Decorate the Graves

Perhaps they volunteered, perhaps they were conscripted/ Perhaps they kept a shop, perhaps they tilled the soil/ Perhaps they left the States to shouts of "baby killer", perhaps they heard "no blood for oil"/ Perhaps they knew or feared that they would not return alive, perhaps they felt indestructible, filled with confidence, certain but sadly mistaken that they would survive/ Perhaps they left with timid heart afraid of what they'd face/ Perhaps, they knew our greatness as an exceptional place/ Perhaps they never wanted war/ Perhaps they knew America was worth dying for/ Perhaps they had loved this land since Mayflower time, perhaps they were fresh off the boat without a dime/ For the city on the hill in this land that still beckons even today/ It was their duty or privilege- their lives to pay/ For liberty is always purchased with blood spilled/ As tyrants and madmen refuse to yield/ Were they here long enough to say "a life well-lived"?/ Indeed they were, for freedom's sake/ The struggle to which every patriot must remain awake/ None went willingly to their young grave/ But it is the United States of America that their sacrifice continues to save.   God bless them and rest their souls

A Rogue Company

Is the corporation now entrusted with fixing the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico more interested in the media spin of damage control than actual control of damage? With an abysmal record of violations nearly one hundred times worse than the amount of wrong doing wrought by BP's nearest ranking competitor in terms of reported safety violations with BP held to account for more than seven hundred (700) and the second worst ranking offender responsible for only eight (8) in the same period, one must ask just how flawed the management of BP has been. No sane person would claim that BP deliberately unleashed this disaster, but no one could doubt that some grave, perhaps even criminal negligence has been involved. 

Matter of Fairness

It was never my tendency to blame US Presidents for acts beyond their control such as acts of God like hurricanes or acts of corporate negligence like oil spills. I could find no fault in the last President Bush for Hurricane Katrina nor initially in Obama for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But when the response was slow to Katrina, the responsibility shifted from Louisiana politicians who had diverted money sent from Washington to strengthen the levees for years to other purposes (including some purported to have been less than above board) and even away from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and to an administration that seemed slow to grasp the magnitude of need. So too was I loathe to blame the Obama administration for a catastrophe that they could not have prevented. But when President Obama tries to take credit for what turns out to be a failed attempted solution, "top kill"- I do start to doubt. And when White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs demands the press corps "stop asking so many questions" about the BP spill my skepticism intensifies. And the last straw for me might be when the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has the nerve to blame the last President Bush. At least with Bush's background as an oil man, he might have known more rapidly how to address the ongoing crisis or who to call to figure it out. Obama deserves no blame for the initial spill, some for the tardy response, but will gain no credit in my book for whatever it takes to eventually stem the tide of this disaster.

Defender of Civilization

As another Memorial Day approaches, where many will commemorate the sacrifice that each of us should appreciate every day, America continues her battles of the last century where the United States was literally the shield against benighted forces who would cast the world into darkness. In the First World War, the conduct of Germany was so brutal that they were derisively called "Huns". Troops of Kaiser Wilhelm II devastated tiny Belgium, massacring thousands of civilians before going on to rape the area of France they managed to occupy. They introduced weapons of mass destruction to the world, launching the first military attack with poison gas. Ultimately, only the might of the United States was able to thwart brutal German aggression in World War I. The Second World War only enhanced America as the protector of freedom for the globe. What the United States defeated with enormous cost not only in treasure but more importantly shed blood, was evil on the march. The Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor had released a new brand of brutality on Asia as Japan started a war of aggression by promulgating their phony Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere- a conquest that included the notorious Rape of Nanking and the infamous Unit 731 and its fatal experiments on thousands of prisoners. Need I mention the unparalleled Nazi viciousness against Europe that gave us the world's worst genocide. Only America- the arsenal of democracy, the storehouse of freedom, and the spreader of liberty could confront and defeat the forces of fascism and slavery. The Red menace in Korea that only America could fend off still threatens the free South Korea even today. The same Communist threat cost American lives in Southeast Asia and where the US left, reeducation camps and crimes against humanity were sure to follow. Dangerous regimes in Grenada and Panama were pacified at a cost in US blood before we finally confronted the madness of Saddam Hussein. Americans have fallen in the war on terror which we were forced to wage as jihad hit our shores and we still find ourselves locked in this life and death struggle even if the Obama administration refuses to acknowledge this and plays a semantic game trying to call the battle something else. The United States of America has willingly paid the high price for liberty and not just our own but wherever it was threatened across the world. Sadly, more are bound to join the ranks of the honored dead as the struggle for freedom is never over.

