Sarandon’s out? (Glenn Beck)

 

The media has already pulled out on the story of Iraq, and they are sticking to the storyline that it’s a complete failure. All politicians, for or against the war, say what a great job the troops are doing—the translation that the media doesn’t give you is that ‘great job’ includes killing tons of terrorists. So much so that the head of the CIA is saying that Al-Qaeda is near defeat in Iraq and overall. This is the kind of news story that has people like Susan Sarandon threatening that if John McCain wins, and continues this horrible war that’s beating the terrorists, she will move to Italy or Canada. Let’s hope it’s Italy because it’s much, much farther away. No word on if she’ll take Tim Robbins with her.

No End Of Bile From Obama’s Bully Pulpits

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, May 30, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Decision ‘08: Everybody knows the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his bigoted anti-American rants. We’ll soon get to know the Rev. Michael Pfleger. With Barack Obama, you’re not only waiting for the other shoe to drop. You’re following a centipede.

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Read More: Election 2008

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In April 2004, Sen. Obama told a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times that he had three spiritual mentors or counselors: Jeremiah Wright, James Meeks and Father Michael Pfleger. On Sunday, May 25, Pfleger showed up at Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ doing his best Rev. Wright imitation.

A radical priest at Chicago’s St. Sabina Catholic Church, Pfleger told the congregation, “We must be honest enough to expose white entitlement and supremacy wherever it raises its head.” He mimicked Hillary Clinton crying and said her reaction to Obama’s candidacy was to say: “I’m white. I’m entitled. There’s a black man stealing my show.”

Obama was quicker on the draw than he was with Wright, saying last week that he was “deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger’s divisive, backward-looking rhetoric.” Maybe, maybe not. But if Obama doesn’t share Pfleger’s views, Trinity Church — Obama’s church — obviously does.

With Wright, Obama could get away for a while with claiming remarks such as 9/11’s being a case of America’s chickens coming home were cherry-picked snippets from decades of sermons, and that in any event he wasn’t there on those particular Sundays.

When Wright repeated and amplified those remarks at the National Press Club, Obama’s political calculation was to disown the pastor he said he couldn’t disown, the man who married him and baptized his children.

Obama said he realized Wright wasn’t the same man he had known for 20 years. Will he say the same thing about Pfleger? Or will he admit that his church is a bastion of black liberation from whose pulpit routinely comes vitriol worthy of a David Duke or, for that matter, a Louis Farrakhan?

The 2004 Sun-Times article noted that “friends and advisers” such as Pfleger, “who has known Obama for the better part of 20 years, help him keep his (moral) compass, he (Obama) says.” Based on Pfleger’s remarks, either he or Obama, or both, have, uh, lost their bearings.

Pfleger has had a working relationship with Obama since the late 1980s. As noted, he was one of Obama’s spiritual mentors. Between 1995 and 2001, Pfleger contributed a total of $1,500 to Obama’s various political campaigns.

This includes a $200 donation in April 2001, three months after Obama, still an Illinois state senator, helped obtain $225,000 in grants for St. Sabina programs. In 2000, Obama secured a $100,000 earmark for the ARK Community Center, attached to St. Sabina. Render unto Caesar.

Pfleger apologized for his remarks, saying “I regret the words I chose” and the “words are inconsistent with Senator Obama’s life and message.” But does he regret the sentiments expressed or merely that they hurt Obama’s political chances? Pfleger’s remorse came only after his rant popped up on YouTube.

Pfleger, who leads a mostly black parish and has warmly embraced what is called black liberation theology, was a member of “Catholics for Obama.” A glowing endorsement of the former state senator appeared on Obama’s campaign Web site. Pfleger is a regular guest at Trinity.

The June-July issue of Wright’s “Trumpet” magazine described him as “Afrocentric to the core.” This is the same magazine that printed an op-ed by a Hamas supporter and honored Nation of Islam leader Farrakhan. Pfleger calls Farrakhan a “friend” who “is a great man who I have great respect for, who has done an awful lot for people in this country.”

Does Obama have any spiritual mentors who don’t hate America and think all its people are racists? We don’t believe in guilt by association, but these are the only associations he seems to have.

Obama cannot claim he was ignorant of Pfleger’s views as he claimed to be of Wright’s. He cannot claim to have sat in the pews of Trinity United, bringing his children there, and heard none of this. Both his judgment and his honesty, even his true beliefs, are in question.

If the Rev. Pfleger helps open the public’s eyes about the enigmatic Obama, he will have also done an awful lot for the people of this country.

 

Exclusive: Dishonest Divisive Barry Obama

by Bill Siegel

Barack Obama’s Watertown response to President Bush’s Knesset speech is precisely what Obama himself accuses Bush and John McCain of engaging in: a dishonest divisive attack, or perhaps better stated, a dishonest, distorting, divisive projection of his own thinking.

President Bush said: “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them that they have been wrong all along. We have heard this before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

The following is the text of Obama’s response, annotated to point out just some of the dishonesty and distortion that animates much of Obama’s rhetoric:

I do want to say something about yesterday. You know, after almost eight years I did not think I could be surprised about anything that George Bush says. But I was wrong. Yesterday George Bush was before the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, to help commemorate the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence. That’s a wonderful occasion and a time for celebration.

It is also a time to demonstrate that he understands the dangerous conditions in which Israel finds itself and that he understands fully the dangerous types of thinking that pervade America and the West that can and have paralyzed the West from taking the actions necessary to adequately assist Israel.

But instead of celebrating and offering some clear ideas about how to move the situation in the Middle East forward,

Bush had presented the Road Map and, rightly or wrongly, is currently actively engaged in what is often called a “peace process.” What is Obama’s idea other than to sophomorically suggest that his magical persuasive powers and desires for “change” will bring about a resolution? The arrogance embedded in this position is precisely that suggested in Bush’s historical reference.

the President did something that presidents don’t do – and that is launch a political attack targeted toward the domestic market in front of a foreign delegation.

The intended target is most sensibly the world, including (i) the Israeli population to show that Bush has a certain grasp of the futility of never-ending appeasement, (ii) Europe and others which are often stuck in the thinking Bush has outlined, as well as (iii) Israel’s enemies. To limit the target to our domestic market is Obama, himself, taking a global issue and using it for his own political objectives – the very projection he uses against Bush himself.

On a day when we were supposed to be celebrating the anniversary of Israel’s independence, he accused me

Again, on the surface this seems simple naïve narcissism for Obama to claim victimhood here. Needless to say, an attack on a thinking pattern is being construed as an attack on Obama himself. Additionally, it can appropriately be seen as an attempt to elevate himself to being on a par with Bush, rising above Hillary Clinton, and starting to take the mantle of being the Democratic nominee. Finally, Obama is twisting the outgoing president’s global remarks on foreign soil into his own accusation – another maneuver of projection.

and other Democrats of wanting to negotiate with terrorists, and said we were appeasers no different from people who appeased Adolf Hitler. That’s what George Bush said in front of the Israeli parliament.

Despite arguments by cable “news” faces who differentiate “appeasing” from “talking,” this is a correct statement concerning Obama. In simple terms, appeasement consists of rewarding the enemy’s unsatisfactory actions in an effort to induce it to stop such behavior. This is precisely what Obama and his Democrat partners do when they neuter all of our applications of force while allowing Iran to stall “negotiations” and continue to advance its nuclear program. Iran couldn’t be clearer with its frequently stated proposition that it will never cease its nuclear program.

Now that’s exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and that alienates us from the world.

Embedded in this remark is a laundry list of distortions about our recent history. This “talk” is not at all what divides or supposedly “alienates us” from the world. Rather, we are divided as a country in large part based on the very thinking Bush described. The accurate history is that within months of our successful liberation of Iraq, the Democratic base, assisted by many in the State Department, CIA, and the media did all they could to interfere with Bush’s original plan. That plan was to liberate Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam and have the Iraqis quickly install their own government and then leave. As described in numerous accounts, including Doug Feith’s War and Decision, and Ken Timmerman’s Shadow Warriors, those plans were systematically deconstructed, sabotaged, and discredited. This description does not excuse Bush, as he is the ultimate executive. Nonetheless, our divisiveness exists in large measure because of the great political anti-Bush efforts made by those who currently support Obama. As for alienated allies, having vetted all of the self-interest connected with many European votes against our efforts in Iraq (as well as their having now experienced directly the effects of liberal policies towards Shari’ah motivated Muslims), many of those same European countries are returning to more conservative leadership.

And that’s why we need change in Washington. That’s part of the reason I’m running for President of the United States of America.

Now that was frustrating enough, but then John McCain gives a speech. He gave a speech in the morning where he talked about the need for civility in our politics. He talked about elevating the tone of the debate in our country. He talked about reaching out in a bipartisan fashion to the other side.

And then not an hour later, he turned around and embraced George Bush’s attacks on Democrats. He jumped on a call with a bunch of bloggers and said that I wasn’t fit to protect this nation that I love because I wanted to sit down and negotiate with tough diplomacy with countries like Iran. He accused me of not being fit to protect this nation, a nation that my grandfather served in World War II, this nation that has given me everything that I have. So much for civility.

Civility? As if Obama and his “community organizer” hit men have not been constantly beating up on McCain, deceitfully attaching McCain’s name to Bush’s at every opportunity and attacking McCain’s age and so forth. These tactics, while perhaps expressed in a civil tone, are anything but the type of campaign Obama claims he and the name of “change” stand for. Again, he does precisely that which he claims is a part of the “old” system he will change.

Speaking of names, Obama’s followers attack anyone who cites his middle name “Hussein”, again charging a lack of civility and even racism for suggesting Obama is Muslim. As far back as Cassius Clay, blacks have changed their names to Arab-Islamic ones precisely to demonstrate that they are Muslims. Obama’s given name makes clear that he was a Muslim at least at birth. He certainly realized the significance of his name when, in his younger years he changed and went by “Barry.” If he so wants to dispel any issue today, he is free to change his name again to Barry rather than holding the rest of the world responsible for ignoring and overlooking the obvious.

I want to be perfectly clear with George Bush and John McCain and with the people of South Dakota. If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate I am happy to have any time, any place. And that is a debate that I will win, because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for.

[Standing Ovation]

Rhetoric and debate are his strong suits. Perhaps this is why he goes around saying he will talk to anyone. “Talk” is precisely all he stands for and all that his Messianic worshippers “hope” is necessary to rid our world of evil and solve our problems. Again, that is precisely part of the thinking Bush was describing.

George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for. They have to explain why we are now entering our sixth year of war in Iraq. We were supposed to be going over there for weapons of mass destruction that we never found.

Not true. We went into Iraq for a variety of reasons. The most often expressed reason was the failure of the UN to take sufficient action on 17 Security Council Resolutions. WMD was also a reason, given that most who saw the intelligence believed WMD to exist. Even today, numerous sources believe there is clear evidence that WMD were shipped out of Iraq before the liberation. More profoundly, as Obama insists he is the only one who had the good judgment to know in advance that the war was a mistake. Did he somehow know the almost universally accepted intelligence stating Iraq did have WMD and WMD programs was faulty? Or was the “judgment” he trumpets the conclusion that assuming the intelligence was correct, there was insufficient reason to go to enforce the Resolutions. In either case, his tactic of whining that no WMD was found disguises his real philosophy; that which Bush was outlining to the Knesset.

We were told that it was going to last a few months and cost a few billion dollars.

This was the plan until the State Department, under the influence of Democrats, sabotaged its execution and stretched the liberation into an occupation.

We have now spent over 600 billion dollars. Thousands of lives lost, and we have not been made more safe.

Safe by what measure? Obama inappropriately conflates the realities that truly threaten us with conditions that were caused by Bush’s supposed failures. This is where he demonstrates either ignorance or naïveté as to the real threats the West has faced for decades or he is deliberately abusing the truth to sell his candidacy. For all the hardship that has been incurred during the Bush years, it is foolish to think this decades-long battle will be easy. At least a significant portion of America has woken up to and become aware of the powerful force that confronts the West. That is as critical to our safety as any military or police victory.

They’re going to have to explain the fact that Osama bin Laden is still at large and is sending out videotapes with impunity. They need to answer for the fact that al Qaeda’s leadership is stronger than ever because we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan. They’ve got to answer for the fact that Iran is the greatest strategic beneficiary of our invasion in Iraq. It made Iran stronger.

What has made Iran stronger after the Iraqi liberation was America’s show of deep ambivalence with any use of force. It was this fear that Obama’s Democrat cohorts used to paralyze any effective stance against Iran. With the liberation, much of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had so feared an attack on Iran that they moved themselves and/or their assets out of the country. This was the time that Iran was offering to assist us with efforts against Al Qaeda and the time we had maximum leverage because of our use of force against Iraq. Once America’s Left taught Iran that it was unwilling to take a right turn and deploy force against Iran, the regime became emboldened and began to ignore every attempt to “negotiate” for the cessation of Iran’s nuclear program. Bush is responsible ultimately for inaction but the anti-Bush forces are what informed Iran that it could get away with endless stalling and lying. America has so blatantly communicated its fear of being militarily aggressive against Iran that Iran has done simply that which is expected-been unwilling to negotiate or give anything, stalled, and continued to advance its nuclear program.

George Bush’s policies. They’re going to have to explain why Hamas now controls Gaza, Hamas that was strengthened because the United States insisted that we should have democratic elections in the Palestinian authority. They’re going to have to explain why it is that Iran is able to fund Hezbollah and poses the greatest threat to the United States and Israel in the Middle East in a generation.

That’s the Bush-McCain record on protecting this country. Those are the failed policies that John McCain wants to double down on, because he still hasn’t spelled out one substantial way in which he’d be different from George Bush when it comes to foreign policy.

I’m a strong believer in civility and I’m a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy.

This completely misrepresents his record of virtually no bipartisan efforts. He “talks” well but his actions (specifically the lack of bipartisan action) belie his words.

But that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort that we’ve seen out of George Bush and John McCain over the last couple of days.

Again with the projection – Obama is very skilled at divisive dishonest attacks, all packaged with a soothing voice and face.

John McCain has repeated this notion that I am prepared to negotiate with terrorists. I have never said that.

This is simply false as his debate responses have made clear- unless he wants to make the evasive distinction between terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism. If he relies on that distinction, he is more naïve than generally thought.

I am adamant about not negotiating with Hamas, a terrorist organization that has vowed to destroy Israel and won’t recognize them. In fact, the irony is that just as John McCain was making these attacks, a story broke that he was actually guilty of the exact same thing that he was accusing me of, and in fact was saying that maybe we need to deal with Hamas.

That’s the kind of hypocrisy we’ve been seeing in our foreign policy. The kind of fear-peddling, fear-mongering that has prevented us from actually making us safer.

Actually, it is Obama and his “community organizer” cohorts who have mastered fear-peddling and fear-mongering. Obama’s “change” campaign is code for “revolution” as has been so thoroughly articulated and mastered by Obama’s “community organizer” guru Saul Alinsky. One of Alinsky’s tactics, mastered by Obama, are to personalize the target and describe it as 100% evil. Obama has done that perfectly with Bush and then further extends it to McCain. In fact, the essence of Obama’s thesis is that we only really need fear Bush and Cheney as they are completely responsible for our threats. Get rid of them and their representative McCain, and Obama promises you will have nothing to fear. This is perhaps one of his most devious and dangerous projections – the transfer of fear off of our real and appropriate enemies onto those he seeks to destroy.

They’re trying to fool you.

Again, a true investigation into Obama’s roots reveals his alignment with Alinsky. Most of the public has no idea who Alinsky was or what he taught. It is Obama’s fooling them that has allowed him to suggest that “change” means something other than radical revolution.

They’re trying to scare you. And they’re not telling the truth. And the reason is that they can’t win a foreign policy debate on the merits. But it’s not going to work. It’s not going to work this time. It’s not going to work this year.

Our Iran policy is a complete failure right now,

To the extent that is true, it is due to our actions as describe earlier. McCain may hopefully be able to teach the Iranian regime to think differently.

and that is the policy that John McCain is running on right now. He has nothing to offer except the naive and irresponsible belief that tough talk from Washington will somehow cause Iran to give up its nuclear program and support for terrorism.

Actually, it is only when there is a credible threat of tough action, not talk, that we have a prayer of having a successful Iran policy. Obama, the master of “talk” is completely unable to sell any credible threat of action.

I’m running for President to change course, not to continue George Bush’s course.

I believe we need to use all elements of American power to pressure Iran, including tough, principled and direct diplomacy. That’s what John F. Kennedy did. That’s what Ronald Reagan did when dealing with the Soviets. And that’s what the president’s own Secretary of Defense wants to do.

Many have already written on the historical misrepresentations embedded in these faulty analogies, distinguishing talks in secret from summits, talks at the brink of war when the force card is played rather then when force is interpreted to be avoided at all costs, and so on. Obama fails to point out that it was precisely Khrushchev’s perception of Kennedy’s weakness that emboldened the Soviets to take the game to the brink of all out war in the first place. We can not afford to replay that game today with religiously motivated, apocalyptic Mullahs. Simply put, this is more of Obama’s distortive talk. He is able to get away with it because many of his idolaters know no better.

Understand: George Bush’s Secretary of Defense suggests we talk directly to Iran. So I don’t know if George Bush is calling his own Secretary of Defense an “appeaser.” I don’t know who he’s talking about.

Didn’t you already narcissistically insist he was talking about you?

It’s time to present Iran with a clear choice. If it abandons its nuclear program, its support for terrorists and its threats to Israel, then it can rejoin the community of nations. If not, Iran will face deeper isolation and steeper sanctions.

This is perhaps the most dishonest element of his speech. None of this is new. These positions have been advanced by the Europeans and America for years. This is precisely what has been attempted and met with challenge from the Russians, the Chinese, and others. Alinsky instructs his followers to recognize that much of the population is ignorant and to utilize that ignorance. Obama deploys that tactic here as he has crystallized in the minds of his followers the illusion that no negotiations have taken place with Iran for years.

But in the Bush-McCain view, everybody who disagrees with their failed Iran policy is an “appeaser.” Back during his “No Surrender Tour,” John McCain said that anybody who wanted to end the war in Iraq wanted to surrender. He even said later on that he would be willing to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years.

Again he distorts what McCain actually said and clearly intended. Nevertheless, Obama presents himself as the innocent force for good who has been so maliciously misrepresented.

I think he noticed that it wasn’t polling well, because he announced yesterday, he said that suddenly all our troops are going to be home by 2013, although he didn’t explain how he was going to do it.

Projection again? Perhaps what annoys the Clintons more than anything else in losing to Obama is that Obama has hijacked all of the old Clinton strategies and implements them even more skillfully. Every position Clinton took was polled and adjusted and this has become an Obama staple. Then, like a Clinton, he accuses his opponent of the very ploy.

He offered the promise that America will win a victory, with no understanding that Iraq is fighting a civil war. Just like George Bush’s plan isn’t about winning, it’s about staying. And that’s why there will be a clear choice in November: fighting a war without end, or ending this war and bringing our troops home. We don’t need John McCain’s predictions about when the war will end. We need a plan to end it, and that’s what I’ve provided during this campaign.

The American people have had enough of the division and the bluster. Both Bush and McCain represent the failed foreign policy and fear-mongering of the past. I believe the American people are ready to reject this approach and to embrace the future. I think you’re ready for change that unites this country and ends this war and restores our security and standing in the world and that is serious about a bipartisan foreign policy.

This it the true first step towards an appeasement policy. Irrespective of any words, its intention is to convince the crowd that under Obama’s guidance, we will be able to talk our way back to a civil world. As Bush was suggesting, a civil world requires participants who respect and seek civility in terms similar to each other. It is the very fact that our enemies do not share our notion and terms of civility that generates the problem in the first place.

You can’t suggest that you want to be bipartisan and then run the kind of campaign tactics that we’ve been seeing over the last couple of days. You’ve got to start while you’re campaigning. That’s why we’ve got to bring about some change in the White House.

“Change” as Obama truly means it, is anything but bipartisan. His notion of bipartisan is to listen to what those on the other side of the aisle have to say in order to politely tell them that, in fact, he will act only as he has done throughout his career – in the most partisan liberal fashion possible.

Perhaps the most important part of most Bush speeches is truly relevant here – “God Bless America.” We will certainly need it.

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FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Bill Siegel lives in New York.

If you are a reporter or producer who is interested in receiving more information about this writer orthis article, please email your request to pr@familysecuritymatters.org.

Note – The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of The Family Security Foundation, Inc.

You Can’t Appease Everybody

For the record it’s pronounced henceforth: ‘Admaninejad’ like ‘admonee – nedjod’ okay? Great.

by Ann Coulter

After decades of comparing Nixon to Hitler, Reagan to Hitler and Bush to Hitler, liberals have finally decided it is wrong to make comparisons to Hitler. But the only leader to whom they have applied their newfound rule of thumb is: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
 
While Ahmadinejad has not done anything as starkly evil as cut the capital gains tax, he does deny the Holocaust, call for the destruction of Israel, deny the existence of gays in Iran and refuses to abandon his nuclear program despite protests from the United Nations. That’s the only world leader we’re not allowed to compare to Hitler.

President Bush’s speech at the Knesset two weeks ago was somewhat more nuanced than liberals’ Hitler arguments. He did not simply jump up and down chanting: “Ahmadinejad is Hitler!” Instead, Bush condemned a policy of appeasement toward madmen, citing Neville Chamberlain’s ill-fated talks with Adolf Hitler.

Suspiciously, Bush’s speech was interpreted as a direct hit on B. Hussein Obama’s foreign policy — and that’s according to Obama’s supporters.

So to defend Obama, who — according to his supporters — favors appeasing madmen, liberals expanded the rule against ad Hitlerum arguments to cover any mention of the events leading to World War II. A ban on “You’re like Hitler” arguments has become liberals’ latest excuse to ignore history.

Unless, of course, it is liberals using historical examples to support Obama’s admitted policy of appeasing dangerous lunatics. It’s a strange one-sided argument when they can cite Nixon going to China and Reagan meeting with Gorbachev, but we can’t cite Chamberlain meeting with Hitler.

There are reasons to meet with a tyrant, but none apply to Ahmadinejad. We’re not looking for an imperfect ally against some other dictatorship, as Nixon was with China. And we aren’t in a Mexican stand-off with a nuclear power, as Reagan was with the USSR. At least not yet.

Mutually Assured Destruction was bad enough with the Evil Empire, but something you definitely want to avoid with lunatics who are willing to commit suicide in order to destroy the enemies of Islam. As with the H-word, our sole objective with Ahmadinejad is to prevent him from becoming a military power.

What possible reason is there to meet with Ahmadinejad? To win a $20 bar bet as to whether or not the man actually owns a necktie?

We know his position and he knows ours. He wants nuclear arms, American troops out of the Middle East and the destruction of Israel. We don’t want that. (This is assuming Mike Gravel doesn’t pull off a major upset this November.) We don’t need him as an ally against some other more dangerous dictator because … well, there aren’t any.

Does Obama imagine he will make demands of Ahmadinejad? Using what stick as leverage, pray tell? A U.S. boycott of the next Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran? The U.N. has already demanded that Iran give up its nuclear program. Ahmadinejad has ignored the U.N. and that’s the end of it.

We always have the ability to “talk” to Ahmadinejad if we have something to say. Bush has a telephone. If Iranian crop dusters were headed toward one of our nuclear power plants, I am quite certain that Bush would be able to reach Ahmadinejad to tell him that Iran will be flattened unless the planes retreat. If his cell phone died, Bush could just post a quick warning on the Huffington Post.

Liberals view talk as an end in itself. They never think through how these talks will proceed, which is why Chamberlain ended up giving away Czechoslovakia. He didn’t leave for Munich planning to do that. It is simply the inevitable result of talking with madmen without a clear and obtainable goal. Without a stick, there’s only a carrot.

The only explanation for liberals’ hysterical zealotry in favor of Obama’s proposed open-ended talks with Ahmadinejad is that they seriously imagine crazy foreign dictators will be as charmed by Obama as cable TV hosts whose legs tingle when they listen to Obama (a condition that used to be known as “sciatica”).

Because, really, who better to face down a Holocaust denier with a messianic complex than the guy who is afraid of a debate moderated by Brit Hume?

There is no possible result of such a meeting apart from appeasement and humiliation of the U.S. If we are prepared to talk, then we’re looking for a deal. What kind of deal do you make with a madman until he is ready to surrender?

Will President Obama listen respectfully as Ahmadinejad says he plans to build nuclear weapons? Will he say he’ll get back to Ahmadinejad on removing all U.S. troops from the region? Will he nod his head as Ahmadinejad demands the removal of the Jewish population from the Middle East? Obama says he’s prepared to have an open-ended chat with Ahmadinejad, so I guess everything is on the table.

Perhaps in the spirit of compromise, Obama could agree to let Iran push only half of Israel into the sea. That would certainly constitute “change”! Obama could give one of those upbeat speeches of his, saying: As a result of my recent talks with President Ahmadinejad, some see the state of Israel as being half empty. I prefer to see it as half full. And then Obama can return and tell Americans he could no more repudiate Ahmadinejad than he could repudiate his own white grandmother. It will make Chris Matthews’ leg tingle.

There is a third reason to talk to dictators, in addition to seeking an ally or as part of a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur talked with Japanese imperial forces on Sept. 2, 1945. There was a long ceremony aboard the USS Missouri with full press coverage and a lot of talk. It was a regular international confab!

It also took place after we had dropped two nukes on Japan and MacArthur was officially accepting Japan’s surrender. If Obama plans to drop nukes on Ahmadinejad prior to their little chat-fest, I’m all for it. But I don’t think that’s what liberals have in mind.

Electoral College Outlook: McCain 270, Obama 268

by Robert Novak and Timothy P. Carney

Posted: 05/28/2008

Electoral College: While national polls garner attention, they have no direct bearing on choosing our next President. A state-by-state count of electoral votes is the key to analyzing the presidential race.

For the first time this year, we run through all 50 states plus the District of Columbia in order to handicap the presidential race. Outlook: If the election were held today, we see a McCain victory by the narrowest of margins.

The electoral map looks nearly identical to 2004, with Iowa and Colorado swinging into the Democratic camp. Beneath the surface, however, we see Michigan and Pennsylvania becoming more competitive for Republicans.

