THE OTHER SIDE OF RACISM

DAVID HOROWITZ has commented on Facebook today concerning the continued silence of the liberals with regard to the historical peoples revolt against the totalitarian theocratic dictatorship. His remarks are as spot on...

And let us not get carried away. No one, not even the neo-cons are advocating interceding militarily in Iran, but a voice of support for those marching hordes who are not only exercising the rights of free expression in calling for free elections that we support here in the United States, but they are also voicing opposition to an unquestionably sworn enemy of ours in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

How much plainer can this opportunity to extend textbook American graciousness to an oppressed people be? But I suppose in this case, only the wistful teleprompter of our much heralded Barack Obama knows for sure.

Horowitz writes:

Here's one scene from the historic revolt in Iran. Everything liberals pretend to be concerned about is on the line in Tehran today. Basic freedom to vote and have your vote counted; basic freedom to protest and not be killed. Even the style of the revolt is something for liberals to celebrate—the Tweeter revolution, the women's revolution, the revolution of the young. But liberals are silent. They want their government, their White House, to pretend it has no stake in the outcome, that it can deal with either Iran, the Iran of the Islamo-fascists who oppress their own people and want to kill us, or the Iran of those freedom loving citizens whose blood is running in the streets. Shameful.

Props to Mr. Horowitz for pointing out what seems to be obvious to anyone not blinded by party shenanigans, those poor souls who prefer a knotty grudge match to anything remotely akin to what some of us prefer to call principles. Don't misunderstand me. I speak plainly here. As far as I'm concerned, the Left and the Right are opposing butt cheeks of the same dumb-ass political machine.

As a staunch constitutionalist I prefer a strict adherence to those founding principles that inform individual liberty with abiding responsibility and uniform and unifying justice. But why did we and why do we continue to waste the perceptions and inertia our founders left us in writing and in deed? Our nation is floundering in a mess. Both parties have contributed heavily to the burdens now foisted upon the American people. And as a result, I fear the worst is closing in upon us all. But I can appreciate the work David Horowitz and Anne Wortham is doing for America today, even though folks of our intellectual ilk will continue to be called racists and nazis by small minds.

So even as we note that the landscape is littered with false assumptions and intellectual scoundrels, let us turn to another important American voice on the issue of racial politics gone awry, Professor Wortham as she writes with a special combination of intelligence and self-awareness:

MY FELLOW AMERICANS, please know I am black. I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul’s name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a Black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival—all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the “change” that Obama asserts has come to America.

Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared “progressive” whites who voted for him because he doesn’t look like them.

I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration—political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University ’s Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that “fairness” is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that a man who asks me to “go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice” is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the “bottom up,” and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting “Yes We Can!” Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead—and no one including, especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over—and Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a Black person.

So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to—Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine—what little there is left—for the chance to feel good.

There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

Dr. Anne Wortham is author of “The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness” which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues. She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality. Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.

THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S IDEAS on immigration, immigrants, and on being an effective American in 1907 were once considered sane, profitable, and good for both the country and the people. Some of us still think it is a brilliant sketch of American inspiration, and are astonished that some people have the audacity to disagree:

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

—Theodore Roosevelt, 1907

Every American citizen needs to read this!

RESIGNATION OF A PRESIDENT

Alan Caruba writes in the Canada Free Press that now is the time to actively call for the impeachment or resignation of the current POTUS. While we agree that the list of concerns about Barack Obama is long and severe, we also realize that in the current political climate, the kool-aid nectar still flows freely among true believers of the Obama Blitz, serving a spacious terrain littered with nervy blind followers who deny all evidence of corruption no matter how keen the odor.

As this 44th American President continues to dismantle the engines of capitalism and personal liberty, flooding the statist coffers with phony dollars, killing jobs, the economy, the future, the successes of the past, while consistently bad-mouthing on foreign soil the nation he is sworn to protect, insulting our allies and cozying up to our enemies, secure behind glaring but secret flaws and persnickety details of an incendiary public life the media helped him hide in plain sight like so many brightly painted eggs scattered along the campaign trail...

HERE'S A QUESTION I would pose to you. If the Supreme Court can act within days to approve the sale of Chrysler to Fiat, why can it not act to hear cases filed months ago regarding whether President Obama is a “natural born” citizen of the United States? Why have some lower courts refused to hear such cases citing that the parties bringing them, citizens under the rule of the Constitution, have no “standing” to do so?

The Supreme Court is famous for trying to dodge such cases. The likelihood of impeachment is zero because Democrats control Congress and only one President ever resigned from office and that was Richard M. Nixon. It took an excruciatingly long time to reach that point as anyone who lived through the Watergate scandal will tell you. The nation was shocked to learn that a President engaged in a criminal enterprise while in office.

The question of preserving and protecting the Constitution would be hard to prove except in hindsight, but by then it would be too late for the nation, ruined by excessive, unjustified taxation and borrowing that threatens the collapse of the economy.