A Media Infestation

ABC's Nightline aired a report last evening on head lice. For all the world, when I heard a report was going to air about vile little vermin, I thought the dinosaur media was doing an expose` about themselves. After all, would most people not describe the main stream media as conniving, self-promoting leftists, liars, and Obama flacks? The dinosaur press is no longer interested in ferreting out facts or shining the light of truth to power but an active participant in whitewashing any problems that can be attributed to Obama while promoting his socialist agenda which they share. It is just a shame that there is not a handy treatment to rid ourselves of their rampant corrupting influence.

Good Riddance Scowl

Occasionally, a figure transcends his medium and becomes emblematic of so much else. To many, John Wayne became more than an actor, his life reflected the physical embodiment of American patriotism. Wayne enhanced our sense of self, which was of course largely to the good, but sometimes a performer arises who pulls us down, whose very presence on the stage is coarsening and to the ill. Simon Cowell is in this league of corrupter. Cowell received some undue adulation last evening from ABC's Nightline as he temporarily exited the national stage with great fanfare and was praised for his candor, his supposedly refreshing honesty, where once again, the dinosaur media got it wrong. Cowell was no creature of virtue but a vicious breaker of dreams who criticized in the most inflammatory and damaging way. Cowell, so far as I know, is no singer of great repute but has seen fit to eviscerate his betters who had the guts to put themselves up on that stage under the microscope of scrutiny. Cowell put a twist on the FOX network catch phrase- his tagline should be "you create, I deride". Cowell has gained tremendous wealth and notoriety by mocking those whose talent and courage he could never match. What brilliant gift did Cowell ever display as he dished out his unique brand of heartless criticism bent on sidetracking careers and destroying psyches? Simon Cowell should go down as one who diminished the culture. I will not miss him ripping apart the aspirations of others as Cowell seemed to me the type who relished pulling the wings off butterflies as a child and grew up to vastly enrich himself by crushing hope.

Window on Taiwan

The author hopes sincerely that this is no more than one more paranoid rambling, and declares this commentary is a worst case scenario. What if the current tension on the Korean peninsula has been orchestrated by Communist China to deflect America's attention and resources away from Taiwan to enable the People's Republic of China to finally make a move against the Republic of China essentially unopposed beyond the meager means that Taiwan can muster on her own? What better time to consolidate the authority of Red China than when the US is led by Barack Hussein Obama who is palpably weak in foreign relations with American forces already involved in war in two nations than to start hostilities against Formosa right after our already limited forces are about to be forced to confront a third front in Korea? The Communist Chinese could win in a walkover with a US leader loathe to confront the People's Republic and having basically forsworn the use of nukes against Red China which would be the only weapons that could make a difference.

March of Evil

North Korea, Iran, even Jamaica man are in the throes of darkness. North Korea is led by a narcissistic madman who routinely starves and executes his own people and is kept in power by cult of personality thugs. Apparently, enslaving his own nation was not enough; so he evidently ordered an attack on a South Korean vessel that murdered forty-six (46). Kim Jong-il now seems bent on enveloping the peninsula in a war perhaps, stoking the fires of a wider war involving Japan and of course, the DMZ-committed United States of America. Iran continues to build nukes and threaten to annihilate Israel. Either the Koreas or the Middle East could ignite at any moment, sparking a real World War III that would make the war on terror look like child's play. And now even a tourist paradise has gone rogue with a drug lord in Jamaica fighting the lawful authority in the streets. His name is (really) Christopher Coke- sounds like a Bond villain out of Ian Fleming or a character out of a Tarantino movie, but he is all too real and wanted for drug and weapon trafficking by the United States. We can not even go to the beach anymore without worrying our all-over tan will turn into an atomic glow.

Realm of Injustice

US President Barack Hussein Obama cited the potential for abuse when decrying the new immigration enforcement law recently enacted by Arizona. Of course, the potential for abuse exists with every law that is passed. Every enforcement mechanism is performed by human beings who are of course fallible and subject to personal bias. If laws were subject to being overturned because they could be misused, then all law would have to be vacated. Profiling may occur in Arizona or in any other state because flawed people are charged with administering what legislators with all the best intentions have passed and equally honorable governors have signed. Hopefully, law officers will proceed with integrity, but surely in some cases, they will not. But we need law to thwart anarchy and chaos and by in large in America, law has been fairly applied in recent times. There will be travesties- that is simply human nature. 

The Broken Border

A country with an open border is really no longer a nation. Just in the last several days, an illegal from Guatemala ran down four teenage girls, pushing them grievously injured from the hood of his car so he could flee from the scene; a Mexican illegal who had been deported nine (9) times after drug and sexual assault convictions was accused of rape in Edmonds, Washington, and another illegal was charged with rape after being deported a mere four times. Our borders are not porous- they are laughable or would be if the really terrifying drug war was not being fought along the Mexican-US boundary and the real prospect did not exist of jihadists like al-Qaeda members simply sauntering in where we have left ourselves unprotected. That is why Arizona passed its modest, common sense law now stirring up such controversy among idiots. Do your job D.C. and protect the people of the country by enforcing our international borders.

