THE SOUNDS OF CAPITULATION

In 1984, KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov explains how Marxist ideology is deconstructing America's values, destabilizing the economy, and provoking crises in order to sovietize the free world.

Yep, what a difference a few decades make. Nobody wants to be an American anymore. Instead, everybody that comes here wants to take a piece of America back to the Old Country, or ummah, as the case may be. The people who need to watch this video are those decent, hard-working and compassionate Obama voters, who voted for every plank of the Communist Agenda. Sweetie, that's the "change" you voted for.

Make no mistake about it. Leftists have taken over our schools, colleges, media, movies, music, pop culture, et cetera, and we have now elected a Communist President. America needs to wake up. Western Marxism and Islam must be stopped.

"The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.' She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'You want a piece of me?'"

—Robin Williams

"I understand what Tolstoy meant when he said that the 'good' cannot seek power nor retain it'."

—Icarus Tull

WILDERS GIVES SPEECH IN NYC

"Our enemies should know: we will never apologize for being free men, we will never bow for the combined forces of Mecca and the Left."

Those penetrating words crown the marvelous Geert Wilders' speech given at the Four Seasons in New York City on February 23. Wilders is the the stalwart Dutch parliamentarian who was recently turned back from entering Great Britain due to pressures from a leading Islamic leader in that country. Here is the entire speech:

Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me. And—to the immigration authorities—thank you for letting me into this country. It is always a pleasure to cross a border without being sent back on the first plane.

Today, the dearest of our many freedoms is under attack all throughout Europe. Free speech is no longer a given. What we once considered a natural element of our existence, our birth right, is now something we once again have to battle for.

As you might know, I will be prosecuted, because of my film Fitna, my remarks regarding Islam, and my view concerning what some call a ‘religion of peace’. A few years from now, I might be a criminal.

Whether or not I end up in jail is not the most pressing issue; I gave up my freedom four years ago. I am under full-time police protection ever since. The real question is: will free speech be put behind bars? And the larger question for the West is: will we leave Europe’s children the values of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem, or the values of Mecca, Teheran and Gaza?

This is what video blogger Pat Condell said in one of his latest you tube appearances. He says: “If I talked about Muslims the way their holy book talks about me, I’d be arrested for hate speech.” Now, Mr. Condell is a stand-up comedian, but in the video he is dead serious and the joke is on us. Hate speech will always be used against the people defending the West—in order to please and appease Muslims. They can say whatever they want: throw gays from apartment buildings, kill the Jews, slaughter the infidel, destroy Israel, jihad against the West. Whatever their book tells them.

Today, I come before you to warn of a great threat. It is called Islam. It poses as a religion, but its goals are very worldly: world domination, holy war, sharia law, the end of the separation of church and state, slavery of women, the end of democracy. It is NOT a religion, it is an political ideology. It demands your respect, but has no respect for you.

There might be moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam. Islam will never change, because it is built on two rocks that are forever, two fundamental beliefs that will never change, and will never alter. First, there is the Quran, Allah’s personal word, uncreated, forever, with orders that need to be fulfilled regardless of place or time. And second, there is al-insal al-kamil, the perfect man, Muhammad the role model, whose deeds are to be imitated by all Muslims. And since Muhammad was a warlord and a conqueror we know what to expect. Islam means submission, so there cannot be any mistake about it’s goal. That’s a given. It’s fact.

This is Europe 2009. Muslim settlers calling for our destruction, and free speech on trial. All this is the outcome of a sick and evil ideology, the ideology that is weakening us, the surrender ideology of cultural relativism. It believes that all cultures are equal, and therefore Islam deserves an equal place in the West. It is their duty, the left thinks, to facilitate Islam. This way the cultural relativists paradise comes within reach and we will all be happy, and sing kumbaya.

The forces of Islam couldn’t agree more. Islam being facilitated by government is their agenda too. But they see it as jizya, the money dhimmis pay in order not to be killed or raped by their Muslim masters. Therefore, they happily accept the welfare cheque or the subsidies for their mosque or the money governments donate to their organizations.

This is just one example of cultural relativists and Muslim settlers having the same agenda. There is another. Islam considers itself a religion and therefore we are not permitted to criticize it. The left agrees. Although it hated Christianity for decades, now that Islam appears on the scene, they suddenly change course and demand ‘respect’ for something they call a religion.

Again we see the left and Islam having the same agenda: it is a religion, so shut up.

This all culminates in a third coming-together: nor the left nor Islam is in favor of criticism. In fact, given the opportunity, they would simply outlaw it. Multiculturalism is the left’s pet project. It is actually their religion. Their love of it is so great, if you oppose it, it must be hate. And if you say it, it is labeled hate speech. Now here is something the Islam can agree on.

This is the essence of my short introduction today: where the left and Islam come together, freedom will suffer.

My friends, make no mistake, my prosecution is a full-fledged attack by the left on freedom of speech in order to please Muslims. It was started by a member of the Dutch Labour party, and the entire legal proceeding is done by well-to-do liberals, the radical chic of Dutch society, the snobbish left. Too much money, too much time, too little love of liberty. If you read what the court of Amsterdam has written about me, you read the same texts that cultural relativists produce.

How low can we go in the Netherlands? About my prosecution, The Wall Street Journal noted: “this is no small victory for Islamic regimes seeking to export their censorship laws to wherever Muslims reside”. The Journal concluded that by The Netherlands accepting the free speech standards of, “Saudi-Arabia”, I stand correct in my observation that—I quote—“Muslim immigration is eroding traditional Dutch liberties”.

Now, if the Wall Street Journal has the moral clarity to see that my prosecution is the logical outcome of our disastrous, self-hating, multiculturalists immigration policies, then why can’t the European liberal establishment see the same thing? Why aren’t they getting at least a little bit scared by the latest news out of, for example, the UK. News that tells that the Muslim population in Britain is growing ten times as fast as the rest of society. Why don’t they care?

The answer is: they don’t care because they are blinded by their cultural relativism. Their disdain of the West is so much greater than the appreciation of our many liberties. And therefore, they are willing to sacrifice everything. The left once stood for women rights, gay rights, equality, democracy. Now, they favour immigration policies that will end all this. Many even lost their decency. Elite politicians have no problem to participate in or finance demonstrations where settlers shout “Death to the Jews”. Seventy years after Auschwitz they know of no shame.

Two weeks ago, I tried to get into Britain, a fellow EU country. I was invited to give a speech in Parliament. However, upon arrival at London airport, I was refused entry into the UK, and sent back on the first plane to Holland. I would have loved to have reminded the audience of a great man who once spoke in the House of Commons.

In 1982 President [Ronald] Reagan gave a speech there very few people liked. Reagan called upon the West to reject communism and defend freedom. He introduced a phrase: ‘evil empire’. Reagan’s speech stands out as a clarion call to preserve our liberties. I quote: If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. What Reagan meant is that you cannot run away from history, you cannot escape the dangers of ideologies that are out to destroy you. Denial is no option.

So, what should we do? Is this a good moment for freedom-loving people to give in or to change course? To all-of-a-sudden start singing praise of Islam, or proclaiming there is such a thing as a moderate Islam? Will we now accept the continuation of Muslim mass immigration to the West? Will we appease sharia and jihad? Should we sacrifice gay rights and women rights? Or democracy? Should we sell out Israel, our dearest ally, and a frontline state of Islam?

Well, my humble opinion is: No way, Jose!

I suggest to defend freedom in general and freedom of speech in particular. I propose the withdrawal of all hate speech legislation in Europe. I propose a European First Amendment. In Europe we should defend freedom of speech like you Americans do. In Europe freedom of speech should be extended, instead of restricted. Of course, calling for violence or unjustly yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre have to be punished, but the right to criticize ideologies or religions are necessary conditions for a vital democracry. As George Orwell once said: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”.

Let us defend freedom of speech and let us gain strength and work hard to become even stronger. Millions think just like you and me. Millions think liberty is precious. That democracy is better than sharia. And after all, why should we be afraid? Our many freedoms and our prosperity are the result of centuries of endeavour. Centuries of hard work and sacrifice. We do not stand alone, and we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Late December 1944 the American army was suddenly faced with a last-ditch effort by the Germans. In the Ardennes, in the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler and his national-socialists fought for their last chance. And they were very successful. Americans faced defeat, and death.

In the darkest of winter, in the freezing cold, in a lonely forest with snow and ice as even fiercer enemies than the Nazi war machine itself, the American army was told to surrender. That might be their only chance to survive. But General [Anthony] McAuliffe thought otherwise. He gave the Germans a short message. This message contained just four letters. Four letters only, but never in the history of freedom was a desire for liberty and perseverance in the face of evil expressed more eloquently than in that message. It spelled N – U – T – S. “Nuts”.