The election will hinge on two regions: Lake Erie and the Mountain West. An Obama win in New Mexico or Nevada would be enough to tip the scales, but a McCain win in Pennsylvania could put the race out of reach. In the end, as always, it comes down to Ohio, where Obama’s weakness among rural whites could send McCain to the White House. McCain 270, Obama 268.

Alabama (9): McCain will be safe in this Deep South state. Solid Republican.

Alaska (3): While this state’s GOP is undergoing political upheaval, and Democrats could possibly steal a House and Senate seat thanks to corruption on the part of entrenched Republican incumbents, on a national level, this is a solidly Republican state. McCain doesn’t help himself by opposing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), but he shouldn’t have to worry about this state. Solid Republican.

Arizona (10): Karl Rove has worried about Arizona in the past, in part because of the immigrant influx. But this is McCain’s home state, and he will carry it easily. Solid Republican.

Arkansas (6): The Democratic stronghold in the South, Arkansas has two safe Democratic senators, and three of four congressmen are Democrats. Still, Obama will struggle in all Southern states, and this one is no more friendly than the others. Solid Republican.

California (55): Every four years Republicans talk about having a chance here, and they give a new reason. In truth, Republicans need to raise funds in wealthy Orange County and other rich parts of the Golden State, and writing off this once-Republican state is not a good way to extract campaign cash from it.

This year a constitutional amendment on gay marriage — overturning the recent state supreme court decision that the state must approve same-sex marriages — can a boost McCain. While gay marriage initiatives have helped Republican candidates in the past (especially in 2004), the turnout effect in California won’t be huge, nor is McCain the natural candidate for anti-gay-marriage voters, considering his opposition to a federal marriage amendment in Congress.

Liberal, black, and college populations will turn out in droves for Obama, while immigration resentment in San Diego and the Los Angeles are will hurt McCain, the author of the 2006 amnesty bill. Solid Democratic.

Colorado (9): Bush won here in 2004 by 100,000 votes out of 2.1 million, but Colorado has shown a tack to towards Democrats since then. In 2006, Democrats took over a Senate seat, the governorship, and a U.S. House seat. This year, Democrats are poised to pick up the second Senate seat. With the Democratic National Convention in Denver stirring liberal excitement, Colorado looks like one of Obama’s best chances to win a Bush state. Leaning Democratic.

Connecticut (7): Connecticut is liberal and Democratic, and a hawkish Republican is not going to do well. Wealthy white liberals with advanced degrees are a big chunk of Obama’s base. If McCain picks Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID) as his running mate, Connecticut might be in play. The Lieberman endorsement on its own does almost nothing to help McCain. Solid Democratic.

Delaware (3): Al Gore’s and John Kerry’s wins here in 2000 and 2004 were not dominant, and Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D) barely won reelection in 2004. This state could make its way onto the battleground, but early on it looks like an Obama victory. Leaning Democratic.

District of Columbia (3): If you live in D.C. and you’re not black, you’re probably a rich liberal lawyer or lobbyist. This could be a blowout of unprecedented proportions. Libertarian nominee Bob Barr could challenge McCain for second place with about 4% each. Solid Democratic.

Florida (27): Crucial to a Republican victory, Florida is looking promising for McCain early on. In the primaries, McCain scored a big win here, while Obama boycotted the state and is now working to patch up relations. Even before the general election began, McCain had the edge here.

The senior-citizen vote throughout the state will tilt strongly towards McCain for three reasons: he is one of them; older white voters will be hesitant to elect a black President, and such a young President; the veteran community will be warm towards McCain. Add on Obama’s stance of engagement with Cuba and a possible Jewish problem, and things stack up well for McCain. If McCain picks popular Gov. Charlie Crist (R) as his running mate, he could lock up the state (while possibly hurting himself elsewhere).

Obama could certainly win Florida, but don’t be surprised if it starts to fade off the radar screen by October and the McCain grip on it tightens. Leaning Republican.

Georgia (15): Obama talks about winning Southern states in November because he won them in January, February, and March. But winning a Democratic primary is much easier for a black liberal than winning a general election is. Georgia might be his best shot in the South, but it’s not a very good shot. Solid Republican.

Hawaii (4): Obama will dominate his native state in November as he dominated it in March. McCain can save on airfare and reduce his carbon footprint by skipping this state. Solid Democratic.

Idaho (4): This state is too pro-gun and pro-life to vote for Obama. Bush won 2-to-1 here twice. This year won’t be much different. Solid Republican.

Illinois (21): Obama’s home hasn’t been a swing state in a while, and this is not the year. Obama will dominate here. Solid Democratic.

Indiana (11): Indiana has been solid Republican turf in recent presidential contests, with Bush wins of 16 and 21 points in his two runs here. But this year McCain will need to work hard to keep this state in the GOP column.

Obama’s first advantage is Lake County, which includes the cities of Gary and East Chicago as well as some liberal suburbs. This is Obama’s home turf and the second-most populous county in the state. Indianapolis has a high black population, while Bloomington’s liberal university population could generate enthusiasm (although only 28,000 people voted in Monroe County in the Democratic primary).

McCain lacks the down-home appeal that made Christian Midwestern voters so drawn to Bush, adding to Obama’s hopes. Democrats, of course, picked up three congressional seats in Indiana in 2006. However, Democrats have gained here with socially conservative candidates. With Obama and governor candidate Jill Long Thompson atop the Democratic column, Indiana Republicans should have a rebound year in 2008. Leaning Republican.

Iowa (7): While Iowa is certainly its own creature politically, Obama’s strong showing in early head-to-head polls ought to give Republicans reason to worry about the Heartland. Democrats picked up two House seats here in 2006, and Republicans have no chance to win them back. Senator Tom Harkin (D), a hardcore liberal, also has no serious challenger this year.

Iowa, of course, was the state that catapulted Obama towards the nomination while McCain (prudently) skipped it for New Hampshire. Obama is from a neighboring state, and McCain doesn’t rally the conservative base. This swing state appears set to swing back to where it was in 2000: the Democratic column. Leaning Democratic.

Kansas (6): The Kansas GOP is not in good shape, and Obama dominated the caucuses here, but a liberal Democrat isn’t going to carry this state in a presidential election, even if Obama picks Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) as his running mate. Solid Republican.

Kentucky (8): This state is trending Democratic in some ways, and Obama claims to have strong inroads into the South, but his inability to win rural white voters in the primary here demonstrates that the commonwealth is not really in play this year. Solid Republican.

Louisiana (9): One of the nation’s most intriguing states politically, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s 2007 landslide looked like the beginning of a GOP avalanche until Democrats captured the Baton Rouge congressional seat in a special election earlier this month. A high black population and a probably safe Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) weigh in on Obama’s behalf. The influential sugar industry here won’t be pleased with McCain, either. Still, this is now a GOP state like the rest of the Deep South, and they are not about to elect a liberal, pro-choice Democrat. Leaning Republican.

Maine (4): Increasingly a Democratic stronghold, the demographics here cut in both directions. Old white people tend to be McCain voters, but leisure-class New Englanders are Obama people. Gore didn’t get a majority here in 2000, but that’s because Ralph Nader posted 6%. Obama is the strong favorite here, but this one could drift in either direction. Maine is one of two states in the country that are not winner-take-all in the Electoral College. The statewide winner gets two electoral votes, and the winner of each congressional district is awarded one elector each. Leaning Democratic.

Maryland (10): Maryland is even less winnable for the GOP with Obama atop the ticket than it was in 2000 and 2004. The mixture of wealthy whites and urban blacks makes this Obama country. Solid Democratic.

Massachusetts (12): The Bay State is beyond the reach of any Republican. Obama might not fare as well in South Boston as a whiter candidate would, but he won’t lose the most Democratic state in the nation. Solid Democratic.

Michigan (17): Michigan may be McCain’s best chance to win a 2004 Blue State. As with Florida, McCain has the advantage out of the starting gate, having posted two strong primary performances here while Obama boycotted the state.

Democrats have won all of the top-tier statewide races this decade (three Senate contests, two governor races, and both Presidential races), and the GOP brand is damaged thanks, in part, to George W. Bush and the poor economy. But still, McCain has a good chance here. A Rasmussen poll in early May of 500 likely voters showed a dead heat between Obama and McCain.

Both candidates are weak in Michigan. McCain doesn’t naturally connect with hunters or union voters, but these are the very Democrats who have been rejecting Obama throughout the primaries. Obama’s base of college towns and black cities will give him a boost over previous Democrats, but his consistent weakness among union workers will drag him down.

Michigan, together with Ohio and Pennsylvania, promises to be the very heart of the 2008 battle. Libertarian Bob Barr could draw on enough gun-rights single-issue voters here to tip the scale. Leaning Democratic.

Minnesota (10): Although Kerry won Minnesota by less than 100,000 votes, Republicans may not be within striking distance here. Minnesota was one of Obama’s strongest states, thanks to a strong liberal core in the Democrat-Farm-Labor Party that will provide enthusiasm and turnout in November.

This state may stay competitive throughout, but it’s likely Obama will pull away here by the fall. Leaning Democratic.

Mississippi (6): While Democrats can point to a special election congressional pickup here, as well as a large black population, this Deep South state is safe in the GOP column with a black liberal atop the ticket. Solid Republican.

Missouri (11): Missouri is another top pickup opportunity for Obama. Bush won here twice, with a 200,000-vote victory in 2004. Things aren’t looking so rosy for Republicans these days, though, having lost a U.S. Senate seat in 2006 and poised to lose the governorship this year. Obama eked out a primary win here on Super Tuesday by winning big in the areas around St. Louis and Kansas City, but he lost badly in the rural regions of the state. His appeal to black voters and suburban voters makes him a real threat, especially if McCain fails to rally Christian conservatives throughout the state. This may be the state where McCain’s lack of stronger conservative credentials could really hurt him. As of now, McCain holds slight leads in most polls. Leaning Republican.

Montana (3): Montana is safe for McCain. Solid Republican.

Nebraska (5): Nebraska apportions one elector per congressional district, plus two electors to the statewide winner. McCain should win all five electors. Solid Republican.

Nevada (5): A prime chance for Obama to pick off some Red State electors, Bush won only 50% in both elections here. A significant libertarian turnout here is very possible. Immigration should play a role — given the 20% Hispanic population and some resentment of unchecked immigration, the issue could cut both ways. Nevada, and not Ohio, could be McCain’s most precarious state. Leaning Republican.

New Hampshire (4): New Hampshire was one of three states to switch sides from 2000 to 2004, and it could switch back to the GOP column this year. In 2004, Kerry won the state, in part as the local boy, but also due to the Democratic surge in the Granite State. That Democratic surge doesn’t look likely to slow down in 2008.

McCain, however, has a sort of second home here, having won the state in the 2000 and 2008 primaries. His pragmatic moderation is appreciated here, and he will need to peel himself away from Bush and the GOP. This is one of the most swingable states, but early on, it leans towards Obama. Leaning Democratic.

New Jersey (15): Bush surged here in 2004, but not enough to carry the state. That was a one-time blip, and Obama should have no trouble carrying the Garden State. Solid Democratic.

New Mexico (5): Election Day ground zero could be New Mexico, three open congressional seats, an open U.S. Senate seat, and a competitive presidential contest fill the ballot.

Bush carried the state in 2004 by 6,000 votes after having lost it by 365 votes in 2000. These close races clash with the huge registration advantage Democrats hold here.

The state is 42% Hispanic, and here they vote more than in other states. Obama’s poor performance among Hispanic voters and McCain’s coming from neighboring Arizona should help him here. If Bill Richardson does not play a large role, McCain looks to have a slight edge. Leaning Republican.

New York (31): Obama will dominate here. Solid Democratic.

North Carolina (15): Obama’s strong performance in the Southern primaries doesn’t portend a competitive general election. The wine-and-cheese crowd of Charlotte, the black electorate, and the liberal college vote may be vocal, but they’re the minority in North Carolina. Solid Republican.

North Dakota (3): Bush twice won more than 60% here. While McCain may not do as well, he should walk away with this one. Solid Republican.

Ohio (20): In a familiar sight, Ohio looks likely play the role of decider this fall. As in Michigan, both candidates have more weaknesses than strengths here. McCain is no Wal-Mart family-man conservative as Bush was, but Obama has to hope that religious voters and gun owners get over the “bitterness” that caused him to lose Ohio badly in March.

Obama’s perceived elitism, his race, and his liberalism will all hurt him here, but there are pockets of wealthy suburbanites, black voters, and hardcore liberals that will help him. A new Democratic senator and governor, together with likely Democratic pickups in the U.S. House here are all promising signs for the Democratic Party, but Obama himself — and his comments in the San Francisco fundraiser — will not be easy sales.

McCain needs to figure out how he will talk about trade and social issues. If he handles this state well, he will win it. Leaning Republican.

Oklahoma (7): This is not the part of the Heartland that’s in play. Solid Republican.

Oregon (7): Oregon is not an overwhelmingly Democratic state, but it has strong liberal populations that will rally around Obama. McCain, however, could certainly make inroads into the rural voters. Leaning Democratic.

Pennsylvania (21): Many pundits falsely touted Pennsylvania as a swing state in 2004, when it wasn’t. It tilted heavily towards the Democrats. In 2008, however, it is back within reach for the GOP, thanks, in large part, to the Democrats’ choice of nominee. Obama’s dismal primary performance here, especially among white voters, makes this a tough state for Democrats to hold onto. Sen. Bob Casey (D) tried to help Obama with the “bitter” voters in the center of the state, but he fell short. The question for November is can Obama hold onto the Arlen Specter-Ed Rendell vote in the Philadelphia suburbs.

McCain is not the ideal candidate to pick off Casey-Santorum Democrats, and Rendell is still popular. The Keystone State favors Obama, but the closeness here gives McCain a second way to win if Ohio or Nevada falls to Obama. Leaning Democratic.

Rhode Island (4): Rhode Island is even more liberal than Massachusetts in many ways. Solid Democratic.

South Carolina (8): The Democratic primary electorate is majority black, but the November electorate is not. Obama can’t win rural whites, and so he can’t win South Carolina. Solid Republican.

South Dakota (3): This is a McCain shoo-in. Solid Republican.

Tennessee (11): More competitive than much of the South, but still a safe McCain win. Solid Republican.

Texas (34): McCain may not dominate as Bush did, but if he’s in trouble in Texas, it’s all over. Solid Republican.

Utah (5): Utah is the most Republican state in the nation. Solid Republican.

Virginia (13): There is much talk about Virginia as a Democratic pickup for 2008. Democrats hold the governorship and after November will probably hold both Senate seats. Popular former Gov. Mark Warner (D) may have an easy enough path to election his Senate race that he can stump for Obama. Democrats have made big advances in Northern Virginia as those suburbs have gained in wealth because of the growth of federal government. Add in a strong black vote near Richmond and Virginia Beach, and you see the reasons for Democratic optimism.

But many of the suburban former Republicans who have turned against Bush, former Sen. George Allen (R), and the GOP broadly will be drawn to McCain’s brand of moderation. Also, Bush won this state by nearly 10 points in 2004. Leaning Republican.

Vermont (3): The heart of liberal hippiedom will vote for Obama. Solid Democratic.

Washington (11): Obama’s strength here will make this very difficult for McCain. Solid Democratic.

West Virginia (5): Once a battleground state, this year West Virginia falls off the charts. Consider how poorly Obama did in the primary here. Solid Republican.

Wisconsin (10): This is a battleground state where Obama looks stronger than most Democrats. He shores up the Nader vote and motivates the liberal base. The black pockets in Milwaukee help out, too. Leaning Democratic.

Wyoming (3): McCain will win here easily. Solid Republican.

Join the U.S. Navy and Proud Americans in Warning: Don’t Tread on Me

Flags bearing rattlesnakes and bearing the simple warning “Don’t Tread on Me” were first flown on the first ships of the Continental Navy in the Delaware River in 1775. Today, as America faces unprecedented threats, this historic symbol of our founding has emerged as a reminder of our origin and true courage. The Secretary of the Navy, Gordon R. England, has ordered all U.S. Navy ships to fly the First Navy Jack in place of the Union Jack for the duration of the Global War on Terrorism.

The U.S. Navy is relying on a historic icon to remind the world of America’s strength and courage. The rattlesnake has been a favorite symbol of independence throughout America’s history. Adopted as a uniquely American icon by early patriots, such as Benjamin Franklin, the rattlesnake represents American unity. Individually, its rattles have no sound, but united they can be heard by all. And while it does not strike unless threatened, once provoked, the deadly rattlesnake never surrenders.

The rattlesnake was used as a symbol of resistance to British repressive acts in Colonial America. Flags bearing rattlesnakes and bearing the simple warning “Don’t Tread on Me” were flown on the first ships of the Continental Navy in the Delaware River in 1775.

Today, as America faces unprecedented threats, this historic symbol of our founding has emerged as a reminder of our origin and true courage. The Secretary of the Navy, Gordon R. England, has ordered all U.S. Navy ships to fly the First Navy Jack in place of the Union Jack for the duration of the Global War on Terrorism. In a memo to all ships and stations, England explained, “The temporary substitution of this Jack represents a historic reminder of the nation’s and Navy’s origin and will to persevere and triumph.”

Eagle Special Products has joined with the United States Navy Memorial Foundation to bring our members a special edition First Navy Jack Flag. Created to meet the standards of flag construction established by the United States Navy Memorial Foundation, each 3′ x 5′ flag in this edition is handmade, piece-constructed together, and then marrow-stitched. We have also arranged for each First Navy Jack Flag to be hand-raised according to tradition over the U.S. Navy Memorial. Your flag will be accompanied by a certificate documenting that it was flown over the U.S. Navy Memorial.

We invite you to proudly display this American symbol and send a message to the world that America will stand up to its aggressors and preserve liberty.

England prove too good for United States (CNN)

Story Highlights

• England cruise to a 2-0 friendly victory over the United States at Wembley
• Captain John Terry scores the first while Steven Gerrard adds the second goal
• Fabio Capello’s side face Trinidad in their final match this season on Saturday

(CNN) — Captain John Terry helped England produce their most impressive performance of the Fabio Capello era with the opening goal in a 2-0 friendly win against the United States at Wembley.

The Chelsea defender had something to smile about after his Champions League final penalty shoot-out agony when he headed Fabio Capello’s side into a 38th-minute lead.

There could have been no more fitting scorer than Terry, just one week after his spot-kick miss prevented Chelsea from victory in Moscow.

Steven Gerrard made sure of victory 14 minutes into the second half when he converted a slide-rule pass from substitute Gareth Barry.

The visitors had already survived one lucky escape when Gerrard slotted home David Beckham’s curling free-kick, only for the goal to be ruled out because England’s newest centurion had not waited for the whistle.

When Beckham picked Gerrard out with another free-kick, the midfielder’s shot seemed to be heading into the net until Clint Dempsey got his head to it, providing Frank Lampard with a chance from the rebound which he promptly volleyed wide.

Gerrard also set up Beckham and Jermain Defoe, eager to make an impression on his first England start for nearly two years, but neither man could locate the net.

Terry at least put a different complexion on proceedings, even if his fourth goal for his country could hardly make up for his misery at the Luzhniki Stadium.

Capello used up his maximum six substitutions in the second-half but man-of-the-match Gerrard stayed on the pitch and after scoring his goal, the Liverpool captain cushioned a header into Wayne Rooney’s path, only for the Manchester United striker to screw his shot wide.

Eddie Johnson wasted the visitors’ best chance, firing wide from the edge of the area when left in space by an England defense that, by-and-large, was given little trouble for the majority of the 90 minutes.

England will now travel to Trinidad & Tobago on Thursday for their final friendly match of the season, although Italian Capello is expected to leave his Manchester United and Chelsea players behind to give some squad players a chance to shine.

Social Security Reform

I have a good idea: why don’t we let the people [individually] decide whether they want to contribute to Social Security for their respective retirements? If so, then the government can invest the money for them. If not, they can invest it themselves and everybody gets private accounts so the balances are kept in order and there is accountability.

Liberals won’t go for that idea because SS is not really about retirement, but a grab bag of money for politicians, a bribe for the constituents and a ponzi scheme of redistribution for the lazy numbskulls.

Conservatives will go for it all the way, of course, because we really don’t need the people’s money. We just want limited government.

The Stupidest Man Alive: David Paul Kuhn (Brad DeLong)

Digby alerts us to David Paul Kuhn writing for the Stupidest Publication Alive, the Politico:
GOP strategists mull McCain ‘blowout’: [M]any top GOP strategists believe [McCain] can defeat Barack Obama… by a margin exceeding President Bush’s Electoral College victory in 2004…. [T]hose same GOP strategists are reticent to publicly tout the prospect of a sizable McCain victory for fear of looking foolish…. [T]he thinking is that he could win by as many 50 electoral votes. By post-war election standards, that margin is unusually small. Yet it’s considerably larger than either Bush’s 2004 victory or his five-electoral-vote win in 2000…
I think we can stop there: a “margin [that] is unusually small” is not a “blowout.”
Duncan Black asks the natural question: “Is There Any Limit? I mean, is there any dictation that Politico won’t take down from Republicans? Is nothing too absurd for them to pass it on?” The answer is that there is not.

A New Argument About Immigration

May 28, 2008by Phyllis Schlafly
Many arguments, pro and con, about how to deal with illegal aliens have been passionately debated over the past couple of years, but there are still other arguments that need public exposure. Mark Krikorian presents a new argument in his forthcoming book called “The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal.”
The pro-more-immigration crowd argues that today’s immigrants are just like immigrants of a century ago: poor people looking for a better life who are expected to advance in our land of opportunity. Krikorian’s new argument is that while today’s immigrants may be like earlier ones, the America they come to is so very different that our previous experience with immigrants is practically irrelevant.
The essential difference between the two waves of immigrants was best summed up by the Nobel Prize-winning advocate of a free market, Milton Friedman. He said, “It’s just obvious that you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”
The term “welfare state” does not just mean handouts to the non-working. Our welfare state encompasses dozens of social programs that provide benefits to the “working poor,” i.e., people working for wages low enough that they pay little or no income taxes.
Immigrants of the previous generation were expected to earn their own living, pay taxes like everybody else, learn our language, love America, and assimilate into our culture. Today’s immigrants likewise come here for jobs not welfare.
During those prior major waves of immigration, the United States didn’t have a welfare state. Native-born Americans survived the Great Depression of the 1930s without a welfare state.
The Social Security retirement system was established only in 1935. Most other agencies that redistribute cash and costly benefits from taxpayers to non-taxpayers started with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in the late 1960s.
Today’s low-wage immigrants and lower-wage illegals can’t earn what it costs to live in modern America, so they supplement with means-tested taxpayer benefits. And many immigrants don’t learn our language or assimilate into American culture because of the multicultural diversity taught in our schools and encouraged in our society.
Today’s immigrants fit the profile of the people who benefit from our welfare state: the working poor with large families. Krikorian sets forth some dismal figures.
About 30 percent of all immigrants in the U.S. workforce in 2005 lacked a high school education, which is four times the rate for native-born Americans. Among the largest group of working-age immigrants, the Mexicans, 62 percent have less than a high-school education, which means they work low-wage jobs.
Nearly half of immigrant households, 45 percent, are in or near poverty compared with 29 percent of native-headed households. Among Mexicans living in the United States, nearly two-thirds live in or near the government’s definition of poverty.
Costly social benefits provided to the working poor include Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (now called TANF, formerly AFDC), food stamps, school lunches, Medicaid, WIC (nutrition for Women, Infants and Children), public housing, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one of the most expensive parts of income redistribution. Twice as many immigrant households (30 percent) qualify for this cash handout as native-headed households (15 percent).
Health care is another huge cost. Nearly half of immigrants are either uninsured or on Medicaid, which is nearly double the rate for native-born families. Federal law requires hospitals to treat all comers to emergency rooms, even if uninsured and unable to pay.
Hospitals try to shift the costs onto their paying patients, and when the hospitals exhaust their ability to do this, they close their doors. In Los Angeles, 60 hospitals have closed their emergency rooms over the past decade, which imposes another kind of cost.
Immigration accounts for nearly all the growth in elementary and secondary school enrollment over the past generation. The children of immigrants now comprise 19 percent of the school-age population and 21 percent of the preschool population.
The Heritage Foundation estimated that in order to reduce government payments to the average low-skill household to a level equal to the taxes it pays, “it would be necessary to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, all means-tested welfare, and to cut expenditures on public education roughly in half.” Obviously, that is not going to happen.
Attempts to limit welfare eligibility for illegal aliens by provisions added to the 1996 welfare reform law, SSI, food stamps, Medicaid and TANF all failed. Krikorian concludes that “Walling immigrants off from government benefits once we’ve let them in is a fantasy.”
As Americans are pinched between falling real estate values and the inflation of necessities such as gasoline, they are entitled to know how their tax dollars are being spent. The big bite that social benefits to immigrants (one-third of whom are illegal) takes out of taxpayers’ paychecks should be factored into any debate about immigration or amnesty policy.

Surge To Victory

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, May 27, 2008 4:20 PM PT

War On Terror: They said the surge would fail. They claimed we had no allies. They called Iraq a quagmire. They sought to cut and run. Now, our victories over terror are accelerating across the world.

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Read More: Global War On Terror | Iraq

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Take a look at what happened in the global war on terror just over the Memorial Day weekend:

• Iraqi forces ran al-Qaida terrorists out of Mosul, the terror organization’s final urban stronghold. That victory reduces the killers to fringe areas with little public support, and a truncated capacity to recruit and strike terror in Iraq’s cities. Al-Qaida has “never been closer to defeat than they are now,” said Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

Iraqi troops also cleaned out Basra and Sadr City, reducing any prospect for domestic insurgents to take power by force. Along with al-Qaida, these terrorists may try to continue, but the will is fading as the pressure is ratcheted up.

• In Colombia, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos announced that Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda, founder of the FARC Marxist terror group, died a hunted man in the jungle on March 26 as bombs rained down on him. Better still, the government knew this because it penetrated FARC. Marulanda died knowing his chosen successor, Raul Reyes, had been blown away, too. Indeed, three of FARC’s seven top leaders have been killed since March, and the rest are headed “for the grave,” Santos said.