Fantastic Fuel Fictions

With new CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency) standards announced yesterday, Barack Obama once again ventures into what popular historian Stephen Ambrose had termed of Hitler's magical thinking- "wolkenkuckkucksheim" or cloud-cuckoo-land. In spite of evidence to the contrary, Barack Hussein Obama continues to persist with his green jobs fantasy often citing what he alleges is the green job success of Spain. Spain has indeed allocated vast resources to transforming into a more environmentally-friendly economy, only to find that old carbon-emitting industry was crippled or killed while very few green jobs were created. Spain has had negative return on green investments, massive job losses in traditional vocations raising the level of national unemployment and forcing the government to extend unemployment compensation while creating nowhere near enough green jobs to give the newly fired old industry workers jobs and contributing to the economic dislocation which may bring Spain to collapse like Greece. So with executives from fourteen vehicle companies who are either essentially already owned by the government (GM and Chrysler) or terrified that they soon will be present at the ceremony, Obama staged his public executive order signing which will raise the prices of all our new cars and trucks as manufacturers must pass on their newly engendered costs. There will be green alright but not Obama's green job fantasy as more greenbacks are stripped from our wallets to pay to indulge Obama's reverie.

Kiss of Death

President Barack Hussein Obama does not have a great record when it comes to endorsing or campaigning for candidates. Obama last threw his weight behind Arlen Specter who Obama said he "loved", but that did not seem to impress Pennsylvania voters who threw the six-term Senator out unceremoniously in Tuesday's election. In fact, outside of some radical areas like San Francisco or Manhattan, Obama's backing may well hurt more than it helps candidates for national office.

Our Marxist Leader

Last night, with the passage of the financial reform bill, United States President Barack Hussein Obama declared "victory over Wall Street". Obama announced triumph over the vehicle most Americans use to grow their nest eggs, whether as individual investors, with stocks in their pension funds, or in 401(k)s and Roth IRAs. Obama celebrates as he vanquishes American capitalism as we have known it. The United States financial markets were already amongst the most regulated institutions in the world. Were there failures in oversight? Certainly, lax performance at the Security and Exchange Commission allowed Madoff to keep on stealing, but laws against that were already in place- they just did not enforce them until billions had been systematically looted. But because one meal prepared at home is bad, sane people do not burn down their own kitchen.

Act of Desperation

ABC's Good Morning America plans to broadcast a feature tomorrow on people starting new businesses that they were promoting this morning. The spin ABC will offer is most likely to be an attempt to renew optimism while acknowledging that things have been better at other times in the economy. No one should have too much confidence in an economy that figures once again unexpectedly (as Obama's pocket sages never see the obvious coming) show unemployment rising to its highest level in three months with 25,000 new jobless after the so-called experts predicted that the rate of unemployment would continue to diminish. The entrepreneurial spirit has always existed in America, but the people starting businesses now are not necessarily doing so because they think the economy is healing under Obama's stewardship. Even in the best of times about seventy percent of new businesses fail and in these troubled times that percentage will likely be even higher. Many of those taking the risk of opening today are doing so because they see no other choice. They are being made redundant or cashiered out often at advanced ages where despite their experience and long term track records with one company, no one else will hire them. They are too young for pensions or their companies have closed and what they had expected to retire on has vanished into the ether. So, they are taking their family savings, or what they can borrow from friends since banks are not, by in large, lending, or are starting with a Small Business Administration loan from Uncle Karl (prior to the Obama administration, I would have said Uncle Sam but today our bureaucrats are behaving much more like they are acting in a system created by Marx). Many of these pioneers starting their companies are doing so as one last shot, not a sign that things are going well but that no other opportunity to find gainful employment and support their families exists for them in Obama's America.

Corps and Country

Last night, as was mentioned in my initial post today, I spent some time watching PBS. The first program about Kashmir was boilerplate, politically-correct liberal. However later in the evening, I was pleased to see an objective, even at times, laudatory program about the training of the United States Marine Corps, a bit of the history of the Corps, and a museum in Quantico, Virginia dedicated to the USMC. The normally peacenik PBS people who broadcast the show seemed genuinely proud to be Americans and portrayed our brave Marines in a fair light. I only wonder why the program aired in Nashville so late at night rather than in prime time or the family dinner hour but from 11 pm to 1 am. Was this because the local broadcasters, who are camped firmly on the left as is apparent with almost all the programming they select for air, were worried that such a positive portrayal might be used as a recruiting tool by those bad old warmongers?

