More Excess Baggage

The world has been shocked by the brutal murder of an honor student at the hands of street thugs in Chicago. Not since the LA riot video of Reginald Denny being dragged from the cab of his truck and set upon has the public seen this kind of anarchy on US streets. Scenes like this are a sad reminder of South African "necklacing", where a tire was forced around a hapless victim's neck, gasoline poured on it, and it ignited to fatal results. Or the wanton violence of the head choppers, jihadists with their dull blades and minds in the Middle East and Chechnya. This horrible event can not be a ringing endorsement for the city in which it occurred to host the Olympics. May there be swift justice for the savage perpetrators. On another matter of justice, Hollyweird seems to have rallied around Roman Polanski, an admitted child rapist. The entertainment community has long been a model of excess and eccentricity with Fatty Arbuckle, who notoriously stretched the ironically named Virginia Rappe beyond her limits with fatal consequences to Busby Berkeley whose drunk driving skills left something to be desired with more dead strewn off the road, rallying to protect their own regardless of the offense, but it is hard to conceive of anyone standing up to defend drugging and raping a thirteen year old. Maybe Polanski can share a correctional facility with Manson who murdered Polanski's first wife. That would make for some bloody bedfellows with Manson, I am sure, the one left standing-wiry, crazy little cuss that he is with his iconic little forehead swastika that I would gladly remove-why stop with the Nazi emblem when you can have the whole head? It would be good to see Polanski in the can instead of in like Flynn.

Matter of Priorities

What is really important? With America engaged in a world-wide war on terror, with massive combat forces deployed in Iraq, with growing problems subduing the Taliban in Afghanistan, President Obama has evidently talked to his commander on the ground there, General Stanley McChrystal, just once, but Obama has been so intimately involved with his adopted hometown Chicago's effort to lure the Olympics that he is personally flying to Copenhagen to boost that city's effort to clinch hosting the games. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns- even many Chicagoans, who are not Daley machine insiders who will profit from the games or politically- connected Illinois Democrat elites with vested interests, do not want their city and state burdened with the costs of hosting the games at a time of great economic dislocation. They know that cities formerly hosting Olympics have often been buried with an aftermath of debt. They remember terror attacks in Atlanta and Munich that could be replicated at a time of vastly worse global war on terror in which terror appears to be holding its own if not winning, particularly on the aforementioned Afghan front and in neighboring Pakistan. With America's economy beset and the Midwest grievously afflicted, many in Illinois want bread before circus and most Americans want the President's laser focus to be on waging and winning (victory- a notion Obama has said he is "uncomfortable"with) the war before he worries about generated bribes and kickbacks for his old Chicago pals. In Chicago, the political class has always believed in taking care of itself first, so I guess the troops out there fighting for all of us just have to go pound sand.

Waited Too Long

A brush fire not confronted early can become an inferno. A threat not contained when manageable can have unprecedented and unimaginable consequences. The international left that consciously advances evil is likely to bring charges against Israeli leaders, military officers, and possibly even enlisted men for non-existent war crimes that never took place as Israel finally answered the barrage of missiles, rockets, and mortars from Gaza. Now the Jewish state faces a threat unimaginably worse than any issuing from Iran's proxies in Gaza or Lebanon- total nuclear annihilation. The lunatic religious fanatics of Iran have unleashed carnage on their own citizens since the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini. Jimmy Carter, who waxed moral while facilitating the rise of the world's most murderous brand of fanaticism, is the first and therefore most blameworthy in the line of leaders that could have prevented what the world now faces. He saw the Shah as repressive with SAVAK trying to prevent the rise of Islamism and incidentally infiltration and overthrow by neighboring Soviet Reds using unsavory techniques including violence and even torture against the most dangerous elements that sought to undermine the Pahlavi regime. Carter simply could not tolerate what he saw as an autocrat and allowed Khomeini to rise in his place. Khomieni went after the apparatchiks of the Shah's government with a vengeance- slaughtering thousands. Perhaps that was to be expected, but then he turned his attention to the pacifist Baha'i community particularly in Shiraz and as the world was silent, killed thousands more. Khomieni persecuted other ethnic and religious minorities, disappearing several Jews who unlike the Baha'i had enough influence in the world that violence against them was not ignored (at least generating some attention). Carter was given the ultimate opportunity to reverse Khomeinism when the Shia leadership conspired with "students" to seize the US embassy in Tehran. Carter dallied, refused to use US might to the extent he could have when it mattered and oversaw the national humiliation of the United States at the hands of the mullahs. The US squandered more opportunities to thwart the Iranian madness as that nation focused her resources on developing atomic weaponry through the Clinton administration and the last President Bush, who rightly saw Iran as one of the three heads of the Axis of Evil. But Israel saw the looming threat and also did not do what was needed to stop it. Sharon, who was supposed to be a brilliant tactician and bold military adventurer, contracted Israel security needs vis-a-vis Iran out to the world when Israel could have staged her own attack while the threat was just budding as she had done when Iraq was aiming for a nuclear capacity, but he did nothing. Olmert seemed more interested in feathering his own nest in petty ways than advancing Israel's safety. Now, Netanyahu faces the Hobson's choice of destroying as much of Iran's nuclear, industrial, and military capacity in a preemptive first strike as Israel can, or the loss of his own nation to nuclear carnage- a new holocaust Iranian leaders have said they would gladly sacrifice twenty million of their own people to achieve. Even as the world sees Ahmadinejad unleash the force of the mullah regime against Iran's own people, leaders with the ability to stop genocidal intentions do not sense the urgency. As has been the case in events far too often, the world makes itself willfully powerless against evil because while the virus was small, no one bothered to halt its spread.

Perils of Age

Someone near and dear to me is matching the most famous German field gun in eighty-eight ways of sullen splendor. I avoid maudlin sentiment rigorously but now I send this tribute through tears. He struggles each day now in so many ways- once he stood like a tree, sturdy and intrepid, now his broken form bends like a reed, wavering with the wind but never his spirit or ideals which remain unbowed. As a child, he earned the bread and milk for six others without hint of complaint by dint of sweat of the brow. He worked his deft little hands on acid-filled automobile batteries while a family business was stolen and prosperity was sucked away by the winds of depression. He answered his nation's call in her time of crisis and learned to use his mind more than his hands to prosper. He explored continents and now fights incontinence. As his body declined, so too did his taste change. He went from loving Frank Sinatra music and western action movies to now, drifting off to Babette's Feast and Whales of August, listening to Liberace and Lawrence Welk. He used to drink whiskey like water and eat a porterhouse at a sitting. Now, he chokes on water saying it is too strong and says his butter soft fillet is too tough. The other morning at two, there was a mighty thud and he who volunteered as a glider pilot is prostrate with half severed ear and broken rib(s). I scoop him up as a babe in arms as he once lifted me. Please keep Simcha ben Jacob in your prayers.

Slay the Dinosaur

The moribund media, hidebound by ideological constraint, is bleeding viewers and readers as FOX News, conservative talk radio, and web sites like Breitbart and Drudge all enjoy banner years. No longer able to credibly deny their liberal bias, the old line leftist outlets are in some cases literally going bankrupt, only appropriate as the agenda they flog is a bankrupt one. They are the handmaidens of Obama and discerning consumers are fleeing their lies in droves. Fundamentally, consumers of news do not want their common sense and most deeply held values consistently mocked and insulted. I have a recipe for saving the archaic purveyors of lie and myth and Red agenda, but why would I want to sustain propagandists? They will not follow the suggestion anyway- so here goes: Abandon the quest for social justice and crusader of the left you learned in journalism school and remember who, what, when, why, and how; question the current leader the way you interrogated Bush; do not give people in power who think like you a free pass, and most important- pursue truth. Of course, there are other institutional factors such as Rupert Murdoch's much publicized and oft-commented upon battles with unions, but when "stop the presses" is heard for the final time and the main stream media is buried in the grave of its own making, I will know the wound was self-inflicted.

