U.S. TRADE DEFICIT WORSENING

RIGHT UP UNTIL THE COMMODITY bubble burst this summer, there was the ridiculous theory going around that the world was now "decoupled" and that European and emerging markets would somehow avoid being affected by the US slowdown. These decoupling theories disappeared as oil dropped like a rock, only to be replaced by an equally ridiculous idea: that the world's economic pain would be spread evenly. This is wrong. Although the entire world is going into a recession as a result of the credit crisis, some economies are better prepared than others to weather the storm.

Durable and capital goods
The US's manufacturing sector is concentrated in industries most vulnerable to an economic downturn, durable and capital goods. Durable goods are products that last for more than three years like SUVs, motor/sail boats, et cetera. These items are the first areas where consumers cut back spending, which is why the big three are in so much trouble. Capital goods are equipment and machinery used in creating other goods, and the biggest demand for these products has come from emerging markets with their growing manufacturing sectors. With emerging market manufacturing now in contraction, demand for these capital goods is set to disappear, which leaves the US in a disastrous situation:

We make mining equipment at a time when commodity prices are crashing and mines are shutting down.

We make construction equipment (caterpillars, pickup trucks, etc…) at a time when global construction is grinding to a halt.

We make civilian aircrafts at a time when global trade and travel is quickly contracting.

Cheap consumer goods
At the other end of the spectrum from durable and capital goods are the cheap consumer goods found in retailers like Wal-mart. Demand for these lower-end consumer products tends to hold through the severest of recessions, because they are absolutely essential to our modern standard of living. While some current shoppers at Wal-Mart might be forced to cut spending on these essential items, new spending from shoppers who are downgrading from higher end stores will pick up a lot of this shortfall. For example, as more American's lose their jobs, there will be a lot of consumers downgrading from designer clothes to Wal-Mart's cheaper clothing. The resiliency of Wal-Mart is bad news for the US, as virtually all the retailer's cheap goods are imports from Asia.

The trade deficit
A quick look at where the US's trade deficit is concentrated reveals just how grim the outlook is. We are running huge deficits in consumer goods and industrial supplies (oil), which we desperately need, and the only category with a sizable surplus is capital goods (civilian aircrafts, mining equipment, etc), for which global demand is crashing. This explains why the US trade deficit grew in October.

Implications for the dollar
While imports to the US are falling, US exports are falling even faster. Exporting nations still have to finance our massive trade deficit, but are now getting less benefits from it. If this trend continues and the US economy keeps shrinking, Asian nations will begin abandoning their dollar pegs and start focusing on stimulating domestic demand instead. The dollar will quickly lose all its value when this happens.

by Eric deCarbonnel

OBAMA TALKIN' TRASH IS HARDLY NEWS

Well now, NR columnist Kathleen Parker has settled back down if only somewhat into her more familiar conservative roots with a few choice words about the new president. We must remember that Ms. Parker was the "good Republican" woman who tore into Governor Sarah Palin as being "out of her league" in this new role as Republican VP nominee. This was an outrageous attack, given the fact that many of us were and are still cringing note for note the same bristling song about the Chicago ACORN-tainted community organizer named Barack Obama.

Hell, with the long line of political scoundrels cluttering up our persistently revised glorious past and the Blagojovich impreachment guilty verdict just delivered in a unanimous blowout, I wonder if anybody on God's green planet is qualified to cleanly govern a state, much less the whole country anymore.

But life moves along. Elections are held. Winners take power. New drapes are ordered. Personal styles and wayward policies are thrust upon us. But apparently Ms. Parker doesn't like trash talkin' playground antics, and it doesn't matter whether it's the skins or the shirts shucking the jive. Personal exemption excepted. Let's take a look:

TWO IMPRESSIONS EMERGE from President Barack Obama's first week in office. Partisanship has reached a tipping point when the new president is circling the fire hydrant with a conservative talk-radio personality. And, the new president is sounding an awful lot like the old one. Let's roll the tape.

"I won. I will trump you on that."

That's Barack Obama a few days ago, according to The Associated Press, speaking to Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona during a meeting with congressional leaders about the proposed stimulus package. Kyl had the audacity to question giving tax credits to people who do not owe federal income taxes.

Rewinding to 2004: "I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style."

That's George W. Bush after his re-election, explaining his assumption that the American people approved of his many plans, including Social Security reform and the war on terror.

Obama and Bush each mistakenly assumed that his election was a national mandate for his policies, rather than a rejection of alternatives.

Yes, Ms. Parker seems genuinely upset that boys will be boys, particularly if she's a moose-hunting mother of five from the North Country. Personal empowerment? Perhaps the Lady Parker should have supported the judgment of an honor-crippled US Senator from Arizona instead of harping on the genuine freshness which was overworked into a momentary stumble by Sarah Palin.

If Obama had a mandate at all, it was to heal the divisions that have plagued politics for so long. No more partisan bickering, he promised, though there's only about a smirk's difference between Obama and Bush, stylistically. While one is bring-'em-on confrontational and the other a passive-aggressive Mr. Cool, both reveal a staggering sense of personal empowerment.

If only Kathleen Parker knew what the PUMAs knew she would not have believed those phony words by the Democratic machine, which this go round in particular, included every man, woman, and child on the payroll of the mainstream media. Did I say mention this woman calls herself a conservative? She continues in this vein:

Obama was cool even when, at that same GOP meeting, he urged Republicans to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. No anger, just angst. "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done."

Excuse me, Mr. President, but you've been baited by none other than the Master Fisherman. Limbaugh tossed you a lure and you chomped.

Uh, yes. El Rushbo—radio talk-show personality, master of ceremonies extraordinaire—certainly has a tendency to stretch over the top, embellishing the picturesque until it smacks of the grotesque, but that is beside the point in this theater of the obvious, and she further details some of that testimony, blasting both Limbaugh and Bush for their predilection toward colorful phrasing. Okay. Did I mention this woman claims to be a conservative? But while she takes the Republicans to task for past linguistic and oratory failures, she continues to whisper sweet nothings to Mr. Obama with these noble words:

Trying to assign blame—or amp up rhetoric to satisfy the market's gargantuan appetite for ratings—is counterproductive in the present. If Obama wants to rumble, he's got an eager foe in Limbaugh. But if he really wants to win, he might take a page from his predecessor's playbook: Never dignify your enemies with recognition...

IS EUROPE ABANDONING SOCIALISM?

The following article by Joseph Farah will display what is at work here. The utter ruin of American competitiveness. That's the blueprint these Marxist Democratic party apparatchiks are using to shore up power for themselves and render the United States more pliable for the big takeover they have already begun executing. Paranoia or keen insight? You be the judge now, or history will do it for you.

HOW IRONIC IS IT THAT the U.S. is embracing socialism at the very moment Europe and many other parts of the world are running away from it? Somebody needs to ask Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi about this.

In the past five years, 33 countries, including 20 in socialist Europe, always held up as the example for a new American economic model by Democrats, have cut their personal income taxes, according to a study by KPMG, the giant accounting firm. In the past four years, 60 countries have cut their corporate income tax rates. Why have they done it?

Simple. They want to compete more effectively for capital and human resources. Basically, the world has been turned upside-down—with territories even under Communist control recognizing that low taxes is what drives burgeoning economies.

Read it all.

NETANYAHU DEFIANT AGAINST APPEASERS

ISRAEL'S SECURITY CHALLENGES ARE daunting. Hamas remains in power and will try to rearm itself with an even more deadly arsenal. This goes without saying, however much the Arab and Western Left wish to spin "context" contrary to the facts on then ground since day one of Israel's declaration of independence as a modern state on May 14, 1948.

The Israeli papers carried reports on Monday (here, for instance) about an article in the London-based Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat claiming Egypt was warning Hamas to strike a deal with Israel before Binyamin Netanyahu forms the next government. Otherwise, the Egyptian officials are supposed to have said, Hamas stands to “lose everything.”

