Middle Kingdom Risen

China is being called upon to use her good offices to contain North Korea. The Chinese are such a kindly government as was recently demonstrated in Tibet that they can not wait to assist Obama just for the sake of his personal magnetism, the long-standing client state relationship of the North Koreans not withstanding. The Chinese Reds now hold much of the US debt, do you think they want to see America remain the master of an unipolar world, its lone superpower? The Chinese are rollicking with delight to see such a naif in the Oval Office-they can not believe their good luck to have an adherent of unilateral disarmament (Obama) as their foil. The Communists are overjoyed to watch America, not being brought down a peg, but ushering in her own collapse. The mass enslavers in Beijing who artificially linked the value of their currency, the yuan, to the dollar when it was to their benefit, who basically maintain their industrial workers at a subsistence level so they can effectively "dump" merchandise in nations where a living wage prevails, who sent poisoned products the world over, killing pets in America and people elsewhere, and who allowed Chinese "volunteers" to save the North during the Korean Conflict, are happy to see our applecart upset and are not about to do anything to right it.

Saudis Crucify Criminal

The religion of peace is on full display once again. I was astounded to read a story linked on the Jerusalem Post's crawl that Saudi Arabia placed the body of a convicted felon on a cross as a warning. What an atavistic display of barbarity by the nation that gave us more than a dozen of the September 11 suicide terrorists. Saudi Arabia hosts the two most sacred sites of Islam, Mecca and Medina. Millions of devoted Muslims make the pilgrimage of the religiously mandated Haj to visit this bastion of medievalism that routinely chops off heads and hands, made uncompromising Wahhabism the prevailing strain of Sunni theological thought, and still dogmatically enforces the subjugation of women with the dreaded morality gendarme, the police for the promotion of virtue and the suppression of vice. They are still crucifying alleged criminals-I say alleged because the Saudis are notorious for their use of torture to extract confessions. There are no churches, Bibles, or openly practicing Christian missionaries in Saudi Arabia. There are rarely Jews in Saudi Arabia as unless they are foreign dignitaries or diplomats, they would simply not be admitted. I can not imagine that many Jews would want to visit the font of anti-Semitism that spawned Osama bin Laden in any event. A faith that has produced the vast majority of the world's suicide bombers, a religion that venerates martyrdom as its highest seventy-two virgin virtue, a dogma that is almost wholly intolerant of people who believe differently right to the Sunni-Shia divide that has spilled rivers of blood, a system that cynically allows the use of human shields and has had one of its prominent clerics endorse the use of weapons of mass destruction in an attack to kill ten million Americans in a fatwa or religious edict, could not aptly be termed a peaceful faith.

Could Have Guessed

That Barack Hussein Obama would nominate an anti-Constitutional activist jurist to the Supreme Court should surprise no one. A President who is such an overt opponent of the natural rights of man, natural law, and God's holy ordinance, and who is such a proponent of government intervention and Federal micromanagement of the most personal aspects of our lives (i.e. health care) would be expected to appoint like minded busybodies who support any effort of government to consolidate and monopolize power and force (both Obama and Sotomayor are gun control advocates-neither recognizes the Second Amendment provision that gun ownership is an individual right). That a leader named Hussein might not have Israel's best interests at heart should not surprise Obama's many Jewish supporters. Obama's father was a Kenyan Muslim and his step-father an Indonesian Muslim. Indonesia, where Obama experienced much of his early education, does not recognize Israel's right to exist. Obama sat in J. Wright's church after Wright and Louis Farrakhan had visited Colonel Gaddafi in Libya when Libya was in open conflict with the United States. What did you expect? America has enthroned an abortion on demand, government growing, anti-capitalist Muslim apostate and he will surely bring with him people who reflect his biases into high office.

Happy Go Lucky

Hallelujah! Barack Hussein Obama has brought us back from the brink of economic collapse-he said so on his West Coast campaign fundraising junket-so it must be so. Investor extraordinaire Mark Faber predicts Zimbabwe level hyperinflation in the US because the Obama bailouts have us so overextended. I called that here months ago in this blog with only a hint of hyperbole, but I wasn't being sarcastic, or Jeremiahing the issue, I felt tremendous economic dislocation was inevitable if we elected a socialist to cap off the already sliding economy in the Bush recession. I said then when the mass media was parroting the Obama campaign, calling the crisis, "the Bush-McCain recession" that if we elected Obama, we were in for unprecedented economic calamity. My exact words were, "elect a third world leader, get a third world nation". While Obama heralds a non-existent recovery and fills Democrat coffers while according to Fox News costing the taxpayer at least a couple of hundred thousand tax dollars on a partisan trip, the media will once again be docile and unquestioning in the face of contrary facts. If Obama says the worst is behind us, his handmaiden press will dutifully carry the water, even if it is to fill a pool in a mirage hallucinated during Beverly Hills and Las Vegas fundraisers.