I would argue that a President who appoints over twenty “czars” to supersede the powers of the secretaries of various federal departments; people who are apparently exempt from Congressional approval or oversight, and people who apparently do not feel the need to hold press conferences to explain what they are doing, is distinctly unconstitutional.

It will be argued that there have been various such “czars” in the past, mostly particularly “drug czars” whose purpose was to oversee and coordinate efforts to address the nation’s problems with illegal drugs, but the imposition of people to virtually replace members of the President’s cabinet is unprecedented. Cabinet officers must receive the approval of Congress, but these “czars” have not.

Even the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has been reduced to a mere figurehead as various personal envoys of the President have been authorized to act for him regarding sensitive diplomatic affairs, answerable presumably only to him. What we have is a President who is running the government through an invisible network of people who are not answerable to the citizens of the nation, yet granted powers to determine the extent of the rights of those citizens including how much compensation they may receive.

This is a President who has said during a C-Span interview that the government is out of money, but who is pressing forward for legislation to impose trillions in taxes on all energy use, who advocates the borrowing of tens of billions by the nation for a proposed healthcare “reform”, and who has already signed a so-called stimulus bill of nearly 9,000 items representing $700 billion that he deemed “imperfect.”

We have all watched the President in action since January 20, 2009 and what we have seen and heard has been constant criticism of America that has been an affront to our great history and our defense of human rights. He has done this in one foreign nation after another.

A speech in Cairo to the worldwide Muslim community President Obama distorted the facts of American history and conflated the deliberate murder of six million European Jews in the last century with the suffering inflicted on so-called Palestinians by their fellow Arabs; the result of repeated wars on Israel. No such comparison can be made and is by definition obscene.

Within months, “tea parties”, citizen protests, occurred from coast to coast and others are being planned for July Fourth. Not since the advent of the Civil War under threat of secession has a President faced such widespread opposition after taking office.

In State after State, resolutions are being passed in opposition to his proposed legislation and policies. An organization of “Oath-Keepers”, members of the U.S. military, the reserves, the National Guard, peace officers, and veterans, has emerged to say they will not blindly “follow orders” issued by this President that are contrary to the oath to uphold the Constitution they have taken.

This is a President whose Department of Homeland Security has defined as “extremist” anyone who criticizes or disagrees with his policies.

Americans who are fearful of the havoc President Barack Obama has let loose on this nation need to flood Congress with the demand that he be removed from office for his failure to protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution. Indeed, to conclusively prove he was constitutionally qualified to run for the presidency.

The White House has to hear from Americans calling on the President to resign.

Read it all.

Frankly, one of the most discouraging coup d'etats that this wicked administration has committed has been the usurping of the census mechanisms, grabbing controls for the executive branch and its sorry powers of "estimating people" whereas we favor the traditional method of an aggressive head-count. As many have pointed out, this power grab is a deception geared to overlooking massive illegal aliens of various stripes while packing the numbers aimed at boosting beyond their natural numbers certain preferred groups clamoring for tax and other stealth special interest favors.

This is highly irregular for our nation of laws, and needs to be stopped, but probably won't. After all, these smarty pants leftists are convinced that the US Constitution is mere yellow parchment, a quaint curio of the past, a surreptitious political document that failed. A debatably unAmerican Barack Obama, in this viewpoint, has come to sever America from her sordid past. End of story. All praise to Mister Obama...

Irreversible? More like fish in a barrel.

MARKING UP THE UNION SUNDOWN

JUST TO MAKE SURE YOU'VE UNDERSTOOD what I'm saying, here's another shot at conflating reality with a Bob Dylan lyric one redliner at a time. In rock mythology the roots grow deep and wide, but it's rather clear that this Dylan has no peer as the unmitigated prophet of doom and exaltation, centered as it is, upon the timeless truth we all confess but can rarely recognize in ourselves, OR others. Yes, here again was the voice that always managed to spin the magic far beyond the usual malapropism of contemporary songwriter genius. No matter how we choose to slice the banana, it seems that Dylan with Infidels had grabbed a direct pipeline from GOD in shaking down the Barack Obama bug some twenty-six years before the facts themselves show up to kick us in the pants. Sure, he was observing the germane times in which he was living back then, just as we all were, but my oh my, how fast the bodies and antibodies are piling up these days.

America has lost its industrial base to China, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere. America is financially overextended, depleted energy reserves forcing us to funnel billions of dollars annually to our duplicitous enemies, millions of Americans are jobless and under-employed leaving the nation crowned with a future of unprecedented deficits and national debt far beyond the parameters of rational manageability—the socialists.

With the UAW now taking control of General Motors, and the brazen Obama administration's irresponsible manipulation of private interests leaving many of us muttering new words for nothing left to lose, Dylan's cracked ancient voice seems ever more pertinent today than it did to the general population that score and nine years ago when these simple but crafted lines first broke into our consciousness...