My friends, the national-socialists got the message. Because it left no room for interpretation!

I suggest we walk in the tradition of giants like General McAuliffe and the American soldiers who fought and died for the freedom of my country and for a secular and democratic Europe, and we tell the enemies of freedom just that. NUTS! Because that’s all there is to it. No explanations. No beating around the bush. No caveats.

Our enemies should know: we will never apologize for being free men, we will never bow for the combined forces of Mecca and the left. And we will never surrender. We stand on the shoulders of giants. There is no stronger power than the force of free men fighting for the great cause of liberty. Because freedom is the birthright of all man.

ALAN KEYES ON BARACK OBAMA

THREE-TIME PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE ALAN KEYES, a former Republican, has a few choice words for the current occupier of the Oval Office and the eligibility concerns surrounding him, the Obama policies in tending the current financial crisis, and the future of the United States as a nation. Keyes is very clear and forthright in this interview.

THOSE STILL PUFFING ON RACISM

SO, IT'S TRUE. FINALLY. After all these years the word is out—everyone is a little bit racist. Somebody needs to tell the Obama administration that it owns a chunk of nasty racism itself, all by its lonesome. The firestorm over Eric Holder's astonishing remark is an apt response to his patronizing notions. But I'll stop here, and put on my NATIONAL COWARD cap I grabbed off the air, and give a nod to Suzy Rice whose assessment of Holder, Clyburn, and Pelosi are nothing short of barbed wire retributions. No coward is Rice.

MORE CONSTITUTIONAL MURMURINGS

SOME POSTINGS NEAR THE TOP of the thread seemed to convey the notion that the U. S. Constitution is antiquated and should therefore be ignored. Quite a common viewpoint these days, particularly within all three branches of the Federal Government.

The Constitution is nowadays comparable to the British Crown. Theoretically all-powerful, but in reality the monarch is trotted out and curtsied to at the opening of Parliament, then otherwise ignored in matters of substance. We may still follow the Ps and Qs of the details, but the meat and potatoes of the federal system devised by the Founders has been quashed by an ever more powerful imperial government.

There have been bills introduced at the beginning of each Congress for the last decade or so that would require all legislation brought before the Congress to cite the specific Constitutional authorization for the purpose and contents of each new bill. Not surprisingly, this effort has never gained any traction. Those in control are not amused by any such check on their power and arrogance.

What the Founding Fathers envisioned as a useful tool for the common prosperity and security of the states has morphed from the organ grinder's monkey to an 800-pound gorilla that jerks the states around at will. The Federal government forgets that it was created by the states and that it (theoretically) exercises only delegated powers. The resolutions introduced in the various state legislatures are merely attempts to point out that fact and that Congress has greatly exceeded its authority in many areas. The states are not appendages of the Federal government and may not be coerced or dictated to.

Interesting comments by a poster named Mark. We are particularly inspired by the third rather telling paragraph.

THE STATE SOVEREIGNTY MOVEMENT

YOU MAY NOT HAVE HEARD much about it, but there's a quiet movement afoot to reassert state sovereignty in America and stop the uncontrolled expansion of federal government power. Almost half of the state legislatures are considering or have representatives preparing to introduce resolutions which reassert the principles of the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution and the idea that federal power is strictly limited to specific areas detailed in the Constitution and that all other governmental authority rests with the states.

In the version of this bill being considered in Washington state, they appeal to the authority of James Madison in The Federalist who wrote:

"The powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people."

The founding fathers believed in a balance between state and federal power. This state sovereignty movement clearly arises from the belief that the balance of power has tilted too far and for too long in the direction of the federal government and that it's time to restore that lose balance.

The emergence of this movement is a hopeful sign of the people asserting their rights and the rights of the states and finally crying "enough" to runaway government. With the threat of increasingly out of control federal spending, some of these sovereignty bills may stand a fair chance of passage in the coming year.

There's a lot of excitement about these bills, but there are also a lot of misconceptions, with people claiming that some states have already declared sovereignty and that the movement is much farther along than it really is. Contrary to popular rumor, none of the states has actually enacted a sovereignty law yet. Some have come close. Oklahoma's bill passed their lower house overwhelmingly but stalled in the Senate last fall and is being held over for consideration in the new year.

Contrary to the fantasies of some extremists, these sovereignty bills are not the first step towards secession or splitting up the union, nor are they an effort to block collection of the income tax, appealing though that might be. For the most part, they are not so much political statements of independence as they are expressions of fiscal authority directed specifically at the growing cost of unfunded mandates being placed upon the states by the federal government. Despite the movement picking up steam as he came to office, the target of these bills is not President Obama, but rather the Democrat-dominated Congress whose plans for massive bailouts and expanded social programs are likely to come at an enormous cost to the states.

Read it all. And don't neglect the long scroll of comments. Quite an educational foray...

And if any doubt the seriousness of this peculiar cause celebre now stirring the minds and hearts laboring inside the legislatures of many states, click HERE for the complete "no holds barred" bill now before the New Hampshire State Assembly. Yes, Virginia, there is a rising tide of resentment among the people jealous for liberty who yet unapologetically cling to the exact words wriiten by our forefathers within the original United States Constitution and its ratified amendments. Strides by the US Congress, the Presidential offices, and the US Supreme Court of late in chipping away at the guaranteed rights of its citizens are not catching everyone flatfooted.

This is really happening, folks. Where do you stand?

Do you even consider yourself neglibibly knowledgeable on these important issues? And so, does mere constitutional scholarship qualify one to assess the amassing questions that exist before us in these interesting times where banks and multinational corporations are failing with the wind, our nation's security shipped along with decent jobs overseas, gone forever we are told, our borders as porous as a rock star's mating habits, and individual rights disappearing faster than the climate is warming. I ask you.

Addendum (snatched off an unnamed BC poster):

1. The Declaration of Independence IS codified law of the USA. It's preeminence as a Free People's final bulwark, requires the Republic's citizenry to cast off such despotic, tyrannical abuses of state, if need be. The 2nd Amendment secures the means to exercise that God-given right, lo duty. Various elements (1st, 4th, 9th, 10th) of the Bill of Rights illuminates less drastic measures to secure such inalienable rights.

2. At all societal levels, creeping socialism has infected this country for over 100 years. Socialism/communism CANNOT exist in tandem with a Constitutional Republic.

3. The US-Marxist time is nigh. Search Cloward-Piven Strategy. The current state of economic crisis was manufactured in order to bring this to pass. Why do liberal policies never work? These policies are not designed to work, only fail. This is why Porkulus will not work. It will only subvert rights further.

4. All branches of military take an oath to uphold the Constitution, not the president, not the congress, nor the federal bureaucracy. It is their right and duty to ignore unconstitutional orders.

Unlike the first two justifiable concepts, and more so than the third which is either a very frightening fact, or simply a falsehood, this fourth statement is highly debatable, and not a path to be taken lightly when confronting the scions of military jurisprudence. Liberty can be such an ugly, yet rewarding, pursuit.

ICE HALTS DETENTIONS AT VA FACILITY

THE NOVEMBER DEATH of a Prince William County man in immigration custody at Piedmont Regional Jail has prompted Immigration and Customs Enforcement to suspend placing detainees at the facility, three hours south of the District near Farmville, Va.

In recent years, the rural county jail has contracted with ICE at rock-bottom rates to become a principal storehouse for non-citizen detainees from Northern Virginia and the District awaiting deportation. But since the November 28 death of detainee Guido Newbrough, ICE has launched an investigation into medical care at the facility, and its detainee population has fallen from 330 to 53 as of Wednesday. The jail laid off 50 of its 135 employees this week.

"There is no effort underway to cease utilizing Piedmont. However, we have stopped housing detainees at Piedmont while we continue to monitor current conditions at the facility," said Cori Bassett, an ICE spokeswoman.

The suspension comes at a particularly sensitive time for Piedmont and the town of Farmville, which has 7,000 residents. Piedmont had been earning $46.25 a day for each of the ICE detainees it housed in dormitory-style cells with triple bunk beds. Business was so robust that a group of investors announced a deal with Farmville officials last year to build a $21 million, 1,000-bed, privately run immigration detention facility there, pledging to convert the job-starved town into a hub for ICE operations in the mid-Atlantic.

Yeah, buddy. Hustling investors can always find the cash when it comes to making yet another quick buck. We at the Two-Fisted Quorum expressly approve of better, even strict enforcement of this nation's immigration laws, including the rounding up, penalizing and deportation of those who have skirted the system, and honest news about mismanagement of detainees is always disappointing and sad, but something is repugnant about how seamlessly a group of investors always manages to scramble into place to "fill a need" just in the nick of time to make some easy money, especially at the public trough.