Rumors were flying about a ceasefire of a year to a year and a half in which Israel would open the crossings to Gaza and free 1,000 Hamas prisoners in return for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Israel’s current leaders Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, and Tzipi Livni are said to be anxious to conclude a deal for Shalit before the February 10 elections.

If so, they’re badly miscalculating. Israelis want Shalit freed and are perturbed that Operation Cast Lead didn’t secure that result. The renewed terror puts the government’s claims about restored Israei deterrence in doubt as well.

Clearly Olmert, Barak, and Livni can’t boast that the war was a resounding success, gravely weakening Hamas, and then agree to abject terms of 1,000 terrorists for one Israeli soldier. Israelis would rejoice to see Shalit back home in any case—then send Livni and Barak (with Olmert finished in any case) deeper into political defeat.

Bibi to world: I don’t believe Operation Cast Lead came anywhere near defeating or neutralizing Hamas. I am realistic about the danger Hamas continues to pose.

“Hizbullah has de facto control over Lebanon and has tripled its lethal capacity.”

Bibi to world: Ditto for the Second Lebanon War. It didn’t achieve much and I am realistic about the danger Hizbullah continues to pose.

“And advancing peace with moderate Palestinians is possible, but must be done in a way that does not sacrifice Israel’s security interests.”

Bibi to Obama administration: Again, I don’t dismiss this idea, but I’m going to be real careful about it and will not be pushed into moves I deem harmful to Israel.

“Above all else, the top priority of the next government of Israel will be to ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons. Iran is a regime openly pledged to our destruction, and its threats must never be dismissed lightly. Israel must immediately redouble its efforts to work with the United States and other allies to neutralize this threat.”

Bibi to Obama administration and Europeans: If you’re really intending to do something about it, I will work with you against the Iranian threat. If you’re not, take note: Israel will go it alone.

To sum up, Netanyahu’s advent evokes rational fears in those who wish Israel ill and irrational enmity in those purporting to wish it well. Netanyahu, aware of the various perceptions, wants it to be known that he is above all an Israeli nationalist concerned about his country’s survival. After three years and more of weak, obsequious leadership, Israelis—with their mixed feelings about his earlier tenure at the helm—are ready to put him there again.

Read it all.

We, in the United States, who share this resolve to identify and stop the rising global tide of Islamic jihad in all of its infamy can only hope that Bibi Netanyahu rises once again to the top slot in the Israeli government at this most dangerous time in history. His abiding strength and iron resolve to confront those who would "wipe Israel off the map" not with weakness but with clarity of purpose will be the corrective and timely anecdote to the wobbly Obama policies already in motion.

Remember people, our Dear Leader has already—in his first week as top policy maker of the most powerful military force on earth—reached out to the Islamic rabble in a pitiful show of "dhimmitudinal" solidarity, just like he telegraphed in one of those two biographies of his (and William Ayers), in stating that "when the political winds change in an ugly direction I will stand with my Muslim brothers."

As Charles Krauthammer put it, "Every new president flatters himself that he, kinder and gentler, is beginning the world anew. Yet, when Barack Obama in his inaugural address reached out to Muslims with to the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect, his formulation was needlessly defensive and apologetic.

Krauthammer is being gentle. The truth is that Obama has more up his sleeve than even this well-respected conservative columnist will admit publically.

Is it "new" to acknowledge Muslim interests and show respect to the Muslim world? Obama doesn't just think so, he said so again to millions in his al-Arabiya interview, insisting on the need to "restore" the "same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago."

Astonishing. In these most recent 20 years—the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world—America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved—and resulted in—the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.

That's right. Stop the misplaced appeasement to these vulgar peoples who are aggressive the world over, thanks to Saudi-financed Wahabbi madrassas now stretching into every corner of the free world. Bottom line, Mr. President. No more dhimmitude. We had enough of that with the last man to sit in the same seat you now occupy. Enough said for this patriot.

OBAMA'S WAR ON PAKISTANI TERRORISTS

THERE HAVE BEEN REPORTS that the continuing strategy of allowing Predator strikes in the proverbial “lawless, tribal areas” of Pakistan has been paying dividends. Aside from the objective good of eliminating enemy combatants, the regular attacks have apparently been making it more and more difficult for al-Qaeda types to find refuge.

Oddly enough, it seems to make the locals less eager to indulge in their much vaunted hospitality and to have these people stay overnight in their houses and villages when there’s a decent chance that missiles will come flying out of the clouds and blow the abodes to smithereens.

We presume this what the new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, meant by “smart power”? But what if a civilian or two is killed? What then? Well, it’s the kind of smart power I can advocate without losing a moment to self-doubt. And with progress having been made, it was important to send an immediate signal to the region that President Barack Obama was not going to call a halt to these strikes. Hope is a motivator. To defeat an enemy, you must rob him of hope. That’s nothing new. Predator strikes alone won’t defeat this pernicious and relentless enemy, but it’s part of the solution until we finally wake up and realize that this is a protracted war whose name is Islam.

Good move, Mr. President, and keep it up.

Ditto those words from Right Wing Bob.

OBAMA'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

PLAGIARISM ANYONE? Now the Joltin' Joe Biden VP pick makes sense. This grass roots fellow from Chicago can't help but telegraph his signals.

'Dreams of my Father 'was written by Bill Ayers. It's no wonder that it's so inconsistent. The Washington Times even did a linguistic analysis of it by running it through a concordancer and comparing it to Barack Hussein Obama's and Bill Ayers' writing and it had every marker of Bill Ayers in terms of structure and lexicon.

They also ran it through Pennebaker's Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, which established that not only was it written disingenuously, but that the person who wrote it in the first-person couldn't have been writing about himself. Plus, it's chock-full of seafaring metaphors, as is everything that Ayers writes. Obama has barely even been on a boat.

It's damn near a slam dunk that old pal William Ayers wrote that book.

NO COLONIAL LEGACY

"THE NOTION THAT AMERICA managed, under Bush, to lose some kind of special place in the affections of the Muslim wolrd, a special place that it possessed because America "had no colonial legacy"—is the kind of thing you read in the cheesiet potted summaries of the postwar period ("because, boys and girls, America had no colonial legacy...."). Does Obama think that the Muslim attacks, from without and within, on the Hindus of India has to do with some "colonial legacy"? Does he think that the attacks on Christian Filipiinos in the southern Philippines, or on Buddhists in southern Thailand, have to do with a "colonial legacy"?Does he think that Muslim aggression against non-Muslims in southern Sudan, or southern Nigeria, has to do with a "colonial legacy"? Well, only insofar as Muslims, wherever they do not yet completely dominate, but are present in sufficient numbers to attempt to work their will on non-Muslims, they will do so."

Thanks to Hugh Fitzgerald for his abiding clarity on this issue. The quote above plainly defies the gist of mistaken US policy with regards to the Islamic armies agitating along nearly every border or within across the globe. He continues:

"The business of America not having a "colonial legacy" and thus being somehow more natively attractive to Muslims, misses the point, misunderstands reality. America is not liked for the same reason that any of the European former colonial powers are not liked, or why India, for that matter, is a target of Muslim hostility and, when possible, aggression. These are Infidel lands.

"If Barack Obama or those who advise him are, just like their predecessors, unwilling or incapable of learning what is in the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, incapable of studying, and then assimilating what the ideology of Islam inculcates, incapable of recognizing that it contains both a politics and a geopolitics, that its hold over the minds of men is far greater, far more akin to the ideologies of Communism and Nazism as a totalitarian regulation of every aspect of life, or at least would like to attain to that in its ideal, most comprehensive reception, then they are likely to make the same kind of colossal mistakes as the Bush adminstration did in Iraq, with its squandering of men, money, material, and morale."

Now that would be hope and change we can all live with, Mr. President.

Unfortunately, we are going back to the popular notion that if we just talked to the murderous, hateful, sociopathic killers, everything will turn out okay. It is a school of wishful thinking, blinded by ignorance and served with an endless supply of hubris. When will the west's liberal intelligentsia recognize that "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."?