Union Sundown off the Infidels LP

Well, my shoes, they come from Singapore,
My flashlight's from Taiwan,
My tablecloth's from Malaysia,
My belt buckle's from the Amazon.
You know, this shirt I wear comes from the Philippines
And the car I drive is a Chevrolet,
It was put together down in Argentina
By a guy makin' thirty cents a day.
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Well, this silk dress is from Hong Kong
And the pearls are from Japan.
Well, the dog collar's from India
And the flower pot's from Pakistan.
All the furniture, it says "Made in Brazil"
Where a woman, she slaved for sure
Bringin' home thirty cents a day to a family of twelve,
You know, that's a lot of money to her.
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Well, you know, lots of people complainin' that there is no work.
I say, "Why you say that for
When nothin' you got is U.S.-made?"
They don't make nothin' here no more,
You know, capitalism is above the law.
It say, "It don't count 'less it sells."
When it costs too much to build it at home
You just build it cheaper someplace else.
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Well, the job that you used to have,
They gave it to somebody down in El Salvador.
The unions are big business, friend,
And they're goin' out like a dinosaur.
They used to grow food in Kansas
Now they want to grow it on the moon and eat it raw.
I can see the day coming when even your home garden
Is gonna be against the law.
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Democracy don't rule the world,
You'd better get that in your head.
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that's better left unsaid.
From Broadway to the Milky Way,
That's a lot of territory indeed
And a man's gonna do what he has to do
When he's got a hungry mouth to feed.
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Copyright ©1983 Special Rider Music

TRACKING THE PARADOX OF TOLERANCE

Just in case some of my friends and foes alike can't figure this out for themselves, here's one of the 20th century's most persuasive philosophers writing against the tide of totalitarian ideologies. In support of capitalism and the freedom to fail or succeed while empowering the individual in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Karl Popper is plainly spoken in his rejection of Plato and his anti-individualist descendents:

UNLIMITED TOLERANCE MUST LEAD to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

—Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies

THE TOM JEFFERSON QU'RAN

MUCH HAS BEEN MADE OF LATE to the existence of a Qu'ran that was owned by America's third president and one of its more profound scholars, Thomas Jefferson. When the Barbary pirates were attacking this young nation's merchant ships in the Mediterranean Sea, killing, pillaging, and enslaving its sailors, as current president, Jefferson inquired of his friends in Europe to brief him about these ruthless scalawags. After learning that these "Musselman" pirates followed a strange and conquering religion, he inquired further, and eventually came into possession of the now infamous Qu'ran that Minnesota Congressman Larry Ellison, Democrat and Islamic convert, was sworn into office upon.

This was little more than a cheap PR tactic, especially if Ellison had known the full story of what was contained within the pages of the book that he wanted to replace the traditional Bible many others, Jew and Gentile, have used in the ceremony over the ages. Once again, Islamicists prove they do not wish to integrate but to subordinate...

The Qu'ran he was describing was a translation by George Sale, first published in 1734. Jefferson’s was a two volume edition published in London in 1764. By chance, I was able to buy later edition of this Qu'ran which included the 145 page “Preliminary Discourse” found in all editions. Had Keith Ellison or President Obama read this introduction, they would have never cited this particular Quran as evidence of our Founding Fathers’ respect for Islam. Here is one excerpt:

As the Arabs have their excellencies [such as hospitality], so have they, like other nations their defects and vices. Their own writers acknowledge that they have a natural disposition to war, bloodshed, cruelty, and rapine, being so much addicted to bear malice that they scarce ever forget an old grudge… The frequent robberies committed by these people on merchants and travelers have rendered the name of an Arab almost infamous in Europe; this they are sensible of, and endeavour to excuse themselves by alleging the hard usage of their father Ishmael, who, being turned out of doors by Abraham, had the open plains and deserts given to him by God for his patrimony, with permission to take whatever he could find there; and on this account they think they may, with safe conscience, indemnify themselves as well as they can, not only on the posterity of Isaac, but also on anybody else, always supposing a sort of kindred between themselves and those they plunder. And in relating their adventures of this kind, they think it sufficient to change the expressions, and instead of “I robbed a man of such or such a thing,” to say, “I gained it.” We must not, however, imagine that they are the less honest for this among themselves, or towards those whom they receive as friends; on the contrary, the strictest probity is observed in their camp, where everything is open and nothing ever known to be stolen.

Now more recently, President Barack Obama, in his June 4 speech in Cairo to the Muslim nations, has seemingly drawn a false conclusion in referencing the Jefferson Qu'ran by saying that Islam has made a long and lasting contribution to the United States. Jefferson was so moved by the barbarity of what he read in the book that he called on Congress for the funds to build a navy. Neither John Adams nor George Washington before him thought they had a need for a naval force, given the vast isolation of the western hemisphere, but the Islamic pirates in this case, so effective were they in disturbing the shipping lanes of American commerce that they did indeed contribute a long and lasting impact on the United States...

