote and spoke of conquest and dhimmitude of the infidels. That’s you and me, by the way. There will likely be no Renaissance of Islamic thought mainly because the catalysts that need to be there, the ones that lead to Christianity’s Age of Enlightenment, simply don’t exist. Islam isn’t going that way and the moderates are quickly losing ground.

If it takes the Pope for that issue to receive international attention, then, well, I guess it takes the Pope. Only a true secularist or “humanist” would think that the Pope’s only hope of understanding Islam would be if “high-level experts” could “help guide him” to a better understanding. So he needs to be proselytized to in order to be a true convert to the "Religion of Peace". Advocacy of proselytizing one’s faith for other’s to better understand it is something the New York Times hasn’t endorsed in living memory. I suppose in Islam the Times has finally found a religion with which it can do business.

In my opinion, the Pope doesn’t need to apologize. The Times does. Its insults and intolerance of the Papacy and its place in Christendom defines offensive. Multicultural doesn’t mean everyone but Christians (and Catholics are included in that heading). Let them remove the log from their own eye before lamenting on the speck in someone else’s for a change.

Hat tip to Newsbusters for keeping up the coverage on this issue.

2006-09-20T18:18:00.000-04:00

Beware Your Enemies’ Posthumous Praise

HBO’s new documentary, ‘Mr. Conservative’ about the life and politics of Barry Goldwater, told in part from the perspective of his granddaughter, has raised a few hackles from the Right and drawn praise from the Left. Considering that many of us on this end of the political spectrum see Goldwater’s ideas (his own people founded the Libertarians) and writings as the watershed event defining what some call the “true” conservatism, it unsettles the stomach to see those on the Far Left speak well of him.

Well, they apparently don’t, really. They will likely use the chance to impugn current members of the conservative movement by claiming they are straying from Goldwater’s purity. Doubtless we’ll see Reagan invoked next in the same manner.

For a man who wrote “The Conscience of a Conservative” and the lesser-read “Conscience of the Majority”, Goldwater was a true visionary. He was able to distill so much of what it was to be conservative in an era of unbridled liberalism (the era that brought us the Great Society and the Selfish generation) and he gave conservatives a star to steer by. When I originally read Conscience of a Conservative some years ago, I thought on not only how much I found myself agreeing with what he wrote, but on how much of it (save for the nuclear confrontation with the Soviets part) was still relevant to this day. Incidentally, Reagan made use of that last part to great effectiveness. What a surprise, Goldwater was right again. I have often looked at Goldwater and John C. Calhoun as heirs to the same tradition, attempts to reign in the federal beast whenever possible and make certain it sticks to its enumerated powers. I highly recommend reading both of their works.

Much is made of Goldwater not liking the fact that religious conservatives were being seen as the “only” conservatives and there’s a point to that. Conservative thought draws from the wellspring of Judeo-Christian morality and so such an association was only a matter of time. Intermeshing the ideas means some aspects might be lost in the debate regarding the religious aspect of the movement. To say that modern conservatives somehow thusly are detached from Goldwater’s legacy by their faith, though, is disingenuous at best.

I will say this, when comparing those who call themselves conservative in this day and age with Goldwater’s thoughts on conservatism, many fall short. Certainly our President falls short as well as a vast majority of Senators and a staggering number of Representatives. There are few true conservatives in Congress and barely four on the Supreme Court. To say that conservatives or even “neo-cons” dominate the government is to say you really are clueless when it comes to what conservatism really is or the statements and voting records of your elected officials.

Liberalism, even in moderation, still dominates this country and it seems to draw many of the political class under its wing. From that standpoint then you can certainly make an argument that most aren’t “Goldwater” conservatives. Libertarians, specifically the more conservative Libertarians of the Midwest often see themselves as descendants of that last “true” conservatism as well and often it is their base reason why they cannot identify with the Republicans despite the latter’s professed conservative tradition. Those Libertarians see a weakness in the Republican tradition in their compromise with the Left and that they are willing to betray their principles for some imagined political gain.

So, from that point of view, perhaps the Left is correct and their ridicule of those Republicans who have sold out will have some basis in reality (a rarity for the Left), but I bet one thing you won’t see in the documentary is that there are still plenty who share the conservative ideals of the late great Arizona Senator and who attempt to carry on in his memory if not in his name.

Among those who are supposed to offer quotes in this documentary are Hillary Clinton, Al Franken, and Ted Kennedy; not exactly what I’d call people who could speak authoritatively on issues of conservatism or on Barry Goldwater. That William F. Buckley Jr. isn’t interviewed (from what I hear) speaks volumes about the slant of the piece. They don’t want to showcase the man. They want to use him as a tool to make a political statement favoring the Left. You need only look at the comedy cavalcade of characters above to infer that. If you want to know the real Barry Goldwater, read his autobiographical work “With No Apologies”. If you want to see another Leftist hatchet piece, make sure to tune into HBO for 90 minutes of fun and frivolity.

2006-09-19T07:38:00.000-04:00

Dare Not Speak The Truth

It looks as if Cyrus Nowastech, the screenplay writer whose "Path to 9/11" ABC screenplay thrust him into the national spotlight, has decided to answer the myriad of volleys from the Left tossed his way. The writer who has been labeled everything but a white man (literally) has responded to calls that he is partisan or had an "agenda" to discredit the Clintons with his docudrama. Consider:

In July a reporter asked if I had ever been ethnically profiled. I happily replied, "No." I can no longer say that. The L.A. Times, for one, characterized me by race, religion, ethnicity, country-of-origin and political leanings--wrongly on four of five counts. To them I was an Iranian-American politically conservative Muslim. It is perhaps irrelevant in our brave new world of journalism that I was born in Boulder, Colo. I am not a Muslim or practitioner of any religion, nor am I a political conservative. What am I? I am, most devoutly, an American. I asked the reporter if this kind of labeling was a new policy for the paper. He had no response.

This is a man whose screen credits certainly don't speak to his political leanings, including the likes of Oliver Stone's "The Day Reagan Was Shot", but that doesn't matter much anymore. All one must do is attack an icon of the new religion, or in this case icons and shed a little light on the real history that we've been encouraged to "Move On" from and you're officially a member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Congratualtions, Cyrus. Now you're in the big time.

At least they didn't smear Cyrus alone. Apparently, the director David Cunningham committed the sin of relation to a father who started a youth ministry. What was it they used to say about America? Here we judge you by who you are, not by who your father was. That is, unless the Left can use that to some sort of political advantage. Fairness here, the Right does that too. It's pretty sad when they do. Although sometimes the sins of the father are inherited by the son, this isn't 19th Century Ireland. Let's take people as we find them.

All that aside, consider, though, what he feels he was really trying to say when he wrote that screenplay.

"The Path to 9/11" was intended to remind us of the common enemy we face. Like the 9/11 Report itself, it is meant to enable us to better defend ourselves from a future attack. Past is prologue, and 9/11 is merely another step in an escalating Islamic fundamentalist reign of terror. By dramatizing the step-by-step increase in attacks on America--all of which, in fact, occurred--we are better able to see the pattern and anticipate the future. That was the point of the series, its only intention. Call it the canary in the coal mine. Call it John O'Neill in the FBI.

Spoken like a real historian, one who actually wants to use history to interpret the past and possibly better understand the future. Understanding always worked so much better for me than structured attempts to rewrite history and construct a new future based on that. I thought Progressives were all about understanding. Where were you on that one, boys?

Cyrus Nowatech is yet another in an increasingly long line of people with no political agenda who find themselves in the inconvenient spot of being assigned on by powers who are adversely affected by their desire to "speak truth to power". He won't be the last. As this election cycle rolls into the '08 Presidential elections, and assuming Hillary is in fact running, I'd hazard a guess we'll see a lot more of these rather nasty character assassinations. Count on it.

2006-09-18T18:12:00.000-04:00

Don't Quote Me On This...

I wonder if that's what Pope Benedict XVI was thinking as he read the now infamous quote by the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Paleologos II. To say that this shows the relatively thin skin of the Muslim world would be a drastic understatement. Being one of the religious leaders of the Western world, it is appropriate for Pope Benedict to speak on matters of religion and relations between the religions in this day and age. That we are not allowed to quote or review history without "offense" to some party or another is a dangerous notion.

The remark that has much of the Islamic world in a tizzy is Emperor Manuel's challenge to a Persian scholar and I'll print it in its entierity here.

"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war."

"He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.' "

Now, the Pope didn't necessarily say he agreed with it, although one could be forgiven for seeing that Islam was spread by the sword seeing as the Byzantine Empire, its satellite states, all of North Africa, Spain and southern France were all invaded and decimated by Islamic invaders whose purpose was conversion or subjugation and extermination of those who wouldn't convert.

There's also the simple fact that many of those nations, after existing in some form or another going back to the Persian Empire, simply ceased to exist as they were absorbed into the Caliphate. You can't get more clear than Constantinople now existing as the Turkish city of Istanbul (that wasn't a voluntary conversion, just for the record) and one of the greatest churches of all Christendom, the Hagia Sophia, now existing as an Islamic mosque.

That he dared to remind us of what the great minds of the 1300's were thinking has incensed many in the Islamic world. The Pakistani parliament voted to condemn the Pope for statements it called "derogatory" and sought an apology. Even when the Pope offered one, the Vatican was told that such a simple thing as an apology was insufficient.

Turkey, of course, possibly most sensitive to the subject, has been a little more vocal. The deputy leader of Turkey's Islamic party, Salih Kapusuz, called the Pope's remarks "the result of pitiful ignorance". Well, at least he's got an open mind about all this. So...the Ottoman Turks, after converting to Islam, didn't make their all-consuming goal the conquest of the Byzantine Empire and beyond? Anyone? No takers?

He further comments:

"He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefitted from the spirit of reform in the Christian world...It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades".

The Crusades, a Western response to Islamic imperialism and aggression, full of their own flaws of human weakness though they were, were not some spontaneous assault on the peaceful and enlightened kingdoms of Islam. The Byzantine Emperor of that time in the 11th Century was watching Islamic armies waltz all over his former lands and disregarded a long standing enmity to beg the Pope of the time for aid. That led to the Crusades, which arguably were a failure because they did not stop the Islamic invasion. They and the Mongols merely delayed it a couple hundred years.

If anyone was the aggressor in that period of history, it was the kingdoms of Islam, like the Mamluks or the Ottomans, not the Franks or English.

The weekend hasn't seen much respite for the Pontiff. The attacks have grown. Newsweek decided it was worth a major story and no less than Al-Qaeda is threatening His Holiness.

One might remind the religious fanatics in between their chants of "Death to America" "Death to the Pope" that they're falling prey to that old adage "Best to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

2006-09-12T13:59:00.001-04:00

¿Habla Ingles?

Every now and then, you come across a story that, although apparently innocent, is really the sign of a true malignancy of liberalism run-amuck. Typically, it involves the misspending of tax dollars, and this story is no exception.

According to the Idaho Statesman, two new preschools have been opened that will be Spanish-only in terms of what language can be spoken. The focus of the schools will be on developing the childrens' Spanish language skills and emphasizing Spanish culture. The story features one delighted mother.

Franco-Cronin, a native of Ecuador, has worked hard to get her preschool-age twins to speak Spanish and English. Speaking Spanish to the children at home just isn't enough, she said.

"They say, 'The only person who speaks Spanish is Mommy,'" said Franco-Cronin. "I want them to feel comfortable hearing it from other people, so they know it's normal, it's part of our culture."

Wow, doesn't that just warm the heart? Later, the article mentions another concern this mother had when considering this Spanish-immersion education.

Franco-Cronin has always taken her children to Spanish-speaking play groups and has spoken only Spanish to them at home. But she has noticed that her girls often reply to her in English.

"I didn't feel it was enough for them," she said.

See? This screams feel-good story, but the underlying story it tells goes largely unnoticed. First, there's a somewhat racist tone to her comments. How dare her children respond to her in that dirty English language around her. They should speak the noble Espanol. And although immigrants who are somewhat conceited in their view of their native language and culture goes back to our founding, there has never quite been the facilitation of that racism as there is now by overindulgent liberalism.

I might remind the dear lady that she left her native Ecuador to give her children a better life in a great country like the United States. And although it's wonderful that she wants to instill in them a respect for their mother country (again, something immigrants to the U.S. have done since the beginning), to expect that the rest of us will fund her racism is a true sign that the wrong people are holding the purse strings.

That's right. Not something you usually consider is it? You're thinking "It's just a preschool". Well, it's a preschool the people of Boise have to fund and that not all of them can use. Most parents are going to want their childern to primarily learn English in this country, because if you don't know it well you're not going to have much of a future in this country. McDonalds drive-thru might be something you'd aspire to, but not the United States Senate, for example.

And while I think it's just peachy for immigrant groups of any stripe to pick up the torch and fund private schools that teach their own language and culture, as long as it meets local educational standards, I don't think they have a right to fleece their fellow taxpayers to foot the bill for their racist little endeavor. They came to America presumably because it's better here. If they force their children to not integrate and are assisted by the liberal enablers that are rampant in our school districts, their children will be duplicating the same pathetic conditions and society they endured in their previous country.

We don't allow people to immigrate to the U.S. only to bring their disastrous living conditions or their causative agents with them. I don't really buy into the current platform of "all cultures are equal, except the U.S. culture which is lower" mentality. If where you were from was so great, then why'd you come here? I'll tell you why. Because your culture sucked. It may have had some nice elements, but in the end the sucking outweighed the nice elements and you realized that in the American culture, the sucking does not outweigh the good parts. So, here you are. Leave your sombrero at the border and come on in. The culture's fine.

Cut the stone around your neck. Take pride in who you are but adopt who you wish to become (an American) and succeed. That's all we ask here in America. We also ask that you try not to suckle too much off the public teet and this is a prime example of doing just that. This story represents a small symptom of a widespread national disease, cultural isolation and degredation fostered by indulgent liberalism.

2006-09-11T14:19:00.000-04:00

You Have To Have Faith To Deny Facts

On this somber occasion, I would first ask that anyone still reading my blog, if you haven't already, check out the 2,996 project. Although they're having bandwidth troubles, the project had the very noble goal of remembering the lives of all the souls who lost their lives on 9/11.

I happened to be listening to WXNT 1430 AM's "Abdul in the Morning" as I went into work and one of the topics that came up on the anniversary of 9/11 was that of conspiracy theories related to it. The most common, and undoubtedly the most extreme, revolve around the Bush administration or some element therein (Rove, Cheney, even Ashcroft when he was AG) or a combination of those being responsible for the whole catastrophe, either by letting it happen on purpose (LIHOP) or making it happen on purpose (MIHOP).

First, it strikes me as incredible that so many of these theories can exist in light of all of it playing out right in front of our eyes. There was no hearsay, no second guessing. We saw it and could easily map the history of our enemies that led up to it. They didn't make a strong attempt to cover their tracks, nor is there any evidence they wanted to.

Many of these theories continue to survive, even in the face of honest, dedicated non-partisan research that end up fully debunking them. Of course, it has occurred to me that believing a conspiracy theory is the easy part. It's often said the best conspiracy theory is one which has no real proof. A certain level of faith is required. I find it even more interesting that individuals who have faith in little else will so wholeheartedly throw themselves behind such enterprises with nothing but that to sustain them.

What drives people to cling to these theories and espouse them quite loudly on each anniversary of 9/11? Well, some could be explained by a need to believe things aren't so cut and dry. Some simply cling to certain bits of quirky or weak evidence as proof that the whole story can't be trusted and some simply don't like the current administration or Congress and see such things as natural fodder for their hatred. Sometimes it's a combination of those and certainly it's not limited to those possibilities.

Whatever they believe, they cling to it as a sort of blind faith. I see the allure in it and have succumbed to it myself in the past, but sometimes seeing things with your own eyes and hearing things with your own ears trumps even the strongest skeptic. Seeing the planes hit, hearing the passengers' and crews' calls that give us an almost blow-by-blow account of what happend on those planes, does more to convince me than 100 conspiracy sites.