Read it all.

ECONOMICAL SUPPLY CHAINS YANKED

No quick fix on the horizon. Note that even savings by those tight-fisted Asians are blamed for problems in their own region. Simply put, global merchants have overproduced in terms what the people can afford to buy, or desire to own; in other words, they have looked for love in all the wrong places.

But lest we forget, the Chinese and the Arabs still own America, unless we do something to break free (like produce our own energy and rebuild our own gutted industries, and insist on fair trade policies rather than this massive giveaway (trade deficit) that our leadership continues to pile up at national expense.

Washington Post reporter Steven Pearlstein:

FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS, Asians and Europeans have tended to view their own financial and economic problems as largely imported from the United States. The impacts on their own economies, they reasoned smugly, would be modest and short-lived.

Turns out they were wrong.

Over the past two weeks, the bottom has fallen out of Asia's export economy while Europe has come face to face with a financial crisis that is as bad as ours and will probably become even worse without the kind of unified response that individual countries have so far resisted.

And what does that mean for us? Nothing good. It means that our downturn will be longer and deeper than many had hoped and that we can't rely as much on export growth to pull us out of the ditch.

Basically, there are two stories to tell here about the sudden downturn in the global economy.

The easiest to understand is the collapse of industrial production in East Asia, where the supply chain starts in places like Taiwan and Vietnam and moves through places like China and Japan before cars, shoes, computers and flat-panel TVs arrive at stores in the United States, Western Europe and everywhere else.

According to Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, the 40 percent decline in Taiwan's industrial production at the end of last year was the "canary in the coal mine" of Team Asia's formidable export machine. At about the same time, Japan's exports fell 35 percent, Korea's 17 percent, and China's fourth-quarter gross domestic product was essentially flat—no economic growth at all.

As did a number of other economists, Eichengreen told me he'd never seen declines this fast and this steep, even during the Asian economic crisis when he was working at the International Monetary Fund's war room here in Washington. It all reflects not only the sharp pullback in discretionary consumer spending around the world but also an equally sharp pullback in the flow of foreign investment that was used to build factories and shopping centers and has been an important driver of growth in the region.

Demand for Asian exports will pick up again before too long, but it will be a long time before they reach the levels attained at the height of the bubble economy. And it will be longer still before foreigners will be eager to invest in expanding capacity again.

Ideally, Asians would respond to this challenge by reducing their heavy reliance on exports and foreign investment and reorienting their economy more toward domestic consumption. But as Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago points out, that's not as simple as it sounds.

For starters, the things Asians might want to consume aren't necessarily the things they produce to export, so production would need to be reoriented and workers retrained and redeployed. And to replace the foreign investment, these economies would need to develop financial institutions that can raise and invest risk capital, which right now they don't really have. Most significantly, Asian governments would have to create safety-net programs like Social Security so people don't save so much and spend so little.

In short, the Asian downturn is probably manageable, particularly now that the Chinese government has responded with a massive stimulus package. But it will take time for the region to make the necessary adjustments to get the region humming again.

Read it all.

KENNEDY CENTER CELEBRATING ARABS

How low can we sink in America? The Washington Times reports on an upcoming Kennedy Center festival:

When "Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World" became a major Kennedy Center project a few years ago, it appeared to be a look at a distant, exotic world. After three years of planning, the center announced its three-week festival last spring. By then, the timeliness of its Arabic theme seemed downright prescient.

"Arabesque" opens Tuesday, looking more relevant than ever, bringing Washington an in-depth, multifaceted look at a part of the world vital to our own.

As theatergoers enter the Kennedy Center's two great halls, they will be surrounded by a large exhibition of 40 wedding dresses from the 22 Arab countries, some exquisitely crafted from an earlier time and some modern.

Every night of the festival, diverse groups will present free performances on the Millennium Stage. Among them will be oud players from Bahrain and Tunisia; an orchestra playing Andalusian music and five Marrakech women performing traditional Berber songs, with both groups from Morocco; Palestine poetry reading; a Yemeni lute player; and a band from Algeria combining Western and North African rhythms.

Yep, orchestra playing Andalusian music. Only been planned three years but is suddenly timely? Highlighting twenty-two ARAB countries? Orchestra playing Andalusian music? Harmless enough some say. Others might suggest that this very sort of naive public display is nothing more than a self-created trojan horse gifting those who wish us harm, and as is usual in these very strange times, the natives remain characteristically clueless.

Read it all.

STATES REJECT FEDERAL STRINGS

Take a look at this one, folks. It seems that Obama worship is slowing in its tracks less than a full month after the man from Illinois has taken office. Where's that mandate now, Mr. President? Is this sudden fallout with the Washington (by way of Chicago) crowd the mere tip of the iceberg, and given how the November election played out, one might be forgiven for wondering what in the world did these states have up their sleeves, and when did they put it there?

Some have suggested that the Obama team has ratcheted up its Saul Alinsky method with such torque in such a short time that backlash and outright rebellion leading to secession of some regions of America could occur within four to five years. That seems unlikely, but so did this so soon after the Anointed One took the oath of office (twice, by the way).

WORRIED THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is increasing its dominance over their affairs, several states are pursuing legislative action to assert their sovereignty under the 10th Amendment of the Constitution in hopes of warding off demands from Washington on how to spend money or enact policy. The growing concerns even have a handful of governors questioning whether to accept federal stimulus money that comes with strings attached.

The sentiments to declare themselves legally independent from Washington have swept across as many as a dozen states, renewing a debate over so-called unfunded mandates that last raged in the 1990s. The states question whether the U.S. government can force states to take actions without paying for them or impose conditions on states if they accept certain federal funding.

"We are telling the federal government that we are a sovereign state and want to be treated as such. We are not a branch of the federal government," said Arizona state Rep. Judy Burges, who is leading an effort in her state to pass a resolution called "Sovereignty: the 10th Amendment." Ms. Burges was inspired to action by a pair of Bush administration initiatives: The No Child Left Behind education law of 2002 and the Real ID Act, a 2005 law that established national standards for state-issued driver's licenses and identification cards.

Read it all.

Addendum: More on Saul Alinsky...

THE ART OF CRIMINAL COLLUSION

CONFOUNDED BY THE PERSISTENT and pernicious moral relativism of the high strutting Lefties in your midst? Today in Breath of the Beast, Yaacov ben Moishe takes issue with the chortling and hairsplitting of PBS navel gazer—Bill Moyers—in Saint Bill or Accessory to Mass Murder? The Dilemma of the Morally Relativistic Media.

On one hand he considers Israel to be entitled to defend herself (as if she needed his permission) on the other hand, he wants, from the vantage point of his snug PBS studio to be able to pass judgment on what a fitting (proportional?) defense would be.

Proportionality? Israel’s armed forces always has done and continues to do their best at separating Hamas from their human shields and killing only the combatants. But that is not enough for Bill Moyers. He uses two examples, examples which all media professionals by the time he used them knew to be suspect, to imply that the Israelis are no better than those who want only to murder them. He pointedly ignores the obvious difference in the morality of the two sides.

He pretends, as it were, that he has just walked into the room and sees Israel beating up the Palestinians without knowing any of the background. According to him, it is an onslaught and a slaughter and he hurls those epithets at Israel, not the hate-filled murderers who have caused the problem and intentionally placed their own people between them and the tiger they had taunted once too often.

He crowns his assault on morality with the remark that first caught our attention—the one he has already backed away from as “obviously not sufficiently precise”. (Ah, suddenly the man who has traded in words all his professional life has “misspoken?

More likely he spoke too quickly and revealed too much) Not only did he state that it was the bible that “genetically encoded” violence in the Jewish people, even as he goes on to say, “A radical stream of Islam now seeks to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth,” he compounds his betrayal of common sense and moral decency by adding “Israel misses no opportunity to humiliate the Palestinians with checkpoints, concrete walls, routine insults” as if he agrees with the Islamist honor/shame formula that their humiliation must be avenged in blood.

Read it all.

Unravelling and understanding this Israeli-Arab conflict is a rather simple task. Unravelling and understanding the mental gymnastics the Left uses to suggest its own moral superiority is not.

ANN COULTER

WITHOUT RESORTING TO HER USUAL banter of sarcasm and low blows, Ann Coulter still softens no punches in making her viewpoint perfectly clear to Hardball's Chris Matthews, apparently filmed off-location in sunny Florida.