Hundreds of FARC foot soldiers are now furtively phoning the government to beg for a deal. Along with fears of their own men turning them in for cash, FARC leaders now work in a poisoned atmosphere, knowing spies are in their midst. They won’t win.

• British forces for the first time drove the Taliban from a southern stronghold in a 96-hour battle this month. It was their first combat operation since new troops arrived in March. The New York Times reported a “palpable” sense of relief among villagers, with the district chief and exiles returning to rebuild. “There has been huge optimism from the people,” an officer was quoted as saying.

• In the south Philippines, Marxist and Muslim terrorists are desperate. A big arsenal belonging to al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf was unearthed in Sulu Saturday, taking 283 sacks of bomb components out of circulation. Meanwhile, Nur Misuari, the top terrorist of the Moro National Liberation Front, on parole in Davao, pleaded with other terrorists to drop arms and sue for peace at a rally Saturday.

• In Egypt’s al-Qaida inner circle, a leading jihad ideologue, using the nom de guerre Dr. Fadl, has now openly questioned terrorism as a tactic, given al-Qaida’s mounting losses. He threatened to renounce violence — a new blow to the jihadists.

Has there ever been such an epidemic of terrorist surrender? And the trend is growing. For the first time, the possibility of a world without major terror organizations is real. The world has shrunk for them, while the nations that fight back are getting stronger.

Significantly, those doing much of the winning are U.S. allies — the ones we supposedly don’t have.

The British have sprung to life after years of ineffectiveness. They now show their old mettle as they break the Taliban.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi, Colombian and Philippine militaries have become effective anti-terrorist fighters after U.S. training. Those countries’ forces were directly responsible for victory in Mosul, and big reversals in the jungles of Colombia and Philippines.

U.S.-trained anti-terror forces now form a united, global front of sorts. It’s a bad time to be a terrorist.

So where are the naysayers now with their conventional wisdom that the war can’t be won? The tables are turning on terrorists all over the world. As victories crescendo, it should be trumpeted loudly: The surge is working.

Policy on Criticism

I won’t accept criticism from those who are too sensitive to be criticized.

London: Sarkozy seeks to moralize capitalism

Commentary by Herbert London

In a recent Le Figaro report Nicolas Sarkozy said, “At the end of the French presidency, my aim is that [Europe] will have moved towards a common immigration policy, a common defense policy, a common energy policy, and a common environment policy.”   He noted, “The citizens of all of Europe demand protection; they want Europe to protect them, not make them vulnerable.  They want it to allow them to act, not oblige them to suffer.”

President Sarkozy goes on to contend that this “protective Europe” is incompatible with “the excesses of financial capitalism.”  He maintains that France under his guidance will take initiatives “to moralize capitalism.”  As part of his vision Europe is to be seen for “community preference” and to make matters perfectly clear President Sarkozy has called on the government backed Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations bank to take the lead in protecting France from the “power of extremely aggressive sovereign funds.” 

How does one parse the ambiguous phrases?  Is European immigration policy, to cite one example, going down a path taken by France in which more than a quarter of Marseille residents are Muslim and unrest now characterizes urban life in this once peaceful city?  What does Sarkozy mean by a common environmental policy?  Are European nations about to embrace a common carbon footprint?  And if so, will such regulation be enforced by bureaucrats in Brussels?

Perhaps the most interesting and often-heard expression used by Sarkozy is “moralizing capitalism.”  For years European leaders have been decrying “the inhuman dimensions of Anglo-Saxon capitalism”—code words for the free market.  Sarkozy is merely following the rhetorical lead of his predecessors.

However, in his desire to place strict controls on sovereign investment he may be inhibiting cash-starved industries and corporations and, in the process, restricting innovation Europe needs to be competitive.  If moralizing capitalism means protective regulation that keeps union control over the labor market, stagnation is the inevitable result.  It has been demonstrated in France and elsewhere in Western Europe that if you cannot fire, you cannot hire, a condition that has led Europeans to envy the relatively low unemployment rate in the United States.

Clearly Europe has benefited from Arab capital that has gravitated north in search of investment opportunity.  This condition aimed in part as punishment for American Middle East policy, has bolstered the euro against the dollar and, to a modest degree, has had a salutary influence on European economies.

But in actuality Europe’s industries are largely moribund.  They cannot compete against Asian markets and often demand protection against the economic onslaught.  The unfunded liability due to cradle to grave security—even with recent modifications in outlook—is daunting.

As a consequence, the Sarkozy proposal to moralize capitalism—which has the ring of human decency to it—is catastrophic for a Europe that suffers from economic sclerosis.  If anything, France and Western Europe desperately require a shot of adrenalin in the form of free market initiatives.

Clearly Europeans have a preference for security, long vacations, short work weeks and reduced competition.  However, Europeans are not alone in the world.  The intrusion of other markets is a reality and the interest of competitiveness will have to be assuaged. 

While Sarkozy’s pro-American foreign policy stance is justifiably applauded, his European economic position is hopelessly predictable and doomed to fail.  Perhaps as a member of the EU in good standing, he, as the leader of France, is obliged to repeat standard European slogans.  But these are empty slogans that if enacted into policies will further weaken Europe economically and make it less likely the continent will assume the defense responsibility to which is so often gives lip-service.

Sarkozy has enjoyed a honeymoon period with American leaders, but his platitudinous economic position should offer a moment of reflection.  Are we merely hearing much of the bankrupt moralizing of the recent past—an echo of Chirac?  That is the most likely conclusion to be reached from his remarks.

 

 -Herb London is president of the Hudson Institute and a member of Insight’s Editorial Advisory Board.

 

A Revelation (Personal)

I’m a moralizing influence that people resent. But, I cannot, in good conscience, be otherwise. Moreover, the resentment is mutual. Jesus said, if you do not hate your family, you cannot follow me. Indeed, if you do not hate your own life, you cannot be my disciple. Does Christianity sound like a cult, now? Some say it is.

Mentally Ill being targeted by Islamists to carry out suicide attacks

what kind of perverted religion persuades a mentally retarded
English man with a mental age of ten to blow himself up as a suicide
bomber in a small town like Exeter?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3999058.ece

From The Sunday TimesMay 25, 2008

MI5 fears jihadis will use mentally ill as suicide bombers
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Islamic terrorists may be targeting mentally disturbed or disabled
people in Britain in a bid to form a new “brigade” of home-grown
suicide bombers, security officials fear.

MI5 and police say the case of Nicky Reilly, who is being held over a
nailbomb attack last week in Exeter, may indicate a new strategy of
targeting vulnerable people with mental health problems to carry out
attacks.

A counterterrorism official said MI5 was investigating the extent to
which Reilly had been manipulated by a “charismatic” Al-Qaeda
recruiter.

“It is a grotesque concept but they are using people who are clearly
mentally subnormal,” the official said. “We know they have clever
radicalisers who will take advantage of anyone they think they can
manipulate, whether they have an IQ of 60 or 140,” he said.

Related Links
Café blast suspect `sent a message of support’
Comment: violent Islam appeals to social misfits
Reilly, 22, is a Muslim convert who has spent time detained in a
mental health hospital. He has been described as a shambling
introvert with the mental age of a 10-year-old. He is believed to
have Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and may also suffer from
schizophrenia.

Security officials say Al-Qaeda appears to have exported the tactic
from Iraq, where disabled “foot soldiers” have been used to
devastating effect.

They point to a case in February when a suicide bomber in a
wheelchair killed an Iraqi general in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Earlier, two women, initially thought to have Down’s syndrome, acted
as couriers for a bomb in Baghdad, killing almost 100 people.

Officials say people with mental disabilities are not only easier to
manipulate but also less likely to arouse suspicion. If they are
white Muslim converts, they are even less likely to be noticed.

The attack in the Giraffe restaurant in Exeter city centre on
Thursday caught the authorities by surprise.

Police say Reilly – who is 18 stone, over 6ft tall and nicknamed the
Big Friendly Giant – had three primitive but “viable” homemade bombs,
which they believe he may have built using instructions on the
internet.

One device exploded in the restaurant lavatory, leaving Reilly with
severe cuts to his face. Yesterday police said he was in a stable
condition in hospital.

Forensic analysis suggests his bombs were made from caustic soda,
paraffin and nails in a tin box.

Police say that shortly before the explosion Reilly – who recently
changed his name to Mohammed Rasheed – received a text message of
encouragement. They are holding two men who were arrested at gunpoint
outside an open-air cafe in Plymouth on Friday.

Security officials admitted that MI5 had been aware of Reilly but
that he had not been under surveillance.

Barak Obama – 50 Lies and Counting: Posted on Political forum.com

<http://forum.com/>  – Elections and Campaigns. Share with friends

1.) ‘Selma Got Me Born’ – your parents felt safe enough to have you in 1961 – Selma had no effect on your birth, as Selma didn’t occur until 1965.

2.) ‘Father Was A Goat Herder’ -  he was a privileged, well educated youth, who went on to work with the socialistic Kenyan Government.

3.) ‘Father Was A Proud Freedom Fighter’ – he was part of one of the most corrupt and violent governments Kenya has ever had

4.) ‘My Family Has Strong Ties To African Freedom’ -  your cousin Raila Odinga has created mass violence in attempting to overturn a legitimate election in 2007, in Kenya. It is the first widespread violence in decades.

5.) ‘My Grandmother Has Always Been A Christian’ – she does her daily Salat prayers at 5am according to her own interviews. Not to mention, Christianity wouldn’t allow her to have been one of 14 wives to 1 man.

6.) ‘My Name is African Swahili’ – your name is Arabic and Baraka (from which Barack came) means blessed in that language. Hussein is also Arabic and so is Obama.

7.) ‘I Never Practiced Islam’ – you practiced it daily at school, where you were registered as a Muslim and kept that faith for 31 years, until your wife made you change, so you could run for office.

8.) ‘My School In Indonesia was Christian’ – you were registered as Muslim there and got in trouble in Koranic Studies for making silly faces. (check your own book).

9.) ‘I Was Fluent In Indonesian’ – not one teacher says you could speak the language.

10.) ‘Because I Lived In Indonesia, I Have More Foreign Experience’ – you were there from the ages of 6 to 10, and couldn’t even speak the language.     What did you learn, how to study the Koran and watch cartoons?

11.) ‘I Am Stronger On Foreign Affairs’ -  except for Africa (surprise) and the Middle East (bigger surprise), you have never been anywhere else on the planet and thus have NO experience with our closest allies.

12.) ‘I Blame My Early Drug Use On Ethnic Confusion’ -  you were quite content in high school to be Barry Obama, no mention of Kenya and no mention of struggle to identify – your classmates said you were just fine…you merely chose to do drugs.

13.)’An Ebony Article Moved Me To Run For Office’ -  Ebony has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn’t, and never did, exist.

14.) ‘A Life Magazine Article Changed My Outlook On Life’ -  Life has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn’t, and never did, exist.

15.) ‘I Won’t Run On A National Ticket’ in ‘08′ -  here you are, despite saying, live on TV, that you would not have enough experience by then, and you are all about having experience first.

16.) ‘Voting Present rather than Yes or No is Common In Illinois’ -  That is common for YOU, but not many others have 130  ‘Present’ votes which means you wouldn’t commit yourself because you didn’t want the voters to know the real you and where you stod on the issues!

17.) ‘Oops, I Misvoted’ -  only when caught by church groups and democrats, did you beg to change your so-called ‘misvote’.

18.) ‘I Was A Professor Of Law’ -  you were only a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.

19.) ‘I Was A Constitutional Lawyer’ -  you were only a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.

20.) ‘Without Me, There Would Be No Ethics Bill’ -  you didn’t write it, introduce it, change it, or create it.

21.) ‘The Ethics Bill Was Hard To Pass’ -  it took just 14 days from start to finish.

22.) ‘I Wrote A Tough Nuclear Bill’  -  your bill was rejected by your own party for its pandering and lack of all regulation – mainly because of the money you took from your Nuclear Donor, Exelon, from which David Axelrod came.

23.) ‘I Have Released My State Records’ -  as of March, 2008, state bills you sponsored or voted for have yet to be released, exposing all the special interests pork hidden within.

24.) ‘I Took On The Asbestos Altgeld Gardens Mess’ -  you were part of a large group of people who remedied Altgeld Gardens. You failed to mention anyone else but yourself, in your books.

25.) ‘My Economics Bill Will Help America’ -  your 111 economic policies were just combined into a proposal which lost 99-0, and even YOU voted against your own bill.

26.) ‘I Have Been A Bold Leader In Illinois’ -  even your own supporters claim to have never seen any BOLD action on your part.

27.) ‘I Passed 26 Of My Own Bills In One Year’ -  they were not YOUR bills, but rather handed to you, after their creation by a fellow Senator, to assist you in a future bid for higher office.

28.) ‘No One Contacted Canada About NAFTA’ -  the Canadian Government issued the names and a memo of the conversation your campaign had with them.

29.) ‘I Am Tough On Terrorism’ -  you missed the Iran Resolution vote on terrorism and your good friend Ali Abunimah supports the destruction of Israel and another friend El Hadi(sp?) was stopped by the Federal Government from collecting and sending donations to the terrorist group Hamas…now he is raising money for you and lists your wife Michelle as a supporter of his and she lists him as one of her friends.  Also you and your wife are known co-horts of the man and wife ‘Weather-Underground’ hippie pair who admitted killing people and bombing several federal buildings back in the late sixties or early seventies. The man has written a book saying he and his wife only wish they had done more killings and bombings!
 
30.) ‘I Am Not Acting As President Yet’ -  after the NAFTA Memo, a dead terrorist in the FARC, in Colombia, was found with a letter stating how you and he were working together on getting FARC recognized officially.

31.) ‘I Didn’t Run Ads In Florida’ -  you allowed national ads to run 8-12 times per day for two weeks – and you still lost.

32.) ‘I Won Michigan’ -  no you didn’t.

33.) ‘I won Nevada’ -  no you did not.

34.) ‘I Want All Votes To Count’ -  you said let the delegates decide.

35.) ‘I Want Americans To Decide’ -  you prefer caucuses that limit the vote, confuse the voters, force a public vote, and only operate during small windows of time.

36.) ‘I passed 900 Bills in the State Senate’ -  you only passed 26, most of which you didn’t write yourself.

37.) ‘My Campaign Was Extorted By A Friend’ – that friend is threatening to sue if you do not stop saying this. Obama has stopped saying this.

38.) ‘I Believe In Fairness, Not Tactics’ – you used tactics to eliminate Alice Palmer from running against you.

39.) ‘I Don’t Take PAC Money’ – you have taken loads of it.

40.) ‘I don’t Have Lobbyists’ – you have over 47 lobbyists, and counting.

41.) ‘My Campaign Had Nothing To Do With The 1984 Ad’ – your own campaign worker made the ad on his Apple in one afternoon.

42.) ‘My Campaign Never Took Over MySpace’ – Tom, who started MySpace issued a warning about this advertising to MySpace clients.

43.) ‘I Inspire People With My Words’ – you inspire people with other people’s words.

44.) ‘I Have Passed Bills In The U.S. Senate’ – you have passed A BILL in the U.S. Senate – for Africa, which shows YOUR priorities.

45.) ‘I Have Always Been Against Iraq’ – you weren’t in office to vote against it AND you have voted to fund it every single time, unlike Kucinich, who seems to be gutting you, Obama.
 
46.) ‘I Have Always Supported Universal Health Care’ – your plan leaves all of us working taxpayers to pay for the 15,000,000 who don’t have to buy it.

47.) ‘I Only Found Out About My Investment Conflicts Via Mail’ – both companies you site as having sent you letters about this conflict have no record of any such letter ever being created or sent.

48.) ‘I Am As Patriotic As Anyone’ – you won’t wear a flag pin and you don’t put your hand over your heart during the Anthem… because you have said ‘you didn’t want to offend muslims and others who don’t like America’!

49.) ‘My Wife Didn’t Mean What She Said About Pride In Country’ – your wife’s words follow lock-step in the vein of Wright and Farrahkan, in relation to their contempt and h atred of America.

50.) ‘Wal-Mart Is A Company I Would’t Support’ – your wife has received nearly a quarter of a million dollars through Treehouse, which is connected to Wal-Mart.

Posted on Political forum.com <http://forum.com/>  – Elections and Campaigns .Share with friends

Why Female Chauvinism Is Worse Than Male Chauvinism

At the heart of female chauvinism or simply, feminism, lies disrespect for male authority whereas male chauvinism is something referred to by women as cruelty, which is in fact supported not only biblically and historically, but across the world in terms of social norms. Feminists defy male authority and incite social instability by lechery and guile.

Sarah, Abraham’s wife lied straight-faced to God. In addition, Job’s wife told him to commit suicide when he was in his darkest hour.

At the end of the day every man knows he can only rely on himself and that marriage is largely a relationship of convenience; that relationships with women are largely relationships of convenience. God says that it is not good for man to be alone so he made woman. Then the apostle Paul said it is better for man to be without a woman if he can stand it. However, that it is better for a man to be married than to burn with lust.

Feminists (your typical woman) make life as difficult for [white] masculinity as God says it would be for a rich man to enter heaven. These terms are metaphorical of course, but it truly is a daunting task being a man in the present age (unless one is not white, then a swagger is par for the course).

The reason female chauvinism (feminism) is worse than what is referred to as male chauvinism by jealous and contemptible women is underscored by the conditions of our present age. The baby boom generation, which takes great pains to diminish white masculinity, prefers to sacrifice national security on the altar of political correctness. The vacuum left by an absence of white masculinity invites barbarism to supplant order, leading to the ghettoization of our society.

As in Deuteronomy 28, curses for disobedience,

 

“The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth.”

[...] You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.

[...] You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and ravish her. [...] Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. 33 A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. 34 The sights you see will drive you mad.

[...] The LORD will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your fathers. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. You will become a thing of horror and an object of scorn and ridicule to all the nations where the LORD will drive you.

[...] You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. [...] You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity.

[...] The alien who lives among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. 44 He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, but you will be the tail.

All these curses will come upon you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the LORD your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. 46 They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever. 47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, 48 therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the LORD sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.”

Feminists dissent against reality to impose upon the whole of society their vision for self-empowerment which objectifies themselves and nullifies objectively based natural law and absolute morality. The black and female ‘empowerment/liberation’ movement[s], which heretofore have been coterminous as well as symbiotic, are simply anti-Christian, anti-white-heterosexual-male, anti-Capitalist and anti-democratic fascist radical particularist movements with views toward toppling traditionalist (white christian male patriarchal democratic capitalist) order. What these movements aim to do will land America and other nations overrun by these ideologues into a Third World ghetto.

 

Ban on Sex for Soldiers in Afghanistan Lifted … Sort Of (military.com)

JALALABAD, Afghanistan – Single soldiers and civilians working for the U.S. military in Afghanistan can now have sex legally. Sort of.

A new order signed by Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of Combined Joint Task Force-101, has lifted a ban on sexual relations between unmarried men and women in the combat zone.

Poll: Sex in a War Zone Okay?

General Order No. 1 outlines a number of prohibited activities and standards of conduct for U.S. troops and civilians working for the military in Afghanistan. Previously, under the regulation, sexual relations and “intimate behavior” between men and women not married to each other were a strict no-no. The regulation also barred members of the opposite sex from going into each other’s living quarters unless they were married to each other.

To find more deployment news and resources, visit The Deployment Center.

But the latest version of General Order No. 1 for Afghanistan, which Schloesser signed April 19, eases those restrictions.

The new regulation warns that sex in a combat zone “can have an adverse impact on unit cohesion, morale, good order and discipline.”

But sexual relations and physical intimacy between men and women not married to each other are no longer banned outright. They’re only “highly discouraged,” and that’s as long as they’re “not otherwise prohibited” by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, according to the new order…

No Obama! (link to video)

A MUST SEE!

 

http://www.theurbangrind.net/?p=2570

 

Black Gangster and Arab/Islamic Terrorist Rappers

I’m no afficionado or learned critic of rap music, but from where I’m sitting, [the genre] fits Islamic terrorists like a glove. 

Consider the following from a family-oriented source providing information about the propaganda of the Islamic Mein Kampf:

–

Followers of the ideology also produce content that supports the goals of violent Islamists. One of the most well-known examples is the rap video “Dirty Kuffar” (Kuffar means “nonbeliever”), which was downloaded onto millions of computers or watched online. In the video, the rapper, waving a gun and a Koran, praises bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks and disparages

Western leaders with lyrics such as:

Peace to Hamas and the Hezbollah
OBL pulled me like a shiny star
Like the way we destroyed them two towers ha-ha
The minister Tony Blair, there my dirty Kuffar
The one Mr. Bush, there my dirty Kuffar
Throw them on the fire.

The song is performed against a changing backdrop of images of world leaders morphing into animals or fictional characters and scenes of terrorists engaging in military training and attacking coalition forces in Iraq.

—

It doesn’t seem like it takes much to adapt the Muslim terrorist culture to the American gangster rap culture; in fact, the only difference between them I see is that the former is simply more strategic and international in its vision.

Barack Obama: Gaffe Machine

Michelle Malkin

All it takes is one gaffe to taint a Republican for life. The political establishment never let Dan Quayle live down his fateful misspelling of “potatoe.” The New York Times distorted and misreported the first President Bush’s questions about new scanner technology at a grocers’ convention to brand him permanently as out of touch.

But what about Barack Obama? The guy’s a perpetual gaffe machine. Let us count the ways, large and small, that his tongue has betrayed him throughout the campaign:

– Last May, he claimed that tornadoes in Kansas killed a whopping 10,000 people: “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed.” The actual death toll: 12.

– Earlier this month in Oregon, he redrew the map of the United States: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”

– Last week, in front of a roaring Sioux Falls, S.D., audience, Obama exulted: “Thank you, Sioux City. … I said it wrong. I’ve been in Iowa for too long. I’m sorry.”

– Explaining last week why he was trailing Hillary Clinton in Kentucky, Obama again botched basic geography: “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.” On what map is Arkansas closer to Kentucky than Illinois?

– Obama has as much trouble with numbers as he has with maps. Last March, on the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala., he claimed his parents united as a direct result of the civil rights movement:

“There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala., because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born.”

Obama was born in 1961. The Selma march took place in 1965. His spokesman, Bill Burton, later explained that Obama was “speaking metaphorically about the civil rights movement as a whole.”

– Earlier this month in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Obama showed off his knowledge of the war in Afghanistan by homing in on a lack of translators: “We only have a certain number of them, and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” The real reason it’s “harder for us to use them” in Afghanistan: Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. The Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi or other non-Arabic languages.

– Over the weekend in Oregon, Obama pleaded ignorance of the decades-old, multi-billion-dollar massive Hanford nuclear waste cleanup:

“Here’s something that you will rarely hear from a politician, and that is that I’m not familiar with the Hanford, uuuuhh, site, so I don’t know exactly what’s going on there. (Applause.) Now, having said that, I promise you I’ll learn about it by the time I leave here on the ride back to the airport.”

I assume on that ride, a staffer reminded him that he’s voted on at least one defense authorization bill that addressed the “costs, schedules, and technical issues” dealing with the nation’s most contaminated nuclear waste site.

– Last March, the Chicago Tribune reported this little-noticed nugget about a fake autobiographical detail in Obama’s “Dreams from My Father”:

“Then, there’s the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. In fact, the Life article and the photographs don’t exist, say the magazine’s own historians.”

– And in perhaps the most seriously troubling set of gaffes of them all, Obama told a Portland crowd over the weekend that Iran doesn’t “pose a serious threat to us” — cluelessly arguing that “tiny countries” with small defense budgets can’t do us harm — and then promptly flip-flopped the next day, claiming, “I’ve made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave.”

Barack Obama — promoted by the Left and the media as an all-knowing, articulate, transcendent Messiah — is a walking, talking gaffe machine. How many more passes does he get? How many more can we afford?

Good News on the Terror Funding Libel Front

Douglas Farah

 

There was good news on freedom of speech front yesterday, as the Wall Street Journal won a complete victory in a libel case involving terror finance issues. The lead reporter, the venerable Glenn Simpson, is now 4-0 since 9/11 in these types of cases.

While the victory is a testament to his tenacity and care, it is also a testament to the courage of the WSJ in willing to fight and win these cases. Most are lost simply because the will to fight has gone out of so much of the media, who would often rather settle than protect the truth.

A brief summary: The Tribunel Correctionel in Paris issued a ruling in Ancienne Bauche SA v The Wall Street Journal Europe. The Journal, editor Michael Williams and reporters Glenn Simpson and Benoit Faucon, were all acquitted on charges of felony and civil libel.

The other WSJ cases are: One UK case was lost at trial but overturned by the House of Lords (the ground-breaking and precedent-setting case of Mohammed Jameel); one UK case was thrown out (Yousef Jameel); one UK case was dropped by the plaintiff (Al-Rajhi), and the Bauche case was won at trial.

The cases seem to indicate that careful, fair and accurate reporting on terrorism financing can withstand legal challenge even in Europe, where plaintiffs are heavily advantaged in libel proceedings. The catch: You have to be willing and financially able to defend yourself. To all our benefit, the WSJ had the will.

Bauche, a Paris sugar-trading concern which did business with a trader in Gaza accused by the Israelis of backing terrorism, alleged libel over a July 2007 report regarding the use of commodities to transfer value from an Islamic charity in France to Islamic charities in the territories.

Bauche arranged shipments of sugar to Gaza financed by a charity in Paris called the Comite de Bienfaisance et Secours aux Palestiniens, which is legal in France but is banned by the U.S. for allegedly financing terror. The group won a previous libel case against the Simon Weisenthal Center (currently on appeal).

At a trial at the Palais de Justice in Paris on April 1st, the two reporters testified for about five hours regarding their work on the story, which took six months. Key to the defense was that the article made clear there was no reason to believe that Bauche had knowingly or intentionally supported terrorism.

At the end of the April 1st trial, the public prosecutor made some non-binding observations. She called the article “a serious in-depth investigation,” which lacked invective or innuendo and contained “just stated facts.” The journalist testimony regarding efforts to confirm the story in various places “shows they are serious and their rigour. They have multiple sources. Their sources are checked.” So, she said, “I don’t see how to say there is no good faith.”