Jefferson's navy soon cleaned up the shipping lanes, and the rest is history. From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. A great lyric, thanks in part to those pesky Muslims. Perhaps this is what our current president meant. A little bit of Obama-style taqiyya, eh?

Read more.

OUR LIBERAL RACIST MEDIA

Journalists who deliberately go easy on the president are practicing racism.

—T.K.Farrow, Pajamas Media

This week, Newsweek’s Robert Samuelson covers the month-old Pew Research Center study which found that “President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House.”

The study—which examined over 1200 stories by the Washington Post, the New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, NewsHour, and Newsweek—found more than 40 percent favorable coverage for Obama, compared to Bush’s 22 percent and Clinton’s 27. More significant than the percentage gap itself is the conclusion Samuelson reaches:

But the deeper explanation may be as straightforward as this: most journalists like Obama; they admire his command of language; he’s a relief after Bush; they agree with his agenda (so it never occurs to them to question basic premises); and they don’t want to see the first African-American president fail (emphasis added).

If Samuelson is correct, then the mainstream media is racist. And like most liberal racists, they don’t even know it.

In the late 1990s, author Jim Sleeper wrote a book titled Liberal Racism, which presented the ways in which the effort of many Caucasian liberals to close the historical racial divide and eliminate related inequities has gone horribly wrong. Sleeper writes:

It was Congressman Major Owens, a black representative from New York City, who in 1981 first told me and other members of a small audience of liberal activists and journalists that “liberals are sometimes the worst racists.”

There are many African-Americans—including this writer—who would instantly agree with the former congressman. White liberals might be surprised at how frequently his observation is a topic of conversation among the “victims” that liberals wish to lift out of oppression.

Mr. Sleeper continues:

Only gradually did I realize that liberal racism has several dimensions. Sometimes, prompted by misdirected and self-congratulatory compassion, liberal racism patronizes nonwhites by expecting (and getting) less of them than they are fully capable of achieving. … Liberal racism ends up perpetuating double standards by setting the bar so much lower for its intended beneficiaries that it denies them the satisfactions of equal accomplishment and opportunity.

No kidding! You think?

If Samuelson is right, then the media lowers the bar for Obama by consciously deciding to provide less critical analysis of his policies and performance. Under those circumstances, any presidential achievement is suspect because it’s shrouded in media assistance, rather than merely media coverage.

It also means the results of any disastrous Obama policy that manages to pass muster in the court of public opinion can be laid at the feet of those who are supposed to be the watchdogs of our democracy.

To be fair, there must be some media professionals who would never want to be an accessory to disastrous policy such as cap-and-trade or single-payer, government-run health care. But these very same liberal media members may still be unable to write critical stories about Barack Obama or his policies, even if they don’t bear the “liberal racism” belief that the black president can’t possibly accomplish his ambitious agenda without the help of the newsroom. For that group of journalists, fear is the explanation for their absence of critical thought.

Candidate Obama’s campaign staff repeatedly showed they were not above branding Obama’s critics—see the repeated complaints by former President Clinton at having been so branded—and the candidate himself used race when he believed it to be beneficial: “They’re going to try to scare you because I don’t look like all those other guys on the dollar bills.”

Some of the president’s ardent supporters participated as well, such as Janeane Garofalo with her response to the tea parties. And we’ve also seen liberal media members attack one another when one dares to disagree with an Obama policy. Although not related to race, Jon Stewart’s reaction to Jim Cramer’s criticism of economic policy was scathing.

No liberal media member wants to be branded a dissident of Obama, much less be accused of dissenting for racial reasons. So even the liberal reporters who don’t think Obama needs the help of the media have justifiable fear of being considered a hindrance to his agenda. And race, of course, is at the center of that fear.

Who said election of the first black president would make race less relevant in America? Whoever it was needs to think again.

The previous opinion was written by T.K.Farrow for Pajamas Media. We, at the Two-Fisted Quorum, completely agree with the author's honest assessment. Viewing folks as equals, in the flow of circumstances is the only way out of the maze. But be careful how you parse these simple but double-edged words. Egalitarianism is not patronizing, smug, condescending, or passed along on a piece of paper. Nor is it achieved by branding.

As a president suspiciously fond of holding two oppositional positions at the same time, I suppose it's a no brainer to conclude that when Candidate Obama said, “They’re going to try to scare you because I don’t look like all those other guys on the dollar bills,” apparently he was referring to his own rather scary administration.

NEW TRAINS, PLANES, AND AUTOMOBILES

All Americans, right or left, Dems, or Republicans, should deftly ponder this letter I received from Sean Brodrick who has described precisely what I would like to see happen to all that disappearing BIG money that the Obama administration, AKA the Obamanation, is trying to shovel to its ACORN cronies after already flushing the toilets of that host of bankers, thieves, and swindlers who continue to live lifestyles of the rich and famous while pillaging the American landscape of every industry and value American was once famous for...

