The Two-Fisted Quorum

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND A MOSQUE

2010-08-31T05:12:00.000-07:00

ONE OF THE MOST COMMON arguments of the supporters of the Ground Zero mosque includes religious freedom as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Religion is seen as the framework to support building a mosque and community center near the site of the former World Trade Towers. Is this really about religion? Step back and look at the controversy. Do you feel like you are taking part in a religious exercise or a political fracas?

There is a vast confusion about what a religion is and is not. Currently the operative rule is that anything associated with Islam is a religious affair where all of the freedom of religion is applied to the action or event. Islam's actions are religious and if you oppose it, you are an un-American bigot.

It is time to stop and take a look at what we mean by a religion. There are about as many Buddhists in America today as there are Muslims. When was the last time you remember a Buddhist demand of any kind? Do Buddhists set up councils to shape the textbooks and demand Buddhist finance? Does the government make a big announcement when Buddhists are appointed to high posts? Are there even any Buddhists in any White House appointments? Do Buddhists complain? Never, for these are political actions, and Buddhism has almost no political outreach. Buddhism in America is purely religious, not political at all.

Yet the media and the Internet are consumed by talk and argument about Islam. The discussion is never about how many rounds of prayer to do or whether a certain food is halal (religiously proper). No, the focus is always on something that non-Muslims are to do to accommodate an Islamic religious practice.

There is a practical working definition of religion as compared to politics. Religious practices are done by those who follow that religion and are motivated for achieving paradise and avoiding hell. Outsiders are not involved in those religious acts. If it is about going to heaven and avoiding hell, then it is religious. However, if the religion makes a demand on those outside of its own group, then that demand is political.

Most people think that the Koran is a religious text. Instead, 64% of the text (by word count) is about non-Muslims, who are called Kafirs. The Koran is fixated on Kafirs and makes many demands on them. Not the least is that Kafirs submit to the rule of Islamic Sharia law. Ultimately Sharia law is the pure expression of Islamic politics and it completely contradicts our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Under Sharia there is no freedom of speech, wives may be beaten and apostates murdered.

Mohammed had little success with Islam until he transformed it into a political system. He preached the religion of Islam in Mecca for 13 years and made about 150 converts. He left Mecca and moved to Medina. In Medina he turned to politics and jihad. In the last 9 years of his life, Mohammed was involved in an event of violence on the average of every 6 weeks. The political method persuaded every Arab to convert to Islam. The religion did not succeed; it was politics that made Islam powerful.

Bill Warner
Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam

OUTREACH TO WHOM?

2010-08-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

THANKS TO Traeh for the following clip. As we, who are wide awake to the time-worn Islamic strategies of stealth jihad, understand, the devil is indeed in the theocratic details. Americans may not know their own history much less the history of Islamic conquest, but the patterns of aggression are certainly easier to track once the spirit of multiculturalist appeasement, a one-sided plunge into dhimmitude, is understood as the dangerous tool of Islamic Supremicism that it is.

Victor Davis Hanson recently said with regard to the GZ mosque:

Plopping down a 100-million dollar, 13-story, “Constantinople House”, say, in Cairo, near a site of radical Christian-inspired violence by self-described Christian zealots against Egyptians—funded from abroad by Christian evangelical groups—for the purpose of Christian contemplation and interfaith outreach would be of course beyond fiction.

Muslims conquered Christian Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul. Muslims conquered Cordoba and Spain and later lost them. Hanson's analogy makes brilliantly clear that Cordoba House is Islamic revanchism, under a layer of multiculturalism. We frequently hear that once a land has been conquered by Muslims, they believe it is theirs by right forever. To put an Islamic revanchist project next to the site of the WTC jihadist atrocity is an arrogantly militant thing to do.

It would be like Christian revanchists putting a "Constantinople House" near a site of Christian-inspired violence. Meanwhile, one rarely, if ever, hears Christian priests talking up the possibility of recovering Istanbul and making it Constantinople again. One not infrequently does find imams talking up the return of Al-Andalus, centered in Cordoba.

A MUSLIM VICTIM OF 9/11

2010-08-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

Dear Gabriel,

We know there are many Muslims in America who do not subscribe to the ideology of political Islam, the advance of jihad, and the imposition of sharia law.

This past Sunday, a courageous Muslim spoke out against the Ground Zero Mosque in a column in the Washington Post (see below).

The buzzing opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque continues to grow, with some polls show opposition now over 60%. Media coverage continues to grow.

This has become, and rightly so, a high-profile national issue, which is why we continue to put out emails about it. Islamists and their politically correct allies are desperately trying to smear anyone who opposes the Ground Zero Mosque. They know they are losing the national debate on this. And as you saw in your email on Saturday, the New York City bus company is censoring a media campaign about the Ground Zero Mosque.

The Ground Zero Mosque is not a done deal. We must keep the pressure on!

***

A Muslim victim of 9/11: 'Build your mosque somewhere else'

By Neda Bolourchi
Sunday, August 8, 2010

I have no grave site to visit, no place to bring my mother her favorite yellow flowers, no spot where I can hold my weary heart close to her. All I have is Ground Zero.

On the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, I watched as terrorists slammed United Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, 18 minutes after their accomplices on another hijacked plane hit the North Tower. My mother was on the flight. I witnessed her murder on live television. I still cannot fully comprehend those images. In that moment, I died as well. I carry a hole in my heart that will never be filled.

From the first memorial ceremonies I attended at Ground Zero, I have always been moved by the site; it means something to be close to where my mother may be buried, it brings some peace. That is why the prospect of a mosque near Ground Zero—or a church or a synagogue or any religious or nationalistic monument or symbol—troubles me.

I was born in pre-revolutionary Iran. My family led a largely secular existence—I did not attend a religious school, I never wore a headscarf—but for us, as for anyone there, Islam was part of our heritage, our culture, our entire lives. Though I have nothing but contempt for the fanaticism that propelled the terrorists to carry out their murderous attacks on Sept. 11, I still have great respect for the faith. Yet, I worry that the construction of the Cordoba House Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site would not promote tolerance or understanding; I fear it would become a symbol of victory for militant Muslims around the world.

When I am asked about the people who murdered my mother, I try to hold back my anger. I try to have a more spiritual perspective. I tell myself that perhaps what happened was meant to happen—that it was my mother's destiny to perish this way. I try to take solace in the notion that her death has forced a much-needed conversation and reevaluation of the role of religion in the Muslim community, of the duties and obligations that the faith imposes and of its impact on the non-Muslim world.

But a mosque near Ground Zero will not move this conversation forward. There were many mosques in the United States before Sept. 11; their mere existence did not bring cross-cultural understanding. The proposed center in New York may be heralded as a peace offering—may genuinely seek to focus on "promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture," as its Web site declares—but I fear that over time, it will cultivate a fundamentalist version of the Muslim faith, embracing those who share such beliefs and hating those who do not.

The Sept. 11 attacks were the product of a hateful ideology that the perpetrators were willing to die for. They believed that all non-Muslims are infidels and that the duty of Muslims is to renounce them. I am not a theologian, but I know that the men who killed my mother carried this message in their hearts and minds. Obedient and dutiful soldiers, they marched toward their promised rewards in heaven with utter disregard for the value of the human beings they killed.

I know Ground Zero is not mine alone; I must share this sanctuary with tourists, politicians, anyone who chooses to come, whatever their motivations or intentions. But a mosque nearby—even a proposed one—is already transforming the site from a sacred ground for reflection, so desperately needed by the families who lost loved ones, to a battleground for religious and political ideologies. So many people from different nationalities and religions were killed that day. This site should be a neutral place for all to come in peace and remember. I believe my mother would have thought so as well.

The Iranian revolution compelled my family to flee to America when I was 12 years old. Yet, just over two decades later, the militant version of our faith caught up with us on a September morning. I still identify as a Muslim. When you are born into a Muslim family, there is no way around it, no choices available: You are Muslim. I am not ashamed of my faith, but I am ashamed of what is done in its name.

On the day I left Ground Zero shortly after the tragedy, I felt that I was abandoning my mother. It was like being forced to leave the bedside of a loved one who is dying, knowing you will never see her again. But I felt the love and respect of all those around me there, and it reassured me that she was being left in good hands. Since I cannot visit New York as often as I would like, I at least want to know that my mother can rest in peace.

I do not like harboring resentment or anger, but I do not want the death of my mother—my best friend, my hero, my strength, my love—to become even more politicized than it already is. To the supporters of this new Islamic cultural center, I must ask: Build your ideological monument somewhere else, far from my mother's grave, and let her rest.

Neda Bolourchi lives in Los Angeles.

OF GUN LAWS AND PURSESTRINGS

2010-07-08T10:39:00.000-07:00

ONCE AGAIN, the U.S. Supreme Court has left the black community defenseless against armed gangs and thugs who terrorize and plunder law-abiding Americans.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Chicago's handgun ban. Gun rights groups hailed the ruling as a seminal moment in their ongoing fight to roll back restrictive gun-control legislation. As far as the National Rifle Association (NRA) is concerned, McDonald settles the matter once and for all: "This decision makes absolutely clear that the Second Amendment protects the God-given right of self-defense for all law-abiding Americans, period." Be that as it may, the McDonald decision is really a victory for and about black Americans. At least it should be.

Read it all.

MUSLIMS-ONLY ENCLAVE IN PHILADELPHIA

2010-07-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

Paul Williams, PhD
May 20, 2010

Thanks to U.S. taxpayers, an Islamic enclave is being carved out of the heart of the City of Brotherly Love. And how generous have you been with your tax dollars? You just gave $1.6 billion for the privilege of turning over all this cash to the Islamic community.

The person doing the carving is Kenny Gamble, the author of such hit songs as “Love Train” and “Me and Mrs. Jones.” So far Americans have shelled out $1.6 billion in federal grants, loans, and “charitable” gifts to create an alleged “Muslims-only” community.

A convert to Islam, Gamble, now known as Luqman Abdul Haqq, is affiliated with the National Ummah Movement which seeks to establish sovereign Islamic enclaves ruled by shariah (Islamic) law within major cities throughout the U.S.A. The movement was started by Jamil al-Amin (the former H. Rap Brown), who is now serving a life sentence at a maximum security prison for killing two police officers in Atlanta.

Gamble managed to collect the $1.6 billion through Universal Company, a so-called “charitable organization,” which he formed in 1993. Gamble and his spokesmen say that the non-profit company provides a public service by cleaning up a blighted section of the south Philly, but local residents say that Universal has really used the $1.6 billion to create a Muslim ghetto. This allegation is supported by Gamble himself. Speaking to his fellow Islamists, the former songwriter quipped: “We are not here for Universal, we are here for Islam.”

The proof is in the pudding. The 800 block of South 15th Street now contains the United Muslim Masjid, an Islamic center, and a madrassah (charter school). All of these organizations have been created and sustained by Gamble’s enterprise. Rotan Lee of the Philly YMCA says: “You look up and down the street and see men, women and children in traditional Muslim dress everywhere; you see the masjid right across from Kenny's house and security guards on the corners in kufis.”

On the website of the Muslim Alliance of National American, the directors of Gamble’s company made the mistake of betraying their true intent by saying: “By the Blessing and Mercy of Allah (SWT), the efforts of Universal Companies serve as a national model for what can be done with commitment, compassion, focus and careful planning and execution. Just another proof positive of the words of the Qu’ran where Allah (SWT) states: ‘Let there arise from among you a small group of people, inviting to all that is good. They enjoin the good, and forbid the evil, and it is they who attain success.’ (3: 104).”

Proof of Gamble’s ties to National Ummah Movement was provided by a conference call from Jamil al Amin to the United Muslim Masjid., a mosque G founded on 15th Street. A transcript from the mosque reads as follows: "...A highlight of one meeting was when we had Imam Jamil Al-Amin on speaker phone talking to us from his Georgia prison. MANA (Muslim Alliance in North America ) and its members have raised and donated several thousands of dollars to his family and legal defense team. Imam Jamil has recently been transferred to a "supermax" prison in Colorado, and we ask that you make du'a for him." [source]

Further proof of the Ummah connection comes from Gamble’s role in the creation of theMANA, an organization formed to free Jamil al-Amin from federal prison and to advance the Islamic take-over of the United States by “cultural jihad” - - pushing for black/Muslim privileges under the guise of equal opportunity and civil rights.

Some of the Ummah mosques maintain armed militias. Others provide training in martial arts and guerilla warfare. Almost all operate beneath the radar of local, state, and federal law enforcement officials.

On October 28, 2009, the FBI raided a warehouse and two houses in Detroit and arrested eleven Ummah members on charges of mail fraud, the illegal possession of firearms, trafficking in stolen goods, and altering vehicle identification numbers. In the course of the raid on the warehouse, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, the ringleader of the group, opened fire on the federal agents and was killed in the ensuing gunfight.

Luqman Abdullah was the imam of the Masjid al-Haqq in Detroit, a mosque that was part of the Ummah network. He sought to claim a section of blight-ravaged Detroit for his group in order to establish a sovereign Muslim enclave governed by sharia (Islamic law). In his sermons, Imam Abdullah called upon his followers to launch an “offensive jihad” against U.S. officials and to carry and use firearms.

Imam Abdullah, along with Kenny Gamble, was a founder of MANA. Another founder was Siraj Wahaj, an un-indicted co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and imam of Masjid al-Taqwa in Brooklyn.

So…how did Gamble squeeze $1.6 billion out of Uncle Sam?

Stay tuned.

ISLAM TO CONQUER AMERICA

2010-06-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

A REFUGEE FROM THE MUSLIM Middle East thinks he has discovered Islam's 20-point plan for conquering the United States by 2020—a plan revealed in the latest issue of Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

On the other side of the mountain, the cat is playing. Here's a snippet we found in the comment section of a Washington Post article suggesting that risk-tolerant China is investing heavily in Iraq as US companies stand pat. This, as the US is drained of its fortune in war while others swoop in to partnership the real business of nation building..

The Chinese are smarter than we Americans. While we are engaged in wars all over the world, some openly some not so openly, the Chinese seek to make friends and useful business connections. While the US supports useless sanctions against Iran, the Chinese are all over Iran making deals. Some Americans think the Chinese are Communists. They are communists in name only. First and foremost they are interested in business.

The US throws money away in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere on military spending or bribes to win influence and our national debt continues to grow. We get nothing from this type spending. The Chinese, using "soft power" are doing business and making money which they are spending to make China a better place for the Chinese. They are building highways, airports, rail lines, schools, factories, hospitals and rapidly improving life for their people. At the same time the US standard of living is dropping so fast that you can see it by driving through most US.

Can the American powers be this stupid? Perhaps not, as another quipster's hypothesis suggests. We've probably got a hush-hush deal with China; that in order to pay off US debt, we'll use our military to open up markets for them and call it even.

It's kind of like sometimes when you get in debt to the Mob, and they cut you a deal that you can work it off by helping them out with "collections" if you're a tough guy.

We shoot 'em, you loot 'em...

US PRESIDENCY AS ACCUMULATIVE ERROR

2010-06-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

David Swanson, author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union has written a chilling piece of commentary on the state of the American presidency.

Below is an excerpt:

SECOND, I LOOKED AT THE POWER OF WAR. Our Constitution wisely placed it in Congress. It is now in the White House and growing ever stronger. President Obama has demanded and received a larger military budget than Bush ever had, plus a larger war budget on top of that, not to mention the secret budget for some of the spy agencies that engage in war. President Obama continues to insist on funding the wars off the books with so-called emergency supplementals. He's put bases into more nations. He's put more troops in the field. He's expanded the use of mercenaries and contractors. He's dramatically expanded the illegal use of drones to bomb Pakistan and other nations, resulting—among other forms of blowback—a man trying to set off a bomb in Times Square, a man whose father's job used to be guarding nuclear weapons. Obama's Pentagon is pushing hard to use drones in U.S. skies as well. Meanwhile, Obama has—in another badder than Bush innovation—formally authorized secret military action in dozens of nations. He's formally done away with habeas corpus and established the power to imprison people at Bagram and other sites completely outside any legal process. He's kept our death camp at Guantanamo open. President Obama has continued to assert the power to torture, and torture has continued. He's also continued to assert the power to kidnap or "rendition" people and send them to nations that torture. But, most disturbingly, Obama has largely replaced torture with murder. People we would have sought to capture two years ago, we now seek to murder instead. And Obama has claimed the power to assassinate anyone, including American citizens. And, needless to say, the warrantless spying programs and other violations of civil liberties roll on unquestioned, and Miranda rights may be at risk now too. And one reason to think things may be even worse than we know is that Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any of his predecessors.

Read it all at Corrente: Obama Was Created By Our Failure to Impeach Bush

OUR HISTORIC FLAGLESS PRESIDENT

2010-06-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

MYSTERIOUS HISTORIC BEHAVIOR ALERT—President Barack Obama's Press Conference on the Deep Water Horizon lacked a certain decorum specific to the staged background. The American Flags were missing. Plain yellow curtains, and a couple of gold columns with chandeliers were all she wrote.

Research of photos from press conferences of past presidents reveal the traditional flags standing sternly behind the President or off to the side. This was Obama's first formal press conference since July of 09, which of course had U.S. Flags present. Just sayin'...

As the gulf oil ecological disaster staggers on into Day 56, many clean-up workers complain of ill health. Obama is also finishing up his two-day tour of MS, AL, and FL, and compares the effects to 911 to the consternation of many.

His comments were condemned as 'ridiculous' and out of touch with reality by those who lost loved ones when terrorists flew passenger planes into New York's World Trade Centre in 2001.

"I think he's off-base,' said former New York Fire Department Chief Jim Riches, who lost a son. "These were terrorist attacks, these 9/11 murders, not something caused by people trying to make money."

DANIEL ELLSBERG DISAPPOINTED IN OBAMA

2010-06-10T08:24:00.000-07:00

FROM THE OLD DEMOCRATS' battered and bruised perspective Daniel Ellsberg is merely another “there’s no place else to go” justifier. To these hard-working and intelligent folks the Democrat Party was all they knew. Lifers, all of them, with nary a glance towards the Other Side they viewed as down-right criminal without ever actually investigating them before Palin came along and utterly stupid beyond measurement. But theirs was another Democratic Party they thought, a party of one person, one vote, a party of egregious progress and open-hearted morality, but those warm memories and smart dreams were created long before Obama and his thug corps cracked the party wide open and left these folks, mostly women, without a political home. I'm talking, of course about the PUMA movement, which had nothing one might imagine to do with Daniel Ellsburg until his timely interview with SPEIGEL ONLINE.

Ellsberg is a former United States military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers.

Legendary leaker of the “Pentagon Papers” during the Nixon administration, he still has a bone to pick with the White House. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the 79-year-old peace activist accuses President Barack Obama of betraying his election promises—in Iraq, in Afghanistan and on civil liberties, of deceiving the public.

Ellsberg, speaking at length, said, "I voted for him and I will probably vote for him again, as opposed to the Republicans. But I believe his administration in some key aspects is nothing other than the third term of the Bush administration. He’s a good politician. He said what he needed to say to get elected, and now he’s just taking advantage of the office. Like any administration before, his administration caters to the profits of big corporations like BP and Goldman Sachs—even though I think BP won’t get off that easily this time. His early campaign contributions, the big corporate contributions, came from Wall Street. They got their money’s worth"

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But Obama has been very verbal about his criticism of Wall Street.

Ellsberg held his ground, stating, "His actions are totally uncoupled from his public statements. I don’t even listen anymore."

Reads word for word like the Hillaryocrats mantra we've been monitoring since that lost and frightful summer of '08. It's chilling actually to realize that someone like Daniel Ellsberg could be so easily fooled by the styrofoam messiah...

More to the point is the zeal and speed of this paradigm shift we've witnessed since the riveting James Carville moment. Like a shot over the bow, Carville signalled for blood, making it okay for others to come out of the covers. Claws visibly retracted beyond the call of duty in an obviously corrupt administration, many have finally stepped up to pop the Obama bubble. The media cloak, the pundits, and even Hollywood on steroids, each have finally exhaled. And that's how the whistle blows.

Once again we learn that people on both sides of the political aisle are slow learners, often just plain gullible, the way politicians prefer their voters, barefoot, poor, and damned near always two faced flushed into the kool-aid, or worse—corroded and corrupt to the bone. My guess is all of the above exist in ample portion. May God save us all.

CAN NORWAY SAVE AMERICA?

2010-06-08T10:57:00.000-07:00

A COMPANY IN NORWAY has invented a machine they call the OS-1 estimated to separate a million gallons of toxic oil and sea water a day. Does the Oil Swallow work as hyped? Will the President heed the call to send it into the Gulf? Will America be saved. Stay tuned. There's no government mistake worse than overlooking the obvious...

Day 50 of this devastation hovers as we recall the haunting countdown during Iran hostage crisis of the Carter administration. Will the White House respond to the outreach, or continue to bumble through? Word is they are turning down help from foreign entities because of the Jones Act, but the truth is the Jones Act has been waived several times already, including by the Bush administration. This is absolutely NO RATIONAL POINT to limit our clean-up opportunities, only political points. Keep an eye on the fall-out in the coming days, weeks, and months. It won't be pretty.

NO GROUND ZERO ISLAMIC CENTER

2010-06-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

THE INIMITABLE BRITISH WIT PAT CONDELL takes the Islamic PR machine to task as the latter attempts to build a 13-15 story triumphal Islamic Center a mere two blocks from where the Twin Towers once stood. To make matters worse, the building is scheduled to open its "doors of deception" on the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 tragedy.

STALKING THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION

2010-05-26T07:14:00.000-07:00

Here's another scathing take of an unstable and disastrous future posted by a Jihad Watch commenter who goes by the telling handle—Susanp.

FOR ANYONE WHO BELIEVES that the globalist, internationalist traitors in the Obama adminstration and beyond, including the annointed one, are not champions of the New World Order, global government, open borders crowd, why did Obama make this statement last week while entertaining the president of Mexico: "America is not defined by its borders."

What, pray tell, defines America in the mind of this Manchurian Candidate, anti-Christ imposter who was elected president by my fellow Americans, most of whom assumed that his promise of 'change' meant change for the better, not a fast track to socialism/communism with obsequious pandering to arrogant, hostile muslim immigrants thrown in for good measure? America is the only sovereign country in the world that refuses to protect its borders and keep illegal aliens out, and Americans are the only people who are condemned, demonized, called racists and bigots for demanding that our immigration laws be upheld and our sovereignty defended.

The 'North American Union' project is not dead and the elitist tycoons have not abandoned their monumental and cherished endeavor. It is very much alive, with the goal of merging Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. into one big borderless union similar to the E.U., with its own currency, parliament, and behemoth bureaucracy. Its foundations are being laid as we speak and it will happen, perhaps not in our lifetimes, but eventually. I see nothing that can stop it except mass revolt by the people of all three nations, and I just can't envision militant Canadians. The Mexicans would love it and who knows what Americans will do.

It will be accomplished in stages, accompanied by the usual lies, obfuscations, and deceit so the peasants don't revolt in fury and with a complicit media providing cover, what could go wrong? When the perfect storm comes along, it will be foisted on the people and proclaimed their only salvation from whatever profound and chaotic 'emergency' they create to consummate their ambitious venture. Several states amended their constitutions in anticipation of this outrageous plot, and that is proof enough for me that it exists.

—Susanp

NICE HAIRCUT

2010-05-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

Here's an adept adaptation gone viral of a famous poem about the Nazis by Pastor Martin Niemöller—Muslim Outrage:

At first, the Muslims were outraged by cartoons, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't an artist.

And then the Muslims were outraged by history books and news, but I didn't speak up because I don't read much.

And then the Muslims were outraged by women who weren't completely veiled and hidden, but I didn't speak up because I'm not a woman.

And then the Muslims were outraged by the practice of other religions, but I didn't speak up because I'm not very religious.

And then the Muslims were outraged by the existence of Infidels so when they came for me … there was no one left to speak up.

The last line is the ultimate goal of Islam the rest are just steps towards that goal. But atmospherics are beginning to turn. Imagine where Western societies should be a decade from now. More Muslims no doubt will make demographic advances in Western societies some ten years from now but non-Muslims will be even more informed and disgruntled by the surly, superior doctrines and behaviors of the Mohammedans by then.

For Islam to be eventually assigned to oblivion, it is imperative that huge numbers of Muslims see the light and leave their fraudulent faith. We must remain confident this will happen. The more one examines Islamic doctrine and the life of Mohammed, the more unacceptable each becomes for both non-Muslim and Muslim alike.

Knowledge is power and the only path to extinguishing revolutionary Islam in long term.

Alternatively, once the West finds its sea legs in this new paradigm, may not involve "consigning Islam to oblivion" but merely managing it as best as possible through global quarantine—an indefinite war without end, but finally one where we will have the clear advantage, once we wake up and discard the so-called political correctness that rules today.

And part of that waking up process involves the realization that most Muslims will never reform; coming to a mind that cannot really absorb the uniqueness of the full horror of that Islam bestows upon its willing victims, the Muslims; a people who truly, deeply, sincerely love all the evil and dangerous tenets of Islam and who are truly, deeply, sincerely fanatical, paranoid and hateful of all non-Muslims; a people who are hopeless, who will never, in numbers sufficient to solve our problem with Islam, live up to our Western Classical Liberal ideal of universalism where all humans must be, at heart, pro-human, and not anti-human, and if the conditions are right, any anti-human will reform and see the light, wholly rejecting the cult of death they know as Islam.