I am interested, though, in how after all these years people still don't believe. Then again, there are always deniers. I remember reading of when Eisenhower first saw the death camps in Germany, he ordered as many men as possible be cycled through to see them because "someday someone is going to say this didn't happen". And so someone has, often. There will always be doubters, I suppose, and I will admit that most likely there are portions of our history that we don't know the whole story on. On this, though, having lived through it with the rest of you, the normal skepticism just doesn't hold a thimble full of water.

Maybe we need these people to keep us honest or maybe they're just a given fact of the human condition, that some can't believe what's right in front of their eyes even if you hit them over the head with it. Whatever the reason, it happened. It's been taken credit for by evil men. We have the historical trail to link them to it. We have over 1400 years of history to know why they did it. The facts are there, and I for one don't intend to let them be forgotten.

Update 1: The Editor-in-Chief of Popular Mechanics, James Meigs, has written an op-ed in the New York Post about the response he's gotten by conspiracy theorists to his magazine's work on debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories. It's worth the read (hat tip to Newsbusters).

2006-09-08T07:15:00.000-04:00

New ABC Docudrama Ruffles Feathers

Occasionally a program garners quite a bit of controversy before it even airs. Recently, the Survivor series announced it would break up its competing “tribes” along racial lines. It’s done wonders for the potential ratings even as critics have howled at the bad example this sets. Exactly what bad example is being set the jury is still out on. Not that long ago, CBS was prepared to air a hit piece on Ron and Nancy Reagan entitled, creatively, “The Reagans” based almost exclusively on a gossipy tell-all book that itself was very partisan and free with the facts. Conservative outrage eventually got CBS to transfer the miniseries to Showtime, but it still aired.

That brings us to the latest in political dynamite to generate controversy without even reaching a TV screen. The new ABC miniseries, “The Path to 9/11” purports to base most of its storyline on information culled from an already white-washed 9/11 Commission Report. The attacks from the Left and from former Clinton officials from Albright to Berger to Clark have howled that none of it is true and that it’s an attempt to make them look bad while ignoring the culpability of the current administration.

Of course, it is also billed as a docudrama, with amalgamated characters and plot inventions that take a little license with historical accuracy. The story is not an accurate retelling even by the account of its producer. It’s a story that is supposed to give a general idea of the mindset of those who were in a position to do something about 9/11 before it happened.

As Larry Elder said, on September 11, 2001, our government failed in its most basic duty. It failed to protect its citizens against a foreign threat. The 9/11 Commission was a giant CYA party with the Bush and Clinton administrations scurrying to protect their own. It appears that there was little concern in the early Bush administration to do anything about Al-Qaeda. At the very least we have no tangible evidence that anything was being done or was in the planning stages.

We know the Clinton administration took even less of an interest in getting bin Laden or his organization. He has opined often on a variety of flimsy excuses as to why he didn’t take bin Laden when he was offered up, say by the government of Sudan. None of them have held any water. The man was a known terrorist even then and it is shameful to say the least that for the 15 to 20 years before 9/11, no administration made serious attempts to shut down or destroy groups that did us harm, from Hezbollah’s bombing of the Marine barracks and US Embassy in Beirut through the USS Cole disaster.

The focus of “The Path to 9//11”, though, tells us what we’ve already seen with our own eyes. The World Trade Center was bombed in 1993 and we did nothing. Khobar Towers, the African Embassy bombings, the USS Cole, all happened on Clinton’s watch…and he did NOTHING. Firing missiles at an empty training camp in my opinion constitutes a big nil in the doer column. These are indisputable historical facts. The opportunity was there, but not the will and Clinton’s administration failed us even before Bush got up to bat. That is what, presumably, this miniseries will dramatize for us, but we can’t know til it’s actually out.

That there is so much political hay being made by the Left, though, speaks volumes that they know this will do considerable damage to their five-year long attempt to pin everything on Bush and his administration, that somehow there was no terrorism or threat to the United States before he got here, or at least not one Clinton hadn’t bravely combated while being assailed by an evil Republican Congress. See, it all comes back to politics and legacies, folks and Clinton’s got nothing good in his. Any good idea that launched during his eight years was co-opted from more conservative elements, not something he wants advertised. The same goes for the bad, like his failure to address any significant international threat to the United States.

Again, though, it’s just a movie. We don’t even know what’s in it yet. In the end, there may be a CGI of Clinton’s head on Mel Gibson’s body from the final battle scene of “The Patriot”. I can’t say. What I can say is that it may be something rarely seen in the media and therefore worth the watch, an attempt to tell history from the other side of the political spectrum than what we’ve had to endure from the last five years of antique media rewrites.

Interestingly, this is supposed to be based off Richard Clarke’s book, which was not very favorable to the Bush administration. Perhaps there is something to the screenwriter’s alleged conservative leanings after all. I’d encourage people to review the July 5th Washington Times op-ed written by Michael Scheuer, a 22-year CIA veteran and the man who headed the CIA unit that was tasked with getting bin Laden. Not much of a Bush fan either, as witnessed by his new book Imperial Hubris, Scheuer also skewered the Clinton administration in that piece for their ridiculously poor performance in fighting any kind of war on terror. It’s worth the read.

Update 1: It seems ABC may have bowed to political censorship after all. They are possibly changing the docudrama to make it a little less accurate so that Clinton's "legacy" is protected just a bit longer. I've already heard this compared to CBS's "The Reagans", but that wasn't censored and was roundly criticized by all but the Far Left as wholly untruthful. It was also shown in its entirety elsewhere. If true, this is plain censorship and ABC and Disney are pathetic.

2006-09-07T07:03:00.000-04:00

He Bangs His Head Against The Post…

It must be nice to walk through life with blinders on. George Stephanopoulos, former Clinton White House pretty-boy turned news hack has followed many a political hanger-on into the field of mass media. His qualifications seem to be that he can smile well and has a nice coif of hair. It certainly isn’t his skills in politics, at least not based on some of the things he’s been saying lately. Case in point, take this quote from ABC’s golden boy.

“If the deficit continued to grow, it’s not responsible to say you’re never going to raise taxes.”

That he uttered to the Republican Senatorial challenger against Lincoln Chaffee in Rhode Island, Stephen Laffey. Notice, there is no consideration for a reduction in government expenses. That is unthinkable. So much so is it unthinkable, that this response is almost automatic and Stephanopoulos is just a representative figure.

This belief has also showed itself among other newscasters and those on the Left who feel that a tax raise is only a natural choice in regards to a period of wartime. Regardless of their personal beliefs in the war and the rightness of it, they are more than willing to say that we Americans should tighten our belts and give over more of our income to the federal government because, well, we did it for FDR.

FDR, by the way, is likely the architect of our Constitution’s doom. It was his socialist programs that first saw the break from what had been over 150 years of solid government. Chips had been put in it certainly by previous presidents going back to Lincoln, but FDR took a wrecking ball to the whole concept of limited government and enumerated powers.

To therefore cite such an example as to why Americans need another tax hike is dubious at best. What the Left of both the Democrat and Republican parties need to do is get out of our pocket books and the sooner the better. We just wormed the simplest of tax cuts out of this President after years of seeing them raise under the last two.

If there’s a war on, of course we’ll pay for it, and pay for it we are. Some other programs might have to be cut in the process, though and now’s a perfect excuse to do so. The ill-fated Department of Education would be the first on my list. Much of that money could be returned to the states with likely a vast improvement in the quality of public education or better yet given to parents as vouchers, the dreaded V word.

A simple plan would be to cut every spending item that isn’t enumerated as a requirement of the federal government and you’d be amazed at the “surplus” we ended up with. The feasible plan unfortunately is that most of the worst of the socialist programs like Social Security, Medicaid/Medicare and the like will not go away because the Me-Me-Me None-For-You generation of baby boomers is reaching the age where they want the largesse those programs offer. Not that it’s that much. Have you ever been on any of those programs or known anyone that was? It’s nothing short of slavery. Perhaps it’s more akin to a drug addiction with the feds as the pusher. You’re given just enough money to live on, but with enough restrictions that you don’t try to do anything else for fear of losing the small dole you’ve been handed. Subsistence living isn’t living, but that’s all the feds can offer you, and this is supposed to be a good thing?

But I digress. That mediacrats such as Stephanopoulos can’t see the spending cuts for the trees is a fact of our age. They believe in big government and they believe it is the only way to save the country. What never seems to sink in for them, though, is who gets stuck with the check. That’s a lesson they sorely need to learn.

2006-09-06T07:01:00.000-04:00

Déjà vu All Over Again

I remember reading in my U.S. history book in high school about how the U.S. lost the Vietnam War. We didn’t actually get that far in the book in class. I just read ahead. What I couldn’t figure out, and what the history book never seemed to divulge, was how exactly we lost anything. How does a military superpower lose to a second-rate guerilla movement supported by a weak Communist government using cast-off Soviet hardware? I asked the same question when I watched the Soviet Union tuck tail and run from Afghanistan. The answer in those cases seemed to be WILL. The resistors simply had the will to hold out at all costs and their will outlasted that of their opponent.

In the case of Vietnam, set aside the struggling succession of barely legitimate governments in South Vietnam and look at why the U.S. stated it was going. I used to think it was just to bail out our French allies in a failed colonial ambition, but upon looking at the bigger picture, there was a real attempt to stem the flow of communism in that part of the world. The U.S. lost the will to continue fighting, but in truth its will was weak from early on. The right tools weren’t given to the commanders in the field and the war was often micromanaged from Washington, especially during LBJ’s Presidency. Eventually, the U.S. completely lost the will to continue on the half-hearted fight, even though the Army had thoroughly decimated the Viet Cong and was continually more than a match for the NVA infiltrators or even the main body of the North Vietnamese Army.

We didn’t lose any battles, but we lost the war, as the old saying goes. Even Tet was a U.S. victory, though you wouldn’t know it from the determined propagandists of the day like Walter Kronkite. He has of course admitted since that he did in fact lie regarding American success and failure in Vietnam because of his own personal beliefs and agenda.

The Army was undermined primarily by the politicians at home who were in turn suffering from continual protests and Leftist anti-war propaganda spread by the Radical Sons of the Boomer generation. No small amount of help assisted in the loss of the war from the agit-prop arm of the Soviet Union, whose KGB turned out some absolutely stellar (and false) propaganda parroted by all the great Lefties of the day from Fonda and Kerry on down.

Let’s fast forward to the current state of affairs. The U.S. is involved in another war half a world away. Our Army is still the best in the world and this time we even have allies and a much stronger native military to assist us. Daily the foreign fighters are killed and the local insurgency ebbs and wanes. We see communiqués and correspondence from leaders in the various terror organizations themselves stating that the U.S. Army’s presence and their inability to make them run back to America is causing them defeat after defeat. Their mood is grim. Is this cause for celebration? Not if you’re a Leftist in America, like Eleanor Clift. This is cause for mourning, because, obviously we’re losing.

“Bush lost a war we didn’t have to fight and shouldn’t have lost-and he’s saying the Democrats don’t understand the stakes.”

That line sums up the Left’s view of this war. When they say “It’s another Vietnam”, I think they genuinely believe it. It’s another attempt for them to undermine U.S. power and prestige and even fighting will in a time where our energy and resources if allowed to work will carry the day. The U.S. Army still has not been defeated and will not be defeated by the likes of what we face in Iraq. It is also only one piece of a very big war that includes Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, North Korea and probably China. And those are just the ones we know are out to get us.

I still am at a loss, just as I was when trying to determine how we “lost” Vietnam if we won all the battles, in trying to figure out how, like Clift says, we lost the Iraq war. What mighty advice could she or her brethren offer to do better? Does she have any? Is there a solution that Dean and Kerry have been holding out on til they get back in power? Is that their October Surprise? Or is this just a pure hatred for the party that usually leans to the right, the Republicans and for American power and its use in the world? I’m tending a bit towards the latter. The Democrats have no better ideas on the war, because if they had, well for one they wouldn’t be Democrats, but also they would have trotted them out already and I’ve seen zippo.

It's difficult to look beyond the prism of today and the partisan hatred that both sides feel for one another. The certainty that I can see is that the left, personified in the national bulwark of the Democrats, is unable or unwilling to view history and our current place in it. Comments like Clift's show that they're still living in the fantasy land of means justify all ends without any consideration for our current reality. Enemies of the United States don't care about our partisan politics except how to use them to their advantage, and the Dems right now are providing the bulk of that support to them whether they like it or not.

2006-08-28T07:04:00.000-04:00

A Good History Lesson

I don't often post so much of another's work, but this really is an excellent piece on historical or fundamentalist Islam and its relationship to fascism. The Federalist usually has the ability to compile some quality pieces such as this, and it's worth sharing. So Enjoy.

Will the real Islam please stand up?

Responding to breaking news of the thwarted attacks against a dozen commercial flights from Great Britain to the United States earlier this month, President Bush did the unthinkable: He described the would-be killers in accurate terms.

On that Thursday, 10 August, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the President opened his remarks to the gathered crowd with these soon-to-be famous words: “The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.”

Key words: “Islamic fascists.”

Nearly five years since September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush has finally dropped his politically correct gloves and called the enemy of the West by the descriptor it deserves. This enemy is exclusively Muslim, and it has a modus operandi and worldview consistent with other forms of fascism.

Predictably, America’s Islamic lobby was quick to object. “We have to isolate these individuals because there is nothing in the Koran or the Islamic faith that encourages people to be cruel or to be vicious or to be criminal,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “Muslims worldwide know that for sure.”

For sure?

In a recent article in Jurist, Ali Khan of the Washburn University School of Law echoed Awad. “It is becoming fashionable for elected officials in the Anglo-American world, notably in the United States and the United Kingdom, to employ abusive language involving Islam,” he wrote. “Phrases such as ‘Islamic terrorism,’ ‘totalitarian Islam,’ ‘crimes of Islam,’ and ‘Islamic fascism’ are freely used, with sadist disrespect, to condemn real and imagined terrorists who practice the faith of Islam.”

Is it possible, then, that by equating the doctrine and practice of Islam with the acts of a radicalized few, President Bush is blurring these lines?

Not according to Daniel Pipes, historian of Islam and director of the Middle East Forum. The President, he says, is “identifying not Islam the religion, but a radical form of Islam.” Indeed, how many times have we heard presidential speeches laced with language about the “religion of peace” and our commonality as “people of the book”? Such language allows Awad and Khan to take comfort in the knowledge that Islam is good, but that terrorism—which doesn’t in any way represent Islam—is bad.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s recent address to the U.S. Congress certainly reflected the President’s heretofore clear distinction between terrorism and Islam. In that speech, the prime minister spoke of the war in Iraq as “a battle between true Islam, for which a person’s liberty and rights constitute essential cornerstones, and terrorism, which wraps itself in a fake Islamic cloak; in reality, wages a war on Islam and Muslims and values, and spreads hatred between humanity. Wherever human kind suffers a loss at the hands of terrorists, it is a loss of all humanity.”

So, is our fight against terrorism or against Islamic fascism? To wit, is Islam peaceful, or intrinsically fascist?
The answers couldn’t be clearer. Terrorism is not an enemy; it’s a tactic. Muslim examples aside, terrorist tactics have been adopted by groups as varied as Northern Ireland’s IRA, Colombia’s FARC, the Shining Path of Peru, West Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang, Italy’s Brigate Rosse, Spain’s Basque ETA, and our homegrown Symbionese Liberation Army. Mostly separatists and leftists, none of these groups viewed terrorism as an end in itself, but as a means to another, political end.

Unlike terrorism, Islam is an ideology bent on territorial expansion and political domination. These traits, along with iron-fisted socioeconomic controls, are the essential characteristics of fascism. When this expansion requires violence, Islam turns to jihad, and within the context of jihad, terrorism is an acceptable tactic. According to Pipes, “Islam is a political religion in a way that none other is. There are many elements within the religion and the history of Islam that suggest there is a dynamic of conquest.” Pipes continues, “There is something inherently expansionist about Islam. Jihad is expansionist warfare.”