Make It Personal

Saul Alinsky, a radical who inspired both Hillary Clinton and Obama, said freeze a target and make it personal. This was seen in the Presidential campaign with Obama mocking McCain, who was tortured by the North Vietnamese to the extent he can not raise his arms above his shoulders, for not even using a computer-not withstanding that it was his war injury in service of the nation that precluded it. North Korea is a tremendous international threat. The regime there has taken a passenger jet down by an on board bomb. The leadership of North Korea has no regard for the welfare of their own people, starving and executing them at will. This is a Stalinist atavism marked by cruelty. This brutality has extended to mowing down wayward fishermen who happily returned to the North after being blown out of territorial waters in a storm and women who returned with food for their starving families after crossing into China. The North routinely engages in gross violations of human rights. So what do North Korean excesses have to do with Alinsky? Aside from the fact that Aliskyites would probably find sympathy for the Stalinist dictator and a way to blame America and the West, the only way to contain North Korea's proliferation ambitions and spreading threats and madness is to follow the Alinsky lead and make it personal. Not personal in a rhetorical sense, but personal in a Uday, Qusay, and Saddam being hunted down personal. The evil, sadistic sons being riddled with bullets personal and Saddam swinging from the rope, personal. Obama had no trouble smearing honorable men and women in his efforts to win elections, but the weakling in the White House would never dare do the one thing that could actually stop North Korea-to let them know that any further aggression on their part won't lead Dear Leader and his close kin to a dock in the Hague but to a disgraced grave.

More Media Mischaracterization

The mainstream media disqualified itself from any function calling for objectivity. These press dinosaurs have become pure partisans pushing forward the Obama agenda after whitewashing his leftist record to assist his election victory. It is astounding that correspondents are able to characterize the Republicans as stubborn obstructionists for obstruction's sake whether on the legislative agenda or today's Supreme Court nomination, they are blocking to thwart our brilliant young President just to prevent him from lifting up the poor, providing health care to the masses, or solving our economic difficulties. The Republicans are simply the party of "no" to the mainstream media, no to reform, no to progress, no to inclusion, and no new or better ideas than the Democrats or Obama. It could not possibly be that those Republicans who stand in opposition, do so out of principle and when they do present new or better ideas are ignored or lampooned by the old-line media and the Jon Stewarts of the world. The Republicans aren't receiving a fair shake-anything said about them has a deliberately negative slant, if any mention of them is made at all.

Embrace America's Power

The left has been embarrassed of US power with Madeleine Albright even declaring the US burdened and destabilizing as the only remaining superpower when she was Secretary of State. Perhaps, that is why the Clinton Commerce Department allowed Bernie Schwartz and Loral to accuracize Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles and provide the Reds with MIRV technology. Academics and the liberal elite have always expressed great sorrow for America's alleged colonialism or imperialism. The current President and his last Democratic predecessor are ardent opponents of America's use of military force abroad (as opposed to violation of Posse Comitatus for events such as the Waco Branch Davidian massacre) with Clinton writing how he despised the military during his successful draft evasion by way of academic deferment days and protesting his home country's involvement in Vietnam on foreign soil when he was a Rhodes Scholar, and with Obama opposing the Iraq War when he was still sitting in the Illinois legislature. Oh the horrors of US force, aggression, and adventurism will seem but a trifle when we are subjugated either by domestic oppressors of foreign ones after our own leadership has weakened us so much with defense cuts and unilateral nuclear and WMD disarmament that will leave us defenseless against a China who retains the strength to force our submission or Jihadists who are willing to go to any length of sacrifice to impose Sharia on us.

Another Cliche Nominated

Barack Hussein Obama named Sonia Sotomayor as his first nominee to the United States Supreme Court. She is a childless, unmarried, Hispanic woman. It was a foregone conclusion that Obama would nominate a judicial activist and in the event, he did not disappoint. Sotomayor will create law from the bench, ignoring legislation and the will of the people. She will rule by judicial fiat in advancing the dictates of Obamaism. She will enforce a self-perpetuating liberal agenda. Even the mass media has reported a speech by the judge in 2001 that conveyed overt hostility to white males. Ms. Sotomayor is wholly unsuited to the restrained judicial review demanded by the US Constitution. Like the man that nominated her, she is determined to use the bench to shape more equal outcomes. Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, is crafting the government with a diversity in appearance, one that "looks like America". But that is as far as the diversity goes, just like a university campus, there is almost no diversity of thought-Obama's team is doctrinaire liberal. A leftist like Sotomayor could rule comfortably on a Hugo Chavez or Castro high court. She will rubber stamp Obama overreach just as judges endorsed and enforced the will of the dictator in the bad, old Soviet days.