All other non-Western peoples show sufficient capability of living up to that ideal (some less than others perhaps), but Muslims are not merely the worst of the lot on the same scale, as a group they are off the scale. Unique. In terms of philosophical, psychological, and political science implications, we may say, mytho-poetically, that Muslims qua Muslims exist to kill and be killed.

LET 'EM EAT UPSIDE DOWN CAKE

2010-05-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

“Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with Jews building houses in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran.”
—Burt Prelutsky

WE ARE TOLD NOT TO CAST ASPERSIONS. We are told not not to stereotype. We are told not to assign blame to all Muslims for the strife, hatred and violence their cousins in the Islamist branch of the family tree produce. Sounds fabulously fair, doesn't it? However we are also asked to collectively categorize ALL Tea party marchers as middle-aged, wealthy, white racists who hate having a black president and want poor black and brown people to suffer.

NYC Mayor Michael's Bloomberg's pathetic remarks immediately after the car bomb was discovered are pathetic enough, but seem mild compared to the snarky scolding he issued this morning after the Islamic identity of the bomber was revealed.

Where is all that anti-Muslim backlash our politicians and CAIR keep warning us against? Have some cake...

We are instructed that it is in our best interest as part of the human race to send our money to poorer nations, to stop living in large homes, to cut down on our "carbon" footprints and to accept the science we are shown. We are told this by people who buy huge homes and make tons of money and resolutely disregard dissent.

And this administration, we are told, has a "boot to the neck" of British Petroleum?

Here, have some more cake...

HOLDER AND OBAMA IGNORE SUBPOENA

2010-04-29T07:29:00.000-07:00

"A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday."
—Russell Baker

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SAID TUESDAY it would provide more information to Congress about the Fort Hood shootings but continued to defy a subpoena request for witness statements and other documents.

After reading the presentation on Islam that Major Nidal Hasan gave to his professional colleagues, one even mildly educated in the form can easily declare the assassin's appeal to the massacre was classic Islam; in other words, there was nothing remotely 'radical' about it.

His testament to Islam is clearly stated in the Qu'ran, with supporting Hadiths and Sira— Islam's core texts prescribing an Islam that has been has carried out for almost 1,400 years throughout most of Europe, north and central Africa, the Near and the Far East, and is now making its way into the Americas with unfortunate ease success, thanks to a hapless host strategically softened by a lack of political will maintained by the treachery of the multiculturalist's creed.

Make no bones about it, Islam is a violent, intolerant, seditious, degrading ideology because its founder was a warlord and mass murderer; therefore, the conduct of those committing Jihad is entirely in keeping with the 'inspiration' of Muhammed whom the Qu'ran calls "an excellent model of conduct" and "an exalted standard of character".

There are two compelling reasons why the Left does not want people to know the facts about Islam and Muhammed, in particular:

if most people knew the full facts of his life, and what he did and taught, the public everywhere would not only refuse to tolerate Islam, the public would also refuse to tolerate the craven, cowardly surrender of our freedoms to this cult, wholly rejecting our accommodation to Muslims demanding acquiescence to their Sharia law in our own lands.

That crystalized moment of clarity would lead to demands that Islam be condemned and perhaps even lead to an indictment of all Muslims, easing the way to deportation, however ugly or painful the process.

Adherents to Islam belong to an ideology that mandates death for apostates, a status that denies the individual full freedom of speech and conscience. Islam also mandates for wife-beating (Qu'ran 4:34), polygamy, female genital mutilation and pedophilia. The Qu'ran allows for child brides by stipulating that a man can divorce a wife who is too young to have begun menstruating and, most damning of all, because Muhammed is recorded in at least 12 Hadiths as having married Aisha when she was 6 and consummated it when she was 9 and he was 54. Islam also mandates for death for homosexuals and adulterers. Most of these mandates are found within either the Qu'ran itself or the Hadiths of Bukhari.

None of this is acceptable to Americans or to any Westerners of good conscience, and so the Left helps to silence any discussion of Islam. The second reason is that the Left itself hates the West, despises Christianity with a vengeance and is exceedingly jealous of capitalism in its frothing pursuit of social justice as defined by its patron saints, Marx and Mao, and thus uses the alien, hostile ideological force of Islam as shock troops in its assault, especially since part of Islamic Jihad involves 'emigration' (hijra) which historically is a stepping stone to Jihad and along with its demographic swell, paves the way for demanding compliance with Sharia and eventually dominating non-Muslim areas.

Neither Republican or Democrat officials are fulfilling with honor the critically important job we have hired them to do.

It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred...

Therefore, it is our mandate as an informed citizenry to be more vigilant in the future when we select our leaders and representatives. This mandate informs is the Tea Party inertia. Americans must quit the finger-pointing and stand tough with the times we now find ourselves nearly in breach of destiny as we stumble among ourselves as orphans and widows of the constitutional framework our founding fathers so struggled to conceive, having lost both the spirit and perspiration that helped American sons and daughters defeat the Nazis and the Japanese aggressors just a few generations ago.

It's a sad state of affairs when President Barack Obama has plenty of time to launch an attack against a state government law and tamper with the US Army's prayer service and host Muslim entrepreneurship summits despite his repeated rebuffs of his own supposed faith, but is willing to DEFY a subpoena request to protect what? a killer? or some information he and his administration don't want to be outed? Doesn't it seem that somebody has all its chips invested in this "angry white men are the biggest terror threat to America" meme?

For the clear-thinking patriot, with each passing incident at high levels of this government, only one conclusion can be reached. We are being governed with heavy hand by a dangerous administration, who, along with the horde of pugnacious sycophants who still support it, will continue to press their destructive agenda forward. Are we calling for an impeachment process? No sir, that would be premature, but we can surely hear the tumbleweed rumblings just down the road, and I fear what wreckage we should meet should things turn even more sour than they are in our government corridors today. The bottom line is simple: we must every one of us, Tea Party or not, demand a far greater standard of leader...

THE ANCIENT ROOTS OF PLATONIST STATISM

2010-04-25T11:10:00.000-07:00

"I see pieces of men marching, trying to take heaven by force;
I can see the unknown rider, I can see the pale white horse"
—Bob Dylan

The fight in this country is not between left and right, but between liberty and tyranny. Big government Hamiltonian progressivism vs small-government Jeffersonian democratic-republicanism.

It's nothing new. It's as old as the Nimrod vs Abrahamic styles of government.

—Ron Jones, The Jones Family

I remember early fall 2000, sitting in a fast food joint eating my burger when I overheard two old men chatting about the upcoming election. Neither were rock solid in their decision yet, although they seemed poised to split their vote between Bush and Gore. However, I heard one of them say that he didn't think he could vote for Bush because he didn't think that Americans should elect dynasties, pointing out the Kennedy family example with the presumption America would have been better off without that particular dynasty. They begin to act like kings, he added.

I left amused and enlightened by their conversation but voted Bush the younger that year. Will political truth always remain so compromised I wonder...
—Gabriel Thy

TURNING BACK THE BEAST

2010-04-23T10:05:00.000-07:00

"Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more."
—John Prine

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth;
I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
—Yeshua the Nazarene

I have been made victorious by terror!"
—Mohammed

A CIVILIAN EMPLOYEE at the Camp Lejeune Marine Base in North Carolina has won his battle to display anti-Islamic decals on his van while driving on the base.

Jesse Nieto, whose son was among 16 sailors killed in the 2000 terror attack against the USS Cole, had used the windows of his car as a place of tribute to his son. He displayed a gold star (a symbol of death in combat), a combat action ribbon, and the message: “Remember the Cole, 12 Oct. 2000.”

But Mr. Nieto also used his vehicle to express his opinion of those who killed his son. Decals proclaimed: “Islam = Terrorism,” “We Died, They Rejoiced,” and a picture of the US flag with the words: “Disgrace My Countries [sic] Flag And I Will [defecate] On Your Quran.”

He also displayed a decal picture of Calvin (from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon) urinating on a cartoon illustration of the Prophet Mohammed. The Mohammed illustration was a re-creation of one of the cartoons that provoked Muslim protests against a Danish newspaper and sparked an assassination plot against the cartoonist.

After seven years with these messages on his car, someone on the base complained. Nieto was ordered to remove them. He removed the most offensive decals, but was later cited again for violating a base traffic regulation that prohibits the display of “extremist, indecent, sexist, or racist messages” on motor vehicles.

Nieto, a Marine combat veteran, decided to fight back. In a lawsuit filed in federal court in North Carolina he claimed a First Amendment free speech right to express his opinion of Islam and Islamic terrorists.

Government lawyers countered that a military base is not an open public forum like a town hall meeting or a public park. The base commander is entitled to enact and enforce reasonable restrictions on speech when open debate or protests might disrupt the military’s mission, they argued.

Nieto’s lawyer, Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center, countered that government restrictions of speech must be viewpoint neutral and not just aimed at silencing speech critical of Islam.

He argued that the base regulation would not ban decals praising Islam, only those critical of Islam.

Last week, Senior US District Judge Malcolm Howard ruled for Nieto. He said the base regulation was not being enforced in a neutral manner and was therefore unconstitutional as applied to Nieto.

“The fact that [Nieto’s] message may be extremely offensive to some is not a sufficient basis for banning [his] decals,” Judge Howard wrote.

“While the military may have greater leeway in restricting offensive material in furtherance of securing order and discipline among its troops,” he said, “it may not do so in a manner that allows one message while prohibiting the messages of those who can reasonably be expected to respond.”

To Nieto, the fight was about more than just protecting free speech, Muise said. “Here is a Marine dad who lost his son to terrorists,” the lawyer said. “It is not just the First Amendment, for him it is more. For him it is the way he is mourning the loss of his son.”

Muise said the case was a result of “political correctness run amok” on a military base. “What is refreshing, is that the judge saw through this political correctness nonsense and applied the law straight up,” he said.

Reprinted with relish from the April 7, 2010, online issue of the Christian Scientist Monitor. Author is Warren Richey.

And a special thanks to the continuing good work emanating from the Thomas Moore Center in its legal fight and push back for free speech against the CAIR-backed Islamicists who seek to destroy the West from within.

Judge Malcolm Howard is also to be commended for his perceptive decision in the Nieto case. Seems simple, but in this poisonous PC multiculturalist environment, even the simple is being turned on its head in order to weaken in thetruggle against the advancing enemies of statism and Islam.

US ARMY SURRENDERS TO ENEMY, AGAIN

2010-04-23T08:09:00.000-07:00

Well, first he's in the background, then he's in the front,
Both eyes are looking like they're on a rabbit hunt.
Nobody can see through him,
No, not even the Chief of Police.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
—Bob Dylan

We live in a political world
Where courage is a thing of the past
—Bob Dylan

WHILE THE PENTAGON DUMPS on Franklin Graham, here's a clarifying article from the Washington Times which shows us who's running the show nine years after the atrocities of September 11...

Since all of Guantanamo's inmates, mirabile dictu, happen to be members of the same famed band of Muslim extremists, the Army has seen fit to distribute Korans. So far, so good, I guess. But the Army doesn't just distribute its Korans like any other religious book. That is, the Bible may get passed around, rifled through, dropped, tossed and stuffed into hotel room drawers. But not the Koran. According to Army policy, the standard operating procedure is: "Handle the Koran as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art."

What's going on here? By official order, a whole lot of "respecting the dignity of the Koran." According to Section 6-5-c(3), should a Koran need to be removed from a detainee's cell—you know, carried somewhere—and the detainee is personally unable to move it (best option), and the Muslim chaplain, librarian and interpreter are also unable to move it (second-best option), then the U.S. Army guard, as a very last resort, may take action—but only "after approval by the DOC (who notes this in the DIMS)."

Then the insanity really begins. The guard is directed to don "clean gloves ... in full view of the detainees prior to handling." He must use "two hands ... at all times when handling the Koran in a manner signaling respect and reverence." Why "respect" alone isn't abundantly sufficient isn't mentioned. While signaling two-handed respect and reverence, however, the guard must be mindful that "care should be used so that the right hand is the primary one used to manipulate any part of the Koran due to the cultural association with the left hand."

It goes on. There's more "reverent manner," more instructions for conveying the book inside a "clean, dry detainee towel." The cockeyed picture is clear. But it doesn't explain what's going on.

At first glance, this scene may seem to exemplify a bizarre excess of good manners, an absurdly obsequious respect for a largely foreign faith. Since when does the United States specifically direct its soldiers to show two-handed "reverence" in the handling of any religious book? But it seems to me that there's more behind this charade. The "clean gloves" and "detainee" towels are the tip off. The fact is, under Islamic law, non-Muslims are deemed unfit to touch the Koran. That much is generally known. What is not usually considered is the reason: According to the Islamic law, we are unclean.

The term is "najis." On the multilingual Web site of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric, there is a catalogue of Islamic laws (www.sistani.org). This includes a list of "najis things." There are 10, beginning with an assortment of excretions and body fluids—obvious stuff that really shouldn't need special mention. On the "najis" list with urine, feces, etc., are the pig, the dog and the "kafir." That means the Christian, the Jew, the unbeliever in Islam—and chances are, the Gitmo guard.

In effect, then, with its official policy of clean gloves and detainee towels, the military is promoting, enabling and accepting the Islamic concept of najis—the unclean infidel—a barbarous notion that has helped fuel the blood lust of jihad and the non-Muslim subjugation of dhimmitude. Our soldiers are many things: self-sacrificing, bold, loyal and true. They are not unclean.

Is this political correctness run amok? Not exactly. It's something else again, a new threat from within that needs vigilant redress. PC is about victimology, the elevation of perceived victim groups to the canonical pantheon. The Gitmo rules are more blatantly about surrender, a voluntary, self-extinguishment, a spreading condition of denial of what is right and worth standing for. Not what you expect from the United States Southern Command.

One doesn't have to be a Franklin Graham or even a Jesus Christ fanatic to recognize that this unfortunate move by the Pentagon only fuels the taqiyya-inspired oil-financed Islamic ascendancy increasingly marked by bolder and bolder encroachments into weakened kafir territories witnessed globally, territories crippled with jihad.

Mr. Graham is nobody's fool. We can applaud his unapologetic stance in choosing truth and love over submission to the duplicitous and wicked death cult as Islamic forces slither its power tentacles into every nook and cranny it seeks to paralyze, torture, and dominate with its sharia impulses...

What is the purpose of pretending that Christianity with all its faults is not diametrically opposed to Islam with all its faults. There's no reason to extrapolate here again what we can only interpret as pure evil, given the historical record, and as the History Channel puts it, history being made every day.

Muslims? Dunno. I'll take them as I find them, but with a strong dose of caution, not so much with a wink but with a scowl. Humans are the hardware. Ideology is the software, Evil gets its juice from many dark places? But in the case of the Religion of Peace, it's the ideology, stupid.

We don't have to return to the Inquisition days when bad acts were performed in the name of Christianity. The contrast between modern Christianity and Islam couldn't be more stark. Right now, this very day, tens of millions of Muslim women and young girls, and in some places, young boys, live in terror of the men of Islam.

Muslim females are subjected to unbelievable oppression while being treated as little more than chattel. Islam, as practiced every single day across the planet, sanctions female genital mutilation, honor killings, public flogging of women, and many more brutal, disgusting and degrading acts against women and children. All religiously and tribal sanctioned, without question for over 1400 years.

These terrifying acts against their own families and tribesmen are not anomalies. There is no freedom of choice, or protection by the law. This terror is the law, sharia law, the deeply ingrained by-product of a sick and perverted cult founded by a sick and perverted warlord from the seventh century.

The veracity of our time is the current struggle between Islam and the Western world where Judeo-Christian principles are dominant. All religions are not equal and are certainly not deserving of equal respect.

Our moral codes originated in religion. The Western world owes an immense debt of gratitude to the Judeo-Christian tenets which undergird our societies and way of life. Life is always a work in progress.

Look at how Muslim infiltration into Great Britain and France has divided those countries. Radical Islam must not be allowed to establish a beachhead in the United States. We should be comforted instead by the belief that most Americans would fight to the death to stop this madness disguised as the perfect religion called Islam. The election of Barack Obama and his shape shifting radical policies has placed our nation at the greatest peril we have faced to date as a free nation, bar none. May God be with us.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred

It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred
—Bob Dylan

You talk about day
I'm talking 'bout night time
When the monsters call out
The names of men
Bob Dylan knows
And I bet Alan Freed did
There are things in night
That are better not to behold
—Marc Bolan

ALAN KEYES SPEAK AT DAYTON TEA PARTY

2010-04-20T13:43:00.000-07:00

DR. ALAN KEYES IN ROUSING SPEECH taunts crowd to leave the comforts of yesterday and stand up against those who would seal their fates by trampling on the US Constitution...

PARSING THE FAILED STATE CONUNDRUM

2010-04-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

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.
—Bob Dylan

"Politics should be the part-time
profession of every citizen who would
protect the rights and privileges of free
people and who would preserve what is
good and fruitful in our national heritage."
—Lucille Ball

Another formidable essay by Hugh Fitzgerald at Jihad Watch...

FOR SEVEN YEARS, SUCCESSIVE American administrations have squandered men, money, materiel, morale (both civilian and military) in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan, wars whose goals—something to do with keeping or making these places unified, prosperous, and above all, preventing them from becoming "failed states" (a strange new and fashionable phrase, that is never defined but simply employed as if its significance were obvious) because then, you see, it doth follow as the night the day that as "failed states" they will become putty in the hands of Al Qaeda, which will move in, lock stock and barrel, and the United States will be unable to do a thing about it, then or at any time in the future.

Meanwhile, Muslims attack and kill non-Muslims in the southern Philippines and southern Thailand; the ISI-backed terrorist groups, slightly quieter after the Mumbai murders, have not been disbanded or weakened in any way by the Pakistani military; the zamindars and generals still share power and still exhibit the same sly meretriciousness toward the Americans as they inveigle ever greater amounts of military equipment, and money, and keep on producing weapons-grade plutonium, that is essentially paid for by American taxpayers. Saudi Arabia continues to spend its tens of billions all over the world paying for mosques, madrasas, campaigns of Da'wa, and propaganda churned out, in part, by armies of Western hirelings, some directly and some indirectly employed on behalf of Saudi Arabia and Islam; in American universities Muslims hire and promote each other, or the occasional non-Muslim willing collaborator, in academic departments devoted to the Middle East or to Islam, and in some Ivy League schools, there have been disturbing reports as to how one or two Muslim faculty members can prevent any open discussion of Islam in its historical context, or subject it to scholarly (i.e., unworshipful) study, and they can do this, sometimes, by even threatening to call on local Muslims to enforce such a ban.

The peoples of Western Europe are now enduring, or suffering, the consequences not of undifferentiated "immigration" but. rather, of Muslim immigration—and the American press hardly begins to touch this topic, to sink beneath the surface of things, and everywhere, the indigenous Europeans regret bitterly the heedlessness of their own political and media elites in allowing in so many Musims over just a short time—the last 20-30 years—and the fact that, because of this large-scale Muslim presence, life for those indigenous non-Muslims who live in societies,and countries, created entirely by non-Muslims (and none of their artistic, literary, musical achievements or political and religious freedoms for one minute conceivable under Islam), has become far more unpleasant, unsettled, expensive, and physically dangerous than would be the case without that large-scale Muslim presence.

The West does not have to squander trillions in these idiotic ventures to save Muslim states and societies from the consequences—political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral—of Islam itself. Indeed, it should not do so. And the fact that so many European countries are now unwilling to contribute to the American Building-the-Bridge-Over-the-River-Kwai project, one that is being conducted by the military who are given a task, but whose highest officers are apparently unwilling to question the efficacy and sense of that task, should give one pause. Why, for example, do those, such as Geert Wilders, who sense most keenly the danger of Islam infiltating and encroaching from within, are the least keen on sending soldiers to Afghanistan, to engage in what they rightly recognize as a snare, and a delusion?

Those countries that are part of the West, or part of the Rest—for the world-wide Jihad is a war of Islam against not the West but against All the Rest, and its ideological promptings are those contained in the Immutable and Uncreated Qur'an, as supplemented or glossed by the Hadith and the Sira, the sayings and deeds and biography of that Perfect Man, Muhammad—need to figure out what Islam, taken straight up and not on the rocks, not diluted by local custom or the ability of some Muslims not to take to heart what the texts teach (though at any point anyone still calling himself a Muslim may revert to that old-time religion, the faith straight up, with dangerous consequences for non-Muslims)—means, and intelligently construct a defense that relies mostly on allowing the pre-existing fissures—sectarian, ethnic, economic—within the Camp of Islam to widen, merely by doing nothing to prevent this.

And the other task—the one that is shown in the colossal failure, over many years, to deal effectively with the nuclear project of the Islamic Republic of Iran—is to make sure that no Muslim state, no Muslim group, no Muslim groupuscule, anywhere in the world, gets its hands, in posse or in esse, on weapons of mass destruction. It should by now be obvious that nothing except military force will stop the Islamic Republic of Iran in its determination to acquire nuclear weapons. Those who did not read what Ayatollah Khomeini wrote, and who thus abandoned the Shah and accepted Khomoeini's ascent to power— what worse group could one imagine being in control of American policy toward Iran than Gary Sick, William Miller (an early promoter of Khomeini), Zbigniew Brzezinski (that fake "realist" so ignorant of Islam and so determiinedly hostile to Israel), Jimmy Carter (ditto, but with an added holier-than-thou belief in the sheer goodness of a "fellow man of faith"—as he addressed Khomeini in a letter)—have not been sufficiently mocked, and their recent ideological heirs, the ones who believe in diplomatic maneuvering and cajoling long after it has run its course, will regret that they did not deal with the nuclear project of the Islamic Republic of Iran when they could.

And it is intolerable as well—flabbergastingly foolish—for the Obama administration to have done everything they possibly can to discourage and prevent Israel, willing—as it has been so many times in the past (bombing the Osirak reactor and then the Syrian nuclear installation, forcing Syrian tanks back from Jordan so as to rescue King Hussein of Jordan, warning Arab rulers of terrorist plots against them).

It should be the United States, and not little Israel, that as a world power and leader—if it saw itself correctly—of those resisting Jihad, should be dealing with the Iranian nuclear project. The claim that this would "only set back the Iranians by a year or two" is unproven, and in any case silly. The mere demonstration of American willingness to destroy major parts of such a program would not result in a renewed effort by a now at long last chasteneed Islamic Republic of Iran, for if the Americans showed themselves willing to attack once, it would be clear that they would be willing to attack again, and in all kinds of places—the port of Um Qasr, for example, or destroying the Iranian navy in the Gulf, or aiding Kurds in northwestern Iran and in another pocket in northeastern Iran, and Arabs in Khuzistan, and perhaps even suggest to the Azerbaijan government that the Americans wouldn't mind, as they did in 1946 with the Red Army, an expansion into northern Iran, to "re-unify" the Azeri people. All kinds of things are possible, but the very idea that an attack on Iran's nuclear project could only be a one-time thing, and that there would be no effect on the Islamic Republic of Iran—which, if it does acquire nuclear weapons, will never be dislodged by its domestic opponents, some of whom at long last realize this, though they cannot openly call for a Western attack on the nuclear project lest they be accused of treason.

It's madness and if, in a year Iran does acquire nuclear weapons, even the folly of the Bush Administration with its crazed and messianic sentimentalism—and the way in which so many policy-makers allowed themselves to be inveigled by Shi'a exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi, and failed to grasp the nature of Iraq and what would inevitably happen—will seem not quite so bad, for the Obama Administration, prompted by a different kind of naivete, but exhibiting the same willful ignorance about Islam, will have outdone even the Bush Administration. And its entire foreign policy will be seen to have been idiotic, and lie in ruins. For some, that will be a grim consolation. For others, more sensible, it will be no consolation at all.

OFFENSIVE TO AGGRESSIVE LEFTISTS

2010-04-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

"I have a habit of comparing the phraseology
of communiqués, one with another across
the years, and noting a certain similarity
of words, a certain similarity of optimism
in the reports which followed the summit
meetings and a certain similarity in the lack
of practical results during the ensuing years."
—Margaret Thatcher

"Politics: A strife of interests masquerading
as a contest of principles. The conduct of
public affairs for private advantage."
—Ambrose Bierce

WITH REGARD TO THE RECENT UPROAR in Davenport, Iowa, where the town fathers in their mid-western wisdom decided to rename the traditional Good Friday to Spring Holiday, thus causing local and national outrage, columnist Dennis Prager has offered up a concise summation of what is a self-evident trend now creeping across America.

1. There really is a war against Christianity.

Leftism functions as a secular religion, and its adherents understand that the major obstacle to the dominance of leftist policies and values is traditional religion, specifically Christianity. With the demise of Christianity in Western Europe, leftist ideas and values came to dominate that continent. America, the most religious industrialized democracy, remains the great exception.

2. Why not abolish Christmas?

If a religiously diverse population and the separation of church and state demand abolishing government recognition of Good Friday, why not treat Christmas similarly and rename it "Winter Holiday"? This was asked of Mr. Hart, the Civil Rights Commission chairman. His response, in the words of ABC, shows the level of thought that is characteristic of the politically correct: "The commission, he said, discussed changing Christmas, but decided enough other religions celebrate Christmas, too. Hart, however, could not name one."