The global jihad is quite clear on its goals and aspirations. Likewise, Hamas and Iran. Our news media continual denial of the reality of the threat of Islam is nothing more than the fairy tale villager's treatment of Chicken Little. "The sky cannot be falling!" "Go away, you are upsetting us!"

Yet the uncomfortable truth remains.

Islam offers kuffars only three choices—become a Muslim, accept dhimmitude (this is not even second class citizen status, it is the acceptance of being treated worse than slave) or death. Truly, Islam is a loaded gun pointed at the head of every infidel in the world. If the dysfunction teachings of Qur'an, Hadith and Sira don't convince you, the history of Islam should. It is nothing more that a series of slaughters; resulting in killing, looting, rape and slavery—all in the name of Mohammed.

Early in his career, Mohammed discover that preaching was not an effective method of growing his faith. In ten years of prophecy in Mecca, he barely had one hundred followers. Mohammed left Mecca for Medina and left evangelism for armed robbery, murder and the use of the sword to spread the faith. It has been so, ever since.

Only fools and poltroons think differently.

LIBERTY GASOLINE IS GOOD NEWS

On a whim today, I decided to research these new Liberty gas stations that are becoming ubiquitous in the Tri-State area of Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia. Imagine my surprise to learn that this gasoline supply outfit is a Virginia founded and operated company, and pumps up fresh American Gulf of Mexico crude via pipelines to Fairfax and Richmond refineries. It's a remarkable story. Finally my conscience can rest. Goodbye Saudi and Venzuelan oil.

For my research efforts, I now have a family gasoline pump wholly American, and I salute with all I have—dear Virginia Liberty!

Thank you, Mr. Holtzman...

THREE AREA OIL PRODUCERS qt the turn of this new century were tired of competing against Sheetz's low gasoline prices so they did something about it. They formed Liberty Petroleum LLC to sell unbranded gas at some of their convenience stores.

In 2001, Bill Holtzman, owner of Holtzman Oil in Mt., Jackson, (Shenandoah County) Va., has joined with Blackie Bowen of Ewing Oil in Hagerstown and Frayser White of Valley Oil in Charlottesville to form the new company. Earl Cox, a former oil industry executive, is heading up the Liberty Petroleum operation based in in Staunton, Va.

Holtzman said the three Liberty owners met while serving on committees with major oil companies. "I said that I was going into the private brand business. The three of us said, 'Yes, it's a good idea to join together because we're not in each other's territories.' That was about a year and a half ago, and now things are really rolling."

Within the next few years, the trio hopes to sign up 90 oil distributors (also known as jobbers) to form a group of as many as 2,000 C-stores east of the Mississippi selling private-branded Liberty gasoline. About 95% will be conversions of existing stations, the balance new builds.

"Liberty is a LLC and the three of us own it," said Holtzman. "It's like a major oil company. Holtzman Oil, Ewing Oil and Valley Oil will all buy from Liberty, and Liberty will sell to other jobbers. We just picked up another one in Bedford [Pa].

"It could snowball with monster numbers. There are lots of jobbers who need a private brand. For gasoline customers, it's 40% who buy by brand and 60% who buy on price. This puts us on both playing fields and gives us the ability to compete with Sheetz."

Altoona, Pa.-based Sheetz has 270 C-stores, mostly in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia. Its sales are estimated by Hoover's Online to be $1.6 billion, or about $5 million per store. Another competitor, mainly in Pennsylvania, is Wawa with 500 stores that do about $1 billion in annual sales.

In the past, Holtzman and Bowen have spoken out against Sheetz's business tactics. Holtzman complained about a so-called Sheetz C-store at the Mt. Jackson Interstate 81 exit really being a truck stop, while Bowen testified before the Maryland legislature in support of a law that would outlaw pricing gas below wholesale cost. It passed, as did similar legislation in Pennsylvania and West Virginia that prevents gas retailers from selling below cost for extended periods of time to drive out local competition.

The Liberty Petroleum may yet encounter another competitor, the Petroleum Marketers Association of America (PMAA) based in Arlington, Va. "We've formed the Petroleum Marketers Oil Company LLC, and we're looking into it as a separate company," said Holly Tuminello, director of communications at the PMAA. "We're just in the beginning stages, talking to potential suppliers. We haven't yet come up with a brand name, but it will be a national brand."

Tuminello said driving the PMMA strategy is concern over "all the mergers of big oil companies. Eighteen months ago we did a survey of our members and they are looking for an alternative to the majors." Through its state associations, PMAA represents 8,000 oil distributors.

As for the Liberty operation, Tuminello said, "They're members of our organization, and we think it's a great idea and support their efforts."

Holtzman said Liberty's gasoline supplier is Energy Merchant Corp. out of its Baltimore office, but the gas comes from the Gulf of Mexico by two pipelines into Fairfax and Richmond, where jobbers will pick it up in their own tanker trucks.

Sheetz and Wawa sell their unbranded gas at four to five cents below the price at Exxon, Chevron and Amoco stations. Liberty will be in that same price range. All claim their gas is the same as that of the big oil companies, the only difference being in the additives used. In fact, Liberty's pumps display a logo which says, "100% Certified Quality Gasoline."

Echoing Holtzman, Cox said demographic changes are dictating that C—store owners consider selling unbranded, less expensive gas. "This is an important marketing situation, where the older age population, 45 to 50 years old and up are more brand loyal, where they say, `What's good for Dad is good for me.' However, Gen X and Gen Y people look for price and convenience. Sheetz has done a good job in that area because they're capturing the customer that is price conscious."

Cox said Liberty Petroleum is basically a licensing agent. "Liberty does not invoice or have receivables. We license them [other jobbers] to use the brand, and we earn a fractional cent on aper gallon basis."

Liberty hopes to have funneled of between 50 million and 60 million gallons by the end of the year, said Cox, earning $.002 on each gallon purchased by participating jobbers. This will pay for Liberty's salaries, office overhead, travel and advertising. By next year, Cox hopes volumes increase to between 75 million and 100 million gallons.

A native of Mount Jackson, Va., Bill Holtzman initially began his career in agriculture in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. In 1972, while working full time in the apple industry, he purchased a small, local Gulf fuel business for $37,000, and worked tirelessly in the evenings and on weekends to launch his new business, Holtzman Oil. Today, Holtzman Oil Corp. is a Chevron, BP, Exxon, Texaco, and Liberty supplier in Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia, and is one of the largest employers in Shenandoah County, Virginia.

BORDER GUARDS HAVE SENTENCES COMMUTED

WASHINGTON (AP) - President George W. Bush has commuted the prison sentences of two former Border Patrol guards whose convictions for shooting a Mexican drug dealer ignited debate about illegal immigration. Bush's act of clemency on Monday for Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean was a victory for Democratic and Republican members of Congress and others who pleaded with the president to pardon the men or at least commute their sentences. Ramos and Compean are each serving sentences of more than 10 years for shooting an unarmed illegal immigrant as he was fleeing an abandoned marijuana load in 2005, then trying to cover it up.

Yep, it was the woeful cover-up that brought the house down on these two fellows. When will our heroes ever learn? Thanks to Jim Gilchrist of the Minutemen Project and the thousands of others who fought to end this travesty of justice.

The nation's largest veterans organization released this week a policy bulletin that takes a firm stand against illegal immigration and calls on its members to hold elected officials accountable for implementing and enforcing U.S. immigration law.

The 30-page bulletin is officially titled, "The American Legion Policy on Immigration: A Strategy to Address Illegal Immigration in the United States."

"The American Legion members have served in the U.S. Armed Forces throughout the world so that Americans can be safe at home," the organization's website explains. "This gives them a unique perspective to the threat that open borders present to their homeland."