Of Gifts Bestowed

For those we lost at sea/ Throw flowers on the waves/ For all the rest/ Go and decorate their graves/ No one draws breath today who knew a man who knew a man at Valley Forge or Trenton or Yorktown/ Yet the gift of liberty they bought with frostbite, blood, and suffering remains/ "'Tis a day to celebrate", they would say/ As life is ever fleeting/ Especially so when a tyrant needs defeating/ But George and England soon forgot the lesson and tried to steal the blessing/ But Kentucky rifles prevailed/ And it was redcoat hide that was nailed/ As freedom survived the assault of 1812/Then manifest destiny took flight/ And civilized the savage night/ Took what to Mexico never belonged/ Singing America's full-throated powerful song/ And then brother bled brother white/ As America entered her darkest night/ Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg ran red with gore/ As North and South fought to even the score/ Men burned alive in the Wilderness Campaign/ But at least the stain of slavery was erased for national gain/ And this holy day began/ With widows and orphans on sacred ground/ Scattering garlands around the fallen heroes earthly beds/ And sending invocations skyward/ A brief time passed, and peace elapsed as the USS Maine exploded/ To arms was the call to one and to all/ And the empire of Spain imploded/ Under US might, the darkening night of Spanish oppression folded/ And tyrants the world over knew America was not to be scolded/ But brave men in blue/ Fell there too/ In the prime of life/ They answered drum and fife/ On San Juan Hill/ Despite polo skill/ Died a star clutching his Krag/ As from a firing port, at Spain's last resort, a Mauser found its mark/ It's impact stark/ But only gallons were spilled/ The worst was yet still-/ A continent erupted/ The Kaiser and the Hun/ Had the world on the run/ As Wilson patiently waited/ And a peace-loving America debated/ Was this our war?/ To settle the score of Mexican intrigue with Germans/ And the Lusitania brought down/ Killing the population of a town/ And US in righteous wrath and indignation/ Issued the call once again to one and to all/ To take up the sword of freedom/ And a boy from verdant fields of green/ Saw something he had never seen/ A landscape brown and barren/ With the clinging stench of death/ As he draws his last breath in his trench choked on phosgene and mustard/ But most made it back/ With the nation's honor intact/ And leathernecks and devil dogs forever heralded with the lost battalion/ With freedom preserved and our values served/ And the Kaiser sent packing/ America went back in her shell/ With isolationists telling the rest of the world to go to hell/ And a menace slowly rising/ Germany came back and mounted an attack/ That should not have been surprising/ Now rivers of blood and a continent of mud and fire/ Thwarted the desire for peace/ Amongst all but the most insular beast/ And then bombs and torpedoes ravaged Pearl Harbor/ The dye was cast/ In the treacherous blast/ And Americans laid down their lives for their friends by the thousands/ But they kept promises made/ And paid ultimate debts to be paid/ To redeem a world's liberation/ Then Korea came/ And war was the game/ With Vietnam the same for our peace and liberty loving nation/ A few spats here and there handled mostly with good cheer/ But blood spills again in Grenada-then Panama-the war most of us saw in the Gulf in 1991 with us spoiling Saddam's conquest fun/ But the terrible cost to the National Guard of Pennsylvania/ With one lucky Scud-Why couldn't it have been a dud?/ Stealing the souls of the descendants of the ever valiant in the Keystone state/ Who in answering the call to battle/ Have never been late/ Oh, down, down came the towers, in blood and flame/ The Jihadists' game/ And up for freedom sprouted/ Those who shouted "You will never soil America's name/ They rose in the ranks to avenge the shame/ Cast the blame on all those who doubted/ We still lay down our lives for liberty/ For those who are lost/ We mourn them/ For those who shirk the cost/ We scorn them/ Each and every one that fell/ Had much life left yet to tell/ Laid down willingly to keep us free/ As God means us to be/ So hold fast for liberty/ Do not permit any enemy to take freedom away/ We few patriots must save the day/ From tyrants, foreign and domestic-/ Celebrate the sacrifice they made-lives given not lost, and remember them on this and every Memorial Day. Be relentless in defense of liberty.

Deliberately Conflate Issues

Senator Jon Kyl, Republican from Arizona, cleared something up for me on one of the Sunday morning policy wonk programs. He clarified that no torture or water boarding ever occurred at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. This fact has been deliberately obscured by the left to make Gitmo appear sinister. This facility should be considered a national asset, where military police, shore patrol personnel, military medical staff, and civilian contractors have confined and contained some of the most dangerous people in the world. The US staff has treated these terrorists with dignity-providing culturally appropriate food, opportunity for Muslim religious practice with prayer rugs and Korans, comprehensive medical care often better than American citizens receive, and access to counsel. The terrorists are being granted rights never before accorded to people fighting without uniforms, hiding in the civilian populace, and often engaged in wanton murder that in most of the world they would face summary execution for, if captured. The US has provided decent living circumstances for people who by right should have ended up with a bullet in the head. It is a shame that the international left and mass media which is in their thrall have done everything they could to confuse the world about America's measured efforts at self-defense.