Stephen Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, coined the term “Islamofascism,” and he compares it other forms of fascism: “Islamofascism similarly pursues its aims through the willful, arbitrary, and gratuitous disruption of global society, either by terrorist conspiracies or by violation of peace between states. Al-Qaeda has recourse to the former weapon; Hezbollah, in assaulting northern Israel, used the latter. These are not acts of protest, but calculated strategies for political advantage through undiluted violence.” Schwartz continues, “Fascism was totalitarian; i.e. it fostered a totalistic world view—a distinct social reality that separated its followers from normal society. Islamofascism parallels fascism by imposing a strict division between Muslims and alleged unbelievers.”

When we look to the deserts of the Middle East at the founding of Islam in the early 7th century, such a picture is clear. At that time, increased trade across western Arabia created unprecedented wealth, resulting in the rise of new urban centers that directly challenged traditional tribal structures and loyalties. These urban centers quickly came to represent a different set of interests from the tribal communities, and a period of internecine conflict and social upheaval ensued.

In this context, the prophet Mohammed offered an alternative: the oma, the community professing the exclusive divinity of Allah, the moon god of polytheistic Arabia, and Mohammed as Allah’s prophetic voice. In creating the oma, Mohammed and his followers forged an inextricable merger of politics and religion. To this day, there has never been a separation—a “Reformation” —in Islam. This is due to the very nature of the oma, which must not only be defended militarily, politically and economically—but also expanded. Mohammed’s efforts to reconstitute the basis of authority and organization in Arabia—from polytheism to a political monotheism, from cities and tribes to the oma—made Islam’s expansionism a certainty.

Like other forms of fascism, Islam’s expansionist impulse would involve violence, subjugation to the state, and conformity to the ideology of the system. As Mohammed writes in the Koran, “Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection (Surah 009.029).” Further, Al Bukhari records Mohammed as saying: “I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah’.”

If this is what Islam is all about—fascist expansionism and totalitarianism—where do moderate or liberal Muslims come from? In short, they come from the same place that liberal Christians and Jews come from. Confronted by the 18th century Enlightenment and its heir, modernism, all religious expressions have found themselves influenced by the ideas and ideals of secular humanism. As Muslims integrated with the West and the West came into increased contact with the Muslim East, Islam experienced the same synthesis. Consequently, liberal Christians, Muslims, Jews and atheists, all under the influence of modernism, confess the same essential creed: The intrinsic equality of human beings, a basic commitment to man’s reason, the supremacy of the individual, and man’s innate goodness in the state of nature. Thus, like liberal Christianity or Judaism, liberal Islam isn’t Islam at all; it’s an entirely different religion.

In the end, any realistic assessment of Islam must accept “fascism” as a term that is far more descriptive than pejorative. In his remarks on the hurtful nature of the term, Professor Khan said that if anyone is “using the label in this broad sense, and thus accusing Islam and not merely the militants, they should say so.”

Well, we’re saying so.

2006-08-25T22:20:00.000-04:00

Global Warming Kicked Your Dog And Mugged Your Nana

It's getting to the point where there's just about nothing that global warming can't do or can't be blamed for. A new report on glaciers in Pakistan by the BBC shows that growing glaciers, glaciers that are advancing, must also be the result of global warming!

Researchers at Newcastle University looked at temperature trends in the western Himalaya over the past century.

They found warmer winters and cooler summers, combined with more snow and rainfall, could be causing some mountain glaciers to increase in size.

One shudders at the implication. If global warming can make glaciers grow as well as recede, why, it can do anything? But then again, so can any false god you wish to worship. Global warming as a policy point for the left has transformed into a religious exercise, one fueled by a mix of ignorance, lack of understanding and in some cases plain, unadulterated greed. The lack of educated understanding and unquestioning devotion by many of this rather discredited theory's followers seems more like a classic cult than something we need to seriously debate anymore.

Amusingly, the almost same opinion is expressed by those "learned" talking heads everytime I turn on the nightly news. It seems a matter of course for both sides that the argument is fundamentally settled. I would argue that the Right doesn't hold that closely to it, just that the likelihood of the Left's far-off view of global warming is likely more farfetched than the standard cyclic climate change our planet has been demonstrably undergoing since the last major glaciation. The Left will not even offer that discussion, just that they have scientists to back up their "facts and that is all they need. Having come from a science background, I can guarantee you that little reaches the realm of "settled" science.

It is only those who have no decent counter-arguments or who are so wholly deluded that would continue to argue in the face of evidence like this that global warming is a man-made and already irreversable catastrophe that will destroy the world. It apparently is doing no such thing. We stand amongst a crowd of Chicken Littles and they're perfectly willing to harm us, our society and our economy to prove their "facts" with assinine plans like Kyoto, which wasn't even meant to do more than slightly so down the alleged human influence. At the same time, "developing" governments are never included in their arguments, just the big bad United States. Again, you can certainly reach into the hat of usual suspects to know just how dubious a position that leaves the Left's arguments.

Even the Left's latest propaganda piece authored by the man-who-would-be-president can't stand up to much in the way of scrutiny. As we watch Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, we are left with an even greater inconvenience. Much of what he purports cannot readily be backed up, chief amongst his very questionable evidence, man's affect on the long-term global climate. The real shame of this is that his expanded cult is hurting the scientific community. When science is made to serve politics, you fail both and Al Gore truly deserves the title of demagogue for his part in the EnviroCult.

Such evidence as this, though, evidence that works against the theory of global warming, being turned into some ridiculous "proof" of further damage is so far beyond the pale that I'm not sure how people can still take this movement seriously. Making even such blatant contrary evidence fit the dogmatic EnviroCult belief structure has taken us to a new level and I will not even give this movement the satisifaction of legitimate debate until they start examing the flaws in their own belief structure. You can't debate a zealot.

2006-08-24T22:14:00.000-04:00

You Can’t Have Your Living Constitution And Eat It Too

Jonah Goldberg has a masterful editorial this week on the hypocrisy of those wanting a “Living Constitution” versus those who would rather we stick to the easily identified original intent. He starts it with a quote from Slate’s legal correspondent, Dahlia Lithwick.

"We do not insist that our medicine, our technology, or even our entertainment, all remain in an obsolete state; why would we demand that the law be given such treatment? It seems absurd to suggest that we can change the speed limit to reflect improved technology but we cannot interpret the Constitution to reflect improvements in society."

Her assessment is interesting not just because of its towering arrogance, which Goldberg quite pithily takes apart, but because it provides an interesting technical view of how the Left justifies the whole concept of a “Living Constitution”. To the Left, in general, it really is no different than a radio or television and no more immutable than an encyclopedia or dictionary. After all, even Webster’s updates for slang.

And I’m not sure if she recalls law school, but the law has in fact changed quite significantly over 200 years within the framework of the Constitution. Federal laws have worked well within that frame and in the last sixty years well without it as well. The US legal code would make the librarians at Alexandria think about cutting back a little. The Constitution is not just some “law” that needs to be kept mutable to be saved from obsolescence. The Constitution was also not designed as a socially mutable document that would change with the hemlines for a given year.

The Constitution narrowly defines the powers and duties delegated to the federal government by the preexisting state governments. As an afterthought, and because there were paranoids among the Conventionalists who thought that some day people in the federal government might try and extend their powers over what were seen as inalienable rights. Now, not only are those not sacred and immune from attempts by “social engineers” to erase or modify them, but the Constitution is being turned into a social experiment by figures on the Left to give some semblance of legitimacy to their otherwise illegitimate programs.

If the Constitution is not susceptible to the whims of demagogues and changing cultural trends, then the limits on power it imposes and the freedoms it enumerates can be eternal. This was the intention of the Founders, plain and simple. If something did occur that required a significant revision of the language of the Constitution (such as the question of slavery), that mechanism was also provided in the form of Amendments. That worked for over 150 years until socialists just started bypassing it, but they have never been able to claim that they have a real mandate to do what they do, because there is no real Constitutional basis for it.

But if it is susceptible to such whims of social engineering as the Left has tried to employ and if it can be made to see whatever those in power want it to say merely with a claim of “changing with society” or the needs of some majority or minority, then it might as well not exist. It might as well be written in pencil and drafted by a 2nd grader for all the legitimacy it would have as the foundation for all our laws, and by consequence all our laws and government would be equally as illegitimate. They might as well resurrect the concept of “Divine Right” (no pun intended) to explain why we must no longer eat meat or why we must no longer be able to defend ourselves or basically act like Parisians.

With that in mind, I can see no realistic or effective argument to explain why or how the Constitution can be “Living”. If someone else has an argument they think could hold more than a thimble of water to argue such a case, I’d like to hear it. Until then, I think I’ll stick with the wisdom of what has come before, because it has the tide of history to prove how amazingly it has worked compared to the few decades of utter failure by those who have been in opposition to it.

2006-08-23T23:26:00.000-04:00

Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco

I see the UK is selectively editing Tom & Jerry cartoons to remove smoking scenes. This should come as no surprise to people here in the States. After all, we said nothing when the “Aunt Jemima”-like character that was occasionally Tom’s owner had her voice edited from what some viewed as stereotypical and offensive to a more neutral broadcast tone. There’s nothing like taking the fun out of funny. I have heard, though, that the new voice is actually funny if you’re high. I don’t have the Zogby statistics on that, though.

Anyway, scenes that “glamorize or condone smoking” will be edited out. On a side note, I hear they’re going to be cutting out scenes from Roadrunner cartoons where the Coyote doesn’t realize he’s violating the laws of gravity by running off a cliff. We have to think of the children don’t you know. While I think it’s a bit retarded to assume kids will smoke because a cartoon cat smokes, usually right before something horrible happens to him, I suppose my voice is in the minority these days.

The British regulatory body, Ofcom, concluded with likely the best line of the story.

“However, while we appreciate the historic integrity of the animation, the level of editorial justification required for the inclusion of smoking in such cartoons is necessarily high”.

I hear the Bible is next on their list as they intend to edit out all those pesky God and Jesus references. After all, it’s “historic integrity” is certainly appreciated, but we’re talking editorial justification here. This sort of thing isn’t unique to the British Isles kids. There’s people right here in the U.S. who not only agreed with this article, but wondered why we didn’t do it first.

Shall We Write A Story?

Eerie to know there are computer programs out there writing news stories. All you have to do is plug a few facts in and the program spits out a fully functional news story, ready for print. It’s like MadLibs only with the odd “Mrs. Robinson you’re trying to seduce me” vibe.

So far it’s greatest success appears to be in writing financial stories, which admittedly are rather dry and boring. They’re using these things as minor-league forecasters, though. Would you want your market research decided by some frustrated, bored programmer who would have rather been designing his new SimGirl than writing adjectives and predictors into his news story code?

The justification, as always, writes its own joke.

“This means we can free up reporters so they have more time to think.”

Think of all the labor this would have saved the likes of Jayson Blair from the New York Times. Why, if he’d had that, just think of it. He could have doubled or even tripled the rate of stories he fabricated. Consider me decidedly not impressed by automation in a field that really needs more supervision. News shouldn’t be churned out on a robotic assembly line. Next thing you know, they’ll be outsourcing news jobs to India and Pakistan and then there’s chaos.

I’m sure all bloggers and mainstream journalists will one day band together to combat the vile robojournalist. Until then, honestly, I thought that’s how a lot of news stories were already produced.

2006-08-22T23:55:00.000-04:00

Pigeonholing And You

There’s a danger to subscribing too much to a singular view of a given ideology. When you refuse to acknowledge that anything other than your narrow interpretation of a class of people or philosophy is the correct one, it forces you to interpret events and occurrences along your narrow thesis. This is true in science as well as in the liberal arts and humanities. If you build a religion around your belief, ultimately you’ll look like a schmuck.

Thomas Frank, author of the vaunted left-wing treatise “What the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America”, proves he is the poster boy for this affliction in his latest New York Times Op-Ed, “G.O.P. Corruption? Bring In The Conservatives” (have to be an NYT subscriber).

To look back, in Frank’s “seminal” work, Kansas, he argues that it wasn’t conservative ideas and principles that won over central America and took former “working class” bastions of Democrats and changed them to Republicans overnight. The problem, he stated, was that Republicans used fear and deception to turn otherwise loyal, but gullible and perhaps slightly retarded, Democrats and other Middle America values voters into frightened sheep who would vote for anyone who would protect them. The same logic was often used, I recall, during the end of the Cold War by Leftists who could find no other real argument for conservatives’ opposition to communism. So Kansas took an old Cold War meme and resurrected it for the 21st century. Leftists love it when old Marxist tactics become new again and thus Franks has received much acclaim for his work.

Frank’s basic argument was that conservative policies are innately damaging and unhealthy to these very salt of the earth who voted for them. Never mind that we have 40-60 years of government largesse and failed liberal, even socialist policies to prove conservatives’ very point or to offer an abundance of reasons of why Middle America might have wanted to walk away from a party that has radically drifted to the Left over the last few decades. That is inconsequential. What matters are Republicans and conservatives (which is just another word for Republicans) are evil. And now you can say you’ve read his book.

Getting back to Frank’s NY Times piece, the crux of his argument seems to be that conservatives are equally unfit to govern, because they believe in small government. There seems to be a belief on his part that, after using fear and manufactured terror to get into power, obviously “corrupt” conservatives in turn corrupted and scandalized large sectors of an otherwise benevolent bureaucracy. Through this evil master plan, conservatives, now that they’ve wormed their way into power, will corrupt that power and then fuel cynicism among the masses over the failures, in turn blaming those failures not on themselves but on hapless Democrats and liberals. The fiends! Of course, I’m paraphrasing, but not much.

This Leftist media darling, the flavor of the month in a pool of little fish that tries to be the next Chomsky or Zinn, says what most conservatives joke about liberals saying and becomes the next in a long line of caricatures that refuse to see the world through any other lens than their “alternative” view of history.

Arguably, conservatives can be guilty of this world view as well, pigeonholing liberal wins into failures of the people or the masses, blaming anyone but themselves. Whichever side does it, it is an unhealthy behavior and a failed manner of belief. If you fail, you must analyze the fault in why you failed. I’ve often heard that fundamentally people are suckers for the truth. I’ve also heard that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The left these days routinely lies to the masses about their true intentions and then tries to fix a society that wasn’t fundamentally broken to begin with and they’ve done it so often and, previously, against light opposition that they’re starting to believe their own press as gospel. It’s time to start admitting when they’re at fault and that perhaps it isn’t just some evil puppet master conservative boogeyman. Maybe, Frank should just consider that Kansas, and the rest of the “red states” just aren’t buying what the Left’s selling anymore.

Hat tip to Newsbusters for this story.

2006-08-21T19:30:00.000-04:00

What’s In A Democracy?

A lot of talk these days centers about how our democracy is threatened or endangered by Gestapo-like right-wingers or left-wingers. The talk often shifts to the ordeal in Iraq and Afghanistan and what kind of democracies they’re really going to have. I’ve even seen an author on C-Span speak to our “arrogance” that we a slightly over 200 year old country dare lecture Iraq, which is “7,000 years old” on what kind of government it should have. By the way, Iraq isn’t quite that old. Civilization in the area could be argued at 6,000-7,000 years and I’ve heard some arguments for exceedingly older, but even though it is the birthplace of Hammurabi, the area hasn’t seen “representative” government before.

Well, this led me to think on a line I heard not to long ago. What would you consider a country that could send government troops in at any hour of the day into your home, grab you, imprison you without trial and hold you indefinitely? Would that be a democracy? Well, I’d hope so. It’s what they can do to you in Great Britain through the Official Secrets Act. And Britain is the model for our democracy to a good extent.

I know some were thinking “Well, with Ashcroft/Gonzales/Bush (fill in your most hated current Executive employee here) it could happen here”. Actually, a bit of it happened when Clinton ordered Janet Reno to kidnap Elian Gonzales and send him back to communist Cuba, but we haven’t really seen it here since then. I digress, though.

Ideas like habeas corpus and several of the freedoms we take for granted in the Untied States are not subscribed to or even considered in other parts of the world and while we might get what are called and what even function as “democracies” in the Middle East and elsewhere, they won’t necessarily be American democracies. Our liberal government and even more liberal freedoms are the envy and in some cases a source of criticism of much of the world’s governments. To assume that cultures that don’t hold such liberal views on freedom will adopt them at all is possibly to assume too much. While we might instill representative government and perhaps a greater measure of freedom than most places have ever known, they are still not America. That should be kept in mind as we consider what “democracy” is.