3. Civil-rights organizations are not about civil rights.

The ACLU and other left-wing organizations that have noble-sounding civil-liberties and civil-rights names have a problem similar to the one the March of Dimes had once polio was conquered: What to do now? Civil liberties and civil rights are extraordinarily well-protected in America. If the ACLU and the innumerable civil rights commissions ceased to exist, and a few smaller and politically neutral groups took their place, civil liberties in America would benefit. As is obvious from the Davenport example, these groups do not really function as civil-rights or civil-liberties organizations. They are organizations that promote left-wing agendas. And no leftist agenda is greater than minimizing the influence of Judeo-Christian religions, specifically Christianity, on American life.

4. Good Friday as an American holiday reminds Americans that this is a religious society.

Leftism opposes America's three great values – what I call the American Trinity (see, for example, my video on the American Trinity at prageruniversity.com) – "E Pluribus Unum," "Liberty" and "In God We Trust." The left uses diversity and multiculturalism to undermine E Pluribus Unum ("From Many, One"). It substitutes equality (of result) for liberty, and the powerful state for the powerful free individual. And it seeks, perhaps above all, to replace "In God We Trust" with a secular society and secular values. If it had a motto, it might be "In Science (or Secularism) We Trust." The elimination of Good Friday as an American holiday is just one more such battle in this war.

5. Non-Christians offended by Good Friday as an American holiday are narcissists.

The left tells us that non-Christians are offended by the government celebrating Good Friday. As a Jew, permit me to say that any non-Christian offended by Good Friday or Christmas gives new meaning to the word "narcissist." To seek to erase the name Good Friday is an exercise in self-centeredness and ingratitude that is jaw-dropping. We non-Christian Americans live in the freest society in human history; it was produced by people nearly every one of whom celebrated Good Friday, and we have the gall to want to rename it?

6. PC (Political Correctness) should be renamed OTL (Offends the Left).

Most Americans will characterize the Davenport attempt to rename Good Friday "Spring Holiday" as political correctness. That it is. But the term itself is politically correct. Like everything PC, the term itself hides its true meaning, which is leftism. Political correctness is invariably produced by the left. The term, therefore, should not be PC; it should be OTL, "Offends the Left." It is very unfortunate for America that it isn't. Americans would have much greater clarity as to the Second Civil War now taking place – from San Francisco to Boston to, yes, Davenport, Iowa.

Mr. Prager's six point firing line spotlights precisely why the Left remains so fond of Islam. Both ideologies consistently pretend to be easily offended while simultaneously playing the "superiority" and "victimhood" cards.

The American political scene and each of the thousands of well-documented Muslim sharia and jihadist atrocities spanning the globe by both US allies and US enemies that—under duress of policy—are routinely ignored by the so-called mainstream media, bear witness to this fact.

This dualistic morality is further corrupted when these players also exhibit absolutely no self-consciousness much less remorse at the outrage and the offense they level at those with whom they disagree.

If you doubt these assessments laid out against the backdrop of the recent FBI arrests of so-called Christian militia up in Michigan, I suggest we talk turkey.

OOPS, LET'S TRY THAT REVOLUTION AGAIN

2010-03-24T11:09:00.000-07:00

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out?
—John Lennon

"Life is a corrupting process
from the time a child learns to play
his mother off against his father
in the politics of when to go to bed;
he who fears corruption fears life."
—David Saul Alinksy

The function of socialism is to raise
suffering to a higher level.
—Norman Mailer

IT'S A WONDERFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, but don't ask me about the details. That would take too much time away from the problems still at hand. Here's what we have in mind—a nice slice if argumentative heaven, as one rugged individualist to another. As some might say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I..."

Q: But aren't Anarchists just socialists?

A: In a greater sense, yes. Anarchists like Benjamin Tucker and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon were both Anarchists and socialists. Today, however, when one hears another refer to himself as a “socialist,” what the other person usually means is, “state-socialist.”

Though the difference seems to be lost in translation between Anarchists, socialists, and outsiders, it remains an important one to distinguish. As Ernest Lesigne, a French Anarchist of the 19th century, put it, There are two Socialisms and we here at the Two-Fisted Quorum have got both their numbers.

One is communistic, the other solidaritarian.
One is dictatorial, the other libertarian.
One is metaphysical, the other positive.
One is dogmatic, the other scientific.
One is emotional, the other reflective.
One is destructive, the other constructive.
Both are in pursuit of the greatest possible welfare for all.
One aims to establish happiness for all, the other to enable each to be happy in his own way.
The first regards the State as a society sui generis, of an especial essence, the product of a sort of divine right outside of and above all society, with special rights and able to exact special obediences; the second considers the State as an association like any other, generally managed worse than others.
The first proclaims the sovereignty of the State, the second recognizes no sort of sovereign.
One wishes all monopolies to be held by the State; the other wishes the abolition of all monopolies.
One wishes the governed class to become the governing class; the other wishes the disappearance of classes.
Both declare that the existing state of things cannot last.
The first considers revolutions as the indispensable agent of evolutions; the second teaches that repression alone turns evolutions into revolution.
The first has faith in a cataclysm.
The second knows that social progress will result from the free play of individual efforts.
Both understand that we are entering upon a new historic phase.
One wishes that there should be none but proletaires.
The other wishes that there should be no more proletaires.
The first wishes to take everything away from everybody.
The second wishes to leave each in possession of its own.
The one wishes to expropriate everybody.
The other wishes everybody to be a proprietor.
The first says: ‘Do as the government wishes.’
The second says: ‘Do as you wish yourself.’
The former threatens with despotism.
The latter promises liberty.
The former makes the citizen the subject of the State.
The latter makes the State the employee of the citizen.
One proclaims that labor pains will be necessary to the birth of a new world.
The other declares that real progress will not cause suffering to any one.
The first has confidence in social war.
The other believes only in the works of peace.
One aspires to command, to regulate, to legislate.
The other wishes to attain the minimum of command, of regulation, of legislation.
One would be followed by the most atrocious of reactions.
The other opens unlimited horizons to progress.
The first will fail; the other will succeed.
Both desire equality.
One by lowering heads that are too high.
The other by raising heads that are too low.
One sees equality under a common yoke.
The other will secure equality in complete liberty.
One is intolerant, the other tolerant.
One frightens, the other reassures.
The first wishes to instruct everybody.
The second wishes to enable everybody to instruct himself.
The first wishes to support everybody.
The second wishes to enable everybody to support himself.
One says:
The land to the State.
The mine to the State.
The tool to the State.
The product to the State.
The other says:
The land to the cultivator.
The mine to the miner.
The tool to the laborer.
The product to the producer.
There are only these two Socialisms.
One is the infancy of Socialism; the other is its manhood.
One is already the past; the other is the future.
One will give place to the other.
Today each of us must choose for the one or the other of these two Socialisms, or else confess that he is not a Socialist.

TWO AMERICAN MUSLIMS

2010-03-21T06:19:00.000-07:00

FINALLY, a well-written open letter from an American Muslim to an active and influential American-born jihadist, now fled to viper pit of Yemen, the latter most recently connected to the Christmas bomber and the Fort Hood assassin.

No, Anwar, this country it is not evil. It is you who is evil and this nation and its people who are blessed. This nation gave my family the freedom and liberty to practice Islam in a way that no majority Muslim nation has ever allowed. I was raised learning to pray, fast, give charity, build mosques, and help those in need in the character of my faith as a result of the free environment of this United States. I learned this despite the repulsive nature of imams like yourself who drive so many reasonable Muslims away from the faith and so many weak and vulnerable ones towards your fascism.

My parents fled the radicalism of theo-political fascist thugs like you in the Middle East in order to give our family a fresh start in the land of freedom—America. I have throughout my life in my soul accepted spiritual Islam as my relationship with God; however, I have also always wholly rejected political Islam because of its supremacist mindset which you embody.

Growing up in Wisconsin, learning to become a physician and then serving in our armed forces as a naval officer and a physician, I learned about the beauty of the diversity of America and the equal access of all of its citizens to our society and our government. I learned about the beauty of a government which separates church and state and yet was formed by very pious Christian and all people of faith but yet remaining “under God” as a nation of common morals and values. The United States is a nation which you intentionally misunderstand and twist for your own despotic ambitions.

You may believe that moderate Muslims like us at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy are apostates since we reject the Islamic state, political Islam, and governmental shar’iah. But I know Islam well enough to know that there are no intermediaries between a Muslim and God. Takfir (excommunication) is forbidden and you may also be a Muslim but your Islam is not my Islam. You are nothing but a fascist theocrat who uses Wahhabi interpretations of our Qur’an in order to wage illegitimate wars.

The wars of Iraq and Afghanistan are legitimate and are in fact waged with the intention of leaving a far better nation for Muslims and non-Muslims in the free practice of Islam and all faiths than the tyrant Saddam or the despotic Taliban ever did for their citizens which they considered their slaves. You intentionally ignore the representative forms of government being empowered in those nations so that you can deceive those who listen to your propaganda.

American troops are simply doing what Muslims should have done in Iraq and Afghanistan long ago. As a freedom-loving Muslim, I pray that the same revolutions for liberty happen from within the nations of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Jordan, the Emirates, and Pakistan to name a few led this time by civil wars from Muslim liberty movements against the thugs, monarchs, autocrats, and theocrats like yourself who are running these nations.

Read it all here

FRITZ SHOUTS IT FROM THE MOUNTAIN

2010-02-12T10:31:00.000-08:00

If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.
—Barack Obama

"Remember he is the same President that stated doctors would take out perfectly good tonsils because it would mean more money for them."
—Citizen Rain

ON OR ABOUT DECEMBER 18, 2009, former South Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings released this scathing essay on why all the jobs have evaporated in America:

Who is against jobs in the United States? The big banks, Wall Street, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Business Roundtable, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Retail Federation, Corporate America, the President of the United States, Congress of the United States. Everyone is crying for jobs, but no one seems to understand why there aren't any. And the reason for those opposing jobs is money.

Beginning in 1973, big banks made most of their profit outside of the United States. Industries off-shoring, investing, banks financing the investments, transfer fees, fees and interest on the loans made for bigger profits. Long since, the big banks under the leadership of David Rockefeller have led the way to off-shore and make a bigger profit. Goldman Sachs, AIG, Citicorp and Wall Street, conspiring for a bailout and now using it for bonuses, make more money from the off-shored operations.

The Council on Foreign Relations ought to be renamed the Council on Making Money. A recent PEW poll reported fully 85% of Americans said that protecting United States jobs should be a top foreign policy priority. But only 21% of the Council on Foreign Relations agrees. Financial interests organized the Business Roundtable to continue off-shore investment and profit. The local Chamber is for Main Street America, but Tom Donahue and the United States Chamber have sold out to the financial interests and oppose jobs and producing in the United States. Thirty years ago, hundreds of thousands of Arrow shirts produced in China were a best seller in the United States. But at Christmastime, the Chinese supply ran short and the retail stores had to order the same shirt from New Jersey. They made 20% less profit on the New Jersey shirt. Retailers are all for profit from imports and against domestic production and jobs in America.

Corporate America would fight any initiative by the President, the Congress, or the government to create jobs in the United States. That is, production that faces competition offshore. In globalization, U. S. production can't make a profit, can't survive. Its competition will off-shore the same article for a lesser price, putting you out of business. Moreover, Corporate America doesn't have to bother with labor in China. The China government controls labor and you don't have to worry about a work stoppage or minimum wage. All they have is a maximum wage.

And Corporate America doesn't have to worry with clean air and clean water or the environment in China. Nor does it have to worry with OSHA and all of its safety rules. Many times the factory building is furnished and you don't have to worry with capital costs. If you make a profit, you can just reinvest it in an additional operation and not have to pay any U. S. income tax. If the operation fails, walk away with no legacy costs. Corporate America bitterly opposes its government protecting and strengthening the U. S. economy because producing again in America will put the executives back to work. They can send a Jaycee to China to watch the quality control daily and sit on the 32nd floor on Sixth Avenue with the internet, keeping check, and, leaving early for a massage and drinks. With production in China they don't have to work.

As Commander-in-Chief, the President dithered for months over the number of troops. But he can't equip the troops except for the favor of a foreign country. The War Production Act of 1950 requires the President to make sure that we can produce in- country those articles necessary for our national defense. Enforcing this law would limit the campaign contributions. Under Section 201 of the trade laws, the President is supposed to take action, like impose tariffs or quotas, when a certain production is endangered. Not only endangered, our automobile production has been bankrupted. But all the President does is give Detroit bailout welfare. The President doesn't want to limit the campaign contributions.

The same with Congress. Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota long ago tried to allocate the tax incentive for foreign jobs and production to domestic jobs and production. The Business Roundtable and the U. S. Chamber fought it like a tiger and killed it.

As the President said in his West Point talk, there is fierce competition in international trade and globalization. All countries move to protect and build their economies while the United States goes out of business. The one advantage that the U.S. has is its richest market in the world. It is fast becoming the poorest market and the U.S. is losing any clout to maintain a strong economy.

The economy is in the hands of Summers, Bernanke and Geithner. Campaign contributions are in the hands of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel. The poor President is smart, diligent and working his head off campaigning. But he is inexperienced and not governing, and the Congress is in a Mexican standoff over an archaic filibuster rule that reveres democracy by the minority.

Of course, the media, which knows this and keeps it top secret, is owned by big business.

If I don't meet you in the breadline, my children will.

Merry Christmas!

And the always interesting James Nollet has this to add...

There seems to be an optimal size for self-government. Self-governing entities that are too large don't work well. The only way the USSR and Yugoslavia held together was by FIAT from a strong, centralized, authoritarian regime.

I hold that America has lost its capacity for responsible self-government. Electing Obama Osama is merely the latest in a long series of proofs of this contention.

Democracy in America was always an EXPERIMENT.

The experiment has run its course. The only thing that can now save the United States is an American Napoleon.

THE 28 PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY

2010-02-11T05:41:00.000-08:00

LOOK NO FURTHER. These 28 fundamental beliefs instituted in the Constitution for the United States of America by the Founding Fathers which they said and we confirm must be understood and perpetuated by every person who desires peace, prosperity, and freedom.

Sarah Palin on Glenn Beck...

“Who’d have thought a history buff with a quirky sense of humor and a chalkboard could make for such riveting television?” Palin wrote. “Glenn’s like the high school government teacher so many wish they’d had, charting and connecting ideas with chalk-dusted fingers—kicking it old school—instead of becoming just another talking-heads show host.”

WINTER STORM 2010

2010-02-10T10:25:00.000-08:00

AS I WENT OUT THIS MORNING to survey the snow job of a lifetime, I wondered about the historical storms of the DC-Virginia area. Fortunately, I quickly found a Virginia state government page on Al Gore's internationally acclaimed Internet—now fluffy and thick with information.

Global warming? Well, yes and no.

THE CULT OF DISAPPOINTMENT

2010-02-03T06:49:00.000-08:00

THOSE WHO VOTED FOR POTUS Obama have not walked away from him. Those who voted against him were never in the room. Those who voted against George Bush and Hank Paulson and the cranky, weary, predictably puckish John McCain are newly persuaded that there was no credible choice in 2008. The rookie or the train-wreck?

Fourteen months later, it is more clear that the Obamanation crowd chose their idea of the UnBush, and instead what they got was an UnAware. POTUS does not register how much polling trouble his party is in.

Those voters have now turned not into a big-hearted pumpkin awaiting their shining prince to carry them off into the Brave New World where no adults are allowed but into a steady drift of dead-eyed wanderers, perfectly ripened pickings for the ever so embracing cult of disappointment.

The red ink in the 2011 fiscal budget has ended all the dreams for Obamanation as well as the last-ditch McCainiacs. What remains is receivership, or something like it, reorganized Federal spending and paying off the debts without taking on new ones. The debts are the end of disappointment. Time to clean out the two-car garage called Congress.

Read it all.

WAS FORT HOOD A FALSE FLAG?

2010-02-02T07:47:00.000-08:00

By Chuck Baldwin [ November 20, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

BY NOW, VIRTUALLY everyone has read and reread the copious news accounts of the terrible shooting a few weeks ago at Fort Hood, Texas. This column will not attempt to add new details to what is already a highly scrutinized tragedy. However, I do want to pose three basic questions that, to me, are extremely glaring and, for the most part, absent from the discussion.

Question 1: Why were the soldiers not armed?

After all, this is a military base; more than that, it is an Army base that emphasizes the training and equipping of frontline, combat-ready soldiers. For the most part, these were not clerks or cooks; these were combat troops. Fort Hood is home to the 1st Cavalry Division (the largest Division in the Army). Troops stationed at Fort Hood have engaged the enemy in virtually every hot theater of war to which American forces have been deployed. In recent conflicts that means Somalia, Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Without a doubt, these are among America's bravest and best.

So, how is it that these intensely trained, disciplined, rugged, highly qualified warriors are not allowed to carry their own weapons on base? This makes about as much sense as the policy forbidding airline pilots from carrying their own handguns on board commercial airliners, or teachers not being allowed to carry their own handguns in the classroom. After all, judges are granted the authority to carry their own firearms into the courtroom. If we can trust lawyers, we should be able to trust soldiers, airline pilots, and teachers.

Question 2: If the federal government—including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, etc., with billions of dollars worth of technology; tens of thousands of snoops, spooks, and intelligence gatherers; and myriad Patriot Act-type laws—could not protect US soldiers on one of the most tightly secured and heavily guarded military installations in America, how can anyone in the country possibly not break out in cacophonous laughter when politicians tell us we need to surrender more liberties so that they might pass more laws to protect us crummy little peons? Or is it that, because Hasan was a Muslim, the politically correct nincompoops in charge gave him a pass?

Consider: we have learned that the shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, had attempted to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda; that numerous classmates of Hasan had reported his anti-American views, which, according to a column written by Dennis Prager, "included his giving a presentation that justified suicide bombing and telling classmates that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution"; and that Hasan had a long history of pro-Islamic, anti-American activity. All of which begs an answer to the question, How could such an individual not only be allowed in the US military, but also be allowed to advance to the rank of Major?

I think most of my readers have the answer to this question figured out: we have an out-of-control, politically correct federal government that only senses danger from conservatives, libertarians, Christians, pro-lifers, Tea Party protesters, and anti-UN, anti-IRS, pro-Second Amendment activists—and supporters of Ron Paul and Chuck Baldwin, of course. To this politically correct federal leviathan today, anti-American jihadists, militant Black Panthers, or illegal aliens who have committed felonious crimes in Mexico pose no risk to anyone, and must be "understood."

As Prager quotes NPR's Tom Gjelten: since Hasan had never been in combat, he must have suffered from "pre-traumatic stress disorder." No, I'm not kidding. That's what he said. (I'll pause while you pick yourself up off the floor from laughing.)

To the politically correct crowd running things in Washington, D.C., anyone coming from a socialistic, Big Government, or anti-American point of view is harmless, and anyone coming from a conservative, Christian, constitutional, or pro-American point of view is dangerous. Can one imagine how the mainstream media, federal police agencies, and the Southern Poverty Law Center would have reacted had Hasan shouted "Jesus is greatest!" instead of what he really said, "Allah is greatest!" right before opening fire?

If one rejects the notion that political correctness favoring Muslims (and every other minority in the United States) had anything to do with the Fort Hood shooting, then we are back to the original question: If the federal government—including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, etc., with billions of dollars worth of technology; tens of thousands of snoops, spooks, and intelligence gatherers; and myriad Patriot Act-type laws—could not protect US soldiers on one of the most tightly secured and heavily guarded military installations in America, how can anyone in the country possibly not break out in cacophonous laughter when politicians tell us we need to surrender more liberties so that they might pass more laws to protect us crummy little peons?

Are we now really supposed to believe that all these Patriot Act-type laws, which allow the federal government to trash the Constitution and Bill of Rights—and poke its ubiquitous and meddlesome nose into every corner and crevice of our lives—are actually doing anything to make us safer? You've got to be kidding! The only thing they are doing is stealing our liberties. If the Fort Hood massacre proves anything, it proves that.

Question 3: How could one man (with no combat experience) armed with only two handguns fire over 100 rounds (demanding he reload at least 3 times) into a crowd of scores and hundreds of fearless combat-trained warriors? I must confess: this is the question that bothers me the most.

According to the official story, Hasan was the only shooter, and he was allowed to fire at will into a crowd of America's finest warriors for at least 4 minutes, reloading at least 3 times, firing over 100 rounds of ammunition, killing 13 people, and wounding over 30—and was finally taken out by civilian police officers AFTER EXITING THE BUILDING. I've got to tell you: I cannot get my brain around this one.

Again, these soldiers are warriors. They not only know how to fight, they know how to fight unarmed. They are trained to risk their lives. They are trained to do whatever is necessary to take out the enemy. Had even a small group of soldiers rushed the shooter (especially if they came at him from multiple directions) there is no way that Hasan would not have been subdued—and most likely killed. Yes, a few of the on-rushers would have been hit, but Hasan could not have gotten them all. That is a fact! And yet, we are supposed to believe that Hasan was not only unmolested by soldiers inside the building, but he was allowed to leave the building entirely, and then get shot by civilian policemen? Again, this explanation makes absolutely no sense to me. None.

Initial reports said there were multiple shooters. If that was the case, the scenario is much more plausible. If multiple shooters had opened fire from various vantage points—especially if they had rifles—it would have made unarmed resistance extremely difficult. That scenario would make sense. The "one shooter with two handguns" explanation makes no sense.

I realize that no unarmed man wants to rush an armed attacker. Of course, some who would do so would probably die, but again, these are trained warriors. Furthermore, this was an all-or-nothing, kill-or-be-killed environment: something these men are trained for. If untrained civilian passengers on flight 93 on 9/11 could rush and thwart armed attackers on board a commercial airliner from a narrow aisle way and stop a hijacking—a task infinitely more difficult than for a group of highly trained professional soldiers outnumbering an attacker by scores or hundreds in a large building—tell me again how Hasan was able to open fire with only two handguns, kill and wound scores of people, and calmly walk out of the building unscathed? Again, this makes no sense.

Of course, all of the above is predicated upon the public accounts of the events being a truthful representation of what actually occurred. Which, after trying to comprehend the plausibility of what we are being told, is becoming increasingly difficult to believe. But then again, I haven't believed much that the federal government or major news media has told me since John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And I must say, this story serves only to further fuel my skepticism.

Former Libertarian candidate for US President Chuck Baldwin makes a compelling case that there is ALWAYS something more than "meets the eye" afoot with regard to the US response to this mullah-declared war for global control. The continued efforts to repolish the same tarnished mask of political correctness with every official response to an event of national security have worn a bit thin. Conspiracy theorists now seem to present a much clearer view, one that that jives with the facts with each new Islamic foil. How much longer can we hold this wobbling fixation on multicultural suicide together? Every day the news is packaged in reworked lies and old obfuscations. With an economy in the toilet, an educational system stripped of its purpose, and a seemingly permanent social glitch in our once cherished American pride, we must vigorously question our leaders who must surely know we cannot hold our breath from the stench of faux reality much longer.

WHEN IS CLASS WARFARE JUST PLAIN COMMON SENSE?

2010-01-28T07:25:00.000-08:00

CNBC POSTED A POLL on their "Squawk On The Street" module questioning whether one felt better about job security after hearing the President's SOTU speech last night. Here's one comment that struck a chord with me from a commenter called Youknowme:

I don't feel better about job security, but I do have more hope than I did a month ago. At least he's beginning the long road of reform that we need in compensation (because CEOs simply don't deserve 300 times more than they made 20-30 years ago). What are they, supermen? Last time I checked they need their middle managers and working class to run operations. Their so called "leadership" is incredibly inflated. I understand that having a competent CEO is important to the company's success but that doesn't mean that the CEOs now are 300 times better and smarter than the ones 20-30 years ago.

However, gimme a liddwe time here..im finkin...im finkin..and it's urting my widdle bwain...

A valid point, one I have been making for nearly two decades now. As much as I admire our "objectivist" philosopher for her vigorous stand against the pernicious methods and goals of the Communists, Ayn Rand just doesn't account for the perils of excessive greed or pure evil and the snarling matrices of aggressive fascism possible in her worldview, and of course this is due to the same flaw as other grand illusions, the flaw generally known as human nature. Man is simply not always as moral as our idealists would prefer. A quick glance at their own flawed lives should be enough to put the question of perfect morality to rest.

We all know by now it was the banks with grins and government nudging who created this financial mess, yet the individual players are paying few if any reciprocating personal penalties for these mistakes. This disconnect from the cause and effect realities dominating our own lives tends to exacerbate the irrelevancy most of us are feeling with regards to this administration.

The economy is frozen tundra, so it appears that the American people have yet begun to fight.

DEVALUE THE DOLLAR, KICKSTART AMERICA

2010-01-28T03:23:00.000-08:00

Dollar Devaluation To Fix The Great Recession
Frank Beck, Forbes Magazine, 12.09.08, 1:00 PM ET

What began as government social tinkering—with implied threats to banks and mortgage companies to extend home loans to even the most marginal of borrowers&@151;led to a greed-blinded mortgage banking business and the meltdown we are experiencing today. Now we are asked by the same congressional leadership to go along with taxpayer-funded bailouts of the very banksters who, while making millions, created the mess..

Despite the trillions of dollars already expended recapitalizing banks, there is very little, if any, progress to show. Will a few trillion more do the trick? That seems to be the consensus among Congress and the banks. "They are simply too big to let fail," or are they really just too big to save? We can go back to "Plan A" and buy the toxic assets. If so, at what price? What if a few trillion does not remove enough toxic waste from the system or doesn't get credit flowing again and the economy bustling?