Obama Apologizes Unapologetically

Barack Hussein Obama continues his university tour, denouncing the profit motive, continues to blame America for Muslim hostility because our lack of evenhanded treatment of Palestinians and rough treatment of terrorists, and expresses our collective mea culpas for a couple of centuries of continuing racist oppression including the original sin of slavery (notwithstanding that US voters put a black man in the highest office). At the Naval Academy graduation, Obama takes great credit for the termination of teenage pirates that many police department SWAT teams could have handled, and reports exist that Obama actually restrained the Navy in the operation, delaying the rescue of Captain Phillips. Notwithstanding Obama's braggadocio about an operation any American President would be duty bound to authorize, our Commander in Chief told the Navy that he was a peacenik who would only use them basically as a last resort. The United States Navy is an instrument crafted from the start as the tip of the spear to project power. From Commodore Matthew Perry who opened Japan to the West, to Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet that after America crushed a European empire in the Spanish-American War, proved we were a naval power with worldwide reach, our navy has been the instrument of aggressive foreign policy necessary in our world of realpolitik, the iron fist that is sheathed in the velvet glove of our diplomacy. Obama does not understand the function of the military which can not be composed of group huggers suffering any crisis of conscience about what whale their sonar deafens, or what Afghan family serving bin Laden tea, their cruise missile kills. Billions are spent on the navy to project US power, protect American interests, and ultimately when necessary to kill our enemies. People who attain the status of officers in our forces are not in the main, naive of their purpose. The military mission of any nation is an inherently bloody one- if threatened violence fails to persuade determined opponents-real violence must be employed to destroy them. Profit is how one improves the lot of one's family and future prospects-not a sin, crime, or shame, except in like thinkers of Obama's warped world. Islamic animus to the US is not our fault, we defended Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo while our geographically closer NATO allies abdicated humanitarian obligations and once again countenanced genocide in their backyard. Europe pontificated and America's military under Clinton acted to end the bloodshed that the rest of Europe was too weak or timid to stop. We liberated fifty million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. We did not obliterate the hosts of al Qaeda's murder plot in Afghanistan but freed them and tried to improve their way of life. We put a halt to Saddam Hussein's genocide of Kurds, brutal suppression of Shias including the marsh Arabs who by in large were and still are more loyal to Iran than their native nation of Iraq, and we put paid to any notion of Saddam, who will rank with Pal Pot in the realm of cold hearted mass murderers, ever attempting territorial expansion again as he had done in Kuwait and attempted against Saudi Arabia as he penetrated Khafji in the 1991 Gulf War, or any potential WMD production that Saddam no doubt wished for, if only as a hedge against Iran and a chemical sword over the head of Israel. As for the special US relationship with Israel, Obama may well be on the way to ending, the Jewish state is the only pluralistic, tolerant democracy in the Middle East. The Palestinian people in their diaspora have proven to be treacherous and ungrateful neighbors, rebelling against Jordan, causing civil war in Lebanon, creating strife everywhere, serving as Saddam's local muscle against their generous former hosts when Saddam seized Kuwait, and forming the backbone of some of Saddam's suicide commandos when America liberated Iraq. Balanced treatment between a largely genocidal populace (the Palestinian Muslims) who are openly hostile to America and who want no peace with the Jews, only their destruction and the bastion of Western values in the Middle East (Israel) is counterproductive at best. Our so-called torture of terrorists must have produced the desired results as there has not been a successful large scale attack on the "Homeland" since September 11, 2001. A wise President would not express remorse to the world for his nation protecting herself from wanton, nihilistic evil. And as far as the US being racist, bigot, homophobes-we elected a mixed race leader, arguably our two most watched celebrities, are the Oprah and Will Smith, and the perversion of marriage is spreading like wildfire with six (sick) states now welcoming homosexual union. As an American, I apologize for one thing, that so many of my neighbors were duped into voting for a blame America first hater who fit comfortably in Reverend Wright's tarnished pews, and whose friendship with unapologetic terrorist Bill Ayers was no accident.

A Dangerous Dilettante

How will closing Gitmo advance the security interests of America? How will bringing Muslim fanatics onto the mainland and into the general prison population make our citizenry safer in their homes? Even if they are isolated in a Federal detention facility, normal prison guards are not equipped to face "suicide soldiers" whose highest aspiration may well be martyrdom. The personnel employed at Supermax in Colorado are tough, but they are not MPs, SPs, or Air Force Security police, by in large, and few have recent combat experience as many of the elite Gitmo guards have had in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even National Guard and reserve units used to guard these terrorists have at a minimum basic training, if not advanced infantry training to know how to grapple with and subdue someone who has been trained to kill with their hands in the badlands of Pakistan. Why would Obama jeopardize the safety of children in the "Homeland" as Bush termed it, or even expose civilian corrections officers to unnecessary and unprecedented danger?

By It Honestly

How does one come to conservatism? In my case, logic dictates the rightness of the right. I witnessed the leftist perspective first hand with attempted indoctrination at the University School of Nashville, an experimental school, once connected to the Peabody College for teachers, which some years back merged with Vanderbilt University. The institution was so liberal that drug use and homosexuality were essentially advocated in a life skills class for thirteen to fifteen year olds. I attended this hotbed of preaching Darwin, Engels, and Marx from eighth through tenth grade, and it fostered the spirit opposite of the permissiveness and license being taught in me. To conform with mainstream society, be a Reaganite, and even preppy was to rebel against the hippie holdover culture that permeated USN. Even when it was against self-interest, I maintained conservative principles, campaigning against a state income tax in my home state of Tennessee even though it would have included an end to Tennessee's Hall Tax, a levy on unearned (interest and dividend income) on which my family has been taxed millions over the years. Fundamentally, only limited government with strict federalism, a system of free market capitalism, a strong national defense, and issues addressed and resolved locally where citizens have the most control is the form of governance that makes sense to me, the one that Obama is rapidly reversing.

Begins at Home

America's wealthy luminaries had a confab in New York to decide how to best direct their charitable giving. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, anti-Semitic nut Ted Turner, and the Oprah were amongst the attendees. I don't care what a person does with money that they have earned. If Oprah wants to open an academy for physical and sexual abuse on Tierra del Fuego, that's her business. But what I don't like is people being able to take advantage of the tax code to "outsource" their charity. With such glaring and sadly ever growing need right here in the streets of America why should Bill and Melinda Gates receive a tax benefit to give mosquito nets to Africa. Plenty of inner city kids or needy in Appalachia could have used the help right here to escape grinding poverty and lack of jobs. Let the rich give what they want but only allow deductions for domestic contributions until all need is met here. Also philanthropic foundations have been so subverted by the left that they are now almost exclusively controlled by liberals and the capitalists who made the great fortunes to begin with to start the foundations must be rolling in their graves. These benefactors could never believe that the legacies they left would now advance a socialist or Marxist agenda. God help the country that doesn't have the sense to take care of her own first.