Another consideration of our democracy in all this is how it may be “threatened”. Well, it’s always threatened. Demagogues and tyrants are ever present dangers in any society and the longer we exist the more we seem to want to regulate ourselves and wrap ourselves in the warm, clingy blanket of socialism. The Constitution is routinely attacked as outdated, sexist, racist, too vague, too specific, misinterpreted, flat-out ignored, or worst, treated as a “living, breathing document”. It’s the easiest way to build a new Great Society by deconstructing the old one. As it’s been said, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Still, my concern is that those who consider it threatened in the alarmist fashion that’s so fancy among the hard-core left and right these days is that they think in the short-term. Our society and government are too resilient to be beaten in the short-term and no tyrant or demagogue could destroy us that easily. What they should be concerned with, and what many are seeing today, is the effect of long-term re-engineering of our society. What was unthinkable a generation ago becomes acceptable or even the norm and society decays and degenerates into some new, poorer form as a result. While people focus on the here and now, our national attention span shrinks faster than a 10-year old with a TV remote.

It’s important that those people refocus and think about the long-term. What kind of country are we leaving the next generation? What kind of country were we left and why? How do we stop those who so willingly make the mistakes that cause this damage? That is something we must all keep sight of or what makes a democracy will become somewhat of a moot point around these parts.

2006-08-18T17:46:00.000-04:00

What Happened Exactly?

If you read any of what I write with any degree of interest, you know I’m a big fan of historical events and most importantly of properly understanding that history. That includes making sure the account is honest. It’s all going to be colored by the views of the authors. The adage “history is written by the winners” exists for a reason. Still, I like to think that we can try to be as honest as possible when it comes to documenting those events, regardless of our bias. In other words, there will always be bias, but it shouldn’t obfuscate the truth.

Take the recent and perhaps unfinished conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Already, the spinners of facts have begun revising and editing it, all with the proper use of language and with no blatant outright lies of course, to write how this event occurred, what happened and what the outcome is.

First, it’s important to remember who started this. Now let’s not get all philosophical and start with the “does anyone really know who started it” crap. This particular instance was started by Hezbollah. They attacked an Israeli outpost on Israeli land and killed between five and eight soldiers. The total has not been verified in the accounts I’ve seen. They also kidnapped two. This all occurred almost on the heels of Hamas attacking in southern Israel through a tunnel and kidnapping one Israeli solider. None have been release, by the way, nor do we know if they’re even alive.

What we do know is that the bulk of the coverage painted Israel as an aggressor state bent on killing innocents. The slant ran from the regulars like Reuters and the New York Times all the way up to former President Jimmy Carter. Let's examine some of the former President's most telling remarks when asked about the recent conflict between Israel and Lebanon.

I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.

Considering Hezbollah was spread across all of Lebanon, from the suburbs of Beirut to the Bekaa Valley to the Israeli border, and considering Israel found dead Iranian Pasdaran among the fighters they'd killed, I think they were very justified in their massive bombing attempt. Carter's a nice old man and he's made a name for himself with really great organizations like Habitat for Humanity, but politically he's as naive as he ever was. Recall that he was genuinely stunned and caught unawares when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. This man defined clueless in that era and still does.

And Israel is holding terrorist killers. It's not holding a few people that "looked Arab" or "political prisoners". It's holding terrorists. When terrorists kidnap Israeli soldiers after killing others and violating Israel's sovereign territory to do that, I do in fact consider Israel justified and Carter's moral equivalency attempt makes me sick.

That reminds me of another point I wanted to comment on, and I know it's seen a bit of play in the blogosphere. The whole "disproportionate response" bs I saw on the nightly news and in the news dailies really reeked of low quality propaganda. In fact, pro-Hezbollah propaganda has been streaming from the likes of mainstream publications like the LA Times. Just because one side can kick the rear in of the other doesn't mean they should "equalize" their level of fighting. War is about destroying the other side's ability to fight and in some cases about the extermination of your enemy. Amazingly, this has been the case throughout the ages. Somehow, when it's a Lefty darling like Hezbollah, the one attacked is being "disproportionate". In case those same journalists missed it, Israel has made a habit, going back to '48, of kicking in the teeth of whomever was mentally retarded enough to attack them. This was not new news, but it was new spin.

Another thing missing in almost every piece of coverage I've seen has been how many Hezbollah were confirmed or projected to be killed. You usually only heard of Israeli soldiers and Lebanese civillians and how many were dead. The mainstream media has experience with this, however, in that they do pretty much the same when they cover the US Army and Marine's presence in Iraq. Well, at least one blogger had semi-official numbers. The Lebanese appear to have around 850 dead civillians, although it's hard to get a direct tally since Hezbollah doesn't wear uniforms. In addition, Israeli casualties have been 157, of which 118 were soldiers. For Hezbollah, there are over 600 confirmed dead by the IDF and 800-1200 estimated additional casualties. The IDF has a habit of being extremely conservative in its numbers, as it's mindful of mistakes being used against it. The U.S. got into the same habit after Vietnam.

So that's a lot of Hezbollah dead and good riddance to them, but you won't hear about them on any 60 Minutes piece anytime soon. And hence that should give you a little better picture of the conflict. Likely, with the falling out of the international peace keepers as France is already faltering, and the refusal of Hezbollah to even consider abiding by this fake "ceasefire" (you can't have a ceasefire when only one side stops firing), I suggest everyone should get ready for round 2.

They should also take some of the facts to mind of all that's happened there to date and keep them in perspective as the slanted coverage continues. I for one will be watching to see how things are reported and how much longer the mainstream can portray a bunch of terrorists with American blood on their hands as "the good guys" and get away with it. Should prove an interesting statement on our culture, shouldn't it?

2006-08-17T23:45:00.000-04:00

What’s The Plan?

I love election season. There’s always someone who says they can do things better than someone else. It doesn’t matter if they know exactly what that is, just that they’re willing. Running for office means never having to say you don’t have a clue. Take this gem from Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-duh).

“I just don’t understand why we can’t get new leadership that would give us a fighting chance to turn the situation [in Iraq] around.”

Seems a simple enough and relatively average remark for an election year, doesn’t it? I think in these cases, the first thing that comes to my mind and the question I sometimes yell in frustration to the TV talking head or the internet quote is “Exactly what do you propose to do that isn’t already being done? What could you possibly make better and not worse? In a time of war, precisely what more could you add to the process or dialogue to make it more efficient?”

The answer in most cases, and from what I’ve heard from Madam Hillary so far, is absolutely nothing. In the case of Iraq, the Democrats have no new ideas, no plans other than to pull a Vietnam era (the only real comparison I’ve found between Iraq and SE Asia) and withdraw while our ally is weak.

What new leadership could give us a “fighting chance”? This is just ridiculous no-speak. A fighting chance? I didn’t realize Americans were in retreat and running for their lives. Last I heard, casualties are down, Iraqi forces are up and fighting more on their own and the three elements of the “insurgency” are quickly melting away to nothing but foreign fighters the average Iraqi doesn’t even want there. So what fighting chance are we hoping to get with the Democrats? That I’m afraid we won’t get an answer for.

As to the more general issue of the negativity spewing from the Left sans any useful ideas, there’s Joe Biden, one of the more “moderate” of the Leftists.

“There’s not much of a comprehensive strategy, and I, quite frankly, think we’re worse off now then we were before this administration initiated its efforts in the region.”

We don’t really need any evidence or proof. Joe’s just expecting anyone listening to him will take his accusations on “faith”. You know, the thing that he and his ilk usually hang on right-wingers as an outmoded and antiquated way of looking at the world. How are we worse off? Joe’s statement was in regard to Hezbollah, Hamas and the radical Shi’a Muslims. Do they hate us more than they did before 9/11? Considering all three have American blood on their hands from up to 20 years before or more, how can they hate us more? And why would we care if they do? This isn’t a popularity contest. This is a war and their side has spent the years since 1979 figuring out how to kill or subjugate the vast majority of us.

Such things are often lost when politics comes into play and politics certainly drives much of the rhetoric of the power figures of our nation. In this case, the Party largely out of power is just taking it to the extreme, no matter how hollow their arguments and in this case they’re pretty hollow. No plan, no “exit strategy”, no master agenda on how to improve the international situation graces the platform of the Democrat Party. Their plan is to smear until they win and then hopefully figure out something if they’re elected, or even better, hope it all goes away, at least for the next four years.

That’s slipping in to the realm of fantasy, though and I think they’d be fools to expect it will. The lack of credible or useful foreign policy ideas from the Left, though shows that not only are they a grand cavalcade of fools, but that should they get back in power they’ll lead us down the road of misery, malaise and suffering. Obviously they don’t mean to. Surely they haven’t planned for that.

2006-08-04T20:40:00.000-04:00

You Say Compromise, I Say Sell-Out

Some have probably heard of the House’s recent attempt to pass some tax reform for the ridiculous Estate Tax. Despite having a clear majority, House Republicans felt the need to compromise with Democrats and finally addressed the long-dormant issue of a minimum wage hike.

The idea was the minimum wage would be raised to $7.25/hour incrementally over the next few years. In exchange for this rather large economy-stalling job-killing welfare increase, the Republicans included a provision that would exempt estates worth less than $5 million (or $10 million for couples) from having to pay Estate Tax. There would be a graduated scale for those with more valuable estates, with a 15% tax on estates valued from $10 million to $25 million and a 30 percent tax on estates that were valued at more than $25 million.

Granted, this was a bit of a sell-out itself, as the idea had been all along to abolish the Estate Tax. We obviously aren’t going to be that lucky, but I see the need to appear that “the rich” weren’t getting any significant break. God forbid we should ever reward success in this country.

Even more ironically, Senate Democrats (including the minimum wage’s chief champion Teddy “Chappaquiddick” Kennedy) killed the measure decrying a “dirty trick” by Republicans to try and tack on rich people reform to their noble attempt to help the poor. So there’s still no minimum wage hike or estate tax break nor will there be. Nothing will be done before the November elections and likely nothing will get done afterwards. Expect at least gridlocked split Houses of Congress at that point or Democrat control, so either way the Estate Tax is here to stay.

There is substantial evidence of and arguments regarding the damage caused by minimum wage laws, most notably from esteemed professor Walter Williams. That the House Republicans were so willing to compromise on such a left-centric issue shows how far they’ve fallen and how much of the conservative base they’re willing to sell out. Sadly, even this weak attempt at compromise was shot down by the Democrats who have clearly shown there can be no compromise. There can only be the Left’s agenda. Anything else must be stopped and this is what the November election will help ratify one way or another.

At least there was some success in getting a bill passed to allow for drilling and oil and natural gas exploration in the Gulf and on the coasts. I might remind you that Cuba with the help of China is already beginning exploration in that same shelf and could tap significant quantities of that resource before the U.S. could even get out of the gate, thus negating environmentalists requirements that they be kept pristine. Cuba, it seems, does not feel the need to follow the EnviroLeft’s agenda in this regard. Still, the bill has to make it out of committee to reconcile the different versions of the House and Senate. We can only pray the more expansive House version wins out.

The latest drilling bill and the previous bills on illegal immigration do show that when the House puts its mind to it, it has some chops. Since it’s obvious the Democrats has forgotten what compromise is, there is perhaps no need for the Republicans to keep pursuing it as if they were the minority party, which they may be again in a few months. Again, November will tell.

2006-08-03T18:33:00.000-04:00

Progressive Idea Nixed By Progressive

Webster’s has several definitions for Progressive, but one I thought most interesting is “making use of or interested in new ideas, findings or opportunities.” Perhaps that should be amended to include items solely desirable by the Left, because it certainly doesn’t fit the column of DeWayne Wickham in Tuesday’s USA Today.

Mr. Wickham’s column is a fairly run of the mill hit piece on vouchers, an idea at which you would think the Left would jump. Never have I seen a group so defined by “choice” and “individual right to choose” for so many other issues, but not for where you can send your kids to school. Perhaps that’s because most on the Left know full well that they run the public schools and everything that’s taught at their little social engineering factories.

His main beef is with a $100 million program of federal tax dollars aimed at allowing vouchers under a different name (Opportunity Scholarships) to be given to parents who want to choose a better public school for their children. He crows that it is a failure before it starts and that these kids don’t need a different school, just a better public school (requiring of course MORE money to an already bloated educational establishment).

His primary evidence? Kids with certain economic, social and racial backgrounds (read: poor minority kids) don’t do well in either public or private schools based on a report from the National Center for Education Statistics. He harps on that point for the bulk of his editorial and carefully skirts another small fact, that while switching to a private school doesn’t turn all underprivileged kids into Rhodes Scholars, it does certainly improve their scores and more succeed under such a system. Those facts, being that they don’t backup his race-baiting hypothesis, are surprisingly omitted, except for a brief mention that “overall”, private schools did better than public schools.

Here’s one you’ll like even better. His primary backup to indicate that “The results…are nothing more than we expected” is Reg Weaver, President of the NEA, a large and well-funded (by you and me) organization that primarily backs leftist causes and political candidates through its control on teacher’s unions. Most teachers in private schools, you may or may not be aware, are not unionized. In public school they are. It shouldn’t take much more than that for you to see the connection. Mr. Weaver states “We know what it takes to improve public education and it’s not vouchers.” Sounds like Nixon and his plan he couldn’t tell us. Well, tell you what Weaver, let us in on your little secret because we’ve been wondering for the past 40 years if you had the slightest idea what in the hell you were doing or how you would “improve” public education.

It wouldn’t be a true hit piece, though, without a backhand at the voucher program by calling it racist. He doesn’t have to come out and say it. Wickham just brings up that vouchers were offered after schools were desegregated (in his example in Prince Edward County in Virginia) to allow white students to be transferred out of integrated schools. So of course, we should hate this because it’s racist. Well, that argument would hold a bit of water other than the fact that NO racial bias is in any of the current voucher plans and in fact it’s been suggested rather tellingly in volumes of research that minorities in poor neighborhoods would be the primary beneficiaries of vouchers. Perhaps there in lies the resistance and the need to lie (not an uncommon thing for journalists these days) to denigrate a program that threatens one of the pillars of the Left’s power base.

At least he does offer what should improve public education, again from the huckster Weaver. “Certified teachers. Smaller class sizes. Adequate and equitable funding. Safe and orderly schools and qualified staffs.” How have we missed this before? The answer was so simple and all we needed was the NEA’s wisdom to guide us. Certified teachers, more appropriately qualified teachers are easy enough. You just have to do away with the unions and start testing the teachers’ proficiency on their given subjects. WAIT. The NEA opposes that. Smaller class sizes are a red herring and have been debunked themselves. Adequate and equitable funding arrived a generation ago. Most schools are funded to what some might “conservatively” call (no pun intended) excess. Teachers aren’t paid that bad and in fact many are paid quite well. Public school union teachers certainly outshine their private school counterparts in terms of salary, no question. The administrations for public schools receive the lion’s share of the funding and use it to fund massive bureaucracies, counselors, lawyers, “experts” and public relations personnel. Considering private schools live without most of those rather successfully, the “adequate and equitable funding” line goes beyond being a joke and more of a flat-out insult to the intelligence of the general public. Safe and orderly schools require more than the federal government can give. They require a restructuring of our society that has been steadily and intentionally broken down since the early 1960’s. Schools can’t do that nor is it their mandate to do it and we’re certainly not going to pay their unqualified selves to do it. Qualified staffs? See above. Submit to performance testing and we’ll talk. Until then, ask your union rep why you’re inadequate.

I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me, by the way, why the several thousand I pay a year to the local government for holding my land hostage with property tax that they say goes to local schools doesn’t entitle me to determine where my child goes to school. We’re lucky at least, to have access to a good school system, in fact one of the best, but I can’t say I approve of being scolded like a child by a newspaper writer on why I and others don’t need that right.

There’s a popular phrase associated with the late, great Bill Hicks. “Go back to sleep America. You are free to do what we tell you.” I often hear it bandied about when it comes to money going to conservative causes or when the government undertakes some venture the Left isn’t too fond of. But I don’t in those instances see a destruction of individual choice. The axiom could be more easily applied to the Left’s train of thought in cases like this, implying that they know what’s best for us and that we really should leave it to the elitists to run our lives and our money for us. And yes, I know elitists fall on both sides of the political spectrum, but these days the only ones that seem to be impacting my personal freedom and wallet seem to be coming almost exclusively from the Left.