Strike the Colors

Never has an American President been so eager to subordinate the needs and interests of the American people to the whims of foreign powers. This was manifested at Obama's UN General Assembly and Security Council sessions, at the G-8 summit and at the G-20 where Obama placed the world above his own nation. Much more of a one-worlder and proponent of the new world order than the first President Bush, a committed internationalist, Obama seems ready to abandon our military advantage, relinquish our sovereignty, and be reduced to less than a second rate power as the realpolitik world sees our weakness under his stewardship and mocks Obama as US interests are stepped on as a doormat the world over. Obama even removed more than three hundred and eighty agents from the Mexican border in a time of a drug war there and an ever greater threat of jihad terror with each passing day bringing us closer to the next 9/11. This is no time to lower our guard. Obama abdicates US leadership under the pretext of being a world leader, he has nuclear arms reduction fantasies that if implemented leave us at Red China's mercy. Obama believes his "green promises" and efforts to control the climate can lower the oceans in his effort to fight the myth of global warming as the earth actually cools. Obama mires us in hopeless debt, utterly devaluing the currency and leaving us vulnerable to complete economic ruination. It has long been said that "in the end we are all dead", Obama just wants to make sure we are all poor first with his insane effort to equalize outcomes around the globe as he seems to believe he is more than President of the United States but ruler of the world.

Home Schoolers' Argument

A video emanating from a New Jersey school with elementary school age students being indoctrinated in song by instructor(s) whose fealty lies not with the nation but to the President to worship Obama is the most compelling motivation I have yet seen to teach one's children in the home and not expose them to the coming Soviet-style education system. This incident portrays brainwashing and should never have been foisted on children.

An Evil Doppelganger

Has anyone else noticed the strange resemblance in appearance between Saddam Hussein, the butcher of Baghdad and Manuel Zelaya, the Chavez-Castro wannabe, now sheltering in Brazil's embassy in Honduras? With Zelaya ranting about poison gas, Israeli hit teams, and radiation all out to get him, the Honduran dictator in the making proves the similarities to Saddam are more than just physical.

Dilution of Power

The G-8, the group of the world's seven largest industrial nations, plus Russia, have agreed to follow President Obama and extend policy-shaping decisions to the G-20, which includes the most productive of the so-called developing nations. Obama wants to give more voice to these smaller economies, which by necessity means giving up some control. This coupled with the prospect that the dollar will lose its status as the reserve currency of the world is troubling. California alone, if separated from the rest of the United States, would still be the fourth largest economy in the world. Even though contraction has occurred, the US is still far in a way the largest economy in the world. Many of our international competitors have echoed Fritz Hollings and accused the US of "too much consumption", resentful of the level of prosperity average Americans enjoy. They agree in this regard with our own President who feels we need to be taken down a notch. But when Americans by necessity mimic Chinese and Japanese who have long been net savers and sock more of their earnings away, revenue coming in to government in America goes down and taxes consequently go up. This is no time for the US to be further weakening herself and subjugating the needs of United States citizens to the interests of foreign nations.

Now I Understand

Massachusetts Democrats believe in two sets of rules- one for them and one for the rest of us. The supposed fonts of erudition from Harvard's hallowed halls, right into Governor Patrick's office have spawned the idea of "this is OK for me, but not for thee". From the late Ted Kennedy with his drowning pool to customized law for Democrat partisan political advantage, this was seen once more in the hurried legislation to facilitate the installation of Paul Kirk to replace Chappaquiddick Ted. When a Democrat occupies the US Senate seat, but a Republican sits as governor, there is no way, he (Romney) will be permitted to appoint a temporary replacement to fill the seat until a special election. But when the shoe is on the other foot, with a Democrat governor holding the reins of power, the vacancy must be filled immediately- another Democrat must fill the breach and vote us into the "hell care" of public option socialism. So Democrats operate under a double standard with loyalty to party emphasized above law and country.

The World's Emperor

Yesterday, Barack Hussein Obama strode to the podium of the United Nations General Assembly with imperial gusto. His vainglorious plans for the world are the fantasy of an insolent and arrogant blatant incompetent. Obama is a blazing dangerous fool intent to spread godless poison around the globe. Obama articulated his pipe dream of nuclear disarmament, where if he succeeds, plenty of nations will sign on, but our evil and destructive adversaries will simply ignore their commitments, while we dutifully relinquish the ability to protect ourselves from them, and our most vulnerable ally Israel may well be the first sacrificial lamb, being forced to give up her nuclear arsenal in a trade in which the world states falsely that they will confront and contain the threat from Iran. Thus made feckless by promises the world never intended to keep, the Jewish state will be left at the mercy of the Arab and Muslim states with their vastly larger populations and huge numerical advantages in conventional forces and Iran may accomplish the goal of removing the Zionist entity from the map without ever firing a shot. So, Obama will lead most of the world against God, goodness, and righteousness while using his platform to debase his own country- the US which has fed and freed more of the world than any other nation or combination of nations. Yes, I bemoan the catastrophic betrayal of allies and democracy, the Czech Republic, Poland, Honduras, and Israel, but my profound concern is for the United States which has never suffered under such mis-leadership. Obama can proclaim his corrupted vision all he wants and international leftists and elites and foreign powers will on the surface applaud him and rally to his cause, because they all wish to weaken America, but the whole world calling an eagle a rabbit does not make it so. Do not permit a leader who believes the universe revolves around his every utterance to ground us down. Lift up liberty, save America, let freedom take wing.

Time for Consecration

We who are feeble lean on your strength/ We sordid sinners who have plumbed the depths of depravity/ We who must be buttressed in our own frailty/ We wallow in the weakness of the flesh even as it shrivels around us/ In a profane glory, with false pride that knows no bounds/ Arrogance and insolence- not commending the Uncaused First Cause that gave us our very breath/ That sees all our flaws that are all we are and ever can be/ Yet permits us to remain in his presence/ He knows our darkness and still casts the Light/ Oh, the one who sustains us though we deserve no such clemency/ And heaven's mercy answers "lowly, lowly" with the blessed forgiveness of "Holy, Holy"/ When we feel despair/ He is there/ With all our deficiency/ We are bolstered by His strong hand/ We live in dissolution/ Yet He perpetuates our land/ We ignore and defy His command/ But He sees the prodigal with degradation, dissipation, and despair/ And still He welcomes us into His house/ He hears every prayer as we beseech and beckon in our brokenness/ Yet He is never disillusioned with the wayward children of his own creation/ The beleaguered believers of this troubled nation/ And allows the breath to return to our bodies in all our corruption/ With the lie of humility, the shabby profession of innocence, and pretense of faith/ That are infinitesimal to the Source/ When the truths we are able to comprehend are by our nature false/ The Lord who is so much greater/ Hears the pitiful plea, a drop of rain in the oceans or a speck of dust in the midst of His firmament of sky and stars, countless and ever changing/ Can we claim to comprehend?/ Such is our lassitude, our willful weakness, our choice/ Our meager portion is so much more than we merit/ And still He delivers.