The Dream Car

Obama's "green" car mandate is a tad optimistic given constraints of physics and engineering. The high mileage vehicle imagined by the libs would under current circumstances by necessity be small and light and of no utility for large families. Not a big deal perhaps for Obama, the most enthusiastic abortion pusher who has ever resided in the White House, but can you imagine how many kids you can fit in a smart car (maybe one purpose-built for the circus could hold my lovely neighbors' family but I doubt they could carry their kids along with a few packages from Walmart in anything smaller than a minibus.)? The car of the future the environment as deity crowd envisions will run on water with butterflies and rainbows as the only exhaust products. Given the current ownership of US automakers and the worshipful regard among Obama's backers-this wonder vehicle will be made under the new imprint of "Messiah Motors".

Gun Free Zone

There was a fatal shooting yesterday during a high school graduation being conducted on Tennessee State University's campus. It is impossible to believe this happened with clearly posted signs declaring the campus a "gun free zone". Why someone with criminal intentions and a murderous mentality would never violate the posted regulations of a campus or a clearly delineated state or Federal law. Someone really ought to look into this.

This Is Incest

Every observer of politics knows a story where a politician has lost office in an election or forced out by term limits, only to turn around in short order to become a lobbyist, seeking to influence former colleagues. This is unsavory, and some states and governmental bodies have imposed waiting periods or other restrictions against this practice. But this is by no means the only sort of abuse. There exists all sorts of tortured ethical legislation designed to permit ex-pols (and sitting politicians for that matter) to conduct enough slippery gymnastics to slip through loopholes that seem tailor-made to facilitate a sort of graft. One glaring omission in Federal law allows politicians to be wined and dined by lobbyists as long as they don't have a sit-down meal. They can have all the appetizers that influence peddling merits. These provisions to permit continued manipulation of the process were not oversights or miscalculations, every legislative body in the country is chock full of lawyers-they used the deliberative process to design the law for their own benefit. They knew exactly what they were doing and wanted to continue to foster a climate where votes can still for all intents and purposes be bought and sold. Occasionally, a politician is brought forward to be the sacrificial lamb on an issue unpalatable to voters. This is no act of bravery as invariably they are either already term-limited or have been assured some other position if their constituents are so riled up they throw them out of office. Matt Kisber, a Democrat, was sent out to shepherd support for a state income tax in my home state, Tennessee. He did inflame the voting public with his backing of this widely unpopular measure, but lo and behold, Mr. Kisber was made the head of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development and did not have to face voter wrath by standing for office after being the hatchet man for a term-limited so-called moderate Republican Governor, Don Sundquist. All is right with the world, as politicians have no worries about job security no matter how mad they make the voter. Regardless of party affiliation, they take care of each other.

New Family Planning

Barack Hussein Obama could do Orwell or Aldous Huxley proud. He has an ambitious energy policy involving cap and trade. He has taken or is taking the automobile companies. He wants to "green" America as part of the stimulus package. This transformative approach is holistic in scope. Obama has reversed welfare reform, started by Reagan and brought to the fore by the Republican Congress under the somewhat reluctant Bill Clinton who signed on with gritted teeth. Obama favors the broad amnesty approach to immigration reform and mostly is willing to relinquish sovereignty and have more or less open borders. I have often heard and seen as in the case of one of my neighbors, that there is simply no way they can survive with a "green" vehicle. They have seven children and require a large SUV, minivan, or church-type van just to go anywhere as a family. Such practical considerations rarely enter an environmentalist politician's mind. So what is the logical outcome of subsidizing unwed pregnancy anew, rewarding illegitimacy with AFDC and ever increasing welfare benefits, and having an influx of unskilled Latin American and Mexican migrants to take menial jobs and leech the system? Extreme growth of the most dependent population-with those carrying the water for the nation ever more aggressively burdened to support the parasitic dole dwellers. The large productive families will not have to worry about transport though with the ever growing lower classes, there will be a push for something akin to China's one child policy, particularly with such a friend of the abortionist in the Oval Office as Obama. The poor could not fairly be expected to limit the scope of their birthrate without the rich having to make a similar sacrifice in the size of their families. After all Obama wants to ensure equity, fairness, and equal outcomes. Besides a large Catholic family like my neighbors could never fit into a government-mandated smart car-so the obvious solution is limit the family. Why, even Jonathan Swift would be proud.

Bequeath Them Freedom

Oh sons of sons of liberty/ The nation they died for/ Born in blood and fire on the forge of war/ For you and me/ Not land or gold or precious stone/ But for this sacred idea alone, you see/ This notion of a place where a man could breathe free/ Unleashed, granted manumission from tyranny/ No paint or statue as legacy/ But the noblest patrimony/ Of blood and rended flesh that nourishes the tree of liberty/ With no travail too great to bear/ To guard the freedom we have here/ No sacrifice too dear to make for freedom's sake/ As a great deceiver ties us in a Gordian Knot of regulation, and aid, and law to subdue us/ To take the gift that God did imbue us/ We few who still hoist "Don't Tread on Me"/ And fight still to proclaim liberty/We with the last vestige-some slandered remaining aspect of national pride/ We who do not our heroes martyred, hide/ To allow a young and foolish peacock to decide/ True patriots hold this love of country and Constitution deep inside/ Who do not rush with the masses on Obama's fool's errand ride/ We have learned Barack's apology game/ Hussein who demands as Americans we bury our heads in shame/ As if jingo were our middle name/ And racism and oppression our claims to fame/ And we will simply rejoice/ When we hear Obama's voice/ Saying we forswear force/ While real menace nations arm up, of course/ They will just be taken by the Obama charm/ And line up in sequence to disarm/ There will be no further cause for alarm/ As lions rest with the lamb/ And Iran and North Korea embrace Uncle Sam/ And we enjoy our email filling with spam/ And Christians and Jews dance with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Nanny State Ninnies