MONITORING SUBPRIME CRISIS STRIKES

TWO ARTICLES from the Atlantic Monthly bear notice. Here is a strident look at that housing strata may very well be welling up as the next wave of American slums—not the cities, but those isolated suburbs of abandoned McMansions. Then there is this long piece dissecting and analyzing a rather comprehensive set of notions impacting the history of past economic stresses and their continued impact upon the current financial meltdown in How the Crash Will Reshape America:

In this sense, the financial crisis may ultimately help New York by reenergizing its creative economy. The extraordinary income gains of investment bankers, traders, and hedge-fund managers over the past two decades skewed the city’s economy in some unhealthy ways. In 2005, I asked a top-ranking official at a major investment bank whether the city’s rising real-estate prices were affecting his company’s ability to attract global talent.

He responded simply: “We are the cause, not the effect, of the real-estate bubble.” (As it turns out, he was only half right.) Stratospheric real-estate prices have made New York less diverse over time, and arguably less stimulating. When I asked Jacobs some years ago about the effects of escalating real-estate prices on creativity, she told me, “When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave.”

With the hegemony of the investment bankers over, New York now stands a better chance of avoiding that sterile fate.

REMOVING THE FISHWRAP, SMELLING THE STENCH

Thanks to DisEnfranchised Voterfor this entry posted over at the Confluence, a high octane PUMA site whose energetic post-election dialogue nearly matches the buoyancy of those frothy days in early September when I first discovered this most kinetic of political creatures.

I AGREE WITH Joseph Cannon that I expected a few Republicans to sound more “progressive” than Obama. But I also agree with blogger Falstaff that Obama isn’t a conservative in liberal’s clothing. He’s just what many of us predicted him to be: a blank sheet of paper, an empty suit, a person who has no idea who he is or where he stands. He’s only cared about doing whatever he could to get to the top without even thinking about anyone else. It is why he can sound like a conservative because he seriously doesn’t understand the difference. He goes with whatever the status quo is until an adviser tells him differently.

Here is what Falstaff said:

I don’t think this can be understood in conscious terms or in the sphere of political judgment. Contra some PUMAs, I don’t think he’s some kind of clever right-winger in liberal’s clothing. I think we’re seeing someone with a deep need not to be seen—including (indeed, most importantly) by himself. In stark contrast to Hillary, he doesn’t have the first idea who’s actually in there. He’s even hiding in his autobiography, where he becomes more opaque as one reads.

Thing is, this job does not permit invisibility. As I’ve also posted elsewhere, he’s walked out onto the biggest stage of all, and he won’t get off it without us and him knowing who, in fact, he is. That’s the case in palmy times, and it’s certainly the case in a tempest.

Having said all that, my point here was somewhat simpler. It was about preparation. I did credit him with skill at that. He was better prepared for some aspects of the primaries than was Hillary—he had what turned out to be an intelligent game plan. It was all he had, of course—his ability to run plays was really limited, all float-like-a-butterfly, no sting-like-a-bee. But figuring out about the Net, about the generational emotions of Millenials, and about how to game the caucuses was smart tactically. But it turns out that his ability to prepare seems to be limited to campaigning. He and his team don’t seem to have been able to prepare for actual governing.

And the question he faces, and that we all face, is whether he can become a person in real time, in the midst of the tempest. Or, more accurately, what person it’ll turn out is in there, what person he has been so terrified of his entire life and that he’s pervasively and energetically kept in the box. And, then, whether than person is up to the demands of the moment.

It should be obvious by now that our new President is a puppet on a string and we now have a Puppet Government run by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Rahm Emmanuel. And what nonsense is this—rumors that what may be coming down the pike is an election to remove presidential term limits? God forbid. Our State Department just congratulated Venzuela on it's successful election to eliminate term limits—pure unadulterated penis envy!

Totalitarianism all across the chessboard, what a concept! To paraphrase the prophet from Hibbing, oooooh Mama, is this REALLY the end—to be stuck inside Big Government with no liberty to choose again? Should patriotic Americans (and we know what we mean) act as if all this para-democratic nonsense is just for silly kicks or is this just the set-up for the global tribulation next in line to render a few licks across the neck for the menacing tribes of Arab supremacy, and what about China, Russia? Has anybody thick in the business of running this once great nation read to the end of the friggin' manual, yet?

Okay, abort panic mode. Cooler heads must prevail. Steve Lingus of Anderson, SC puts our dilemma into ample clear terms:

The demise of the USA began when we decided to be the guardians of freedom for the peoples of the world and were willing to give our manufacturing to other countries to foster democracy in those lands. Now we pay the price. We are now dependent on foreign labor to make the goods we need. Gone are the slogans that said "Crafted with pride in the USA". Our clothes and shoes come from other lands as does some of our food. Corporate CEOs share this blame as well as to increase the bottom line it was more profitable to make goods overseas where wages were cheaper and there was less regulation. The current economic situation does not help much either as people cut back on all but the necessities which are made in China. The road to recovery will be difficult but as a strong people we will survive that is unless President Obama decides to put us under UN jurisdiction.

Let me add these finishing touches to the discussion. First, you cannot have "free trade" with non-capitalist market sectors. A free market system cannot compete fairly with slave/prison/child labor. Second, China refuses to float its currency on the world market, but instead props up its currency by fixing it to an unreasonable sub-value. This protection in turn guarantees its exports low prices in relation to other countries, and is just another way to dump products in other markets at below cost. The US must set trade policy to reflect reasonable currency values and impose tariffs that reflect those imposed on our products by the trading partner. If Chinese products were valued at their true cost, they would be priced competitively with goods made in the US and other "free" economies.

LIBERALISM AND EVIL

Excerpts from David Solway's essay titled above.

THE ANTIDOTE TO LIBERALISM is not, as many writers and thinkers of the past have argued, authoritative control, but political humility—the conservative recognition that the world is insolubly complex, that topdown intervention in the social, political and economic life of the nation is often counterproductive, and that one must not attribute to one’s fellow man, and especially to one’s enemies, an a priori commitment to communal benefit or reasonable accommodation.

Broadly speaking, the conservative project is what is known in philosophy as an “axiological” ethic, in which the determination of the rightness of an action is contingent upon the value or goodness of that action as embodied in results, however deferred. It is concerned with consequences. The liberal ethic on the other hand is “deontological,” that is, it holds that an action may be considered right if it conforms to a prior set of values even if it does not bring as much good into the world as some alternative action may have. It is concerned with motives.

This is why “the liberal mind” seems incapable of learning from past mistakes or failed initiatives, why predictions that have not come to pass do not prevent it from making similar predictions in the future, and why Neville Chamberlains crop up in every generation. From its perspective, the hurdle to peace and understanding is the result of miscommunication. The liberal-left has taken aboard wholesale the trendy theories of one its most revered mentors, German social philosopher Jurgen Habermas, who argued, under the lemmas of “communicative action” and “explicative discourses,” that world conflicts stem from poor communication modes. Accordingly, the generic Left says talk, unperturbed by the fact that its enemies say fire!

One thinks, in this connection, of the film Cool Hand Luke where the naïve protagonist tells his pursuers, “What we got here is a failure to communicate,” and is immediately shot.

GUNS, REVOLUTIONS, HISTORY

by Charles M. Richardson

Today the U.N. wants to take away our guns. Where's the parallel in our Nation's history? During the past few decades the teaching of American History in our public schools has suffered greatly at the hands of the American Historical Association and others who would manipulate our children. So I'm going to recap some need-to-be-aware American History: How and WHY our American Revolution started.

We celebrate April 19th as "Patriot's Day," the anniversary of Paul Revere's Ride. What was that all about? For starters, here are the first three stanzas of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous poem:

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town tonight,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore shall be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said, "Good night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar,
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflections in the tide.

Now let us see what that was all about, courtesy of Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Military Science Department's Battle of Lexington & Concord Abstract. You can download its entirety HERE.

"On the 15 of April 1775, General Thomas Gage, British Military Governor of Massachusetts, was ordered to destroy the rebel's military stores at Concord. To accomplish this he assembled the 'Flanking units," including Light Infantry and Grenadiers, from his Boston Garrison. In charge he put Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith and Marine Major John Pitcairn. ....In an attempt at secrecy he did not tell his officers his plan until the last minute. The problem with his security measures was that Boston had become a glass fishbowl. All rebel eyes were watching to see the British's next action, and when the garrison committed to an action, the Americans knew their every move.

"At midnight on the 19th of April the British column, consisting of 650-900 troops left Boston, crossed the Charles River, [preceded] closely by the alarm rider Paul Revere. As the British marched toward Concord, the entire countryside had been alerted to their presence, and rebel militia was deployed to meet them.