Narrative of Lies

Barack Hussein Obama termed the Israeli settlement enterprise "illegitimate" at the United Nations General Assembly today after falsely calling the conflict between the Jews and Palestinians a cycle (only a cycle if you can not recognize the difference between a rapist and his victim, a concentration camp inmate and an SS man, an armed robber and the cop trying to detain him) at the tripartite meeting between Obama, Israel's prime minister, and the leader of one of the Palestinian factions that pretends an interest in the peace process while using it only as a way to make war by other means against Israel in the Arab quest to eliminate the Jewish state. This sellout of an ally, pulling the rug out from Israel when she is under existential threat from Iran, is not occurring in a vacuum, but against the backdrop of the deliberate demonization of Israel (and Jews) in the world's press. The dinosaur media is misrepresenting the history of the conflict and putting the onus solely on the Jews without regard to the fact that the Palestinian Liberation Organization was founded with the aim of Israel's destruction in 1964- three years before the so-called territories came under Israel's alleged occupation in the 1967 war. Palestinian Authority leader Abbas comes from this PLO wing which has never affirmatively recognized Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, nor wavered from the goal in the PLO charter of supplanting Israel with a Palestinian state. These "moderate" Palestinians share the same terminal objective of pushing the Jews into the sea as Hamas- another Palestinian faction equally committed to Israel's destruction but unwilling to broach negotiation, even as a mere tactic of war. Almost all Palestinians, and all those with power, weapons, and a popular mandate want to eradicate the Jewish state, with no two state solution but with a final solution for Middle East Jewry. Much of the world's populace has thrown in their lot with those who oppose the presence of Jews on the land, out of religious affinity with fellow Muslims, out of deep-seated anti-Semitism, out of a woeful ignorance of history, out of an absence of Biblical instruction (the claim of the Jews to the land has Supreme documentation), out of a misplaced sense of liberalism which has become an unthinking loyalty to the international left, out of a desire for cheap and plentiful oil, out of a desire to root for the underdog, imagining that to be the Palestinian- not the Jew who through centuries has worn the target of much of the world, or out of any combination of the aforementioned factors. So the BBC, the American networks, the salon of the academy, and now even President Obama declare the settler the bad actor, the culprit for the world without regard for the fact that the Jews have no arbiter who can deliver peace. As has been said in the past, if the Palestinians give up their weapons, they would have land, rights, and peace but if the Israelis disarm, there will soon be no Jews- no live Jews as anything but dhimmi anyway in the Holy Land. By vilifying the innocent, the world becomes accomplice to evil.

Adventures in Sobriety

Conservatives are not perfect people. They are as flawed as anyone else. In Rush Limbaugh's case, the mega-talker had a well-documented battle with prescription pills. Rush survived his addiction and his already huge success has only been magnified. Glenn Beck endured and overcame great loss and the quest for the constant high that sadness left him. Even actor Kelsey Grammer battled demons of narcotic dependency after sustaining more premature loss and family tragedy than any person should endure. But all three men living in the glare of the spotlight have achieved, in spite or perhaps in a way because of, their great personal struggles. Whatever cross you have to bear, there is hope- you do not have to carry it alone.

Why Language Matters

A relatively obscure story that should be grabbing more attention received some airplay today. Manuel Zelaya, the deposed Honduran aspiring strongman has crept back into the country whose democratic process and institutions he was trying to subvert. He is sheltering in the embassy of Latin power Brazil, after he failed in his attempt with Hugo Chavez's backing at making himself ruler for life in the mold of a Castro or Chavez himself. The world's diplomats, the US State Department at the behest of our President, and the dinosaur media are all referring to the wannabe dictator as the victim of a coup. Zelaya and his cadre of Marxists attempted an anti-Constitutional maneuver to extend his term against the will of the legislature, the courts, and most of the people of Honduras. Zelaya was the one attempting the coup, but in most of the world, this tyrant is the aggrieved party. That is how language is tortured to turn truth on its head.

The Climate Quilt

The Today Show highlighted an environmental quilt, purportedly created by brainwashed wee ones but obviously assembled by their elders, meant to mourn our destruction of the earth, the way the AIDS quilt "celebrates" the lives of HIV victims. A child was even brought forward to offer her "programmed" suggestions to thwart man-caused climate change-reuse plastic bottles and turn off lights when you leave the house to fight the chimera. Yes, enjoy the petrochemical residue in your plastic bottles as they progressively deteriorate as you refill them. And turn off lights, harming your security and that of your neighbors when you leave the house. People who pay utility bills already cease using non-essential power without having to find a child to lead them. This is more indoctrination and nonsense propaganda from a company GE with a vested interest in hyping environmental causes and the backers of world governance and subordination of national and individual rights to the UN at the global climate summit with elites, corporations, and international bureaucrats all conspiring to steal our rights.

The Free Lunch

The Senate meets today to mull the health care regime with Democrats claiming the burden of the program will be borne by eliminating fraud and inefficiencies. If such a level of snafus prevailed, we would have long ago claimed the savings and would not be involved in the "hell care" debate today. Greater efficiencies do not seem to exist in the VA health care debacle or the Post Office, but the Democrats can magically wring them out of the system without costing the taxpayers anything. And the Senate talks now focus on the program costing the poor even less, but this would never create an additional expense for the more productive Americans-especially the taxed to death middle class.

Real Horror Show

For the first time in my life, I fear the loss of freedom in my country, the give away of sovereignty and patrimony, and the very loss of our Republic. Not much to laugh about when a buffoon interviewed a budding tyrant on Letterman-not a very entertaining program in its heyday and now a misery to watch, but I am willing to endure a lot for my readers. Letterman started his monologue with a tirade against Republicans with jabs at Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford to make his upcoming guest absolutely comfortable that he would be preaching to the choir. Letterman introduced the Big Kahuna and gave him a most apropos gift for an environmentalist wacko (which truly minimizes Obama's green overreach which has more to do with mechanisms of control than a non-existent fix for climate), a heart-shaped potato from a woman in the audience. Obama presented the illusion of authority and was greeted with real deference, but despite the appearance of leadership, Obama demeaned the office with much of what he said. Even the obligatory mention of sending boys and girls to their deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq belied the fact that the ship of victory, helmed by every previous American President but Truman, Johnson, and Carter is rudderless with Obama spoiling for retreat from Iraq and increasingly shying away from commitments to win in Afghanistan. Obama campaigned on the premise that Bush had taken his eye off the ball by going to Iraq and diluting the effort to win in Afghanistan and kill Osama bin Laden-now Obama only seeks a way to placate the leftist peacenik base who share his raise the flag of surrender ethos against jihad as well as in suicidal unilateral nuclear disarmament. As for the dreary atmospherics of the Letterman broadcast, Obama seems to be a devotee of the speeches of Hitler-using the word "folks" quite a bit, from our beleaguered citizenry trying to cope with Obama's assault on our free markets that have created the most prosperous nation the world has ever known, to the "folks" in Afghanistan who dispatched the murderers of three thousand. Maybe Obama is conflating the two, and doing to the American people what he should be trying to do to our nation's enemies. If Obama could inflict as much damage on al Qaeda and the Taliban with his "good intentions" as he has inflicted on us, we would have secured victory already. At least Obama's cold insouciance was not as boring as Letterman usually is- one a so-called entertainer and one a so-called leader, positioned to lead us over the edge.

All Hail Obama

After his media sycophant saturation tour Sunday, Obama will continue tonight with an appearance on vicious political partisan David Letterman's unfunny chat show. Letterman- best remembered by conservatives as the man who thought cracking a joke about a baseball player raping Sarah Palin's underage daughter would bring rollicking laughter, will genuflect to Obama-just ecstatic that the "Great Leveler" would stoop to come on Dave's show. Obama will continue to distort the universal care scheme, exaggerating its benefits and not revealing its true cost in monetary terms or in the freedom patients necessarily will forfeit. Letterman will be obsequious and will do everything he can to tell the viewers that the fertilizer pile swarming with flies Obama is pitching is delicious bonbons. Letterman, who pilloried Bush for eight years with venom, is so enamored with Obama, that he is willing to dig in himself and show America just how good Obama's candy for us tastes. Never forget, those in Congress are not going to savor the flavor- they refuse to subject themselves and their families to what they will impose on us and will keep their Cadillac health plans (that even as our families are denied care, we will continue to pay for) as we wait in long lines until we die off.