Some argue that it is time to help Main Street, not Wall Street. So, we should "forgive" some of the mortgages for those who are 90 days or more behind on their payments. Have you quit paying yet?

If we are to save bankers, shouldn't we at least distinguish between those who possess the intelligence to renegotiate their loans to workable terms? If we are to save homeowners, should not we first define the term "homeowner?" Perhaps it is not only someone who agreed to and signed a mortgage and is living in a house. Just perhaps, it should also include the stipulation that this individual paid some amount of a down payment: 20%, 5%, a dollar. I can tell you who is not a homeowner. It is not someone who paid zero down and ridiculously low payments for two years; that, my friend, is a renter.

The problem with all these ideas is the money is only directed at those who created or benefited from the problems. Why not attack the situation in a manner that will benefit most everyone, an approach that has been successful before and, when compared to the current course, has little downside?

Here it is. Stand back. World currencies should be devalued overnight.

It can be done on a country-by-country basis, but a coordinated devaluation would work best. A devaluation of 30% would raise the dollar value of all assets by 43%. A $200,000 home with a $230,000 mortgage would become a $286,000 home with the same mortgage. Presto! The homeowner who was $30,000 upside-down now has $56,000 equity and a good reason to make his payments. Both the homeowner and the bank are immediately better-off.

It would even benefit those who purchased their homes responsibly, as the value of their homes would rise by the same 43%. The current course of throwing trillions of dollars at the culprits is without any benefit to those who acted responsibly.

Admittedly, this is not a solution without the price of inflation, but the inflation would be short-lived. The current course will ultimately cause massive inflation that cannot be accurately estimated, and it may not even solve the problem.

Currency devaluation proved effective in ending the Great Depression. In 1930, Australia was the first to leave the gold standard, immediately devaluing the aussie by more than 40%, and the economy quickly recovered. New Zealand and Japan followed suit in 1931, each with the same result. By 1933, at least nine major economies had enacted a devaluation of their currency by removing it from the gold standard, all of whom emerged from depression.

In 1933, through a series of gold-related acts, culminating in the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, America realized a dollar devaluation of 41% when the price of gold was adjusted from $20.67 per ounce of gold to $35 per ounce. America, like the others before, had its economy bottom and recover as a result. Of the larger economies, only the French and Italians continued to adhere to the gold standard, and their economies remained depressed until finally, in 1936, they allowed their currencies to devalue, and their economies then recovered.

I see no reason to believe we would have any different result today. Only debt would remain the same. All other assets would immediately be worth more (in nominal terms), whether it be a home, a stock, an ounce of gold or a used car. Bank balance sheets would immediately improve, as many loans would be moved from non-performing to performing status. Banks would be paid with devalued dollars, but they made millions creating the mess. The current use of government stimulus through the creation of dollars will certainly lead to a similar or worse devaluation, so this is likely a net gain for the banks too.

Businesses would instantly become more profitable, and workers' pay would increase, allowing each to pay their debts more easily, even while sending more tax dollars to Washington, without raising tax rates. As assets are sold, the capital gains would send even more taxes to Washington. States and locales would receive more revenue via sales and property tax, improving the fiscal condition of school districts and local governments. The national debt would effectively be reduced by the same 25%, giving future generations a chance. Combine the move with a congressional pledge to only raise the budget by half the devaluation, and we could be on track for a balanced budget and paying down the debt.

As the old Saturday Night Live skit said, "Think of inflation as your friend. Wouldn't you like to wear $1,000 suits and smoke $100 cigars?" I know I would.

Frank Beck is Chief Investment Manager of Capital Financial Group and ProPlayer Investing in Austin, Texas, an affiliate of Partnervest Securities of Santa Barbara, Calif. Mr. Beck may be reached at Frank@FrankBeck.com.

SHIT IN A BAG

2010-01-25T07:37:00.000-08:00

Get your shit in one bag."

Often a military term generally meaning, Stop foolin' around; get only the gear you need, put it in one bag, and let's go. If someone says your shit is in one bag but there is no bag around, you're being complimented.

So if you really want to know HOW to get your shit in one bag, here's the expert.

Someone asked the question concerning the ammunition strategy, "How many magazines is enough?" We thought it was an excellent question. Thanks to Doc for some solid advice.

I calculate the minimum number as 3x whatever my standard carry is for that particular firearm. For example, my daily carry gun is a G30. I (nominally) carry 3 magazines for it—one in the gun and two spares. So, my minimum for that gun is 9 magazines.

In reality, my wife has a G30 as well—so one would stock 18 magazines. And we often carry G21 mags (which fit) as the backup mags, so I have a minimum of 18 G30 mags, and 18 G21 mags.

As it happens, we have 4 G30's...so 36 G30 mags, and 36 G21 mags.

And we have 4 G21's...36 more G21 mags.

And as I said, those are minimum numbers. For my AR platforms, each one has at least 24 magazines. My M14's...21 each.

And so on.

We have a couple of FAL's...I bought 200 FAL magazines back when they were cheap (like a buck each). We also have a couple hundred G3 mags, for our PTR-91's, I got those at around $0.50 each. Since the mag is the most fragile part and crucial part of a weapon, it makes sense to stock up. Especially while we can.

It's clear some of us are serious weapons collectors.

JIHAD IN LITTLE ROCK SHOOTING

2010-01-22T09:40:00.000-08:00

As plain as day. But still our military intelligence corps stumbles all over itself trying to downplay the obvious. Such immense self-loathing in the broad and toothy face of an army of jihadists so cocksure of its own righteous endeavors, that every makeshift soldier we capture in vain usually sings chapter and verse like a canary before, during, and after an attack, precisely the reason why they are attacking.

Or they invent one on the spot from the latest headlines, knowing how much we the enemy will grieve over our own successes, knowing gleefully by heart the Qu'ran gives them carte blanche to kill the infidels just as a matter of manifest destiny as the West remains deaf, dumb, and moronic in dealing with its adversaries, like a drunken but broken empire already on its knees...

This fellow apparently was a slow learner.

MEMPHIS — A Tennessee man accused of killing a soldier outside a Little Rock, Ark., military recruiting station last year has asked a judge to change his plea to guilty, claiming for the first time that he is affiliated with a Yemen-based affiliate of Al Qaeda.

In a letter to the judge presiding over his case, the accused killer, Abdulhakim Muhammad, calls himself a soldier in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and calls the shooting “a Jihadi Attack” in retribution for the killing of Muslims by American troops.

“I wasn’t insane or post traumatic nor was I forced to do this Act,” Mr. Muhammad said in a two-page, hand-printed note in pencil. The attack, which he said did not go as planned, was “justified according to Islamic Laws and the Islamic Religion. Jihad — to fight those who wage war on Islam and Muslims.”

It remains unclear whether Mr. Muhammad really has ties to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which President Obama has said is behind the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an American plane by a Nigerian man.

But if evidence emerges that his claim is true, it will give the June 1, 2009, shooting in Little Rock new significance at a time when Yemen is being more closely scrutinized as a source of terrorist plots against the United States.

Mr. Muhammad, 24, a Muslim convert from Memphis, spent about 16 months in Yemen starting in the fall of 2007, ostensibly teaching English and learning Arabic. During that time, he married a woman from south Yemen. But he was also imprisoned for several months because he overstayed his visa and was holding a fraudulent Somali passport, the Yemen government said.

Under pressure from the United States government, Yemen deported Mr. Muhammad in late January 2009. But just four months after his return, Mr. Muhammad used a semiautomatic rifle to gun down two soldiers — Pvt. William A. Long and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula — while they were standing outside a military recruiting station in Little Rock, killing Private Long and wounding Private Ezeagwula.

Read it all.

STRAIGHT FROM LUDWIG VON MISES

2010-01-13T09:40:00.000-08:00

FOR A WELL-REASONED and well-written treatise on the virtues of property ownership as the salve for what curses us as a people in constitutional crises, check out this essay...

WORLD PEACE AT A GLANCE

2010-01-05T05:04:00.000-08:00

HAPPY 2010 WISHES to all our silent readers, and yes, we have them as our Live Feed attests, but thankfully few are the ones who actually waste theirs or our precious time begging to differ, or in announcing themselves in any number of other less tedious ways...

But in a slow kickoff of the new year of Two-Fisted Quorum (despite the plethora of pungent events of late of which the national media has covered in various degrees of detail), here are a few skewered bits that may have missed your perusal:

Congressional Democrats scheme to push universal voting rights...

China announces new restrictions on its own band of merry Muslims...

Top dozen "media scares" of the past ten years. And you say the conspiracy isn't real?

Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, inspired by a hard-hitting piece by Charles Krauthammer threw a crush punch at the Obama administration's mishandling of the recent terror attacks on US soil at Fort Hood and Detroit air space. One question Koch, a Democrat who supported Bush in '04 and Obama in '08, raised is why aren't we honoring those who brave men and women who stopped these two catastropes in their tracks? Where indeed?

So, let's piece together the few narrative threads we are offered by the mainstream media. Any Muslim who snaps and shows his true colors is merely an isolated case of an otherwise gentle soul getting his "buttons pushed" while those unfortunate enough to be caught red-handed with "terrorist ties" are part of some Tiny Minority of Extremists™ and surely not representative of mainstream Islam. So no matter how much regurgitated Qu'ran-speak is spewed out by Muslims, it is never representative of the whole. Must be a riot to have the mainstream media and western governments in one's hip pocket.

Ever wondered why you sometimes confuse "inalienable rights" with "unalienable rights" when pondering our Declaration of Independence? Read this for personal resolve. Note Jefferson's choice.

THE JIHAD DECADE COMETH

2010-01-03T10:50:00.000-08:00

Seems as if the gloves are off as we barrel toward Campaign 2010. From the American Thinker:

AS WE LOOK BACK on the past ten years, it is clear that we are now entering a post-American decade. How did it all go so wrong so quickly?

The year 2000 kicked off with the Democrat ruse of a "stolen election"—this from the racketeering party of ACORN—but thankfully, it was not stolen after all. George W. Bush took the reins, but soon thereafter came the culmination of all the Islamic attacks on the U.S. during the Clinton years. Islam's fatwa on the West during the Clinton administration came home to New York and Washington on September 11th.

And while the Bush Doctrine (you are either with us or against us) was the right approach, the well dressed jihadists that Islamists like Grover Norquist ushered into the White House after 9/11 managed to sabotage the best strategy to fight Islamic jihad. The cowboy swagger set against the whole fantasy about the hijacking of Islam and the "religion of peace" nonsense was irreconcilable. It confused people. And it led to the marginalization and even dismissals of brave men and women who evaluated and exposed the jihadist ideology in our government agencies.

Who can forget the case of counter-jihad expert Steve Coughlin, the Pentagon's most knowledgeable specialist on Islamic Law and jihad terrorism? The Pentagon ended the career of its most effective analyst at the behest of a Muslim aide, Hesham Islam, within the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. Islam scholar Andrew Bostom observed that Couglin's firing was symptomatic "of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global jihadism."

In February 2009, former Bush administration official Douglas Feith told me that that kind of rot is systemic. He recalled that an Office of Strategic Influence was created within his Pentagon office to fight the ideological war—but then "somebody leaked—well, leaked, no. No, somebody lied to the New York Times and gave a report saying that this Office of Strategic Influence was intending to lie to foreign journalists. And the New York Times ran a front-page story saying that. It caused a big imbroglio that resulted in the shutting down of this office. I don't think the U.S. government has recovered to this day from that fiasco, because every time anyone suggested creating an office to really deal with jihadist ideology in a systematic or strategic way at the Pentagon, people would say, oh, no, we are not going to have another Office of Strategic Influence problem."

And so the drip, drip, drip of jihad continued through the last decade. We became more paralyzed, impotent, and deceived. Meanwhile, the Leftist/Islamic alliance, a deadly marriage between the Democratic Party and their propaganda handmaidens in the mainstream media, engaged in daily beatings of Bush and his administration.

Removing Saddam Hussein was good. There is no way around that powerful truth. But why stop there? Removing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as well would have been even better. But Bush lost his mojo in 2006. The relentless pounding by the Left, Israel's halfhearted performance in the war with Hezb'allah in the summer of 2006, and the loss of the House and the Senate in November 2006 all contributed to the rout.

But what really led to the downfall of Bush's leadership was the falsity of his premise. He wanted to believe, like Condi and Powell and the soft diplomacy crowd, that Islam would negotiate with the West. Islam cannot negotiate. Yet still the West continues its pursuit of the impossible, despite great risk. This is a function of the Western mind. These people think it inconceivable that talk can't solve anything and everything, that war is an indelible part of the human condition. But it is. War is as much in the makeup of man as sex, food, art, love, all of it.

And wars must be fought. They will not disappear, but we will.

Of course, we know this. But the Left, our in-house enemy, demonizes any war that America chooses to fight. The egregious, horrible crimes of Mao, Stalin, bin Laden, Che, Lenin, Pol Pot, Ahmadinejad, et al, which are so heinous and so enormous, are in their terrible minds a historical footnote. They become cultural icons for the "radical chic." Cold-blooded monsters have co-opted our country.

And so successful was the Left at infiltrating our government, schools, and institutions that eight years after the most heinous attack on American soil, we elected an icon of our mortal enemy. A Kenyan, Indonesian, third-worldish boulevardier with as much understanding of the American experience as any foreign national. Don't call me a racist for calling him what he is—I am not interested in the color of his skin, but in the content of his character. His lack of experience in all relevant areas to the office of the president is breathtaking. And his bowing to Islam and our enemies worldwide is disastrous.

Bush's premise was false, but Bush was a patriot. Bush loved America, and he protected America, even if he refused to see the enemy for who and what it was. It was no accident that America was safe for eight years post-9/11. Eight years of safety is cracking apart now under a weak and pro-Islamic president. The jihadi attacks on America in 2009 were staggering. And it has only just begun. Dismantling the Bush protections against jihad and launching attacks on Americans, bloggers, tea partiers, town hallers, patriots, and vets is incomprehensible—and if I hadn't lived through it, I wouldn't believe it possible.

I pray that America examines the Left decade and takes stock. It was the appeasement of the Left that destroyed the foundations of this country. We must rebuild them. The advancement of Islam would never have been possible—could never have happened—without our surrender to the Left. The real war is against the Leftist/Islamic alliance.

This is a fighting year.

Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs website and is former associate publisher of the New York Observer. She is the author (with Robert Spencer) of the forthcoming book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America (Simon and Schuster).

PALIN ADDRESSES GRIDIRON CLUB

2009-12-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

IN A NOD to the intense interest in last year's Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin, the Gridiron Club’s board dropped a 100 year old rule—often violate—that comments made at the dinner were off the record and could not be reported. Instead, twittering was allowed, although not during speeches or songs. Palin tweets herself and noted in her dinner remarks that she had “the Twitter thing going.”

Palin was surrounded by reporters at the pre-dinner reception held on an evening when Washington was in the midst of an early snow storm. The former Alaska governor was dressed in a stylish black dress and carried what she told Chicago Sun Times correspondent Lynn Sweet was a purse made from an otter.

[The Gridiron Club, founded in 1865, is the oldest and most prestigious journalist organization in Washington DC. The annual Gridiron Dinner is attended by the media elite, at which the president is traditionally the speaker. This year, President Barack Obama was the first president to refuse to address The Gridiron Dinner since Grover Cleveland.

[Last night, Saturday December 5th, the black tie dinner at the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel had double the attendance of recent years—for instead of Obama, the speaker was Sarah Palin. The tradition of the dinner is that the speaker pokes fun at himself and the attendees. Sarah was such a hit there were dozens of the most liberal elite journalists in America laughing their heads off, many wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. Here's her speech. It is as clever as it is funny.]

Good evening. It's great to be in Washington. I am loving the weather [it was snowing]. I braved the elements and went out for a jog! Or, as Newsweek calls it, a cover-shoot. I feel so at home here in DC. I can see the Russian Embassy from my hotel room!

It's a privilege to be here tonight at the Washington DC Barnes & Noble. Tonight, I'll be reading excerpts from my new book. Perhaps you've heard of it? "Going Rogue."

Yukon wasn't sure if I'd go with that title and somebody suggested I follow the East Coast self-help trend and go with, "How To Look Like A Million Bucks...For Only 150 Grand."

Todd liked, "The Audacity of North Slope." [She nods to him as he's at the head table]

Hey, I considered not having a title at all. I've said it before, but you Beltway types just don't seem to get it. You don't need a title to make an impact. But anyway, let's get started.

I'll begin my first reading on Page 209.

It was pitch black when we touched down in Arizona late on August 27, 2008. The next morning we drove to John McCain's ranch in Sedona. John was waiting on the porch. Before he can say a word, I tell him, I'm quoting now,

"I know why I'm here, and I'm ready. But, I'm worried. The cost of credit protection for the largest U.S. banks is rising precipitously. Have you given any thought to the run on the entities in the parallel banking system? Do you realize the vulnerability created when these institutions borrow short term in liquid markets to invest long term in illiquid assets?"

John said, "you betcha!" I thought, "you betcha?" Who talks that way?

Well, sometimes you just have to trust your instincts. When you don't, you end up in places like this. Who would have guessed that I'd be palling around with this group? At least now I can put a face to all the newspapers I do read.

It is good to be here and in front of this audience of leading journalists and intellectuals. Or, as I call it, a death panel.

To be honest, I had some serious reservations about coming to visit your cozy little club. The Gridiron still hasn't offered membership to anyone from my hometown paper in Wasilla, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley Frontiersman. And my dad thought it was just a plain bad idea to leave the book tour for some football game.

He might have a point! [She waves to her parents at a table at the back of the room] Hi, Dad! Hi, Mom! They crashed the party, you know.

I've been touring this great, great land of ours over the last few weeks. I have to say, the view is much better from inside the bus, than under it!

But really, I am thrilled to be with you. And I'd like to thank the Gridiron for the invitation and Dick Cooper for his introduction.

To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, this has to be the most extraordinary collection of people who have gathered to viciously attack me since the last corporate gathering at CBS.

Despite what you have read, or more likely, despite what you have written, I do feel a real bond with all of you. I studied journalism, earned a communications degree and for a time only wanted to be a journalist. I was even a television sportscaster back home.

I'm guessing some of you probably got your start the exact same way... once there was television.

Let me get back to the book.

I know that many of you are still upset because I wouldn't play that silly Washington game. You know, the one where all of you read a book in its entirety, from the first page of the index to the last.

But think about it, because you actually had to read the whole book in the vain hope of finding your name, you now know all about Denali, mom, dad, ungulate eyeballs, slaying salmon on the Nushagak and Ugashik near Alegnigak, where we make agootak and moose chili!

You're welcome.

Still, I want to do something very special for this audience of Washington elite. So, I'll read from the index--which I chose not to include in the hardback. Would you believe me if I said I didn't include it because we wanted to save trees?

Under A we have...

Alaska, media not understanding. Pages 1-432.

Under B...

Biased media. Pages 1-432

And under C...

Conservative media. See acknowledgments.

I'll stop there.

I know this can be a long night, and as I understand it, we're going to break with a Gridiron tradition. Normally, the Democrat speaker would deliver a speech after me. But instead, John McCain's campaign staff asked if they could use that time for a rebuttal.

A lot has been made of a few campaign relationships. The closeness. The warm fuzzy feelings. John and I both agree all those staffers should just move past it. It's history.

Let's just say, if I ever need a bald campaign manager, it appears all I'm left with is James Carville.

I don't want to say that I've burned a bridge, but I know all about canceling a bridge to nowhere.

That Democrat speaker I referred to is, of course, the one-and-only Barney Frank. And I'm the controversial one?

Barney, the nation owes you and the government a debt. A huge, historic, unbelievable debt.

But, it's good to be here with you, Mr. Chairman. Because by Chairman, I don't just mean the House Financial Services Committee. As far as I can tell, Barney's also the Chair of AIG, CITI, and the Bank of America.

I don't want to say that the U.S. Government is taking over the role of the private sector, but I have to admit, on the flight here, thumbing through a magazine and looking at a photo of President Obama with the President of China, the person next to me pointed at it and said, "Hu's a communist."

I thought they were asking a question.

Still, when I see this administration in action, I can't help think of what might have been. I could be the Vice President overseeing the signing of bailout checks. And Joe Biden would be on the road, selling his new book, "Going Rogaine."

Speaking of books.... Did I mention mine? "Going Rogue" Makes a great stocking stuffer. Available now at a bookstore near you. Hey, I have to pay for my campaign vetting bill somehow.

Really, the response has been great. So I'll close by reading a final passage. Page 403:

...I've been asked a lot lately, "Where are you going next?'

Good question! Wherever I go I know that, as with anyone in the public eye, I'll continue to have my share of disagreements with those in the media. Maybe even more than my share. It will come as no surprise that I don't think I was always treated fairly, or equally.

But despite that, I respect the media very much. It's important. A free press allows for vigorous debate! And that debate is absolutely vital for our democracy. So as hard as it can sometimes be, we must all look past personal grievances.

We must move beyond petty politics. And we must allow these incredibly talented and hard-working women and men to ask the hard questions and hold us, and our government, accountable. Because their mission is as true as the sun rising over the Talkeetna and Susitna Mountains...

Okay—so none of that is actually in the book. Not a word.

But I do believe it! And I believe we live in a beautiful country blessed with so many different people who want the best for their children, families and for our great nation. I'm so proud to be an American.

And that is what I'll be talking about when I travel to where I'm headed. No better place than here to announce where I'm going. I'm going to Iowa! I'll be there tomorrow from noon to 3:00 pm at the Barnes & Noble on Sergeant Road in Sioux City. Come early. Long lines are expected.

Thank you everyone. God Bless the U.S.A!

BULB BUBBLE SET TO BURST POCKETBOOKS

2009-11-09T13:10:00.000-08:00

CALL IT GREENING RUN AMOK. Or, more forgivingly let's call it poor planning combined with petty penny pinching by a large greedy corporation with another bright idea that feels more like a swindle to consumers.

FirstEnergy, an Ohio utility, sent two $3.50 energy-saving compact florescent light-bulbs (CFLs) to customers, and then charged them $21 for the bulbs—whether they wanted them or not. According to news reports, the remaining $14 was to pay the utility back for the electricity customers would not be using because they had the new bulbs. But if customers don’t use the bulbs, or if they already have their own, they still have to pay the fee.

The scam program, which was set to begin October 12 but has been “postponed,” was FirstEnergy’s response to the state’s new energy law, which requires investor-owned electric utilities to reduce consumption by 22.2 percent by 2025. The bulb distribution was supposed to help FirstEnergy’s customers meet the new requirements.

FirstEnergy, which was a little startled by the outcry, pointed out that customers would save $60 over the life of the bulb. It was unclear if this figure was before or after the $21 fee. This isn’t the first such maneuver by a utility: about two years ago, Allegheny Power sent energy-efficient bulbs to its 220,000 Maryland customers without letting them know they would be footing the bill.

Bulb brohahas may become more frequent, as states require utilities to reduce consumption and/or use more renewable energy sources, which are typically more expensive. Critics have argued that such sweeping initiatives will raise costs and/or lower profits for utilities, who will then turn to their customers to make up the difference—some more gracefully than others. But if demand is reduced, should utilities really be repaid for the lost profits? Or should reduced consumption be seen as merely the cost of doing business in a more energy-conscious country? The issue is akin to Saudi Arabia’s demand that it be repaid for lost revenues, should oil consumption drop. In this country it’s called decoupling, and it’s a hotly debated topic. We at the TFQ call it madness, pure and simple.

FirstEnergy, headquartered in Akron, OH, is the nation’s fifth largest investor-owned electric system with 4.5 million customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. If the company sounds familiar, it might be because FirstEnergy was fingered in a massive East coast blackout in 2003. Failure by the company to adequately maintain transmission lines led to a cascade of outages that left millions without power for days.

These hidden fees are taxes by theft, and amount to grand larcency, and should be stopped! This is not capitalism, OR American pride, This is madness, greed gone pathological, pure and simple.

DRAWING CONCLUSIONS ON THE WALL

2009-11-08T13:18:00.000-08:00

LET US ENGAGE IN A SIMPLE thought experiment (an adaptation):

A young man erupts in rampage, shooting over 100 rounds into a crowded reception center on a military base, killing over a dozen and wounding many more. Afterwards, it is learned that the shooter was a soldier himself, a fairly high ranking officer in fact. It is also discovered that he has long held Nazi sympathies, and has posted on Neo-Nazi websites. Journalists uncover evidence that he had been distributing Nazi leaflets and copies of "Mein Kampf" on the morning of the attack. When the press finally gets around to interviewing survivors of the incident, they confrim that the shooter shouted "Heil Hitler" as he opened fire.

Given this forensic data would there be any question about whether or not the shooter's actions were ideologically driven?

Would the reportage weave a narrative of his supposed victimization, or would it raise alarms at the presence of avowed Neo-Nazis in our miltary ranks?

Would we be warned "not to jump to conclusions" by our political leaders, or would we be told to fear the threat of an oncoming wave of similar attackers spawned by right-wing radio?

Would his neighbors and superiors have been more likely to report his rantings to the authorities?

More than the attack of one lone jihadi, the answers to the above questions are the bullets that truly scare me...