In their ruling today, the judges found that the story contained only one possible inaccuracy, which involved whether one of the sugar deals was blocked by the French police (as WSJ stated) or simply canceled by the Gaza trader after intervention by the Israeli police (as Bauche alleged). The potential inaccuracy “is not of the kind that would make the article defamatory as it matters little in what circumstances the transaction failed between one version and the other,” the judges found.

“No impropriety, either intentionally or by negligence, is therefore alleged by [WSJ] against the plaintiff, except to consider, which the tribunal would not admit, that every commercial transaction with Palestinian partners is a priori suspicious.”

In other words, the only thing the WSJ reported was that Bauche had done business with Palestinians, and there’s no crime imputed in that.

Concluded the judges: “The facts reported as to the Bauche company are not damaging to its honor and reputation. The offense of public defamation against an individual is therefore not constituted. The defendants are, as a consequence, freed from prosecution.”

As all serious journalists should be.

Why Affirmative Action is a Self-Defeating Proposition

Let me refer you to a definition of Jealousy: An intense interest for another’s honour or prosperity. The reason why Affirmative Action can never be successful in promoting the utopian leftist vision of perfect equality of condition is thus: any advantage gained due to material redistribution will be offset by a concomitant jealousy – namely, that of interest in another’s honor, which will invariably increase due to the offsetting advantage conferred upon the recipient of said advantage due to said policy of redistribution.

In short, an entitlement complex comes with the baggage of inferior self regard in juxtaposition to a superior regard of another, hence jealousy of another’s honor. Or in other words, redistribution of [material] advantage comes at the price of personal dignity. So if AA’s minions are willing to give up their dignity to sponge off of those who support the entitlements, then [said minions] shouldn’t be surprised when they don’t get respect from those on whom they sponge (as well as from each other since there is mutual understanding of a sponge culture, which breeds disaffection).

A Word to Barack Obama: Real Patriotism Speaks for Itself

Patriotism is commonly defined as one’s love and devotion of country and the willingness to make sacrifices for it.

Barack Obama gave a speech in Charleston, West Virginia, where he made an exception to his self-imposed policy of not wearing a flag lapel pin, and according to the Chicago Tribune, defended his patriotism.

According to Obama’s campaign web site, he justifies his patriotism by citing his maternal grandfather’s enlisting in the army after Pearl Harbor, and his marching across Europe with Gen. Patton. He also mentions how his grandfather taught him to say the Pledge of Allegiance and love his country. It sounds to me that the grandfather is a true patriot, but what does this have to do with Obama? Did Obama become a patriot through osmosis?

The web site goes on to mention that Obama went to Harvard Law School, and “Barack’s patriotism and profound belief in the underlying principles of this country led him to teach Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.” No, I think it’s more probable that he taught Constitutional Law because it was gainful employment and he needed the money. Many law school professors are off-the-map liberals who try to come up with ways to undermine the Constitution, so he was perfect for the job.

The web page further defines his patriotism by stating: “Barack believes that you show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans and veterans.” In his speech in Charleston, he echoed these examples of his patriotism and then immediately attacked the country’s poster child for patriotism and most famous war veteran, John McCain. The last time I checked, John McCain is an unapologetic patriot who retired as a Navy Captain after spending five years as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton while Obama was being taught the Pledge of Allegiance by his grandfather.

So far I’m not convinced of Obama’s patriotism. Here’s why.

Obama married a woman who said that America was a “mean” country and as an adult she was never proud of it until her husband ran for president.

He attended a church for 20 years where the minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, preached disdain for America and her foreign policies, asked God to damn her and accused her of spreading AIDS and crack cocaine among black communities. Would a true patriot sit there and listen to that dribble, or would he walk out and never come back?

Obama is a long-time friend and business associate of former domestic terrorist and Weatherman leader Bill Ayres, whose organization caused explosions at the Pentagon and New York City police headquarters and made serious attempts to destabilize and overthrow the U.S. government. Would a true patriot associate with such persons or tolerate anyone who did?

Obama never joined the Armed Forces to make a sacrifice for his country; nor did he ever join VISTA or the Peace Corps as an alternative to military service. Instead, he attended college at two of America’s most prestigious universities which prepared him for a career in politics.

Obama has campaigned on his decision to not support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, despite overwhelming evidence at the time the nation’s security was in jeopardy and military action was warranted. It makes me wonder under what set of circumstances a President Obama would commit U.S. forces to battle to protect this country.

Have Mr. and Mrs. Obama ever attended a Fourth of July parade? Do they swell with pride like I do when you see the B-2 stealth bomber slowly flying over the spectators at the beginning of the Rose Parade? Does Obama get goose bumps when the National Anthem is sung at a baseball game or other sporting event whether he is there in person or watching it on television? I suppose not, in light of press reports that Obama won’t place his hand over his heart during such occasions.

A true patriot does not have to justify his patriotism to anyone. He demonstrates it by his actions. A patriot never has to defend his love and respect for his country because it’s obvious. Nor does a patriot have to make the case for his patriotism on a web site, in a feeble attempt to convince others you’re something you’re not.

##

Gregory D. Lee is a syndicated columnist with North Star Writers Group (http://www.northstarwriters.com/). You can see his previous material at http://www.northstarwriters.com/gregorydlee.htm

Bush’s Full Interview With NBC (link)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/24696309#24729860

Stunning Victory Against Judicial Supremacy

May 21, 2008by Phyllis Schlafly
The media have been telling us to watch the gun-control case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, where we await a decision about Americans’ Second Amendment rights. But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals just handed down an equally important gun decision that has additional implications against judicial supremacy.
The Second Circuit, which convenes in New York City, shot down the liberals’ longtime dream of achieving gun control by suing gun manufacturers for crimes committed by firearms. In a remarkable decision, this federal appellate court dismissed City of New York v. Beretta U.S.A. Corp. (pdf) and protected gun corporations against frivolous lawsuits in state and federal courts.
The lawsuit was brought by the City of New York in order to seek control over gun suppliers. At stake was not merely money but also whether the liberals would obtain from judicial activists the gun control which the liberals could not get from legislatures.
This decision provides a roadmap for how Congress should withdraw jurisdiction from judicial supremacists in other fields, too. The Second Circuit decision is a sweeping affirmation of Congress’s power to stop future and pending lawsuits in federal and state courts.
This ruling broke an alarming trend of judicial supremacy and stopped outrageous lawsuits that tried to impede the sale of guns because of illegal acts committed by New York City residents and others. Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg was left empty-handed in his attempt to sue businesses concerning crimes committed by residents of his city.
The lawsuit cited the harm from gun sales while ignoring evidence that the benefits far outweigh the harm. The trial court sided with Bloomberg, but the appellate court said “no” and put an end to the nonsense.
Congress had legislated the basis for this decision by passing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) in 2005. The PLCAA protects against a “qualified civil liability action,” defined broadly to include almost any lawsuit brought against a gun manufacturer or seller based on “the criminal or unlawful misuse” of a firearm distributed in interstate commerce. On the day it was signed into law by President Bush, gun manufacturers moved to dismiss this case, and the Second Circuit has now enforced the law.
The appellate court rejected an argument that this law denied access to the courts. New York City can and does sue all the time, but Congress properly rejected the ridiculous notion that the city could sue businesses over a typically beneficial product that was later used illegally.
Should General Motors and Ford be held liable for crimes committed by drunk drivers, or baseball bat suppliers be sued for criminal beatings inflicted with their products? Of course not, and it was an outrage that courts even entertained such actions against gun manufacturers and suppliers.
If Congress had not effectively withdrawn jurisdiction, gun manufacturers would be reluctant to produce guns and many might go out of business. This intimidation would deter the lawful sale of guns.
That’s exactly what the gun-control advocates have long wanted: legislation from the bench that they could not persuade real legislatures to pass. A majority of legislators, who are elected, see the absurdity of gun control and recognize the valuable self-defense function of guns.
The role of judges should be (as Chief Justice Roberts repeated in his confirmation hearings) like that of baseball umpires: calling the balls and strikes, but not changing how many strikes constitute a strike-out. Judges should interpret ambiguous laws fairly but not legislate from the bench.
Gun control has become so unpopular that not even the Democratic presidential candidates dare brag about their views. Instead the anti-gun crowd hopes to get what it wants from supremacist judges.
The misuse of the courts to obtain a result contrary to the will of the American people should not be allowed on other vital issues. Congress should also take away from judges issues such as the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, the Boy Scouts, and the definition of marriage.
Take another example. Federal courts should not entertain lawsuits by illegal aliens against local ordinances that enforce our immigration laws.
This refreshing gun decision by the Second Circuit signals the way for Congress to return the judiciary to its proper place in our constitutional separation of powers system. In the previous Congress, the House did pass bills to curb court mischief about the Pledge of Allegiance and the definition of marriage, and now it’s time for the Senate to step up to the plate and take action against judicial supremacists.

Virginia Abortion Ban Struck Down

Note:

The ‘peace’ activists want to run away from armed men and turn on helpless infants. These people (leftist antiwar protesters supporting abortion) are nothing but dastards.

 

Article:

 

A federal appeals court panel in Richmond, Va., on Tuesday struck down a Virginia law that made it a crime for doctors to perform what the law called “partial birth infanticide.”

In a 2-to-1 decision, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the law was more restrictive than the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which the United States Supreme Court upheld last year in Gonzales v. Carhart.

Both laws prohibited the procedure known medically as intact dilation and extraction. It involves removing an intact fetus and, typically, piercing or crushing its skull. The more common second-trimester abortion procedure, dilation and evacuation, involves dismembering the fetus in the uterus.

The key difference between the two laws, Judge M. Blane Michael wrote for the majority, was that the federal law imposes criminal charges only when doctors intend at the outset to perform the procedure, while Virginia law also made it a crime for doctors to perform the prohibited procedure by mistake.

“Unlike the federal act,” Judge Michael wrote, “the Virginia act subjects all doctors who perform” the more common procedure “to potential criminal liability, thereby imposing an unconstitutional burden on a woman’s right to choose.”

The Virginia law, Judge Michael wrote, imposes criminal liability on doctors who set out to perform the more common procedure “but who nonetheless accidentally deliver the fetus to an anatomical landmark and who must perform a deliberate act that causes fetal demise in order to complete removal.” The landmarks in question are passed, in the law’s words, when “the infant’s entire head” or “trunk past the navel” is “outside the body of the mother.”

Judge Michael was joined by Judge Diana Gribbon Motz. Both were appointed by President Bill Clinton.

Judge Paul V. Niemeyer, who was appointed by the first President Bush, issued a fierce dissent. “With a troubling opinion,” he wrote, “the majority now seeks to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart.”

“The majority’s selective use of statutory language and its rationalizations,” Judge Niemeyer wrote, “represent nothing less than a strong judicial will to overturn what the Virginia Legislature has enacted for the benefit of Virginia’s citizens and what, in materially undistinguishable terms, the Supreme Court has upheld as constitutional.”

Tuesday’s decision was the appeals court’s second encounter with the law, which it struck down on different grounds in 2005. The Supreme Court ordered the appeals court to reconsider its decision in light of Gonzales v. Carhart.

A spokesman for the state attorney general, Bob McDonnell, issued a statement suggesting that the state may seek a review of the decision from the full appeals court, which is generally conservative, or from the Supreme Court.

“We are extremely disappointed with the divided decision,” said the spokesman, J. Tucker Martin. “We are reviewing the panel opinion at this time and considering all possible courses of action.”

Stephanie Toti, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented the plaintiffs in the case, a doctor and a medical center, said in a statement that the Virginia ban was extreme.

“The only way for doctors to obey this law would be to stop performing the most common second-trimester abortion methods,” Ms. Toti said.

 

Bashers Beware

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, May 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT

The Presidency: It takes little courage — or brains — to join the mob vilifying President Bush. But the Democrats (and Republicans, too) depicting him as villain will one day regret it.

---

Read More: Election 2008

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In the eyes of members of both parties, George W. Bush seems to be the cause of everything from the recent GOP special election losses to a flagging economy to today’s bad weather.

Barack Obama plans to reach the White House by claiming the presidency of Sen. John McCain would amount to a third Bush term. McCain, meanwhile, seems to think it a wise campaign strategy to highlight his differences with the president, such as outgreening the greens on global warming.

Rep. Tom Davis, former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, reflected the panic engulfing many Republicans in Congress last week when he called President Bush “absolutely radioactive” and warned, “They’ve got to get some separation from the president” if they want to win this November.

How about a dose of reality?

On the economy, there are indications the sun is coming out after a fairly mild economic storm. More data are showing a recession will be avoided, and it looks like a new bull market in stocks began in March after a short and shallow bear.

The report earlier this month of 20,000 jobs lost in April was far better than had been expected, and unemployment remains low at 5%.

There is undeniably a lot of gloom and doom out there, with the Reuters/University of Michigan sentiment index at a 26-year low. But the National Association for Business Economics announced Monday that it expects the current downturn to be mild and brief.

NABE “anticipates a significant pickup in the second half” with real GDP for 2009 projected to be 2.9%. It may not even classify this downturn as a recession at all.

For the resilience of this economy, we can thank the president. He pushed substantial tax cuts on income and investment through Congress, which were followed by four years of growth, generating over 8 million jobs.

The president also can be thanked for appointing Ben Bernanke, chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, to succeed Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve chief. Bernanke has moved on several fronts to keep the economy afloat — including creatively making more credit available to combat the subprime mortgage crisis.

As for national security, Obama keeps saying the war in Iraq and the rest of the administration’s foreign and defense policy have, as he put it last week in South Dakota, “prevented us from making this country safe.” But the country is safer than anyone expected after 9/11.

There has not been a single terrorist attack on the homeland, and we have instead foiled multiple terrorist plots to kill innocent Americans. America has succeeded in foiling these plots because Bush gave the National Security Agency the authority to monitor any and all communications of suspected terrorists, by telephone, e-mail or other means.

The president also gave authorization for the CIA to employ tough interrogation methods on terrorists in custody, to the extent of transporting those detainees to secret locations abroad.

As we have prevented the terrorists from taking their jihad to the U.S., we have taken the global war on terror to the terrorists’ home soil. We have given Muslims in the Middle East the opportunity for freedom in Iraq, proving that we are willing to spill our blood and expend our own resources to defend our interests as we promote their liberty.

When faced with the entire Washington establishment demanding an end to the war — including his own father’s secretary of state, James Baker — President Bush stuck to his guns, placed a new general in charge and employed a surge strategy that is now winning the war in Iraq in resounding fashion.

This is the supposed albatross Republicans are so intent on distancing themselves from and which Democrats believe to be the key to victory in November. The facts of the last seven years tell a different story.

Anti-foreigner violence escalates in South Africa

(Recasts, adds analyst comment)

By Paul Simao

JOHANNESBURG, May 19 (Reuters) – Mobs armed with knives, clubs and jugs of petrol torched shacks and beat migrant workers on Monday in escalating anti-foreigner violence in Johannesburg squatter camps.

The unrest has killed at least 22 people since last week and increased political instability at a time of electricity shortages, rising inflation and disaffection among the poor over President Thabo Mbeki’s pro-business policies.

Police fired rubber bullets at rioters and police helicopters hovered overhead as officers rounded up suspects involved in some of the worst township violence since the end of apartheid.

The attacks started in Alexandria township last week but have since spread across communities and the central business district in South Africa’s biggest city, hitting townships in the east of the city on Monday.

They have targeted mostly Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, the biggest groups among immigrants who are accused by the poor of taking jobs and fuelling the high rate of violent crime.

Women have been raped, shops and homes looted and dozens of shacks burnt to the ground. Scores have been arrested.

“This is a war,” said Lucas Zimila, a 60-year-old Mozambican man who was attacked by a machete-wielding mob while sleeping in his shack in Tembisa, north of Johannesburg, on Sunday night.

“They screamed at me to get out, that I didn’t belong here. Then they burned everything in my house,” said Zimila, who suffered a five-inch gash in his head.

The unrest is an embarrassment for South Africa, which has vaunted its tolerance since the end of apartheid and hopes to encourage foreign visitors for the soccer World Cup in 2010.

The violence is an indicator of anger among those who complain they have been left out by Mbeki’s policies to promote business and investment. Investors are already worried by growing labour influence in the ruling ANC since Mbeki lost the leadership in December to rival Jacob Zuma.

ANC Treasurer General Matthews Phosa called at the weekend for an early election, calling for strong leadership. Mbeki has to step down next year and Zuma is the frontrunner to succeed.

UNEASE

South Africa, with a population of 50 million, is home to an estimated 5 million immigrants. Foreigners from poorer countries have been lured by work in mines, farms and homes and by one of the world’s most liberal immigration and refugee policies.

“The violence is not a good signal for investors,” said Raoul Luttik, senior investment manager, ING Investment Management in the Hague, Netherlands on a day the rand held steady.

“But the focus on the rand is more related to inflation, which has been spiralling, and also crucially, the monetary policy,” he said.

Immigrants say that far from being criminals they are more often the victims of crime. Several told Reuters organised criminals were using the violence as cover to rob and loot.

Acting National Police Commissioner Tim Williams said in a statement that more officers would be deployed to trouble spots.

South African papers carried photos of a man set alight by a mob at the weekend. The scenes recalled troubles during apartheid, when activists fought security forces and rival factions. Suspected informants were sometimes burned to death.

Mbeki and Zuma have called for an end to the violence.

Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela said he was saddened by rising hatred of foreigners. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, another Nobel laureate, pointed out that neighbouring states took in South Africans during the struggle against white minority rule.

“We can’t repay them by killing their children,” he said.

Hundreds of immigrants have taken refuge in police stations, churches and government offices.

“It’s getting worse. They keep coming here because this is a safe place,” said Simon Ramollo, a community activist who was arranging bedding and meals for about 200 foreigners.

The biggest group of immigrants — an estimated 3 million — are from Zimbabwe. They have fled economic collapse at home and the violent political standoff since disputed March 29 elections gives them little incentive to return home.

Mbeki’s critics say his softly, softly approach to Zimbabwe has done too little to end the crisis there. (Additional reporting by Gordon Bell and Sebastian Tong in London; Editing by Marius Bosch and Matthew Jones) (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the violence and other top issues, visit: africa.reuters.com)

Fitting Developments

The Democrats are running a black marxist and the NAACP elected a man named jealous. If only symbolically, these developments are fitting indeed.

NAACP names new president (Wash Post)

The NAACP selected Benjamin Todd Jealous as its president Saturday, tapping a young, Oxford University-educated activist to lead the nation’s oldest civil rights group.

Jealous, 35, was chosen by the group’s 64-member board after a year-long search and was introduced at the group’s national headquarters in Baltimore. He is expected to start his new job Sept. 1.

In selecting Jealous, the NAACP broke with its tradition of picking politicians and ministers to lead, as it did three years ago with its selection of telecommunications executive Bruce Gordon. Jealous is the president of the Rosenberg Foundation in San Francisco, which advocates for immigrants and working-class families.

Jealous also is a former news executive, having served as executive director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which encompasses about 200 black newspapers, and as managing editor of the Jackson Advocate, a black newspaper in Mississippi.

“Ben Jealous has spent his professional life working for and raising money for the very social justice concerns for which the NAACP advocates,” NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said.

FW: Engineering history lesson

Note: I don’t agree with the last bit in whole, but it’s still very funny all the same.

AN INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON

Railroad tracks. This is fascinating.

Be sure to read the final paragraph; your understanding of it will depend on
the earlier part of the content.

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,
8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in
England, and English expatriates built the USrailroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were
built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s
the gauge they used.

Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then? Because the people who built the
tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if
they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on
some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Romebuilt the first long distance roads in Europe (andEngland) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the
matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/Procedure/Process and
wonder ‘What horse’s ass came up with it?’ you may be exactly right.
Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses’ asses.) Now, the twist to the
story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRB’s. The SRB’s are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRB’s would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB’s had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run
through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRB’s had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system w as determined over two thousand years
ago by the width of a horse’s ass. And you thought being a horse’s ass wasn’t important?

 

=

Obama: Racial Unity Can Overcome Capitalism (Satire)

by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace · 21 Comments

(2008-03-18) — In a landmark address on race, which has already eclipsed Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream‘ speech, Democrat presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama today said the U.S. can achieve the Founding Fathers’ vision of “a more perfect union” only if black and white come together to overthrow the bourgeoisie who run the military-industrial complex and control the means of production.

In distancing himself from the “wrong” and “divisive” racially-charged preaching of his long-time pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Obama simultaneously defused America’s racial tensions, while filling his listeners with “the audacity to hope that the empire of American military and economic might would soon come to an end.”

“When the means of production are in the hands of you, the proletariat,” Sen. Obama told an audience in Philadelphia, “only then will black and white blend together in harmony the way they do in my own DNA.”

The Democrat presidential frontrunner painted a picture of “a glorious future when America shall truly be one nation, under God, in which God administers schools, hospitals and most other sectors of the economy through his anointed servants in the federal government, using the harvest of plenty gathered from the pockets of black people and white people alike.”

Clintonian Political Economy

Hillary’s now screaming from her podium that during the Bill Clinton era the American economy boomed and the budget went into surplus. That this is dispositive evidence for the efficacy of straight-line, big government, tax raising, excessive litigation enabling liberalism.

This argument fails on two counts.

Firstly, it ignores positive and cumulative effects of past policies of previous presidents. Secondly, it ignores negative and cumulative effects of Clinton’s then current and now past policies.

In the first sense, Clinton’s policy of raising taxes on the vibrant, multidimensional, growing economy (post ‘89 hiccup) was in effect increasing the income cache for federal government on the coattails of Reagan and Bush’s laurels. Of course raising taxes increases treasury income at least in the short term, but higher rates invariably disincent income earners, affecting a concomitant economic slowdown. This, in turn, adversely affects the conditions in which future policymakers must make decisions.

If you’ve read ‘Good To Great,’ Clinton would be, in the most liberal estimate (pardon the pun), a level 4 leader who inflates himself and the value of the organization in a present-tense fashion as opposed to a level five leader whose policies impute enduring strength to an organization.

And that’s apart from foreign policy weakness wherein Islamic radicals the world over were able to gain chokeholds in key areas of the globe while Clinton sat back and did nothing, the cumulative effects of which led to 9/11.

FWD: Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?

> Why did the chicken cross the road?
>>
>> BARACK OBAMA:The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a
>> CHANGE! The chicken wanted CHANGE!
>>
>> JOHN MC CAIN:My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he
>> recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all 
>> the
>> chickens on the other side of the road.
>>
>> HILLARY CLINTON:When I was First Lady, I personally helped that 
>> little
>> chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely 
>> qualified
>> to ensure — right from Day One! — that every chicken in this 
>> country
>> gets the chance it deserves to cross the road.  But then, this really
>> isn’t about me…….
>>
>> DR. PHIL:The problem we have here is that this chicken won’t realize
>> that he must first deal with the problem on ‘THIS’ side of the road
>> before it goes after the problem on the ‘OTHER SIDE’ of the road. 
>> What
>> we need to do is help him realize how stupid he’s acting by not 
>> taking
>> on his ‘CURRENT’ problems before adding ‘NEW’ problems.
>>
>> OPRAH:Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, 
>> which is
>> why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the 
>> chicken
>> learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I’m
>> going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the
>> road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.
>>
>> GEORGE W. BUSH:We don’t really care why the chicken crossed the 
>> road. We
>> just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or 
>> not. The
>> chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground 
>> here.
>>
>> COLIN POWELL:Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the
>> satellite image of the chicken crossing the road…
>>
>> ANDERSON COOPER – CNN:We have reason to believe there is a 
>> chicken, but
>> we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the
>> road.
>>
>> JOHN KERRY:Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I 
>> am now
>> against it!  It was wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the
>> chicken’s intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against 
>> it.
>>
>> NANCY GRACE:That chicken crossed the road because he’s GUILTY! You 
>> can
>> see it in his eyes and the way he walks.
>>
>> PAT BUCHANAN:To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.
>>
>> MARTHA STEWART:No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was
>> going. I had a standing order at the Farmer’s Market to sell my eggs
>> when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any
>> insider information.
>>
>> DR SEUSS:Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad?
>> Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I’ve not been
>> told.
>>
>> ERNEST HEMINGWAY:To die in the rain. Alone.
>>
>> JERRY FALWELL:Because the chicken was gay! Can’t you people see the
>> plain truth? ‘That’s why they call it the ‘other side.’ Yes, my 
>> friends,
>> that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay
>> too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination
>> that the liberal media white washes with seemingly harmless 
>> phrases like
>> ‘the other side.’ That chicken should not be crossing the road. 
>> It’s as
>> plain and as simple as that.
>>
>> GRANDPA:In my day we didn’t ask why the chicken crossed the road.
>> Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good 
>> enough.
>>
>> BARBARA WALTERS:Isn’t that interesting? In a few moments, we will be
>> listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming
>> story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to
>> accomplish its life long dream of crossing the road.
>>
>> ARISTOTLE:It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.
>>
>> JOHN LENNON:Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads
>> together, in peace.
>>
>> BILL GATES:I have just released eChicken2007, which will not only 
>> cross
>> roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance
>> your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of the Chicken.
>> This newplatform is much more stable and will never cra…#@&&^(C%
>> ………reboot.
>>
>> ALBERT EINSTEIN:Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the 
>> road
>> move beneath the chicken?
>>
>> BILL CLINTON:I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What is your
>> definition of chicken?
>>
>> AL GORE:I invented the chicken!
>>
>> COLONEL SANDERS:Did I miss one?
>>
>> DICK CHENEY:Where’s my gun?
>>
>> AL SHARPTON:Why are all the chickens white? We need some black 
>> chickens.
>>
>>
>>
>> I still think the best one is:  To show the opossum it could be done!
>

 

 

 

–
Nathan D George
www.math.berkeley.edu/~natedawg

When mass killers meet armed resistance (Classically Liberal)

It took place at a university in Virginia. A student with a grudge, an immigrant, pulled a gun and went on a shooting spree. It wasn’t Virginia Tech at all. It was the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, not far away. You can easily drive from the one school to the other, just take a trip down Route 460 through Tazewell.