No Control Freak

Our Dear Leader graced the Sunday Morning wonk shows with his presence, except FOX which at least attempts to present some semblance of balance against the backdrop of the other leftist networks. Obama was on the defensive despite his questioners' evident admiration and gentle pliancy. Obama denied any effort to take over health care despite the fact that he has essentially nationalized both the automotive and banking industries. No, the brilliant One would never try to monopolize power while in the same ABC interview, he dismisses the concerns of any American who has seen the taint of ACORN exposed. We have a power mad novice blithely grabbing for the brass ring of absolutism with his left hand while telling you to focus on all he wants to give you with the mirage of what you already have and will have to continue to pay for with his right hand.

Profession or Inclination

I never thought I would find myself in these pages praising a pimp and a prostitute but that is what I, in a way, find myself doing today. Andrew Breitbart, FOX News, and conservative talk radio have rocked the world with revelations about the depths of depravity at the leftist activist organization ACORN by focusing this week on the intrepid young muckrakers James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles who exposed rampant, grotesque corruption that the mainstream media with all its resources (cadres of investigative reporters, powerful producers, Sixty Minutes, Dateline NBC, 20/20) would not do-making that biased, moribund old-line press dinosaur even more irrelevant. James and Hannah using a mere $1300 and a great concept, involving costumes right out of Starsky and Hutch in the seventies, went to ACORN front shops nationwide to demonstrate the pervasive nature of perversion therein. The widespread fraud that ACORN had been assumed to engage in was not brought into the light by Geraldo or John Stossel or a team of pros dispatched by Richard Mellon Scaife or other vastly more experienced, better funded establishment conservatives. Two cub reporters scooped everyone in the press, with Hannah and James proving ACORN to be worse than even most conservatives feared. In a scenario concocted to illustrate just how low ACORN would go, the young pair pretended to be a sex worker and her procurer who intended to bring in underage Latin American girls to serve as sex-slave hookers to fund the pimp's future political aspirations. In every attempt that has been broadcast, in ACORN offices across the nation, Hannah and James succeeded in showing that organization to be devoid of decency, an utterly immoral, evil enterprise-and this is the group Obama and many Democrats have been in bed with for years.

No Safe Harbor

After yesterday's bombing in Kabul, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said foreign troops should leave Afghanistan soon but that Italy would not pull out on her own. Right now an unworkable strategy is being employed with increased mission tempo and responsibility but tremendously restrictive rules of engagement that leave US and allied forces exposed and vulnerable. Along with this mission creep comes the burden of "nation building". This is a futile attempt at winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people who accept the aid, assistance building schools, wells, and roads, then refuse to send their daughters to said schools, have the water from the wells freely distributed to their sons who are gainfully employed in the Taliban and who go down the roads we build to plant improvised explosive devices at night to kill our patrols who come back to help the very people who burn with the desire to kill foreign infidels. This schizophrenic approach is doomed to high and unnecessary casualty failure. The people we are trying to co-opt to our cause and jeopardizing our own troops' lives to protect are the Pashtun cousins, brothers, and fathers of the people who want to kill us and who adore Osama bin Laden and venerate the September 11 attack and cheer each subsequent act of carnage against the West or are the very terrorists themselves who have merely stashed their AKs under rocks. Historians point to the successful suppression of the Malay Insurrection to model the struggle against terrorists and separate them from indigenous support. But I have a more recent example of how to defeat an insurgency-Sri Lanka. The government forces ignored international pressure and consternation in the West, isolated and then killed the Tamil guerrillas by the thousands, using all measure of force available to them to crush all opposition, without any particular concern whether non-combatants who were Tamil and supported the separatist cause were damaged in the crossfire. The only prospect of ever defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, that serves as another front, a staging area, and a recruiting center for the Islamists, is to follow the example of the Sri Lankan military and devastate any opposition in every area it is encountered with or without the cooperation of Pakistan whose ISI intelligence service has played a double game, pretending some common cause against terror while at the same time sponsoring terrorist organizations and operations. The time is long passed where we can coddle the ideological soul mates of bin Laden and expect they will change their minds. The Afghan people are not bystanders or innocent victims of our aggression but the willing hosts of those who brought destruction of our innocents to our shores and often willing confederates in jihad to this day. Those who will not join us to defeat the Taliban or do what is necessary to benefit from our aid and protection which we are delivering at great cost in blood and treasure must be cornered and killed until they know they are a defeated people just as the Japanese realized-only after the annihilation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Out of Bounds

Our political discourse is being tainted with artificial charges of racism in an effort to silence criticism of Obama. Mainstream conservatives are being sullied with charges of race-baiting. Are J.C. Watts, Thomas Sowell, and Walter E. Williams racist when they question the President and his policies? We have a cabal of Democrats and their media lackeys trying to start something-something ugly and unwarranted between the races. Joe Wilson, who was an obscure Congressman, largely unknown, like most Congressmen, outside his district until he blurted out the truth during Obama's speech to the joint session to tout his health care scheme. Suddenly, Wilson is a disguised Klansman, a closet racist, not someone honorable, with an honest disagreement with a dishonest President. Representative Wilson, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck seem to be the lightning rods for the liberal attack machine, including their henchmen in the dinosaur media. Throughout history, when debate is silenced, dictatorships are born.

A Real Czar

Some concern has been raised in the USA regarding Obama's appointment of numerous so-called czars, who are empowered by the President himself without vetting and confirmation by Congress. Obama has more czars than any of his predecessors, but they are largely, to this point, innocuous-Obama's "kitchen cabinet". Russia, on the other hand, has a real Czar in all but name in Vladimir Putin who has maintained the reins of power as Medvedev serves as a figurehead. Putin is up to his old KGB tricks, reminiscent of Czarist intrigues, with political opponents, reporters, and critics gunned down mysteriously at home or poisoned in London by person or persons unknown. They could never be acting as agents of the state, could they? Putin has deceived the last President Bush who looked into his eyes and proved he had no discernment, and Putin has sat across the table from Obama with the steely cold glare of old imperial Russia and scared the hell out of our wet behind the ears President. Obama has capitulated yet again, betraying Poland and the Czech Republic, who took risks offering to host the US missile shield in Europe, by kowtowing to Russian demands and abandoning the program, thereby selling out our "New Europe" allies from the former Eastern Bloc. This leaves all Europe under threat of intimidation and blackmail from nuclear Iran-at whom the program was aimed, rogue states and terrorists, not the bully boy in Moscow. So, Putin steals companies from alleged oligarchs, installs his confederates as oligarchs in their place, squelches dissent, kills opponents, devastates Chechnya, and twists Obama's arm till the boy President whimpers "mercy"-sounds pretty czarist to me.