Brodrick's suggestions just make sense in this time of rising joblessness and economical collapse. President Barack Hussein Obama (it's okay to admit, honor, apotheosize that now, right?) promised this great nation an American way out but is delivering chaos and continued crisis instead. Did I mention the slippery slope towards Marxist and Islamic values? No, but I should have.

Solution? Muster those thousands upon thousands of hyperactive ACORN shock troops into the business of real work instead of repeatedly putting them into situations where it is too easy to succumb to temptation and face being hauled into jail for voter registration fraud and other illegal activities, so we can energize this country with righteous industry, and get moving again. Just maybe these folks would feel good enough about themselves after an honest day's work to quit hating America. The psychological warfare going on within the Democratic Party is sad, sad how the party perpetuates the same dysfunctional thinking generation after generation upon its own constituents. Corruption is its own reward. By their fruits ye shall know them.

But rebuilding this country as a first priority is a deserving and capital idea on so many fronts. I applauded these ideas when I first heard Lyndon Larouche suggest them in a long detailed speech I heard off the television from the next room unaware of who I was hearing, about five years ago, but I was cheering nevertheless, and I applaud them now when I read them in an email from a Wall Street market analyst.

By the way, all you guttersnipes lurking in the tall tender grass of assimilation waiting to target my references and arguments with smear jelly, let you be reminded that La Rouche was bulls-eye dead-on in predicting this crisis, complete with critical numbers and important names. He knew about the economical doom headed our way years, even decades before we crashed, not unlike the Soviet splat two decades earlier, so why didn't our entrenched leadership class take heed and siphon off some intelligence in the matter instead of piling on with greed and redirection?

It is important to note that Congressman Ron Paul was also warning us years ahead of time, the lone harbinger of economic truth in Washington it appears, but did we listen, did our bankers listen, did our government listen? For all their conspiratorial and isolationist faults, both of these marginalized men of great knowledge and critical powers were right on the mark in this money game, and several other things, too, but let's stay on track, and keep to the topic at hand—trains, planes, and automobiles, oh, and infrastructure, too!

WE ALWAYS HEAR THAT TRAINS can't survive in this country without public subsidy. That may be true. But you can say the same thing about the big banks, can't you?

Personally, I'm wondering how much of a public transportation system we could buy if we took the money we're spending bailing out Wall Street banks—$70 billion on AIG, $52.5 billion for Bank of America, and $50 billion for Citigroup, just to name three—and spent it on passenger rails.

Still, $8 billion isn't much when we're spending $50 billion propping up a single bank. And that's small potatoes compared to the $79 billon spent on highways and bridges in 2008 and the $80.2 billion spent on highways in 2009, not including spending from the stimulus package.

And sure, we drive a lot more than we ride trains, so more should be spent on highways. But public policy has pushed us away from trains and into cars for the past 60 years. If we start funding trains more, people will start riding more trains.

Now for the really bad news: If Amtrak spends that money on new railcars, it's going to have to go shopping outside our borders. Amtrak only has about 630 usable rail cars. Some are more than 30 years old. Dozens more are worn out or damaged but could be reconditioned and put into service.

But there aren't any U.S. companies that build passenger rail cars. While there are some subway car makers and trolley car makers in the United States, for passenger rail cars you have to buy from Canada's Bombadier, Germany's Siemens or France's Alstom.

Do you think maybe GM could retool and start building passenger trains? Sure, GM knows nothing about building railcars. Well, it didn't know anything about building tanks in World War II, either, and GM learned that pretty quickly. It could always partner with foreign firms—Uncle Sam didn't have a problem forcing Chrysler into a marriage with the Italians.

It's also true that GM's assembly lines are set up to put out cars at a high volume. Well, I'm sure the quarries on Easter Island were designed to turn out Giant Stone Heads as fast as possible—but sometimes, you have to change with the world before the world comes crashing down on you.

Cars Should Be Only Part of GM's Future...

It's not like I want GM to stop making cars. I just think GM should probably make a lot fewer automobiles, but much better ones. Anyone who wants to pay the giant stone head tax can still drive a gas-sucking SUV.

But GM can also make small cars, with a focus on quality, good mileage, and multiple power sources. The Japanese, Europeans, Koreans and Chinese will be making these cars, too, so GM will have its work cut out for it.

In fact, I have news for President Obama and GM: Detroit has already lost the battle over who is going to build cars. Check out this chart from Clusterstock, showing the sources of auto production in the United States:

The "transplants" are Toyota, Honda, and Nissan factories here in the United States. They may be called transplants, but they employ American workers, pay U.S. taxes and have plenty of American shareholders.

In 2002, the Detroit Big 3 produced 80 percent of 12 million cars, or 9.6 million vehicles. In 2009, they will build just over 50 percent of a total production of 5 million cars, or roughly 2.6 million vehicles. That is a plunge of about 73 percent in 7 years.

So yes, I think maybe GM should find something else to make besides automobiles.

Start Building the Transportation System of the Future...