"America is a nation built by immigrants and the American Legion recognizes and celebrates that," said National Commander David K. Rehbein in a press release. "We do take strong issue, however, with illegal immigration. It's a matter of national security. The 9/11 hijackers and three of the men who plotted to kill innocent Americans at Ft. Dix were perfect examples of terrorists exploiting our weak immigration laws and our lack of enforcement. This booklet is a good reminder that America has a serious problem that needs to be addressed."

The booklet itself makes the Legion's position clear in a statement that stands alone on the first page.

"The American Legion is opposed to any person or persons being in this country illegally, regardless of race, sex, creed, color or national origin," the bulletin states. "We believe the current laws governing immigration should be enforced impartially and equally."

Originally founded in 1919 on an idea proposed by Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (the president of the same name's eldest son), the Legion has now grown to a membership of more than 2.6 million wartime veterans organized in more than 14,000 posts nationwide.

The policy bulletin explains, "Legionnaires subscribe to a creed, 'To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America; to maintain law and order and to foster and perpetuate a 100 percent Americanism.' These words are recited in unison at Legion meetings and represent a continuing contract of service to benefit America and it is this commitment by Legionnaires that is the fuel for action on illegal immigration and other national security concerns facing this country."

The Legion hopes the policy booklet will educate the American public on how "the security, economy and social fabric of the United States of America is seriously threatened by individuals who are illegally in this country."

"Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime," the booklet states. "The poor, minorities, children and individuals with little education are particularly vulnerable. It causes an enormous drain on public services, depresses wages of American workers, and contributes to population growth that, in turn, contributes to school overcrowding and housing shortages. Directly and indirectly, U.S. taxpayers are paying for illegal immigration."

In financial terms, the booklet cites a report by the Center for Immigration Studies that claims the average illegal alien household in 2003 paid approximately $4,200 in federal taxes while, on average, created $7,000 in costs at the federal level.

In response to what it sees as a contributing factor to crime, terrorism, unemployment and depressed wages, the Legion proposes the following five-point strategy urging the federal government to enact the following steps:

1. Secure the borders and other points of entry in the United States, including construction of a physical barrier and sufficient Border Patrol presence.

2. Eliminate the jobs magnet and social services benefits that draw illegal immigrants to the U.S. by enforcing laws sanctioning employers who hire illegal aliens, implementing employment eligibility verification and eliminating government benefits for illegal aliens.

3. Eliminate amnesty laws that permit illegal aliens to break the law and remain in the U.S.

4. Reduce the U.S. illegal alien population by attrition through workplace enforcement, interagency and interstate cooperation, rejection of driver's license plans, mandating English as national language and establishing parameters for noncriminal deportations.

5. Screen and track foreign visitors legally entering the United States. The plan further calls for reforms to current legal immigration policy, including alteration of the non-immigrant visa program that allows some nations' citizens entrance to the U.S. without a visa application, elimination of the visa lottery that randomly approves visas from countries with low immigration rates and expanding visa allowances for seasonal and temporary workers. John Raughter, a spokesperson for the Legion, told WND that many people think only of the economic issues surrounding illegal immigration, but for Legion members who have fought to protect America, the issue is a matter of continuing the fight for our country's freedom.

"We want to raise public awareness that illegal immigration is a national security issue," Raughter said. "The American Legion wants to remind people that included in the Fort Dix Six conspirators and 9-11 attackers were men in the country illegally."

This is not a vendetta against legal immigrants. This is about playing fairly and giving immigration control back to the government of the United States and taking that power away from people and nations who wish us harm. We have met many fine immigrants, hard workers just wanting a chance at a better life. As Fox News analyst Bill O'Reilly has opined several times on his show, if he were a penniless citizen of Mexico and beyond with a family to feed, clothe and house, encouraged by his own peers to exploit the ease at which this nation of ignored immigration laws soaks up illegals into its system, he too, would be among those millions pouring in.

Less than a year before the New York City and Washington terrorist attacks, my wife and I had the chance to visit Paris. We stayed with a young American fellow and his wife in their modest flat in central Paris for a few days before moving on, but what struck me was how diligent he was, as a spouse of an American exchange student in making his monthly visits to the immigration and visa police. This friend voiced passionate concern that he could be deported at any time unless he complied fully with regulations.

Here was a young American, aUniversity of Texas student, on sabbatical for a year in Paris, living in a run down flat off the Rue Saint Maur metro stop while his young Anglicized Romanian wife spent a year in exchange at a French business school. And yet, he was afraid of missing a monthly status appointment, an error in judgement or circumstance engineered to have the wild-eyed immigration police immediately banging on his door to put him back on the plane to Austin.

This was before 911. What a difference a few years and an ocean make, although this doesn't explain why France is currently groaning under the weight of excessive and belligerent Muslim immigration. Perhaps my friend was simply paranoid, or perhaps closer to the truth, officials in both nations, America and France, tend to look away in a fog of political correctness when confronted by problems brought into their midst by the "diversity" sort of "illegal" alien, while clamping down hard on those who might tend to obey the rules for the slightest infraction. Unfortunately, this latter conjecture sounds about right.

FIVE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

THESE ARE DANGEROUS TIMES. The volume and ferocity of anti-American chatter across the Internet have reached a level we have not seen since the days leading up to 9/11. The radical Islamists, who would use violence against those who do not accept their view of life, have become arrogant enough to bring their savage methods to new depths of depravity.

To understand this bolder enemy, we must [fully] recognize what they are capable of.

Mumbai.

Last November, a handful of terrorists came into Mumbai by stealth, and within hours brought a city of 18 million to its knees. They attacked ten symbolic sites favored by tourists, murdered some 200 people, and left a wake of indescribable destruction, shattering thousands of lives in their wake.

They singled out American, British, and Jewish targets, and ordered the terrorists to "kill to their last breath". Many of their victims were savagely tortured before being murdered. So brutal was the torture that experienced doctors who later examined the bodies were in shock and could not find the words to even speak about it.

Gaza.

In Gaza, Hamas brought a different kind of terror into the news. Hamas fights her enemies with cowardice and unspeakable cruelty. While terrorists have been given free reign to shell civilians living in southern Israeli towns, they hide behind the women and children of Gaza, drawing Israeli fire to its rocket launchers which are placed deep in densely populated areas, putting their own people at mortal risk.

During the last two years, nearly 6,000 rockets were fired from Gaza, aimed at schools and homes, mostly in the little town of Sderot, which has taken the brunt of the ceaseless barrage. Israel finally responded with a mighty attack to silence the rockets that had plagued its citizens for the last eight years, and while the number of rockets has been reduced, they did not stop, continuing to terrorize the people of southern Israel.

The True Face of Hamas.

There is now a mountain of documentation demonstrating that over recent months, Hamas has acquired massive caches of weapons and explosives which they stored in mosques, schools, and throughout residential neighborhoods.

They have humiliated, brutalized, and murdered their Christian and Fatah 'enemies' in cold blood. And after Israel dropped leaflets in Gazan neighborhoods, urging civilians find shelter away from the aerial attack, Hamas forced them back into their homes, preventing them from finding safety from the bombs. No wonder the number of civilian casualties is so high.

On December 24, in a final blow to any semblance of civilized governance, Hamas passed a new penal code firmly rooted in Shari'a law. Among the punishments that this new code enables are forty lashes for drinking wine, cutting off hands for theft, and crucifixion for 'treason'.

Their reversion to a seventh century penal code underscores their intention to achieve ultimate power that will drive the lives of their people back into the dark ages. The current plight of the people of Gaza can be laid squarely at the feet of Hamas.

What This Means for the West.

Hamas supporters have used the current conflict as another excuse to stir the boiling cauldron of Islamist hatred against the West. Their mantra of "Death to Israel, Death to America" feeds their frenzy and has spawned demonstrations throughout the United States, demonstrations that are growing increasingly hysterical and out of control.

Last week in New York City, seven police officers were hurt—two with head wounds—when a pro-Hamas demonstration became violent.

In San Francisco, pro-Hamas demonstrators shouted, "I want you to watch as I kill your children, cover your children in their own blood! I want you to watch me blow your children's brains out".