Israel Under Siege

The Goldstone Inquiry into Israel's conduct in Gaza reached its predictable and predetermined outcome with Israel cast as aggressor, lawbreaker, and international villain. Israel restrained herself in the case of provocation by constant rocket attack that no other nation would put up with and when she finally acted, Israel demonstrated a more judicious use of force than America has shown in Iraq or Afghanistan, in spite of the fact that Hamas systematically and deliberately used their own civilian population as human shields, making civilian casualties inevitable and Hamas, not Israel, culpable. South African Judge Richard Goldstone was selected by the UN to give his forgone conclusion precisely because he is Jewish, just as the anti-Semites orchestrating the execution of the Rosenbergs selected a Jewish judge and prosecutor to give the chimera of objectivity and avoid being labeled anti-Semites in the wake of revelations about the annihilation of Europe's Jews in the Holocaust. So a Jewish judge is once again empowered to give the sheen of respectability to a lynching and multilateral organizations and an international court regime that were created largely to ensure that the Shoah never again be repeated are turned against the Jewish state at the time of her greatest need with an American leader in Obama determined to do nothing to substantively protect the Jewish state from undeserved international opprobrium or physical destruction from Iran. How could the US president who does not recognize the sanctity of American borders, who will not defend America's sovereignty, and who is a committed internationalist, in favor of multilateralism to his own country's detriment (willing to abdicate strategic decisions to international bodies and trusting in the utterly politicized International Criminal Court), be expected to do anything else? Obama will not stand for America's security, so surely Israel can not rely on Obama to stand for hers. Israel is at her greatest peril, treated as a pariah by much of the world and left to face Iran alone. Let all decent people, Jewish and Gentile, and especially America's evangelicals who still still wield so much clout, rally to speak for beleaguered Israel at this, the time of her greatest need.

The Capitalist Enemy

Much of the Democratic party is at war with capitalism. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is a chieftain when it comes to the war against free enterprise while leading the peacenik wing of her party that even seeks to extricate America from the real shooting war in Afghanistan, a conflict even President Obama declares is a war of necessity. Obama recognizes the deterioration of the situation in the struggle against al Qaeda and the Taliban and wants to surge more US troops in to stem the tide. Pelosi is so craven that she openly opposes the President of her own party in this attempt to stabilize Afghanistan. Both Pelosi and Obama agree wrongly that free market excesses caused our recent recession. It was in fact not a lack of regulation that distorted the market but government policy against "redlining" and forcing banks to make "liar loans" that started the ball rolling toward collapse. The banks under pressure from RainbowPush and other race interests groups with the heavy hands of government regulators and Congressional activist busybodies behind them forced banks to lend to areas with near one hundred percent default rates where the money became essentially a gift. The banks were told not to worry by regulators as the risk would be underwritten by government sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and this spawned the unsustainable subprime market, with trading in exotic investment vehicles that inevitably collapsed. Government interference at the behest of powerful Democrats-Maxine Waters and Barney Frank in the US House of Representatives ignored John McCain's warning from the Senate of the house of cards and the impending crisis-caused the downturn, not any inherent flaw in capitalism as Obama is now seeking to address with ever more burdensome and costly regulation. While many Democrats are set to flee the fight against Islamic extremism, they are happy warriors in the fight against the prosperity that market forces left to their own devices always bring in the self-correcting economic cycle. Put simply, too much interference in the market, not too little, caused the crash and Congress and the President may impose even more, stifling any robust recovery in strangling red tape.

Megalomaniac Is Born

The power mad cloak their intentions, they always couch their plans in what they can do for you on their rise to power. Rare is the autocratic who does not pretend that he is the champion of the people. Hugo Chavez-the defender of the poor, Putin, battler of the oligarchs, are among the leaders today who would never claim to want to rule for power's sake, but in the event, have demonstrated that they are in it for themselves. America is rife with top down little Napoleons with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Obama all breathing the dictator's contemptuous instincts, and foolish Republicans like McCain willing to go along to protect the process. It is long past time that the Republicans showed some backbone like South Carolina's Joe Wilson-the stakes are too high not to, this is no tea party or school debating society, this is our freedoms and our very lives that the power mad are bent on stealing.

Beware the Triggers

Obama is scheming to pass a universal care scheme using any parliamentary maneuver including reconciliation, which heretofore has been used only to pass budgets. Still, Obama faces opposition in his own party, perhaps sufficient to forestall the worst aspects of the care regime. Obama is willing to compromise now to have a plan passed-not a perfect plan in his mind, but one that advances the process. Obama knows once his foot is in the door, the government that will set the rules and then judge the outcomes, has the power to make the private insurers fail, with enough mandates to set off automatic provisions to implement the public health scheme they have been pushing to come into effect as artificial goals and standards are not reached. Obama believes he can rally Democrats in Congress to this cause, delaying any electoral consequence for himself and them as consumers see some benefit before they have to absorb the mammoth and ever escalating costs. Obama is willing to forgo complete victory now, knowing he is assured of winning later and feels he may even peel off one or two liberal Republicans to support this strategy, with Olympia Snowe, Senator of Maine and Senator George Voinovich of Ohio being prominently mentioned in the media as Obama's most likely Republican accomplices. If any bill with guidelines and time lines forcing the future implementation of a public option passes, the American people have lost and will inevitably be saddled with rationed care, unfathomable deficits, and freedom-limiting rules and regulation. Do not permit your Congress to rob you of freedom, steal your choice, and shorten your lives. Put paid to this socialist universal spread the misery scheme.

Mechanisms of Control

Universal health care is a means for government to dominate your life. They can tell you if you are permitted to smoke, consume alcohol, or drink sugary soda. They will determine if you are too fat, and then mandate your diet to combat obesity to control their costs. They can ban guns overturning our Second Amendment to curb the costs of treating victims of "gun violence". The proposed cap and trade regime on carbon emissions will tell you what you may drive and where-you can not be emitting your carbon in already polluted LA. They will tell you where and if you can fly. They may even take the decision about power consumption out of your hands with scheduled blackouts or brownouts, maybe during the less productive night hours when the authorities deem you should be sleeping-you must. Yesterday, there was debate over whether 9/11 should be a national day of service, sounds innocuous enough-even beneficial, but remember this Democrat crowd perverts the noble concept of volunteerism. Bill Clinton corrupted pitching in by paying his AmeriCorps volunteers. Maryland adopted Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's proposal to compel schoolchildren to offer their labor as a condition to graduate when she was Lieutenant Governor. It is a small thing for fascists to go from suggested to compulsory. Conservative economist Milton Friedman explained the perils of compelled national service eloquently in his argument against the military draft and helped end the US Selective Service System with his cogent and incisive position, and I concur that forced labor comes with pitfalls that will be exacerbated under this most controlling of all American leaders. What Obama requests this September 11 may be his demand next year. The door is even open to Obama creating a civilian force "just as powerful, just as well-funded" as the military-a concept he proposed during his Presidential campaign. Millions of unemployed youth could find themselves conscripted- with the terrifying potential for Obama Brown Shirts to enforce his will, the ultimate mechanism of control against a pliant and disarmed people.

Departure From Sanity

The BBC announced last night that the US had acquiesced and agreed to bilateral talks with the last totalitarian state, Stalinist North Korea. America will sit across from North Korea as if they are our equals. This notion demeans the sacrifice of every American who has fallen in the battle against Communism. North Korea is a hostage-taking, proliferating, dollar and US Treasury counterfeiting, mass murder, terrorism-committing, slave and prison state. The North Koreans are in a friendly race with Iran to see who can do the most evil. Both North Korea and Iran are gripped by mad leaders-Ahmadinejad and his mullah backers- devotees of an End Time cult of the Twelfth Imam, religious fanatics who seek to bring on the cataclysm to fulfill God's will, and Kim Jong-Il, a strongman (was there ever a more unfitting misnomer for a stroke-afflicted midget) with a cadre of personality cult followers comprising his soldiers and state security apparatus who are fed and feted while other North Koreans starve. The Dear Leader of North Korea is a braggart and voluptuary who has denied himself nothing while his people suffer. We should not have American emissaries talking to his representatives-in a just world like "let them eat cake Marie Antoinette" he would face the righteous wrath of his own people. North Korea and Iran both have the primary export of trouble-menacing neighbors with North Korea just releasing water from a dam this week, drowning several South Korean campers after South Korea had already warned the dam could be used for just such a deliberate attack. Iran, of course, is the largest nation-state backer of terror-funding and supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon, their sister organization Hezbollah in Iraq, other Shiite terrorists in Iraq as well, America's enemies in neighboring Afghanistan, and Hamas, the terror organization determined to never compromise with Israel but like Ahmadinejad, determined to eliminate the Jewish state. So Obama, whose spokesman Gibbs prematurely went out of his way to congratulate Ahmadinejad on his stolen election victory before the ire of Iran's people showed on her streets, will still sit with the last members of the Axis of Evil, dispatching our diplomats now to reason with the unreasonable North Koreans. Who knows-our compromisers may even reach a deal but will the North Koreans uphold their end of the bargain? It is a given North Korea will not-they are kidnappers and murderers who will extort America and the West to their strategic advantage, then roll out another nuke, lob more missiles over Japan, or use some other provocation against their South Korean brothers to demand even more.