Their Murderous Rage

I watched a PBS Independent Lens program last night which purportedly was made by an East Indian-American Hindu woman and another woman who was of Pakistani origin and Muslim descent. The show dealt with the bloody, long-standing conflict in the Indian-administered section of Kashmir. Of course, despite the balance of using a filmmaker from each religion, like so much else produced for public broadcasting in the United States, the production was skewed to a perspective sympathetic to the Muslims' plight. American public broadcasting consistently engages in moral inversion turning Muslim terrorists into victims and victims of jihad into oppressors. While regions of India tend to be more or less tolerant of various religions, in Pakistan and other areas where Muslims are in control, other faith groups are systematically dominated or destroyed. From Saudi Arabia, where there are no churches and no construction of religious institutions other than those of Islam is permitted, to Pakistan where public expressions of faith other than Islam are not countenanced and people can be jailed or killed for apostasy, defaming Mohammad or Islam, converting from Islam, or proselytizing for another religion, to Sudan where Christians and animists were subjected to a campaign of genocide, to Turkey, a supposedly moderate state of Muslims but not an Islamic state where three workers at a Christian publishing house were butchered, it seems Muslims do not play well with others. But on PBS or NPR, you will rarely if ever hear of outrages perpetrated by Muslims, but you will see plenty of reports and programs chronicling outrages against Muslims.

A New Burma

Thailand may well be on the way to becoming a super-oppressive junta state much like her neighbor Myanmar (the former Burma). The former Siam already suffers under an unelected nominal prime minister who was installed by the army. The government as it now exists serves only the interests of the military cadres, the rich, and the politically connected. The will of most of the people is trodden over with governance only supporting the elite. Now, the down trodden could take no more and rallied in opposition only to find themselves and a "rogue general" who championed their cause being shot at and in the case of the former military leader and more than twenty others, actually being killed. Where is the hue and cry of the world so often heard directed against Israel of calls for "restraint" or condemning the government's disproportional use of force? The Thai generals and their installed junta should thank their lucky stars that as they slaughter their own innocents in the streets that they are not under much scrutiny- after all, it is not like they have committed the supreme crime of attempting to defend themselves while being Jewish.

An Optimistic Exercise

A war simulation was conducted in Israel that presumed that Iran possessed nuclear weapons. The war game had too rosy a tinge as it assumed rational actions from fanatic actors. Iran will not necessarily conduct an underground or atmospheric test when it achieves weaponized status. The first hint of Iranian success may come as Tel Aviv falls victim to atomic incineration. To suppose that mutually assured destruction matters to End Time cultists assumes too much. Iran is a nation that publicly hanged a girl reputedly of sixteen for promiscuity and hoisted homosexual teen boys to their deaths on a gibbet in a town square. The mullahs and the thugs that keep them in power do not recognize international norms, which is why they have seized an embassy (the US embassy- ours), abducted hikers as spies, and ransomed a young French academic for two Iranian prisoners held by France including a notorious murderer. One would be foolish to think that a nation that follows no rules in any other context would suddenly behave like other states in possession of nuclear weapons.

Go Vote Tomorrow

The last few weeks have been tumultuous in Middle Tennessee with the flood, the damage many of us sustained, and the beginnings of the slow process of recovery, but remember we have an opportunity and a civic duty with tomorrow's election. Please take the time if you have the chance to vote  tomorrow for Juvenile Court Clerk and again in August in the Republican primary and cast your lot with the "conscientious conservative" Lonnie Spivak. In the gubernatorial race, I stand with Ron Ramsey although I would readily vote for fellow legitimate conservative Zach Wamp. Let us just hope these two excellent candidates do not split the conservative vote, leaving the nomination in the hands of Bill Haslam, who has all the makings of a Lamar Alexander moderate. If you are not in the hospital or still pumping water out of your house, please go vote. 

Democrats Are Baffled

Many Democratic Party politicians do not comprehend why after all they have "given" us that they are not beloved by the American people. After all they have spent more money in inflation-adjusted dollars on recovery efforts than FDR did to attempt to reverse the Great Depression. The Obamabots do not understand that most Americans have a strong libertarian streak and want neither a hand up or a hand out from government, but simply, as much as possible, want government out of their lives. The Obama crowd did not factor in that at this point the green jobs they are attempting to create are largely a fantasy and that the infrastructure work they are funding in the way of FDR's New Deal are no longer the type of employment that will revive America as we are no longer the largely agrarian economy that Franklin Roosevelt was trying to salvage with strong-backed boys fresh off the farm, but instead, these "shovel-ready" jobs are often being filled by criminal aliens with the debt being created bound to bury us.