"Until this time there was no armed resistance to the British that had resulted in loss of British life. Several months earlier, Gage had attempted to destroy military arms at Salem and met with resistance but no shots were fired, and the British retreated without completing their objective. Lexington Militia Captain John Parker had heard of the events at Salem, and collected his men on the Lexington Green to face the British column.

"At dawn Smith's advanced parties under the command of Major Pitcairn arrived at Lexington Green to see [Parker's] group of armed Militia in formation across the Green. Pitcairn ordered the Militia to be disarmed. In response Parker ordered his men to disperse ..... the British fired upon the small group [which] retreated into the woods . . .

"The British column then advanced to Concord encountering a group of armed militia at the Concord North Bridge. This time when shots rang out the Americans were more prepared, and fired back in 'The Shot Heard Round the World' and so began the American Revolution. The short battle at the bridge was a rout, and the British abandoned the bridge, retreating to Concord center. Knowing that he was in a dangerous situation, Smith decided to return to Boston as soon as possible. In his retreat the real battle began.

"Militia and Minutemen from all surrounding towns had marched toward Concord, and when the retreating column ran into this army they were outflanked, out gunned, and scared. The Americans did not fight as the British did. ....Because the Americans never formed a firing line the inexperienced British had little to shoot at. This ...shooting from behind trees, walls, etc. destroyed the British morale and they broke ranks.....

"... ...The British suffered badly, nearly 20 percent casualties, but more importantly, this action led to the siege of Boston and the start of the Revolutionary War."

Longfellow's last stanza:

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, --
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
Is the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen and hear
The hurrying hoofbeats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

—H. W. Longfellow [1807-1882]

At the dedication of the Minute Man Monument at Lexington Green, on April 19, 1836, was sung/read Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn:"

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

.....Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die,
and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882]

I hope all of you have seen "The Patriot," as the suffering and sacrifices were great, to bring into being the America that has beckoned to so many millions.

Let us beware of any tyrants who would seize our guns. The illusion of "peace" through a "one-world" government is not worthy of such risk.

Remember. Sir Winston Churchill's inspiring words to British Parliament in 1939 ring true today:

"If you will not fight when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."

GUN CONTROL PACIFICATION MEASURES

THEN THERE WAS A LOUD BOOM! Think you've heard everything? Try this on for shock value. The mob origin of Chicago's handgun ban. Now, tell me who else from Chicago is trying to take away all guns...

Dear Concerned Citizen,

The liberals are at it again. In a new bill introduced the first day of the present session of Congress, and with zero coverage from the MSM, H.R. 45 (Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009) targets all gun owners in the USA. While the media the world and everyone else is focused on the "phony plan" to spend tax dollars legislation is sneeking through the House and Senate for more gun control.

This nefarious bill seeks to strip us all of our Constitutional Rights to possess and bear firearms of any distinction. It requires, within the first two years, that all new guns be registered. The bill goes retroactive after two years. Meaning that two years after the passage of the bill, ALL FIREARMS in a citizen's possession must be registered, not just those purchased after the bill passes, and this apparently applies to antique firearms as well.

Every five years the firearm owner must go through a complete renewal process for each weapon owned. Failure to comply carries stiff penalties including confiscation of the firearms and jail time (penalties as high as ten years imprisonment in some cases). The bill also authorizes government searches without warrant, the creation of a federal bureaucracy to monitor firearm possession, et cetera.

The following is a summary of the bill as provided by the Congressional Research Service. If you read the whole bill, you'll find it will effectively preclude the ownership of any firearms by law-abiding people unless directly licensed by the Attorney General :

1/6/2009—Introduced. Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009—Amends the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act to prohibit a person from possessing a firearm unless that person has been issued a firearm license under this Act or a state system certified under this Act and such license has not been invalidated or revoked. Prescribes license application, issuance, and renewal requirements.

Prohibits transferring or receiving a qualifying firearm unless the recipient presents a valid firearms license, the license is verified, and the dealer records a tracking authorization number. Prescribes firearms transfer reporting and record keeping requirements. Directs the Attorney General to establish and maintain a federal record of sale system.

Prohibits:
1. Transferring a firearm to any person other than a licensee, unless the transfer is processed through a licensed dealer in accordance with national instant criminal background check system requirements, with exceptions;
2. Licensed manufacturer or dealer from failing to comply with reporting and record keeping requirements of this Act;
3. Failing to report the loss or theft of the firearm to the Attorney General within 72 hours;
4. Failing to report to the Attorney General an address change within 60 days;
5. Keeping a loaded firearm, or an unloaded firearm and ammunition for the firearm, knowingly or recklessly disregarding the risk that a child is capable of gaining access, if a child uses the firearm and causes death or serious bodily injury. Prescribes criminal penalties for violations of firearms provisions covered by this Act. Directs the Attorney General to:
1. Establish and maintain a firearm injury information clearinghouse;
2. Conduct continuing studies and investigations of firearm-related deaths and injuries; and
3. Collect and maintain current production and sales figures of each licensed manufacturer. Authorizes the Attorney General to certify state firearm licensing or record of sale systems.

Like all other threats against our liberty, we must rise and defeat this bill, slap it down hard.

In order to stop Democratic Party Senators Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein and their fellow gun-grabbers—we need to let the Congress know with thousands of faxes telling them to leave guns alone.

Americans like you who understand what our Founding Fathers envisioned for our nation—and who are willing to fight to defend our Constitution and for what it stands. So please, help the Citizens Committee and me defeat those who wish to gut and trash the United States Constitution.

Help me flood the U.S. Senate and the House with the sea of FAXES big enough to drown each and every Senator and Representative willing to vote away the Second Amendment.

Keep calling your Senators today, toll free numbers include 1-877-851-6437 and 1-866-220-0044, or call toll 1-202-225-3121 AND REGISTER YOUR OUTRAGE at ongoing efforts to take guns away!

CALL PRESIDENT OBAMA, 202-456-1111 and 202-456-1414 expressing your disdain and ABSOLUTE REJECTION of all GUN BANS.

DO NOT BE SILENCED–MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

NOTE: We need TENS OF THOUSANDS of faxes and PHONE CALLS and EMAILS delivered to ALL Senators and Representives right away!

For our projects to be successful, we must count on voluntary financial support from individuals who care. Remember, protecting our freedom is not inexpensive. But then, it's impossible to put a price tag on freedom. But together, we can preserve the Constitutional rights our Founding Fathers intended our people to have forever.

For more information contact CCRKBA.

Sincerely,

Alan Gottlieb
Chairman, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

If you prefer to donate by check, please mail to:

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
12500 NE Tenth Place
Dept Code 2098
Bellevue, Washington 98004

If you are still not certain what's going on here, ask yourself this question—why is the liberal establishment even interested in much less think they can accurately account for the massive accumulation of handguns, rifles, shotguns, and various other firearms scattered about this vast nation any more than they can haul in, document, and deport the illegal aliens that are flooding into this country?

Whenever this question of illegals comes up in polite company the pat response is, "Oh there's no way we can round up all these people. The challenge is just too daunting. They are here. We just have to deal with it as a compassionate nation."

Or something to that effect.

And yet, these same laissez-faire liberals dare insist upon this notion to round up, document, tax, monitor, or confiscate every personal weapon in the possession of law-abiding citizens, contrary to the notion of the Second Amendment which guarantees the right of citizens to keep and bear arms, (whereas illegal aliens have no such Constitutional protection).

This ain't Denmark, my friends, but something is definitely rotten in the neighborhood.

CITIZEN OUTBURST #855

WHO SAYS THE CHEAP JUNK is cheap for America? This junk is horrid for our economic infrastructure. The textile workers all across the south lost their jobs while the fat cats took their business to China, Mexico, and elsewhere for their cheap goods to be sold back here in America.

Take a look at the teen shops for clothing, those $25.00 blouses are absolute junk. When washed tiny holes show up, buttons are gone, why? the weaving is very poor quality and it falls apart. Examine other foreign-made products that fall apart. Contemplate cars fleshed out with aluminum and plastic instead of US Steel.

Last week I had a 3-mile an hour bump with a wall, creating extensive damage including the tie rod and such. By contrast, back in 1985 I survived a crash I had in a 1969 Chevy. The front wheel came off, and the car flipped five times; I was going 60 miles an hour. This automobile held together. I was not hurt and the car sustained minor damage. All of the products are being done cheap and cheaper but we are beginning to pay high costs for it, including skyrocketing insurance premiums, et cetera.

Folks. It is time for America to look out for America.