Face of Evil

Each generation has had to confront the bestial hand/ From the time Washington strode upon this land/ None with a soul could shrink from this stand/ As merciless enemies shouted their demand/ Redcoats and robbers of liberty/ Trying to squelch the natural yearning to be free/ Then the answer to the bloodbath at the Alamo/ With liberty's lovers telling Mexican oppressors to let go/ Then brother pitted against brother in a struggle like no other/ A noble victory freeing the slaves/ Leaving six hundred thousand in their graves/ The constant menace of the Indian wars/ With brutality on both sides settling scores/ Then there was the explosion of the Maine and the defeat of the empire of Spain/ Now an international power/ Wilson dallied over facing our fateful hour/ But when the Kaiser became too much/ America throttled his bloodied touch/ And then again in World War Two/ The USA did what liberty lovers must do/ And faced the wrath of devils without soul/ And turned them back in the liberator role/ Then came the fight to save Korea from the seeping menace of the Red/ That left so many innocents dead/ On the peninsula, then Vietnam/ With peace with honor a faulty stand/ Because against such an enemy/ Only in victory are people really free/ And we stood as we watched the plane hit the tower/ Knowing we too are called to answer in this fateful hour/ Will we shrink from the bloodied unbidden hand/ That brought destruction to the homeland/ Or will we rise as the phoenix to avenge the day/ And make the fanatics dearly pay?

ACLU Attacks Abstinence

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the state of Mississippi because government funds were used and speakers including the Lieutenant Governor talked in terms of God at an abstinence event. What evil does the ACLU see in promoting purity? What greater good will they achieve if they win in Federal court and block such events in the future? By couching a concept in Biblical terms that the audience already accept, what great offense did the speakers commit? Why is the ACLU determined to chase the Lord from the public square? While there exists a war of civilizations between the most ardent if misdirected followers of Mohammad and the West, it must never be forgotten that while jihad has killed, atheists in the last century under the red flag killed more than one hundred million. If I had the Hobson's choice of living under a godless Communist tyranny or under Muslim subjugation, I would select being able to still call out to God.

A Patriot's Poem

Congressman Wilson be the voice of the voiceless, the honest man, the last Republican firebrand/ Wave the flag, rouse the masses/ This is not one of Obama's Ivy League classes/ Smash their idol, bring him down/ Show the world the dangerous clown/ Obama- the tyrant in the making/ Obama- the master of faking/ Obama- the author of a fiction page/ Obama-the pretender who should elicit nothing but rage/ And Joe Wilson-a frank and true man/ Patriots-with which one will you stand?

Obama's Offensive Line

With the NFL season kicking off tonight, I felt it was time to draw a rare sports analogy. The dinosaur media lead the interference to help Obama overturn the old order that was America. Unemployment rises 555,000 but the old-line press spin this as a good number, better than expected. When Bush dusted of the ashes of 9/11 and somehow managed zero unemployment, economists believe a number of four percent means statistically anyone who wants to work can find a job, America was still somehow to the press in the midst of an economic catastrophe. Now, with many seeking jobs unable to secure them, Obama has erected the pillars of recovery, his and Bernanke and Geithner's action have saved us. An Obama prosperity means a devalued currency and a jobless recovery-in other words, there is no recovery. Obama's failings at home, abroad in relation to the near nuclear armed Iran, in Iraq and Afghanistan are ignored, blamed on Bush, or whitewashed by Obama's mainstream media flacks, who are determined that their Messiah for the godless, succeed. Obama's radical associations before his election and appointments in office are sanitized by the lackey press, so much of America never even hears of them. No matter Obama's shortcomings, do not expect to hear or read about them in the moribund media, you have to go to Drudge, conservatives on FOX, the web, or talk radio to find his flaws for yourself. The old-line media shield their great leader.

The Brother's Keeper

Obama is devoid of sincerity and compassion as he trots out Teddy Kennedy's ghost to try and subvert the America we have known and whose freedom and prosperity, we have enjoyed. Obama pretends he wishes to serve the least of these and that we are our brother's keeper as he allows his own brother to languish in a twelve-foot hut in Kenya. Obama. a millionaire and attorney, allowed his Aunt Zeituni, whose visa had expired, to remain in Boston's projects without clarifying her immigration status. If Obama shows so little concern for his blood relatives, what do you think he feels about your welfare? The one emotion I believe Obama has aplenty is anger- anger against the bourgeois, anger against the white patriarchy, anger against the capitalist oppressor and a determination to get even, not uplift the poor but bring the middle class down to their level. Obama is convinced free market capitalists, Americans in particular, have brought the world nothing but misery. Obama will protect the interests of his elite backers like George Soros, the Hollywood elite, corporate profiteers who have backed his plans like GE. Obama will prevent social risers from joining the privileged few, because under Obama there will be no aspirational climbing-turning America for the first time into a class-rigid stratified society, reminiscent of nineteenth century England, where purviews were protected and dreams snuffed out. Obama pays lip service to the poor while crushing job creation and attacks the middle class with tax and spend and print money policies. It is not just insurance workers and doctors who will suffer under an Obama care scheme, what Obama is pushing will prevent Americans from doing better.

Obama Ad Nauseam

Mendacity and arrogance, Obama's core traits on full display tonight, and so far defining his Presidency, presented the audience with the one authentic moment when a Republican Congressman and patriot could take no more and called Obama on the carpet to borrow an Al Franken phrase as the "lying liar" that he is. Representative Joe Wilson called a spade a spade and blurted out "liar" to a President who had just taken the extraordinary and unprecedented step of calling his domestic opponents lying fear mongers in a joint session of Congress generally reserved for State of the Union addresses, matters of war, and visits of allied heads of state at crucial times (i.e. Churchill and Thatcher). So Obama can mischaracterize honest dissent as distortion and only one person in the chamber has the balls to violate arcane protocol and give voice to the displeased masses, who feel (rightly) that their liberty is threatened by the health care scheme and Obama. This is no time for Robert's Rules of Order when a substantial number of people see their suffrage and patrimony being stolen. Better to solve the problem today with words than tomorrow with bullets.