The World Disintegrates

South Korea fires on vessels of North Korea, one of the globe's worst proliferaters, as they enter South Korean waters, weeks after a South Korean warship there was sunk, killing more than forty, in all likelihood by a North Korean torpedo. On the streets of Bangkok, protesters against the unelected government are shot dead. Greece seethes with street action against an austerity plan to prevent national bankruptcy, and there too have there been deaths. The Middle East teeters on the precipice of regional war with Iranian proxies Hamas and Hizbollah joining Syria to assail Israel as the rest of the world pressures Israel to skulk back into pre-1967 suicide borders while Israel's alleged negotiating partner, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has demands much hardened by belief that America will abandon her moral backing of Israel and perhaps impose a solution in the Palestinians' favor, continues incitement against Jews unabated and has less popular support than Hamas who does not bother to pretend any goal beyond the removal of Jews which would gain them election in a general Palestinian plebiscite just as it did in Gaza over the corrupt forces of the PA which the West wrongly sees as more moderate. The PA is not accommodationist in any way to true peace, they merely are playing the West's game of negotiation as a means of waging war by other means with the same goal of replacing Israel with a Muslim state. American forces still fight and die in Iraq and Afghanistan with Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal under threat of the Taliban. Iran continues to push forward with nuclear ambition accompanied by a promise to "wipe Israel off the map" by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The US has abdicated her moral authority and duty to prevent Iran from fulfilling atomic aspirations and obliterating the Jewish state. Instead, America joins the immoral chorus backing Israel into a corner. On the economic front, Obama fails to see the lessons of Europe's failed socialism just as Europe begins to implode and the Euro collapses from the same cradle to grave socialist excess that Obama seeks to impose on the US. Some would say, "don't worry- things can only get better", but the way the world is going, we will live to see the situation become vastly worse.

A Presidential Tantrum

Yesterday, the President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, declared that he was angry- really angry, over the oil spill. Obama announced he was angry at the oil companies but his righteous ire is also directed at the Federal government. Well, does this mean heads will roll? Will Obama fire the Energy and Interior Secretaries? Will he dismiss the Coast Guard official leading at the scene? Obama is after all the head of those Federal agencies and in possession of the power to fire those who work under him who he finds have been derelict in their duties. Or was all that just rhetoric? Is Obama going to return the campaign contributions that he has received from oil companies? BP, who many see as the primary culprit in the Gulf spill, has reportedly given Obama his largest campaign donations over the past twenty years. If the President is so disturbed by the recent events, one would think the honorable thing to do would be give the oil companies, particularly BP, their money back which they could then use for spill cleanup. Or is Obama's outrage merely one more pose? 

Leave in Disgrace

There can be no question that Richard Nixon departed the White House in ignominy. Watergate had rocked the institution of the US Presidency to its core. Jimmy Carter should also have hung his head in shame. He had overseen the virtual collapse of the American economy and saw the superpower and colossus of a military machine the USA brought low by fanatic Iranian students and the mullahs who inspired them to seize our embassy (or nest of spies as they called it) and hold members of its staff to humiliate our nation for more than a year (444 days to be exact- ended only when Reagan entered office). The United States is now embarked on a socialist path that is the road to ruin. Let us pray and work all we can to see to it that Barack Hussein Obama becomes a one-term wonder and by that I mean sane people will wonder how he ever won Presidential election and after his defeat in 2012, may he be regarded with the same esteem as his undistinguished recent predecessors, Nixon and Carter.

Where Evil Flourishes

Afghanistan sheltered and encouraged al Qaeda, the organization that brought us September 11. Afghanistan under Taliban rule gleefully destroyed a world heritage site sacred to a religion other than Islam with explosives. Afghanistan is perhaps the most misogynistic society in the world (although most Persian Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are anything but friendly to women's rights on the Sunni side and Shia Iran is no paradise for women either). Afghanistan continues to be the world's primary source for the opium poppy, and it is widely rumored that Afghan President Karzai's own brother receives the largest piece of the drug trade lucre. So, it could be said reasonably that Afghanistan is not one of the world's most moral states. When Barack Hussein Obama finally deigned to meet the Dalai Lama, considered one of the world's great moral leaders, after shunning him for a year due to pressure from Red China, the meeting was held discreetly without the ceremony or even dignity usually associated with a US President meeting with one of the world's great religion's leaders. In fact, the Dalai Lama was ushered out the back past the White House garbage pile and this act of humiliation was done in full view of the assembled press to placate Communist China. Then, when the duly elected leader of a US ally, Benjamin Netanyahu last met with Obama for his down dressing and lecture, the press was completely excluded without even a photo opportunity showing the two leaders of two of the nations most threatened by jihadi terror even shaking hands. This was an overt slap in the face not just to Netanyahu but to all those who support Israel. So the leader of a country we had to occupy, running an utterly corrupt nation, Karzai is greeted with the red carpet and feted while decent even morally towering figures are treated like dirt, which only serves to appease, rewards violence, and encourages more. So is the font of evil in Afghanistan or is it in the Oval Office?