Aside from the fact that when Muslims kill in the name of their religion and the first thing Muslims en masse (plus those useful idiots like Geraldo Rivera) then do is worry what sort of blowback will happen to them, while going "postal" to my knowledge has never been done in the name of Jesus, Yahweh, etc. These secular tragedies are not motivated by religious sentiments as are killings committed by Muslims the world over in the name of Islam. It's apples and oranges here.

As I've often opined, when the day comes again that Presbyterians, Lutherans, Buddhists, Jews or just about any group of believers but Muslims start committing heinous crimes in the name of their religion, I'll rethink matters on the ground. Until then, I observe only one religion out there that inspires people to kill in its name. You know which one. I know which one. Even many of the PC folks out there on the nip tuck know but won't even admit it to themselves. Stupid world.

NO TRANSPARENCY, NO SURRENDER

2009-10-23T04:21:00.000-07:00

Remember when the Left howled to know name for name who was being snuck into the White House for discussions on energy policy? Remember the rolling outcry when the Bush administration refused to reveal its guest list, presumably comprised mostly of Big Dirty Badass Oil reps?

Now, try to recall "Gentleman Jim" candidate Barack Obama's lofty but obviously bogus declaration of new White House transparency if he came to live there. Finally, let's return to Groundhog Day Reality in this Washington Times report...

THE WHITE HOUSE HAS TOLD Congress it will reject calls for many of President Obama's policy czars to testify before Congress—a decision senators said goes against the president's promises of transparency and openness and treads on Congress' constitutional mandate to investigate the administration's actions.

Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, said White House counsel Greg Craig told her in a meeting Wednesday that they will not make available any of the czars who work in the White House and don't have to go through Senate confirmation. She said he was "murky" on whether other czars outside of the White House would be allowed to come before Congress.

Miss Collins said that doesn't make sense when some of those czars are actually making policy or negotiating on behalf of Mr. Obama.

"I think Congress should be able to call the president's climate czar, Carol Browner, the energy and environment czar, to ask her about the negotiations she conducted with the automobile industry that led to very significant policy changes with regard to emissions standards," Miss Collins said at a hearing Thursday that examined the proliferation of czars.

The debate goes to the heart of weighty constitutional issues about separation of powers. The president argues that he should be allowed to have advisers who are free to give him confidential advice without having to fear being called to testify about it. Democrats and Republicans in Congress, though, argue that those in office who actually craft policy should be able to be summoned to testify because they do more than just give the president advice.

At issue are the 18 positions Miss Collins says Mr. Obama has created since he took office. Of those, she says 10—the White House says eight—are in the executive office and not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests or requests for testimony.

Read it all.

Washington continues to beg a single question.

After candidate George W. Bush's promise never to commit American fighting forces to foreign nation building tasks back during the 2000 campaign run against sitting Vice-President Al Gore, coupled with his adminsistration's own penchant for high secrecy even when hosting important but non-life-threatening strategy sessions such as the notorious energy policy sessions. The question:

Will Americans ever again elect an honest administration to help turn this great nation back from the brink once we have truly articulated an intelligent posture on what kind of nation we seek to be?

That's considerably too much to ask of a nation in constant change, I realize. The two myths of America are greater than the sums of its parts, but the reality of both is unfortunately far less than all that, quoth the raven.

First of all, we might consider ourselves fortunate in getting a good start and setting a good example by simply electing leadership that practices what it preaches. That sounds promising and of good faith, but don't we hear this same "I'm more honest than my opponent" speech in every jurisdictional race around the country from dogcatcher to POTUS every two to four years?

Are American voters as foolish as they seem, or does the system itself, the system as we know it, the sprawling scrawling now choking system made complex beyond a single candidate's or voter's comprehension some 230 years after its founding, encourage, and in fact DEMAND, the Big Lie?

That's a scary thought, but it seems to be increasingly true. Most other more colorful, more tainted types of candidates for high office are marginalized as fringe or unelectable, even though they may very well carry within them the attributes of a capable and even admirable leader. But we reject them as less than perfect, less than diligent, less than honorable. Is this because we imagine that our leaders must meet a higher standard than that to which we hold ourselves?

However, if we are to be diligently honest with ourselves as plain citizens and immaculate voters beckoned to the audacious booth from innumerable pathways to the present case, we might begin to realize that there might possibly be many more candidates who should meet our criteria to help dilute our own hypocrisies about our own elected bodies. Because is it not true that we voters, in unbelievable proportions, would only make fringe and unelectable candidates ourselves, the great unwashed tainted beyond all doubt with our own peculiar sins and pursuits and responsibilities ?

That's why we hide in the shadows of the voting booth. Or flounder in civil apathy, tending to avoid most of the issues facing us as a people, as a good neighbor, as an American patriot, only picking one or two hot button issues in our community lives to inform ourselves enough to stake a claim in its resolution. And it is at this point we voice our opinions. It is at this point we feel our opinion trumps those of those with whom we disagree, for whom we may have cast a vote. Suddenly we become the candidate of honesty, of truth, of passion, of resolve, of leadership. No matter that we beat the dog. No matter that we cheat on our taxes, or overcharge for our services. No matter that we had a adulterous love affair last year. Our hypocrisy, just like the hypocrisy that sits in an elected office, knows no bounds. Suddenly we are charmed enough by what we deem as critical circumstances to feel our vote and our voice count for something. After all, we pay their salaries, dammit. Hell, we pay for everything that's ever been done, and we want our money's worth...

But of course, it has long been detected that the backroom behavior of these dutifully elected officials is not much better, and often much worse than the moral turpitude we exercise in our own lives. Values? In flux, dear, always in flux. But that's okay we say as we admonish ourselves once the initial firestorm has passed, and wasn't enough to drive them from office already. We forgive them after a good public spanking since they are so learned, handsome maybe, most assuredly rich. It is for these reasons they deserve our support, not because they are any better at doing there jobs as we are at our own, or as we could be in doing theirs.

So while we feel obliged to judge others who actually may or may not meet our moral standards to any greater degree than we might meet or fail them ourselves, we are in effect judging those seasoned politicians who obviously have more information at their disposal than we part-time patriots do. Isn't that their job? We always want it both ways.

But if they can't explain their job to us without lying, why are they in that position in the first place?

How stupid and irrational is this behavior? But the pattern never changes. We continue to vote the same earmarked scoundrels back into office, even after their lofty lies, outright hoaxes, and squandered opportunities have been revealed. We continue to decide elections often based on frivolous distinctions of honor and honesty, only to have those distinctions smeared into oblivion within a few tracks of the first term. We like to pride ourselves on thinking outside the box in our many endeavors, yet we continue to refuse relative newcomers who wander onto the political scene from any other mold than the ones we have been trained to respect.

I think something needs to change in this country, and it has nothing to do with a candidate's penchant for stretching the truth into an outright lie. My patriotism is not silly putty.

Oh yes, the two myths of America I mentioned above.

That's the Good America of Christopher Columbus, George Washington, The Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, The Greatest Generation, MLK, and Barack Hussein Obama, and then there's the Bad America of pretty much the same elements, just flipped in their moral perspective. It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, I have always and will continue to subscribe to the Good America meme.

Apparently, that puts me on the fringe. Don't worry, fellow Americans, I'll learn to live with it.

THE THIN VENEER

2009-10-19T05:54:00.000-07:00

In his article—Confessions of a Cultural Drop-out—published by Pajamas Media, Victor Davis Hanson slays the huffing and puffing dragon of popular culture. His last few paragraphs begin with eerily the same language I just this past weekend used to describe my own general malaise which can also be summarily dismissed as simple aging by those who, in Kierkegaard's terms, simply refuse to make distinctions , so I start here...

A FINAL, ODD OBSERVATION. As I have dropped out of contemporary American culture and retreated inside some sort of 1950s time-warp, in a strange fashion of compensation for non-participation, I have tried to remain more engaged than ever in the country’s political and military crises, which are acute and growing. One’s distancing from the popular culture of movies, TV, newspapers, and establishment culture makes one perhaps wish to overcompensate in other directions, from the trivial to the important.

Lately more than ever I try to obey the speed limit, overpay my taxes, pay more estimates and withholding than I need, pay all the property taxes at once, pick up trash I see on the sidewalk, try to be overly polite to strangers in line, always stop on the freeway when I see an elderly person or single woman with a flat, leave 20% tips, let cars cut me off in the parking lot (not in my youth, not for a second), and patronize as many of Selma’s small businesses as I can (from the hardware store to insurance to cars). I don’t necessarily do that out of any sense of personal ethics, but rather because in these increasingly crass and lawless times, we all have to try something, even symbolically, to restore some common thread to the frayed veneer of American civilization, to balance the rips from a Letterman attack on Palin’s 14-year-old daughter or a Serena Williams’ threat to a line judge, or the President’s communication director’s praise of Mao, civilization’s most lethal mass murderer, or all of what I described above.

I don’t fathom the attraction of a Kanye West (I know that name after his outburst), a David Letterman, Van Jones, Michael Moore (all parasitic on the very culture they mock), or the New York Review of Books or People Magazine (they seem about the same in their world view). So goodbye to all that.

Horace called this reactionary nostalgia the delusion of a laudator temporis acti, the grouchy praiser of times past for the sake of being past. Perhaps. But I see the trend of many ignoring the old touchstones of popular entertainment and life as a rejection of establishment culture—a disbelief in, or utter unconcern with, what elites now offer as valuable on criteria that have nothing to do with merit or value. I was supposed to listen to Dan Rather because Murrow once worked for CBS? I am to go to the Cinema 16 because Hollywood once made Gone With the Wind or On the Waterfront?

I don’t particularly like the idea that I want little to do with contemporary culture. But I feel it nonetheless—and sense many of you do as well.

But don't neglect reading it all..

RETURN OF THE BIRTHERS

2009-10-12T07:44:00.000-07:00

AFTER FIRST OBSERVING the notorious "birther" movement back in July, 2008, long before many in the nation had tuned into the election, even before the financial crisis finally broke, which I anticipated atop the formidable shoulders of others here and here and here, there is finally a break in the courts for the "eligibilty to serve" suit to get heard.

In what could prove to be a turning point in the legal challenges to Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president, a federal judge in California, also a former US Marine, has scheduled a hearing on the merits of a federal court case raising those questions.

While there have been dozens of legal challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen,” many of have summarily dismissed while others still languish in the lower courts.

The US Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Complicating the situation is candidate and President Obama’s decision to spend sums estimated from the hundreds of thousands of dollars to several millions to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions.

It has been concluded that the “Certification of Live Birth” posted online and widely touted as “Obama’s birth certificate” does not in ANY way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same “short-form” document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true “long-form” birth certificate—which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician—is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.

Congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a “natural born citizen,” although, defying both official protocol and common logic, no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama’s claim to a Hawaiian birth.

The birthers are considered fringe folks, crazed radicals, racists, and inconsequential, but here's a look at the latest fring controverst, this time on the left. First, let's go to Big Hollywood.

And now, let's take a peek at the firestorm created by a White House spokesman who said the "Internet Left fringe needs to grow up, and take off their pajamas so that this administration can get on with more important issues" here's that link. Or something like that. Here's another take.

SUNSTEIN SAYS AMERICANS TOO RACIST

2009-10-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

BUT HEY WAIT, there's more, this Sunstein fellow says that Americans are too racist FOR SOCIALISM. And he defends communism and the welfare state but says that this nation's 'white majority' opposes programs aiding blacks and Hispanics. What about all those obese out of work white folks still clinging to guns and religion? Guess they don't even figure into the race-baiters wealth redistribution strategies.

Methinks, of course, we need a new deck. That race card is so frayed, we can see it coming, and it's ALWAYS coming, from the bottom of the deck, from the top of the deck, from somebody's cuff-linked sleeve, yes, it's always coming from somewhere, no matter how skewered the results...

Socialism? This despite the fact that nearly every former socialist nation, including those in western Europe, are warning the US that socialism isn't all it's cracked up to be, as even they are moving away from the organizing system that suffers from too much rampant idealism and not enough bootstrap periphery.

In "The Second Bill of Rights," WND reported, the self-professed communist Obama aide Cass Sunstein proposed a new "bill of rights" in which he advanced the radical notion that welfare rights, including some controversial inceptions, be granted by the state. Among his mandates:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

The Obama czar's controversial comments were made in his 2004 book "The Second Bill of Rights," which was obtained and reviewed by WND. On one page in his book, Sunstein claims he is "not seriously arguing" his bill of rights be "encompassed by anything in the Constitution," but on the next page he states that "if the nation becomes committed to certain rights, they may migrate into the Constitution itself."

Later in the book, Sunstein argues that "at a minimum, the second bill should be seen as part and parcel of America's constitutive commitments." WND has learned that in April 2005, Sunstein opened up a conference at Yale Law School entitled "The Constitution in 2020," which sought to change the nature and interpretation of the Constitution by that year.

Sunstein has been a main participant in the movement, which openly seeks to create a "progressive" consensus as to what the U.S. Constitution should provide for by the year 2020. It also suggests strategy for how liberal lawyers and judges might bring such a constitutional regime into being.

Just before his appearance at the conference, Sunstein wrote a blog entry in which he explained he "will be urging that it is important to resist, on democratic grounds, the idea that the document should be interpreted to reflect the view of the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party."

That's rich. Notice how Sunstein in his first amendment says that everyone should have the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation. He didn't mention that everyone has the "right" to a publishing contract, or a paying gig in the arts, a cush talking head job, or a gravy train in politics.

Rather, he intends his own brand of segregation touting a system that demands that everyone participate in this new slavery, the new feudalism, enunciated and controlled by the prestigious oligarchy of beautiful and bright, hand-picked elites who know to toe the party line, and are amply rewarded with entry into the gated communities of government from on high.

Notice also, the usage of the word "decent" when describing certain guarantees this new world order claims to represent. Who gets to decide what is decent or just shy of Shantyville? Who tells me that what I choose to attain or acquire or inherit is too extravagant, and what in all this decision-making is based on criteria other than the equalitarian limits of the open marketplace? We've all seen this movie before. From the September 29 issue of New York Times, itself a bastion of liberal pretentions:

"Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.

German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II. Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless."

No matter what methodologies these aggressive statists intend to use in cutting the materialistic pie, we are told that we will be guaranteed decent jobs, decent health care, decent wages, decent lives. Meanwhile why are these cut-throat millionaires doing all the talking, doing the deciding for us? As constitutional Americans we are already guaranteed an equal opportunity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, within the realms of moral responsibility. We are not guaranteed a bowl of soup, a box of rocks, a diamond ring, or a job, but we are at liberty to pursue any and all of these things.

But a totalitarian statism is like a skin disease which encompasses all and threatens to spread to every organ in the body, and I respond with a deliberately loud and progressive—NO THANK YOU!

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism', they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
—Norman Thomas, Socialist

As for me, I would rather fail completely while chasing a dream, embrace my aching inner hobo, and take my God-given liberty to my grave than to play with the scorching fires of committed communism. The founding fathers knew what they were talking about as they studied man's history in dealing with other men. We were warned. And now, perhaps, the greatest threat to America as a freedom-seeking nation since the Civil War is upon us.

That peculiar stealth threat is already upon our shores. While Mister Obama signs away our rights of freedom of speech to the OIC-dominated United Nations, we must ponder how quickly and where the enemy may pounce next.

CONSIDERING THE SECOND AMENDMENT

2009-10-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

As breaking news that an illegal gun ring has been snared in a sting by the Feds hits the media wires as I write this with the knowledge that the Supreme Court will soon address the right to bear arms issue again in a case from Chicago, it is more important than ever to remember why the Second Amendment is important, even precious to Americans who understand the consequences of ignoring the much maligned US Constitution.

We who appreciate the wisdom of our learned and conceptual founders have no choice but to oppose those in favor of touchy feely gun eradication laws, which leaves us helpless to defend ourselves and our families from intruders of every stripe, and worse, creating an environment where the rise of an oppressive fascist government intent on enslaving or abandoning its citizenry is inevitable.

Mari Thompson of Second Amendment Sisters offers a sterling remembrance.

A COMMON ERROR in Constitutional interpretation is the failure to examine the document in the context of its original meaning. In fact, Thomas Jefferson once wrote to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson, suggesting to him that when examining and interpreting the Constitution, he should study the time in which the document was written, and “carry himself back to that time.”

This would seem to be good advice for today. The recent Heller vs. DC case might have gotten more votes in favor of Heller had the Supreme Court of today done just that.

We certainly know that during the time of the writing of the Constitution, every male citizen above the age of 16 was counted as a member of the militia. All males were assumed to own weapons (which most of them paid for), and be ready to muster when the call came. Of course, the first call for the militia was to fight the British in what has become known as the American Revolution.

Today, as during the early days of this country, the people are still the militia, in the usage of the word at the time of our founding. The actual purpose of having armed citizens was to guard against an overbearing government. In the inimitable words of our National Spokesperson, Suzanna Gratia-Hupp, when speaking to Senator Chuck Schumer and other members of a Senate committee: “The purpose of the Second Amendment is to protect all of us (the people) from all of you (the politicians).”

We now live in a country that has been promised “Hope and Change” by our new president. Since we have no details of what “hope” and what “change” he was speaking about during the election, the Second Amendment is more important than ever. We must be ever more alert to signs of any government entity trying to erode the God-given and constitutionally enumerated right to keep and bear arms and all other constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Mari Thompson is President of SAS, and is also one of its founding members.

A NATION OF CRIMINALS

2009-10-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

HERE IS A FRIGHTENING LOOK at ourselves, recently published in the Washington Times by reporter Brian W. Walsh, detailing the horrors of overcriminalization and the government's rush to prosecute Americans for minor offenses. Kathy and George Norris were quiet, industrious Americans whose only crime was to not have the proper paperwork on a specific number of orchids they purchased overseas in their small orchid supply business.

"You don't need to know. You can't know." Those are the words Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, heard when pursuing court officials the day after federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search. The agents, six of them, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, spent half a day ransacking the Norris home in Spring, Texas. No questions were answered while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.

This particular American nightmare began with the search in October 2003 only officially ended when Mr. Norris was released from federal supervision in December 2008 after two years in the slammer, 71 years old, unnerved, a mere ghost of his former self.

Two Congressman, Chairman Robert C. Scott, D-VA, and ranking member Louie Gohmert, R-TX, conducted a truly bipartisan hearing in Washington earlier this year, giving voice to the increasing number of Americans who worry about this sort of "overcriminalization."

We wish this hearing well. This type of heavy-handed prosecution is no way for a great nation to behave. We will strongly resemble a corrupt, broken nation if this level of law enforcement against ordinary citizens is allowed to persist. How long before we regain our composure, our faith, our honesty, our compassion, our sense that we are a nation of reasonable men and women, and not merely a land of hidden laws, information and thug antics...

And yet we coddle so many others who thumb their noses at America herself...

Read it all.

SCHOOLHOUSE SHARIA

2009-10-01T09:46:00.000-07:00

A RECENT PEW RESEARCH poll shows American attitudes about Islam trending toward accepting the narrative that organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) are peddling. This narrative includes the propositions that Islam is and historically has been a religion of peace and that Muslims are the victims of a great deal of discrimination in this country.

Not coincidentally, this faulty narrative is being peddled in many of our public schools. Small wonder more and more Americans are falling for it. Several months ago the ACT! for America Mission Viejo (CA) chapter completed an eye-opening report about the disinformation and outright propaganda showing up in public school curricula and textbooks that deal with Islam.

We have written frequently on this topic, but that pales in comparison to the Orwellian "newspeak" that has recently been handed down by California's education establishment with respect to teaching Islamic studies. For instance, as reported in the Investors Business Daily editorial below:

...the suggested framework glorifies Shariah as a liberal reform movement that "rejected" the mistreatment of women that existed in Arabia before Muhammad and his successors conquered the region, according to Accuracy in Academia. The guidelines claim that Islamic law established for the first time that men and women were entitled to equal "respect."

This astonishing example of historical revisionism is just one more reason why we communicate such a sense of urgency to you about the rapid advance of radical Islam and creeping shariah here in the United States. Our window to build the organized resistance to defeat this is not twenty or thirty years long—it is more like five to ten at best.

Over the past two decades college campuses have become hotbeds for pro-Islamist, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-American indoctrination. This has now made its way into our public high schools and middle schools.

If an entire generation of American students are successfully indoctrinated with lies, such as that shariah Islamic law established that men and women were entitled to equal respect, the chances that we can successfully roll back the rising tide of radical Islam dim immensely.

As Adolf Hitler is reported to have said to the adults in Germany, "I care not what you think...I have the children."

Recently, Fox News reported that the head of CIE—now known as the Institute on Religion and Civic Values—misled California education authorities about his academic credentials. For one, Shabbir Mansuri never received a USC degree in chemical engineering as he has claimed, Fox says.

The group's Web site no longer includes the claim. These are the folks who are teaching your children about Islam in public schools. Parents have protested, even sued, but to no avail.

For example, parents of seventh-graders in the San Francisco area, who after 9/11 were taught pro-Islamic lessons as part of California's world history curriculum, sued under the First Amendment ban on religious establishment. They argued, reasonably, that the government was promoting Islam by mandating that their kids participate in Muslim role-playing exercises such as designing prayer rugs, taking an Arabic name and essentially "becoming a Muslim" for two full weeks.

Children also were told to recite aloud Muslim prayers that begin with "In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful," and memorize the Muslim profession of faith: "Allah is the only true God, and Muhammad is his messenger."

But a federal judge appointed by President Clinton told parents in so many words to get over it, that the state was merely teaching kids about another "culture."

California's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision, ruling that it was OK to put public-school kids through Muslim role-playing exercises. The decision was a major victory for the multiculturalists and Islamic apologists in California and across the country who've never met a culture or religion they didn't like—with the exception of Western civilization and Christianity.

You can't teach the Ten Commandments in public schools. But teaching the five pillars of Islam is A-OK.

Read it all

THE TALKING SANDWICH

2009-09-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

POLICY RIPS ASIDE, THE SUSPICIOUS PR STRATEGY that put this Robert Gibbs buffoon in the White House Press Secretary slot simply to play the inept front man designed as an administrative contrast and counterweight to the messianic fluency of the eternal candidate named Barack Hussein Obama (except when his teleprompter chokes), seems apparent to all but the most dedicated of partisan players.

And I suspect the pick of Joe Biden as VP was for the same reason. Make the highly brokered showmanship of Barry the Obama look good via the manipulation of exaggerated comparison.

Wasn't Joe Biden sold to the voting public as a strong foreign policy wonk? But what's he been kept doing? The President himself has laughingly informed the public that he's anointed Joltin' Joe as watchdog for the domestic stimulus money, while BHO himself calls the foreign policy shots from the shadows, afraid to confront, or even face those foreign counterparts he is stiffing or the military leadership he commands yet ignores.

Remember how half the country railed against the supposed grammatical ineptitude of George Bush?

Opinions still rage. By playing his media games at the G-20 summit, Obama has managed to insult what's left of our allies, insuring the world is an even more dangerous place.

His dramatic disclosure of Iran's "secret" nuclear facility that he has known about since last November, the same one that some of our allies have known about for several years, has made him the laughing stock of the world. Perchance, to all those free of blinders, one can't help but notice that this president has confirmed to the world that he just might be the Clown-In-The-White-House, a title dubbed to him by certain number of fallen Democrats who saw him up close during the primaries.

Because Mr. Obama deliberately embarrassed them at the G-20 meeting, China, France, Great Britain, and Russia will now move to extract a high price for cooperating with the US on the Iran issue, and it should come as little surprise should the nations actually work to embarrass the president and the United States.

Under George Bush some of our allies didn't like the US, but they respected our status and our resolve. Under apologetic and weak Obama, they no longer respect the US, and seek ways to exploit our weaknesses with even more diligence than in ordinary times. They see, according to sources close to French President Nicolas Sarkozy that Obama is nothing more than what he appears to be—an egotistical, bumbling showman in an empty suit, despite all his dedicated followers on the US Left and in the media who try to paint this man, tied to his teleprompter except when giggling late nights with David Letterman, as the greatest statesman and intellectual America has ever seen, and I mean ev-aaaaah!

Too much skin in the game to admit they were duped, or perhaps they just love cashing those George Soros-funded checks they get in the mail? Who knows? But we remain, indeed, a nation divided. A quick spin around the media turf and channel wars is enough to tell us everything we wanted to know but were afraid to ask about where our country is now headed and even why we somehow intuit that the gear-grinding propaganda machines on both sides are only now just warming up.

LET'S ROLL OUT A MISSILE NWO-STYLE

2009-09-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

Washington Times opinion writer Wesley Pruden takes on the Obama cult in an article, titled," Reality bites Obama's 'West Wing.'" A good article no doubt about matinee idols and their sycophants, and in particular, one matinee idol and his merry band of worshippers who made up the majority electorate last November. But it's Pruden's third paragraph which struck me.

"Nasty surprises abound across the real world. Iran completes a third round of testing of Shahab-3 and Sajjil medium-range missiles capable of hitting not only Israel, Eastern Europe and several Middle Eastern countries but, if all that were not sobering enough, several U.S military bases as well. Venezuela boasts that it's working with Russia and Iran in finding sources of uranium, the key ingredient of nuclear weapons technology. China says it will display new "upgraded missiles" in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of Red China. India announces that it can now make nuclear weapons up to a strength of 200 kilotons, four times over the line that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty pledges signing nations not to cross."