Top Down Dictator

Obama offered we mere mortals a glimpse of his brilliance in his Robin Roberts' interview on ABC. He told some tall tales to Roberts about how any health care scheme could not raise the deficit-a total fiction as the US has just been forced to raise the debt ceiling as the nation prints increasingly worth less currency apace. Obama described his red lines in what he demands of any plan. Obama is not granting most Americans anything-if forty-five million Americans lack medical insurance as Democrats contend, two hundred fifty million Americans already are covered and most are generally satisfied with their access and their costs. And Obama persists with the lies about no illegal aliens being covered and mocks the existence of death panels. Successive court decisions have forced taxpayers to pay the burden of health care cost for aliens who break into our country-illegals can not be denied care and this will necessitate that any plan the President signs will include care for foreigners who bust in, mocking our sovereignty. As for the death panels, there are finite resources and care will by necessity be delayed by the additional number of patients and I fear an ever shrinking number of doctors who will not be able to practice under the dictates of the Hippocratic oath and their conscience but under ever increasing Federal strictures, with less compensation for greater effort. And there will be rationing-Obama is distorting the truth about the inevitable. Not just on the imposition of a care scheme but on so much else, the President is cutting corners and not being called on it. Even the education speech in which Obama co-opted the conservative message after receiving much flack from parents (Obama would have ignored conservative critics but could not help but hear the throng of unhappy parents), was originally a diktat of what the students could do to help Obama. Local school boards were reportedly bypassed in the matter with the national teachers' unions and Obama working to further subvert local control in his vision of an increasingly Federalized K-12 education system. The only area Obama wants more local control is radio where he can squeeze out powerful national talk show hosts who oppose him by mandating more locally-produced content or airtime addressing local issues. That and more minority station ownership will ensure that more of Obama's critics are silenced as we fall further into the realm of central planning, command economy tyranny.

North Korean Mischief

North Korea deliberately opened floodgates on a dam, releasing billions of gallons of water in spite of South Korean warnings that the dam could be used as a weapon, flooding an area popular with South Korean campers, killing at least six and leaving at least three missing. This assault comes after South Korean fisherman have been both shot at and abducted by North Koreans, and after a female South Korean tourist was shot and killed on an authorized visit into North Korea. How many outrages will the world allow-with North Korea remaining the world's foremost proliferator, selling any weapon to anyone with cash and still doing everything she can to advance Iran's nuclear program? When will the world say this is intolerable and take the kind of massive preemptive strike to defang the maniacal midget dictator, who is striving to be in a position to blackmail the whole world? I fear the answer is never, as even the last President Bush, who rightly characterized North Korea as a member of the Axis of Evil, ultimately lacked the guts to act decisively. This cowardice by the community of nations must serve as a lesson to Israel that if the Jewish state does not act to stop Iran, forcefully and without warning, no other nation or multilateral body will stop the ultimate destruction of Tel Aviv and Ahmadinejad's fulfillment of his pledge to erase Israel from the map.

Bad Doctor's Diagnosis

Howard Dean, while he was out shilling for the public option, socialized, rationed health care scheme, was asked about the resignation of green job czar Van Jones. "Primal scream" Dean defended Jones saying Jones was a Yale law graduate. As I recall the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, was a University of Michigan PHD in mathematics and quite the greenie himself-maybe Ted can replace Van as the new environmental jobs mob boss-a nonsense appointment to a nonsense position. Dr. Dean's defense of Jones highlights a gulf between the parties. A responsible Republican, who had gained high party position as Dean enjoyed for the Democrats, would never attempt to mount a defense for a pariah like David Duke, who was rightly declared a persona non grata by the GOP after the former Klansman tried to hitch his wagon to the Republican party. The big tent of the GOP excludes race baiters and reactionary instigators while the Democrats welcome racial incendiaries and radical troublemakers. Van Jones was not the victim of a smear campaign as he contends but indicted by his own inflammatory words as seen on YOU TUBE, not misquoted or taken out of context. Someone spewing the kind of venom Jones has would be ushered out of any affiliation with a political party that retained integrity, but Dean sunk to Jones' defense. A rabble-rouser with caustic, racist, and Communist utterances does not need to be in a high governmental position in any American administration and only a fool would mention Jones' educational credentials to try to affirm why he had been given a czar title by Obama, who I fear shares some of Jones' radical views.

Media Attacks Family

The dinosaur media's jihad against the family is much more prevalent than just Lord Haw-Haw Harwood's suggestion yesterday that conservatives are ill-equipped to raise their own children (for details of Harwood's outrage read my post of yesterday-"NBC's Grotesque Bias"). I should not have been surprised though, because I had noted previously how the broadcast and print media have aggressively gone against tradition since man's memory runneth not to the contrary and pushed for homosexual marriage, a default position in opposition to every major organized religion there has ever been. Even the Miss California controversy arose because the media is hellbent on overturning the bedrock of our civilization, the family unit. The media lauds perversion-the more perverse your lifestyle, the more likely you are to be on a reality show. Hedonists, addicts, and exhibitionists fill our airwaves, while we so staid and conventional, reach for the remote. There is some good news worth mention-Van Jones, Obama's green jobs czar, has resigned. An overt Marxist, who had made the statement that only white kids would pull a Columbine, and who had signed a "truther" petition suggesting US government complicity in the 9/11 attacks, the question should not be why Jones has quit now, but how he was ever granted a position in Obama's administration? Was Jones not vetted or did Obama see nothing wrong with his pronounced radicalism? Even in the Jones case, the media with few exceptions failed by not shedding light on Jones' past statements and associations. Only the Internet, the Fox network spearheaded by Glenn Beck, and talk radio delved into Jones' background with the other TV networks seeming to assiduously avoid the controversy. So at least some commentators are not wearing Obama's rose-colored glasses and are willing to risk censure and boycott to uphold God, family, and nation.

NBC's Grotesque Bias

On this Saturday's Today show, John Harwood uttered the single most repulsive statement I have ever heard from a TV commentator. Harwood actually said that those parents who oppose Obama speaking in the schools could hardly be counted on to raise their own children "effectively". Maybe this lout thinks the state can raise them better like the old Soviet Union or Cuba. For this insult alone, Harwood should be fired. Does he have children? Who the hell is he to suggest a political disagreement negates a person's ability to parent? At least the parents opposing Obama by in large support their own families without turning to welfare, AFDC, or other dole programs like many of Obama's followers. Harwood must go.

Not My Bailiwick

I had been bothered by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs even before he dismissed parents' concerns about Obama's speech to the nation's students as "silly season". When a politician is soliciting support nothing is more important than the schools and the classroom is given a certain sanctity (often sadly unmerited in public schools which have already become politicized by educators' unions and seem to be a means to transfer wealth to teachers who no longer are working for the great benefits but have virtual lifetime job security, regardless of competence, and as ABC's John Stossel pointed out, are now also well-paid, far in excess of their private or parochial school peers and much more than most American workers), but Gibbs simply dismisses parental fear as "silly season", mocking and contemptuous of millions of conservatives and of many others who do not wish to see the young further propagandized. Gibbs was flippant and haughty over the children that parents rightly regard as the largest responsibility and most precious gift they will ever have. So Gibbs who typically gives clueless a whole new meaning tells a large swath of the voting public that there is no nefarious significance to the speech but omits reference to a national lesson plan that was to accompany the broadcast asking the students what they could do to help Obama, not the nation, not their parents, not the school itself- but Obama. So Gibbs goes from a joke to a W. C. Fields-"go away" parents you and your petty concerns "bother me", after all it is only your children I am talking about. Gibbs should go-any controversial question and too frequently Gibbs has become John Banner from Hogan's Heroes-"I know nothing" which seems pretty apt in Gibbs' case. No Teflon Bill Clinton, Gibbs is the "artless dodger" and arrogant to boot. Gibbs lacks the tact and grace of most of his predecessors who were at least skillful in deflecting or evading questions that put the Presidency on the spot. Gibbs seems like he's kept in a West Wing broom closet or hermetically sealed in a jar in Funk and Wagnalls' basement as Johnny Carson used to say between his forays to make an ass of himself to the White House press corps. I am sure he is a Democrat but from his lack of guile, Gibbs seems to be speaking as an atavist to the Know-Nothing Party of the 1840s, not in anti-immigrant sentiment, but because he literally seems lost on the podium. I wonder if there is such a thing as verbal GPS to help this over-his-head fellow out. Like so much of the Obama administration he speaks for, Robert Gibbs is a perfect failure.