Getting back to Wickham’s column (No DeWayne, I haven’t forgotten you), his argument doesn’t hold water. He played the racist card because he knew his argument was inadequate and his best source is the President of one of the most left-leaning and partisan groups in Washington opposing vouchers; hardly credible in my opinion and definitely full of bias and malice.

Yet, his was not the only Leftist piece to hit the press after this study was released. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to talk about that more later. Til then, take a nap and come tomorrow there should be some other element of society or government ready to tell you how to live your life and how you should pay them to make sure it happens.

2006-08-02T06:45:00.000-04:00

Sometimes They Get It Right

Occasionally, you read a story in one of the big dailies that speaks a bit of common sense. Unfortunately, it is usually because the editors have an agenda that is furthered by attacking something they would normally ignore. Still, you take what you can get. Such is the case with today’s USA Today editorial on the 10th anniversary of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act.

To bolster their argument that government shouldn’t be picking on poor, defenseless single mothers, they highlight some serious corporate and special interest welfare that usually doesn’t see a lot of ink in the big papers. The highlights of the piece are the over $144 billion paid out in the last ten years in agricultural subsidies and drought relief payments. They rightly point out that not all of the money, in fact hardly any, goes to the stereotypical family farm. Most go to agricultural corporations or individuals who have never farmed, but are paid not to, for example. Money also goes to relieve drought in areas that haven’t seen a dry year in ages. Thus it goes to show that once you open a money spigot, there’s almost no chance it will be turned back off.

Then it brings up one of my other favorites, corporate welfare, where the Congressional Research Service has noted 15,877 earmarks worth $47.4 billion in our money. Who pitched for that? Lobbyists and special interest groups, of course did most of the dirty work. Contrary to CNN and the Washington Post, the NRA is not the sole lobbying organization in Congress. Everyone from sugar growers to car manufacturers to airlines to service unions are vying for your money.

The USA Today editorial also decries money going to state and local governments as a way to pay for their woes and shore up federal mandates. What it doesn’t say and should is that most of that money could have and should have just stayed with the states and never been taxed by the feds. That would have solved much of that problem. Local and state governments have become as dependent as the legendary welfare moms on the feds for everything from highway money to midnight basketball (remember that one?). It is a situation of the federal government’s own making. As its bloated bureaucracy has expanded, it has required the smaller governments to bow to its requirements, something that has crippled their ability to provide basic services without federal aid. It’s easily akin to a pusher/junkie relationship. USA Today would have done well to explore that a little further.

Last and certainly not least, the largest welfare queens of them all receive a paragraph. Whole books have been written about the lamprey-like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and the spiraling costs they entail. These are perhaps the largest drain on our economy and the biggest recipients of federal largesse. As our population ages, higher taxes or fewer benefits (most likely both) will be the result, especially as Congress inevitably vacillates back and forth between tax and soak Democrats and spendthrift Republicans. Neither major party seems interested in solving that problem, but why should they? It makes for a better political football and these days that’s all such groups really care about…politics.

The editorial calls for restoring fiscal sanity through control of welfare payments at all levels. Elimination of most of them would likely be even better, although you usually won’t hear a liberal paper like USA Today call for that. Eliminating just the farm subsidies and corporate welfare would save almost $200 billion in a budget where we’re currently spending $300 billion over what we take in. It’s one small step, followed by looking at federal programs and departments that could easily disappear tomorrow with no ill effect to the rest of us (*COUGH*Department of Education *COUGH*).

It’s nice to see a paper like USA Today bring this up in one of their editorials, even if it was to just highlight that they thought welfare moms were receiving too harsh of treatment because of reform. Funny enough, even they had to admit in the first part of their editorial that Welfare Reform by and large not only worked. It exceeded most every expectation.

They wouldn’t be the liberal rag they were, though if they didn’t point out how unfair it was that these people who had children out of wedlock and didn’t get a good education can’t get the $14+ an hour jobs that are required to finally do better than just being on the dole. Amazing how unjust that is… To hear them tell it, those jobs should just be handed out or we should pay for these women (and some men) to be educated so they can make that much. No mention of course on not only why we should have to pay for the irresponsible behavior of others is made, but also there is the typical lefty naiveté of how not only would they be paid for, or what jobs would be created magically created that they could fill.

There’s also the small detail omitted of all the millions already spent on job training and “workforce development” at all levels of government. It doesn’t seem to do much good even when it is available and then any government bureaucracy allowed to handle it wraps it in so many layers of requirements as to make it unusable. Why I remember myself looking years ago into such things as there being federal money available for retraining for those of us laid off by companies that outsourced U.S. jobs to other countries. Take a guess at the loophole. If the job went to a NAFTA trading partner, the feds didn’t have to pay. And now guess where the jobs in question went? They drink Molson there, I can tell you that much.

It’s also not unique. Most of those programs don’t work. They just pay for bureaucracies that employ a few here and there without actually fulfilling much of their noble intended goals and I guarantee you we’d see more of the same if the left’s advocated “new job training” programs for the former welfare moms were expanded. Some would benefit, but most would still be where they are, safely still poor so that the likes of USA Today could yell and scream for even more of our taxpayer dollars to be spent.

So, chalk this one up as a partial victory for common sense in one of the newspapers of record, even if it was only to take another shot at the “cruel” Republicans in power. Now if we can get them to shout as loudly when a Democrat sits in the White House, we’ll be making real progress.

2006-08-01T07:42:00.000-04:00

We’re Already In World War III

I’ve been hearing lately in regards to the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict that it has to be brought in check before it leads to World War III. I have news for those pundits who chose that as the Phrase of the Day. We’re already fighting the Third World War. We just don’t call it that yet.

While we were attacked in smaller though no less significant ways before 9/11 (the Cole, Khobar Towers, the African embassy bombings, Somalia, the ’93 WTC bombing, Beirut in ’83, etc.), America didn’t seriously enter the war until September 11, 2001. When we did, there was a realization among many, those who chose to look beyond the usual Republican/Democrat hogwash, that this was a war, now called The Long War, with no end in sight and no clear idea of who we would have to fight to end it. We only knew we were in it and we could continue suffering casualties or do something about it.

The famed “Axis of Evil” speech, the “You’re either with us or with the terrorists” line and what became the Bush Doctrine all were signs of our new global reality; one we actually were part of for years but only at that point acknowledged. Flush with oil money and emboldened by a fusion with global Marxists after an initial training and love affair with unreformed Nazi fascists, the shadow of Islamist terror organizations have merged with the old hardline Communist survivors (China, North Korea and Cuba) and even "ex" communists like Russia to take on the last remaining superpower and the chief impediment to their global goals, the United States.

The United States must be reduced and or forced back into isolationism if any of their agendas are to succeed. They see the model of Vietnam and know this is the only way they can fight the U.S. until some of them are militarily capable of challenging it. The most likely candidates in the short term will be China and/or North Korea, with possibly Iran bringing up the rear. This is the war currently waged against us and there are willing allies, either complicit or implicit, in the form of the American Left.

Whether the U.S. fights militarily in the Middle East and elsewhere or whether we're fighting the battle of political wills here at home, we have to keep in mind, we didn't start this. No, no. Don't start pulling out your lists of "Well America did this". Trust me. I've seen those lists since college and they're starting to get a little stale. No country, especially not those currently aligned against the U.S., has done more for the world or guaranteed more freedom for its own people than the U.S. It's certainly not perfect and we wage that campaign daily as well, but I'll take it over the rest of the world any day.

What I mean by us not starting it is, there's nothing we could do to just turn it off tomorrow. Israel's current conflict with Hezbollah is a prime example. Hezbollah and Hamas started this round by killing Israeli soldiers and then kidnapping others. Israel responded by going after those organizations with everything it had. It could have easily folded up and died, but it didn't. And all these discussions of a cease fire and peace in the Middle East seem to be focusing on stopping Israel's offensive. Well, one must consider Israel isn't the only one shooting, nor did it start the shooting. Until you can get Hezbollah to cave, there will be no peace, except one forced on an Israel that is winning. The only way Hezbollah will talk peace is if their Baathist masters in Syria or their sugar daddies in Iran pull their financing, and that won't happen. One could make an arguable case that Iran and/or Syria put Hamas and Hezbollah up to this latest round of bloodshed.

The United States is in the same situation. Are we to stand by and watch them kill more and more of us, becoming bolder and bolder in their attacks, until one day we all live under dhimmitude? Is that our best solution? Or do we go into their dens and kill them all? Not a lot of middle ground there. We couldn't "contain" the Soviets. We couldn't stop at the Rhine when fighting the Germans. We couldn't not drop the atomic bomb on Japan. Half ass doesn't win a war. It just lets the enemy catch their breath and hit you again another day.

All the arguments against the war in Iraq or the Israeli-Hezbollah/Hamas conflict or even the war in Afghanistan fail to take into consideration a) history and b) other nations' and NGOs' motives. Until they do, the arguments are moot. We are in a war not of our choosing and will only be out of it when the other side begs for peace or is dead. This may be contained. This may get out of control and most likely all of us will be lucky to live through it. Just don't make the mistake of thinking we aren't living in the middle of the next World War.

2006-07-31T20:32:00.000-04:00

Fixing The Barn Door After The Horses Get Out

And so it is with the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to “overhaul” its disaster-relief programs. After the massive fraud and waste generated by FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (and it didn’t help that it hit one of the most corrupt parts of the U.S. politically speaking), the DHS has decided to revamp their plans and protocols for dealing with disasters.

First, let’s remember that it has always been the responsibility of the state and local governments anytime they had a natural disaster to be the first-responders and to handle any given situation as best they could. This has been the case always, until a sympathetic press saw a chance to take a shot at a President it didn’t like and vindicate an otherwise unredeemable fraud of a mayor in a Democrat bastion completely run as a Democrat machine. Now, because of that and Bush’s compassionate conservatism, we have a legacy of over a billion dollars of wasted taxpayer money that DHS has to try and appear as if they are taking a lesson from to reform future disaster-preparedness.

What’s the answer? Of course, more federal intervention sooner. That means what? The feds are the last group you typically want to call in on a local issue. Put simply, who do you think might know better how to respond to your house being flooded or sliding away on a field of mud or burning in a wildfire: the official who lives 20 miles away or 50 miles away or the one that lives 1 or 2,000 miles away?

Common sense has to kick in over partisan politics somewhere, people. Surely you won’t stand there and demand federal intervention just because you think it’ll hurt the Republicans at the polls. Rationalism can’t be the exclusive province of conservatives and libertarians, but then again…

Then there’s the small matter of disaster aid. The feds were giving out $2,000 to all disaster victims of Katrina, and predictably it was spent (as most free money is) on ridiculous items in many cases. Anything from lap dances to booze to color TV’s seems to have been ok. Anything but food and shelter, that is. The DHS response is to limit the aid to $500. Presumably, if they get less, then they can waste less. Sort of like, if I patch this part of the hole with tar, but leave about a quarter of the hole open, it will only leak a fraction as much.

Setting aside that I think the whole idea of “government welfare assistance”, especially in terms of money is ridiculous and that I consider Madison’s 1794 quote of “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” putting the kibosh on the whole “General Welfare” clause nonsense, you would hope at least common sense might take hold in the bureaucratic halls of DHS.

Why is the federal government’s solution to any problem to throw money at it? There’s a Depression on? Throw money at it! There’s poverty in America? You don’t say? Throw money at it! We have to stop illegal drugs! Throw money at it! A natural disaster that no one could prevent and that no one caused just because they were Republican wiped out a bunch of homes and now we have a bunch of poor people homeless who need help. Throw money at them! Yes, the solution works every time. I don’t know why we don’t use it more often. I have a headache today. Perhaps the feds could throw me some money to make it better.

The idea that the federal government exists as a panacea to cure all of our social and economic ills is the path to the socialist state of Failureville, population every failed economy in the last 100 years. By “reforming” our disaster preparedness, but still offering that greater control at a higher level is best, we do not alter the basic structure or dependence on the federal behemoth over local and state control and increase the irrelevance of those same levels. We would be better served by relying on our own local resources with more money in our pockets (and the pockets of our local governments) by reducing the bureaucracy of the federal government. That we survived and handled disasters just as bad for almost 200 years before Katrina without serious federal intervention should clue the rest of us in.

If you want to grow, you don’t enlarge the nest, you leave it and fly away and whether you fly or fall and perish, shouldn’t it be up to you?

2006-07-20T21:24:00.000-04:00

Embryonic Stem Cell Research Kicked Away Again From The Federal Trough

Whenever someone’s pushing an issue too hard, especially an issue where money will change hands, it’s worth looking into who will benefit, usually monetarily, from the issue. Such is the case with the recent push through of the embryonic stem cell bill that Congress passed and for which Bush finally decided to crack open his veto pen.

It’s safe to say that the overall response of the press has been negative. That Congress so quickly and so openly passed it is also a bit of a surprise. Bush, in one of the few Reaganite things he’s done, openly and showily vetoed it. Now, this is not a pro-life/pro-abortion piece. That’s an issue for another time and when I can bother answering the hate mail. It goes beyond that. Although there certainly are considerations on both sides to that effect, and it does affect the motivation of many, I'd like to discuss the economic side of this.

Consider, if you will, what was actually the issue. The issue wasn’t “the big bad Bushies won’t let us experiment on embryonic cells”. Never was. There’s nothing stopping researchers from experimenting with fetal tissue. What’s been at stake is federal grant money. The researchers behind embryonic stem cell research are primarily biologists, not doctors. They have been unable to secure significant private investment in embryonic research. Some might argue that the investors have moral issues with it, but I’m guessing it’s just a matter of plain old fashioned results.

See, there are two primary forms of stem cell research. There’s embryonic, where they experiment with stem cells from fetal tissue and adult stem cells from…well, guess. Blood stem cells, umbilical and placenta cells and some from the bone marrow are common choices.

The adult stem cell research has been around for decades, shown great promise and even some success in treatments for type 1 diabetes, spinal cord injuries, repairing heart muscle, fighting several forms of cancer, fighting immunodeficiency conditions, and the recognized and close potential to do much more. There is a rather lengthy list. Some human experiments have even been conducted and people who could not walk before due to spinal cord injuries are walking now because of injections of adult stem cells. Adult stem cells are easy to harvest, in many cases from the patient who will be the beneficiary of the research or from the placenta or umbilical cord blood.

Embryonic require a steady supply of fetuses. Guess where they get those from. Embryonic stem cell research also hosts the dubious distinction of showing significant, real promise in curing exactly ZERO ailments, diseases or conditions. There is the occasional snake-oil promise that it might one day, if we’re lucky, find some way to cure Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. So far, there is no evidence that it will. In fact, tests that have been done with live cells thus far have either met in total failure through immune system rejection or in massive tumor growth.

Money from investors only goes where there are results, and as you can see, embryonic research hasn’t really delivered. So they go to feed at the federal trough, and Congress and the media seem more than willing to oblige. After all, it’s only your money.

What you watched in the news and in Congress was a well laid-out fleecing of the American taxpayer, and amazingly Bush headed it off. Pay no attention to the charlatans like John Edwards, former Senator, trial lawyer and well-known “baby-whisperer” who argue that people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of their wheel chairs and walk again if only the federal government wouldn’t be so stingy with your money and support a hack research field. If private investors won’t put money towards it, there’s a good chance there’s nothing to it. Maybe someone should mention that on NBC Nightly News.

2006-07-19T21:40:00.000-04:00

When Did You Take A Walk Off The Map, Andy?

I grew up in a household of Democrats. One could describe them as somewhat apolitical. Politics was rarely if ever discussed in our household. The general consensus was that they were mostly crooks anyway so why bother. My family was a good union family, though. They paid their dues, went on strike in the blistering sun, went to union meetings and voted for Andy Jacobs as their federal rep religiously. Like most Hoosiers, they tended to choose Republicans for local office, but Andy and Birch Bayh were the anointed as far as they were concerned.