The Broken System

Greece is currently demonstrating the logical conclusion of the socialist system. Massive national debt engendering riots in the streets could soon be coming to a town square near you. Several other European welfare states risk looming potential collapse including Great Britain. And instead of sticking to our free market capitalism model, the United States is following their failing path. So America is underwriting the Greek bailout with fifty billion dollars so far in loan guarantees, backing the largely German $170 billion rescue package which requires Greece to take some modest measures of austerity which are still so unpalatable to Greek workers and particularly Marxist-led labor unions that their civil unrest has continually roiled the streets and actually killed people in a bank. Giving Greece any more money for the profligate cradle to grave welfare state will do as much good as giving a drowning man the proverbial glass of water.

One Bright Spot

Over the years, I have noticed that local media in my hometown of Nashville tend to mimic the doctrinaire party line of the national dinosaur media. Last night, one of the anchors on our NBC affiliate, WSMV, was especially hostile toward the GOP with her introduction of a report on the Republican budget proposed as an alternative to that offered by our Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen. The talking head, Demetria Kalodimos, said that the budget offered by Bredesen included pay raises for state workers but that what the Republicans counter with removes this "one bright spot". Why, one might ask Ms. Kalodimos, would state workers gaining additional compensation be a bright spot for the vastly larger number of Tennesseans who do not work for the state but would bear the burden of funding these pay increases? How can we afford this increased cost and pay for flood recovery too at a time of national economic dislocation and high unemployment across our beleaguered and battered state? Why is it good news that state workers whose actual pay now exceeds that of the average non-governmental workers without even factoring in the generous taxpayer funded benefits they also receive would need raises in a period where the US government claims inflation is under control? Why in a time of private sector job losses should private employers be forced to further subsidize our former public servants who are rapidly becoming our masters? Finally, I just have to ask why Ms. Kalodimos has such animus to the Republican Party who after all are only trying to look after the interests of the citizens of Tennessee and what does Demetria have against Tennessee taxpayers? Demetria, your bias is showing.

Race, Class, Nation

The common touch- or as Vice President Joe Biden said on ABC Good Morning America "the ability to relate to people" has long been held as a virtue by office seekers and those who hold public office in the United States. Potential Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was said to possess this ability, but she did not grow up in a log cabin in the way of Lincoln but in one of the tony sections of Manhattan reserved for the wealthy. In her time running that down to earth institution, Harvard law school, she did not appoint a single black or Hispanic to its staff, just twenty-eight whites and a single Asian. Kagan claims to wish to defend and represent the "despised and disadvantaged" of society which sounds a lot to me like a jurist who will rule on empathy not the Constitution as written or precedence of our laws which are said to be "no respecter of persons". And as far as love of country goes, which would be held as a virtue if sane people still ran the country, one must question Kagan's decision to ban military recruiters at Harvard based on don't ask- don't tell which might also shed some light on Kagan's somewhat dubious sexual preference. But who else would a phony black man purporting to be risen from the streets appoint to the nation's highest court. When Barack Hussein Obama was seeking office from his first campaign on, he pretended an affinity for the African-American street. Entering office in the racial hotbed of Chicago, Obama sought "race cred" by joining the politically influential, large, black liberation theology church of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama used this association successfully in every political campaign except against someone with vastly greater street cred- former (notorious) Black Panther Bobby Rush. Obama could not convince black voters in the one race that he lost that he had made anywhere near the bones that sixties lightning rod Rush had when it came for standing up for black rights. As far as American perceptions of class go, Obama came from just as rarefied a background as his Supreme Court nominee Kagan. Though Obama tried to prove he was down for the struggle and up with the brothers, he could not share their experience in many ways for his was a background of protection and privilege. Obama pose of humble and modest roots does not jibe with the facts. Obama did not come from public schools but was one of only two black students at that time attending Hawaii's most exclusive private secondary school, then attended selective Occidental College, next entering Ivy League Columbia, before finally completing Harvard law. Not exactly a Horatio Alger story when race preference in admission is taken into account and certainly a path smoothed for Obama's ascension. Despite protestations to the contrary, Obama and Kagan have more in common with country club Republicans than the average person on the street. As far as Obama regarded and regards our nation, he never seemed to laud it much before he achieved its highest office, citing problem after problem with America in his campaigns, fundamentally altering us now that he is in the Oval Office, and worst of all, as he goes around the world literally bowing to foreign tyrants, Obama is constantly apologizing for the evil that America has (in his eyes) wrought. Defaming us around the world, Obama does not seem a stalwart patriot or even to like the America that elected him so much. Overall and throughout his career, Barack Hussein Obama has been a chameleon, always adopting positions of convenience aimed at advancing himself. Now stuck where he can rise no higher, Obama is displaying his shiftiness as he attempts to conjure a second term and appoints people like Kagan who will rubber stamp perpetuating Obama's big intrusive government legacy.