Now what I read is this. We are in a shrinking global existence, monetarily and militarily, at least according to or even thanks to the several recent as well as the current occupiers at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. While we continue under this present administration to exhibit cultural weakness and across the board apologetics, what we truly should be doing is marginalizing the weak Left, and joining in with our new peers, and blast off a few rockets and unveil a few more death machines in big parades and national celebrations. Then perhaps, once again, we Americans might again feel like we fit into the world as we know it, and how do we know it?

We watch our neighbors. We mimic our enemies who seem to have no shame in calling for our deaths. They know who they are, even if our leadership looks the other way or forgives them seven times seventy and more in what seems to be an impossible struggle to win hearts and minds. We show them our strength as they show us their strength. As the dollar continues to fail, and the bankers conspire, and we give away billions of these dollars to our enemies in a vain attempt to buy friendship even as these foreign governments funnel our US tax monies right back into the coffers of those who seek to kill us, perhaps we should stop this wasted appeasement long enough to ask what comes next when all this bribery and corruption fails to bear fruit. Look at Pakistan. Look at Egypt. Look at Turkey. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan. Look at the immigrants from those countries into the United States and Europe.

We cannot win there. We can only return these haters to their countries of origin, or isolate them in their own countries before they get here, bound by the ummah struggling for a caliphate. That one way. It worked with Isabella in 1492. Tried for treason under penalty of death, or hard expulsion can work again.

Or we can get right with ourselves and expose those of the order of Mohammed to the very best firepower we've got. I prefer the former, but if that fails to stop this drip drip dripping flood of madness we call the New World Order, I suppose the latter will do.

When in Rome...

Unless each American prefers to live in slavery and fear, we cannot long deny nor surely long escape this crisis. Therefore, as responsible and free citizens standing upon this soil beneath this flag with concerted and quiet enjoyment of the United States Constitution and its favor, we must prepare ourselves. I say, let the games begin!

IDEOLOGY AND STRATEGIES OF GLOBAL JIHAD

2009-09-28T10:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Gabriel,

Our friend and esteemed colleague Dr. Walid Phares comments below on the unprecedented acceleration of jihadist terror plots we have seen in the past few weeks, the latest in Springfield, Illinois.

Dr. Phares will be presenting a session entitled "The Ideology and Strategies of Global Jihad" at the American Congress for Truth national conference webcast on November 7th.

This conference, entitled "Radical Islam's Threat to America," is available FREE of charge to all elected officials, their staffs, and members of ACT! for America and American Congress for Truth. Log on to Act For America to find out more information and how you can participate.

And please pass the word about the conference to every elected official you know.

As we noted last week, we believe there is a correlation between the Obama administration's accelerated "outreach" effort to the Muslim world and the increase in terrorist plots. Within the world of jihadist Islam such efforts are viewed as weakness. They reinforce the supremacist political ideology shared by jihadists and, in doing so, embolden them.

What's more, these efforts send a message to the so-called "moderate" Muslims that the "strong horse" (to quote Osama bin Laden) they should get behind is, indeed, the jihadists.

Warning: The Jihadists are mushrooming inside America

Dr. Phares writes...

It is unprecedented in American counter terrorism annals: in one day the nation was dealing with three separate Jihadist plots to blow up civilian and other targets inside the Homeland. Although the cases were addressed at different time periods by the FBI and other agencies, nevertheless, the thickening web of Terror attempts breached the crossing line of US national security. This week, authorities revealed three conspiracies by American Jihadists: Michael C. Finton, a 29-year-old man who wished to follow the steps of American-born Taliban John Walker Lindh, was arrested after trying to detonate what he thought was a bomb inside a van outside a federal courthouse in Springfield, Ill.

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian national was arrested after placing what he believed was a bomb at a downtown Dallas skyscraper. But perhaps the most troubling case is of Afghan-born Najibullah Zazi who set up shop in suburban Denver, scouting the Web and visiting beauty supply stores in a hunt for chemicals needed to build bombs for Al Qaeda. Sources called the alleged plot one of the most significant terror threats to the U.S. since 9-11. Add to the list the North Carolina Jihad cell, led by Saifullah Boyd, which was planning on attacking civilian and military targets across the country.

The immediate question raised by an increasingly worried public is about the connection between all these terror cases: are they all connected? While law enforcement and certainly judicial authorities proceed in a bottom up reasoning, that is to build the case for a global connection between all what is happening with the help of legal evidence, analysts in the field of counter terrorism and conflict are already realizing the meaning of what is happening inside America.

In my book Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America (2005-2006), I clearly projected that Jihadists, individuals and cells will be mushrooming and expanding inside the United States within few years from then and that they will precisely do what they are trying to do now. I have also projected how large they will become, with time. It was a simple deduction: if the Government doesn't counter this ideological growth, Jihadists will keep coming. And in fact they kept coming, spreading crossing the barriers of ethnicities, races, nationalities and geographical frontiers.

The Jihadists committed to harm the US, and based inside our borders, are now by the hundreds. When I suggested this fact on CNN in 2006, and reiterated it on Oprah's show so that the public realizes what is to come, I raised a few eyes brows. Now unfortunately, we are meeting the cells of Jihadism in our cities and little towns, and sadly the expectation is that we will see more, and we may unfortunately not be able to stop them all from reaching their goals.

The North Carolina cell, the New York subway plot, the Dallas attempt, the Illinois case, added to the previous cases of the shooting of a soldier in Arkansas, the precedent New York cells, Georgia's young Jihadists, all the way back to the infamous Virginia paintball network, if anything gives us the genome of what is morphing inside the country—a vast body of dispersed cells with at least one binding force—the Jihadi ideology. The question thus is to find out who is propagating the doctrines of Jihadism: who is funding it; who is protecting the indoctrination operation which leads naturally to the rise of homegrown or foreign linked, lone wolves or packs of Jihadists, Terrorists. That is the real question: where is the factory?

What should the US Government do? Well, it must first of all come to the front of the threat and lead the nation against it. This is not a matter of only local police or law enforcement efforts. President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders from both parties must give this spreading plague a top priority—for if one of these groups is successful, our national economy will crumble again, or at least will be wounded even more severely, let alone the human consequences of terror.

Americans are watching with great concerns, these terror plots being revealed. They expect their elected officials to address these fears before the worse happens.

PREPARING THE TURKEY SHOOT

2009-09-23T10:28:00.000-07:00

IT'S QUITE EASY TO SEE who's causing liberals and Marxists the most pain. They sputter and spend an enormous amount of time and resources in an effort to demonize those who cause them so much agony. We can easily observe that Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh cause liberals to suffer severe, chronic heartburn and draw full migraine headaches they can't wait to share with their neighbors.

Paragons of American liberty Micheal Savage and Mark Levin also pierce the frothing leftist "message" balloons, but who's counting mighty eagles now that the chirping chickens are indeed coming home to roost...

Rodeo clown or not, Glenn Beck at his most outrageous is no louder than those two hilarious party-sniffers Chris "Leg-tingling" Matthews and the salacious King of Rage, Keith Olberman. The reason Beck has captured the right wing zeitgeist so thoroughly is that he is providing a valuable service by connecting the long string of dots no one else wants to connect.

Unlike the increasingly feckless Bill O'Reilly, Beck is showing incredible stones by being one of the very few individuals willing to snatch back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz that characterizes this administration.

Which brings us to that old leftist canard—Global warming, Man-Made or Political Rubbish? The "real" facts show that more and more climatologists are stepping from the shadows of the Al Gore-scare to contradict the rush to blame man on global warming, or even to admit that dangerous unnatural warming is even occurring across the planet.

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen mocked man-made global warming fears in a July 2, 2009 radio interview on WRKO's Howie Carr program. Lindzen noted that man-made climate fears were "divorced from nature" and he said the scientific foundation for climate fears is "falling apart."

"How did we get a population that can be told something that contradicts their senses and go crazy over it?" Lindzen asked on the program. Lindzen recently co-signed an open letter to Congress with a team of scientists warning: "You Are Being Deceived About Global Warming. Earth has been cooling for ten years.'

When asked about climate fears, Lindzen dismissed the notion that "ordinary" Americans are buying into former Vice President Al Gore's climate views.

"We are too smart for that. You look at the polls, ordinary people see through this, but educated people are very vulnerable," Lindzen quipped. Lindzen also noted that people are being told that if they change a lightbulb, they are "saving the Earth", they are "virtuous, they are smart."

"Now you are told if you that if you don't understand global warming is going on, you are dumb, but if you agree to it, you are smart," Lindzen explained.

That sounds familiar.

NO EXTRA HARRUMPH

2009-09-22T10:04:00.000-07:00

Well, of course he is. Barack Obama. Chicago politics. Democratic community organizer organizing the Democratic community as far as the eye can see, and then some. But of course, in a critical era with so much already on the national plate, combined with the president's "a speech a day keeps the radical right-wing revolutionaries at bay" mentality, in my own humble opinion, signals that this action is not only dangerously overreaching as the tea party movement continues to grow in opposition to any government intrenchment not constitutionally stipulated, but is laughably frivolous. I think the record shows rather clearly that the Bush example mentioned above, brought the Republicans no extra harrumph at the polls, but indeed may have proved detrimental to those candidates.

WASHINGTON — The White House’s intervention in the race for New York governor is the latest evidence of how President Obama and his top advisers are taking an increasingly direct role in contests across the country, but their assertiveness has bruised some Democrats who suggest it could undercut Mr. Obama’s appeal with voters tired of partisan politics.

Read it all.

THE MOST INCORRECTLY USED WORD

2009-09-21T06:01:00.000-07:00

YES, VIRGINIA. Racism exists in America—and it exists in all races, socio-economic groups, heritages, populations, tribes, and imaginations. It cuts across every line man dares draw in the sand. And let's face facts. Racism is not the exclusive domain of white males living in the south, driving a pick-up truck while kissing his shotgun. That is a stone cold fact.

The definition of racism is a simple concept: Racism is the belief that one’s own race produces a particular superiority over any or all other races. It is the opposite of the concept of equality—and is anathema to MLK’s exhortation to judge one another by the content of one's character, not the color of one's skin. Racism is rejected by most reasonable and educated people of good spirit. Don't misunderstand me, good spirit is the key factor of innocense and empathy, although education and reason are often great partners.

“Racist” is the most over-used and most incorrectly used word in the English language of our age. Even so, however, there is a growing number of educated people who practice an agenda of racism based on a politics of ever receding grievances and envy. Just look at the United Nations. Or Saudi Arabia and its satellites. Or Malmo, Sweden. Or the Democratic Party in America.

And that's not even mentioning the sad and dangerous notions of religious bigotry that engulf the world today.

SLAMMIN' MIDDLE-AGED OUTRAGE

2009-09-20T05:54:00.002-07:00

AS THE SEPTEMBER 12 Tea Party march of two million and this blog wanes temporarily, here's a quick spot on why things are different now. As Shannon Love noted on the Chicago Boyzblog and and now echoed by Mark Tapscott in the Washington Examiner the times may be changing again:

"Getting hundreds of thousands of kids, the professionally unemployed, and government workers to show up isn't that hard [especially if someone buys the bus tickets]. Getting two million middle-class, middle-aged people with jobs, careers, children and businesses is way, way more impressive.

"We can safely assume that for every individual who made it to the protest that there are dozens of people whose grown-up obligations prevented them from attending.

"That thought should keep Obama and Pelosi up at night."

Indeed. To have Federal laws written by outsider lawyer groups like the Apollo Group, and driven through congressional hoops without having even been read by those who dare to vote on such game-changing legislation being shoved down the American populace is just wrong, anti-American, and no way to run a republic founded upon the principles of liberty and constitutional law. It's that simple, folks. America, please. This nation is slipping away. Both parties have long raped and pillaged the US Constitution as if she deserved it in flaunting her exquisite and growing beauty and liberty for all peoples to admire and aspire to. Where has our once lauded American magnanimity gone? Can we not agree that this serial abuse of our constitution must be stopped?

Read it all.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

2009-09-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

"Socialists can provide shelter, fill your belly with bacon and beans, treat you when you're ill, all the things that are guaranteed to a prisoner or a slave." - Ronald Reagan

As the young and the belligerently idealistic continue to push toward anything that smacks of overthrowing capitalism and ushering in the imagined golden era of socialism, despite all its past and present failures, preferably under the banner of its anointed one, the rules of the game only grow fuzzier while the strategies turn nastier. If only I had been more politically awake during the Reagan years.

CONSIDERATIONS ON SUCH HEIGHT

2009-09-15T05:34:00.000-07:00

And then there were none. Well, there is still the dazed and confused Taliban-loving Patti Smith. But after Ginsberg and Burroughs left the beat in the late 90s, andCorso ducked behind the curtain in 2001, Jim Carroll was damn near the final nail in the famous and infamous Beat Generation tool shed annex to fade to rust.

Carroll contributed an untitled poem to the pages of Rolling Stone at the height of his rock and roll stardom:

It’s sad this vision required such height.
I’d have preferred to be down with the others, in the stadium.
They know the terror of birds.
I am left, instead, with the deep drone…
The urgency to deliver light, as if it
were some news from the far galaxies.

[From Issue 321 — July 10, 1980]

Jim Carroll was 60.

Actor and dancer Patrick Swayze also died this week of pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA

2009-09-10T18:44:00.000-07:00

It's not often I find pushy liberal first person reveries I accidentally discover to be such riveting and therapeutically charming journalism. In spangled tone and delivery the "unbamboozeable" Joe Bageant, celebrated author of Deer Hunting With Jesus (Dispatches From America's Class War) and the following essay, dubbed Poor, White, and Pissed honors the raunchy profession of confessional reporting. Liberals, take note. The fix is in. You have just been given room to make improvements in your game, if you can just pay attention long enough to read the signs. Your knuckleball has become a soft shoulder lob ripe for the bleachers. America might just be changing yet.

Having recently affiliated professionally with a company in Winchester, VA, after a quarter century of surviving the juiced up jostle of the national buzz called Washington, here is one local's description of his hometown, which is located some ninety miles due west of the nation's capital. Just beyond the rippling Blue Ridge Mountains nestled among the apple trees of the Shenandoah Valley, it is a beautiful ride from utter chaos and global intrigue to the fresh green freedom of God's country.

The essay, written some three years plus before candidate Barack Obama put his own teleprompted spin on the unsightly static cling of the poor, white, and pissed crowd is an eloquent rejection of the liberal standard, and needs no more introduction from me:

IF YOU ARE READING THIS it is very likely that you are a liberal, maybe even an outright screaming burn down the goddam country commie—in which case I say, "Come sit by me comrade!" (Especially if you are a blonde.) Like most lefties you probably live in an urban area, or someplace with reasonable cultural diversity. More than likely you are educated and can read this without moving your lips. Maybe you even live in the freethinking People's Republic of Berkeley, or bustle along under the fabled lights of Manhattan where you can see independent films and buy such things as leeks and soy milk at your grocery store.

I, however, live in a town where it is easier to find chitterlings, ponhaus and souse in the grocery store than a leek—and where Smokey and the Bandit still plays to packed movie houses year after year. My hometown's claim to fame is the 1983 "Rhinehart Tire Fire" in which some five million discarded tires burned for nine months, gaining Winchester, Virginia national news coverage and EPA superfund cleanup status. The smoke plume was visible in satellite earth photos, the cleanup took 18 years and the fire stands as my hometown's biggest event of the Twentieth Century. As for intellectual life, this is a town where damned few residents ever heard of, say, Susan Sontag. Even though our local newspaper editor did manage a post mortem editorial on Sontag, which basically said: Goodbye you piece of New York Jewish commie shit!, most people reading the paper at their breakfast tables around town were asking themselves, "Who the hell is Susan Sontag?" They would ask the same thing about Daniel Barenboim or Hunter S. Thompson because those figures have never been on Oprah. Our general ambience was well summed up by a visiting Atlanta lawyer who looked around town and observed: "Dumb lordee I reckon!" This from a guy who's seen a lot of dumb crackers. Laugh if you want, but this is the red state American heartland everybody is talking about these days.

Is it possible for a higher class of person to live in American places like Winchester, Virginia? Not really. Only the local old family business elite and well-paid plant managers transferred here find such a place livable—the former for their social status and the latter in the safe knowledge they will be transferred out someday.

Most of the rest of us stuck in Winchester are what used to be called the traditional working class. These days, when we are called anything at all, it is White Trash. Poor working whites, people with only a high school diploma, if that. Nationally we at least number a quarter of white U.S. workers, thirty five million in all by the government's own shaved-down numbers. Nobody knows for sure in a nation that calls millions of $7-an-hour janitors and marginal people working "contract labor", with no insurance or benefits, "independent businesspersons" and "entrepreneurs." Small independent business people are, we are told, "the backbone of America's economy." If that is true, then it's a sorry assed thing because we are talking here about citizens who bring down maybe 25-30K a year before taxes. With both spouses working. I told my freelance janitor friend Gator that he was the backbone of the American economy; he said he felt more like its asshole.

In any case, my people are not the people in the cubicle next to you at work (though they might well be cleaning it at nights when you are sleeping.) Mine are not people complaining about paying off their college loans or who got the best parking spot at their office campus complex. They are people with different problems entirely. Mostly related to truck payments. Or people like my old tree service boss Danny, who cut off a finger working with a chain saw, wrapped it in a McDonald's foil wrapper and ran to the hospital to get it sewn back on.

Or any of the thousands of people in this town who smash apples into apple sauce or boil them into vinegar at National Fruit Products, performing soul grinding shift work year after year with no opportunity to ever be promoted, or obtaining health care at all. Just the seasonal layoff when all the apples are smashed and the millions of gallons of vinegar bottled. Working class people going nowhere in a town that smells like vinegar.

Most of the rest of us stuck in Winchester are what used to be called the traditional working class. These days, when we are called anything at all, it is White Trash. Poor working whites, people with only a high school diploma, if that. Nationally we at least number a quarter of white U.S. workers, thirty five million in all by the government's own shaved-down numbers.

Don't laugh, you're next!

Middle class liberals, or affluent conservatives for that matter, are hard put to understand poor white working class culture. With our guns, God and coarse noisy aesthetic, (let's face it, NASCAR and Shania Twain?) we look like a lower species, a beery subset of some sort. The truth is that poor white working culture is not a subset of any other American class. It does not operate below the middle and upper classes, but parallel to them. Just as there are few ways out of it, there are few ways in. Its inhabitants are born here. The educated left cannot easily get inside.

When it comes to access, liberal social academics are camels passing through the needle's eye, though I've never met one who would admit it, or even knew that observing is not necessarily understanding. Consequently we find many books/studies focusing on ethnic minorities, but few credible ones about our defiant native homegrown poor. To my mind, it is impossible to be tenured and have street cred, but then I am just a prejudiced redneck prick from Winchester, Virginia, otherwise referred to as "Dickville".

Yet this place from which and about which I write could be any of thousands of communities across the U.S. It is a parallel world created by an American system where caste and self-identity are determined by what one consumes, or cannot afford to consume, education and of course, the class into which one is born. Like most things American, it was about money from the get-go. The difference is that some of us have known this truth from birth and on brutal terms. For instance, few middle class Americans today ever sold newspapers on the street corner at age twelve to pay for school clothes or carried coal to a dirty living room stove all winter. I did both. They never sat down to a dinner of fried baloney and coffee after cold hours on the street corner.

If this sounds like some Depression era sob story, let me say that it was in 1959-62. And right now I can find a hundred people in my neighborhood who did the same, or some kids still doing it (often Latino these days). My point being that there are and always have been a helluva lot of us know-nothing laboring sons out here, whether more fortunate Americans acknowledge our struggles or not. But they should. You see, it's like this: When the heartless American system is done reducing us to slobbering beer soaked zombies in the American labor gulag, your sweet ass is next.

Everybody loves the Dalai Lama, but nobody loves po' me!

Ain't no wonder libs got no street cred. Ain't no wonder a dope-addicted clown like Limbaugh can call libs elitists and make it stick. From where we stand, knee-deep in doctor bills and hoping the local Styrofoam peanut factory doesn't cut the second shift, you ARE elite. Educated middle class liberals (and education is the main distinction between my marginal white people and, say, you) do not visit our kind of neighborhoods, even in their own towns. They drink at nicer bars, go to nicer churches and for the most part, live, as we said earlier, clustered in separate areas of the nation, mainly urban.

Consequently, liberals are much more familiar with the social causes of immigrants, or even the plight of Tibet, than the bumper crop of homegrown native working folks who make up towns like Winchester. Liberal America loves the Dalai Lama but is revolted by life here in the land of the pot gut and the plumber's butt. Can't say as I blame them entirely, but then, that is why God created beer. To make ordinary life more attractive, or at least stomachable.

Whatever the case, helping the working poor does not mean writing another scholarly paper about them funded by grant money. That is simply taking care of one's middle class university educated self. Yet the cause of dick-in-the-dirt poor working white America is spoken for exclusively by educated middle class people who grew up on the green suburban lawns of America. However learned and good intentioned, they are not equipped to grasp the full implications of the new American labor gulag -- or the old one for that matter. They cannot understand a career limited to yanking guts out through a chicken's ass for the rest of one's life down at the local poultry plant (assuming it does not move offshore). Being born working class carries moral and spiritual implications understood only through experiencing them. It comes back to street cred.

Read it all.

And from this Georgia boy with a similar background, I say let them eat boiled okra and fried green tomatoes! It'll do the nation good...

TODAY IS FUNNY, TOO

2009-08-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

Today's Funny lifted from a friend of mine at the American Conservative Party...

Bill Clinton is getting $12 million for his memoirs. Hillary got $8 million for hers. That’s $20 million for the memories from two people, who for eight years repeatedly testified, under oath, that they couldn’t remember anything.

WITH JUST CAUSE AND FULL EFFECT

2009-08-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

I AM SUPPORTING only one organization to stop this president's healthcare program: the League of American Voters . And I am encouraging concerned Americans to funnel their support to the League as their main venue for donations. I believe the League has the most effective program to confront directly and stop Obama's ruthless and radicalized healthcare takeover plan.

Obama is moving to ram through Congress his plan and all our resources need to be focused to stop him. Also read the League's urgent message below!

Dear Supporter:

In our last message, we warned that Obama was on the run, desperate to get his radical health plan rammed through Congress.

But Obama's falling poll numbers, and the fact that outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax are fully informing Americans about the dangers of the plan, have hurt him and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's efforts for their healthcare fiasco.

They are desperate. Obama out-and-out lied this week when he claimed that the AARP, the nation's largest seniors organization, backed his healthcare plan.

The organization does not support it. Nancy Pelosi has even compared citizens protesting against the health plan with Nazis. These futile attempts of Obama and Pelosi to twist reality prove that our efforts are working!

This weekend, we will begin our national TV ad campaign. We are rolling out our powerful new TV ad — devised by Dick Morris, our chief strategist. Dick's ad exposes how Obama's plan will lead to healthcare rationing if he succeeds in adding 50 million people to the government system.

Remember, you can't let your guard down. Obama and the Democrats know they no longer have the 60 votes to pass the radical health plan in the Senate.

We are told they are working behind the scenes to change long-standing Senate rules so that they can pass their health plan with just 50 votes!

This is again a desperate measure and an attempt to subvert our democratic and constitutional system.

I can assure you the League of American Voters is working day and night to stop Obama's plan. We are also preparing for contingencies. When Congress returns after Labor Day, we must line up all our forces for the final battle.I realize many people are on vacation or feel confident we can defeat Obama's plan.

Please don't fall victim to overconfidence. It is critically important that you join with the League of American Voters today and help us defeat Obama.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Bob Adams
Executive Director

UNMASKING THE MONSTER

2009-08-03T10:22:00.000-07:00

Here is a short, simple, straight to the point essay penned by Steve Bussey on ResistNET, a visibly patriotic website dedicated to stopping, then rolling back the move to abolish the US Constitution inch by inch, word for word, and with it the freedom and liberty that so many have fought to preserve and enjoy for well over 200 years.

This is a site I've only recently discovered, so I am still treading lightly, trying now to rustle too many leaves before I find myself somewhere I do not wish to be. But Mr. Bussey's article offers a clear idea of what is simmering beneath the surface tension that passes for political ~~dissection~~ discussion all across this great land of ours. Our nation's free citizenry and our elected leadership seem to have lost their way, and have been on this false path for several decades now.

I HAVE HEARD THE MODERN tea party movement mischaracterized and slandered over the past several months, and seen yellow journalism about vocal protestors disrupting town hall meetings hosted by politicians. These and other crocodile tears are shed by journalists, politicians and pundits who are either too stupid to understand, or are intentionally trying to villainize the new conservative activism.

Some of the knocks I hear against the tea party movement are that they are racist because they didn’t protest during the Bush years, but only now when there is a black president; shut up and pay your taxes; or cries of hypocrisy because tea party protestors love big government in the form of military spending, interstate highways, or the Veteran’s Administration and oppose programs that would help the poor and downtrodden - all hogwash.

Discontent among conservatives and libertarians has been festering for several decades since George H.W. Bush succeeded President Reagan and began to walk back conservative advances. Contrary to popular belief, that is the primary reason he was a one term president.

The discontent swelled with the advent of the Clinton Administration and his largest tax increase in the history of the free world, as well as Hillary’s attempted take over of our health care industry. The Republican Revolution lead by Newt Gingrich, however, temporarily tamped down the discontent. Enter George W. Bush.