What was perhaps most disappointing, and likely what began the turn of my young mind from thinking of the Democrats as noble champions of the little guy, was watching the unions repeatedly fail my family. I watched the unions make backroom deals and become more corrupt, union reps getting into bed with the managers and owners (sometimes literally) they ostensibly were aligned against. Strikes became rituals. Benefits decreased. Wages stagnated and new employees came in at much lower pay. Looking back, this is how those companies survived. The ones with stronger unions are gone, but it still didn’t help those who believed in that system or the betrayal, for nothing really, of their devotion.

These same unions funded the Democrats, especially the local campaigns, and we would hear the Dems railing against this or that social injustice against this union or that minority only to see them do less than nothing when they got in office. Funny, that was exactly what they said the Republicans did as they gave fiery campaign speeches. So, we had two parties of a whole lot of nothing we were paying to make our lives better, we thought. Maybe that’s another reason politics wasn’t discussed in my house. It was too bitter a pill to swallow.

Above this all, though, there were still folks like Andy Jacobs. He seemed a man of integrity and a man of compassion. Sometimes, you think, regardless of if he believes this way or that on certain issues, he’s still a good person and still intentioned to do right. Then just about the time I was having a serious crisis of faith regarding the Democrat Party as a young adult, Jacobs went completely off the deep end and cast the deciding vote in the joke of piece of gun control legislation, the Brady Bill.

He retired immediately after, possibly afraid of the backlash of all us working class who’d voted him in, watching him betray a right we counted on to help us protect our homes from the encroaching criminal element he’d helped to do nothing about. Of course, I thought his replacement, Julia Carson, who might’ve made Lenin blush with her over-the-top socialist principles, who he endorsed wholeheartedly, was completely unlike him. I thought, perhaps, he had made some fatal miscalculation with the Brady Bill, but I wasn’t going to let that tarnish what I thought was a good, moderate Democrat (when there used to be moderates).

I’ve found in the following years that Jacobs was showing us a glimpse of who he truly was when he cast that vote or who all those years in Washington had helped him become. He’s spent the last few years violently railing against “neo-cons” and right-wingers, sounding like your typical second-year poly sci student more than a retired veteran and “moderate” Congressman. Take this latest quip he wrote for our weekly Lefty mag, NUVO:

Neo-con job artists are right. The Constitution does not give “due process” to a terrorist; doesn’t give it to a murderer or rapist either. “Due process” is for finding out whether a person is a terrorist, murderer or rapist. Loyal Americans call this “liberty and justice for all”.

Considering those terrorists captured were captured in no uniform in a combat situation firing on our troops, they were lucky they weren’t summarily stood up and shot. Perhaps we all would’ve been better served if they were. The important thing that should also be considered, and I would’ve expected Mr. Jacobs might have realized this, is they are not U.S. citizens. We have never given U.S. rights or civil liberties to prisoners of war. In World War II, Axis prisoners were tried in military courts and often executed in similar situations. That’s war! It wasn’t like we picked these guys up speeding down I-70 doing 90 in a 70. We caught them in combat situations taking arms against the United States. That they dressed like civilians rather than take a uniform speaks more of subterfuge and guerilla action, something not protected by the much-vaunted and often misunderstood Geneva Convention (and when exactly did they sign it, oh, never mind).

U.S. courts have never had jurisdiction here and it is folly to assume that somehow they now do. The Left has seen terrorists as a law enforcement problem since the beginning and I can assure you that approach has failed. Did it stop the African embassy bombings, Khobar Towers, hostage takings or the bombing of the Cole or 9/11? No. Only killing them dead seems to remove them permanently.

I have to wonder where Jacobs really stepped off the train and became such a screaming Lefty. This, of course, isn’t my sole evidence. Merely the first and last piece I have. There is much in between and it is easily researched. Perhaps he always was, and the role of a politician in a different climate than today required he be more discreet. One thing’s for sure. The man my folks thought was serving them in Congress is not the same man who voted for the Brady Bill or who has since taken every opportunity to skewer anyone with a slightly different than far-left point of view and likely he never was.

Maybe it’s true what Reagan said. He didn’t leave the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party left him, and apparently most of us working-class poor who still clung naively to the hope that they really were looking out for us. It makes you reevaluate much of what we know of our modern political scene and much of what has happened that changed the course of the way this country had done business for over 150 years to something completely different, and completely unprecedented (and not for the better) in the last fifty.

2006-07-18T22:08:00.000-04:00

The Wellspring

Usually one columnist doesn’t provide such a wide variety of fodder over such a short time. Dan Carpenter is one of those unique individuals that can break that stalemate, though. In addition to his screed on gun owners (and a host of other associated individuals), Dan was able to take a moment to share with us his thoughts on the developing crisis in Lebanon.

So what does Dan think of the looming crisis? Why, it’s all Israel’s fault, and the U.S. is just as guilty because we won’t rein in our junkyard dog.

Criticism of Israel in this country is pretty much taboo, even when it turns its state-of-the-art, American-financed military forces against its sovereign neighbors and "regrettably" kills far more civilians than do the anti-Israeli terrorists.

President Bush's insistence on this heedless ally's "right to defend itself" with hundreds of bombing sorties in response to a few kidnappings and guerrilla rocket launchings shows once again how out of step our leadership is when it comes to appreciating national aspirations.

Like most liberals, Dan is focused on looking at things through blinders and examining only one tiny aspect of an extremely complex situation. If you hear no evil, then you can see whatever you want it would seem. Notice how the actions that caused Israel to launch its current offensive are reduced to a “few kidnappings and guerilla rocket launchings”. Because Israel should just accept that people being killed by bombs and soldiers killed or kidnapped by border incursions are just the price of doing business in the Mideast apparently. And all the bombings before this one? Do they matter? As Israel has withdrawn and fallen back and begged for peace in the wake of continued murder of innocent civilians, none of that mattered? It really does take a liberal to ignore that.

There is also no consideration, of course, for the massive presence of Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon, as well as hundreds of Iranian “advisors” and until recently a significant Syrian military presence. All these forces are sworn to Israel’s destruction. Iranian missiles and money have flooded into Hezbollah’s bases in Lebanon and Lebanon’s army has been unable to do much about it. With the stated objective of Iran now the complete destruction of Israel, doesn’t it make sense that they would ratchet up their puppet organizations along Israel’s border to fulfill that promise? Or is it just empty rhetoric?

So I’d say also it’s more than just a matter of a few kidnappings or some stray rockets. The main difference in the conduct between Israel and its enemies is, Israel is actually trying to avoid collateral damage. Although it’s war, and sadly innocents are going to get caught in this, Israel has always made it a policy to minimize civilian casualties. Israel’s enemies, be they Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah, Syria, Iran, any of them, go out of their way to kill as many women, children and young people before they bother targeting soldiers. In fact, I think soldiers are only targets when there’s no one else to blow up or shoot at. The whole moral equivalency thing is a bit sickening, but Dan’s all for it.

Don't the Iranians likewise have a right to defend themselves? The North Koreans? The Palestinians, who have suffered in every aspect of life under 40 years of foreign occupation?

Dan equates the Israelis to known state sponsors of terror, Iran, North Korea and the Palestinian Arabs. That’s the very definition of moral equivalency. Never take into consideration any of the particulars of a party, whether it be a rogue communist state like North Korea, a revolutionary Marxist/Islamist/fascist theocracy like Iran or an fake government of a fake people that sponsors real terror on its neighbors and is considered the trash of the Arab world like the Palestinian Arabs. The Israelis, in Dan’s eyes are no different and no better. They’re just another “animal” we have to rein in.

And this 40 years of occupation bleeding hart claptrap really pigeon holes Dan. I don’t have time to take you on the Grand Tour, but if you agree with Dan on that sentence, take some time to read a history book (and please not the text books they’re shilling in high schools and colleges these days). The Palestinian Arabs come from Jordan and Egypt as well as areas of the West Bank and the rest of Israel. Arafat was Egyptian for Pete’s sake. The PLO was founded before the ’67 war in which Israel occupied the Sinai and West Bank, and at the time those were claimed by Egypt and Jordan, respectively. There was no Palestinian state and there has been no occupation of some conquered people’s territory. The Hashemites in Jordan have killed far more Palestinians and the Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and Syria have done more to treat the Palestinians like sub humans than the Israelis could have ever dreamed of doing.

That’s not the end of it, though. Dan has to explain why the U.S. won’t rein in one of its closest allies.

Bush's answer is the reflexive, popular, bipartisan gospel in America, where the Book of Revelation drives politics and the plight of the Palestinians gets no notice until a suicide bomber commands it for a day or two.

See, it’s the Jesus freaks in Jesusland who are guilty of our support of Israel. We don’t support it because it’s the only friendly democracy in the region (well, now one of two) or because of cultural or economic ties or even military ties. We support it because we let the Bible govern our foreign policy. Reading Dan’s blog, I couldn’t tell if I was reading the Indianapolis Star or International ANSWER’s web site.

It’s hard to take such a person seriously when their columns and blog entries are filled with the jingoistic talking points and tired arguments you would expect to hear in an amateur anti-war rally on some second-rate college campus. They don’t reflect well of a paid, veteran columnist of a halfway decent newspaper. I’ve seen Dan write better, even when I’ve disagreed with him, but I think sometimes he lets his leftist leanings and loathing’s get the better of him. Right, Dan? Columnists of the World Unite! Solidarity, baby.

2006-07-17T23:37:00.000-04:00

Better To Remain Silent Lest You Be Thought A Fool...

Than open your mouth and remove all doubt. I love that old axiom. It fits no one this week better than one of the Indianapolis Star's chief editorialists, Dan Carpenter. His editorial, "Hoosiers Under Fire", was a finely crafted piece of boring talking points that looks like he just couldn't figure who to attack that week. To be safe, it looks like he just fired a shotgun full of ink at the easiest of conservative or Republican targets. For example:

All those poor souls stuck like penned cattle in a bureaucratic cyber-mess at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles -- and no Kernan-O'Bannon administration to blame it on. Well, we can all give thanks they weren't waiting for concealed-weapons permits. I can tell you I feel a lot safer now that you can buy one of those for a lifetime.

It was important, said one of the legislators who championed this latest victory for the gun lobby, that good citizens be spared the "hassle" of renewing permits for lethal firearms every few years. He didn't mention the joy of periodic driver's license renewals; but, hey, maybe he killed two birds with that bullet. Surely, any clerk anywhere is going to think twice about hassling customers when just about anybody might be packin'.

Well, in two short paragraphs, he managed to malign the BMV, gun owners, legislators, possibly the governor and people who don't speak quite so eloquently as he (packin'?). That's got to be some kind of record.

Let's concede that we know Carpenter hates gun owners, because he buys in to the elitist claptrap that somehow if you disarm the citizenry or make it difficult for them to get guns, crime will magically drop. The English and Canadians thought that too, as did the Australians, and you don't have to be a man of the world to see how stupendously that failed.

And hey while we're on the subject, I'm all for lifetime driver's licenses. At most, they check your vision. What's the point? People have the chart memorized anyway. Read line 3. Sound familiar? It's just another way for the State to now squeeze $21 out of our wallets every six years. I guess license plate fees weren't high enough. But that's beside the point. Licenses are not always ways to demonstrate competence. You could just as easily say that columnists such as Carpenter and bloggers such as I need get license. Still doesn't speak to our competence, does it Dan?

In most common cases, like driver's licenses, it's all about the fee. Just some extra money to be made for the state's coffer and the concealed carry license is no different. And would Dan please explain to me how it's going to make a lick of difference if someone has a concealed carry license for 1 year or 100 if they get convicted of a felony? They'll still lose it. It's not irrevocable. Setting aside that I'm all for a system like Vermont and Alaska have (no permits needed to carry concealed), I think Dan either doesn't want to or somehow can't understand reality, as evidenced by his deep desire to spout off ridiculous rhetoric like he's reading off the DNC's '92/'94 federal platform.

What might be more something for Dan to think on is not so much a clerk being concerned about hassling someone not knowing if they're packing so much as the criminal who won't necessarily commit that violent crime for the same reason. But then, in liberal land there are no criminals, only society's victims, right Dan?

Then Dan goes over the National Asset Database which ridiculously lists several Indiana attractions (I'm sure Santa Claus Land is in there without even looking) as terror targets. That one I have to agree with Dan on. Someone check the temperature in Hell.

But, Dan just can't let sleeping dogs lie. He has to prove to you that he really can fit his whole foot in his mouth.

Just to kind of bring things full circle, Paul Helmke, the former Republican mayor of Martone's hometown of Fort Wayne, blasted Florida Gov. Jeb Bush last week for attributing a dip in that state's (still horrendous) crime rate to a new law allowing citizens to "meet force with force" when they feel threatened.

Helmke, who became president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence just last Monday, issued a statement noting that violent crime has decreased nationally since the restrictive Brady Law went into effect in 1994. He questioned whether that's not a better idea than encouraging folks to carry heat and handle their own policing when they get, er, hassled.

Now there's a credible source. The Brady Campaign, formerly the Artist known as Handgun Control, Inc. saying that their prize gun control legislation, which did exactly nothing to stop criminals from getting or using guns, was responsible for a crime wave decrease that started at least a year before the legislation was adopted. Certainly it wasn't the dip in the crack drug trade or the fact that criminals themselves were reporting (from behind bars, thankfully) that they preferred to avoid targets and homes they feared to be armed. Couldn't be that cities with highly restrictive gun laws saw their crime rate decrease at much lower levels than the rest of the country (except New York, go Rudy).

But to review, the Brady Law primarily hassled law-abiding gun owners, and I remember it well because it restricted my and others' lawful purchase activities at the time, but I knew dealers in our neighborhood who had no trouble acquiring stolen guns. The law didn't affect them, apparently. Primarily, it made someone wait seven days to get a gun legally (unless you had a permit) and then only until they had the national instant check system. It restricted clips for semi-auto handguns to 10 rounds and banned certain cosmetically unique firearms from new manufacture and sale in the U.S. You could still own them or buy older ones, and you could still own clips that had greater than 10 rd. capacity. So who did it stop? Well, if you were trying to purchase one of those items legally, it stopped you most likely. Clips that were $13-$15 suddenly were over $100 and stayed that way for 10 years. Rifles that had been $400-$500 suddenly went for well over $1000 or more. No change, just availability.

All that law did, and anyone that was listening to Handgun Control, its Marxist sympathizers, and Bubba C in the White House on his more candid days, was price some guns and accessories out of the range of the poor and middle class, which was what they wanted. Brady was a test law to see if they could start down the slope to bury gun rights. The '94 election proved that they had rather grossly misjudged Americans and their habit of not liking freedoms restricted for their "own good".

So Dan might consider some of that before spouting useless drivel in the form of quotes from an outspoken anti-gun-rights advocate who has taken the lead of a largely discredited agitprop anti-gun rights organization. Of course, if he were to stop, then I wouldn't have such pretty gems to pick up and run with the following day, so perhaps you should keep opening that mouth, Dan. Just try and remember that old axiom.

2006-07-14T18:23:00.000-04:00

We Should Stand By Israel

Of course, many are aware of the current and growing war between Israel and its neighbors these past few weeks. Through blatant acts of terrorism, Hamas and Hezbollah engaged in themurder and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, plus a new round of rocket attacks, despite their assurances (at least Hamas’) that they would attempt to adhere to a ceasefire. Israel apparently has had enough and has made the decision of whether to roll over and be terrorized or take action.

The United States is and must stand behind Israel in this instance. Of course, the UN, obsolete a body as it is, attempted to pass a resolution condemning Israel, but the U.S. veto squashed it. There have been calls by many European and Arab nations for the U.S. to intervene and stop Israel. I have to ask the question. Why? The United States has adopted a policy of aggressive defense and even preemptive action to stop future terrorist strikes. Why should we deny Israel that option? How hypocritical would that be?

Of course, those demanding it are generally also no big fan of the United States’ policy on unilateral action either. Deliberate acts of aggression against a sovereign nation and its people must be met with all force that can be brought to bear. When a mosquito bites you, do you scold it? Or do you swat and kill it? Well, if you’re not a Berkeley student, you squash it and move on. You don’t tap it. You don’t brush it (unless you want stung again). You make sure it can’t do that anymore. Terrorists of the Islamofascist variety fall into this category.