Sugar is about to become a taboo substance. No not cocaine, but refined white sugar will be the new contraband. Of course, certain places have already imposed such intrusive, busy body measures, notably New York City under faux Republican, turned independent Mike Bloomberg. The mayor was not successful in targeting sugar but has made smoking an almost forbidden and costly act. He has forced many restaurants to post nutritional content of their food, and he has even forbidden the use of certain kinds of cooking oil in restaurant cuisine. Bloomberg really believes he is that much smarter and needs to make your decisions for you. Obama is less interested in your health or the welfare of your family. He is certainly an adherent of the elites know best philosophy, but the coming sugar tax has virtually no bearing on America's health. Make no mistake this is nothing more than a government revenue grab. This is one more way like the proposed cap and trade regulation for Obama to keep his hand in your pocket.

The Docile Press

Can you imagine the hue and cry of the media if Bush was still the President with the economy hemorrhaging six hundred thousand plus jobs? There would be no old line media passivity in the face of such catastrophe. We would never hear the end of criticism for Bush's mismanagement. Obama is given carte blanche to ruin us with any blame devolving back to the previous administration. This administration is about to attempt to initiate salary caps across the financial industry. During the campaign I predicted this and was told that was unconstitutional nonsense by a family friend who held a high position with Merrill Lynch in Huntsville, that actors, artists, and athletes would be specifically excluded because they by in large support Obama and the Democrats, but others in the private sector would have their bull gored by the rising socialist. Some might have thought Obama would exclude those who did not participate in TARP or ask for government assistance from this unprecedented government intrusion, but I knew Obama would make a grab for all the power he could get. Obama and the Democrats may extend the "helping hand" of government to sustain the nation's dying newspapers. Don't expect any complaint about violation of the First Amendment or how accepting Federal aid would make newspapers compliant instruments of the administration-they mostly are even before the first stimulus check. No matter how ambitious Obama's expansion of government becomes, he will continue to enjoy rave reviews in the dinosaur media, his leftism, race, and ability to blame Bush make him invulnerable, immune from criticism.

The Incoherent Babblers

The last President Bush was regarded as less than eloquent, though those with close personal interaction with him, such as the families of fallen soldiers, generally thought him to be sincere. Obama and his myth of greatness, created by the old line media, is called grand eloquent, though when speaking off the cuff, without his speechwriters and teleprompters, he is often just as flustered as Bush was. But it is not the officeholders who are my focus today but their supporters. Bush's backers tended to be reasoned and well-informed with a working knowledge of the issues, our history, and civics, many of them listeners of talk radio, while Obama's voters tend to favor emotion. Whether hearty union operatives (read labor thugs) or from the realm of academe, Obamites resort to feelings or straw man arguments to explain Democrat Party appeal. Last Saturday, I attended some horse races and whether it was the tenured Vanderbilt lecturer who claimed, "Aren't we a hell of a lot better off now with such a great leader?" or the serving staff at a carving station who were ebullient, with "hope for change", "change for hope", or any of the asinine permutations, those who follow Obama have no idea what he actually stands for or where he is taking the nation. On Thursday, a realtor showed me a marquee property she is listing at $2.1 million. She holds a Masters degree and seems perfectly balanced in every way, but her lemming-like adherence to Obama. She brought him into the sales pitch on a building that Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton composed many of their hits in, saying how in keeping with the administration's vision what a great green and environmentally friendly building this was. Assuredly, the architect(s) in 1928 gave no consideration to the building's environmental impact. People seemed to have a lot more sense back then.

Best Behind US

Tim Geithner, noted tax cheat and Treasury Secretary, said he was determined to overcome the normal economic cycle on Sunday. He said he wanted to prevent a "boom". I assume he wants a steady course, with an economy on an even keel without booms or busts. Yet, the Obama administration has not hesitated to disrupt the cycle which would have produced recovery if allowed to self-correct, by massive and unprecedented government spending by way of stimulus, new, more intrusive regulation of business including the cap and trade system Obama is pushing for, and even outright nationalization of financial (AIG) and automotive companies (Chrysler with GM soon likely to follow). If a national care system follows, the America we have known B.O. (Before Obama) may not be recoverable, even if Republicans or a third, conservative party manages to achieve office, even with the right retaking the House and Senate. So far as I am aware, once granted, no entitlement program has ever been taken away. Now may be the last chance to stop rationed care, and I am not sanguine that the will exists to stop this freedom-stealing, life-altering, death-hastening advance of government intrusion into all our lives. Obama may take your guns, but you will have a nice government provided health card in their place to monitor the most personal aspects of your life from STDs, to whether you smoke, to whether you or your children carry genetic diseases (or even genetic disease markers). I never realized there were so many fools willing to relinquish blood-earned liberty so fast.