Lie, Distort, Dissemble

Leftist politicians and their media handmaidens have almost perfected their propaganda techniques to try and pull the wool over the eyes of the American public. Recent examples include: 1.) New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg trying to cloud America's focus on the jihadi threat by saying a white male "probably angry over health care" had planted the Times Square bomb and the dinosaur media ran with this obfuscation by repeatedly showing video of a white guy near the scene of the SUV bomb caught by a closed circuit camera in the insidious act of changing his shirt. 2.) Our great recovery- in the week where US markets lost an enormous amount of wealth including a thousand point nosedive in fifteen minutes, President Obama and his political and media flacks trumpet how much better the overall economy is growing with two hundred and ninety thousand jobs allegedly created, the most for a comparable period in four years, to show just what a great job they are doing- except the jobs numbers were artificially inflated by Census hires, the markets certainly did not reflect that the economy is rising, and widespread sentiment remains justifiably grim. 3.)The Arizona immigration debate is being staged on President Obama's ice cream store fiction where the most innocuous act, a family travelling to share Rocky Road or vanilla cones find themselves deported for the crime of having brown skin. No one visiting a Baskin-Robbins parlor is going to find themselves detained and questioned unless they happen to run over a pedestrian on the way to dessert. Did any so-called dinosaur journalist go out of his way to correct the deliberate Gestapo misconception President Obama is spreading or merely parrot party line? Only on Fox and in the new media is there an inkling of answering deliberate lies with substantive truth.

Fifty Million Innocents

Yesterday, I dealt with the celebration in the dinosaur media of the birth control pill turning fifty. How tragically ironic it is that despite this readily available, almost foolproof form of contraception that the United States is soaked in the blood of aborted babies- our own Holocaust many times over in raw numbers of lives lost. Should the Pill not have limited the scope of this wanton carnage? Even if taking the Pill fostered free love, easy sex, and more immorality, at the least, unwanted pregnancies should have gone down. But in the event, with so many abortions on demand, the Pill was found lacking. One can only imagine the many millions more abortions that would have been performed had the Pill not come into being.

Praising the Pill

NBC evening news devoted much airtime this week to the fiftieth anniversary of the birth control pill. Nancy Snyderman, NBC's hapless chief medical correspondent, even speculated on the coming creation of a similar prophylaxis for men in lauding the virtue of this great aid to promiscuity, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and the overall decline of values and morals for our nation and the world. So the pill that facilitated women behaving just as badly as men who for generations had acted like satyrs is now a grand creation in advancing equality. If you do not count antibiotic resistant venereal disease, the chronic affliction of herpes, and that little problem of HIV, as the buffoons at NBC seem to feel merits little mention, nymphomania has become a dinosaur media virtue.

The Numbers Game

Two hundred and ninety thousands jobs created- hallelujah! Obama has saved us, but overall unemployment actually jumps to a government-admitted figure of 9.9% (which according to many economists is actually a low ball figure with true unemployment counting discouraged job seekers and the under-employed still hovering around fifteen percent). And how did the administration fix the numbers? They cooked the books by having the Census hire six hundred thousand workers, three times the number the last Bush administration hired at a similar point in his term of office. And these are lousy, temporary jobs without benefits. When the Census is finally tallied, many of these hires go right back into unemployment lines. Is this how America will turn the corner and return to growing prosperity?

We Bounce Back

We can let our watery ordeal be our River Styx or our gateway to a renewed and more unified Middle Tennessee. This event has received nowhere near the national and international attention the story would have received if our comportment had been less decorous (as in New Orleans post-Katrina) or than what the scope of damage merited as was pointed out in a forwarded e-mail correspondence I received from a devoted and much appreciated reader and later echoed to a national audience by Tennessee's own internationally-renowned entertainer Kenny Chesney. The massive expense generated by the flood losses should be the perfect rationale to shelf plans for a new convention center until all recovery needs are met and until the national economy returns to its feet where such a convention center could actually generate enough business to not force a general obligation down the throats of the majority of Nashville residents who will never benefit from it and to whom it will only represent an additional burden to pay for along with our flood losses. Let Middle Tennessee take this chance with so much already being washed away to start doing things right.