It was January 16, 2002 when Peter Odighizuwa came to campus. He had been suspended due to failing grades. Odighizuwa was angry and waving a gun calling on students to “come get me”. The students, seeing the gun, ran. A shooting spree started almost immediately. In seconds Odighizuwa had killed the school dean, a professor and one student. Three other students were shot as well, one in the chest, one in the stomach and one in the throat.

Many students heard the shots. Two who did were Mikael Gross and Tracy Bridges. Mikael was outside the school having just returned to campus from lunch when he heard the shots. Tracy was inside attending class. Both immediately ran to their cars. Each had a handgun locked in the vehicle.

Bridges pulled a .357 Magnum pistol and he later said he was prepared to shoot to kill if necessary. He and Gross both approached Odighizuwa at the same time from different directions. Both were pointing their weapons at him. Bridges yelled for Odighizuwa to drop his weapon. When the shooter realized they had the drop on him he threw his weapon down. A third student, unarmed, Ted Besen, approached the killer and was physically attacked.
But Odighizuwa was now disarmed. The three students were able to restrain him and held him for the police. Odighizuwa is now in prison for the murders he committed. His killing spree ended when he faced two students with weapons. There would be no further victims that day, thanks to armed resistance…

http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/04/when-mass-killers-meet-armed-resistance.html

Corporate sponsorship of Schwarzenegger’s glitzy events draws scrutiny

Note:

I’m a pretty big fan of the governator, so I take what the critics say about him rather lightly. It’s good to involve corporate America in events – as long as there’s not favoratism and corruption, or rather, cronyism lining the pockets of fatcats unjustly. The way to prevent this is to monitor all activities. Remember, if we were angels, we wouldn’t need government and if the governors were angels, we wouldn’t need checks and balances.

Insofar as GE is concerned, the press has got them under a microscope due to their sundry dealings with Iran. So, just keep that in mind.

Article:

The California governor says it saves taxpayers money to have private entities pay for ceremonies, conferences and travel. Watchdogs fear the government-corporate relationship is getting too cozy.

By Michael Rothfeld, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 18, 2008

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who runs one of the largest state governments in the country, approached the leader of another giant organization recently to ask for some financial aid.

In a telephone call from his Capitol office, Schwarzenegger secured agreement from General Electric’s chairman and chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, that the Fortune 500 company would co-host and help pay for the Border Governors Conference this August at Universal Studios in Hollywood, which the corporation owns.

The event could cost more than $3 million between GE and other private sponsors, according to participants in the planning of the conference, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the arrangements.

That would make it an expensive example of a technique Schwarzenegger has embraced to bring the glitzy style he appreciates to ceremonial state functions: getting corporations and wealthy supporters to pay for them. The governor’s aides say the practice saves taxpayers money.

Government watchdog groups argue that it may compromise the administration’s independence from corporate interests. Schwarzenegger’s phone call with Immelt was arranged by a GE executive, formerly an advisor to the governor, who oversees the company’s lobbyists in Sacramento.

“It’s a governmental conference, with governmental officials,” said Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. “If GE is paying for it, the question is what does GE expect for their contribution? And they are certainly going to expect good will.”

A spokesman for General Electric said the size and nature of the company’s contribution have not been finalized, and administration officials said there is no budget yet.

Schwarzenegger’s office has accepted millions of dollars in private gifts for things such as state dinners, international travel and ornaments on state Christmas trees.

The cross-border conference, held each year in one of the 10 participating U.S. and Mexican states, is an important event for Schwarzenegger because it is the first to be hosted in California in eight years, and the only one while he is governor.

“We are going to take this important annual event to a whole new level,” Schwarzenegger said last month in a statement announcing the partnership.

The three-day conference will feature a “Green Tech Expo,” along with festivities at the Universal theme park’s “Streets of the World” and “Spartacus Square,” and at the nearby Hilton hotel.

The thread connecting Schwarzenegger and the company is an interest in environmentally friendly technology. GE has a 3-year-old program, “Ecomagination,” which includes producing such things as clean locomotive engines, wind turbines, energy-efficient appliances and solar panels. Ecomagination accounted for $14 billion of GE’s $173 billion in revenue last year, a spokesman said.

GE has spent $475,000 lobbying California government since the beginning of 2007 on such matters as corporate taxes, the film industry and the recall of unsafe products. Paul Miner, the former Schwarzenegger aide who brokered the conference deal, is now the GE government relations manager who coordinates the lobbying team.

Aaron McLear, Schwarzenegger’s spokesman, said the governor never unduly favors his supporters in official decisions. McLear said the conference would boost business in Los Angeles without costing the public money.

“The governor absolutely believes in saving the taxpayers money any chance he can,” McLear said. “So if he can partner with a private entity to host an event like this, that saves taxpayer dollars.”

GE spokesman Peter O’Toole said Immelt agreed to sponsor the conference, which will require closing parts of Universal Studios to tourists, partly because both Schwarzenegger and Immelt are “fairly progressive.”

“We’re doing it because he asked and we have a good relationship,” O’Toole said. “Our thinking is similar between the CEO and the governor. . . . It’s not a quid pro quo, but we thought it was something important to do. It’s an important market for us.”

Schwarzenegger’s office has received a wide range of corporate gifts. For the governor’s Christmas tree lighting event one year, S. Martinelli and Co. gave $297 in sparkling apple cider. A New York ornament maker, whose glittery creations are collected by the governor and First Lady Maria Shriver, donated a few to decorate trees in Schwarzenegger’s office.

Microsoft and Google each committed to donate hundreds of hours of consulting time for a state website soon to be unveiled that will allow Californians to compare public schools. The Jordan Vineyard & Winery held a retreat for 20 of the governor’s staff members. General Motors donated the use of vehicles and drivers for two of the governor’s trips to Asia.

Schwarzenegger’s inaugural ceremonies last year were funded by $2.9 million in donations from the pharmaceutical industry, energy companies, home builders and others. Companies pay for the governor’s Sacramento hotel suite, costing $107,000 this year.

The bulk of private support received by Schwarzenegger’s office has come from the California Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit group affiliated with the California Chamber of Commerce that does not disclose the names of its donors or the details of specific expenditures.

The foundation paid $306,000 in 2006 for a Sacramento dinner for then-Mexican President Vicente Fox, state records show. It has funded annual receptions after Schwarzenegger’s State of the State addresses. The group has spent millions on jet planes, hotels and meals for the governor and his staff on trips described as “trade missions.”

“If the taxpayers were paying for some of these glitzy things, I think there would be objections,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. But the flow of private money to elected officials’ causes is “something that should be watched.”

“We recognize that there could never be a solid wall of separation between government and private interests, but sometimes when the relationship gets a little too cozy, it makes us nervous,” Coupal said.

Since 1980, when it was first convened in Chihuahua, Mexico, the Border Governors Conference has alternated between U.S. and Mexican states. The purpose is to keep open lines of communication.

Former Gov. Gray Davis hosted the event in 2000 in Sacramento. Meetings were held at public buildings, including the Capitol and a city library, where government absorbed the costs. The Golden State Host Committee, a privately funded nonprofit also affiliated with the California Chamber of Commerce, spent $196,000 to hold two dinners during the conference.

In planning last year’s conference in Sonora, Mexico, a small industrial and agricultural state, Gov. Eduardo Bours Castelo recruited corporations to pay for it, said Luis Borbon, an aide. “It was going to be very, very expensive for the government,” Borbon said.

michael.rothfeld@latimes.com

WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON? A Global Intelligence Briefing For CEOs

Herbert Meyer

This is a transcript of a speech given Feb 27 and 28 last year [2007] to a large conference of American CEOs in Seattle. The startling message that is hitting home with me is that the major clashes and consequences of what he’s describing aren’t way off in the future. They’re relativily near-term; still within my lifetime!

Currently, there are four major transformations that are shaping political, economic and world events. These transformations have profound implications for American business owners, our culture and our way of life. – Neil P.

1. The War in Iraq

There are three major monotheistic religions in the world: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. In the 16th century, Judaism and Christianity reconciled with the modern world. The rabbis, priests and scholars found a way to settle up and pave the way forward. Religion remained at the center of life, church and state became separate. Rule of law, idea of economic liberty, individual rights, human rights all these are defining points of modern Western civilization. These concepts started with the Greeks but didn’t take off until the 15th and 16th century when Judaism and Christianity found a way to reconcile with the modern world. When that happened, it unleashed the scientific revolution and the greatest outpouring of art, literature and music the world has ever known.

Islam, which developed in the 7th century, counts millions of Moslems around the world who are normal people. However, there is a radical streak within Islam. When the radicals are in charge, Islam attacks Western civilization. Islam first attacked Western civilization in the 7th century, and later in the 16th and 17th centuries. By 1683, the Moslems (Turks from the Ottoman Empire) were literally at the gates of Vienna. It was in Vienna that the climatic battle between Islam and Western civilization took place. The West won and went forward. Islam lost and went backward Interestingly, the date of that battle was September 11. Since them, Islam has not found a way to reconcile with the modern world.

Today, terrorism is the third attack on Western civilization by radical Islam. To deal with terrorism, the U.S. is doing two things. First, units of our armed forces are in 30 countries around the world hunting down terrorist groups and dealing with them. This gets very little publicity. Second we are taking military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are covered relentlessly by the media. People can argue about whether the war in Iraq is right or wrong. However, the underlying strategy behind the war is to use our military to remove the radicals from power and give the moderates a chance. Our hope is that, over time, the moderates will find a way to bring Islam forward into the 21st century. That’s what our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is all about.

The lesson of 9/11 is that we live in a world where a small number of people can kill a large number of people very quickly. They can use airplanes, bombs, anthrax, chemical weapons or dirty bombs. Even with a first-rate intelligence service (which the U.S. does not have), you can’t stop every attack. That means our tolerance “for political horseplay” has dropped to zero. No longer will we play games with terrorists or weapons of mass destructions.

Most of the instability and horseplay is coming from the Middle East. That’s why we have thought that if we could knock out the radicals and give the moderates a chance to hold power, they might find a way to reconcile Islam with the modern world. So when looking at Afghanistan or Iraq, it’s important to look for any signs that they are modernizing. For example, women being brought into the workforce and colleges in Afghanistan is good. The Iraqis stumbling toward a constitution is good. People can argue about what the U.S. is doing and how we’re doing it, but anything that suggests Islam is finding its way forward is good.

2. The Emergence of China

In the last 20 years, China has moved 250 million people from the farms and villages into the cities. Their plan is to move another 300 million in the next 20 years. When you put that many people into the cities, you have to find work for them. That’s why China is addicted to manufacturing; they have to put all the relocated people to work. When we decide to manufacture something in the U.S., it’s based on market needs and the opportunity to make a profit. In China, they make the decision because they want the jobs, which is a very different calculation.

While China is addicted to manufacturing, Americans are addicted to low prices. As a result, a unique kind of economic codependency has developed between the two countries. If we ever stop buying from China, they will explode politically. If China stops selling to us, our economy will take a huge hit because prices will jump. We are subsidizing their economic development, they are subsidizing our economic growth.

Because of their huge growth in manufacturing, China is hungry for raw materials, which drives prices up worldwide. China is also thirsty for oil, which is one reason oil is now at $60 a barrel. By 2020, China will produce more cars than the U.S. China is also buying its way into the oil infrastructure around the world. They are doing it in the open market and paying fair market prices, but millions of barrels of oil that would have gone to the U.S. are now going to China. China’s quest to assure it has the oil it needs to fuel its economy is a major factor in world politics and economics. We have our Navy fleets protecting the sea lines, specifically the ability to get the tankers through. It won’t be long before the Chinese have an aircraft carrier sitting in the Persian Gulf as well. The question is, will their aircraft carrier be pointing in the same direction as ours or against us?

3. Shifting Demographics of Western Civilization

Most countries in the Western world have stopped breeding. For a civilization obsessed with sex, this is remarkable. Maintaining a steady population requires a birth rate of 2.1. In Western Europe, the birth rate currently stands at 1.5, or 30 percent below replacement. In 30 years there will be 70 to 80 million fewer Europeans than there are today. The current birth rate in Germany is 1.3. Italy and Spain are even lower at 1.2. At that rate, the working age population declines by 30 percent in 20 years, which has a huge impact on the economy.

When you don’t have young workers to replace the older ones, you have to import them. The European countries are currently importing Moslems. Today, the Moslems comprise 10 percent of France and Germany, and the percentage is rising rapidly because they have higher birthrates. However, the Moslem populations are not being integrated into the cultures of their host countries, which is a political catastrophe. One reason Germany and France don’t support the Iraq war is they fear their Moslem populations will explode on them. By 2020, more than half of all births in the Netherlands will be non-European.

The huge design flaw in the post-modern secular state is that you need a traditional religious society birth rate to sustain it. The Europeans simply don’t wish to have children, so they are dying.

In Japan, the birthrate is 1.3. As a result, Japan will lose up to 60 million people over the next 30 years. Because Japan has a very different society than Europe, they refuse to import workers. Instead, they are just shutting down. Japan has already closed 2000 schools, and is closing them down at the rate of 300 per year. Japan is also aging very rapidly. By 2020, one out of every five Japanese will be at least 70 years old. Nobody has any idea about how to run an economy with those demographics.

Europe and Japan, which comprise two of the world’s major economic engines, aren’t merely in recession, they’re shutting down. This will have a huge impact on the world economy, and it is already beginning to happen. Why are the birthrates so low? There is a direct correlation between abandonment of traditional religious society and a drop in birth rate, and Christianity in Europe is becoming irrelevant. The second reason is economic. When the birth rate drops below replacement, the population ages. With fewer working people to support more retired people, it puts a crushing tax burden on the smaller group of working age people. As a result, young people delay marriage and having a family. Once this trend starts, the downward spiral only gets worse. These countries have abandoned all the traditions they formerly held in regards to having families and raising children.

The U.S. birth rate is 2.0, just below replacement. We have an increase in population because of immigration. When broken down by ethnicity, the Anglo birth rate is 1.6 (same as France) while the Hispanic birth rate is 2.7. In the U.S., the baby boomers are starting to retire in massive numbers. This will push the “elder dependency” ratio from 19 to 38 over the next 10 to 15 years. This is not as bad as Europe, but still represents the same kind of trend.

Western civilization seems to have forgotten what every primitive society understands, you need kids to have a healthy society. Children are huge consumers. Then they grow up to become taxpayers. That’s how a society works, but the post-modern secular state seems to have forgotten that. If U.S. birth rates of the past 20 to 30 years had been the same as post-World War II, there would be no Social Security or Medicare problems.

The world’s most effective birth control device is money. As society creates a middle class and women move into the workforce, birth rates drop. Having large families is incompatible with middle class living. The quickest way to drop the birth rate is through rapid economic development. After World War II, the U.S. instituted a $600 tax credit per child. The idea was to enable mom and dad to have four children without being troubled by taxes. This led to a baby boom of 22 million kids, which was a huge consumer market that turned into a huge tax base. However, to match that incentive in today’s dollars would cost $12,000 per child.

China and India do not have declining populations. However, in both countries, there is a preference for boys over girls, and we now have the technology to know which is which before they are born. In China and India, many families are aborting the girls. As a result, in each of these countries there are 70 million boys growing up who will never find wives. When left alone, nature produces 103 boys for every 100 girls. In some provinces, however, the ratio is 128 boys to every 100 girls.

The birth rate in Russia is so low that by 2050 their population will be smaller than that of Yemen. Russia has one-sixth of the earth’s land surface and much of its oil. You can’t control that much area with such a small population. Immediately to the south, you have China with 70 million unmarried men – a real potential nightmare scenario for Russia.

4. Restructuring of American Business

The fourth major transformation involves a fundamental restructuring of American business. Today’s business environment is very complex and competitive. To succeed, you have to be the best, which means having the highest quality and lowest cost. Whatever your price point, you must have the best quality and lowest price. To be the best, you have to concentrate on one thing. You can’t be all things to all people and be the best.

A generation ago, IBM used to make every part of their computer. Now Intel makes the chips, Microsoft makes the software, and someone else makes the modems, hard drives, monitors, etc. IBM even outsources their call center. Because IBM has all these companies supplying goods and services cheaper and better than they could do it themselves, they can make a better computer at a lower cost. This is called a “fracturing” of business. When one company can make a better product by relying on others to perform functions the business used to do itself, it creates a complex pyramid of companies that serve and support each other.

This fracturing of American business is now in its second generation. The companies who supply IBM are now doing the same thing, outsourcing many of their core services and production process. As a result, they can make cheaper, better products. Over time, this pyramid continues to get bigger and bigger. Just when you think it can’t fracture again, it does. Even very small businesses can have a large pyramid of corporate entities that perform many of its important functions. One aspect of this trend is that companies end up with fewer employees and more independent contractors.

This trend has also created two new words in business, integrator and complementor. At the top of the pyramid, IBM is the integrator. As you go down the pyramid, Microsoft, Intel and the other companies that support IBM are the complementors. However, each of the complementors is itself an integrator for the complementors underneath it. This has several implications, the first of which is that we are now getting false readings on the economy. People who used to be employees are now independent contractors launching their own businesses. There are many people working whose work is not listed as a job. As a result, the economy is perking along better than the numbers are telling us.

Outsourcing also confused the numbers. Suppose a company like General Motors decides to outsource all its employee cafeteria functions to Marriott (which it did). It lays off hundreds of cafeteria workers, who then get hired right back by Marriott. The only thing that has changed is that these people work for Marriott rather than GM. Yet, the headlines will scream that America has lost more manufacturing jobs. All that really happened is that these workers are now reclassified as service workers. So the old way of counting jobs contributes to false economic readings. As yet, we haven’t figured out how to make the numbers catch up with the changing realities of the business world.

Another implication of this massive restructuring is that because companies are getting rid of units and people that used to work for them, the entity is smaller. As the companies+ get smaller and more efficient, revenues are going down but profits are going up. As a result, the old notion that “revenues are up and we’re doing great” isn’t always the case anymore. Companies are getting smaller but are becoming more efficient and profitable in the process.

Implications Of The Four Transformations

1. The War in Iraq

In some ways, the war is going very well. Afghanistan and Iraq have the beginnings of a modern government, which is a huge step forward. The Saudis are starting to talk about some good things, while Egypt and Lebanon are beginning to move in a good direction.

A series of revolutions have taken place in countries like Ukraine and Georgia. There will be more of these revolutions for an interesting reason. In every revolution, there comes a point where the dictator turns to the general and says, “Fire into the crowd.” If the general fires into the crowd, it stops the revolution. If the general says “No,” the revolution is over. Increasingly, the generals are saying “No” because their kids are in the crowd.

Thanks to TV and the Internet, the average 18-year old outside the U.S. is very savvy about what is going on in the world, especially in terms of popular culture. There is a huge global consciousness, and young people around the world want to be a part of it. It is increasingly apparent to them that the miserable government where they live is the only thing standing in their way. More and more, it is the well-educated kids, the children of the generals and the elite, who are leading the revolutions.

At the same time, not all is well with the war. The level of violence in Iraq is much worse and doesn’t appear to be improving. It’s possible that we’re asking too much of Islam all at one time. We’re trying to jolt them from the 7th century to the 21st century all at once, which may be further than they can go. They might make it and they might not. Nobody knows for sure. The point is, we don’t know how the war will turn out. Anyone who says they know is just guessing.

The real place to watch is Iran. If they actually obtain nuclear weapons it will be a terrible situation. There are two ways to deal with it. The first is a military strike, which will be very difficult. The Iranians have dispersed their nuclear development facilities and put them underground. The U.S. has nuclear weapons that can go under the earth and take out those facilities, but we don’t want to do that. The other way is to separate the radical mullahs from the government, which is the most likely course of action.

Seventy percent of the Iranian population is under 30. They are Moslem but not Arab. They are mostly pro-Western. Many experts think the U.S. should have dealt with Iran before going to war with Iraq. The problem isn’t so much the weapons, it’s the people who control them. If Iran has a moderate government, the weapons become less of a concern.

We don’t know if we will win the war in Iraq. We could lose or win. What we’re looking for is any indicator that Islam is moving into the 21st century and stabilizing

2. China

It may be that pushing 500 million people from farms and villages into cities is too much too soon. Although it gets almost no publicity, China is experiencing hundreds of demonstrations around the country, which is unprecedented. These are not students in Tiananmen Square. These are average citizens who are angry with the government for building chemical plants and polluting the water they drink and the air they breathe.

The Chinese are a smart and industrious people. They may be able to pull it off and become a very successful economic and military superpower. If so, we will have to learn to live with it. If they want to share the responsibility of keeping the world’s oil lanes open, that’s a good thing. They currently have eight new nuclear electric power generators under way and 45 on the books to build. Soon, they will leave the U.S. way behind in their ability to generate nuclear power.

What can go wrong with China? For one, you can’t move 550 million people into the cities without major problems. Two, China really wants Taiwan, not so much for economic reasons, they just want it. The Chinese know that their system of communism can’t survive much longer in the 21st century. The last thing they want to do before they morph into some sort of more capitalistic government is to take over Taiwan.

We may wake up one morning and find they have launched an attack on Taiwan. If so, it will be a mess, both economically and militarily. The U.S. has committed to the military defense of Taiwan. If China attacks Taiwan, will we really go to war against them? If the Chinese generals believe the answer is no, they may attack. If we don’t defend Taiwan, every treaty the U.S. has will be worthless. Hopefully,China won’t do anything stupid.

3. Demographics

Europe and Japan are dying because their populations are aging and shrinking. These trends can be reversed if the young people start breeding. However, the birth rates in these areas are so low it will take two generations to turn things around. No economic model exists that permits 50 years to turn things around. Some countries are beginning to offer incentives for people to have bigger families. For example, Italy is offering tax breaks for having children. However, it’s a lifestyle issue versus a tiny amount of money. Europeans aren’t willing to give up their comfortable lifestyles in order to have more children.

In general, everyone in Europe just wants it to last a while longer. Europeans have a real talent for living. They don’t want to work very hard. The average European worker gets 400 more hours of vacation time per year than Americans. They don’t want to work and they don’t want to make any of the changes needed to revive their economies.

The summer after 9/11, France lost 15,000 people in a heat wave. In August, the country basically shuts down when everyone goes on vacation. That year, a severe heat wave struck and 15,000 elderly people living in nursing homes and hospitals died. Their children didn’t even leave the beaches to come back and take care of the bodies. Institutions had to scramble to find enough refrigeration units to hold the bodies until people came to claim them.

This loss of life was five times bigger than 9/11 in America, yet it didn’t trigger any change in French society. When birth rates are so low, it creates a tremendous tax burden on the young. Under those circumstances, keeping mom and dad alive is not an attractive option. That’s why euthanasia is becoming so popular in most European countries. The only country that doesn’t permit (and even encourage) euthanasia is Germany, because of all the baggage from World War II.

The European economy is beginning to fracture. The Euro is down. Countries like Italy are starting to talk about pulling out of the European Union because it is killing them. When things get bad economically in Europe, they tend to get very nasty politically. The canary in the mine is anti-Semitism. When it goes up, it means trouble is coming. Current levels of anti-Semitism are higher than ever. Germany won’t launch another war, but Europe will likely get shabbier, more dangerous and less pleasant to live in.

Japan has a birth rate of 1.3 and has no intention of bringing in immigrants. By 2020, one out of every five Japanese will be 70 years old. Property values in Japan have dropped every year for the past 14 years. The country is simply shutting down.

In the U.S. we also have an aging population. Boomers are starting to retire at a massive rate. These retirements will have several major impacts:

• Possible massive sell-off of large four-bedroom houses and a movement to condos.

• An enormous drain on the treasury. Boomers vote, and they want their benefits, even if it means putting a crushing tax burden on their kids to get them. Social Security will be a huge problem. As this generation ages, it will start to drain the system. We are the only country in the world where there are no age limits on medical procedures.

• An enormous drain on the health care system. This will also increase the tax burden on the young, which will cause them to delay marriage and having families, which will drive down the birth rate even further.

Although scary, these demographics also present enormous opportunities for products and services tailored to aging populations. There will be tremendous demand for caring for older people, especially those who don’t need nursing homes but need some level of care. Some people will have a business where they take care of three or four people in their homes. The demand for that type of service and for products to physically care for aging people will be huge.

Make sure the demographics of your business are attuned to where the action is. For example, you don’t want to be a baby food company in Europe or Japan. Demographics are much underrated as an indicator of where the opportunities are. Businesses need customers. Go where the customers are.

4. Restructuring of American Business

The restructuring of American business means we are coming to the end of the age of the employer and employee. With all this fracturing of businesses into different and smaller units, employers can’t guarantee jobs anymore because they don’t know what their companies will look like next year. Everyone is on their way to becoming an independent contractor. The new workforce contract will be, “Show up at the my office five days a week and do what I want you to do, but you handle your own insurance, benefits, health care and everything else.”

Husbands and wives are becoming economic units. They take different jobs and work different shifts depending on where they are in their careers and families. They make tradeoffs to put together a compensation package to take care of the family. This used to happen only with highly educated professionals with high incomes. Now it is happening at the level of the factory floor worker. Couples at all levels are designing their compensation packages based on their individual needs. The only way this can work is if everything is portable and flexible, which requires a huge shift in the American economy.

The U.S. is in the process of building the world’s first 21st century model economy. The only other countries doing this are U.K. and Australia. The model is fast, flexible, highly productive and unstable in that it is always fracturing and re-fracturing. This will increase the economic gap between the U.S. and everybody else, especially Europe and Japan.

At the same time, the military gap is increasing. Other than China, we are the only country that is continuing to put money into their military. Plus, we are the only military getting on-the-ground military experience through our war in Iraq. We know which high-tech weapons are working and which ones aren’t. There is almost no one who can take us on economically or militarily. There has never been a superpower in this position before.

On the one hand, this makes the U.S. a magnet for bright and ambitious people. It also makes us a target. We are becoming one of the last holdouts of the traditional Judeo-Christian culture. There is no better place in the world to be in business and raise children. The U. S. is by far the best place to have an idea, form a business and put it into the marketplace. We take it for granted, but it isn’t as available in other countries of the world.

Ultimately, it’s an issue of culture. The only people who can hurt us are ourselves, by losing our culture. If we give up our Judeo-Christian culture, we become just like the Europeans. The culture war is the whole ballgame. If we lose it, there isn’t another America to pull us out.