Combining the Mohammedan legacy of conversion through conquest (by the sword) with the racial superiority, anti-Jew, socialist mindset of the fascist governments of old has bred a new and much deadlier breed of warrior who wages war through terror. Hence, Islamofascist. I just wanted to make sure you all understood my definition.

Sadly, good people are and will be hurt by this. Lebanon, with almost half of its population Christian and violently opposed to Hezbollah, as well as the Muslim part of the population that wishes to coexist with the Christian tribes and with Israel, will suffer greatly for Hezbollah’s stranglehold and Syria’s legacy of control on parts of Lebanon. This isn’t going to win Israel any new friends, but war rarely makes friends of those stuck in the middle of the battle. On the economic side, there’s the world oil supply, which seems to rise in cost daily as the MidEast remains unstable. We were able to keep the price stable only by tolerating despots, zealots and fools to run things in the region. Now that this policy has been shown to do more harm than good, we and the rest of the world will be left with the financial consequences. Oil will be more expensive.

Like most armchair historians at this stage, I have my own thoughts as to how this could play out. One, the terrorists will cave to Israel’s demands and return the hostages. This is not very likely, although there’s a glimmer of hope that perhaps they’ll have no choice. Two, Syria will join the fighting. Either Israel will attack them or they’ll use Israel’s operation in south Lebanon as their stated provocation and send troops back into Bekaa. They’ve been waiting for such an excuse to continue their designs of conquest on Lebanon.

Likely, Syria will not enter the fray unless it can be reasonably sure Iran will back it. Syria knows that militarily it cannot outlast or outfight the Israelis and so will need Iran’s muscle to strengthen its spine. Iran has been wanting a renewed military conflict with Israel for many years now, and with the madman Ahmadinejad running the show now, it seems all the more likely. This whole affair could be on the marching orders of Iran and Syria. Hezbollah is fully bankrolled by them and wouldn't wipe it's rear without sayso from Tehran or Damscus. Frankly, Israel has every right to hit Syria and Assad. The fascist Baath's there have been asking for it for some time. Iran, well, Iran has a great population but a world class group of fanatics for leaders. For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Left that Bush and his administration are making the U.S. a theocracy, I would suggest to them they visit Iran and see what real theocracy truly is.

I think Jordan, Egypt and the rest of the Arab world will sit this one out and see who ends up winning. Oh they will likely shout and bluster to no end, but they won’t fire a shot. Everyone still remembers ’67 and ’73, at least the leadership does, and no Arab nation wants a repeat of that. The major powers are sort of an x factor. Will they enter? Will they not? It’s in no one’s interest besides the United States’. Russia may send aid to Iran if it gets in, but Putin won’t risk involving his nation any more deeply. France may use the opportunity to sell some more arms and get richer on others’ misery. I’m sure some of our defense contractors will do the same.

In summation, this event was provoked by terrorists hoping to goad Israel into a retaliatory act, hoping to further destabilize the region possibly even at the behest of some of the region's emerging powers. Such groups thrive on the chaos this sort of thing generates. But it’s also the only way to really stomp them into the ground. They don’t understand reason. They don’t fade away without press. You can’t ignore them. They just kill until they are killed. More may replace them as long as this brand of thought remains taught in schools and fostered by governments with the money and means to do so, but at least these will be dead. In the meantime, the rest of the world will have to suffer through this escalation and pray that things don’t get any worse, because they have an annoying habit of doing just that.

2006-07-13T06:41:00.000-04:00

Founders Critiques Revisited

My old reliable debater, Catastrophile (have to ask him some day on why the name choice), raised some issues regarding the Founders article I reviewed and I thought it worth elaboration in the general forum. Sometimes points don’t come to me as I’m writing that others will bring up later, as I’m sure happens with just about every writer and I appreciate the chance to explore them, so on to some of the comments he had regarding my and the Kurlansky’s editorial. First he notes that he feels I was a bit overstated.

Hrm. I don't know if this really qualifies as a "hit piece" . . . a bit hyperbolic, perhaps, but he seems to be arguing the same basic point you are.

I don’t think I was exaggerating too much when I called it a hit piece. I mean, what do you call this line?

…we keep worrying about the vision of a bunch of sexist, slave-owning 18th century white men in wigs and breeches

Emphasis added. I don’t know what Cat’s definition of a hit piece is, but being called a sexist slave owner, and well let’s not forget we have to note they were all white and wore wigs, yeah, that doesn’t shout reasoned analysis to me.

You say: "The Founders were men, just men. They were products of their times and did the best they could to establish an enlightened and new form of government that would be better than them, even transcend them."

He says: "But the founding fathers, unlike the Americans of today, understood their own shortcomings. Thomas Jefferson warned against a slavish worship of their work, which he referred to as 'sanctimonious reverence' for the Constitution."

This sounds less like an attack on the Founders than on the current state of things.

Well, my concern here is that you isolate one small portion of what he said without considering his whole text. His whole text is ridiculously inflammatory, as noted above. Jefferson also said "Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." You see, Kurlansky was arguing more that by deconstructing the “myth” of the Founders, you can more easily deconstruct the Constitution. Jefferson certainly didn’t want us to “worship” a document over all else, but he didn’t want demagogues to be able to warp it to their whims either and advised that in its words were our strength to accomplish that; the very thing Kurlansky and those like him advocate.

Blind nationalism is a problem. Mythologizing the Founders gets us nowhere. And the kind of argument that rebukes any and all criticism of the US as antiAmerican is flat-out dangerous, but unfortunately seems to be everywhere these days.

Casting nationalism aside is equally a problem. Kurlansky’s piece was not advocating nationalism in the traditional sense. He was advocating a social justice America and not an America of opportunity for all. His idea of an America as “good as it was supposed to be” is one of a universal health care and social welfare net (which, arguably, we have some of). He seems to dislike “men of property” and prefer “anti-establishment” thinking. These are all pretty clearly issues of the far Left. I find that hard to debate.

Mythologizing the Founders doesn’t help us much, no, but neither does deconstructing their legacy. By deconstructing them, which I have read many an essay dedicated to just that task, allows them to be delegitimized and by thus whatever they create can be shown to be as equally flawed and demanding of replacement. My statement here is not some far flung conspiracy theory or stretch of fancy. Go to the majority of public elementary and high schools. You’ll see it in action.

And I have never considered criticism of the U.S. as anti-American. I can give you a laundry list of U.S. policies I think were ridiculous. I’ll start with the Missouri Compromise and the Civil War and carry through to the New Deal, Marshall Plan, Great Society, Department of Education, Federal Income Tax, FICA…the list goes on and on. I’ll critique those and many other positions of government from Clinton’s failed foreign adventures to Bush’s horrible immigration policy. I won’t criticize America for being America, though and to do so is not very beneficial to solving our problems. You must deal with a degree of perspective when comparing the United States to the rest of the world. In many cases, there is no comparison, and we can debate slavery or whatever other issue you want.

There is a reason the United States is the last world superpower and it’s not just our weapons. People that argue from that standpoint, that it’s our country and our history that’s the root of the world’s problems, not taking into account individual policies or more importantly the objectives of other nations and organizations, I have no respect for and, I think, are the ones who are truly blind and to use your own word dangerous in their ideas. Education and debate are my preferred weapons to combat them, but if they don’t want to listen, then well, I suppose there can be no reasoned debate.

And he quotes Robespierre of all things, who bad mouthed our Revolution compared to the French Revolution. I hope he’s not suggesting that the murderous anarchy followed by murderous tyranny was a better example of democratic revolution than what was seen in America. Frankly, things like that say a lot about where his argument is based and again it translates to me as a “hit piece”.

Lastly…In fact, what this piece seems to be arguing is the idea that we need iconoclasts to get anywhere, that abject worship of the establishment is dangerous. I have to agree. That argument doesn't speak to me of hidden socialist agendas or rejection of American principles . . . only of a healthy skepticism about deifying any bunch of "just men" -- be they the Founders or any others.

The basic argument didn’t speak to me of socialism, but his wording and examples did. Sometimes it’s a bit buried, but everyone has a motivation and not all of it is “I think we need to be more practical”. Usually, if what you’re arguing isn’t very defensible or popular, you can wrap it in “practical” and “reasonable” criticisms and jab your points in amongst the growth. Don’t tell me you don’t see much of that in debate. Skepticism is fine, but I don’t believe that was his only agenda and I think you have to stretch to think otherwise. If you want to critique the Founders, try it. They were just men, as I said, and products of their time, but they constructed something magnificent and had the words and ideas to give that concept iron and allow it to survive the test of time. Critiquing them in any productive way along that line (that their notions of individual freedom, liberty and limited government are antiquated) is difficult to impossible with any degree of legitimacy and I don’t think Kurlansky pulled it off, but I definitely think that’s what he tried.

2006-07-12T06:36:00.000-04:00

Questions, Questions

It should have been expected, with the initiation of the new law regarding lifetime concealed carry permits here in Indiana that there would be those who were uneasy with the decision. The Indianapolis Star has made sure several of these concerns have graced its editorial pages since the beginning of the week as well as a couple of rebuttals. I thought it worth reviewing some of those concerns in the spirit of understanding and trying to dispel the myths that come along with it.

One such letter noted a concern over the increase in the length of the term of a concealed carry permit helping to make Indianapolis and by extension the state more the “Murder Capital of the U.S.” First, I might remind the writer that the highest murder rates have been in cities where guns are largely banned like Washington D.C., New York and Gary’s neighbor, Chicago. Anyone who’s actually spent any time in northwest Indiana knows that Gary itself doesn’t see many “home-grown” murders, not more than any town its size, really. Most of the statistical murders are Chicago transplants. Gary is a convenient “drop-off”, because of its large industrial and warehouse districts and murders are just as regularly counted by where the body is found if they don’t know where it occurred.

The gentleman in question also sees us as a “small, but vocal minority”. While a majority of Hoosiers may not be permit holders, I can with some degree of assurance inform him that they do own firearms in their home. Not that you’d want to go knocking on doors to find out who’s who (a little reference to the sleeper ‘Deal of the Century’ from the 1980’s). And as I ask anyone who broaches this topic, how is limiting the time of the permit going to reduce crime? Do you honestly think the gang bangers won’t take their guns out if they can’t get a valid permit or if they’ve let their existing one lapse. Do you honestly think they get permits? Who really is that naïve?

Another fellow has mixed emotions about the new lifetime permit. He asks “With crime on the rise, how wise is it to make it easier for someone who has never been convicted to have access to a handgun with the assumption that it will never be used in a crime?” I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that question. So people without criminal records shouldn’t have an easy time accessing firearms? So because I’ve been a good citizen, obeyed the law and want to defend myself, I shouldn’t have an easy time of it because there’s a risk in assuming I’ll never break the law? You might as well never give out drivers’ licenses to prevent traffic accidents or vehicular homicide. How about never giving anyone matches and/or gasoline so they won’t be at risk of wanting to commit arson? It’s the exact same logic. Just because someone MIGHT abuse their freedom at some point is no reason to take it from them, well, unless you wish to operate in a tyranny. Then, that’s sort of expected.

Yes, amazingly with freedoms come responsibilities and being human and imperfect some of us will abuse those freedoms and act improperly. Whether it’s with a gun, a knife, a car or a book of matches, bad things can happen to good people. If you can’t handle that, head for your crawl space, curl up in a fetal position and await the end because honestly that’s about all that’s left for you.

Lastly, he does lecture on that same responsibility, even though originally he seems to imply that we don’t possess that instinct as gun owners. Of course guns should be kept out of reach of children and thieves, but accidents will happen. Again, amazingly, that is the difficulty that is life and stupid people will show us time and again that no matter how much we try to idiot proof life sometimes a guy will just stick his finger in the socket. I lock up my firearms and try to teach gun safety to my family. If I didn’t, should that preclude me from a concealed carry permit? I don’t think it should. Rights come with responsibilities more than they do restrictions and that’s something I wish more people understood.

Lastly, we have a writer who just flat out thinks this whole thing is

2006-07-11T12:02:00.000-04:00

Time To Grow Up

I remember during the Clinton years the host of conspiracy theories that surrounded him and his wife. Did he have Vince Foster, Ron Brown, or any host of other people killed? There were even web sites devoted to the alleged body count. While Clinton was Attorney General and then governor of one of the leading drug import states in the country during the 70's and 80's, and one wonders how the drug cartels were able to operate so unmolested during his tenure, there is no proof of any wrong doing in any of those instances. Clinton was a poor President, lied under Oath and was impeached. It was never "all about sex", for anyone that actually followed the charges against him, but like the Teflon Man he was, many of the charges didn't stick.

The thing about most conspiracy theories is, they are self-sustaining. The best conspiracy theories are the ones you can't prove, it is often said, and certainly the 90's was full of them for Clinton. I will not be the last to say that many were generated out of severe dislike or even hate for the man and had little basis in fact. That's why you don't hear much about them today. Sometimes you just have to grow up and move on.

The current President, George W. Bush, has acquired his share of conspiracy theories, even more grand and loony than his predecessor. We start with the tame ones, like he didn't complete his Guard service. Rather still is standing by that canard. There are plenty about his connections and his family connections to Nazis and Saudis and Lions and Tigers and Bears. Just google them and you'll find hundreds of sites, many not surprisingly out of the country and many not so surprisingly linked to "social justice" and anti-war sites, leftovers from the old ANSWER days (yes, amazingly it often comes back to that). None has been so pathetic or ridiculous, I think, than the recent push to claim that Bush and his "Company" were responsible for 9/11.

The loonies at Democratic Underground, my favorite place to shop for leftist drivel, have recently pushed a wave of "experiments" designed to show how the WTC couldn't have been felled by mere jet fuel and weaking of the structure. The story is getting play at some college campuses and even a few mainstream liberals are seemingly unwilling to discount such an occurrence is possible.

Kids, when did we get here? I'm just wondering. I remember right after 9/11 going through this same thing with the creepy Lone Gunmen episode that only months before showed a "shadow government" attempt to crash planes into the WTC to restart the global war market (because, of course, during Clinton's terms there was no war). But it's about as significant as the apocryphal story of classical music suddenly playing right before the Trinity Test. Interesting, even a little eerie, but irrelevant. Such theories and stories may help some make sense of the senseless, but even the most diehard conspiracy gurus have to give way to the onslaught of questions that challenge their theory.

In the case of 9/11, how do you explain the fact that the hijackers were on the planes(confirmed by video at the airports), can be confirmed by recorded conversations piloting and assaulting people on the planes, the extensive documentation of United 93, the video of the plane crashing into the Pentagon and the WTC, the engineering studies that easily showed how the jet fuel is more than just a little kerosene over some chicken wire and how it turned the temperature in the WTC core to one that could warp and deform steel, how Al Qaeda has gone to great lengths to try and claim credit for the occurrence, even resorting to "No, really, it was us" statements when faced with true skeptics. Stop me if this gets complicated. It's bad when some of your own people won't believe you or your enemy. Sometimes you have to be a grown up and accept what logic tells you is true.

Set aside your hatred for Bubba or GW and look at things rationally. What could have happened? What logically could have taken place? Could Bush have been behind some master conspiracy to bring the U.S. back to war footing? There just isn't the evidence. Set aside the hatred for him and for his winning the 2000 election by the electoral college instead of the popular vote, and there really is no reason to blame a sitting President for mass murder in this case. Hell, I won't even blame Bubba C (although that he felt no remorse for what his own branch of government did is the height of sociopathy) for Waco and those are confirmed cases of the U.S. government killing its own citizenry. Janet Reno on the other hand...

I'm a reasonable man, at least I like to think I am and I'm willing to entertain real evidence. Some real evidence, I've seen, like an ATF agent letting three other agents enter a room that he then immediately sprays with automatic fire convinced me something was rotten with the Waco massacre. None of the books or web sites that allege to show the "truth" about 9/11 can get that obvious of a smoking gun. There are mountains of "What Ifs" and conjecture, but nothing that you look at and say "Now wait just a damn minute". It's just not there. Time to grow up boys and girls.