Do you notice how oil and gasoline prices are going back up again? The recent plunge in oil was short-lived, and we're probably heading for another oil crisis by 2012 at the latest — and maybe by as early as next year.

The United States consumes around 20 million barrels of oil a day and imports roughly 65 percent of it. The amount of oil our country consumes is equal to the output of the world's two largest oil producing nations (Saudi Arabia and Russia) combined. It is absurd for a country that has less than 3 percent of the world's oil reserves to consume 25 percent of the world's produced oil—buying much of it from people who hate us!

At some point, we're going to have to move beyond oil. Maybe electric cars or alternative fuels will be the answer for some people. But trains are a cheap solution for most people.

Yeah, GM's Volt and other electric cars will be rolling off the production line in 2010 (so we're told). In the meantime, how many of Detroit's new muscle cars — the new Chevrolet Camaro, Dodge Challenger and Ford Mustang — will also be rolling off the production line? The Challenger gets 13 mpg in the city, 19 on the highway. That sucks ... gas!

I'm not trying to dictate what kind of cars people should drive. I just think gas guzzlers should pay a tax — let's call it the "giant stone head" tax, because when it comes to the energy problem this country faces, gas guzzlers are part of the problem, not the solution.

So for our $60 billion, I'd like to see GM start to build things we really need—passenger rail, as well as electrified streetcars and hybrid streetcars/buses.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs...

It's also true that a factory that makes trains won't employ as many people as a factory that makes cars. Canada's Bombardier employs 34,000 people to make trains.

On the other hand, trains don't run themselves. France's national rail company employs about 200,000 people, and France has only one-fifth the population of the United States in an area the size of Texas. Amtrak has only 18,000 employees. So a push into rail would potentially create a lot of good, middle-class jobs.

Rebuild Infrastructure...

Meanwhile, the railroad tracks themselves are a mess. Again, highways are publically funded, railroads aren't. This makes it cost far more to ship things reliably in the United States, since you have to use air or trucks, both of which are very inefficient compared to rail. I think it's time to change that.

A problem with rail is that sharing the tracks with current passenger trains is iffy at best, and virtually impossible with high-speed trains. We need to build new railroads. Building new rail would keep America's steel makers busy.

The railroads and local trolley services will need to be electrified, of course, so we can tell OPEC where they can stick their oily thumbs. Electrification is work that can be done by U.S. companies and U.S. workers.

And there's something else we need to do that will help ALL U.S. manufacturers, including GM...

NEIGHBORHOOD BULLY

THIS MORNING IN THE WEE HOURS, we on the East Coast were greeted by a speech from Cairo which will surely and eerily live in infamy. Perhaps it's time to recall these scorching words about one of the most remarkable stories in the history of mankind. That story is Israel. Dylan doesn't pull punches in this track, and delivers a scathing and sarcastic attack at the politically correct viewpoint, now at its zenith some twenty-five years later, which tends to support the Transjordanian Arabs, now redubbed the Palestinians after a brainstorm by PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 1969 hit upon the idea of a "race" without a homeland.

The Middle East war is not now and never was a conflict between Israelis/Jews on the one hand and Palestinians on the other. In fact, the Arab-"Palestinians", while currently the perpetrators of most of the anti-Jewish atrocities, were never a very important part of the conflict. In fact, before about 1970, virtually no one in the world considered the Middle East conflict to be one between Israelis and Palestinians.
The term "Palestinian" itself had referred to Israeli Jews back in the 1940s, and had been slowly deconstructed and redefined to refer to the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. The Middle East Conflict was always a war by Arabs against Jews, not a conflict between Israelis and "Palestinians." The war was repackaged as a conflict between Jews and Palestinians as a public relations gimmick by the Arab fascist regimes. These regimes had never had any interest in "Palestinians," in creating a "Palestinian" state, or in "Palestinian nationalism" before 1967. That is because Palestinian nationalism did not and DOES NOT exist. The Palestinians were a regional group of Arabs having virtually no cultural nor national distinctive traits separating them from Syrians, Lebanese, and Jordanians. They are all basically Arabs!.

The bulk of what are called "Palestinian Arabs" are members of families who migrated into the Land of Israel beginning in the late 19th century. Palestinian nationalism is a mislabeling of Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism exists, although it is closely bound up with Islamic nationalism and even Islamism. Palestinian nationalism, however, is a phantom. It is nothing more than genocidal hatred of Jews!

The Arab assaults and aggressions against Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1968, and 1973 had nothing to do with Palestinians. The Palestinian terror campaign would itself be easy to suppress today and eradicate if the Middle East conflict were really a Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel would simply obliterate the terrorists and expel their supporters to Syria and Lebanon. The Middle East war continues because it is really an Arab-Israeli war, not an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also in large part a war between barbarism and civilization. In many ways an Islamic religious jihad against the Jews.

From the masterful voice of our conservative, yes, I wrote conservative (read radical centrist), poet and prophet Bob Dylan straight off the prescient 1983 "Infidels" LP:

Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.