Conservatives and libertarians began to squirm in their seats with Bush’s unconstitutional federal intervention into our local schools with No Child Left Behind. The squirm turned into foot-tapping and nail biting with the Medicare prescription drug bill, and we stood and began shouting at our televisions with the expanded State Children’s Health Program and TARP – all unconstitutional expansions of federal tyranny over sovereign States and free enterprise. Enter President Obama.

President Obama has removed the mask from the monster once and for all and exposed the true Progressive agenda for America—a reshaped America based on a new foundation – his words, not mine, by taking over car companies, insurance and investment companies, Cap & Trade and a national health care plan. With his actions there can be no further debate concerning the direction Progressives in America, Democrats and Republicans, wish to take.

Why is there a modern tea party movement? Is it racist? There is a modern tea party movement because as Thomas Jefferson so eloquently wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “. . . all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable. . .”

It began before President Obama, but certainly with him and his programs, evil in the form of federal infringement upon our liberties, Progressive disrespect for our Constitution, American history, traditions and political philosophies, has become insufferable.

They may name their movement "tea party" to invoke and evoke our Founding Fathers, but the movement is much more profound than just taxes. The movement is about freedom and liberty. It is about legalizing and respecting our Constitution once again.

Yes, indeed, Mr. Bussey. We must also remember that both the 43rd president and the current Obama administration have led us—the American people—to believe that government first resides with the executive branch. Each administration also believe, the other two branches participate at the President's discretion. The problem this presents is that few constitutional scholars or free citizens agree with them, since the Constitution clearly states otherwise. Afterall, by 43rd and 44th's way of thinking, the law is just a 'guideline', and can be ignored when it gets in the way. We can think of too many dark scenarios of how this progression will eventually lead to a person to try to remain in power.

BRANDING OBAMANOMICS 101

2009-08-03T06:18:00.000-07:00

I snagged this little ditty from a FB friend named Lyn Morales. It has the look and feel of a viral urban legend, but it is well worth a moment's ponder. Thanks Lyn...

AN ECONOMICS PROFESSOR at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on.)

If somebody is unable to understand THIS explanation, I have serious doubts about their ability to even function in society, much less run our country!

As the late Adrian Rogers said, "you cannot multiply wealth by dividing it..."

A STIRRING CULTURAL REVOLUTION

2009-07-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

Is this for real, or simply another line of digital dope offered up in the form of political wishful thinking? As much as we might pine for the ushering in of that new post-racial worldview that Obama promised but can hardly deliver even if he tried, which he obviously isn't when it counts the most—on the fly—the dividend bearing reality remains that "until you see the reds of their eyes" racial politics is big business and too formidable a stick of ill repute to simply fade away.

However, words will be words, and often fetch a handsome price on the information markets these days. So the knaves with their knives on all sides of the compost pile continue to line up in service to their killing fields of choice.

Former associate of the Oakland, CA of the revolutionary Black Panther Party, and now conservative agitator—David Horowitz—on the aftermath of the recent Henry Louis Gates spectacle, writes:

NOW, FOR WHITE PEOPLE the term "racist" is really tantamount to being called a "ni---er" if you're black, except that blacks are free to call whites racists while whites can't even write the word n-i-g-g-e-r without risking repercussions. Watching this show—watching this cop be not only unapologetic but demanding that Gates apologize to Crowley and his mother (for the trash-talk Yo Mama), it occurred to me that a great turn is indeed taking place as a result of the election of Obama.

First we had the spectacle of Sotomayor—a race-preference leftist—backing off entirely from race preferences, and now we have policemen who normally would just be under fire, saying enough—we're not going to take it anymore. Saying: For years we've bent over backwards to apologize for racial injustices, some of which occurred and some of which did not, we've taken so many hours of courses and training to be sensitive to minorities, and we're not going to be called racists anymore when we're not. You are a professor making five or ten times what I make. You are in state whose governor is black; you're in a city whose mayor is black. You're pretending you're a powerless victim and at the same time phoning my chief and calling me a racist, telling me I don't know who I'm messing with because your friend who is black is the president of the United States. F--- you! And that's something of a cultural revolution.

Read it all.

While we can agree with the Horowitz analysis of the racial game as it is historically played, it is far too early to presume that this president has actually achieved racial consensus and has flatlined the old racist beast by inadvertently appealing to those very same tactics in solving this social dilemma that has supposedly led to the often cited racial polarity in the first place, beer garden or no beer garden.

ORDERING PIZZA IN AMERICA

2009-07-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT you had mastered the quaint old Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, along comes a spider...

Big Brother welcomes you, and look, it wasn't the Republicans, after all. It was YOU sleeping or fooling around like a spoiled brat on watch duty, all along. But pay me no mind, I'm nothing. In a nation where the splendid words of Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan are ignored or mocked, there's no claim of special consideration for the words of warning I bring to the table.

But if you like your nationalized health care, you'll like your nationalized pizza, too. Then you might be able to fit into those nationalized motor cars that are coming our way. But all is not lost; we can then celebrate the Ayatollah's Iran getting White House support for nuclear power while we note that at the same BAT time and on the same BAT channel that very same White House denies Americans the right of continued nuclear power.

What a country! After all, snookering the law of inertia, a government in motion tends to remain in motion, unless something more powerful gets in its way.

Speaking of Bat Ye'or, here she is in her own words:

I belong to no group, no community apparatus. My only contribution is my work. But I believe that my work has opened an enormous field for reflection, not only for the Jewish world but for the Christian world as well that has suffered much more than the Jews from dhimmitude.

I have described the process of Islamization of the Christian communities and of certain Christian countries through demography, immigration, enslavement, forced conversions, but also through genocide such as that which is being perpetrated against the Christians of Sudan. But beyond all that, I am Jewish. My identity is Judaism. Just as, when I was young I was subversive, didn't feel Jewish and would have perhaps fallen in with communism, since I was opposed to that Jewish bourgeoisie that I couldn't identify with—the country of Egypt was in total poverty and I did not accept the chasm between the populations...

HENRY GATES IS A SHOW-OFF

2009-07-23T21:44:00.000-07:00

LIVING AMONG THE BROKEN GLASS and junkyard battlegrounds of ordinary American life for ample portions of my fifty plus years I've come across many a hustler, thief, or druggie who can deport themselves as if scripted by a charm school mistress. I agree with the others above that Henry Louis Gates is wrong in this case. I have followed the career of Prof. Gates with some interest over the past decade or so.

Seems he often desires to approach the racial issue with detachment and intelligence, but he often tends to slip under pressure, thus proving he still labors under the racialist spell, and he just can't shake loose of it. This incident is just more proof. Doesn't make him Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, or less a human being than I am, or the Harvard professor that he is, but it does show just how incredibly difficult it is to shed a grievance we as Americans, black and white, male and female, young and old, rich and poor, revolutionary or saint, individuals all, have been indoctrinated by society great or small to embrace.

Gates is not being reasonable in his post-arrest comportment either, because this incident was not racial profiling. His self-regarding notions of "how he comported himself" were almost immediately betrayed when he began to yell and scream in succumbing to disorderly conduct when faced with procedural requests for ID which he didn't present.

He did present a Harvard ID, but the record apparently shows that he offered nothing with his address on it. Thus, this appears like he was spoiling for a scene—some fresh data for his class or this documentary he has already announced.

Had he just quietly and politely provided his proper identification and answered all the questions the police officers had every right to ask, chances are damn good this Harvard professor would not have been arrested.

Class warfare in America? Yes, and Henry Louis Gates showed he had no class.

ASSUMING FINANCIAL RISK

2009-07-23T10:44:00.000-07:00

MY DARLING DEBT, YES, WE KNEW YOU THEN, and we know you now. Texas Congressman Ron Paul delivers a striking blow to what I see in the real estate game as the continuation of the same monetary irrationalities that put us into the fiscal trouble we now find ourselves.

Just yesterday I had a conversation with a MetLife loan officer. He told me that his firm is currently offering 105s to select clients, but he hears that 125s are coming. What that means is that another round of secondary mortgage loans for 125% of current home values will be floated to a certain stratum of financial clients. All it would take is another Islamic attack or a continued dollar plunge or any number of current pressures upon the American and global economies to push back in shocking the system at an unregulated moment, and oops, there goes all that risky lending again right down the drain. Pessimistic? Not empathetic enough for the 21st century debt-oblivious consumer?

Maybe. But risk is always a capitalistic concern. One would think that the government and the banks would have learned something from all this freewheeling market manipulation, and move to modify the business models to help send a solid message to consumers that a slower, more conservative approach to borrowing and spending is not only recommended but of necessity required. For the sake of honesty, I admit that I got caught up in it myself, and am now paying the price for my own irrational exuberance. Congressman Paul is warning that we ALL must snap out of this debt-driven nightmare and learn to live within our means as individuals, communities, states, and nations, or else simply prepare for whatever version of the worse case scenario finds us in its path of destruction.

Would I assume a 125 loan, if it would help me out of a current crisis? I don't know, but I would think about it long and hard with some tough questions answered along the way before I would jeopardize myself, or my lender in such a scheme which is based on an optimism that may or may not be warranted or rational.

As I prepare to enter the real estate industry myself, as a very green rookie agent fresh of the state and national exams, I know there is much to learn, and I intend to wrestle and deconstruct every nuance of the business. I plan to master what I, in good conscience, can stand and deliver in honest representation of those persons who wish a serious and dedicated advocate during what is a very strategic and personal transaction—buying or selling real property.

Owning real estate carries with it a traditional "bundle of legal rights" transferred with the property from seller to buyer. These are the recognized rights of the holder of title to the property and include:

the right of possession - the property is owned by whomever holds title;

the right of control - within the laws, the owner controls the use of the property;

the right of exclusion - others can be excluded from using or entering the property;

the right of enjoyment - the owner can enjoy the use of the property in any legal manner; and

the right of disposition - the title holder can sell, rent or transfer ownership or use of the property at will

This bundle of rights offering strong compulsions toward private ownership should not be taken lightly. Private ownership is the backbone of the American system. Our financial networks must continue to rise to the occasion, but we as owners and potential owners must also redeem our responsibilities if we wish to be considered as carriers of the promise that ownership bestows. The unfortunate fact that far too many of this nation's foreclosure properties from the least to the greatest have been found in a sorry physical state due to departure vandalism is disappointing, and of course criminal. Egregious vandalism like this does not speak well of us as honest and forthright people who deserve to own property.

Life is risky, but the glory of our efforts as buyers and sellers, agents and brokers, is that we can each work to minimize that risk, for ourselves and for others, and in the spirit of goodwill, peace, and liberty we can change the world for the better, one satisfied property owner at a time.

SHAMING THE MUSLIMS OUT OF ISLAM

2009-07-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

A critical look at the REAL crisis of the 21st century, a crisis which those of us who acknowledge it are mocked and ridiculed by the appeasers for inventing, when the facts reveal that in actuality more and more alert citizens with the passage of time are coming to realize the honest observation that the rising Islamic threat presents a grave and penetrating danger to western civilization and the entire human race.

The moment of truth is now. We must prepare ourselves, tending to the spirit and the body with equal wind. Please read this article, and click the links at the bottom of the page, if you are one of the scoffers. Your own life, or the lives of your children may be saved as a result.

The following Q&A was sent from another concerned patriot on this early front. Please take these words seriously:

When I read MA Khan's new book, Islamic Jihad, I was struck by two things, the high quality of his scholarship and an emerging historical trend.

Khan is firmly in the Foundationalist School of scholarship. He does not indulge opinion, but bases his work on the Islamic doctrine of jihad and its historical effects on civilization, with a focus on the destruction of India. He investigates and documents two little known areas—the Sufis and the enslavement of the Hindus.

The excellence of his book is part of an historic pattern. When Islam attacked us on September 11, 2001 we were unprepared for war. Our intellectuals were spineless dhimmis who have been bought and paid for by the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood, and as a result, were apologists and not able to defend our civilization.

However, in one of the more remarkable intellectual events in history, a new type of intellectual was drawn into the study of Islam. Trained critical and scientific thinkers who were amateurs in the field of Islam applied their critical reasoning to this subject and produced a wealth of excellent books and articles. The new Islamic scholarship was fact-driven and took up Islam's challenge of war.

Khan's Islamic Jihad is an excellent intellectual weapon.

BW: Welcome Mr. Khan. Tell us about your motivation behind writing this book.

Khan: Thank you Bill giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts on the kind of danger the progressive world faces from an Islamic resurgence and how we deal with it.

What we are witnessing today in Muslim countries-namely in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Sudan etc-is the Talibanization or Saudization of the society, i.e., the establishment of Sharia in all spheres of life and society. In other Muslim countries, the demand for the same is solidifying; in a few decades, the face of the entire Islamic world will dramatically change.

The Islamic world is heading toward that which it embraces: Islam as a complete code of life, as believed by every Muslim. This transformation seems inescapable at this moment. But our major concern now is the infidel world, particularly the West. The native population in Europe is declining from low birthrate, while Muslims are procreating at unbridled rates. In the UK, Muslim population is increasing 10 times faster than the rest; the trend should be similar in other Western European countries. And where does this lead? By the middle of this century, Muslims will become the largest religious group in Europe.

And what will happen under that circumstance? We can easily make a guess. Take the example of Pakistan: in elections, only 10% of Pakistanis support parties that seek to institute Sharia rule. Now look at Britain: some 40% of the Muslims support Sharia rule, with only 37% opposed. This figure, I believe, is skewed to a good extent as Muslims don't speak the truth. Nonetheless, what these figures mean is that a much greater proportion of Muslims living in the West are Sharia-loving or Taliban minded as compared to those living in Islamic countries like Pakistan or Afghanistan. Therefore, unless the mentality of Western Muslims changes drastically in coming decades, which is unlikely, the Talibanization of Europe would become an inescapable reality by the middle of this century, undoubtedly spreading to North America, Australia, Russia and India.

We know what Sharia means to civilized humanity. We witness it in Saudi Arabia; we witness it in Afghanistan under the Taliban; we witness it in Talibanized areas of Pakistan. We clearly know that the plight of women-Muslim or not-would become worse. Treatment of non-Muslims is horrible and extremely degrading under Sharia rule: it is happening in Taliban-occupied regions in Pakistan. The Hindus and Sikhs are being subjected to humiliating jizya, which is an exorbitant discriminatory tax for the security of the life and property of non-Muslims in Islamic state (see Quran 9:29). The Taliban attacked the Sikh community in Orakzai for failing to pay the demanded jizya, slayed the men, took possession of their homes and properties, and enslaved the women and children, in accordance with the Quranic commands (33:26) and Muhammad's example of dealing with the Jewish tribe of Banu Quraiza [M.A. Khan, Islamic Jihad, p47-49]. Thousands of Hindus have already relocated to India in recent months in order to escape the Taliban oppression.

What is at stake today is obviously the Talibanization of globe—that is, the establishment of the governance of the Quran and Sunnah (i.e. Sharia) globally—which is a central demand of the Quran (2:193, 8:39), and the ultimate goal of Islam. And that will be the worst disaster ever to befall humankind. Therefore, averting this Talibanization of the world, which seems inescapable at this moment unless something drastic happens, should be the central concern for the civilized humanity as I see it. My book is an effort to make the world, both Muslim and non-Muslim, understand what Jihad, the scourge of our time, truly means for our future and take real measures to defeat it.

BW: How do you think we must fight battle?

Khan: In recent years, many ingenious measures have been tried and are being tried: the global war on terror, regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq for spreading freedom, democracy and modernity, and efforts to engage and work with the so-called moderate Muslims for winning the hearts and minds of the wider Muslim community etc. But nothing is working; since the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., the number of Jihadis, in the form of numerous radical Islamic groups around the world, are increasing exponentially. The overall Muslim mindset is also becoming increasingly radicalized everywhere, including the West.

There are also many initiatives amongst the so-called moderate Muslims to reform Islam. Many of these Muslims are also making rewarding careers in the guise of their phony reform campaigns. But attempts at reformation as occurred in Christianity, which was basically going back to the root, the originality of the religion, makes things worse in the case of Islam. A genuine and successful effort by the brilliant Saudi scholar Abdul Wahhab (1703-91) to reform Islam, in the mold of reformation of Christianity by Martin Luther (1483-1546), gave birth to Wahhabism, the Islamic scourge that we are confronting today. Efforts to reform Islam away from orthodoxy, i.e., along a rational and humanistic line, have been tried by some powerful Islamic rulers, namely the Baghdad caliphs, al-Mamun, al-Mutassim and al-Wathik (813-847), as well as Akbar the Great in India. They were the greatest monarchs in the world of their time and ruthlessly dictatorial. While they effected some positive changes during their rule, soon after their departure, it was all overturned. Islamic orthodoxy struck back with greater brutality and horror in every instance.

Thus, efforts at reformation have worsened the situation or failed. Any new attempt at reforming Islam is meaningless today because Muslims are becoming well-educated and can read the Quran, which has been translated in all major languages, by themselves. They are no less intelligent than the "reformers" and can understand what the verses of the Quran truly mean. Reformation in the age of modern education is a meaningless exercise and is destined to failure.

What might work, something that has not been tried, is what I personally call 'shaming the Muslims out of Islam'. Islam is a horrible and shameful ideology, unfit for the civilized world. But most Muslims, who are average human beings, do not know what is actually in the Quran and Sunnah, or, they have never analyzed the contents of Islam's fundamental texts critically. They have no idea what it means to be a true Muslim and how shameful it is in the modern civilized conscience. If they are made aware of the true nature of Islam, they will leave this barbaric and dehumanizing cult in large numbers. Islam will be condemned to the dustbin of history where it always belonged.

This is the only measure that has not been tried. And I have been trying exactly that in my website, (founded November 2005): "Telling the Truth about Islam". And my book, Islamic Jihad, is also an extension of that effort. I have convincing evidence that it will work.

BW: Would you elaborate on the shaming of Muslims and how it would work?

Khan: If you look closely at the history of Islam, you would realize that Islamic orthodoxy, with its violent underpinnings of Jihad, has tremendous resilience. As elaborated already, every attempt to reform it from within was followed by its resurgence with greater ferocity. From the 19th century onward, the European colonial powers did effect significant changes in the Islamic world like the equality of religions, liberation of slaves, and the ideas of secularism, progressiveness and modernity. But after colonial withdrawal, these positive changes are all being over turned. Humanity is now being threatened by Islamic orthodoxy and its Jihadis, on a scale unprecedented in history.

What these factors tell us is that attempt to reform and secularize Islam is not only doomed to failure, but its survival in any form will turn calamitous to humanity. So those, who care for our progressive and modernist civilization, particularly those in position of power, must understand this critical factor while dealing with Islam. We probably have time, this time round, to save humanity from the ongoing scourge of Islam, albeit sustaining damages of whatsoever scale it may be, we will be left with no such option if Islam has another opportunity to strike.

So the need of the hour is to break the back of Islam once and for all. And here comes into play the idea of 'shaming the Muslims out of Islam'. What we need is to discredit Islam root and branch, to the level of cells and atoms. This is not difficult to achieve. Simply telling the truth about Islam will do.

I have already mentioned: 'Islam is a horrible and shameful ideology, unfit for the civilized world.' The thing is, most Muslims have little idea of what Islam truly is, what it means to be a true Muslim. Most of them, particularly outside the Arab world, are ignorant about Islam; very few of them read the basic texts of Islam with a proper understanding. They know about Islam mainly from hearsay as part of their growing up. And when it comes to living their life, they are under tremendous influence of the kafir world from their surrounding, through the media, through all the goodies the kafir world bring to them.

At the same time, they also remain indoctrinated rather subconsciously with the cardinal thoughts in Islam, namely:
1. Islam is a complete code of life,
2. Islam is the perfect religion and Muhammad was the ideal man for all time; therefore, both are beyond questioning or criticism,
3. Only Muslims are destined to receive God's succor, and
4. Islam will eventually dominate the world, i.e. all people will become Muslim some day.

This subconscious indoctrination of the so-called moderate or liberal majority of Muslims easily plays into the hands of the extremists. When the extremists make noise on the ground that the prophet has been defamed or blasphemed or that Islam has been insulted, both being perfect and beyond finger-pointing in their subconscious mind, they too join the orgasmic frenzy with the extremists. We have seen this in the controversy over Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, and more recently, over the printing of Prophet Muhammad's cartoons in a Danish paper or Pope Benedict's comment on Muhammad.

I think that this so-called moderate variety of Muslims can easily be dissociated from Islam. What we need to do is to say the truth that Islam is not a "religion of peace" as goes the popular discourse, but a barbaric, inhuman and uncivilized cult; that Muhammad was not a noble, a perfect man for all time, but he was a brutal plunderer and mass-murderer lusting for power, wealth and sex; that he was a sex-maniac with a pedophilic urge for a kid as young as six when he was in his 50s and not far from death; that Islam, as initiated by Prophet Muhammad, is a barbaric institution of imperialism, forced conversion, and slavery and sex-concubinage. Islam, as depicted in its sacred texts, is more horrifying than this.

What we need is to hold the pages of the Quran, prophetic traditions and biographies, and Islamic history bare to Muslims and to the world. This will be enough to shame the Muslims out of Islam.

Why would this work? Let me start with my own example. I was one such liberal/moderate Muslim. When 9/11 occurred, I felt that the attack was rather justified because of the United States' unjust policies toward the Palestinians. I was lucky, I should say, that I was already involved in some internet groups that were critical of Islam. But after the 9/11 attacks, as critical analysis of Islam, the Quran and hadiths flourished dramatically, I became a defender of Islam for quite some time. I continued to resist looking into the basic texts of Islam, the Quran, Sunnah and Muhammad's biographies for 2-3 years. But I eventually read them, and I was shattered and frustrated with myself. I was ashamed because the Quran reads like a manual of unconditional war against non-Muslims, Muhammad was one of the most horrible, if not the worst, human being in the history of mankind. And I had believed that Islam was the most perfect and peaceful religion, a perfect code to human life, for 35+ years of my life.

For a Muslim, living Islam is the most difficult thing in the world, and this was the case with me. Only when I read the basic text of Islam and understood its truth was I able to leave Islam with ease. If I hadn't read these texts, I couldn't have mastered the courage to leave Islam despite the horrible things Muslim Jihadis continued to perpetrate, or howsoever hard the critics would criticize those fanatics.

Similarly, after reading my websites islam-watch.org and faithfreedom.org—websites that focus on the criticisms of Islam based on its foundations: the Quran, the Sunnah, and Prophet Muhammad—many Muslims are leaving Islam, even some potential suicide-bombers and mosque imams amongst them. I have testimonies from Muslims, who considered themselves "Muslims for life" just a couple of months ago, that they would never leave the most fulfilling creed of Islam. But after reading my book, which basically exposes the true nature of Jihad against the popular discourse that it is a peaceful struggle with the self, against vice, for eradication of poverty, for human rights and women's rights etc., they found their whole life based on a lie, and were shattered. Their faith in Islam was shattered.

So the challenge in front of us is to bare the foundation of the Islamic creed in front of these so-called moderate/liberal Muslims and to make them read the foundational texts of Islam. Once they do that, a majority of them will find their faith in Islam shattered. And there it begins: the collapse of Islam like a castle of sands. Humanity will be rescued from its lasting horrors once and for all.

BW: There has been a good deal of truth-telling about Islam since the 9/11. But it is not working so far; we are not winning the battle. What do you think is need to be done?

Khan: That's absolutely true. A lot of literature has been produced, particularly in the form of books, telling the truth about Islam. But you must also take into account that a much greater volume of literature has been produced, selling the lies of Islam. Let me emphasize that for 'shaming the Muslims out of Islam', we need books and literature focusing the Quran, Sunnah and Islamic history, books like Ibn Warraq's Why I Am Not A Muslim, Andrew Bostom's Legacy of Jihad, Dr. Ali Sina's Understanding Muhammad, and probably my Islamic Jihad. Very few penetrative books of this type, except those of Ibn Warraq and Bostom, have been successful. Most books of this type are not picked up by reputed publishers, fearing Muslim backlash; they are often being self-published published and receive little attention. Most important factor of all is that very few Muslims, who in general have a very poor book-buying and reading habit, buy books like these.

Therefore, those books, telling the truth about Islam, have very little impact on Muslims, our prime target. On the other hand, books telling the lies about Islam, which are produced in much larger volumes and the media is eager to promote, are the books that most Muslims and non-Muslims buy. So we have, on the whole, a nullification of the impact of truth-telling books by the lies-telling ones.

And when it comes to the news media, which Muslims read to a large extent: there the truth-telling is largely absent; lies-telling is overwhelmingly prevalent. Our mainstream media (MSM) is based on lies, on falsehood, when it comes to the coverage of Islam. And whatever little truth-telling is done, very little of it is focused on the foundational texts and doctrines of Islam.

The MSM is the biggest culprit, the biggest accomplice, in the success of radical Islam. They are most eager to circulate the messages-audio-tapes and videos et cetera, of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other top al-Qaeda and radical Islamic leaders and ideologues as such. And getting these messages to Muslim audience, harboring potential recruits, is crucial to the success, with which the radical Islamic agenda is progressing. At the same time, the MSM rigorously filter out the few voices that are trying to focus their criticism on the foundations of Islam, criticism that will matter in enlightening both Muslims and non-Muslims about Islam and in shaming the Muslims out of it.