The Horsey Bacchanal

Saturday, I attended one of Nashville, Tennessee's premier charity fundraising events, the Iroquois Steeplechase that benefits the Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. The horses seemed to ignore the throng of spectators and the crowd mostly ignored the horses. The racing was purely incidental. They could have had a tailgate party in a mud field and charged the same admission. Hardly anyone would have noticed the absence of horses and the hospital would have raised just as much money. Who knew so much of life in high society resembled a frat party?

Freedom and Prosperity

The nation's in a pickle/ When the dollar's worth a nickle/ It's time to drown in George Dickel/ When Obama's raising the hammer and sickle/ ACORN says thanks/ As he seizes the banks/ Obama forms new brownshirt ranks/ Backed like Waco, with our own tanks/ To make sure hunters and sportsmen have no more than blanks/ The artful dodger we've elected/ Doesn't care if we're protected/ Doesn't need to be respected/ Just as long as every aspect of our lives is directed/ From the central planning bureau in D. C./ There is no liberty left for you or me.

Buck Stops Elsewhere

Louis Caldera has fallen on his sword to assuage Obama's vanity. Made the sacrificial lamb in the New York City flyover, Caldera resigned, taking the blame, shame, and disgrace with him. I wonder which major national media outlet will afford Caldera the opportunity to tell his side of the story? I am certain none of them will with the possible exception of Fox. This deflecting responsibility for mistakes while taking credit for every auspicious occurrence will be a hallmark of Obama as it was with "Go ask Janet Reno" Bill Clinton. Barack Obama has very narrow shoulders for someone who takes credit for holding up the weight of the world.

Wall of Lies

The Obama administration is constructing false scenarios all over the place to advance a socialist agenda while maintaining popularity in the polls. The unduly rosy picture of the bank stress tests both heartens investors, fueling the current suckers' rally and denies the control economy aspect prevalent in the structure of the Obama agenda. Saying one has no intention of nationalizing banks, means very little if by converting the government's preferred shares to common stock in any coming crisis (the possibility of which the stress tests deliberately minimize), the banks are effectively nationalized with existing common shareholders position so diluted by the government intervention that they have no control of the operations of the bank and their shares are devalued (presuming any value remains). An investor in auto maker Chrysler was philosophical about the central planning takeover-should I call this the Obama five year plan, as the wits in Moscow called their strangling of enterprise and initiative?-he mused, "It is better to have one percent of something than one percent of nothing." This is self-evident, but our founding fathers must be turning over in their graves that so many free men so willingly gave up economic liberty and self-determination.

The Freedom Robbers

The world is once again at a crossroads. Beauty pageant contestants who defend normality are pilloried and hounded relentlessly by the homosexual-supporting cabal that is the mainstream media. An innocuous American talk show host is banned from England. Wahhab fanatics are permitted to spout all manner of incitement against infidels and so-called apostate Muslims on soapboxes in European capitals, but Mike Savage is simply too dangerous with his "borders, language, culture" idea to be tolerated in the country that spawned the Shoe Bomber and the 7/7 murder spree. The world cowers before Islamist expansionism that seeks to subjugate, convert, or murder. America, the storehouse of liberty, is reduced to an apologetic, socialist enterprise mimicking the European countries from which so many Americans or their progenitors fled. The world embraces promoters of abortion on demand, euthanasia for the weak and inconvenient, a life of homosexual promiscuity that leads to the spread of disease and hastens death, but God-forbid a Miss USA runner up have discreet photos taken as a model which is her occupation or a radio host warn homosexuals that they should rally against Iran which is hanging their Persian brethren from cranes-perversion and forced submission to Islam are perfectly acceptable-only speaking against them is an intolerable act. Where is Tom Paine when we need him?

Feeling Their Oats

I dare not make a blanket statement about public employees, as I realize that in every large organization, there are dedicated people, but their morale must really be sapped when because of the structure of government employee unions, they see those who are derelict, compensated equally, if not more, advanced when they do not merit promotion, and minority status or national origin, confer preference over hard work and ability (affirmative action). Today, for the second time in three months, our city's recycling program has been haphazard and left refuse strewn over my yard and more important, blowing around the street I live on which happens to be a US Highway. They have created a road hazard and a danger for me when I had to dart around traffic to abate it. If I had tossed newspapers to blow into oncoming traffic, I would have ended up in environmental court and deserved it. The attitude when I called the city was to either mock my predicament or give me the call another number runaround. This is what happens when public employees are no longer public servants but view themselves as our lords and masters with an ironclad tenure of a job for life with a progressive mayor who backs them, right up to a US President who feels if you are not a part of the team pulling with him in your government or union job, you can go screw yourself. It is a shame that our formerly great nation is devolving to the extent that you need a writ of mandamus or a media crew by your side to get public workers to do the job that you are being bled dry for with your tax payments.