He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that's enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one's command.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What's anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin', they say. He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully

OBAMA SOWS MIDEAST WHIRLWIND

From Frank Gaffney, Jr., an esteemed analyst for the Center for Security Policy, dated Jun 01, 2009, I received this letter warning us of those dire circumstances most of us who follow US foreign policy already realize, namely that the persistently barnstorming POTUS is boxing our own nation and our staunchest Middle East ally, Israel, into an impossible standard where self-defense is not about safety but about survival. However, Mr. Gaffney makes several other newsworthy disclosures.

Read for yourself:

FROM THIS VANTAGE POINT [Jerusalem], two events this week appear to be ominous straws in the wind, warnings of a "man-caused" maelstrom that may inexorably plunge the Middle East into another, potentially cataclysmic war.

The first is the fact that Israel feels obliged to undertake an unprecedented, country-wide civil defense exercise this week. At one point in its course, every man, woman and child in the Jewish State is supposed to seek shelter from a simulated attack of the kind Iran may shortly be able to execute against it.

The second is President Barack Obama's latest effort to reach out to the Muslim world, this time on June 4 from one of its most important capitals, Cairo. There, he is expected to make an address that will reiterate his previous statements on the subject—pronouncements that, unfortunately, can only have been interpreted by his intended audience as acts of submission.

If past is prelude, the President of the United States will: apologize yet again for purported offenses against Muslims by his country; promise to be respectful of Islam, including those who adhere to its authoritative, if virulent, theo-political-legal program known as Shariah; and enunciate diplomatic priorities and initiatives designed to reach out to America's enemies in the region, while putting excruciating pressure on its most reliable ally there, Israel.

This pressure has become more palpable by the day. It has taken various forms, including: U.S. stances adopted at the United Nations that will serve to isolate Israel; blank political and even financial checks for Palestinian thugs like Mahmoud Abbas; diminishing U.S.-Israeli cooperation on intelligence and military matters; and the withholding from Israel of helicopters (and perhaps other weaponry) being provided to Arab states.

Perhaps the most chilling example of this coercive pressure so far, however, was originally reported in the Israeli paper Yediot Aharonot and given international prominence by my esteemed colleague and Jerusalem Post columnist, Caroline Glick. According to these accounts, in a recent lecture in Washington, U.S. Army Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, the American officer charged with training Palestinian military forces in Jordan, made a shocking declaration.

In Ms. Glick's words, "[Gen. Dayton] indicated that if Israel does not surrender Judea and Samaria within two years, the Palestinian forces he and his fellow American officers are now training at a cost of more than $300 million could begin killing Israelis." She went on to note that neither the general nor the Obama administration seemed to find this prospect grounds for rethinking the wisdom of such a training-and-arming program. In fact, her column observed that Defense Secretary Robert Gates "just extended Dayton's tour of duty for an additional two years and gave him the added responsibility of serving as Obama's Middle East mediator George Mitchell's deputy."

Taken together with the U.S. administration's refusal to come to grips with what truly is the most serious threat to peace in the Middle East—Iran's rising power and growing aggressiveness, reflecting in part its incipient nuclear weapons capabilities—the stage is being inexorably set for the next, and perhaps most devastating, regional conflict.

Whether the signals Mr. Obama is sending are intended to communicate such a message or not, they are going to be read by Israel's enemies as evidence of a profound rift between the United States and the Jewish State. In this part of the world, that amounts to an invitation to an open season on Israel.

It is hard to believe that the Obama Middle East agenda enjoys the support of the American people or their elected representatives in Congress. Historically, the public and strong bipartisan majorities on Capitol Hill have appreciated that an Israel that shares our values, that is governed democratically and that is in the cross-hairs of the same people who seek our destruction is an important ally. Quite apart from a sense of moral and religious affinity for the Jewish people's struggle to survive in their ancient homeland, most of us recognize that it is in the United States' strategic interest to stand with Israel.

It is worrisome in the extreme that Mr. Obama does not appear to share this appreciation. To those who worried about his affinity for the Saudi king and Islam more generally and his longstanding ties to virulent critics of Israel like Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi and former Harvard professor-turned-National Security Council staffer Samantha Power, the President's attitude is not exactly a surprise. His administration's posture may have been further reinforced by Arab-American pollster John Zogby's recent Forbes Magazine article arguing that friends of Israel made up John McCain's constituency, not Obama's. (This raises an interesting question about the sentiments towards Israel of the 78% of American Jews who voted for the latter in 2008.)

My guess, however, is that, as the implications of President Obama's Mideast policies—for the United States as well as Israel - become clearer, he is going to find himself facing the sort of popular and congressional revolt that has confronted him in recent weeks on Guantanamo Bay. The question is: Will such a reaffirmation of American solidarity with and support for Israel come in time to prevent the winds of war being whipped up by Mr. Obama's posturing and rhetoric—and driving Israelis into bomb shelters—from wreaking havoc in the Middle East, and perhaps far beyond?