It is time for CEOs and other top executives to take pay cuts; investors' return should return to reasonable dividends instead of millions for pennies of investment. We can bring America back to it's feet again, but for now AMERICANS NEED TO GET ON THEIR KNEES TO GOD AND BE SORRY FOR ALL THE GREED, SELFISH, AND CRAZY "ME ME ME" BEHAVIOR FROM THIS APPROPRIATELY NAMED ME GENERATION.

Whatever happened to neighborhoods having block parties to exchange clothing and such with their neighbors, instead of this ugly garage sales? Face it, America is in trouble due to selfish greed.

Uh, I am left utterly speechless. There seems to be something missing here, I'm just not sure what. What about the rogue wheel of that American-made Chevrolet?

CITIZEN GRIPE #783

"Grimy jobs that required little education would be replaced with new high tech service jobs requiring university degrees."

ALL THAT DOES IS ELEVATE to necessity a bunch of phony college professors living lavish lifestyles from counterfeit disciplines. Most of them are communists laughing their asses off at the taxes we pay for their so-called service. Very few actually teach: instead they "do research", into such shockingly needful subjects as Native American studies, Black studies, Women studies, Marxism (of course), writing Bowdlerized, fake histories, and let us not forget the all-important studies of the sexual habits of everything that could possibly have sex—really important stuff, that!

None of it is worth a hoot on the open market, but we're supposed to finance their precious "interests" because they are "intellectuals", and you know they are intellectuals because—well—they say so. They hardly ever cease saying so. Phooey!

Any time now we can stop insisting that every living human being go to college. Most jobs require that you show up, be willing to learn, get along with others, and keep your nose clean; you can learn that in kindergarten. Corporations can teach the rest on the job, and you can spend your spare time looking for an honest history text so that you can discover things for yourself, like "there is no free lunch": Real History proves it.

Trying to replace real, productive work with collectivism is what keeps banana republics poor and in the grip of a few politicians and their buddies. That's where we're headed.

Thanks! I needed that.

CITIZEN RANT #524

WARREN BUFFETT, THE RICHEST MAN in the world advocates that America must balance it's world trade balance account if we are to survive because he knows in doing so America will gain $760 billion dollars (our trade deficit) in new jobs every year.

We can hear the Texas twang of US Presidential candidate Ross Perot in 1992. If America had a Positive Trade balance, then we should stay NAFTA and the WTO. But that's not the case. Six months after America Pulls out of NAFTA and the WTO. America will be back to gaining new jobs big time. Because $760 billion dollars in new jobs is a lot of new jobs.

Currently, even the "higher paying technical jobs" we were promised are being farmed out overseas.

We're tired of talking to computers when I want to ask the bank about my retirement funds. When I do get someone on the line, the sap is usually in Florida or India while I am sitting in Texas.

We're tired of not having enough checkout people and being urged to use a computer.

We're tired of turning over everything we buy and finding the words "Made in China". Especially when we are told much of what we buy is actually manufactured by "workers" of the Chinese army.

We're tired of being told we're intolerant because we think people who come to the USA should immediately learn to speak English, especially those taking American jobs. The melting pot has vanished along with national pride. Instead, we have a rotten stew of simmering self-interested minorities who maintain loyalty only to the country or religious entity from which they immigrated.

Yes, this is our response to this endless apologizing to the world for acts of tyranny we never committed...

America became great through the good ideas and hard work of her motivated citizens, who met challenges and transformed these ideas into solutions. Our industrial revolution spread and benefitted people throughout the world. However, as technology improved, America made her greatest mistake, allowing a large number of our manufacturing and agricultural businesses to be outsourced. We need to get back to basics, people! We need to re-institute the Puritan work ethic on which this country was founded and made great!

We need to support each other as Americans! It's nice to 'help our neighbors' but let's be truthful, if we can't afford to take care of our elderly, homeless and veterans, and if we can't afford our own healthcare, how can we afford to continue to give foreign aid to the rest of the world? The world is quick to condemn America but falls short on memory—we are always the first ones to offer a helping hand in a disaster, we are the first ones to send food and money and medicine to countries all over the world in their time of need, and all at no cost to the recipients—only to the American citizens!

Perhaps we should ax foreign aid and redirect that wealth to our own people, to our own economy, to our own success—instead of climbing aboard a sinking ship contemplating trade war strategies. In all fairness, we need to put Americans back to work—in manufacturing, industry, agriculture, healthcare, service, and every other area of contempoary need. America needs to withhold funding from Congress to allow them to see where the money they so readily and irresponsibly spend is actually derived.

Congress does not own the treasury. Money is the operative exchange unit for goods and services rendered. Money does not grow on Congressional trees...

BUYING AMERICA BACK TO PROSPERTITY

An excerpt from Patrick Buchanan's riveting piece about the "Buy American" movement, and the legislative push we need to pull this country back from the disaterous free trade deficits it has accumulated under the misguided tutelage of our last three presidents. We need this on so many levels. Let's just begin with financial solvency and homeland security.

WE MAY BE AT AS TURNING POINT in history. For we are about to choose whether to fully and finally cast our lot with globalism, or to become again a nation and people who put Americans first.

We are about to decide, perhaps for all time, whether we believe in a deepening interdependence leading to one world government, or we restore the independence won for us by the men on Mount Rushmore: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

All four were economic nationalists. All would today be decried as protectionists. For all believed that the nation's independence and prosperity hung upon its ability to stand alone in the world, and that foreign goods should never enjoy as privileged access to America's markets as American goods made in the U.S.A.

All four put America first. And it was they who created out of 13 rural colonies the greatest manufacturing power in history. Is not their record superior to what Bush-Clinton-Bush left us: a hollowed-out industrial nation dependent on foreigners for the needs of our national life and for the loans to pay for them?

Even John Maynard Keynes came around in 1933 to believe in "national self-sufficiency."

Those who prattle about the perils of protectionism need to be asked: What has free trade produced, but a bankrupt America that must go hat-in-hand to Beijing to borrow the money to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure? Are we also to use Chinese iron, steel and cement because they, with their Third World wages, will work for less than our fellow Americans?

As for Europe's threat of a trade war, bring it on!

We would eat their lunch. As analyst Charles McMillion writes, in eight years of Bush, Canada ran up $500 billion in trade surpluses at our expense, Japan ran up $600 billion, the European Union $800 billion.

These three trading partners, often by imposing value-added taxes on U.S. imports, and rebating those taxes on goods sold here, racked up $1.9 trillion in trade surpluses, sucking jobs, factories and technology out of the United States. These trade deficits, and the even larger ones with China, says Paul Volcker, are behind our present crisis.

America is bust. It is shameful to have to go to China and Japan to borrow the money to rebuild America. But to go to China and Japan and borrow billions, and not spend the money here, makes zero sense.

We have indulged in free trade for a quarter century. And look where it has gotten us.

Read it all. And don't neglect to read the comments including this opposing viewpoint:

Pat is making a common logical fallacy of assuming that because x failed then y would have worked. In reality there is no proof that we would be better off had we practiced protectionism for the last quarter century. The science of economics shows that we would actually be far worse.

One hundred years ago 98% of the population worked in food production, now 2% are getting the same job done, and little of it has to do with imports. Technological advances drastically reduced the needed manpower. The 96% who lost their jobs weren't happy, I'm sure, and yet 96% of the US population today isn't unemployed. The menial jobs of food production were passed down to machines while the humans moved on to higher skill jobs.

Today we are seeing a similar shift. The third world is taking over the lower skilled jobs, forcing Americans to improve and evolve.

Pat, for example, by saying "Canada ran up $500 billion in trade surpluses at our expense" is making it seems like we just wrote Canada a check in that amount when it reality we have received $500 billion worth of goods and services in return. Goods and services that would cost more to American consumers had they been produced domestically.

Which brings me to my next point, where is Pat discussing the higher level of living enjoyed by Americans thanks to lower priced goods and services? During Communism, Russians had lots of cash, but nothing to buy. Even with the latest economic earthquake, us American still enjoy a higher standard of living than other countries—why isn't their trade surplus saving them?

Ultimately, Pat is ignoring the most fundamental part of free trade—FREEDOM. Who is Pat or anyone to tell another American who he can or can not buy from? Its my money and I want to have the freedom to buy from whomever I want to--including non Americans. And for our government to have a policy to only buy American forces each of us to pay more for the same. And looking at how well we fared in the War on Drugs, do we really think we can prevent illegal imports into this country?

Ultimately Pat's problem is that he is clueless about economics. Rather than carefully studying it he lets his emotions dictate whats right and whats wrong. Economics is a science. You can't force its laws to change anymore than you can force the law of gravity to change.

Free trade works. It us Americans, who have gotten lazy and complacent, who are the problem. Flipping houses is not a day job. We need to improve ourselves. We need a smaller government that doesn't regulate and tax us to death. And we need to leave free trade alone.