In Florida, a demonstrator screamed, "Go back to the oven," referring to the murder of Jews in the Holocaust, "You need a big oven, that's what you need." Click here to see the video.

Here in America, we watch these events unfold as if we were viewing a new kind of reality show. But this is not theater and we, who watch passively, as we sit comfortably in front of the television, need to be alarmed. It is difficult for Westerners to comprehend the depth of hatred that radical Islamists feel against those who are unwilling to adopt their faith. For them, multi-culturalism is not an acceptable way of life, it is evil.

Their view of life demands that we either convert to their version of Islam, or die. They have made it plain that their goal is to globalize jihad, and turn the world into a global Islamist state ruled under shari'ah law. For them, negotiation is not an option, there is only one way, and there is nothing to negotiate.

A few years ago, Abdurahman Alamoudi presented himself as a so-called 'moderate' Muslim, and suggested that he had a large following. He was an open supporter of Hamas and Hezballah, yet so highly esteemed that he had access to the White House (before he went to federal prison for his role in an assassination plot against the Saudi Crown Prince).

Not surprisingly, few took note when he told a Muslim conference in Chicago, "Muslims sooner or later will be the moral leadership of America—either we do it now or we do it after a hundred years, but this country will become a Muslim country." It was one of many warnings that we ignored.

Yousef al-Khattab, a NYC taxi driver, enjoys the benefits of life in America, even as he runs a website called RevolutionMuslim.com. On his website, he wrote, "We pray that we may witness the dismantlement of western, secular dominance across the world as we hold it to be pagan and idolatrous in the majority of its presumptions.

We seek a resurrection of the just example set forth by centuries of Islamic rule throughout the ages and we hold it to be self evident for the objective soul and mind that Allah is One and that Muhammad ibn Abdullah is His Prophet and that the religion offers the solution to all of the world's ills and afflictions." Is anybody listening?

Radical Islam has taken a firm hold in our society. Hamas is only one of an undetermined number of radical Islamic groups that aim to do us harm. They have used the freedoms that they profess to hate to achieve access to our universities, our industries, our government, and our collective conscience.

They use our sense of fair play against us to impose their moral superiority, and demand our sensitivity to their rights, while simultaneously demanding that we forfeit our own.

So now, while Christian children can no longer pray in school, the same schools have adopted programs that teach our children what it is like to be Muslim, how they eat, and how they pray.

There are now terrorist cells in virtually every state in the union. Their aim is to globalize jihad, and replace our Constitution with the Koran, our penal code with shari'a law.

They range from the well known names such as al Qaeda, Hizballah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood (which masquerades under many other names), and includes lesser known groups like Jamaat al-Fuqra, Darul Uloom, and Islamic Jihad. Associated with these groups are not-for-profit front organizations through which these groups launder money to support terroist activities.

For example, Jamaat al-Fuqra compounds have sprung up all over the country to provide Muslim warriors with rural campuses for combat training. Security is high and outsiders are not welcome. Darul Uloom, the school of Islam embraced by the Taliban, have active centers in Florida, Maryland, Texas, Connecticut and New York.

And CAIR, which claims to be nothing more than "a Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group", was named as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the recent Holyland Foundation terrorist funding trial, Never-the-less, it provides sensitivity training to the FBI.

Today, in unassuming Muslim centers in Brooklyn, NY; Jersey City, NJ; Boston, MA; Fairfax, Virginia; and Dearborn, Michigan, jihad is being plotted, while we bend over backwards to ensure that they are not disturbed.

Today, we in America stand on the threshold of madness as we allow our nation to be undermined by those who would destroy all that generations of Americans have fought and died for.

The time is 1939 and we are Europe denying the growing threat of the Third Reich. Here in America, it is five minutes to midnight and it is time to wake up.

Ilana Freedman is the Editor of IntelAnalysis and is CEO of Gerard Group International, Inc.

STUDENTS UNPREPARED FOR ADULTHOOD

From the NRA today:

I've heard the arguments against extending Right-to-Carry onto college campuses before, but I've never heard them stated in such a way that belittles college students. In the Tulsa World, columnist Wayne Greene (who makes some pretty ridiculous arguments himself) quotes a "former academic" named Mark Taylor, who says college students "are unprepared for dealing with adult decisions of any kind, and especially with decisions of life and death."

The columnist writes that Taylor believes overprotective parents "have produced a generation of students who don't know how to fend for themselves but believe that they are tremendously important."

That argument is so ridiculous I hardly know where to begin, and if I were a college student I'd find it incredibly insulting. Are these the same students who are taking part in ROTC programs at colleges around the country? What about the military veterans who are going to school on the GI Bill? Are they "unprepared for dealing with adult decisions of any kind"? What about non-traditional students who live off-campus but drive in for evening classes? Do they not know how to "fend for themselves"?

Right-to-Carry holders are, statistically, far more law abiding than the general population. Forty states in this country have or shall-issue Right-to-Carry laws, and not one state has moved to repeal their statute. Right-to-Carry holders aren't the problem—and in fact are part of the solution when it comes to public safety.

What will the effeminate Left not do to stop law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves in the face of flagrant aggression? And yet when these very same law-abiding citizens try, under the aegis of well-founded law, to throw the book at murderous criminals, these criminals are coddled and supplied excuses for their vicious behavior. The fix is in, folks. There are people alive and in charge, or close to those who are, who desire and foment for a world on fire, whose secret and not so secret actions are slipped into our daily news along with impassioned pleas of peace, no less. Know your enemy. His name is Unsubstantiated Peace or Total Submission, so roll the dice or take your pick.

THE GREAT WALL OF SILENCE

An important series of questions were posited by a concerned US citizen to her elected representatives. The response to her questions were woefully inadequate. One day very soon we will know who among us—standing along the hallowed halls of liberty and freedom, conscience and the rule of law—were on the payroll to look the other way, and who indeed were the best and the brightest and most dedicated patriots of our time. Only then will the appeasers and the slouchers within our leadership ranks and from among the chattering café crowds know the depths of their shameless ignorance concerning the threat that unambiguously approaches.

If you want peace, prepare for war. “Si vis pacem, para bellum” from Flavius Vegetius Renatus circa 375 AD: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Said another way, when you want something badly enough, you must fight for it. As colonial patriot Patrick Henry once exclaimed, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Our current enemies believe the same. But their version of liberty is not mine.

Watch what people do and you will see their true level of commitment.

Ayn Rand spoke about this kind of bulletproof resolution. “There are two sides to every issue” she said, “one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth.”

Fence sitters and cowards exist in a moral fog where they never really commit to anything but their hatred of success. Achievers are prepared to fight to the death. Sidney Sheldon put it best: “The foolish think the Eagle weak, and easy to bring to heel. The Eagle's wings are silken, but its claws are made of steel.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Winners don’t cut and run. They are in the fight until the end. They stay the course. They know that anything worthwhile will take a bit longer and take some doing. They understand that they will face a few detours, disappointments, and distractions.

"When you push a winner, you find out whom you’re really dealing with." They expect the unexpected. They are warriors who realize that war is war. They don’t make excuses or expect the state or mommy to help them. They don’t find the strongest people to blame for their inadequacies, spinelessness and weakness. They bounce back courageously and fight on. They are the “Steel fist in the silken glove”—when you push them, you find out whom you’re really dealing with.

IT’S THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS clause in our Constitution that will do us in. Every letter I have ever written to a politician, some of them lengthy and with references, evoked terse replies admonishing me for my intolerance and reminding me that ALL religions are respected and welcomed in America. In my follow-up responses to these idiotic replies, none of which were acknowledged, I asked these so-called representatives how they could condone the practice of a religion by millions of immigrants( who continue to flood America despite hating it) that brazenly teaches its followers to usurp our government and convert, enslave, or kill all non-Muslim Americans.