Not hardly. Just a day after his warm massage of His Majesty in Saudi Arabia, and on the heels of his suggestive distortion that America is one of the largest Muslim nations (after declaring that the US was no longer a Christian nation) in the world, the truth-challenged but egregiously adored POTUS gave his much anticipated speech in Cairo this morning, brimming with bogus remarks about the nature and history of Islam. To his credit, however, he did concede in rather soft terms that he believed Israel had a right to exist as an independent state.

Such a marvelous concession after all these years from such a marvelous gamer. Unfortunately, he also suggested that Iran had a right to "peaceful nuclear power" which as we all know is a red herring given the evidence Iran has provided that it wants to extinguish the nation of Israel with one mighty blow, and liquidate every remaining infidel Jew in the necessary clean-up. Frankly, this is not an acceptable solution, Mister President.

MUSLIM GROUP SHUTS DOWN CONFERENCE

THE MANAGER OF A PROMINENT Nashville hotel cancelled a contract with a conservative foundation to hold a conference this weekend on radical Islam, apparently after learning that the group would feature a keynote address by controversial Dutch parliamentarian and filmmaker, Geert Wilders.

Muslim groups succeeded in preventing Wilders from screening "Fitna," his 15-minute movie on radical Islam, in the House of Lords this February, on claims it was insulting to Muslims, and dogged him during a recent U.S. tour as well.

Thomas A. Negri, managing director of Loew's Vanderbilt Hotel and Office complex in Nashville, told Newsmax on Wednesday that he had taken the extraordinary step of cancelling the conference at the last minute "for the health, safety and well-being of our guests and employees."

Negri refused to say why he felt the conference would adversely affect the "health, safety and well-being" of the hotel's guests and employees, except to refer to the website of the New English Review, the group organizing the conference.

The website features articles that warn about radical Islam written by activists, journalists and scholars, including former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, and former Muslim scholar, Ibn Warraq.

One article, written by a retired U.S. army intelligence officer, Jerome Gordon, warns of the growing problems caused by the recent influence of several thousand Somali Muslim refugees who have come to work for a nearby Tysons Food plant to replace illegal Hispanic meat packers.

Negri appeared at a 2003 pro-immigration event on the same dias with a well-known Somali warlord, Gordon told Newsmax.

In a written statement to the conference organizers, Negri said that the hotel had "not received any information related to a specific security threat concerning this event," and declined to provide any justification for cancelling it at the last minute.

One of the conference organizers told Newsmax on Wednesday that the group was considering a lawsuit against Negri and the Loew's hotel chain for "unlawful breach of contract."

Negri also serves on the board of advisors of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, TIRRC, an activist group that states its mission "is to empower immigrants and refugees throughout Tennessee to develop a unified voice" and "defend their rights."

The group boasts of having helped to defeat an "English only" amendment this January that would have required all Nashville government communications to be in English.

Earlier this month, the group won an award from the Migration Policy Institute, which is funded by grants form the J.M. Kaplan Fund, a left-wing group that also funds the ACLU, the Tides Foundation, the Tides Center, the Sierra Club, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and other left-wing causes.

The award singles out TIRRC for its "Welcoming Tennessee Initiative," to "foster constructive public dialogue on immigration within the state."

When asked if he objected to Geert Wilders appearance at the conference, Negri refused to comment.

In a recent interview with FoxNews, Wilders complained that Europe "has pampered" Muslim immigrants. "If you want to come and stay here, that's okay, but only if you adhere to our values, our principles, our laws... and our constitution," he said. "With all the tolerance we are having, we are also tolerant to the intolerant."

ACT FOR AMERICA

Dear Gabriel,

When we speak to groups around the country, it's not uncommon for us to hear people say "surely the things you're warning us about couldn't happen here in America!"

For instance, surely in "the land of the free and the home of the brave," where our right to free speech is enshrined in the very first amendment to the Constitution, the successful muzzling of criticism of radical Islam in Europe and Great Britain couldn't happen here.

Surely an event in America that featured Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders would not be shut down, as was the case in Great Britain earlier this year.

The Newsmax.com article below should be one more nail in the coffin of "surely it can't happen here" wishful thinking. It IS happening.

This illustrates better than any alarm bell we can ring why the growth of ACT! for America into a formidable, organized grassroots voice of resistance to radical Islam is essential. No such force existed in Europe or Great Britain 25 years ago, and the result has been a highly successful advance of cultural jihad in those nations.

The clock is ticking and Islamists are advancing. You can help us continue to build our citizen action network and our organized resistance by forwarding this email to everyone you know and asking them to sign up for our emails at ACT FOR AMERICA.

You can also help us with your financial support by clicking here.

ACT! for America now has nearly 60,000 members and 300 local chapters. With your support we will continue to grow, organize, and successfully resist the rising threat of radical Islam to our security and our freedoms.

ACT for America
P.O. Box 12765
Pensacola, FL 32591
www.actforamerica.org

ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America's national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam.

We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.