The fact is that we live in a world that is constantly trying to destroy the USA since we are at the TOP, so when academics use the theories based upon the artifical world of FREE TRADE we get HAMMERED. FAIR TRADE IS A TWO WAY STREET!

IGNORANCE AS A POLITICAL POINT OF VIEW

RATIONAL THOUGHT OR FACTS are the only tools we have to combat political Islam. On the basis of facts and logic, the kafirs beat the dhimmis and the Muslims, every time. But rational thought is being declared an enemy of the Newstate. The Newstate is the government, the media, and the universities. They all work as one team now. The war against political Islam has become a war to preserve the remnants of rational/critical thought. It is the purpose of the Newstate to eliminate critical/rational thought and analysis. The battle is not with Islam; the battle is with us and how we think.

There is a rational basis for discussing Islam, but people do not want a rational basis because they really don’t want to open the box and look inside. There is a profound fear of actually looking into the eyes of Mohammed and knowing the mind of Islam. Fear, because we feel ourselves to be in the position of a spouse who has suspicions that their partner is cheating on them. If they found out that their suspicions were true, they would have to do something, so it seems better not to know. To keep us from asking questions and wanting to know, the Newstate has declared knowledge about Islam is to be called bigotry.

We just don’t do that, you know, discuss Islam. It is not proper behavior. Bigots don’t like Muslims. Isn’t being afraid of Islam called Islamo-phobia? Exerting critical thought about Islam gets you labeled as mentally and ethically ill. The primary weapon of the Newstate against knowledge is name-calling and insults.

To have knowledge about political Islam is a crime against the Newstate.

It is a crime because the authority of the Newstate has decreed it to be so. The genius of the Newstate is knowing that if facts are made a civil crime then critical thought cannot begin. For this reason, the media never, but never, connects the dots of what is happening with political Islam.

We are beginning to mimic the thinking process of Islam. Islam does not allow critical thought, because critical thought is based upon doubt. Doubt might cause you to ask questions like: “Why was Mohammed having the heads of 800 male Jews cut off? Why were the women and children sold in wholesale lots to get money for financing jihad?”

The Newstate has decreed what knowledge is allowed and what knowledge is forbidden. We have lists of ideas that cannot be argued in public without some sort of censor. Go to any university, newspaper or government agency and see if you can discuss:

The role of Islam in world slavery

In a women’s studies class, see if you can discuss how Sharia law oppresses women around the world

The history of dhimmi

The Islamic annihilation of Buddhist culture in Afghanistan

The role of political Islam in the Israel/”Palestinian” war

See if there is any critical thought about Islam anywhere in the school, newspaper, or government agency

See if you can get the local paper to run any articles on the above. Maybe National Public Radio will do a segment. Not! If you try to get the Rotary club or a local church to talk about any of these and you will find no forum. No one wants to know. You better not talk about it at work, either. If Human Resources hears about it you will be in deep bigot country.

Everybody knows this is at the same cultural level of knowing not to “break wind” in public. You just don’t talk about Islam in public territory. It is like telling N-word jokes. It’s not done.

We call this constraint of public discourse political correctness. Islam has a word for political correctness—haram, meaning it is forbidden. The Newstate now enforces what is allowed (halal) and what is forbidden (haram). Islamic knowledge has always been authoritative and now the Newstate is demanding the authority to tell us when to speak or not to speak. So, the Newstate enforces haram for Islam.

Freedom of speech and the speech of dissent is fading. America is in the beginning phases of authoritarianism. Universities are becoming centers of authoritarian knowledge—not centers of analytic and scientific reasoning. Critical or analytic thinking demands looking at all sides of a question. One of the most important questions of the 21st century is how do we deal with political Islam. But no university teaches any subjects on Islamic slavery, the Islamic annihilation of Christianity or Hinduism, Jews as dhimmis, or any suffering that Islam causes.

The very basis of all Islam—the Sunna, the Sira (Mohammed’s canonical biography), the Hadith (his traditions) are not taught. Oh, you might study a verse or a hadith, but not a systematic study.

If we speak out against political Islam, we are called bigots. But the charge of bigotry is a morals charge. We, who know, are called immoral. We are not factually wrong, but morally wrong. Why is it that knowing the life and traditions of Mohammed makes someone immoral, while not knowing the Sunna makes you morally superior? Why has ignorance become a valid point of view?

All of the doctrine of Islam is found in the Trilogy of Koran, Sira, and Hadith
. If you have not read these then you have not read both the foundation and the entirety of Islam. Why should any official, professor, priest, rabbi, preacher, or media pundit have any right to speak at all until they have read the basic material? Why should ignorance be a leadership quality?

America was founded based on arguments and debates, but now dissent is becoming morally wrong. For example: The New York Times is backing the suppression of Geert Wilder’s movie Fitna. In a shame and a disgrace, the Times condemns the man. They condemn him because he is offensive and insulting. Offensive to whom? Not to me. And they never once asked any questions about whether what he says is true. Truth is no defense against forbidden knowledge, haram. Instead they say he is the equivalent of a European redneck. They attack the messenger and not that facts. They don’t want to know about or look at the facts. Why is it that Islam can be offensive, but I can’t? Where are we are we headed here?

I am more afraid of the ACLU and the Federal government than I am of Islam. The Newstate is beginning to act as a partner with political Islam. Whatever political Islam demands, the Newstate will deliver. The Newstate has decreed that ignorance is the acceptable political point-of-view. And those who represent facts and critical thinking will be punished and condemned as moral criminals and enemies of the Newstate.

At this critical juncture, you have two choices. You can choose ignorance, fear and not being a bigot to please the Newstate. This means being a dhimmi (a kafir servant of Islam). There is another path, the path of knowledge, critical thinking and defending your civilization by telling truth about political Islam. You can choose fear, ignorance and cowardice, or you can choose critical reasoning, knowledge and courage. It is your choice. If you choose courage and knowledge, first ground yourself in some of the truth of the doctrine by reading Mohammed’s biography. It is sacred literature and will do more for you to understand Islam more than any other single thing.

Also check out the information on citizenwarrior.com, and join ACT! for America.

—Bill Warner

The ugly truth is that Islamic Supremacy is what we continue to highlight here. Islamic presumption is plain and clear: Their version of Allah (Arabic word for improper noun, GOD) owns everything, and by extension, those following him can pencil themselves at the top of this new world order. They hide the fact that Islam is not just a religion but a TOTAL SYSTEM.

It is a theocracy consisting of:

A RELIGIOUS SYSTEM that subjugates all people and holds them by a combination of fear and pie in the sky sexual and feasting after-life hyper indulgence. An easy sell to sell to bored males 18-30 years old.

A FINANCIAL SYSTEM that forces 2 1/2 percent of all banking profits to go to Islamic 'charities' and a forced poll tax foisted upon conquered peoples as an alternative to being killed or conversion to this SYSTEM.

A POLITICAL SYSTEM that uses the religious notions of the Koran as a trojan horse to usher in an intolerant totalitarian system contrary to established laws and freedom based on our US Constitutional rights.

One group, Muslims of America claims to be nonviolent, saying in a recent statement that its honored leader Sheik Gilani, founder of the parent group of MOA called al-Fuqra "does not condone nor teach us to condone violence, especially against the innocent."

Raids by police, however, in 1992 and 1993 on a 101-acre Muslim commune in central Colorado turned up bombs, automatic weapons, ammunition and plans for terrorist attacks. At least two of the communes—in New York and California—have shooting ranges. The US State Department, rarely a font of public revelation, has admitted that al-Fuqra seeks to purify Islam through violence.

For a blow by blow of how the SYSTEM plays itself out click here.

BORDER INSANITY REDUX

After a long drama, a departing President George W. Bush finally commuted the sentences of those two border patrol agents, Ramos and Compean, jailed for shooting an illegal drug smuggler (a mere flesh wound) and then trying to cover it up. But the outrage along the US southern border continues.

AN ARIZONA RANCHER who has waged a 10-year campaign to stop a flood of illegal immigrants from crossing his property is being sued by 16 Mexican nationals who accuse him of conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch on the US-Mexico border.

Roger Barnett, 64, began rounding up illegal immigrants in 1998 and turning them over to the U.S. Border Patrol, he said, after they destroyed his property, killed his calves and broke into his home.

His Cross Rail Ranch near Douglas, Ariz., is known by federal and county law enforcement authorities as "the avenue of choice" for immigrants seeking to enter the United States illegally.