Just Blazing Incompetence

After attempting to detonate a bomb in the heart of Manhattan, the Jihadi terrorist was still allowed to board a commercial airliner. He almost escaped the country. Not only might have he avoided prosecution but he could have brought down a plane full of innocents. Not only was the alleged terrorist incompetent but so were those chasing him.

Matter of Luck

The attempted New York City bombing was not thwarted by brilliant police work. Our Federal law enforcers did not save the day. Local authorities did not head off the attack. Only a blatant lack of skill on the part of the bomber himself prevented grave catastrophe. If a few dozen New Yorkers and visitors had been killed had the bomber been more skillful, the economic impact might have been devastating. Some who otherwise might have visited the city would now avoid it and the costs of increasing security would have been overwhelming. Protective measures would by necessity have become even more intrusive which would cripple Manhattan even more. Only fate or God's intervention prevented another costly tragedy.

No Election Today

I had hoped to be celebrating the victory of Lonnie Spivak, the most conservative candidate running in the Republican primaries which were originally scheduled to end at seven this evening but have been postponed for two weeks due to our tragic, epic, thousand year flood. I still, of course hope Lonnie wins and triumphs again in the general election. A few million gallons of water though certainly puts things in their proper perspective- we are all Tennesseans and ultimately all more or less in the same boat. Those of us that recognize the merit of limited government also know that in emergent events like our current flood, only government can muster the resources to save lives. This police, fire protection, and national defense are necessary and proper roles and should be the extent of the reach of government along with guarding our borders where they are failing, and overseeing Customs and the collection of tariffs. On a personal note, two of those lost to the flooding were Joe and Bessie Formosa who my family had known as friends since 1938 when the Formosa produce business was located next to my family's wholesale liquor warehouse. They were magnificent strong family values people who stayed together in life and exited the world together in death. God bless their souls and the rest of those claimed by the devastation and destruction of the rising of the waters.

The Relentless Rain

Down and down the deluge fell/ The downpour gave us our watery hell/ My city submerged/ Washing away pretense/ Sweeping away yearning/ For anything but life and safety/ What was truly significant, we were slow learning/ And now it is our flooded home that is turning/ Upside down and under water/ With great concern for son or daughter/ The damage still not done as the water is rising/ Where it will crest is so surprising/ Too many lives lost/ Still weighing the cost/ These are disasters and tragedies that defy analyzing/ When all that is left is to ask God's mercy

Homeland Security Savant

The loathsome Janet Napolitano was on the Wallace program on Fox today proclaiming what a great job Team Obama is doing in the Gulf oil debacle. She was flattered by Chris Wallace with his mention of her to potentially plague the US Supreme Court for a couple of generations as a potential Obama pick but pretended her focus was on the job she is currently botching. Her most remarkable (or perhaps lamentable) statement was on the state she used to misrepresent as Governor- Arizona and the current immigration enforcement controversy there. She said she had seen the border, walked it, to show how well-versed she is (my words here) "with the criminal alien problem". If this had been Sarah Palin, she would now be mocked as having said "I can see Mexico from my house." The stakes are simply too high to have some incompetent like Napolitano who so easily can be lampooned in any position of consequence.

Wrath of God

I will be the first to admit that I am a sinner, albeit a penitent one. Yesterday, I spoke of earth's resilience in the context of the great Gulf spill, but could just as easily have directed my comments at the Iceland volcano or Mount St. Helens, or the latest earthquake to ravage China. We are beset with shaking, fire, and flood, and perhaps we more than summon some of it on ourselves. In many religious traditions, sin is erased with purification by water- baptism and the mikvah come to mind. The Lord can not be happy to see three thousand years of Abrahamic tradition of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths cast aside with domestic partnership, civil union, the mocking of the sanctified institution of marriage with the perversion called gay marriage. This even defies the Eastern traditions of the Buddha, the Sikh religion, and the Hindu faith. My home town, Nashville, Tennessee and the area around it is experiencing the worst flooding since my father arrived in 1938, maybe a hundred or thousand year flood that has many crying out for the Lord's intervention. I too cry out and beseech that only the sin be washed away, not more lives or property in our current time of testing.

The Resilient Earth

The earth is resilient. The sea renews itself. That is how the planet was crafted in intelligent design. The Gulf of Mexico and the coastline are no doubt experiencing a catastrophe, and it is indeed man's duty to mitigate whatever damage our mistakes have wrought as the Lord gave us stewardship of His dominion. But the planet will overcome this oil spill just as it overcame the sinking of millions of tonnes of fuel-laden shipping during World War II, where hundreds of oil tankers where sent to the bottom by torpedoes. Will the recovery be costly? Of course, but with our mini-Castro in the Oval Office, it is certain BP will bear the brunt, with Obama perhaps even moving to nationalize their American-based assets. The event off Louisiana is devastating, but this too shall the globe survive.