The same goes with the Internet. It has played tremendous role in the success of al-Qaeda and like-minded radical Islamic groups in spreading their messages, which is the linchpin of their tremendous success in popularizing their violent mission and recruiting cadres. While the truth-tellers have some success there, where they can spread their messages with relative freedom, but there are only few such websites with limited readership against a deluge of pro-Islam and militant Islamic websites. And most of all, the truth-telling websites are banned in most Islamic countries, and even in the West. For example, most educational institutions in Australia have banned all truth-telling websites, namely Faith Freedom, The Religion of Peace, Jihad Watch , Islam Watch and Islam Monitor amongst others categorizing them as hate-sites.

So, it will become clear why we are not making significant ground in our truth-telling efforts. The outcome of this battle, I think, will be determined by the media. We must recognize that the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars annually in strengthening intelligence apparatus, tightening security and the war of terror is going to waste. Some of these measures are also working counter to their intended objectives, by helping the radicalization of the Muslim mind on various grievances, howsoever unjustified they may be. And of course, it is causing loss of lives in large numbers on both sides.

In the media, we can kill this menace with a small fraction of the investment and with much less loss in life and properties. The battle can be won with ease. Muslims can ignore the noise made by truth-tellers, often discredited as fringe Muslim-hating Islamophobes, in a negligible few and little-known websites, but they cannot ignore the Mainstream Media. When the truth-tellers get the opportunity to bare the fundamental sacred texts of Islam in the pages of the MSM to show how horrible and barbaric the cult of Islam is, Muslims at all levels would be forced to defend their creed by looking into those texts. Every attempt to defend Islam would lead to their enlightenment about the filth and inhumanity that lies at its heart.

We have more than convincing evidence to affirm that the so-called peaceful majority of moderate/liberal Muslims, ashamed, frustrated, and angered of what they have unwittingly believed for their whole life, would start leaving Islam en masse. The West's problem would be solved in a decade or two with the collapse of Islam; I can challenge you on that. From there, the remedy to the Islamic problem in the rest of the world, including Muslim countries, would soon begin.

The fact is that the Islamists have tremendous advantage against the truth-tellers in every aspect of this battle. The truth-tellers are fighting this battle against mountainous odds: their opponents have annual investment of billions of dollars against zero on their own side; the Islamists have almost all the ground in the MSM, the decisive battleground of this struggle.

I realize that there is little chance of this changing at all. The future of this battle remains hugely tilted toward the Islamist side as of now. The Talibanization of the globe remain an inescapable possibility unless circumstances changes drastically, possibly horribly.

BW: Thank you for enlightening us, Mr. Khan.

Bill Warner
Political Islam

Personally, we at the Two-Fisted Quorum do not believe Mr. Khan's solution of shaming will work. There is an incredible swath of humanity's muster aiming for this fight, millions of indoctrinated assassins intoxicated with the pernicious urges of brutality and demonic rage, a disposition that will not take no for an answer. No amount of persuasion will still this Islamic beast as it prepares for war and total control. This particular fight will of necessity take place. There will be unfathomable casualties, but I believe that if Americans, particularly its cowed and dhimmified leadership finally wake up to this monster threat and throw off the chains placed around them by succumbing to the dual seductions of Islamic briberies and liberal progressive mythologies, the West can win this war, albeit at a formidable price of blood, treasure, and lifestyle for several generations.

THE TRANSPARENT PRESIDENT

2009-07-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

IT IS HIGHLY UNUSUAL that the Obama campaign would choose to first publish Obama's "Certification of Live Birth" (COLB) NOT on its own campaign website, but, on Daily Kos, a hard-left website, and then later adopt the Daily Kos document as its own "official" copy. Since Obama chose to publish his alleged COLB on a public non-campaign website, Daily Kos, he has waived all rights of privacy to it! Let's See It, Mr. O! Produce your actual Birth Certificate not just a COLB of dubious origin (which can be issued to non-citizens)! In addition, the State of Hawaii Health Director waived the privacy privilege by making official public statements about the COLB.

—Patriot Skyline

THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN no right to privacy in the first place. There is certain criteria to meet to stand for election to the highest office in this land. There was general knowledge and immediate concerns that warranted the public airing of Mr. Obama's birth records. But political operatives at every level straight up to the Supreme Court of the United States have stonewalled common sense, and legal precedent.

The man is obviously hiding facts that make him ineligible to hold the office to which he aspired.

Yet another outrage from the first Marxist American President...

Yes, these Marxists do get it. This is THEIR plan to bring America to its knees. Just watch Obama, and his smirking grin...

He knows the plan is working, is pretty damn well on track and in due time the neutron bomb of Obama politics will render us helpless. It's a constitutional outrage the way this stealth takeover of our government is operating, an administration that promised transparency, but what Obama really meant was his government would be invisible.

Can you say czarism?

Craig on July 18th, 2009 3:04 PM posted the following on another site in response to another poster named Heather, who is quoted immediately below in response to the call for sunshine on Obama's right to govern...

“Obama is all you have, so instead of bitching about it, get behind him.”
—Heather Hetherington

We obviously have diametrically opposed points of view and manny of us do not feel helpless like you.

If BHO was born in HI, we will drop that issue. But he is not “all that we have”. There are the legislative and judicial branches of our government that we will not let him marginalize or subvert. While some elements of the Opposition will challenge BHo in a principled but genteel fashion, there will be a more robust Opposition that will do everything legal to kick this Marxist counter-revolutionary to the curb and then kick him and Rahmbo some more, till we have the type of patriotic Americans administering our Republic for which our Founding Fathers fought and died.

We are waging a fight to the death for the continuation of our Republic. You can fight with us, fight against us, or sit on the back porch, but we will not drink the hemlock of neo-Marxism and statism while BHO says, “It is good drink and all of your problems will go away.”

"The birth-certificate controversy is about Obama’s honesty, not where he was born."

Meanwhile, in a surprising shift of position, the respected Andrew C. McCarthy of the National Review Online pens an excellent comprehensive opinion on why the Obama birth certificate issue has already served to root out certain truths about this president, and given the resistance of his administration to release information on other still troubling details of his life as they impact on his status as an honest man, why the issue should remain on the front burner until the American people know the full extent of their relationship with a man who promised us transparency...

Read it HERE.

NOTE FROM CONGRESSMAN FRANK WOLF

2009-07-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

This letter arrived today from esteemed Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA-10th District). We very much appreciate his continued advocacy for local safety issues, human rights around the globe, as well as his repeated efforts to inspire the current administration to remember its promise for transparent government, promised by the candidate, and often touted by the new president with little or no change from the business as usual model Americans have come to loathe from both parties.

The congressman's report:

Dear Friends,

Congress is deep into the appropriations season. The House has passed seven of the 12 FY 2010 spending bills, with five more on course for consideration before the annual August congressional recess. This week the House will vote on the Energy and Water, and Financial Services appropriations. The Transportation-Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations subcommittee on which I serve approved the THUD bill Monday evening, and that bill should be on the House floor later this month.

Transportation Improvements

The transportation spending bill approved by the subcommittee includes another $85 million for the Dulles Corridor Metrorail extension project. This latest installment would bring the total federal share for the project to date to over $440 million. I am hopeful that both the full House and Senate will include this funding in the final version of the spending bill to continue the federal share for this critical project. A national report earlier this month ranked the Washington, D.C., metro area as having the second worst traffic congestion in the nation, a dubious distinction that the area has held for a number of years. Mass transit in the Dulles corridor is critical to relieving congestion on busy roads and will connect the nation‚s capital to one of the world‚s leading international airports.

My recent efforts also have focused on two transportation safety issues. In light of the tragic accident that occurred on June 22 on Metro's Red Line, the Washington region‚s congressional delegation has worked together to secure $150 million in the FY 2010 transportation spending bill for Metro safety and maintenance improvements. This funding would be matched by Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.

The state's decision to close a number of rest areas on interstate highways in the Commonwealth is also of deep concern, and my letter to Governor Kaine urges the state to reconsider the decision. I fear that fatigued drivers, especially long-haul truckers, without convenient places to pull off the highway could increase the risks for accidents. This is a safety issue and the state has a responsibility to the hundreds of thousands of drivers on Virginia's highways to resolve this matter.

Attorney General Is Stonewalling

Earlier this year, President Obama stated that he ran "for president promising transparency, and I meant what I said. That is why, whenever possible, we will make information available to the American people so that they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable. My intention is to hold him and his appointees to his word.

As you will recall, I have been trying to get answers from Attorney General Eric Holder on the Justice Department‚s (DOJ) plans for the disposition of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. After waiting 118 days for a response to my letters of March 13, April 23, and May 13, my office received only a cursory acknowledgment from the department on July 7 that failed to answer a single question. Similar questions from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have similarly been dismissed or gone unanswered. The attorney general's blatant obstruction of this most basic responsibility leads me to question this administration's commitment to transparency and accountability.

Mr. Holder's failure to explain his decision to dismiss a recent voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party is also of great concern. Both the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and I have sent letters to the department seeking an explanation. My office has also called on the House Judiciary Committee and the DOJ inspector general to investigate this matter.

Disappointing Effort on Human Rights

My concerns are growing regarding the Obama administration's failure to date to champion human rights as a central part of American foreign policy. My statement in the *Congressional Record* highlights those concerns, specifically with the administration's dealings with China, Cuba, Sudan, Egypt, North Korea, Vietnam, Iran and Russia. I was quick to criticize the Bush administration when its public rhetoric in the human rights arena failed to match its action. But in this new, young administration, it seems even the rhetoric is absent.

I hope this information is helpful. For more on these and other issues, please visit my website. Please continue to share your views on matters of interest to you.

Best wishes,

Frank Wolf

MORE TENTH AMENDMENT MOVEMENT

2009-07-14T04:43:00.000-07:00

ON FRIDAY JULY 10, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin signed House Joint Resolution 27 (HJR27), sponsored by State Rep. Mike Kelly. The resolution “claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.”

The House passed the resolution by a vote of 37-0 (3 not voting) and the Senate passed it by a vote of 40-0.

Six other states have had both houses of their legislature pass similar resolutions—Tennessee, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Louisiana—Alaska joins Tennessee as the second to have such a resolution signed by the Governor.

A GROWING MOVEMENT

Passage of this resolution appears to be part of what is now a growing state-level resistance to the federal government on various levels. Similar 10th Amendment resolutions have been introduced in 37 states around the country, and various states are considering single-issue legislation in direct contravention to federal laws.

Most recently, the Arizona Legislature passed a measure for public approval on the 2010 state ballot that would give Arizona voters the opportunity to nullify, or opt out, of any potential national health care legislation.

Since 2007, more than two dozen states have passed legislation refusing to implement the Real ID act of 2005. In response, the federal government has recently announced that they want to “repeal and replace” the law due to a rebellion by states.

Pending legislation in states around the country also includes preventing state law enforcement officials from enforcing federal laws, refusing federal gun regulations, refusing to send a state’s national guard to any duty other than what the constitution authorizes, legalizing marijuana for various purposes and more.

A FIRST STEP

While HJR27 is strongly-word in support of the principles of limited, constitutional government that the 10th Amendment represents, it is a Joint Resolution and does not carry with it the force of law. But supporters say that this is an important first step to get their message out not only to grassroots supporters, but to the media, and legislators in other states as well.

Read the final version of the resolution below:

Relating to the Sovereign Powers of the State

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF ALASKA:

WHEREAS the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”; and

WHEREAS the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and

WHEREAS some federal actions weaken states’ rights protected by the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS the Tenth Amendment assures that we, the people of the United States of America and each sovereign state in the Union of States, now have, and have always had, rights the federal government may not usurp; and

WHEREAS art. IV, sec. 4, Constitution of the United States, reads, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” and the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”; and

WHEREAS the United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S.Ct. 2408 (1992), that the United States Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and

WHEREAS all states, including Alaska, find themselves regularly facing proposals from the United States Congress that weaken states’ rights protected by the Tenth Amendment;

BE IT RESOLVED that the Alaska State Legislature hereby claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED that this resolution serves as Notice and Demand to the federal government to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

COPIES of this resolution shall be sent to the Honorable Barack Obama, President of the United States; the Honorable Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Vice-President of the United States and President of the U.S. Senate; the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; the Honorable Lisa Murkowski and the Honorable Mark Begich, U.S. Senators, and the Honorable Don Young, U.S. Representative, members of the Alaska delegation in Congress; all other members of the 111th United States Congress; the presiding officers of the legislatures of each of the other 49 states; and the governors of each of the other 49 states.

MORE APPLES, MORE ORANGES

2009-07-12T21:36:00.000-07:00

Of course these nasty, rather inconvenient statistics would never happen here in America, right, because we have our precious US Constitution to protect us from evil bandits and foreign and internal freedom fighters, right? Oops, Madame Sotomayor just slipped us a silver mickey, but hey, I think in the long run our millions of gun-hating people-loving progressive permissive class clowns might appreciate this...

In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.

China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated

Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were
rounded up and exterminated.

Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million educated people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

Defenseless people rounded up and exterminated in the 20th Century because of gun control: 56 million. Priceless.

Bottom line: Americans must be crazy to cling to their guns and their religion and their matter of fact principles that fly in the face of all this BIG LOVE doled out by governmental gun control fanatics because every American know by now after all our progressive thought experiments that the Second Amendment has absolutely nothing to do with protecting oneself or one's family whether it be from a criminal enterprise or a criminal government.

Yes, that must be it. After all, they'll never come for me...

LEGAL GUN OWNERSHIP SAVES LIVES

2009-07-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

THE GUN CONTROL DEBATE has shifted over the last 20 years. Activists pointed to Britain, Australia and Canada as models of gun control policy; however, the statistics tell a far different story, says John Barnes of the Washington Policy Center. Read on...

It’s an age-old story. A criminal shoots someone, and then politicians propose gun-control measures that would have done nothing to prevent the shooting. On March 26, Kyle Huff killed six people at a late-night party in Seattle. Seattle mayor Greg Nickels immediately called for more regulations on guns. None of his proposals would have prevented the tragedy.

There is another side to stories about guns. In 1990 a group of gang members pulled a Seattle man from his bicycle and beat him. He used his legally-registered handgun to shoot one of the assailants and stop the attack. In 2002 a West Seattle woman shot an intruder who had broken into her home and was beating her roommate. In 2003 an elderly Tacoma man confined to his bed shot an intruder who had kicked in his door and attacked him. In 2004 a Spokane woman awoke one morning to discover an intruder in her house, whom she held at gunpoint until the police arrived. In all of these cases, if it were not for the legal use of guns in self-defense, the victims would likely be dead.

The gun control debate has shifted over the last 20 years. Back then it was common to hear that it is in everyone’s best interests if the government made guns go away. The legislative agenda of anti-gun groups was much more radical and overt. Activists pointed to Britain, Australia, and Canada as models of gun control policy.

In 1997 Britain banned handguns, and between 1998 and 2003 gun crimes doubled. According the British Home Office, between 1997 and 2001 homicides increased by 19% and violent crime increased by 26%, while in the U.S. those same crimes fell by 12%. Between 2000 and 2001, robbery increased by 28% in Britain but only 4% in the U.S. Domestic burglary increased by 7% in Britain, but only 3% in the U.S.

In 1996 Australia enacted sweeping gun control laws. In the six years following, violent crime rates rose by 32%. Canada isn’t faring well under its stringent gun control laws. Today Canada’s violent crime rate is more than double that of the U.S.

The fact that during this time right-to-carry laws were expanding in the U.S. makes these statistics all the more telling. Now 40 states allow citizens to carry guns. Violent crime rates are steadily declining in the U.S. Research—and common sense—show the “right-to-carry” by honest citizens deters crimes against persons and property.

Now even the most vocal anti-gun groups in Washington admit there is an individual right to own guns. The debates rage not over the right of law-abiding citizens to own guns, but how to keep them away from criminals. But just because the debate has shifted doesn’t mean we are immune from bad ideas masquerading as sound public policy. Exhibit one is Mayor Greg Nickels’ knee-jerk call for more gun control.

Citing a rash of gun-related crimes in the past few months, the mayor wants the state to allow cities to tighten restrictions. He is going after the usual targets: “assault” weapons, the supposed “gun show loophole,” and requirements for trigger locks and “safe storage.” All of these are problematic.

There was a federal assault weapons ban in place from 1994 to 2004. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms says the ban did not reduce crime nationally. Criminals who wanted to obtain such weapons found easy ways to get them in spite of the ban. Moreover, law enforcement research shows these guns are used in only about 1% of violent crimes.

The National Institute of Justice found in the 1980s and again in 1997 that only 2% of criminal guns come from gun shows. A report by Handgun Control, Inc., (hardly a friend of gun rights) found only two of 48 big-city police chiefs said guns bought at shows were a major problem in their cities.

Research shows at least 2.5 million protective uses of guns each year in the U.S. Guns are used about three to five times as often for defensive purposes as for criminal purposes. Most often the mere sight of a gun prevents a crime from occurring or getting worse.

Reasonable gun restrictions are clearly necessary; obviously owning a machine gun shouldn’t be legal. But gun ownership is not only a fundamental constitutional right, it is a proven way to reduce crime and save lives.

Source: John Barnes, "Legal Gun Ownership Saves Lives," Washington Policy Center, May 17, 2006.

Of course, there are blank spots in the cited statistics above, but some trends are obvious. Deterrence is not a big headline grabber, but it does change the dynamics of who does what to whom and when. Indeed there are untold instances on record of someone "successfully" defending themselves and others against intruders, but of course the liberal media avoids these stories. What's more disturbing is the fact that often the surprised but alert homeowner is hauled into court to defend himself against charges, while the intruder skirts off. It's an outrage.

Criminals use guns illegally with impunity, and yet the system coddles them. Meanwhile law abiders are demonized, and if the anti-gun lobby has its way, soon they will be criminalized. Ironically, perhaps only then will the system begin to work in their favor again.

But don't take my word for it. Google the web using these four keywords: gun ownership saves lives. There are lots of stories supporting the data. One merely has to be open to the information.

AMAZING WHAT ONE HAS TO BELIEVE...

2009-07-09T16:34:00.000-07:00

...to believe in gun control.

That the more helpless you are, the safer you are from criminals.

That you should give a mugger your wallet, because he doesn't really want to shoot you and he'll let you go, but that you should give him your wallet, because he'll shoot you if you don't.

That Washington DC's low murder rate of 69 per 100,000 is due to gun control, and Indianapolis' high murder rate of 9 per 100,000 is attributable to the lack of gun control.

That "NYPD Blue" and "Miami Vice" are documentaries.

That an intruder will be incapacitated by tear gas or oven spray, but if shot with a .44 Magnum will get angry and kill you.

That firearms in the hands of private citizens are the gravest threat to world peace, and China, Pakistan and Korea can be trusted with nuclear weapons.

That Charlton Heston as president of the NRA is a shill who should be ignored, but Michael Douglas as a representative of Handgun Control, Inc. is an ambassador for peace who is entitled to an audience at the UN arms control summit.

That ordinary people, in the presence of guns, turn into slaughtering butchers, and revert to normal when the weapon is removed.

That the New England Journal of Medicine is filled with expert advice about guns, just like Guns and Ammo has some excellent treatises on heart surgery.

That one should consult an automotive engineer for safer seat belts, a civil engineer for a better bridge, a surgeon for spinal paralysis, a computer programmer for Y2K problems, and Sarah Brady for firearms expertise.

That the "right of the people peaceably to assemble," the "right of the people to be secure in their homes," "enumerations herein of certain rights shall not be construed to disparage others retained by the people," "The powers not delegated herein are reserved to the states respectively, and to the people," refer to individuals, but "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" refers to the states.

That the 2nd Amendment, ratified in 1787, allows the states to have a National Guard, created by act of Congress in 1917.

That the National Guard, paid by the federal government, occupying property leased to the federal government, using weapons owned by the federal government, punishing trespassers under federal law, is a state agency.

That private citizens can't have handguns, because they serve no militia purpose, even though the military has hundreds of thousands of them, and private citizens can't have assault rifles, because they are military weapons.

That it is reasonable for California to have a minimum 2 year sentence for possessing but not using an assault rifle, and reasonable for California to have a 6 month minimum sentence for raping a female police officer.

That it is reasonable to jail people for carrying but not using guns, but outrageous to jail people for possessing marijuana.

That minimum sentences violate civil rights, unless it's for possessing a gun.

That door-to-door searches for drugs are a gross violation of civil rights and a sign of fascism, but door-to-door searches for guns are a reasonable solution to the "gun problem."

That the first amendment absolutely allows child pornography and threats to kill cops, but doesn't apply to manuals on gun repair.

That a woman in a microskirt, perfume, and a Wonderbra, without underwear, is a helpless victim, but someone getting paid $6 an hour to deliver the cash from a fast food place to the bank at the same time every night is, "asking for it." And you won't allow either of them to carry a gun.

That Illinois' law that allows any government official from Governor to dogcatcher to carry a gun is reasonable, and the law that prohibits any private citizen, even one with 50 death threats on file and a million dollar jewelry business, is reasonable. And it isn't a sign of police statism.

That free speech entitles one to own newspapers, transmitters, computers, and typewriters, but self defense only justifies bare hands.

That with the above, a 90 lb woman attacked by a 300 lb rapist and his 300 lb buddy, has the "right" to kill them in self defense, provided she uses her bare hands.

That gun safety courses in school only encourage kids to commit violence, but sex education in school doesn't encourage kids to have sex.

That the ready availability of guns today, with only a few government forms, waiting periods, checks, infringements, ID, and fingerprinting, is responsible for all the school shootings, compared to the lack of school shootings in the 1950's and 1960's, which was caused by the awkward availability of guns at any hardware store, gas station, and by mail order.

That we must get rid of guns because a deranged lunatic may go on a shooting spree at any time, and anyone who owns a gun out of fear of such a lunatic is paranoid.

That there is too much explicit violence featuring guns on TV, and that cities can sue gun manufacturers because people aren't aware of the dangers involved with guns.

That the gun lobby's attempt to run a "don't touch" campaign about kids handling guns is propaganda, and the anti-gun lobby's attempt to run a "don't touch" campaign is responsible social activity.

That the crime rate in America is decreasing because of gun control, and the increase in crime requires more gun control.

That 100 years after its founding, the NRA got into the politics of guns from purely selfish motives, and 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the black civil rights movement was founded from purely noble motives.

That statistics showing high murder rates justify gun control, and statistics that show increasing murder rates after gun control are "just statistics."

That we don't need guns against an oppressive government, because the Constitution has internal safeguards, and we should ban and seize all guns, therefore violating the 2nd, 4th, and 5th Amendments of that Constitution, thereby becoming an oppressive government.

That guns are an ineffective means of self defense for rational adults, but in the hands of an ignorant criminal become a threat to the fabric of society.

That guns are so complex to use that special training is necessary to use them properly, and so simple to use that they make murder easy.

That guns cause crime, which is why there are so many mass slayings at gun shows.

That guns aren't necessary to national defense, which is why the army only has 3 million of them.

That banning guns works, which is why New York, DC, and Chicago cops need guns.

That the Constitution protects us, so we don't need guns, and can confiscate them, thereby violating the 5th amendment of that constitution.

That women are just as intelligent and capable as men, yet a woman with a gun is "an accident waiting to happen."

That women are just as intelligent and capable as men, and gunmakers' advertisements aimed at women are "preying on their fears."

That a handgun, with up to 4 controls, is far too complex for the typical adult to learn to use, as opposed to an automobile that only has 20.

That a majority of the population supports gun control, just like a majority of the population used to support owning slaves.

That one should ignore as idiots politicians who confuse Wicca with Satanism and exaggerate the gay community as a threat to society, but listen sagely to politicians who can refer to a self-loading small arm as a "weapon of mass destruction" and an "assault weapon."

That Massachusetts is safer with bans on guns, which is why Teddy Kennedy has machinegun toting guards.

That most people can't be trusted, so we should have laws against guns, which most people will abide by, because they can be trusted.

That a woman raped and strangled with her panties is morally superior to a woman with a smoking gun and a dead rapist at her feet.

That guns should be banned because of the danger involved, and live reporting from the battlefield, which can keep the enemy informed of troop deployments, getting thousands of troops killed and perhaps losing a war, is a protected act that CANNOT be compromised on.

That the right of online child pornographers to exist cannot be questioned because it is a constitutionally protected extension of the Bill of Rights, and the claim that handguns are for self defense is merely an excuse, and not really protected by the Bill of Rights.

That the ACLU is good because it uncompromisingly defends certain parts of the Constitution, and the NRA is bad, because it defends other parts of the Constitution.

That a house with a gun is three times as likely to have a murder, just like a house with insulin is three times as likely to have a diabetic.

That police operate in groups with backup, which is why they need larger capacity magazines than civilians, who must face criminals alone, and therefore need less ammunition.

That we should ban "Saturday Night Specials" and other inexpensive guns because it's not fair that poor people have access to guns, too.

That guns have no legitimate use, but alcohol does, which is why we issue cops beer instead of guns.

That police and soldiers are the dregs of society who were unfit to get any real job, which perfectly qualifies them with the high moral standards and keen intellects to handle these complicated tools and be our guardians.

Copyright 1999, 2000 by Michael Z. Williamson
Permission is granted to copy in part or in total for non-profit purposes, provided due credit is given.

THE OTHER SIDE OF RACISM

2009-06-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-17T16:49:00.000-07:00

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!