I painstakingly outlined the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and listed every orgainization connected to it that operates in America. I demanded to know why these insurgents and fifth columnists were permitted to operate in our country with impunity when they are dedicated to its destruction. No answer. I demanded to know why Muslim supremacists could carry signs predicting the overthrow of our government while they burned U.S. flags on our streets. No answer. I demanded to know why public funds were allocated to seditionist Islamic organizations like the Muslim Student Association and CAIR, our avowed enemies that intend to cut our throats, seize our property and assets, usurp our government, and implement Islamic law in America.

I demanded to know how my government intended to protect me and my family from the radical jihadists inculcated in American mosques by Saudi Wahabbi clerics. I demanded to know why these America-haters were allowed to come here and spread their vile, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Jew hatred and to explain to me where religious freedom ended and sedition began. I pointed out the explosive, festering situation in Europe with its Muslim supremacists and asked if that was our future. I asked if anyone in Washington had ever studied Islamic history and the doctrine of Islam or if they all relied on the Islamic apologist liars in academia and intelligentsia to provide them with soothing canards so they could ignore the problem of Islam and Muslims.

I listed the terror attacks committed by Muslims in the name of Islam since 9/11 and asked if they really believed that jihad was a marginal problem among a few fanatics. I asked why America stopped limiting immigrants to those who genuinely wanted to become Americans and would contribute to our society and respect our way of life and why we now deliberately and suicidally invite our enemies to invade our country. I concluded by asking them if they were blind and deaf or if maybe they too had been bought by the Saudis.

My representatives are Republicans, except for one. This was a frustrating, infuriating experience that I will never forget and never understand beyond the fact that politicians are shackled by political correctness and fear reprisals from their colleagues and/or the wrath of their constituents if they dare voice valid concerns about Islam. The only thing that will change their attitudes is a flood of complaints and letters of outrage from the people they represent. Someone made the comment in another thread that 9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to Islam and Muslims in America.

Instead of opening the eyes of all Americans to this pernicious scourge, they have been lulled into a false sense of security by lying politicians, politically correct multiculturalists, moral relativists, and well-meaning but ignorant Christian and Jewish clerics. Instead of being isolated and treated with justified suspicion, Muslims have been elevated to victim status and they are the consummate exploiters of genuine good will, a virtue they will never possess or comprehend.

—Susan P.

OIL PRICES, CONSUMPTION CONTINUE SLIDE

An article by Neil King, Jr. of the Wall Street Journal should have conservationist Americans dancing with joy. However, only half the story is actually good news. If these prognostications are true, then the West has some measure of hope of curtailing those runaway oil prices that help cripple our economy this past year. However, the general wisdom that oil prices need to be at a certain level in order to fuel exploration of other energy resources needs to go the way of $140 a barrel oil prices.

Because this week's outlook also included news that the frackas between Russia and the Ukraine has interrupted the delivery of energy resources to Europe, this is not the time for a return of the freewheeling energy glutton America had become. The United States cannot continue to delay its search for viable alternative fuel technologies. The following article and the news out of Russia are testament to the cold hard fact that we need inependence from our energy masters. King writes:

The global downturn is thwarting efforts by Saudi Arabia and other big oil exporters to prop up prices of crude amid rising supply and dwindling demand.

Big producers in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries have struggled for months to keep pace with global economic woes, which have sent oil prices down more than 70% since July.

The world's biggest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, tried to nudge the market up this week by announcing plans to cut output to its lowest level since 2003—around 7.7 million barrels a day, which would put its production roughly two million barrels a day from the summer. Other OPEC members, including Venezuela, are calling for another round of cuts when the group meets next in March.

Global economic woes continue to trump OPEC actions amid signs of weakening energy demand in almost every corner of the world. Reports of rising crude stocks and falling retail sales in the U.S. drove oil prices down again Wednesday, with U.S. benchmark crude settling at $37.28 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, down 1.3% from Tuesday.

OPEC's 12 members last month announced the group's largest supply cut—2.2 million barrels a day—after pledging to cut two million barrels a day in the autumn, when the slowdown began to take hold. OPEC produces about 40% of the world's daily oil needs, which now run around 84.5 million barrels.

OPEC officials expressed concern that the market thus far has been unaffected by the cuts, which have been more disciplined than many analysts predicted. OPEC officials say they hope the cuts will begin to register soon and help drive prices back above $50 a barrel. But pessimists within the cartel say continuing bad news could drive prices well below $30 a barrel in coming months.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi, speaking at an oil conference Wednesday in New Delhi, said prices had fallen below the level warranted by market fundamentals. The oil market, he said, needs prices that "encourages investment, helping create a climate conducive for the development of all viable energy sources." Mr. Naimi recently put that price at $75 a barrel.

Nonsense. Development of new technology does not compete with oil production. Delivery of those technologies may one day compete, but that is no reason to delay the process of finding and perfecting an alternative to oil. If oil did not exist, what then? This general economic wisdom is bunk. Thomas Edison's perfected electric light technology was to compete with gas lighting, but buildout costs were enormous.

The battle between electric and gas lighting lasted some 30 years, and although advances were made in gas-lighting technology, electricity won out. During that time, the Cleveland OH City Council, viewing comparative costs, voted to go back to gas light in 1883 but reversed itself 17 days later. About the time that Brush was developing his arc light, Thomas Edison designed a practical incandescent lamp which later had great significance for Cleveland, because the companies that formed the National Electric Lamp Assn. in 1906 centered much of their light-bulb production in this area. When NELA became the National Quality Lamp Division of GENERAL ELECTRIC CO., it established Nela Park in the suburbs. The division took the leading role in GE’s incandescent lighting development program from 1915 until 1935, when fluorescent lighting research became prominent.

For years, the world's oil surplus was negligible. This year, OPEC's spare capacity is expected to surge to around four million barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Department. In 2009, global oil demand will fall by 800,000 barrels a day—the sharpest retreat since the recession of the early 1980s, the Energy Department predicts.

Gasoline demand is down almost 4% in the U.S. from a year ago, despite the drop in fuel prices. The U.S. is now importing about 750,000 fewer barrels a day than it did last year. Yet crude and refined-fuel stockpiles rose by 9.8 million barrels last week, the Energy Department said Wednesday. Stockpiles at the country's main delivery point for U.S. crude in Cushing, Okla., are at record highs.

MARX DEBUNKED BY TIME MAGAZINE

From TIME MAGAZINE article on May 19, 1947, Karl Marx is man is examined under the light of a man named Schwarzchild who had just written a book about the notorious political philosopher. My, how times have changed.

"If a name had to be found for the age in which we live," says the author of this book, "we might safely call it the Marxian era. For, in one way or another, the most important facts of our time lead back to one man—Karl Marx."

Biographer Leopold Schwarzschild is no admirer of Marx or Marxism. He is pointing to the fact that since World War I no other mind has so potently influenced the political and economic thinking and action of our times. There are masses of unconscious Marxists—men & women who have never read Marx's Capital, and who would rather be found dead than reading the Communist Manifesto, but whose thinking about the role of economic forces in history, the responsibility of government for the individual, and the importance of economic security v. political freedom has nevertheless been profoundly influenced by the choleric expatriate from Prussia.

Even the efforts to fight Marxism with its own weapons have inevitably taken a Marxist turn. Both Naziism and Fascism, Biographer Schwarzschild points out, are Marxist mutations whose predestined political form is therefore the police state. In Nazi concentration camps, as in Russian forced-labor camps, Karl Marx was the presiding genius. In the name of human progress, Marx has probably caused more death, misery, degradation and despair than any man who ever lived.

Complacent & Patronizing. For a mind whose consequences have been so monstrous, this biography is singularly debonair. It is certainly the most readable life of Marx available. For those who wish to see so alarming a monster debunked, it is a complacent job of debunking. Nor need readers fear exposure to the rigors of Marxist political theory or economics. Biographer Schwarzschild lightly writes off those arid involutions.