Trial continues Monday in the federal lawsuit, which seeks $32 million in actual and punitive damages for civil rights violations, the infliction of emotional distress and other crimes. Also named are Mr. Barnett's wife, Barbara, his brother, Donald, and Larry Dever, sheriff in Cochise County, Ariz., where the Barnetts live. The civil trial is expected to continue until Friday.

The lawsuit is based on a March 7, 2004, incident in a dry wash on the 22,000-acre ranch, when he approached a group of illegal immigrants while carrying a gun and accompanied by a large dog.

Attorneys for the immigrants—five women and 11 men who were trying to cross illegally into the United States—have accused Mr. Barnett of holding the group captive at gunpoint, threatening to turn his dog loose on them and saying he would shoot anyone who tried to escape.

The immigrants are represented at trial by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), which also charged that Sheriff Dever did nothing to prevent Mr. Barnett from holding their clients at "gunpoint, yelling obscenities at them and kicking one of the women."

In the lawsuit, MALDEF said Mr. Barnett approached the group as the immigrants moved through his property, and that he was carrying a pistol and threatening them in English and Spanish. At one point, it said, Mr. Barnett's dog barked at several of the women and he yelled at them in Spanish, "My dog is hungry and he's hungry for buttocks."

The lawsuit said he then called his wife and two Border Patrol agents arrived at the site. It also said Mr. Barnett acknowledged that he had turned over 12,000 illegal immigrants to the Border Patrol since 1998.

In March, US District Judge John Roll rejected a motion by Mr. Barnett to have the charges dropped, ruling there was sufficient evidence to allow the matter to be presented to a jury. Mr. Barnett's attorney, David Hardy, had argued that illegal immigrants did not have the same rights as U.S. citizens.

Mr. Barnett told The Washington Times in a 2002 interview that he began rounding up illegal immigrants after they started to vandalize his property, northeast of Douglas along Arizona Highway 80. He said the immigrants tore up water pumps, killed calves, destroyed fences and gates, stole trucks and broke into his home.

Some of his cattle died from ingesting the plastic bottles left behind by the immigrants, he said, adding that he installed a faucet on an 8,000-gallon water tank so the immigrants would stop damaging the tank to get water.

Mr. Barnett said some of the ranch´s established immigrant trails were littered with trash 10 inches deep, including human waste, used toilet paper, soiled diapers, cigarette packs, clothes, backpacks, empty 1-gallon water bottles, chewing-gum wrappers and aluminum foil—which supposedly is used to pack the drugs the immigrant smugglers give their "clients" to keep them running.

He said he carried a pistol during his searches for the immigrants and had a rifle in his truck "for protection" against immigrant and drug smugglers, who often are armed.

A former Cochise County sheriff's deputy who later was successful in the towing and propane business, Mr. Barnett spent $30,000 on electronic sensors, which he has hidden along established trails on his ranch. He searches the ranch for illegal immigrants in a pickup truck, dressed in a green shirt and camouflage hat, with his handgun and rifle, high-powered binoculars and a walkie-talkie.

His sprawling ranch became an illegal-immigration highway when the Border Patrol diverted its attention to several border towns in an effort to take control of the established ports of entry. That effort moved the illegal immigrants to the remote areas of the border, including the Cross Rail Ranch.

"This is my land. I'm the victim here," Mr. Barnett said. "When someone's home and loved ones are in jeopardy and the government seemingly can't do anything about it, I feel justified in taking matters into my own hands. And I always watch my back."

Illegal immigration is wrong. The United States needs to get a handle on these concerns. Here is a video produced by the Bush 2004 Presidential campaign. The video depicts a bittersweet but honest piece of American history, and I certainly have no problem with the ideas contained within it.

Why Bush and Congress did little to stop the tide of ILLEGAL immigration is not my concern in this article, but I strongly believe that ranchers like Roger Barnett deserve recourse in this dangerously escalating crisis. There is no contradiction here. Neither thoughtless political correctness run amuck or lawless multicultural affirmative action are appropriate responses to our border issues.

Radical centrists like this blogger just say no to unchecked illegal immigration.

THIS PROFANE SPLITTING OF HAIRS

HERE'S WHAT FORMER PRESIDENT George "The Rifleman" Bush has said about Osama bin Laden at various points in time, depending on how he was trying to spin the news of the day:

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him."
- G.W. Bush, 9/13/01

"I want justice...There's an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive,'"
- G.W. Bush, 9/17/01, UPI

"Secondly, he is not escaping us. This is a guy, who, three months ago, was in control of a county [sic]. Now he's maybe in control of a cave. He's on the run. Listen, a while ago I said to the American people, our objective is more than bin Laden. But one of the things for certain is we're going to get him running and keep him running, and bring him to justice. And that's what's happening. He's on the run, if he's running at all. So we don't know whether he's in cave with the door shut, or a cave with the door open—we just don't know...."
- Bush, in remarks in a Press Availablity with the Press Travel Pool, The Prairie Chapel Ranch, Crawford TX, 12/28/01, as reported on official White House site

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
—G.W. Bush, 3/13/02

"I am truly not that concerned about him."
—G.W. Bush, repsonding to a question about bin Laden's whereabouts, 3/13/02 (The New American, 4/8/02)

Of course, we think that the tall Saudi provocateur has taken his last breath long ago. Why the State Department still authenticates these last few audio tapes that have surfaced filled with generic and ambiguous messages is debatable, but I suppose there's a shadow of doubt lurking somewhere nearby to be blamed.

But before certain readers get the giddies, they should fathom this irony gnawing at our great republic. Our commandos and other elite personnel are waterboarded as part of their training. This new fellow Obama is a naive child, thrust into a world by handlers that he has knows not, and immediately rushes to close Gitmo. He subjects us to one stupidity after another (as the Islamicists continue to behead Westerners), given that he continues on this present course.

So now Pole Piotr Stanczak joins Briton Kenneth Bigley, Italian Enzo Baldoni, Bulgarians Georgi Lazov and Ivailo Kepov, Americans Jack Hensley, Eugene Armstrong, Nick Berg, Paul Johnson, and Daniel Pearl as victims of this hideous barbarity. These men were all civilians—engineers, civilian contractors, truck drivers and journalists. Oh, and Russian diplomats, Thai security guards, countless Iraqi "apostates", and three Indonesian schoolgirls. Mighty warriors of Allah? Hardly. War criminals coddled by the Left. Most certainly!

Last year the BBC decided to tackle this disturbing subject on an episode of its show "Bonekickers"—with a storyline that had a *Christian fanatic* inspired by the crusades beheading a moderate Muslim victim.

MALAISE REVISITED: OBAMA AND JIMMY

Dead ringers.

ON JULY 15th, 1979, PRESIDENT Jimmy Carter made a televised address to the nation that later became known as “the malaise speech.” America’s economic problems were bad and getting worse. Lines at gas stations, inflation, rising unemployment. The speech that President Carter gave that day was presumably meant to inspire, but ultimately fell on many people’s ears as a litany of what was wrong with Americans and with America.

Carter seemed to be blaming Americans for creating their own troubles with their lack of confidence and spirit. It came to define his presidency for many. Of-course, he had already been president for two and a half years when he made this speech. The smiling peanut-farmer from Georgia had become transformed for many into a sour, pinched and pained version of himself. In 1980, Americans chose another smiling former governor as president. Ronald Reagan’s optimism, however, proved considerably more resilient.

President Barack Obama has been president for two and a half weeks. Yet, part of the reason that his honeymoon has been so short (about one day by my count, i.e., Inauguration Day) is that for many, in the media as well as the populace, he effectively became president the day after the election last November. Since then, so many wanted him to be president already, and to shoo George W. Bush out the door, that it feels like he’s already been in office for about three months.

And yet, this President Obama we have just doesn’t seem like the Barack Obama that won the election. The American electorate, it has been said, always goes with the perceived “sunnier” candidate when voting for president, and you can make a very good case for that. There certainly was little contest on that basis between Barack Obama and John McCain. Obama spoke constantly of hope, avoided controversial wedge issues, and projected one of the most unflappably pleasant dispositions of any presidential candidate since the dawn of the TV age.

His motto was, famously, “Yes we can.” Yet, the day after the election, Barack Obama turned on a dime. Suddenly, he started telling us, things were not only very bad, but were going to be getting a lot worse. Inevitably.

It was easy enough to see the point of this move, tactically speaking. He needed to lower people’s expectations of the coming New Jerusalem that would arrive with his inauguration, just a tad. He needed to set the bar lower with regard to how success would be defined for him in his first few months. And—more controversially, but, I am convinced, truly—'he wanted to foster to some extent a sense of crisis, as it would assist him and the Democratic congress in quickly passing sweeping measures to advance their political agenda.

Read it all.