We're in a war, like it or not, and we have to deal with that present. Until then, mainstream libs and even hardcore leftists entertaining such ridiculous theories does their cause little good and only seems to further insulate them from the reality and problems we really do face. If they can't step out of their dreamscape and handle the real problems, even offer real solutions, then we're wasting our breath on just about every other issue. Something to consider.

2006-07-10T15:21:00.000-04:00

About Time

Usually, when you hear about freedom's these days, they're being retracted. It's refreshing to point out the occasional expansion. Concealed Carry Permits, in my opinion, were a step in the right direction. A truly free state would behave like Vermont or Alaska in terms of firearms and not require a permit to carry, as it really is a natural right of defense to have some form of protection. Remember, the Supreme Court ruled the police do not have an obligation to protect you.

Getting a Concealed Carry Permit for a handgun depends largely on the state you're in. Some require written tests and others require safety courses. Most have exorbitant fees, a sponge meant to assuage gun permit opponents who thinking soaking the gun owner is a small way to get back at them for having too much freedom. In Indiana, permit prices have been relatively minor. It was all of $25, in the form of two money orders to pay the local and state entities who processed it. That fee recently has changed, but with an acceptable twist.

While it is now $40 for a 4-year permit, the Indiana legislature has seen, in its wisdom, to offer a lifetime permit for $100 for current permit holders and $125 for new permit applicants. I for one think it's a great idea and one a long time in coming. All permits should be for life. The notion of them is ridiculous enough, but to require you to demonstrate nothing other than you can type a triplicate form every four years (a feat in itself, I will give you) is a bit ludicrous. The Indianapolis Star article linked above contains most of the relevant details, and of course the expected criticisms. Take this quote from Handgun Control's own Peter Hamm (or is it the organization formerly known as Handgun Control? I forget):

"I would presume the state legislature is going to do the same with driver's licenses and business licenses, because there is no reason anybody should have to go through the hassle of being checked out every four years," he said.

I believe that was the thought of Abdul Hakim-Shabazz as well, WXNT 1430 AM's resident morning talk host. Though, I could be wrong as I only heard him promo a piece with that agreement. The point being for Mr. Hamm to consider, Indiana gun licenses are not something you have to demonstrate any proficiency for after four years, and renewing "licenses'' anyway is often more about getting money than it is about testing competency anyway. From that point of view, I'm certainly in favor of the legislature expanding or making permanent licenses for businesses and drivers.

There still exists a mechanism for revocation when the law is broken. You won't keep your gun permit if you become a felon anymore than you would before, but that is something easily glossed over when someone's arguing for rights restriction like Mr. Hamm. The same would go for any license. Abuse the priviledge and away it goes. What about that is so difficult to understand?

Apparently, Mr. Hamm finds some difficulty, as he speaks for us Indiana gun owners when he says:

"Responsible gun owners understand that some gun owners ought to be checked out every four years."

I sure am glad people like him are there to speak for 'the little guy' like me. Actually, no. Every gun owner I know (and that's quite a few) in this state hates that we have to pay every four years to reinforce our right to carry. If one of us were to commit a felony, then we'd lose the permit. If the police can't handle that, then you have other issues more important than running a background check every few years. Responsible gun owners understand that people like Mr. Hamm don't want us owning guns at all and think of us as little better than criminals ourselves. So, no, I don't agree with his asinine statement or his viewpoint.

Luckily, I don't have to. We now have the option for a lifetime permit, and I for one think I'm going to take it.

2006-07-07T14:35:00.000-04:00

Founders Assault Continued

In the latest salvo against the relevance or significance of the Founding Fathers, Mark Kurlansky of the LA Times has written a hit piece in which he attempts to belittle and reduce the Founding Fathers by pointing out the Left's favorite talking points against them. Anyone who has kept up with the modern press knows there's not much new in that. Perhaps what is new, but becoming more common, is the blatant willingness to put such vitriol into print.

SOMEONE HAS TO SAY IT or we are never going to get out of this rut: I am sick and tired of the founding fathers and all their intents.

Couldn't be much clearer than that if he tried, but what is it that he's really blaming them for? Well, he makes that equally as clear right away.

U.S. offers the worst healthcare program, one of the worst public school systems and the worst benefits for workers. The margin between rich and poor has been growing precipitously while it has been decreasing in Europe. Among the great democracies, we use military might less cautiously, show less respect for international law and are the stumbling block in international environmental cooperation. Few informed people look to the United States anymore for progressive ideas.

Welcome to Socialism 101. Again, he couldn't be much more clear. The Founding Fathers are an impediment, by their very nature, in instituting any socialist agenda, like worker's benefits, "international" law, the environment and of course the often talked about never displayed gap between the rich and poor.

It could be argued easily that we have the world's best healthcare program, because all the advances in medicine of any significance, especially pharmaceutical, are made here. We don't have waiting lines for treatment (except in the part of the system that's already socialized - Medicare/Medicaid). We don't have denial of service and we don't have a crushing tax burden (well, we do a little) that feeds the behemoth like it does in just about every other "great democracy" that has socialized medicine.

Our public school systems suffer from socialist medelling and experimentation as they strive to replace parents, certainly not for lack of money. Studies of parochial/private schools, that spend far less, versus public schools show that money certainly isn't the issue. That is a tired old canard.

The gap between rich and poor is usually code for "everyone should get paid the same - well, except us elite Leftists of course". That people get paid according to their skills and abilities is one of the Hallmarks of this country.

The whole "using military might less cautiously" means we defend ourselves. The atrophied militaries of the other "great democracies", most of which gladly accepted sixty years of our military protection, and their inability to even keep their citizenry safe or respond to foreign attacks speaks volumes to that. I'll take our lack of caution over that any day and twice on Sunday.

International law and environmentalism are also codes for "UN trumps US" laws. The longer these NGO bureaucracies and unsigned "laws" fester and grow, the more they seem to develop some false air of legitimacy that the Left clings to as some sort of handcuff restraint on US policy. And who isn't for cleaner air, water and a nice place to live? That was never the issue. It's all about control and for-profit groups and NGO's like Sierra Club want to be the ones who end up with that control.

Betsy's Page has a wonderful refutation of Mr. Kurlansky's historical references and I will not presume to outshine her. Her response puts paid to his "examples".

Note this, though, of what he also says.

Instead, we keep worrying about the vision of a bunch of sexist, slave-owning 18th century white men in wigs and breeches. Even in the 18th century, the founding fathers were not the most enlightened thinkers available.

Rarely do you see one paragraph so concisely break down the general impression of the Founders by the Left. Because the Founders were not perfect super-beings, we must discount them. And listen to whom? Who is without sin? Certainly not Kurlansky, me, or any of those I'm sure he admires like Lenin or Mao.

The Founders were men, just men. They were products of their times and did the best they could to establish an enlightened and new form of government that would be better than them, even transcend them. They poured all their hopes into a few pieces of paper that espoused what they believed to be universal truths, and for this we should eternally thank them, that such men, amazingly men of their time, could create something that has endured so long and weathered so many assaults. I salute them.

And then he makes the case that the Founding Fathers, the very ones he just spent most of his rant telling you don't matter, don't even buy into making their opinions and beliefs ones set in stone, and thus we can consider any ideas they had, like the Bill of Rights, to be just flights of fancy or "of the times" and outdated notions.

Consider his quote from Jefferson.

"Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind," Jefferson wrote in 1816. "As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstance, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

So you're saying Jefferson said things change? My God. We've been living a lie! Please, give me a break. Jefferson asked us not to be a slave to the society and culture of the day, and we have not. We have no more slavery. We have equal rights for all citizens regardless of sex or race or creed. We have many of the things they could only have dreamed of at the time, but which they hoped the United States, from its creation in the Constitution, might one day achieve.

Does that mean our rights and freedoms should change as well, that somehow they are as mutable as our culture. Well, don't ask me. Ask Jefferson.

"Nothing... is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:48

I believe that's game, set and match, but you'll find many more of Jefferson's quotes that equally defend our liberties and rights, something the modern Left wishes to see squelched. Hand in hand with their "Brave New World" will come oppressive taxation and reform from the barrel of a gun. In our society, someone can say "No" when government says we need a new tax or a new restriction on freedom or a new social program. There are mechanisms to address and defeat such government proposals and although it is never easy, it is doable.

The whole priniciple of the Left, especially the laundry list of "initiatives" Kurlansky feeds us at the beginning of his rant all demand that no one be able to say "No" and if they do they will be removed from the equation. Lessons of history on that courtesy of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Castro and Kim Il Sung to name some of their greats. You can choose those as your "Founders" or the ones we already have. Which do you prefer?

2006-07-03T07:09:00.000-04:00

See New York, Ban Some Guns...

The likely agenda for the international host of delegates for the convention being held at the UN over the past few days (due to end on July 4th, no less) has been innocently stated by Annan and others to be an attempt to stave the illicit trade of firearms in the world. What they've made obvious in their agenda and the NGO gun disarmament groups they've invited to participate is their desire to strike at nations, mostly the U.S. that still allow their citizens relatively free access to firearms.

Ron Paul (R-TX) discusses how this commission has hopes that this will lead to an international gun ban treaty in his latest editorial, and what those who support gun rights will face in the future.

Fortunately, U.S. gun owners have responded with an avalanche of letters to the American delegation to the conference, asking that none of our tax dollars be used to further UN anti-gun proposals. But we cannot discount the growing power of international law, whether through the UN, the World Trade Organization, or the NAFTA and CAFTA treaties. Gun rights advocates must understand that the forces behind globalism are hostile toward our Constitution and national sovereignty in general. Our 2nd Amendment means nothing to UN officials.

Townhall.com has been running a series on the daily activities at the conference, courtesy of Cam Edwards (Don't try to access it til after the 4th as the site is being redesigned).

Well, this one can be summed up pretty easily. Any convention that praises Red China's ability to curb private ownership of firearms pretty much screams out totalitarian fascist slag. While they were at it, I hope they included in the minutes the body count Mao and his successors rung up on that unarmed citizenry. I'm sure there will also be little or no mention of the approximately 100 million people killed by their own governments (China being #1) and the fact that, by and large, they didn't have the priviledge their governments had of being armed and capable of defending themselves.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. You run with the Devil, the Devil don't change. You do. No, of course I realize that isn't original, but I like saying it all the same. A group that tolerates petty dictatorships, communist totalitarian states and warlords and which puts them on equal footing with its democracies is not going to make those other less savory governments act like democracies. It will, however, slowly start to tarnish the standing of the more free governments and cause a general shift towards the less free. This is just the way of things, and we have the benefit of sixty years of history to prove my point.

The NGO's (non-governmental organizations at the conference) that cling like lampreys to a shark (like the imagery?) in an attempt to do what the Democrats failed for over a decade to do hope to add enough language to any agreement and put pressure on enough Senators to try and get it ratified some day in the U.S. (holding out hope of course for a willing Democrat President like Clinton of course). Of course, that doesn't mean they are inactive on the home front. Just because they've not been able to act legislatively, they have still been working their way through the courts to restrict gun rights.

One of their latest crowing points is the Massachusetts ruling that homeowners who fail to lockup guns can be held liable for their improper use if they are stolen. The amusing side note to that is, the gun in that case was locked up, but not "adequately enough" to keep it from being stolen, so it's based on if the judge thinks you did enough to keep criminals from your gun. Don't you just love subjective rulings?

But I digress. This conference will do as ones in the past have done. Groups with close ties to the likes of International ANSWER and the World Worker's Party, which hijacked the old disarmament organizations and apparatus of the Cold War some years ago to use for their gun control agenda, realize that their influence is dependent on whether or not they can deliver restrictions on individual freedoms, one of the largest of which is the right to defend yourself. Their support from some of these self-same totalitarian governments and Marxist organizations comes from a desire to use subversion and the West's own "utopian" idea of a world governing body to solve all our ills.

While we have little to fear from the UN telling us to do anything, we must be mindful and vigilant of the framework and agreements they do develop and their possible implications with more pliable and willing future U.S. administrations. Much like with the government power extensions with things like the Patriot Act, it doesn't hurt to realize that although the current administration may try and show restraint, others will be far less trusting of we the people and far more eager to enact their own view of how we should be safe and secure. History tells us that's one thing we can depend on.

So, fear not when a UN bureaucrat suggests there should be stronger steps taken to police nations that allow too much "liberty" in gun rights and ownership, but keep a wary eye, and watch who amongst our government (in Congress and elsewhere) nods approvingly. Those are the people you'll be wanting to question more thoroughly come the next few election cycles.

And memo to New York, I thought Giuliani cleaned out all the thugs and crooks from the city. Bloomberg must be slipping.

2006-07-01T14:19:00.000-04:00

Just You Wait...

Why is it I so often hear this sentiment and so often see an utter lack of reason or rationale to it? A common phrase among the Left these days seems to be "Just you wait. We'll get a new Congress/President/Supreme Court, blah blah blah and things will be better".

"FILL IN THE BLANK" will be right once we've kicked out these morons and get the Democrats back in power. It could be the War, or poverty or the homeless (who by the way seem to show up whenever a Republican gets in office and head to their summer homes in Cancun when the likes of Clinton is President if you go by the news coverage) or Medicare/Social Security or any number of issues. I am always told the grass is greener on the Left side of the aisle. Mostly, Brian Williams, Al Franken Eleanor Clift and Michael Moore tell me, but hey.

Why just the other day, I was reading one of the local Lefty columnists railing about his apartment or Screech or something of that nature. He curiously came out of left field (as it were) at the end of his rant and lamented how he knew times were tough for everyone, but if we just waited til we got that New Congress, bright, shiny and looking to tax the living hell out of us, we'd all be singing kumbaya, drinking broccoli shakes and singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer weiner". Or was it Dennis Leary who said that? Anyway, his main point was (and has been in other columns) that our hard times would disappear when we got the likes of Kerry, Gore, Clinton or whoever the Leftist of the month currently is back into the White House with a lock-step like-minded majority in Congress.

THAT will solve America's problems. Ok, reality check for all the aging hipsters out there. No it won't. Just changing the Party in the majority sure as hell won't do anything to improve the country. Even worse, it's a left-leaning sold-their-soul-to-socialism Democrat Party, which amazingly enough is what Americans don't seem to want. They don't want illegal immigration. They don't want out of control spending. They don't want gun control. They don't want anything even remotely perceived as handing over an iota of sovereignty to the UN. They surely to God to not want higher taxes and additional social programs with more pork. Now, some of that, sadly, they're going to get with even Republicans because Republicans in Washington are about as conservative as a Nevada prostitute with her wares and surprisingly similar in how they conduct business.

They will get all of it and more if the Democrats are back fully in charge, because the Democrats have all but come out and said that is the plan. Daffy Dean, leader of the Dems, is quite adamant that he believes this is the best course for America and he favors Congressional and Presidential candidates who agree with him. Amazingly, sometimes it is about God, guns and gays, but the real flaw with the Democratic leadership is they seem to think that's all that's keeping the majority of Americans from voting for them. It's not. Sure, those are important issues and many Americans might soften to the Democrats if they took more conservative stances on such issues, but the majority still would realize the Bigger Government Party (there is no mainstream small gov party anymore and the Libertarians are still small guys) is not conducive to good times or good business for America.

Their last two Presidents, Clinton and Carter, had to fake right as Southern conservative Democrats to even get elected and even then didn't get a majority of the votes. Yes, contrary to popular belief, Bush wasn't the only one who didn't win a majority (well, he didn't in 2000). The Democrats are tanked as a serious power contender in this country. If they do get reelected, then we should seriously question what people are smoking these days, because their ideas mean more of a financial and social burden on everyone but those who don't work (and that includes the working poor), more failing schools, an absentee foreign policy and the social engineering experiment of the month. With all that against them, it'd take a miracle, and the Democrats don't really believe in the Guy who creates those.

Good times are here and this country's about as prosperous as it's going to get. Just look at the latest economic numbers. If you think the country is in the doldrums when we're doing this good, then you'll be "just waiting" for a Democrat who will really turn us toward economic oblivion. But don't worry, at least the Big Three news networks will make it seem like good times as we're all standing in tofu soup lines.