Schwarzschild's indictment is most effective when describing Marx's personal and political life from 1818 to 1883. Here is Marx the boy taken to a church in Trier, in the recently Prussianized Rhineland, and baptized a Lutheran. His father, the first lawyer in an interminable line of distinguished rabbis, admired Prussia and its official religion. Here is Marx the future socialist, unsocially shunning his school fellows while his mental acrobatics charm Ludwig von Westphalen, a much older man of a much higher social position. Marx later repaid Westphalen for this early interest by marrying his daughter, Jenny, against the wishes of her family. And here is Marx the frustrated poet, wasting his time, and his father's (and later his widowed mother's) slim resources as a shiftless college student. Marx finally received a kind of mail-order degree from the University of Jena.

Boring from Within. Marx got his start in life as editor of the Rhenish Gazette. This newspaper had been founded by a group of solid businessmen turned publishers. Like other publishers since, they were presently bewildered to discover that their paper had been infiltrated by socialists and was being used as a mouthpiece for revolutionary ideas. Marx lost his job. Then began his lifelong career as an expatriate and professional revolutionist.

In Paris he hobnobbed with Friedrich Engels, elegant, fox-hunting scion of a prosperous German textile tycoon. With him Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto (1848), with him he shared his ideas, hopes, miseries and triumphs. Engels gave him implicit intellectual and political obedience, supported him most of his life and finally settled an annuity on him. In 1848 both Marx and Engels were neckdeep in the revolutionary wave that swept over Europe.

With the first gunshots, Marx rushed back to the Rhineland to edit the New Rhenish Gazette. The chapter on this episode shows the extent to which Marx's tactics are still standard Communist equipment. The New Rhenish Gazette was a tight little dictatorship of the proletariat run by a back-room clique of case-hardened Communists. But communism or socialism were rarely mentioned in its columns ; the paper posed as a liberal organ. The Communists posed as liberal patriots. In the name of liberalism, Marx shouted for war between Prussia and Denmark. He knew that war is good growing weather for communism. The result, as always, was the gradual discrediting of the liberals.

Character Assassination. Other enlightening chapters describe Marx's tactics of character assassination (still standard Communist practice) against anybody who threatened his exclusive leadership. One of his victims was Wilhelm Weitling, a tailor's apprentice, one of the few proletarians who has ever become an intelligent Communist leader. Marx falsely accused Weitling of being a literary crook and hounded him to the U.S. Another target was Ferdinand Lassalle, brilliant founder of the German Social Democratic Party. Marx somewhat inconsistently referred to Lassalle as "Baron Izzy" and "the little Jew."

Another victim was Michael Bakunin, an ardent Russian anarchist who threatened Marx's, control of the First International (founded in 1864 in London). Marx charged Bakunin with shady financial dealings and with being a Czarist agent. He could not make the charge stick, but Bakunin withdrew to lick his wounds.

After the collapse of the 1848 revolutions, Marx spent the rest of his life fighting off creditors, plotting against the public peace, burying his son,* suffering from attacks of carbuncles that sometimes covered him from head to foot, grinding away at economics so that he could "prove" (in Capital) that capitalism was inevitably doomed and that socialism was its inevitable successor, lashing his enemies with invective sometimes worthy of an Old Testament prophet and sometimes unprintable. When he was buried in a cemetery in Highgate, London, only eight friends were at the grave.

Author Schwarzschild's biographical facts are true, as far as they go. But the Marx he presents is a man with his brain cut out. Hence the facts add up to a caricature. Schwarzschild's thesis is that Karl Marx was 1) a rabbinical thinker whose pyramids of abstract logic were brilliant, but had nothing to do with facts; 2) a vicious egomaniac determined to ruin any man or group that he could not dominate; 3) a political seer whose prognostications were almost always wrong; 4) a self-styled "scientific" socialist whose science was about as scientific as astrology; 5) an economist whose economic knowledge was perfunctory and puerile. Marx's mind was undoubtedly diabolic (history is studded with malignant political geniuses). But it is no help in understanding or combating Marxism to deny its author's perverse brilliance.

Read it all.

GOING THROUGH THESE THINGS TWICE

IT HAD HAPPENED BEFORE, and it was happening again last week. An obscure man whose only tools were his brain and his pen was shaping the minds of men who shape the world. Winston Churchill had made one of this man's books "must" reading for the British War Cabinet and for Dominion Premiers who visited London last May. British liberals, scorned and derided by this man, had risen against him. A later book by the same man had just begun to make a stir in the U.S.

The man is Leopold Schwarzschild, a German Jew who once was also a German idealist and democrat. The book that gripped Winston Churchill is World in Trance, a burning, raging indictment of the Versailles era— "years of lofty dreaming and low demagogy . . . the era of the empty phrase . . . the age of complacency . . . the years of self-destruction." When the book was published in 1943, it got almost no notice. But the book and its current sequel, Primer of the Coming World (Knopf), were news last week because:

The Allied attitudes and beliefs which these books examine are still alive in the world, and must soon be put again to the test of peace.

The German formula for recovery and reaggression after World War I, also examined by these books, is still the German formula, as no less an authority than Joseph Goebbels made clear last week when he asked the world to believe that the Germans are decent and worthy people who mean well.

The Myth.

Author Schwarzschild left Germany in 1933, moved from Paris to New York in 1940. At root, his thesis is simple: the Old Adam is, always has been and always will be uppermost in mankind. People have not improved much in the past, they are not improving now, and only fools assume the contrary. Woodrow Wilson and all those caught with him in the perfectionist dream of the Versailles years did assume the contrary, and led the world into chaos.

"Never again," says Schwarzschild, "must we succumb to the myth that power and armaments and compulsion are of themselves sinful. . . . All order, all civilization, all law and dignity, rest on the existence of weapons and power." The Illusion. Author Schwarzschild's No. 2 thesis is that Germans have more than their share of the Old Adam in them. Woodrow Wilson, believing that the postwar Germans of the new republic would be good and deserving democrats; the British, playing balance-of-power politics and encouraging a strong, pre-Hitler Germany; the assorted liberals, radicals, plain men of good will who trusted the Weimar Republic—all these, says Schwarzschild, were members of Germany's "foreign legions," and their illusion was part of the era's tragic foolery.

Of Versailles' Big Four—Wilson, Lloyd George, Vittorio Orlando, Georges Clemenceau—'only Clemenceau really impressed Schwarzschild. The old Frenchman's attitude, denounced the world over as a fatally stupid and selfish policy, was actually, says Schwarzschild, the only sensible policy. Only the Tiger understood that Germany was a jungle to be controlled for France's sake and the world's. Says Schwarzschild:

"For those who knew the German people, their longing for democracy was always extremely doubtful. ... In the field of foreign policy [Hitlerism] was only the continuation of previous German policy. . . . Even if the Officers' Corps and their hangers-on had not made an alliance with Hitler . . . Germany would have inevitably steered her course toward the restoration of her overwhelming military power and eventually toward war."

The Remedy. Schwarzschild's remedy is armed internationalism—total, indefinite occupation of Germany by U.S., British and Russian troops (600,000 would do the job, he thinks). Furthermore, Germany must be deprived of every means of making war, of preparing for war, or of teaching war. Says Schwarzschild:

"Nothing, positively nothing [must] survive which can materially or spiritually become the nucleus of a new military renaissance . . . not just for a few years, but for a minimum of 50 to 60. . . . By A.D. 2000, the last Germans who have ever led or trained troops or manufactured weapons will have died."

The Rebuttal.

H. G. Wells called Schwarzschild "superficially intelligent and massively stupid." Journalist Michael Foot, called Trance "a facile, scintillating treatise which . . . has received applause from those weary brains which prefer the dismal past to the adventurous future. . . ."

Leopold Schwarzschild's appeal to ordinary folks is about as simple as the Old Adam. To them, he sounds like a man telling them what they already know, deep down: that they aren't really as noble, great and good as their Fourth of July orators make out. And that is at least half the story.

Keep this in mind when the Code Pinkers and Obama's minions come to take away your guns just as the Arabs and other distorted Muslims are ready to conquer the world on suicide bomber or set of buildings at a time.