Recipe for Disaster

The Obama administration is going to display strength and an iron will. Obama will not direct the might of America against the murderous Sudanese regime. We will not send forces in to thwart the Taliban in Pakistan. US troops will not overturn the last Stalinist outpost with its cult of personality starving millions in North Korea. The US will sit silently as Iran develops a nuclear weapon apace with the avowed intention of destroying Israel, according to Iran's chief of staff as he recently stated in "eleven days". America will never flex muscle in Latin America as the freedom crushing forces of Hugo Chavez and the Reds crawl across the continent, accomplishing what they were never able to do with the backing of the Soviet Union. Where America will show her mettle will be against the tiny Jewish enclave with its democratic principles, its polyglot status having welcomed refugees from all over the world, even Muslims fleeing Darfur, and its tolerance which permits vigorous opposition parties, even Arab ones, all groups access to their religious sites, and even homosexual "love parades" that rival Berlin's, this bastion of Western values in the vast desert of Arab tyranny. If Israel does not dance to Obama's tune, committing slow suicide by welcoming the creation of a hostile entity dedicated to overcoming the rest of the Jewish state and refusing to recognize it as a Jewish state from the start, Obama will squeeze Israel to death. Obama can actively strangle Israel, he may allow Iran to finish off the "Zionist enterprise", he may permit Israel to be extinguished in dribs and drabs by simply having the US delegate abstain or not veto progressively more crushing measures enacted against Israel by the United Nations. US Jews who widely supported Obama who have any affinity for Israel allowed themselves to be deceived by the close relationship Obama enjoyed with his Jewish aides, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel. These men are witting or unwitting kapos who place their highest loyalty to their boss, not to any nation, the US or certainly not the Jewish state. Israel's only option is a first strike to incapacitate the Iranian menace, whether or not Netanyahu agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state and initiates the piecemeal destruction of his own country or stands strong and maintains a sovereign Israel in defensible borders, refusing to place a knife at her own heart.

Nashville's Convention Center

The city of Nashville (the author's hometown) is proposing a new convention center with a cost estimated at half a billion dollars (which will surely be exceeded). This expenditure at a time of economic contraction is foolhardy. Las Vegas with every attraction in the world can not sustain convention business and tourism. How can Nashville, without even a theme park hope to compete with the Orlandos and gambling capitals of America and the world? This over-ambitious project will create some temporary construction jobs, largely no doubt, filled by illegal aliens who dominate the construction industry here (the labor pool for construction, anyway). This may seem like inside baseball for non-Tennesseans, but inevitably Federal dollars are diverted for a project this enormous. Besides, this sort of New Deal stimulus spending will spread all over the nation unless we stand in the way now.

Incitement and Lies

Freedom House has reduced Israel's rating from free to partly free in that organization's latest assessment of freedom of the press. It is remarkable to me that Israel allows in consistently anti-Jewish reporters along with the young troublemakers of the International Solidarity Movement who make it a point to provoke Israeli security forces by participating in illegal assembly and rioting. I do not see robust reporting taking place against government interests in any Arab or Muslim country. Iran has even recently imprisoned an American reporter of Iranian extraction for imagined espionage. Read Haaretz with its consistent criticism of any Israeli action of self-defense and an editorial policy that delegitimizes the Israeli state and then try to say Israel's press is not free.

The Short Fall

Often when a society succumbs to a revolutionary movement, an epic struggle is involved (or a myth of one is created). Russia only turned red after Lenin was exiled, made his way back, and overcame a Tsar and then the Mensheviks to consolidate power. Mao Zedong had his long march and his battle with the nationalists of Chang Hai Chek and his Kuomintang. Castro fought his way out of the mountains and into power with Che at his side. The Ayatollah Khomeini made his way back from banishment in Paris to declare the Islamic Republic. All our harebrained Hawaiian had to do was win (steal) an election. Note: I am thinking about rechristening our less than glorious leader "the half-baked Hawaiian" because his lack of preparedness for office has been manifested in his being rolled by foreign leaders at each of his international confabs or "the ly'in Hawaiian" because of his broken promises about bipartisanship, good government (a cabinet of tax cheats), and openness.

Two Different Worlds

I am a reader (and occasional editorial contributor) of the Jerusalem Post. I could not help but to remark on two stories that have appeared there in recent days. One story reports that Israel is ignoring illegal Palestinian construction rather than dismantling it as they so often have done with Jewish building (perhaps not wanting to inflame world sensibilities and the already hostile international press) which can be readily contrasted with what happens when Jews build in the so-called occupied territories, so called because Jew-baiters and their self-loathing Jewish peacenik accomplices call them occupied. If natural growth occurs in Judea and Samaria, families grow with children being born necessitating a bedroom addition, a young couple marries and moves out of the homes of parents into a house of their own, a Jew who has made aliyah is joyous because she has had a family member perhaps from the Commonwealth of Independent States (the former Soviet Union) join them but now requires someplace larger, peace patsies like Peace Now document this as colonialist expansionism and present it to the world as an act of aggression against the Palestinians. The Palestinians hold up this burgeoning which would be deemed normal and celebrated as progress any where else in the world as a crime against humanity. Even the US State Department chimes in with the bloom of new or expanding Jewish life on G-d given land being called "unhelpful" or a violation by Israel of past agreements and an obstacle to peace. When a so-called settler builds a shed, I'm surprised if the Security Council does not call a special session to abhor this reprehensible act. Let me now contrast this report with the story that actually appeared first. Anwar Brigith, a 59 year old Palestinian, is to face the ultimate sanction-death-for selling land to Jews. While this has received some coverage, there seems no great outrage in world public opinion which would surely be hysterical if Jews had a law mandating death for their brethren who had commerce with Muslims. How can there be any peace with so pervasive a genocidal and uncompromising mindset ( as Brigith's plight illustrates) on the Palestinian side? Why is there an international fetish against Jews who build, but virtual silence about Arabs who destroy?