Herbert Meyer

Friday Harbor, WA 98250

Herb Meyer served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. In these positions,he managed production of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimates and other top-secret projections for the President and his national security advisers. Meyer is widely credited with being the first senior U.S. Government official to forecast the Soviet Union’s collapse, for which he later was awarded the U.S. National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the intelligence community’s highest honor. Formerly an associate editor of FORTUNE, he is also the author of several books.

usawakeup.org/global.htm

 

Florida, Michigan cannot save Clinton

WASHINGTON (AP) – Michigan and Florida alone can’t save Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign.

Interviews with those considering how to handle the two states’ banished convention delegates found little interest in the former first lady’s best-case scenario. Her position, part of a formidable comeback challenge, is that all the delegates be seated in accordance with their disputed primaries.

Even if they were, it wouldn’t erase Barack Obama’s growing lead in delegates.

The Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, a 30-member panel charged with interpreting and enforcing party rules, is to meet May 31 to consider how to handle Michigan and Florida’s 368 delegates.

Last year, the panel imposed the harshest punishment it could render against the two states after they scheduled primaries in January, even though they were instructed not to vote until Feb. 5
or later. Michigan and Florida lost all their delegates to the national convention, and all the Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in the two states, stripping them of all the influence
they were trying to build by voting early.

But now there is agreement on all sides that at least some of the delegates should be restored in a gesture of party unity and respect to voters in two general election battlegrounds.

Clinton has been arguing for full reinstatement, which would boost her standing. She won both states, even though they didn’t count toward the nomination and neither candidate campaigned in
them. Obama even had his name pulled from Michigan’s ballot.

The Associated Press interviewed a third of the panel members and several other Democrats involved in the negotiations and found widespread agreement that the states must be punished for stepping out of line. If not, many members say, other states will do the same thing in four years.

“We certainly want to be fair to both candidates, and we want to be sure that we are fair to the 48 states who abided by the rules,” said Democratic National Committee Secretary Alice
Germond, a panel member unaligned with either candidate. “We don’t want absolute chaos for 2012.

Filed under: AP • Florida • Hillary Clinton • Michigan

Obama doubles down on McCain

By Jim Tankersley

Updated with new McCain response.

ROSEBURG, Ore. – Barack Obama has doubled down on his claim that John McCain would “double-down” on President Bush’s policies.

A day after he used the phrase to accuse McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, of mimicking Bush’s foreign policy, Obama employed it again for health care in a speech this afternoon.

Obama told a high school cafeteria sweating through a rare spring heat wave in Southern Oregon that McCain would “shred” employer-based health care and leave every American to “fend for yourself” in the free market. McCain “wants to give you the failed Bush health care policies for another four years,” he said.

Later he added – wait for it! – “I don’t think the American people can afford to double-down on the failed health care policies of the Bush Administration.”

Obama repeated the attacks he leveled at Bush on Friday for launching the Iraq war – which he called “the best recruiting tool al Qaeda ever had” – and allowing Iran to rise in power and Hamas to control Gaza. On Friday in South Dakota, he called those “the failed policies that John McCain wants to double-down on.”

 

In Roseburg, he said the same is true for domestic policies. “For eight years,” Obama said, “George Bush has done nothing on health care except offer a few tax breaks to some folks who don’t really need them.” He also slammed McCain on energy policy after a questioner noted the Arizona senator’s Portland’s speech this week about confronting global warming.

“John McCain tried to come to Oregon as an environmental candidate, but his big strategy is to do more drilling and have a gas tax holiday for three months,” he said. “That’s a phony solution.”

McCain had no events scheduled today, but his campaign hit back on all fronts. Spokesman Tucker Bounds called Obama’s willingness to meet with Iran and other “rouge” nations – the source of yesterday’s back-and-forth on foreign policy – “incredibly weak judgment” that “reveals why Americans will elect John McCain’s record of experience and tested leadership.”

In separate statements, Bounds called Obama’s energy critique “Washington-style attack politics and said Obama and Clinton “want to insert government bureaucracy into your medicine cabinet, while John McCain is committed to keeping America’s top-quality doctors, and reforming the system so that health care plans would be made available, accessible and affordable for families.”

 

Rove slams Obama over ‘bitter’ comments, flag pin

(CNN) — Karl Rove launched a wide-ranging attack on Barack Obama during a speech at the National Rifle Association Convention Friday, blasting him for his recent comments calling some small town American’s “bitter,” and suggesting the Illinois senator is an effete politician unable to connect with a broad swath of Americans.

The comments, received enthusiastically by the large crowd in Louisville, Kentucky, are a likely sign Obama’s words at a San Francisco fundraiser last month may be a major Republican talking-point should he capture the Democratic Party’s nomination.

“You know in the age of Barack Obama I don’t know exactly what to call you, because after all, as he said, because we’re bitter and economically anxious, we ‘cling to our guns and we cling to our faith,” Rove told the crowd to laughter and cheers.

“You probably didn’t know you hunted out of economic anxiety, and if gas was a $1.50 a gallon, you probably wouldn’t be hunting,” he continued. “You probably thought you hunted because you enjoyed the outdoors and companionship with family and friends.”

Rove, largely credited with orchestrating campaign strategies that painted former Democratic nominees Al Gore and John Kerry as out of touch with small town Americans, also cited Obama’s recent primary losses in Pennsylvania and West Virginia as evidence a large demographic is unwilling to vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“We here have news for Barack Obama,” Rove said. “The values of those people you diminished are the values of America. And those people don’t like getting patronized, or viewed as an alien species, by a fellow who pretends to embody a new kind of politics, and especially by someone who wants to be president not of red states or blue states, but the United States.”

Rove, who does not have an official role within John McCain’s presidential campaign or at the Republican National Committee, also took Obama to task for recently wearing a flag pin.

 

“It is distracting to say in a Democratic primary when you are trying to cozy up to Moveon.org that an American flag on your lapel is a quote ’substitute’ for true patriotism,” Rove said. “Belittling all those who care to wear our country’s flag, calling them false patriots, and then when you focus on the general election, like this week, start to showing up with an American flag on your lapel again. That’s distracting.”

Obama was asked last October why he normally does not wear a flag pin on his lapel, as many politicians do. The Illinois senator said then he wore one shortly after 9/11, but later decided to show his patriotism in other ways.

“After a while, you start noticing people wearing the lapel pin but not acting very patriotic,” he said then. “My attitude is that I’m less concerned with what you’re wearing on your lapel than what’s in your heart. You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those ones who serve.”

Filed under: Barack Obama • Karl Rove

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/17/rove-slams-obama-over-bitter-comments-flag-pin/

OBAMA: WRONG ON IRAN

 

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published on FOXNews.com on May 16, 2008.

Printer-Friendly Version

President Bush is absolutely right to criticize sharply direct negotiations with Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Barack Obama’s embrace of the idea of direct negotiations is both naïve and dangerous and should be a big issue in the campaign.

The reason not to negotiate with Ahmadinejad is not simply to stand on ceremony or some kind of policy of non-recognition. It is based on the fundamental need to topple his regime by increasing the sense the Iranian people have — that he has isolated Iran from the rest of the world, to its severe and ongoing detriment.

The Iranian regime is almost entirely dependent on oil and gas revenues to pay for the vast program of social subsidies with which the government buys domestic support. Gasoline costs 35 cents a gallon in Teheran. Bread and all other staples are subsidized from public funds. But 85 percent of all government revenues come from oil and gas exports. There lies the regime’s vulnerability.

Iran is sitting atop the second largest oil reserves in the world. Only Saudi Arabia has more. But it can’t get at them. It lacks the foreign investment and technology necessary to increase, or even to sustain, its petroleum output. Under the Shah, Iran pumped upwards of six million barrels of oil a day. Now, Iran generates fewer than four million daily barrels. With domestic consumption of energy increasing at 10 percent a year — due in part to the massive subsidies which hold the price down — Iran is expected to see its oil exports cut in half by 2011 and entirely eliminated by 2014. If Iran cannot export oil, it cannot pay for social peace and the regime could be in dire trouble.

Without subsidies, the Iranian people, half of whom are under 30 and only 40 percent of whom are ethnically Farsi, will become restive and resentful. Already, many complain that Ahmadinejad’s policies have led to global isolation of Iran and stymied economic growth and social upward mobility. While opinion surveys in Iran indicate that the people support the nuclear aspirations of the regime, they are not willing to pay a price of international isolation.

If a President Obama were to meet with President Ahmadinejad, it would send a signal to the Iranian people that they are not isolated but that the rest of the world has come to respect them and to have to deal with them. The leading argument for toppling the current regime will have been fatally undermined.

But if the West sustains a policy of economic sanctions, curbs on foreign investment, and diplomatic isolation, the Iranian regime’s days are numbered.

Official United Nations sanctions are having some effect on Iran but the real power lies in cutting off investment by foreign companies, particularly in the banking and energy sectors. American companies are already prohibited from doing business there, although General Electric may be seeking ways around this prohibition through foreign subsidiaries.

Frank Gaffney, formerly of Reagan’s Pentagon, has pioneered the use of private economic disinvestment in companies that do business with Iran, Syria, North Korea, or Sudan. On his Web site, he has identified almost 500 companies that do business with these terror sponsoring nations. They include such international powerhouses as Sieman’s, Shell, Repsol, BNP Paribus, and Hyundai. He has crafted a terror free mutual fund which can earn good returns while avoiding investment in any of these companies.

Missouri Treasurer Sarah Steelman — now running for governor — pioneered disinvesting pension funds in these companies. Now California, Florida, and Louisiana have followed suit.

We need to let these policies work and global isolation of Iran is the way to do it. Negotiating with Ahmadinejad would simply boost his domestic stature and enhance his political stability, the exact opposite of what we should — and must — be doing.

The Dreaded Reaching Hand of Legal Oppression – Extortionist Racism Charges

It is a crime to be racist. Therefore when racist charges are the subject, prison terms or worse are the predicate. Therefore, charges of racism are a menace to society, extortion to intimidate rivals into silence and compliance analogous to threats of blackballing from society, lynching or some other such thing. The only difference between despised minorities screaming racism and common people carrying pitchforks and torches is that the former have the entire state apparatus at their disposal to legitimize and carry out their vicious attacks. Any comments?

Beyond Bush

By Patrick Ruffini

Posted: 16 May 2008 09:44 PM CDT
The hue and cry for the GOP to file for divorce against President Bush is reaching a crescendo with Tom Davis’s acid-tongued barbs and this more gracefully worded column by 2004 Bush campaign advisor Peggy Noonan.
Davis and Noonan mean well, but their proposed strategy amounts to taking the Democrats’ bait. Because whether the GOP decides to run for Bush or against him, the meta-narrative will still be about Bush. Any day people are reminded of the President in a political context, even when our people are throwing him under the bus, is a bad day for Republicans.
President Bush is a lame duck. His term expires in eight months. Politically speaking, John McCain is the leader of the party. Bush’s term will overlap that of the 111th Congress by a whopping 17 days. Why should Republican Congressional candidates take the bait by positioning themselves vis a vis someone who will be a political non-factor once they take office? If they embrace President Bush, it’s political poison. If they make a fuss of distancing themselves, it guarantees headlines with Candidate X and Bush in close proximity, and looks politically motivated. Don’t take the bait.
The challenge for Republicans is not to support Bush or to reject Bush but to transcend Bush. We are quickly nearing the point where the last piece of meaningful legislation will cross this President’s desk. To suggest that Republicans might want to get around to crafting a post-Bush agenda ignores the fact that the post-Bush era is already upon us. It began March 4, when John McCain secured 1,191 delegates. Start acting like it. John McCain is the only national Republican local Republicans should be talking about.
Republican candidates could do well by parrying attempts to tie them to Bush as follows:
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that President Bush sparks strong feelings on both sides. But last I checked, there’s an election coming up soon to replace George Bush. I’m focused on the future, and the next Congress and the next President. There’s only one person in this race who’s fixated on the past and on George Bush and that’s my opponent. I can only assume that’s because he’d love to continue the hyper-partisanship of the last decade. Not me.
With all due respect, my opinion of President Bush matters about as much as my opinion of President Coolidge. They’ll both be in the history books come next January. When I hit the ground running in 2009, I look forward to serving with President McCain to bringing gas prices down and our troops home victorious.
This has the advantage of being intellectually honest. Voters are forward-looking and know that Bush won’t be President soon. In no other election since 2000 could you say this.
By subjecting themselves to a massive internal debate over the President, Republicans would validate the Democratic narrative of this election as a referendum on Bush. Just ask Al Gore how productive meta-debates about the President’s role in his exit year really are. And his boss was at 65%.
Don’t take the bait.
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Come Back, Colonialism, All is Forgiven

Alex Perry, Time, February 14, 2008

Le Blanc and I are into our 500th kilometer on the river when he turns my view of modern African history on its head. “We should just give it all back to the whites,” the riverboat captain says. “Even if you go 1,000 kilometers down this river, you won’t see a single sign of development. When the whites left, we didn’t just stay where we were. We went backwards.”

{snip} “The river is the artery of Congo’s economy,” he says. “When the Belgians and the Portuguese were here, there were farms and plantations—cashews, peanuts, rubber, palm oil. There was industry and factories employing 3,000 people, 5,000 people. But since independence, no Congolese has succeeded. The plantations are abandoned.” Using a French expression literally translated as “on the ground,” he adds: “Everything is par terre.”

It’s true that our journey through 643 kilometers of rainforest to where the Maringa River joins the Congo at Mbandaka, has been an exploration of decline. {snip} There are no schools here, no clinics, no electricity, no roads. It can take a year for basic necessities ordered from the capital, Kinshasa, nearly 2,000 kilometers downstream, to make it here—if they make it at all. At one point we pass a cargo barge that has taken three months to travel the same distance we will cover in two days. We stop in the hope of buying some gasoline, but all we get from the vessel are rats.

Around 45,000 people die each month in the DRC as a result of the social collapse brought on by civil war, according to a study released in January by the International Rescue Committee. It estimated the total loss of life between 1998 and April 2007 at 5.4 million. For many Congolese like Le Blanc, the difficulties of today blot out the cruelties of the past. “On this river, all that you see—the buildings, the boats—only whites did that. After the whites left, the Congolese did not work. We did not know how to. For the past 50 years, we’ve just declined.” He pauses. “They took this country by force,” he says, with more than a touch of admiration. “If they came back, this time we’d give them the country for free.”

 

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1713275,00.html

Special Report: Senator McCain on Guns

 

My support for the 2nd Amendment
By John McCain

Glenn Beck fans, gun rights are an important issue, and I wanted to share with you some highlights of the speech I will deliver today at the National Rifle Association annual meeting. I think they will give you some good insight into my strong belief in the Second Amendment.

“When I first ran for Congress in 1982, I was proud to have the support of gun owners. For more than two decades, I’ve opposed efforts to ban guns, ban ammunition, ban magazines, and dismiss gun owners as some kind of fringe group unwelcome in “modern” America. The Second Amendment isn’t some archaic custom that matters only to rural Americans, who find solace in firearms out of frustration with their economic circumstances. The Second Amendment is unique in the world. It guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. To argue anything else is to reject the clear meaning of our Founding Fathers.

“Self-reliance is the ethic that made America great, and our Founders understood that. They knew there would be circumstances where Americans might need to use firearms to protect themselves and their families. Some Second Amendment detractors think this is a mere abstraction, or a relic of America’s distant past. But Americans exercise their Second Amendment rights every day to protect themselves from criminals, as happened in Scottsdale, Arizona where earlier this year, a 74-year-old woman defended her home from a man who repeatedly attempted to break in, extort money and threatened to set fire to her garage. The Second Amendment – and its guarantee of an individual right to keep and bear arms – is certainly not an abstraction.

“But the clear meaning of the Second Amendment has not stopped those who want to punish firearms owners – and those who make and sell firearms – for the actions of criminals. It seems like every time there is a particularly violent crime, the anti-gun activists demand yet another restriction on the Second Amendment. I opposed the ban on so-called ‘assault weapons,’ which was first proposed after a California schoolyard shooting. It makes no sense to ban a class of firearms based on cosmetic features. I have opposed waiting periods for gun purchases.”

…

“Like your members, I am a committed conservationist. I have long supported multiple uses for public lands that ensure they are available for this and future generations to hunt, fish and explore. Over 12 million hunters in the United States contribute $25 billion to the economy, much of it in rural areas. Hunters pay billions of dollars in federal revenue through license and other fees. Here in Kentucky, hunters spend over $400 million and support thousands of jobs.”

…

“Over the years, I haven’t agreed with the NRA on every issue. I have supported efforts to have NICS background checks apply to gun sales at gun shows. I recognize that gun shows are enjoyed by millions of law-abiding Americans. I do not support efforts by those who seek to regulate them out of existence. But I believe an accurate, fair and instant background check at guns shows is a reasonable requirement. I also oppose efforts to require federal regulation of all private sales such as the transfer between a father and son or husband and wife. I supported campaign finance reform because I strongly believed our system of financing campaigns was influencing elected officials to put the interests of “soft money” donors ahead of the public interest. It is neither my purpose nor the purpose of the legislation to prevent gun owners or any other group of citizens from making their voices heard in the legislative process.

“Those disagreements do not detract from my long record of support for the Second Amendment and the work we have done together to protect the rights of gun owners from the political attitudes of the moment in Washington that view the Second Amendment as a once quaint custom that must now yield to the judgment of modern enlightened opinion. We have real differences with the Democratic candidates for President. They have learned something since 2000. They don’t talk about their plans for gun control. They claim to support hunters and gun owners. But just because they don’t talk about gun control doesn’t mean they won’t support gun control. Let’s be clear. If either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama is elected President, the rights of law-abiding gun owners will be at risk. They have both voted as Senators to ban guns or ban ammunition or to allow gun makers to be sued out of existence.

“It seems every election, politicians who support restrictions on the Second Amendment dress up in camouflage and pose with guns to demonstrate they care about hunters, even though few gun owners fall for such obvious political theater. After Senator Obama made his unfortunate comment that Pennsylvanians ‘cling to guns and religion’ out of bitterness, Senator Clinton quickly affirmed her support for the Second Amendment. That drew Senator Obama’s derision. ‘She’s running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, how she values the Second Amendment,’ he said. ‘Like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday, . . . packin’ a six shooter!’ Someone should tell Senator Obama that ducks are usually hunted with shotguns.

“Senator Obama hopes he can get away with having it both ways. He says he believes that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms. But when he had a chance to weigh in on the most important Second Amendment case before the U.S. Supreme Court in decades, District of Columbia v. Heller, Senator Obama dodged the question by claiming, ‘I don’t like taking a stand on pending cases.’ He refused to sign the amicus brief signed by a bipartisan group of 55 Senators arguing that the Supreme Court should overturn the DC gun ban in the Heller case. When he was running for the State Senate in Illinois, his campaign filled out a questionnaire asking whether he supported legislation to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns with simple, ‘Yes.’

“The Heller case should be decided soon. But however that case is decided, the federal judiciary will continue to be an important forum for protecting Second Amendment rights. The next President will appoint literally hundreds of federal judges, and is likely to have the opportunity to nominate one or more Supreme Court justices.”

…

“Quite rightly, the proper role of the judiciary has become one of the defining issues of this presidential election. It will fall to the next president to nominate qualified men and women to the federal courts, and the choices we make will reach far into the future. My two prospective opponents and I have very different ideas about the nature and proper exercise of judicial power. We would nominate judges of a different kind, a different caliber, a different understanding of judicial authority and its limits. And the people of America – voters in both parties whose wishes and convictions are so often disregarded by unelected judges – are entitled to know what those differences are.”

…

“The decisions of our Supreme Court in particular can be as close to permanent as anything government does. And in the presidential selection of those who will write those decisions, a hunch, a hope, and a good first impression are not enough. I will not seek the confidence of the American people in my nominees until my own confidence is complete – until I am certain of my nominee’s ability, wisdom, and demonstrated fidelity to the Constitution.”

…

“But I would like to close my remarks with an issue that I know is much on the mind of Americans – the war in Iraq. Senator Obama has said, if elected, he will withdraw Americans from Iraq quickly no matter what the situation on the ground is and no matter what U.S. military commanders advise. But if we withdraw prematurely from Iraq, al Qaeda in Iraq will survive, proclaim victory and continue to provoke sectarian tensions that, while they have been subdued by the success of the surge, still exist, and are ripe for provocation by al Qaeda. Civil war in Iraq could easily descend into genocide, and destabilize the entire region as neighboring powers come to the aid of their favored factions. A reckless and premature withdrawal would be a terrible defeat for our security interests and our values. Iran will view it as a victory, and the biggest state supporter of terrorists, a country with nuclear ambitions and a stated desire to destroy the State of Israel, will see its influence in the Middle East grow significantly.

The consequences of our defeat would threaten us for years, and those who argue for premature withdrawal, as both Senators Obama and Clinton do, are arguing for a course that would eventually draw us into a wider and more difficult war that would entail far greater dangers and sacrifices than we have suffered to date. Thanks to the counterinsurgency instigated by General Petreaus, after four years of terribly costly mistakes, we have a realistic chance to succeed in helping the forces of political reconciliation prevail in Iraq, and the democratically elected Iraqi Government, with a professional and competent Iraqi army, impose its authority throughout the country and defend its borders. We have a realistic chance of denying al Qaeda any sanctuary in Iraq. We have a realistic chance of leaving behind in Iraq a force for stability and peace in the region, and not a cause for a wider and far more dangerous war. I do not argue against withdrawal because I am indifferent to war and the suffering it inflicts on too many American families. I hold my position because I hate war, and I know very well and very personally how grievous its wages are. But I know, too, that we must sometimes pay those wages to avoid paying even higher ones later. I want our soldiers home, too, just as quickly as we can bring them back without risking everything they suffered for, and burdening them with greater sacrifices in the years ahead. That I will not do. I have spent my life in service to my country, and I will never, never, never risk her security for the sake of my own ambitions. I will defend her, and all her freedoms, so help me God. And I ask you to help me in that good cause. Thank you, and God bless you.”

Obama’s Black Ambition

If Barack Obama is running on the platform of being black, then he should lose unless the electorate cows in fear meanwhile justifying their own capitulation by hypocritical accusations (e.g., against conservatives for resisting miscegenation). An economist article suggested that American whites are less racist than they used to be (like in the fifties) because whites have had a seven-fold increase in the proportion of interracial children. This argument infers that whites are racist if they don’t intermarry and that whites are therefore racist by virtue of their skin color. Notwithstanding the fact that this is a racist argument, it leads unambiguously to the conclusion that whites are criminal (because it is a crime to be racist).  Don’t you like how the devil turns things upside down? Very nice logic indeed.

A leftist on tv says that she thinks it’s mean that people won’t vote for a candidate because of his race. On the contrary, it’s mean to vote for a candidate because of his/her identity.

 

 

Cultural Nuances – Young White Women

Young white women/girls are taught not to respect white men and they antagonize us while the nonwhites ghettoize them and groom them for sex. But I’m not bitter.

PETA Protests Preakness

PETA’s protesting horse racing in general. I guess we can’t have that anymore. These loons use sypmpathy-eliciting [nouns] to extort industry. As such, they are nothing but mafiosos.

Analysis: Obama reacts fast to Bush on diplomacy

By CHARLES BABINGTON – 51 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — In President Bush’s hint that Barack Obama wants to appease terrorists, Democrats heard troubling echoes of 2004, when Republicans portrayed John Kerry as irresolute and weak on national security…

 

 

Robin Williams’ New Comedy

 
 Good old Robin Williams:)

Subject: Fw: The Plan
 
 
 
 
 
GOTTA LOVE HIM…A MUST READ…PLEASE DO YOURSELF A FAVOR…READ THIS!
The Plan!
?

Robin Williams, wearing a shirt that says ‘I love New York ‘ in Arabic.

You gotta love Robin Williams……Even if he’s nuts! Leave it to Robin Williams to come up with the perfect plan. Wha t we need now is for our UN Ambassador to stand up and repeat this message.

Robin W illiams’ plan…(Hard to argue with this logic!)

‘I see a lot of people yelling for peace but I have not heard of a plan for peace. So, here’s one plan.’

1) ‘The US will apologize to the world for our ‘interference’ in their affairs, past & present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo, Noriega, Milosevic, Hussein, and the rest of those ‘good ‘ole’ boys’, we will never ‘interfere’ again.

2) We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with Germany , South Korea , the Middle East , and the Philippines . They don’t want us there. We would station our troops at our borders. N o one allowed sneaking through holes in the fence.

3) All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and leave.  We’ll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of whom or where they are. They’re illegal!!! France will welcome them.

4) All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 days unless given a special permit!!!! No one from a terrorist nation will be allowed in.
If you don’t like it in your country change it yourself and don’t try to hide here. Asylum would never be available to anyone. We don’t need any more cab drivers or 7-1 1 cashiers.

5) No foreign ’students’ over age 21. The older ones are the bombers.
If they don ‘t attend classes,or they get a ‘D’  it’s back home baby.

6) The US will make a strong effort to become self-sufficient energy wise. This will include developing nonpolluting sources of energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for a while

7) Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for their oil. If they don’t like it, we go someplace else. They can go somewhere else to sell their production. (About a week of their wells filling up their storage sites would be enough.)

8) If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the world, we will not ‘interfere.’ They can pray to Allah or whomever, for se eds, rain, cement or whatever they need. ! Besides most of what we give them is stolen or given t o the army. The peop le who need it most get very little, if anything.

9) Ship the UN Headquarters to an isolated island someplace. We don’t need the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, the building would make a good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.

10) All Americans must go to charm and beauty school. That way, no one can call us ‘Ugly Americans’ any longer. The Language we speak is ENGLISH..learn it…or LEAVE…Now, isn’t that a winner of a plan?

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

If you agree with the above forward it to friends…If not, and I would be amazed, DELETE it!!