SUNSHINE PATRIOTS AMONGST US

Picture this scenario—roving gangs terrorizing the neighborhood; residents and police act to curb violence. Gang members, adept at finding flaws in a system meant to work as a favorable policy, start crying foul that they are being picked on.

Who was "living" in the area of Israel in 1947? Nobody. It was unattended forgotten desert. Bedouins migrated through it, but it was a vast wasteland. Now with the help of pseudo-compassionate people we are supposed to believe that this turf was always inhabited by the so-called Palestinian people. Hey, I know, let's introduce a turf war. Many an Arab country could alleviate the problem by assimilating the Palestinians (pan-Arabs) into their cultures and societies, but no, it is much more convenient for the Muslim world for them to be 'a thorn in Israel's side'.

Others have said it before, but honestly, the more I hear the screams from the Left the more I am persuaded that unbridled liberalism is indeed some sort of mental disorder—to be unable to distinguish between right and wrong, truth and fiction, the real and the unreal is to be delusional.

Too many Americans digest too much of what the MSM reports as news, thinking that US foreign policy is utterly without redeeming features and that things have never been worse in the nation or the world at large.

But just like President Georgie Bush said yesterday—things during President Abe Lincoln's tenure surely weren't the rosiest of times, now were they? A nation crippled and divided where fathers fought sons, brothers fought brothers, and the blood ran red.

It's unfortunate our automobiles today can't run on the vitriolic fuel our political climate seems to produce in quite an abundant supply.

YOU'RE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE, TONY B

WITH THE INAUGARATION a week away, many Americans—fearful about the economy and uncertain about the future—are desperately pinning their hopes on Barack Obama and his "new New Deal."

But hopeful rhetoric, new programs with massive price tags, and "green investments" are not the solution, says bestselling author and syndicated columnist Tony Blankley. The solution lies in us; the solution lies in American Grit.

American Grit, Blankley's controversial new book, calls for a bold new nationalism—based on hard work, sacrifice, and policies that put America first—to tackle the global and domestic challenges facing our nation.

Blankley warns that Obama's socialist and environmentally sensitive agenda will weaken our embattled nation and invite new threats to America's economic and national security. Instead, Blankley prescribes his own compelling plan, calling upon the U.S. to implement:

A universal military draft to instill the unity, toughness, and cultural purpose lacking in America

An energy security policy where we become oil exporters and expand our diplomatic and economic options in the Middle East and around the world

A proactive, real-world communications strategy that showcases America as the true defender of freedom and opportunity

A new attitude that accepts the duties of citizenship instead of simply demanding more "rights" and "hand outs."

Yes, it's that simple. And I prefer to call this a radical centrist approach to fixing America. Thanks Mr. Blankley for your contribution to this vital reckoning of our times. America definitely needs to toughen up, or those who are tough (Russia, China, Middle East, Israel) will soon enslave the weak and despondent self-obsessed people we have become.

I BEG YOUR PARDON

WHAT THE HELL IN A HANDBASKET is the George Bush White House inhaling during these final days of his busted nut? Still spinning like a puppet in the wind.

John Allen Aregood was convicted of conspiring to transport and harbor illegal aliens. President Bush pardoned him just days ago. But what about former Border Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean who, according to Congressman Tom Tancredo and many others, were sent to prison for "doing their jobs?" Just doing their jobs, Hoss. But we hear nothing, even though the Terminal Right has been a strong advocate for a pardon in this case from the very beginning. Not a word!

In total, President Bush—just weeks after issuing 14 pardons—bestowed his good graces on YET ANOTHER 20 individuals. Here's a partial list of the 19 pardons (courtesy of the Associated Press):

William Alvis III of Flushing, Ohio. Possession of an unregistered firearm and cocaine distribution.

Eric Charles Blanke of Parker, Colo. Counterfeiting.

Steve Doyle Cavender of The Villages, Fla. Conspiring to import, possess, distribute and dispense marijuana.

Marie Elena Eppens of Lynden, Wash. Conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute marijuana.

Eduviges Duvi Gonzalez-Matsumura of Clovis, Calif. Aiding and abetting embezzlement of bank funds.

Minor. Major. All debatable. But still nothing for Campos and Compean? President Bush also commuted the prison sentence of Reed Raymond Prior who was convicted of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute and sentenced in 1996 to life in prison. So what do we have here?

a trafficker of illegal aliens

drug pushers

embezzlers

Were these people more deserving of a pardon than two American heroes who put their lives on the line every single day to protect our border? Is this what happened to  "compassionate conservatism?"

With days to go before he leaves office, time is running out for President Bush to do the right thing, answer those questions and release these brave American heroes from prison! Soembody in that damned house needs to wake up and listen to us.

Tell them that the railroading of Ramos and Compean is a gross miscarriage of justice and perhaps one of the most cynical misuses of power in our nation's recent history. Tell them that their continued imprisonment demeans the American people and our government.

Tell them that these brave American heroes are owed apologies for the injustice they have suffered and that this horrible wrong can be righted only if the President pardons these men or commutes their sentences.

It is highly doubtful that Barack Obama will champion the cause of these wrongfully and vindictively prosecuted American heroes. That means that if President Bush fails to act soon, these brave men are destined to spend a DECADE behind bars... NO TIME OFF FOR GOOD BEHAVIOR... NO CHANCE OF PAROLE. The grim and brutal aspect of this atrocity has been distilled to these possibilities:

Some say that Compean and Ramos were prosecuted to appease a foreign government.

Others even say they were offered as sacrificial lambs to advance a political agenda and a schizoidphrenic administration.

Still others say that it was just a horrible miscarriage of justice.

Assuming that any one (or any combination) of these opinions is true:

The foreign government, that some would say their prosecution was intended to appease, has long since forgotten about them.

The political agenda that some would say their imprisonment was meant to advance—namely amnesty—was defeated!

And the freakish miscarriage of justice has simply gone on too long.

No matter which option one chooses, the only reason NOW not to pardon the brave Border Agents or at least commute their sentences is hard-hearted vindictiveness.

THERE IS NO ACCEPTABLE REASON ON GOD'S CURSED EARTH NOT TO RELEASE COMPEAN AND RAMOS!

TIS WHAT IT TIS

THE LEFT IS NOTHING if not suicidal. Here is perfect example of how leftists "create what they hate."

Now, it is clear that the most progressive people in the United States come from its native, non-immigrant population. Most of these progressives are "white." Even the so-called evangelicals are far more liberal than most immigrant populations, such as Muslims, and even Hispanics.

But the left has visceral contempt for "whites," or anything familiar—boring to them—like Western culture. The left is addicted to foreignness, and "exotica." Immigrants, whether illegal or not, superficially fit that bill even though they are really the vast majority of humanity—not exotic at all. Immigrants from underdeveloped countries offer a double for insulated leftists--they are "different" from the hated "white" American culture, and they provide a way for leftists to act out their aggressions against more pragmatic Americans by concocting a strategy of phony moral superiority. So sure in their political correctness, even studying the suitability of immigrant cultures for integration into the United States is a condemned as being a racist act.

Read it all in the fierce vernacular of Max Publius.

And if you thought global warming is a tad bit overstated, here's the straight dope on that slippery slice of strategic misdirection.

OIL PRICE COLLAPSE WEAKENING DESPOTS

IMAGINE THIS MY FRIENDS, I'm quoting the ineffable Dick Morris. The sky is indeed falling. Good news comes in strange packages sometimes. This is one of those times.

The depression—let's call it what it is—leaves us, well, depressed. But there is very good news from around the world. Our enemies are collapsing under the strain of dropping oil and gas prices.

What we had all hoped conservation and offshore drilling would achieve, the global economic collapse is accomplishing: the defeat of OPEC, Iran, Chavez, Putin and the weakening of the financial underpinnings of Islamist terrorism. In each of these nations, the hold of the dictator is weakening as, one after the other, they face the consequences of dropping oil prices.

Read it all.