PBS Slams America

I found myself watching a reprise of an American Masters program on PBS in the wee hours of the morning because our ancient Pekingese was acting out. The program chronicled the "ordeal" of Dalton Trumbo-one of the so-called blacklisted writers driven from working openly in Hollywood during the McCarthy era. I was struck by the palpable love the Douglas acting clan showed for the Communist Trumbo. The father and son acting dynasty must know that Communism is no mere political philosophy but the most murderous ideology ever conceived. The belief system Trumbo at least flirted with if not fully embraced, killed more than one hundred million people in the last century-first in Russia with the poison then seeping into Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Cuba, Angola, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe (not to mention the numerous Communist-inspired and supported insurgencies that did not succeed but killed thousands more) -and indiscriminately killing multitudes more than even Hitler could manage. Trumbo was lucky he was in America and not in the Communist sphere, where blacklisting or even a gulag would have been a preferred outcome to a bullet in the head in Lubyanka prison or in some unknown killing field in the Communist empire. Artists who demurred even a little from the party line faced Checka, NKVD, KGB, or GRU torture for supposed offenses against the state or the revolution. Some had show trials, some were simply disappeared as Communism spurred a vast apparatus of murder. Even if a bohemian was not subversive or counter-revolutionary, he might well face death because a SMERSH agent had not met his spy quota for the week. Trumbo was supremely fortunate that the authorities he offended were not Reds or he and his whole family would almost certainly have been executed. So watch the self-superior leftist arrogance that is PBS with the knowledge that whatever supposed injustice was visited on Mr. Trumbo, it pales in comparison to what the Communists he was infatuated with routinely did to his creative peers under their jackboots.

Seize the School

Yesterday marked the tragic anniversary of the Beslan school massacre, where the flower of Mother Russia's youth were slaughtered by Islamic extremists. Total innocents and even younger children who had accompanied them and their proud parents to the momentous first day of school were murdered-youth who were scholars, budding artists, and athletes had the chance to fulfill their lives' promise snatched from them by Koran-spouting brigands. In an event synchronous but apparently unrelated to the Beslan bloodletting, on the same day as the Beslan anniversary, Barack Hussein Obama announced he would grace America's public schools with a national speech broadcast to the captive audience of schoolchildren. This speech initially was to be accompanied by a national lesson plan asking the students how they could help Obama. Though the lesson plan has evidently been dropped because of the outcry of parents, enraged by what had all the appearances of an unprecedented partisan political foray into our schools, the speech will still be made and could be outrageous. The stratagem of "turn the youth first" has been commonly applied by statists and dictators for around a century. The Komsomol and the Hitler Youth were the building blocks of leader loyalty in both the corrupted Soviet and Nazi states. In Cuba and North Korea, children are brainwashed into little drones and become firmly adherent to party loyalty, basically robots of the state. I have no faith that Obama, who I fear will devalue property rights, due process of law (show trials and suppression of "sedition" may come under his "Soviet" Sotomayor-style judges), free and fair elections (remember it is Obama's crowd who still contend Bush stole the election from Gore and insulted the whole nation by summoning international election monitors-the same ones who routinely say dictators like Chavez win honestly-to observe Bush versus Kerry to keep the US Presidential election honest), will not further politicize our nation's classrooms, which are already rife with leftist indoctrination on subjects like global warming. Obama can not be permitted to do your parenting for you or the USA as we have known her, will be irrevocably lost.

Events Overtake US

Many commentators on the right are pointing out the failings of our political class in general and Obama's excesses in particular. Glenn Beck has issued a signal warning of deep leftist leanings and even Marxist ties of members of the Obama administration itself. Some might suggest a creeping paranoia among those sounding the alarm on the right. Their reports are not "out there", but I fear they are excessively moderate and that the Malkins, Levins, and Becks of the world are naive enough to expect some sort of normal American democratic process. Stalin famously said, "it was not who votes that matters but who counts the votes." The contested outcome of the Franken Senatorial election in Minnesota, reflects that even in a state with a Republican governor, sufficient manipulation may take place to cloud or change the outcome. ACORN is now generously funded, even receiving Federal money from the stimulus package with its full panoply of dirty tricks-dead people, made-up people, aliens without suffrage, and felons all casting ballots and sometimes multiple ballots for Democrats who would otherwise be defeated in 2010 and subsequent elections. Obama can tell wavering Democrats that they have nothing to worry about, that their remaining in office is in the bag. And this presumes that there even are elections. A terrorist event, a manufactured provocation like the Reichstag fire, may allow emergency rule and or martial law to be declared. I am not confident that we will ever again routinely have elections in this country and I do not know why the radio rightists presume we will get a vote either. Do they not spend many broadcast hours every day telling us just how bad the people that surround Obama actually are?

Obama's Pocket Seniors

The AARP leadership is proving not to represent its membership but to be an active part of the Democrat party pushing the Obama health care agenda which rightly terrifies many senior citizens. While NBC and ABC will not accept a thirty-three second ad critical of Obama care crafted by Dick Morris for a pro-liberty organization, I have watched, I believe on NBC, an ad sponsored by the AARP, where drivers are shown deliberately blocking and fencing in an ambulance, meant to show that "myths" are thwarting Obama's widely beneficial health plan. The elderly in this country are not fools and can see if you stretch resources by adding the forty-seven million uninsured (the Democrats' own figure), it will cause unimaginable lines, delayed care, care rationing, and ultimately bleed this country dry. I saw no such AARP ads on TV denouncing the routine efforts by Democrats to scare old people when Republicans were in power with lies that the GOP planned to end Social Security or wanted to see the elderly "wither on the vine" when it came to Medicare. So, seniors, already able to access Medicare and Medigap insurance, may now forfeit their coverage to some new universal care scheme that deprives them of what they have paid into throughout their working lives and were promised. Instead of listening to their memberships' concerns or trying a national membership survey (or even a vote by mail, telephone, and the Internet using discreet membership numbers) to see what their constituents wanted, the AARP is trying to dictate to its members with an "education" campaign of Obama's spoon fed, talking point propaganda. Our elders deserve better.

Holder's Race Gestapo

US Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he is overhauling his Civil Rights Office and that enforcement will be ramped up in housing, workplace, and other cases of alleged discrimination. So discounting the prima facie evidence of a black in the highest office, the US Presidency, the dangerous political animal Holder believes we are a mighty racist nation. Holder has already declared that if a white pastor were attacked in the pulpit that the nation's new hate crime laws would not be used against his assailant. If you are heterosexual, white, and Christian, you will no longer enjoy the rights and protection of this country. You will also under this new witch hunt of aggressive enforcement, no longer enjoy freedom of association or if you are an employer, the ability to hire and fire as you will be opening yourself up to Federal criminal liability and an expensive litigation nightmare even if you have and can prove cause. Is millions in legal expense and a possible prison term worth firing a Pakistani (remember national origin is an integral part of civil rights) clerk for a few hundred dollars of pilferage? If you are an employer or a religious landlord who does not wish to rent to sodomists, you are really screwed as we have a race-card playing Attorney General employed by our so-called first post-racial President who merely was a member of hatemonger Jeremiah Wright's church for twenty years. A while back, I termed Obama "the Great Leveler" (later incidentally used by Charles Krauthammer), to describe Obama's anti-capitalist agenda. I also said elect a Third World leader and you get a Third World country and now you see the score-settling so often visited in backward nations with the retrospective interrogation special prosecutor. Now we will see a campaign of getting even in terms of race, the likes of which the nation has never known.