 

 

War With Iran Might Be Closer Than You Think

Market forces are predicting a war in Iran, I suspect. Speculators would obviously bid up the price of oil if they think a major conflict will come soon. Philip Giraldi at the American Conservative:

There is considerable speculation and buzz in Washington today suggesting that the National Security Council has agreed in principle to proceed with plans to attack an Iranian al-Qods-run camp that is believed to be training Iraqi militants.  The camp that will be targeted is one of several located near Tehran.  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the only senior official urging delay in taking any offensive action.  The decision to go ahead with plans to attack Iran is the direct result of concerns being expressed over the deteriorating situation in Lebanon, where Iranian ally Hezbollah appears to have gained the upper hand against government forces and might be able to dominate the fractious political situation. The White House contacted the Iranian government directly yesterday through a channel provided by the leadership of the Kurdish region in Iraq, which has traditionally had close ties to Tehran.  The US demanded that Iran admit that it has been interfering in Iraq and also commit itself to taking steps to end the support of various militant groups.  There was also a warning about interfering in Lebanon.  The Iranian government reportedly responded quickly, restating its position that it would not discuss the matter until the US ceases its own meddling employing Iranian dissident groups.  The perceived Iranian intransigence coupled with the Lebanese situation convinced the White House that some sort of unambiguous signal has to be sent to the Iranian leadership, presumably in the form of cruise missiles.  It is to be presumed that the attack will be as “pinpoint” and limited as possible, intended to target only al-Qods and avoid civilian casualties.  The decision to proceed with plans for an attack is not final.  The President will still have to give the order to launch after all preparations are made.

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• US: Iran Attack Plans Ready if Needed
• Obama said “US should not rule out strikes on Iran” during 2004 campaign
• Hoping he’s wrong, afraid he’s not
• Iran closes women’s magazine for telling the truth

Kansas Plans to Shake Up State Court Judges

May 14, 2008by Phyllis Schlafly
Kansas will have a proposition on the ballot in November that could send shock waves into the tenure of state court judges. The voters in Johnson County, Kansas (suburban Kansas City) will vote on the right to elect their 10th judicial district court judges instead of having them chosen by the lawyers.
We hear a lot in the media about bringing democracy to the world. Kansans are asking for more democracy in the middle of the United States.
How state judges get their jobs is a matter of state option, and there is a wide variety of rules.
Some state court judges are elected by the people, some in partisan elections, some in non-partisan elections. About half the states, including Kansas, use some variation of the so-called Missouri Plan, a process that originated only in the 1940s, which gives broad control to the licensed attorneys.
Missouri voters are unhappy with their Missouri Plan because the lawyers have successfully placed on the bench a succession of liberal judges, and it may be another six years before a Republican has a chance to be appointed to the state supreme court. In April, the lawyers successfully lobbied against the Missouri state legislature’s attempt to reform the process.
Kansas gives its licensed lawyers an unusually powerful role in the selection of state supreme court justices. Some voters are beginning to see a connection between that extraordinary control and the judges’ widely criticized decision to order the state legislature to appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars of additional taxpayers’ money to the public schools.
The appropriation of taxpayer funds, and the raising of taxes that this necessarily requires, should absolutely be legislative, not judicial functions. The grabbing of spending and taxing powers by the courts is a major reason why we call these judges supremacists.
Under the Kansas procedure, when there is a vacancy on the Kansas supreme court, a Nominating Commission (on which the attorneys enjoy a 5-to-4 majority) secretly chooses its three favorites, and the Governor must pick one of those three. That’s the whole process: no checking, no appeal, no oversight, no second opinion.
This plan is supposed to result in the “non-partisan” and “merit” selection of judges, but scholars who have studied the process have concluded that the commission selects judges based on the socio-economic interests of the attorneys and their clients.
Attorneys are a special-interest group just like any other group that aggressively lobbies for the interests of its members. In Kansas, the commission has had no shame about selecting judges who make political contributions to Democratic candidates.
Kansans are asking, why should the lawyers have such extraordinary control over the selection of judges who will then rule on cases brought by the lawyers who gave them their jobs? Nine other states allow their licensed attorneys to select some of the nominating commission members, but 41 states either give the lawyers no power in the initial selection of supreme court justices or balance the lawyers’ role with commissioners chosen by democratically elected public officials.
We hear a lot of talk today about the need for an “independent” judiciary. We do need a state judiciary that is independent of the attorneys and their special interests, especially the trial lawyers.
Kansans in Johnson County have discovered they have the right to change their procedure and elect their judges. To put this proposition on the ballot, they enthusiastically collected 14,000 signatures, twice the number required.
A judicial activist on the Wisconsin Supreme Court felt the wrath of voters in April when he became the first justice ousted by voters there in 41 years. Democratic Governor Jim Doyle, who had appointed him, called the negative campaign for that seat a “tragedy,” but the real tragedy is when the voters have no say-so in combating the tyranny of the judiciary.
Many important issues face state court judges in addition to school funding. Same-sex marriage was decided by only one vote in the highest court of five states. It’s unlikely that any judge elected by the people would declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, as some life-tenured federal judges have done and may do again.
We’ve got a better chance of sticking with the will of the American people if state judges are elected rather than appointed by lawyers who have an interest in winning big-verdict cases before those very judges.

 

It’s Not “If” O.J. Did It—It’s How (Book)

You may think you know the truth about O.J. Simpson and the murders that gripped a nation—but prepare to be shocked.
After twenty years as O.J.’s sports agent and trusted confidant, Mike Gilbert is breaking his silence, revealing what really happened that fateful night, and how he helped O.J. get away with the crime of the century.
How I Helped O.J. Get Away with Murder: The Shocking Inside Story of Violence, Loyalty, Regret, and Remorse is unlike anything you’ve read before; Gilbert puts you into O.J.’s inner circle every step of the way—from the Bronco “chase” to the infamous trial to life after the murders.
Told with searing candor and palpable guilt, Gilbert reveals how O.J.’s closest friends and allies concocted elaborate cover-ups to help Simpson build a life without consequences. He divulges unknown stories and facts that even the media and O.J.’s former “Dream Team” don’t know, including:
O.J.’s late-night confession
How Gilbert was responsible for ensuring the infamous glove did not fit O.J.’s hand
How O.J. hides his money and assets to keep from paying the Goldman family
Why Gilbert defended O.J. for so long, and what finally convinced him to come clean—it has nothing to do with sympathy or “cashing in”
Brutally honest and achingly tragic, this book leaves no one’s reputation intact—not even Gilbert’s. But it casts a glaring light on how celebrity can corrupt, how justice can be manipulated, and how loyalty can be perverted. We watched the nightmare unfold, but Gilbert lived it—and he has the scars and memories to prove it.
“I want you to know what happened, why it happened, and how it happened. I want you to see us as real people. You are free to judge me however you wish….We all live in fear of the whole truth being told, because once it is, everybody’s ghosts start to come out. We are all guilty of something. I’ll start with myself—I am guilty of a whole lot. But you have to take the whole journey with me, not just tune in when the saga began for the rest of the country. While the public was watching this unfold, we were actually living it.”

Typical Black-on-White Crime

I doubt if many of you have the stomach for this. I’ve seen it in another iteration before, but I chose not to post it because it’s just so gruesome. But while I’m on a roll talking about black gangsters all over the world, including one running for POTUS, I might as well introduce these characters on trial today.

 

The five people pictured below
 car-jacked, then raped
Christopher Newsom , cut off his penis, then set him
on fire and fatally shot him while they forced his
girlfriend, Channon Christian, to watch.   
An even more cruel fate awaited her!

Channon Christian, was beaten and gang-raped in
many ways for four days by all of them, while they
took turns urinating on her.    Then they cut off
her breast and put chemicals in her mouth ..
and then murdered her.

Knoxville (WVLT) -
The District Attorney General of Knox County
announced the list of charges facing now five
suspects in the double murder of Channon Christian
and Christopher Newsom .

The District Attorney General Randy Nichols is not
saying whether or not he will seek the death penalty,
but he does say the State will seek conviction for
all charges filed in a 24-page indictment from
the Knox County Grand Jury.

Lemaricus Davidson, 25, faces a total of 46 charges.  
Davidson was indicted on 16 counts of Felony Murder
growing out of rape, robbery and kidnapping of
Channon Christian and Chris Newsom,
2 counts premeditated murder of Christian and Newsom,
2 counts especially aggravated assault,
4 counts especially aggravated kidnapping,
and 20 counts aggravated rape.
Letalvis Cobbins and George Thomas, both 24,
face a total of 46 charges each.  
Cobbins and Thomas were indicted on 16 counts
of Felony Murder growing out of rape,
robbery and kidnapping of Channon Christian
and Chris Newsom , 2 counts premeditated murder
of Christian and Newsom, 2 counts especially
aggravated robberies, 4 counts especially
aggravated kidnapping, 20 counts aggravated rape,
and 2 counts of theft.

Additionally, police in Lebanon , Kentucky ,
arrested 18-year-old Vanessa Coleman.   
She faces 40 Tennessee state charges.
Coleman was indicted on 12 counts Felony Murder
growing out of rape, robbery and kidnapping of
Channon Christian and Chris Newsom,
1 count Premeditated Murder,
1 count Especially Aggravated Robbery,
4 counts especially aggravated kidnapping,
20 counts of aggravated rape and 2 Counts of theft.

Eric Boyd, 24, also arrested in connection
with the fatal carjacking, only faces federal
charges as an accessory after the fact.   
He was not indicted by Knox county grand jury.

Felony Murder carries a possibility of death,
life without the possibility of parole and life with parole.  
Especially Aggravated Robbery is a Class A felony
that carries a possibility of 15 to 60 years in prison.   
Aggravated Rape is a Class A felony that carries
a possibility of 15 to 60 years of prison.

At a news conference last  year, 
District Attorney Nichols commended the cooperative
efforts between several departments and credits that
cooperation for the fast pace this case is moving
through the court system.

This is certainly a case garnering a lot of public interest,
Nichols recognizes that and says he expects all kinds
of requests filed in this case, including a change of
venue in order to receive a fair trial.   
But he says he does hope 12 Knox County jurors will
be able to determine the guilt or innocence
of these suspects.

Where be the Revs Al and Jesse?  
Are they providing counsel and help to the families
of the victims?  Of course not – the victims were white.

Why hasn’t this received National coverage by the
news media like the Duke ‘rape’ case?  
Oh, that’s right – the victims were white.

Why hasn’t the NAACP, ACLU, New York Times,
etc., called for an investigation?  
Must be ’cause the victims were white.

Why hasn’t the FBI been called in to investigate
this as a hate crime?   
 
Oh, that’s right – the victims were white.
 
victims

 

 

 

 

 

 

culprits

So, if a white news radio jock uses the phrase
‘Nappy headed hos’, it gets 2 weeks of constant news
coverage and he loses his job. 
If two white people are tortured, raped and murdered
by a group of black people, it barely gets a blip in the news:

Pass this around, and maybe, just maybe,
it will land in the hands of someone in the media or politics,
who has the balls to stand up and be counted!!!

This sounded so unreal that it was checked on Snopes.
 
 
http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/newsom.asp

 

A liberal’s perspective on the divisive dem primary (Brad DeLong)

Eschaton: [T]t really never mattered much to me who won this nomination…. I leaned various ways at various times, and I became more and more annoyed at the Clinton campaign over time. Obama did a bunch of things that annoyed me too, but not as much recently. I’m sure Hillary Clinton would be a decent president. “Electability” arguments for either of them aren’t very persuasive, though smart people on both sides are pretty convinced that their candidate will win and the other will flame out spectacularly.

At this point, however, Obama’s won. There’s no nomination path for her which doesn’t involve rewriting the rules in a way which would never be seen as legitimate, or a massive shift in superdelegates which would likewise be problematic, and even those paths range from unlikely to impossible….

One wishes we could’ve rewound things to about March 4 and had a more substantive campaign, instead of the identity politics-based Freak Show campaign we’ve had since then. It isn’t all the candidates’ fault, of course, as you go to campaign with the media you have and not the media you want…

My one caveat is the “sure.” I think it is highly likely that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be a better president  [. . .] But her campaign’s degeneration into a troop of flying leaking backstabbing monkeys accusing each other of incompetence does not give me great confidence in her as an experienced, crackerjack manager ready on day 1.

Jon Chait On the Spiro Ted Agnewization of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Brad DeLong)

Here is Chait on the mysterious transformation of Bill and Hillary Clinton into clones of Spiro Ted Agnew:

Let Them Eat Arugula: The dying days of the Hillary Clinton campaign have brought the breathtaking spectacle of a candidate lashing out at every element of public life that has nourished her career. The über-wonk has disparaged economists and expertise. The staunch ally of black America has attacked her opponent for lacking support of “working, hard-working Americans, white Americans.” People who thought they knew Hillary Clinton have gazed in astonishment: What has she become? The answer is, a conservative populist….

Liberal populism posits that the rich wield disproportionate influence over the government and push for policies often at odds with most people’s interest. Conservative populism… prefers to divide society along social lines, with the elites being intellectuals and other snobs who fancy themselves better….

Consider this analysis recently offered by Bill Clinton in Clarksburg, West Virginia: “The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it’s by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules.” This is precisely the dynamic that allows multimillionaires like George W. Bush and Bill O’Reilly to present themselves as being on the side of the little guy. A more classic expression of conservative populism cannot be found.

Historically, the conservative populist’s social divide ran along racial and ethnic lines…. [Today it's] nostalgia about small towns… stronger values… work harder… overwhelmingly white…. Bill Clinton recently declared, “The people in small towns in rural America, who do the work for America, and represent the backbone and the values of this country, they are the people that are carrying her through in this nomination.” The corollary–that strong values and hard work is in shorter supply among ethnically heterogeneous urban residents–is left unstated….

Arab Culture and Islam – MEMRI TV spot

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of hearing these fuckers run their mouths.

 

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1761.htm

South Africa – Nowhere to run to (Video)

 

South Africans try to secure themselves by transforming their homes to virtual prisons. This did not prevent a father being shot and killed in cold blood by two black intruders, in front of his family, while pleading for the lives of his children in their own home.

Stories like these are not unusual in South Africa nowadays — when you live there, only the most sickening tales of violence make the news — and that on an almost daily basis. You are bombarded by bloodshed as part of everyday life.

South Africa’s homicide rate of 55/100 000 is the highest in the world, 10 times higher than that of the USA of 5/100 000.

Both black and white are victims. It is a fact, however, that it is a black government that is unable to deal with both the root causes of violent crime, and the criminals themselves. As is the case in the USA and UK, the perpetrators of these extremely violent crimes are almost always black.

I know these statements are politically incorrect, but it is time that black people assume responsibility for their own actions, and stop blaming others.

 

 http://www.southafricathetruth.net/

US moves SA staff due to crime

US moves SA staff due to crime

Johannesburg – Buy-to-let investors who have signed long-term leases to house United States Embassy staff are in for a rude shock. Crime concerns have prompted the embassy to terminate residential leases in stand-alone houses in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. The US plans to move embassy families to multi-unit security complexes.

Letters of termination have already been sent to some landlords and rental agents have advised them that US Embassy staff and their families will vacate stand-alone houses within 90 days.

“The US Embassy has taken a decision to move from stand-alone residences to compound residential units due to increased security concerns,” reads a letter sent to one rental agent in Pretoria.

That particular lease is being terminated two years earlier than originally agreed in the contract. The embassy typically signs residential leases for a period of nine years.

The US Embassy’s new housing policy will no doubt be a blow to investors who have poured money into building and renovating luxury, stand-alone houses to meet the specific requirements of embassy staff. Some will no doubt battle to replace tenants.

Moreover, it’s unlikely that new tenants will be able to match the US dollar-based rentals paid by the embassy.

David Grier, deputy press attaché at the US Embassy in Pretoria, confirms that a heightened security profile was one reason that leases are being reassessed.

He says the demographics of embassy staff have also shifted from large families to singles and married couples with no children who require smaller houses. Says Grier: “Several recent lease terminations have been due to the fact that the embassy no longer requires as many large houses.”

Grier says the US Embassy terminates approximately 20 leases every year. “And this year is no different. However, it’s always done in accordance with all the requirements of the lease signed by the owner of the property and the US Embassy.”

Grier dismisses talk that the embassy will build its own security villages to house staff. He says the US Embassy already owns some properties in SA but will continue to rent the bulk of its residential accommodation needs.

- Fin24.com

Records: Al Sharpton owes millions in back taxes (CNN.com)

• Story Highlights
• Al Sharpton, business entities owe millions of dollars in overdue taxes, AP reports
• Sharpton’s lawyer, nonprofit group dispute size of debt
• Sharpton says U.S. government is trying to intimidate him

NEW YORK (AP) — Big corporations give him money. Presidential candidates seek his endorsement. He has influential friends in Congress and the governor’s mansion.

The Rev. Al Sharpton has emerged over the past decade as perhaps the nation’s most prominent civil rights leader, a status that was demonstrated again this week when he led protests against police brutality that briefly shut down six of Manhattan’s major bridges and tunnels.

But he still carries baggage from his early days as a fire-breathing agitator: Government records obtained by The Associated Press indicate that Sharpton and his business entities owe nearly $1.5 million in overdue taxes and associated penalties.

Now the U.S. attorney is investigating his nonprofit group, an inquiry that an undeterred Sharpton brushes off as the kind of annoyance that civil rights figures have come to expect from the government…

 

Al Sharpton Tax Evasion (CNN)

US Current Account Turns Around (Brad DeLong)

The U.S. current account turns around:

How far does it have to turn around? One unresolved issue is how much of the oil trade deficit will ever have to be repaid–if oil wealth is going to be invested in the U.S. in dollars in order to give princelings and dictators a political-risk insurance policy, the oil part never has to be “paid back” in a foreign-exchange sense. If foreign oil wealth is going to be used to buy imports of capital goods and raw materials from the U.S., to fuel industrialization, the answer is quite different…

Brad DeLong on Jeanne Sahadi on Dodd-Franik

The Current State of Dodd-Franik

Jeanne Sahadi

Dodd-Frank: In a 266-154 vote… lawmakers approved… Frank… to let the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insure up to $300 billion in new loans over four years if lenders agree to reduce the mortgage principal.

To qualify, the lender would have to cut the debt to no more than 85% of a home’s current appraised value. If the FHA-refinanced loans went into default, the FHA would pay the lender the remaining principal owed.

While 1.4 million loans are likely to be eligible for such a program, the Congressional Budget Office estimates such a measure would end up insuring 500,000 borrowers. The CBO estimates the FHA expansion program would cost taxpayers $1.7 billion.

“This bill is very time limited and limited in specifics to a subset of mortgages and meant to mitigate a market failure,” Frank said during the floor debate on Thursday…. [T]he program is limited to loans for owner-occupied residents… lenders and investors would be taking a loss on every loan… borrower[s] would be paying higher-than-usual premiums to the FHA… would share equity in their home with the government. “No borrower who goes through this process will say at the end of it, ‘Boy, that was fun. Where do I buy a ticket to get back on Space Mountain?” Frank said…. If the bill is a bailout for anyone, they say, it’s a bailout for communities across the country, which suffer when home values and property taxes go down because of foreclosures…

Get Over The Gap

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, May 09, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Trade Deficit: We have long been told that when the dollar “corrects,” making our goods cheaper abroad, the trade deficit will begin to fall sharply. Well, it’s finally happening. Now that it is, do you feel any better?

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Read More: Economy

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You shouldn’t. Because even though the trade gap narrowed by $3.5 billion, or 5.7%, to $58.2 billion in March from February, it was a sign of weakness rather than strength.

Compared with a year earlier, March exports rose 15.5% — a good thing, we suppose. But imports increased just 7.9%, a gain that would have been a lot lower if not for oil.

True enough, the deficit appears to be declining — after hitting repeated records in recent years. Exports are booming while import growth has slowed noticeably, due mainly to the slumping dollar.

On the surface, this looks like a good thing. After all, don’t we want to buy less from abroad and more from our own country? The answer is no if it means that the U.S. economy has slowed and is no longer pulling its weight in the world.

Journalists and pundits call the smaller deficit an “improvement,” or “good news.” It isn’t. We run a trade deficit not because we’re uncompetitive or others protect their markets, two great economic myths; we run deficits because we’re such an attractive place for investors from around the world to park their money. The deficit, in other words, is a sign of strength.

As any economist can tell you, the flip side of our trade deficit is our capital surplus, which measures foreign investment flows into and out of the U.S. When we run a trade deficit, by definition we must run a capital surplus — and vice versa.

Last year, for instance, we rang up a record $708.5 billion deficit for both goods and services. But we imported the equivalent of $738.6 billion in investment capital to offset that. This was used to buy Treasury notes, bonds and stocks, and to fund real estate, plants, equipment and worker training.

That foreign capital created jobs and added to our ability to consume. It may even have helped keep us out of recession.

So what does it say that our deficit is now shrinking?

On the whole, it means foreign investors find the U.S. economy a less inviting place to be, maybe because of the housing meltdown and concern over the upcoming election. But if the trend continues, it means we’re all going to have to consume less and save more to make up for the decline in foreign capital.

That might not be a bad thing, but don’t let anyone tell you it will be painless. In the short run, a falling trade deficit will boost GDP. Indeed, based on Friday’s data, it’s likely first-quarter GDP growth will be revised up from the first estimate of 0.6% to roughly 1.2%.

But in the long term, having less foreign investment means our economy will grow more slowly. That’s the downside.

Don’t believe it? Just look at Germany and Japan. They’ve run huge trade surpluses for years, yet their economies have grown slowly at best since at least 1990. They export lots of their capital, as all trade surplus nations do, so they have less to grow on. We import it — and grow faster.

As such, should we root for a smaller deficit? Well, a smaller trade deficit doesn’t have to be a negative. If it got smaller because Congress wised up and created private investment accounts for Social Security — which would raise the U.S. private savings rate — that might be a good thing.

But making the deficit smaller isn’t necessarily a laudable goal, since doing so often covers for other bad policies such as raising taxes, devaluing the dollar and reverting to protectionism.

All these things, by the way, have been proposed as “remedies” for the trade deficit, mostly by wrongheaded Democratic candidates and talk-show hosts. What they’d do, in fact, is shrink the deficit by shrinking the U.S. economy. We’d rather keep the deficits.

Note: I partly agree with this and partly not. I think lower deficits are rather more preferable to larger ones, although free trade, in my view, is more beneficial than detrimental.

Glock_Light

Strength in Poland

Quelling The Grand Old Panic

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, May 07, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Politics: Some Republicans fret that special-election losses portend disaster for their party this fall. But the most radical Democratic presidential nominee ever is actually a golden opportunity for the GOP to win big.

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Read More: Election 2008

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Ronald Reagan used to say the key to GOP victory was presenting voters with “a banner of bold, unmistakable colors, with no pastel shades.” Now, with Barack Obama as the Republicans’ likely opponent this November, there’s no excuse for pastel.

The fashionable notion is that the silver-tongued Obama will generate a coattail effect helping other Democratic candidates. Therefore, Republicans should be scared stiff and hope for the unlikely nomination of Hillary Clinton. But that’s nonsense.

Such silliness was reflected in the record number of Republicans in Indiana who crossed over and voted for Hillary in this week’s Democratic primary.

If Republicans have so little confidence in pitting the principles with which their party has won five presidential elections in three decades against an articulate radical who happens to bring a bit of charisma to the stump, they might as well fold up their tent now.

Jitters plaguing the GOP congressional contingent were exacerbated Tuesday by the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. In a private session, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma warned congressmen that the money isn’t there this year to bail them out if they don’t do enough of their own fundraising.

On top of that came a widely read article by Newt Gingrich in Human Events.

Last week’s loss in the Louisiana 6th congressional district — a traditionally loyal GOP constituency where George W. Bush won re-election by nearly 20% — signals “grave danger,” the former House speaker wrote.

Republicans also recently lost former Speaker Denny Hastert’s district in Illinois. Gingrich called on Republicans to embrace a “real change” agenda that includes gas-tax repeal, spending cuts and making English the nation’s official language.

According to him, “If Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright or (if Sen. Clinton wins) anti-Clinton campaign, they’re simply going to fail.” The signs are that “the voters will say, ‘Not the Republicans,’ ” Gingrich believes.

Not to encourage complacency among Republicans, but this preponderance of gloom is highly unwarranted. Special congressional elections do not hinge on issues of grave national concern, in particular foreign and defense policy — which is sure to be a huge focus when John McCain faces his opponent in November.

If Republicans really believe in their party’s winning philosophy of governing, they should welcome the opportunity to face George McGovern’s ideas dressed in John Kennedy’s charm. This is a rare chance to confront the left’s ideas head-on and win.

When victory comes, there can be no excuses from liberal Democrats of the messenger being at fault. Obama has proved himself a remarkably adept communicator and has weathered personal revelations and every manner of attack from the Clinton camp.

Record-low approval of an incompetent and irresponsible Democratic Congress also gives the GOP reason to hope.

Some items on Gingrich’s list can help take advantage of that, but unfortunately they also include sleep-inducing wonkery such as census computerization and air traffic control reform.

Republicans are going to win only by talking up high-profile issues, including:

• Fighting terrorism: a clear policy to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons as Item One in the ongoing global war on terror — in stark contrast to the notion that a President Obama can talk a madman like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad out of his fanaticism.

• Low taxes: turning the election into a referendum on expiration of the Bush tax cuts — more accurately described as “the Democrats’ biggest tax increase in history,” which would wreck an economy that already has enough troubles.

• Energy independence: developing future alternative sources of energy and becoming far less reliant on foreign oil by safely extracting domestic oil and gas deposits in Alaska, on federal lands in the 48 states and offshore.

If Republicans stop panicking and put on these bold colors, they may just find Barack Obama to be one of the best things that ever happened to them.

Igniting Growth

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, May 07, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Trade: As the U.S. economic hearth flickers, it makes sense to fan it back with the last hardy embers of growth. One is exports, which burn brightest with free- trade treaties. So why is Congress snuffing them out?

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Read More: Economy | Business & Regulation

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Last week’s preliminary gross domestic product data for the first quarter showed a pallid 0.6% rise. Housing was a drag, pulling real GDP down 1.2%. Business sales were unimpressive, and consumer spending was weak.

But there was one bright spot: exports, which rose 5.5% according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, accounting for a third of U.S. economic growth during the quarter.

Maybe that’s why President Bush isn’t letting up on urging Congress to pass three pending free-trade agreements, which will strengthen U.S. exports. It may have hit a wall with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi manipulating House voting rules, but with a potential recession looming, Bush has no choice but to seek it anyway.

“Opening markets is especially important during this time of economic uncertainty,” Bush said Wednesday. “Last year, exports accounted for more than 40% of America’s total economic growth. With our economy slowing . . . we should be doing everything possible to open up new markets for U.S. goods and services.”

Thus far, his plea has fallen on deaf ears in Congress, which has refused to ratify U.S. deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. Worse, it has halted any new pacts from being negotiated.

After all, with Pelosi literally changing the House rules for a treaty vote to “anytime I want,” it’s unlikely any nation would negotiate a free-trade deal only to see it become a public bargaining chip for Pelosi’s pork-barrel spending schemes.

Pelosi has allies in Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They have collectively become the Three Stooges of Big Labor, which opposes free trade.

Pelosi insists that she’s putting the American people first. That prompted U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab to blast those who “demagogue and prey on anxieties and fear. We do a disservice to the American people by pretending that trade is somehow the culprit of our economic problems and anxieties.” We know whom she meant.

Again, let’s look at what free trade with Colombia would do.

• It slashes tariffs from 32% to zero on 72% of U.S. goods right off the bat. Better still, it levels the playing field for U.S. firms because Colombian goods already enter the U.S. duty-free. In the 17 months that the treaty has awaited passage, U.S. businesses have shelled out $1 billion in tariffs to sell goods in Colombia.

• It provides U.S. investors with legal protections and provides for international arbitration if anything goes wrong.

• It ends child labor and lessens environmental damage, two extras the Democrats requested and got.

Meanwhile, if it’s not passed, the U.S. economy gets . . . nothing.

“Delaying the vote on the Colombia (pact) does not create one American job, it does not put one more dollar in anyone’s pocket, does not save one life, does not help one union to organize, or protect one endangered species,” Schwab said.

It just goes to show that doing nothing on free trade isn’t an accomplishment. In fact, it’s a wet rag on the U.S. economy that will eventually draw angry retribution from U.S. voters.

Bush knows this. Too bad Pelosi doesn’t.

Ann Coulter – One Down, Two To Go

Well, it looks like it’s the end of the road for Hillary. Time for her to pack up her pantsuits and go back to … wherever it is she’s pretending to be living these days. Now we just have to get rid of the other two. Perhaps if I endorse Obama …

This week, Bill Clinton lost his second presidential election for a protege.

Ronald Reagan was so popular, he not only won a 49-state landslide re-election for himself, but he also won a symbolic third term for his boob of a vice president, George Herbert Walker Bush (who immediately blew it by breaking his own “no new taxes” pledge).

By contrast, in addition to not being able to get half the country to vote for him in two tries, Clinton’s connection to any other presidential candidate spells utter doom. Both his vice president and his wife have been defeated in elections they should have won, but lost because of their unfortunate association with him. The country has spoken. It wants to be rid of the Clintons.

The reason two elections in recent history — the 2000 presidential election and the 2008 Democratic primary — were razor-close is that in both cases there was some strange, foreboding, otherworldly force dragging down the presumptive winner.

Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, lost an election that should have been his in a walk. In fact, he was the first incumbent president or vice president in 100 years to lose an election in peacetime with a good economy. Mind you, that was before we even knew that Gore was a deranged conspiracy theorist who believes the Earth is in serious peril from cow flatulence.

What was the mystery factor to explain such a historic loss?

The media’s pollsters may have lied to the public about Clinton’s vaunted popularity, but Gore’s pollsters got paid not to lie to him. And they told Gore the truth: Clinton was killing him.

After the election, Gore pollster — and erstwhile Clinton pollster — Stanley Greenberg told Vanity Fair magazine that if Clinton had helped, he said he would have “had Bill Clinton carry Al Gore around on his back.” (This was when one man could still actually carry Al Gore on his back.) But research showed that whenever Clinton was mentioned, Gore’s numbers went down faster than — oh, never mind.

Steve Rosenthal, political director of the AFL-CIO, also blamed Clinton for Gore’s loss, saying polls showed that voters who cared about character voted for Bush. (I know, I know. Are there actually people who care about character and vote Democrat? Yes, apparently they exist.)

Poor Gore did everything he could to distance himself from Clinton, publicly criticizing Clinton’s sexual exploits with an intern, refusing to allow Clinton to campaign with him and taking as his vice president Joe Lieberman — the first Democratic senator to scathingly denounce Clinton’s antics with Lewinsky from the Senate floor.

But voters couldn’t forget Gore’s boss, the purple-faced lecher.

As election predictors go, the Dow Jones has been remarkably accurate. If the Dow goes up from the end of July to the end of October, the incumbent president or vice president wins; if it goes down, the incumbent loses. It has been wrong only four times since the Dow was created in 1896.

Thus, on Nov. 1, 2000, an article in The New York Times began: “The verdict of the Dow Jones industrial average is in, and it says Al Gore is headed for the White House.”

And yet Gore lost. It was only the third time in more than a century that the Dow went up in the three months before the election and the incumbent lost. The two other times were: (1) Herbert Hoover in the middle of the Great Depression, and (2) Hubert Humphrey in the middle of the Vietnam War. (The only time the Dow went down and the incumbent won anyway was for popular Dwight Eisenhower.)

So we have documented proof: Americans rank Bill Clinton with national misfortunes on the order of the Great Depression and the Vietnam War. (This, of course, is an overreaction: The Great Depression wasn’t that bad.)

And now Bill Clinton has wrecked Hillary’s campaign, too. He’s like the creepy guy who graduated last year but still hangs around the high school cafeteria chatting up sophomores.

In a Time magazine poll taken earlier this year, more than twice as many voters said Bill Clinton’s involvement in Hillary’s campaign made them less likely to vote for her as said they were more likely to vote for her. (Some even said that “having Bill Clinton around makes me less likely to vote for What’s-Her-Name.” One-third of the respondents were upset Bill didn’t call the next day, like he promised.)

So before remembering that we are now left with two dangerous choices for president — a young liberal who is friendly with terrorists or an old liberal who is friendly with Teddy Kennedy — take a moment to revel in the fact that our long national nightmare is over. It turns out getting rid of the Clintons was the change we’ve been waiting for.

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Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Slander,” ““How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must),” “Godless,” and most recently, “If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans.”

Obama ‘explains’

Obama ‘explains’ why he does not wear a flag pin nor
stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart
This was sent to me and I’d like to share it with everyone………

I sure hope this gets around before Nov
On Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:48:04 -0400, ‘LTG Bill Ginn’ USAF ret forwarded:

Hot on the heels of his explanation for why he no longer wears a flag
pin, presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama was forced to explain why he
doesn’t follow protocol when the National Anthem is played.

According to the United States Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Sec. 171,
During rendition of the national anthem when the flag is displayed, all
present except those in uniform are expected to stand at attention facing  the
flag with the right hand over the heart.

‘As I’ve said about the flag pin, I don’t want to be perceived as taking
sides,’ Obama said. ‘There are a lot of people in the world to whom the
American flag is a symbol of oppression. And the anthem itself conveys
a war-like message. You know, the bombs bursting in air and all. It should
be swapped for something less parochial and less bellicose. I like the song
‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.’ If that were our anthem, then I might
salute it.’

WHAAAAAAAT!!!!!!!!!! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this could possibly be
our next president. I, for once, am speechless.

Vote John McCain – And Donate Now!

My Friends,
We have a lot at stake in this presidential election. As a nation, we face many challenges that will require real leadership from our next president. I have said before that this election will be about the big things, not the small things, and I write to you today about one big issue in particular – the future of the U.S. Supreme Court. If one of my Democratic opponents is elected in November, you can rest assured that given the opportunity to appoint judges, they will appoint those who make law with disregard for the will of the people.
There may be at least two vacancies on the United States Supreme Court during the next presidential term. As president, I will ensure that only those judges who strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States are appointed. I will nominate judges who understand that their role is to faithfully apply the law as written, not impose their will through judicial fiat.
If you want judges who will clearly and completely adhere to the Constitution of the United States and who do not legislate from the bench to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, then I ask that you join my campaign for president today by making a financial contribution.
I am proud to have played a role in the appointment and confirmation of two great Supreme Court justices – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito I need your support now so that as your president I can nominate judges like Justices Roberts and Alito. Judges who have proven themselves worthy of our trust. Judges who take as their sole responsibility the enforcement of laws made by the people’s elected representatives. Judges who can be relied upon to respect the values of the people whose rights, laws and property they are sworn to defend.
My friends, the future of our country and of the Supreme Court is at stake in this election. If either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama is elected – both voted against confirming Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito – they will appoint activist judges. They will appoint judges who legislate from the bench.
I’m sure I don’t have to remind you how important even one vote on the Supreme Court can be. Issues concerning states’ rights, abortion, affirmative action, the Second Amendment and religious freedom have all been decided by a very slim 5-4 margin.
America needs a leader who recognizes that the people and the states should decide what’s best, not the courts. In order to be that leader, I need your financial support immediately.
Please follow this link to make an immediate donation of $50, $100, $250, $500, $1,000 – any amount up to the legal limit of $4,600.
Thank you for your support.
Sincerely,
John McCain
P.S. To date, my Democrat opponents have raised almost $450 million in their efforts to win the White House. Both Senators Clinton and Obama voted against confirming John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Both Senators Clinton and Obama will nominate liberal, activist judges. As your president, I will ensure that the Supreme Court protects our values. Please follow this link right away to make your donation of any amount, up to the legal limit of $4,600. Every contribution, no matter how big or small, is crucial to our efforts. Thank you.

Is It Jaw-Jaw or War-War?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted: 05/06/2008

Is war with Iran inevitable, even imminent? Or is peace at hand?

From the public diplomacy of the administration, either conclusion may be reached.
Consider.

“West Offers Iran ‘Refreshed’ Deal,” ran the headline in the May 3 Washington Times. The story described an offer to Iran, agreed to by all five members of the Security Council — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — of a sweetened grand bargain, if Tehran will suspend its enrichment of uranium.

Blessing the offering in London was Condi Rice.

Details will not be made public, but the offer is said to include Western aid to Iran for a civilian nuclear program, a light water reactor and a five-year stock of enriched uranium held for Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

America’s contribution would be support for Iran’s admission to the World Trade Organization, a conference to discuss regional security in the Gulf, a U.S. offer to sell Iran spare parts for its U.S.-built civilian aircraft and a beginning of the lifting of three decades of U.S. sanctions.

News of this offer, plus the relaxed mood in Washington, which is utterly unlike the tense atmosphere prior to March 2003, suggests that war with Iran is far from the mind of this city.

But to take the warnings and threats of the civilian and military leaders of this administration at face value would lead one to conclude the opposite — that war with Iran is indeed inevitable, and probably soon. Consider.
 
Last month, Gen. David Petraeus was asked by Joe Lieberman, “Is it fair to say that the Iranian-backed special groups in Iraq are responsible for the murder of hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians?”

“It certainly is. … That is correct,” answered the general.

The next day, Petraeus testified, “Unchecked, the ’special groups’ pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq.”

Petraeus has since been promoted to command of all U.S. forces in the region.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, known as an opponent of war on Iran, followed Petraeus, accusing Tehran of being “hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.” Last week, Gates was out front again. “What the Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen and -women inside Iraq.”
 
Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is now also pounding the war drum. Iran’s “irresponsible influence,” its support of terror and its pursuit of atomic weapons, he said last week, is creating a “perfect nightmare” for the region. The Pentagon, said the chairman, is planning for “potential military … action” because of Iran’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence.”
 
“It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capacity,” Mullen declared. A second U.S. carrier just entered the Persian Gulf.
 
CBS reports that a target list of U.S. military planners includes the headquarters of the Quds Force and plants where Iran produces enhanced IEDs and the rockets used against the Green Zone. The network also reports that the State Department has begun drafting an ultimatum.
 
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmal Khalilzad has chimed in: “Iran and Syria must stop the flow of weapons and foreign fighters into Iraq, and their malign interference in Iraq.”
 
Iraqi Maj. Gen. Qasim Atta says 700 rockets and mortars have been fired at Coalition forces and the Green Zone, and most of the “Katyusha and Grad rockets and smart roadside bombs” were Iranian-made. The U.S. military is preparing a dossier on Iran’s role in the Iraq war.
 
In the Landon Lecture at Kansas State, CIA Director Michael Hayden declared, “It … is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to the highest level … to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq.” That day, State designated Iran the “most significant” and “most active” state sponsor of terror on earth.
 
From the White House to State to the Pentagon to CIA, the Bush administration is now singing from the same song sheet: Iran’s Quds Force, with the knowledge of President Ahmadinejad, is arming and directing “special groups” to kill U.S. soldiers and prevent a U.S. victory.
 
Is the White House rattling sabers to prod Iran into talks?
 
Perhaps. But the administration has also painted itself, and us, into a corner with the war talk. And there are only three ways out.
 
The first is that Iran halts the attacks, ends its intervention and negotiates on the six-nation offer. The second is that Iran rejects the deal, refuses to stop the attacks and U.S. air strikes begin.
 
The third is that Bush is bluffing and goes home railing against an axis-of-evil nation killing American soldiers, having done nothing.
 
With Israel, the Israeli lobby, the neocons and Dick Cheney insisting on air strikes, and even Hillary Clinton talking about Iran being “obliterated,” the last course would seem the least probable.
 
We are likely headed either for negotiations with Iran or war, after Bush returns from the 60th anniversary celebration of Israel’s birth.
 
“To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war,” said Winston Churchill in 1954, whose career often contradicted his wise counsel.

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Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of “The Death of the West,” “The Great Betrayal,” “A Republic, Not an Empire” and “Where the Right Went Wrong.”

Obama’s Marxist Axis Of Friends

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, May 05, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election ‘08: Barack Obama wishes questions about his associations with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and other radicals would end. But maybe the reason they won’t is that there’s a pattern: Marxism. It’s not hiding.

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Read More: Election 2008

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When one looks at Obama, it’s shocking how radical and anti-American his closest associates are. Taken separately, the black liberation theology of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, or fundraiser William Ayers’ unrepentant past as a 1960s terrorist or Obama’s openly pro-Che Guevara volunteers in Houston might be dismissed.

But taken together, and given Obama’s closeness to his friends, it’s fair to ask whether Obama doesn’t share their extreme-left views. Yet whenever he’s asked, he gets mad and avoids the issue.

Maybe that’s not surprising, given that Obama himself began his career as a Chicago community organizer and worked on projects there influenced by Saul Alinsky. The Marxist Machiavellian of the Chicago scene advised budding revolutionaries in his 1971 book “Rules For Radicals” to conceal their radical affiliations to attain greater power. That works well for Marxists.

But Obama’s friends seem to be giving him away. If this sounds extreme, take a look at some of the activities of Obama’s associates:

Wright is an adherent of black liberation theology, an explicitly Marxist interpretation of the Bible whose aim is to stir up class and race hatred to advance communism. Created by a rifle-toting Peruvian priest in the 1960s, it’s now discredited in religious circles.

“Liberation theology isolates a few verses, takes them out of context, and then exaggerates their meaning,” said the Rev. Bob Schenk of the National Clergy Council, on “Hannity’s America” last weekend.

But Wright clings to it. And recently, he loudly praised the Marxist Sandinista dictatorship of Nicaragua.

Not by coincidence, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s president, endorses Obama. “This is not to say that there is already a revolution under way in the U.S. . . . But yes, (Obama and friends) are laying the foundations for a revolutionary change,” said Ortega.

If that’s not enough, Wright’s also made pilgrimage to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in Havana in 1984, alongside the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Cuban-American writer Humberto Fontova noted Jackson and his entourage cheered “Viva Fidel” and “Viva Che Guevara” on the $300,000 trip paid for by the Cuban Council of Churches.

Then there’s Obama’s friend ex-Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, another Marxist. Not only did Ayers set off terrorist bombs against “the establishment” with no regrets during the 1960s, he told the New York Times “we didn’t do enough.”

Now it’s come to light that he posed for a photo in Chicago magazine in 2001, stomping on a U.S. flag in an article flogging his terrorist memoir, “Fugitive Days.” At the time Ayers was touting his anti-Americanism, Obama served with him on the Woods Fund board and Ayers made a $200 donation to Obama’s state Senate campaign.

Ayers has since lectured the Marxist dictator of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, on using public education as an instrument for advancing “revolution.” Meanwhile his stepson, Chesa Boudin, has gone to Caracas as an “adviser” to the anti-American Chavez.

Oh, by coincidence, Chavez and Castro are two of the dictators Obama said he’d like to give face time as president of the U.S.

It gets worse when one looks at Obama’s political organization.

Obama’s own Web site has held at least 15 favorable mentions of Che Guevara, according to a count by blogger Henry Gomez.

When an Obama precinct captain in Houston flew a Cuban flag bearing Guevara’s likeness, Obama said only it “disappointed” him and “does not reflect (his) views.” He never publicly ordered the flag down, nor rejected Guevara’s blood-soaked communism.

Another Obama supporter, acting in Obama’s name, secretly contacted Colombia’s Marxist FARC terror chief Raul Reyes to tell him that Obama would cut off U.S. military aid to Colombia to hinder its war against FARC, as well as deny Colombia free trade, a strategy FARC considers key to overturning Colombia’s democracy.

If Obama repudiated that secret messenger, we didn’t hear it.

Some pundits dismiss Obama’s ties with radicals as an opportunistic association with Chicago political machines to advance his career. But the depth and breadth of the contacts seem deeper.

Obama himself has promised to meet with the hemisphere’s Marxist dictators who have systematically dismantled or are in the process of dismantling democracy all across our hemisphere.

This stinks, frankly. Why does someone who says he represents “change” have so many Jurassic Marxists in his camp calling the shots? He needs to repudiate this crew now.

 

Mickey Mouse OperationForget Miley Cyrus. Check out Disney’s Chinese underwear ad.

By Daniel Brook
Posted Tuesday, April 29, 2008, at 6:23 PM ET

The May issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands tomorrow, but it’s already made the cover of the New York Post. The issue features a photograph of Miley Cyrus, star of the Disney Channel’s mega-hit Hannah Montana, clutching a satin sheet to her otherwise naked torso. Cyrus quickly disavowed the photograph, which was taken by Annie Liebovitz: “I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed,” she said in a statement. “I never intended for any of this to happen, and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about.” Disney, for its part, shared Cyrus’ outrage. Disney spokeswoman Patti McTeague told the New York Times that “a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines.”

Reading McTeague’s comment over coffee yesterday morning, I couldn’t help but think of an advertisement I’d seen a few months ago while on a reporting trip to China. I was walking from my Beijing bed-and-breakfast to a nearby subway station when I was stopped in my tracks by a billboard that made the controversial 1990s Calvin Klein underwear ads look artistic by comparison. Staring down at the throngs of shoppers on Beijing’s Xinjiekou Nandajie Avenue, a busy commercial thoroughfare about a mile west of the Forbidden City, was a white girl who looked all of 12, reclining in a matching bra-and-panties set adorned with Disney’s signature mouse-ear design. In a particularly creepy detail, the pigtailed child was playing with a pair of Minnie Mouse hand puppets. In the upper left-hand corner was the familiar script of the Disney logo.

Not believing my eyes, and on an assignment that touched on images of Westerners in the Chinese consumer’s imagination, I snapped a photo:

 

 

After reading of the Cyrus flap, I e-mailed my photo to Disney’s McTeague. I was curious: How did the company square its position on the Liebowitz photo with its risqué billboard in China?

 

 

 

Note:

Indeed, this is the legacy of the liberals’ sexual/atheist/Political Correct culture; Disney (the mainstream of mainstreams) is now soft peddling child pornography! 

fw: Getting to know Cindy McCain

This is interesting, it’s even more interesting that the liberal media doesn’t even mention this woman…!
(But, they probably will.)

This is a summary of the article on:

Getting to know Cindy McCain
 

    There was an article in the Wall Street Journal on Cindy McCain, John’s wife. All I ever saw was this attractive woman standing beside John. I was surprised how talented and involved with world problems she is.
    She graduated from Southern Cal and was a special-needs teacher.
After her Dad died she became involved with his beer distributing firm and is now the chairwoman. Sales have doubled since she has taken over from her father.
    They have a marriage prenuptial agreement, her assets remain separate.
    She is involved around the world clearing land mines – travels to the countries on a detonation team and served on their board.
    They have a 19 year old serving in Iraq , another son in the Naval Academy , a daughter recently graduated from Columbia Univ. , an adopted daughter in high school, and a son who is the finance guy at the beer firm.
Raised kids in Phoenix , Az rather than Washington DC.(better atmosphere) He commuted.
    In 1991, Mrs. McCain came across a girl in an orphanage in Bangladesh . Mother Teresa implored Mrs. McCain to take the baby with severe cleft palate. She did so without first telling her husband. The couple adopted the girl who has had a dozen operations to repair her cleft palate and other medical problems.
    They have a Family Foundation for children’s causes.  She’s active with ‘Halo Trust’ – to clear land mines, provide water and food in war ravaged and developing countries.
    She will join an overseas mission of ‘Operation Smile’, a charity for corrective surgery on children’s faces.
    She has had two back surgeries and became addicted to pain killers. She talks openly about it which she says is part of the recovery process.
    I’m surprised the media is so quiet about her attributes. She sounds more capable than Hillary or Obama. We would really get two for the price of one. A person with business and international experience. John did work for the firm for awhile when he left the Navy. She, however, has the real business experience.
    Very interesting.

fw: joke

Even loyal, right-wing fundamentalist Bushies will love this!
 
 

Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are having breakfast at the White House. The attractive waitress asks Cheney what he would like, and he replies, ‘I’d like a bowl of oatmeal and some fruit.”

‘And what can I get for you, Mr. President?’

George W. looks up from his menu and replies with his trademark wink and slight grin, ‘How about a quickie this morning?’

”Why, Mr. President!’ the waitress exclaims. ‘How rude! You’re starting to act like President Clinton,’ and she storms away.

Cheney leans over to Bush and whispers, ‘It’s pronounced ‘quiche’.’

Glenn Beck Interviews Senator McCain

Glenn: Senator McCain, how are you sir?

Senator McCain: How are you, Glenn, you old jerk? So glad to talk to you today.

Glenn: Now, see, I don’t think that’s necessary. I don’t like the way you started.

Senator McCain: Listen, you are the most candid and nonsugarcoating advocate for America that probably I have ever heard and I enjoy every minute of it, even when on occasion your remarks are turned in a less than flattering way in my direction and thanks for having me on your show. You do a great job, both on radio and television.

Glenn: You know, sir, I have to tell you, the one thing I do appreciate about you is you do call them as you see them and so we’re even on that and I think that’s great.

Senator McCain: Well, we have that in common. Go ahead, my friend.

Glenn: Let me just start here with your health care proposal. I haven’t read the whole thing yet; but from what I’ve seen, it’s the only one that’s – it’s the only one that’s not socialist. And so that’s really good. It seemed to be based in the free market. Can you explain?

Senator McCain: Sure. I want to give — one of the real important aspects of this proposal is to give every American family a refundable $5,000 tax credit so that they can go out across state lines, which they can’t now, and get their health insurance policy of their choice. If they want to keep their employer-provided health plan that they have today, that’s fine; but I’d love to see them have a choice. And I think people compete and I think you could go online and find out which is the best policy that suits your family.

Glenn: Senator, I mean, I don’t know if you were listening to this old jerk, but I run a business – I run a business here in New York and you know as well as I do that 30 percent of this city is now on Medicaid because you can’t go outside of New York and compete and so companies are just saying, You know what? Let the government – and the government in this state is doing it intentionally.

Senator McCain: Oh, I agree with you. Listen, when you can only go to a certain limited market to get any good or service, then obviously then it distorts the market and you’re unable to have the choice in competition and it’s also, as you know, forcing more and more small business people, like yourself, to say to their employees, I’m sorry. I can’t provide you with health insurance. You’re going to have to find another way to do it or the next time you’re sick, go to the emergency room and – which, as we all know, Glenn, is the most expensive form of health care.
We’ve got to give a choice in competition. We’ve got to put medical records online. We’ve got to have walk-in clients. We’ve got to have community health centers. We’ve got to have outcome-based care for patients. We’ve got to have governors get together and the legislators and others and take care of those who are – have a plan to take care of those who are uninsurable, chronic disease, preexisting condition. There’s a whole lot of things, but we’ve got to base it on choice and competition as much as possible.

Weinstein Reversed Again, This Time in NYC’s Suit Against Gun Makers (WSJ Lawblog)

Notes:

Personally, I feel if the states want to ban guns, it’s up to the populace, but if some federal overseer attempts to trump the constitution for all states, then we might as well warm up for the 2nd American Revolution.

Article:

Brooklyn federal district Judge Jack Weinstein is known for getting assigned huge class actions with billions at stake. He’s also known for getting reversed by his colleagues on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. In the latter respect, the month of April has been a doozie. On April 3, the Second Circuit reversed Weinstein in the so-called light cigarette litigation, decertifying a class of 50 million plaintiffs.

And today, the court tossed out New York City’s lawsuit accusing the gun industry of selling firearms with the knowledge they can be diverted into illegal markets. Here’s the early report from the AP, here’s the opinion.

The crux of the suit, which dates back to 2000: The city of New York sued the gun industry — including Beretta, Browning, Colt, Glock Inc. and a bunch of others — for facilitating “the movement of legally distributed handguns into illegal markets” by, among other things, facilitating “straw purchases” in which those qualified to purchase guns from the manufacturer, such as retailers, make purchases on behalf of those who aren’t qualified.

Back in 2005, Weinstein denied the manufacturers’ 12(b)(6) motion, holding that the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, did not require dismissal of the city’s case, which was brought under a New York criminal nuisance statute. In a 2-1 decision, a Second Circuit panel reversed, finding that the claim restrictions of the PLCAA did apply and barred the suit.

“I am disappointed in the court’s decision,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Regardless of this ruling, we will continue our fight against illegal guns full bore — in the courtrooms, on the streets and in the Congress.”

City Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo, the lead plaintiff lawyer, said his office “is analyzing the decision” before deciding whether to appeal.

Representing the gun manufacturers were, among others, lawyers from Jones Day, Hoffberger & Hollander, Bosick & Gordon, Greenberg Traurig and Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon.