To Be Admired

Ronald Wilson Reagan came from the humblest of backgrounds to make himself into the leader who vanquished those who intended to enslave the rest of the globe. John F. Kennedy also ascended to the highest office but the clan Kennedy as it advanced in the political realm was anything but self-made and scrupulous. They had the wealth and often questionable contacts of Joseph P. Kennedy to thank for their success. Big Jim Haslam is a self-created winner in the mold of a Reagan, his son Bill, not so much. There is nothing wrong with coming from a privileged background and emerging with resources behind you to do great things on your own. It is another matter entirely to pretend to be the driving force that made a nationally known company and taking the credit for what your father sweat blood to achieve. This kind of pretense is contemptible.

Voted Too Early

If you have already exercised your franchise and voted early in the primaries, you should ignore the rest of this column. The race for the Republican nomination for Governor of Tennessee is reaching crunch time, and I have absolutely had it with legacy Bill Haslam and his phony campaign. Haslam sat in a TV spot with his wife and said he would not engage in "negative ads" and later in the very same day this commercial rolled: an ad with Bill Haslam complaining about his opponents lying about him and his Daddy's company that started the barrage of attack ads Haslam fired at his major GOP opponents. Bill Haslam is a first class Don Sundquist-Lindsey Graham RINO with all that implies, and he is in high dudgeon about Zach Wamp and Ron Ramsey telling the truth about him. I had been torn (and to an extent still am) about who to vote for between the two honorable candidates but now am favoring casting for Congressman Wamp because he has never voted for a tax increase. I am not even sure I would not go third party if Haslam succeeds with a split vote in buying the nomination.

Worse Than Imagined

Two Drudge headlines should be the last straws and the final wakeup call to motivate those who see America suffering under a dictator in the making to vote Obama's confederates out. The first piece of news is that President Barack Hussein Obama wants the Federal Bureau of Investigation to have greater warrantless access to your Internet history and records of what you do online under the rational of protecting national security and preventing terrorism. The second blurb was equally alarming- the Central Intelligence Agency is working with the monolith of the technology world Google, once again to advance your security. So while Obama, who promised to have the most open and transparent administration hides from open sessions with the whatever is left of the Constitution's guardians in the press, appearing instead with the cackling coven on ABC's The View, and tells us all he has done for us with our own money, our most basic freedoms are rapidly and deliberately eroded. The last President George W. Bush was pilloried by privacy advocates, in the press and on the campus, for his supposed attacks on civil liberties that went no where near as far as Barack Hussein Obama has taken the nation with hardly a peep out of those who should be shouting "freedom".

Repel the Invaders

A truck was carrying a load of bees but crashed. The bees were supposed to be quite industrious, but they came with costly nuisances in abundance. The invaders from the South who enter as law breakers are not "undocumented workers" as the dinosaur media terms them, plain and simple- they are "illegal aliens" who breech the border as a crime. Some of them come to take jobs in America that are increasingly scarce. Some of them do not come to steal employment and drive our wages down, but come to commit all manner of other crime, from serving as drug mules when they enter, often multiple times, to entering as members of violent street or drug gangs, to sneak in to serve as "coyotes" bringing in other illegals (and often robbing and sometimes raping them along the way), to keeping those they assist in sneaking in in positions of indenture to virtual slavery, to the petty crimes these invaders commit, from vagrancy and public drunkenness to other order offenses, to much more serious consequences that stem from their other crimes including identity theft (including that by some of the more diligent bees who have merely come here for work but take your social security number to gain entry into the workforce), to carnage on the roads caused sometimes by the alcohol or drugs they abuse or simply because they did not understand our road signs and traffic markers. Then there is the little matter that our courts have ruled we must extend hospitality to these housebreakers in our broke states in our insolvent nation. We must pay for their medical bills and the education of their children (often in expensive separate English as a second language classes that are necessitated only because they have broken in)- not to mention the insane concept of birthright citizenship where mothers come over here pregnant with the express intention of popping out an anchor baby which will tie the family to America's benefit system for generations, even if none of the family members ever contribute a dime into the system. We are being played for suckers by our judiciary, the substantial portion of our political elite who push amnesty (by any other name), and the foreign invaders they have invited in and welcomed and forced us to pay for, sometimes at the cost of our very lives.

Senseless at Census

A person I know quite well owns a home that currently sits unoccupied (you might say pending renovation or until the economy turns around presumably after Obama has left office). Suffice it to say the residence is obviously unoccupied, and the owner sent the United States Census mailer back immediately after it was initially received months ago indicating that no one lived at said address. But the alacrity of the home owner's response did not stop the Census Bureau from sending a canvasser to check the property's status. As is mostly the case, with no one living there and even the water cut off to the building, when the Census man arrived, there was nobody present to answer his queries. So, Mr. Census left a note saying he must be reached between four and seven (4-7)pm at a particular telephone number, which the home's owner has called diligently from the day the note was left at the specified time and left several messages with a return number but no further response from the government's agent. Is this phone tag which was completely unnecessary to start with as the owner complied fully and answered truthfully all the questions on the initial Census mailing really cost effective? Is there not a better use of limited Federal resources than wasting dollars like this?

Moral Inversion Complete

British Prime Minister David Cameron sat next to Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and denounced Israel for turning Gaza into a prison. Of course, Cameron's Turkish Islamist host was only too happy to agree with him. The amazing aspect of the criticism of Israel was the straight-faced audacity of it. In the case of Turkey, the Turks have kept (and continue to hold) their Kurdish minority prisoner with much more force and daily bloodshed than Israel has ever caused among the Palestinians. Nor did Israel ever attempt a genocide, as Turkey launched against her own Armenian population. Nor has Israel perpetrated mass discrimination including outright murder of all its minorities, as has recently been the case, even with Christians who find themselves in the intolerant rising Islamist Turkey where three workers at a Christian publishing house were butchered by Turkish nationalists. And at the other side of the table in this instance, we have good old moral Britain. The same Britain that was the colonial master of pre-state Israel and systematically excluded Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler's persecution even though the British knew that by sending the Jews back to Europe they were condemning them to almost certain death. Even after the Holocaust, the colonial power prevented Jews from entering Palestine, forcing them back to DP (displaced person) camps or even to areas of Europe where their return could cost their lives (i.e. Poland). And then the English gladly armed and officered the Arab forces arrayed to annihilate the nascent Jewish state. And the UK has enjoyed such sterling conduct in areas where she is the warder like Ireland and the Malvinas. So two countries, Turkey and not so Great Britain that know quite a lot about oppression because they practice it have the nerve to call Israel out about the Jewish state's defensive actions vis-a-vis the Gaza Strip without even bothering to mention Gaza's other border with Egypt that is also largely closed for the security needs of the Egyptians. So if Gaza is a prison at least Israel is not the only guard. To relate one more little nugget of prisoners and British history- after Hitler's suicide but before Germany's official surrender, thousands of Jewish inmates who had somehow survived the concentration camps and the death marches were held captive on a ship called the Cap Arcona by the Nazis in Lubeck Bay. There is speculation almost to a certainty that British intelligence knew Jewish prisoners were on board yet a British Hawker Typhoon squadron attacked and sunk the ship, killing thousands of Jews who had miraculously survived to that point. Could that have been because powers that be in the United Kingdom did not want to contend with that many more Jewish refugees in Palestine? If Prime Minister Cameron had even the slightest interest in justice, he would be asking Erdogan to cease Turkish support for the Hamas terrorists that hold Gaza hostage. 

No Small Consolation

A woman who supported Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination has produced a documentary in which she contends Barack Hussein Obama stole the nomination, manipulating results and even locking out Hillary supporters in caucus states. This story is making the rounds now in conservative media, suggesting it was a tragedy that the Obama machine got by with it and that the nation would be in better shape had Ms. Clinton secured the nomination. I want you to understand this- Hillary Clinton, who may mount an insurgent campaign against the President for whom she currently serves as Secretary of State, is every bit as radical as Barack Hussein Obama is. When Hillary was First Lady, she embraced and literally exchanged a kiss with arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat's wife Suha, immediately after Suha Arafat had accused Israelis of killing Palestinian civilians with poison gas (in Arabic, but contemporaneously translated into English where Clinton had to absorb the blood libel against the Jews). Hillary Clinton is a fellow traveler of the leftist path with Barack Obama as each is a disciple of Saul Alinsky. Hillary Clinton was the architect of the first public option health care plan, Obama Care before Obama and every bit the advocate of big invasive government and enemy of freedom that Barack Obama is (which is why despite the contentious primaries, Hillary is a high ranking member of the Obama administration). There is no reason for optimism if the situation in America is so bad that Hillary Clinton tries to rekindle Teddy Kennedy circa 1980, running against a sitting President of his own party (Jimmy Carter). If the situation is so dire that Hillary would attempt this, no hope or happiness should redound to the country. And Hillary would, if she secured the nomination be a tougher opponent to a conservative Republican who actually would try to restore and redeem the nation, and Hillary might be able to fool enough of the public to keep power, the Presidency at least, in Democratic hands. Hillary Clinton would be every bit the nightmare in office as Barack Hussein Obama.

The Hoodwinkers Triumphed

For years, the dinosaur media scrupulously denied having any liberal bias. There was no leftward tilt when Sam Donaldson was bashing Reagan as he took the steps necessary to return the US to prosperity after Jimmy Carter's bungling and managed the impossible- defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War. The media never went out of its way to go after either of the Presidents Bush, but "a vast right wing media conspiracy" was given credence and presumed to exist because Hillary Clinton said those mean old righties were after her serial philandering, sell our national security to Red China husband. So the overwhelming liberal propaganda machine did not exist but the non-existent rightist cabal was pulling all the strings. Back as far as the ABC town hall meetings, the media was so strident in protecting the open secret of their radical tilt that Ted Koppel would take air time to allow Reed Irvine or someone from his Accuracy in Media organization to the microphone to speak at an "open forum", only to have his producers yank the mike away and suggest Accuracy in Media was an organization that had come to speak under false pretenses and was a right-wing shill group. That was twenty years ago but the dinosaur press still goes out of its way to try to show watchdogs like Brent Bozell, trying to keep the media honest, are front groups for the evil, all-powerful right as was supposedly embodied by Richard Mellon Scaife. But these radicals who really run things did not exist, did not conspire, and never sent out talking points until intrepid researchers brought out Journolist, a real left-wing cabal that helped elect Barack Hussein Obama to our highest office by spiking stories about Obama's controversial associates, particularly the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, all while literally wishing their New Media opponents dead with one Jourolist lovely waxing maniacal about watching Rush Limbaugh suffer the fatal agonies of a heart attack as she laughs. The right in media never had any anti-Clinton conspiracy sending out blue dressed sirens to make poor Bill fall from his moral pedestal but the left really has held sway over the newsroom since John Kennedy stole an election from Richard Nixon in 1960. The dinosaur media perpetuated the myth that the most radical US Senator who had ground a racial axe to advance throughout his career was a "post-racial" moderate.

Waste No Crime

People have gone to jail for stealing a loaf of bread. Under the three strikes law, I recall a man sent to prison for life for shoplifting sandwich meat and razor blades and then resisting his arrest. Some though are much luckier- they get away with graft for years. Perhaps, they even are caught with a refrigerator filled with $90,000 in cash or chair the committee writing US Tax Code in the United States House of Representatives while forgetting the income they derive from holdings in the Dominican Republic, or they blame a software error for underpaying Uncle Sam what was owed to the IRS by thousands and then end up running that agency and stridently enforcing that tax law over the rest of us. You can not yet call these fellows "criminals", "inmates", or "convicts", but "scoundrel" sure seems to fit with William Jefferson, Charles Rangel, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Dream No More

The American Dream, that to which so many have aspired, that which has beckoned those seeking freedom and opportunity from distant shores, is being extinguished before our eyes. The Dream of course meant different things to different people. But some aspects seem a common thread. Mobility, the freedom and the means to travel, is under attack as the Obama administration hypocritically targets the rest of us as Obama and his family flit over the world on a whim, taking more vacations early on in his administration than any of the previous Presidents during the comparable period of their administrations. Obama serves as a wet blanket and is the national scold as he admonished people not to go to Las Vegas which did not endear Obama to that city's Democratic Mayor Oscar Goodman, who is so outraged at Obama's attack that he has refused to meet with President Obama. President Obama recently flew off to yet another vacation in Maine while having "first dog" Bo delivered on a separate jet. Part of the mobility dream for Americans has been a vehicle of their choice which for many has been a large vehicle, but Obama says no to that. Small fuel efficient cars, hybrids, or electric vehicles (or facing the stricture of being tied to mass transit or a bicycle or one's legs) are the only way to go (unless you need to get your Portuguese water dog to the pristine North). Lobster all around for Obama on vacation in Maine but not for you as Obama has just failed in an attempt to ban lobster fishing from Maine to North Carolina. The American Dream was not necessarily for a lobster in every pot but certainly for food aplenty, and now the national nannies led by Obama will seek to restrict what you consume from trans fat to sodium and even insist on an obesity rating to follow each of us in our medical records starting in 2014 (but worry not- your abortions and HIV-positive status will not be permitted to be tracked). So I could no longer drive my first car, a big gas guzzling 1978 Jeep Wagoneer, to Vegas, and I should be afraid of public opprobrium for taking a cruise in the tail-finned 1968 Cadillac Coupe de Ville that sits idly in my garage, awaiting the era where we can breathe free again. And what of the pride of ownership with the house with the white picket fence or the manse on the green for that matter? In Obama's America, all this is under attack as property tax rates soar as communities are left bereft of Federal assistance but with more and more unfunded Federal mandates which cause the tax burden of ownership to be as high as rent as communities across the nation, facing the Obama economy and the budget shortfalls it engenders, raise property tax rates. With the property tax burden and zoning regulations and the necessity to obtain permits to do anything on your own property, who owns it anyway- you or the government? So, the Dream of owning a home in the good old USA is increasingly turned to nightmare with meddlesome and costly regulation taking away property rights- a liberty as essential as any every propounded by man. And many of those houses are no longer an asset at all but underwater on mortgages or suffering in the shattered (and shuttered) dream of foreclosure. Only turning the tide starting in the November election can restore the dream.

Worse Than Nothing

Hurrah! The Obama brand of financial regulations have just been signed into law yesterday and don't we all feel better? Do these new rules and the growing bureaucracy that will need to be created and put into place to enforce them address the bad loans which virtually all defaulted issued to those who were not credit-worthy which banks were forced to make by the Federal government and pressure groups like Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push Coalition and ACORN after frivolous claims of racism by way of redlining which set off the economic collapse in the first place? No, the regulations do not mention them at all. Does the new financial regime regulate the bloated government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac (or even loans to our military veterans which like the rest of the economy are increasingly falling into default)? Once again, no, not in the least, the government backed liabilities have in fact only increased with a complete takeover by the Federal government of student loans. What the regulations just signed do address, they get wrong. In an attempt to gain more government oversight of the risky derivatives markets, the new rules will restrict farmers and airlines from hedging and locking in fuel and other needed commodities at lower costs by securing contracts that lock in savings which have just been regulated out in an attempt to throttle hedge fund risks on Wall Street. Then, the new scheme will inhibit community banks, the smaller banks that dot the nation and have always had a local focus and boosted local businesses, from making loans while leaving the largest banks virtually unhindered in still taking the risks that got them into trouble in the first place, but with one proviso, the President can now more or less arbitrarily decide that a financial institution that has been deemed too big to fail is in trouble and take it over. With the new regulatory scheme, the Obama care regime, and the car company takeovers, the Obama administration now has effective control over seventy percent of the US economy. Like so much else Team Obama is doing, what masquerades as help, only does damage. Knowing this, that Obama has got your back (and your wallet), don't you feel much better.

Gains Are Illusory

Reports on US economic activity may well reflect an increase as the November election nears. This sort of news would boost President Obama's support and garner votes for his Democrat party. And that is precisely why we must be skeptical of the numbers generated (or manufactured of whole cloth) by the Obama administration or even by supposedly independent monitors like the Congressional Budget Office because 1.) Democrats control Congress at the moment and are self-serving and 2.)the CBO can only work with the information it has access to or is given. Hence, the cost of the Obama health care regime remained just under the magic trillion dollars because the books were cooked to enable it to stay that way. There may well indeed be a higher volume of trade in the markets and more homes may sell in the short run as those who still would enjoy a capital gain will want to take advantage of the lower rates before the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. There is no "recovery summer" or for that matter appreciable improvement in the US economy in general as Obama and his flacks contend. The dinosaur media continues to cover up the real rate of unemployment, claiming it to be about nine and one half percent. Some left-wing economist in academe go along with this manipulated number but most in the field believe true joblessness to be over fifteen percent when discouraged workers and the marginally (under)employed are factored in. The other shoe has not dropped in the housing market either with tremendous numbers of homes underwater and foreclosures still at epic rates. There is no reason to believe that will improve and commercial real estate is a basket case as well. We are not going to enter a double dip recession but have never really left the initial recession despite the squandered bailouts and wasted stimulus attempts. All the Obama gang is doing is devaluing the dollar and causing future inflation- perhaps hyperinflation in the Weimar or Zimbabwe mold. As long as Obama remains in office, there is nothing to be optimistic about. Have a good rest of the year.

Gaylord Give Away

How much corporate welfare will Gaylord Opryland Hotel receive before the public says enough? The politicians in Nashville are only too glad to give away our tax-confiscated funds and subsidize Opryland Hotel at the expense of all the other accommodations in the Nashville hospitality industry. The hotel tax should go back into the general fund, not go to one particular company. Opryland sustained flood damage- so did many of the rest of us, businesses and individuals alike, and many are not eligible for any form of government assistance. So, why should aid be extended to one multi-billion dollar corporation which has already received hundreds of millions in government largess? The resort complex was given millions in tax abatement to initially locate a hotel, entertainment, and theme park here. Roads were built or reconfigured at taxpayer expense to facilitate traffic flow to the complex. Eminent domain was employed to remove some recalcitrant property owners who stood in the way. The theme park was a beacon for tourism and an icon to the locals who often purchased season passes to use every year. Then Opryland unceremoniously closed the theme park after receiving even more government beneficence, only to replace it with a shopping mall. And the resort of late has been no boon to the local jobseeker as area workers were supplanted by Puerto Ricans flown in to labor in a period of contract work and kept in barrack-type motels. Let the billionaire owner, the flood insurance, and the shareholders bear the cost of repairing what destruction the flood hath wrought on Gaylord. They have resources aplenty and they can not pick up one of the largest American hotel complexes outside of Las Vegas and move it anywhere. No matter what, subsidy or not, Opryland is staying in Nashville.

Impervious to Reason

Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, today said that if the Taliban are included in any future Afghan government that they would have to "respect women's rights". The Taliban by in large are illiterate thugs and those who can read are generally versed in the one book which even those who are illiterate revere. That book is the Holy Qur'an, That tome and the Hadith that accompany it do not advocate woman's rights. If you have ever read the Islamic holy books (as I have in the form of English interpretation as I neither speak nor read Arabic), you will find women are deemed chattel under the control of fathers and brothers and then transferred to be under the authority of a husband with no rights to her own children if the husband decides to leave the marriage by saying "I divorce thee" three times. The Taliban will never respect the distaff sex because the Koran itself disdains the fairer sex. It is not the ignorant Pashtun alone who take the Koran absolutely literally. The Christmas day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab believed that a heavenly reward of seventy-two virgins awaited him on the success of his mission of murder. Umar was no poor wayward semi-literate but a scion of one of the wealthiest families in Nigeria and the product of elite education including attending University College London while living in one of his father's chic abodes in one of the most expensive areas in the world. Umar's father was merely the chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria and a former minister of Nigeria's cleptocratic government. The Times Square attempted bomber Faisal Shahzad who had evidently been directed and trained by the Pakistani Taliban was no imbecile either, having gained a US university degree but also had fervent belief in what is written. Mohamed Atta was the field commander of the September 11 atrocity and was no ill-educated pauper either, but the son of a prominent Egyptian attorney and was trained as an architect, even taking post-graduate courses in urban planning in Germany. The Taliban will never respect women's rights because the Muslim faith does not recognize them. Obviously, the most fanatical worshippers of Allah will not abandon their faith and their most deeply held religious views. It is not the Taliban that need to be reasoned with because they will never compromise. It is the Secretary of State herself and the Obama administration, that by refusing to name the enemy and believing that Islamist absolutism can be negotiated with, seem impervious to reason.

Lo and Behold

Just a few short years ago, the economy of Ireland was heralded as the "Irish miracle". Taxes were so low in Ireland that some wealthy Americans renounced United States citizenship to become "Irish". New businesses including those in technology helped Ireland thrive. But the growing prosperity was accompanied by growing benefits and a generous government-funded social safety net. And the newly engendered government expenses caused the formerly modest taxes to rise (which stifled the growth needed to sustain both public and private prosperity). This socialist help, this government hand up, is ultimately breaking Ireland whose credit rating has just been downgraded by Moody's for the second time. Ireland's folly is an excellent lesson for America and a warning for US President Barack Hussein Obama about a path no nation can afford to follow. America's political class should get the message that the economy can only sustain so much imposed generosity, but they won't.

Settle the Score

I watched a breathtaking BBC report yesterday of an Afghan soldier named Mohammad who lost all his limbs in a bomb explosion but whose life was saved by the heroic efforts of a female British corporal who was a combat medic and an American helicopter crew that responded quickly enough to save this grievously wounded warrior. The joint patrol of UK and Afghan forces that Mohammad was injured on was searching for a Taliban heavy machine gun which incidentally was never found. The Karzai administration currently attempting to exercise authority in Kabul believes that the Afghan government can negotiate some sort of reconciliation with the Taliban. Certain Western leaders who want to wash their hands of the struggle in Afghanistan are pushing too and hoping for an accord. Yes, now is certainly the time they say to extend the hand of peace. You have to be kidding me- these Afghan Taliban and their Pakistani Pashtun, Sunni brethren blow up Shia mosques on a lark. They are wanton and conscienceless murderers and plunderers of the first magnitude. Not only did they practice cultural vandalism, misogyny as governance, and mayhem as social order, they harbored Osama bin Laden both before but even after the September 11, 2001 outrage and brought the war and any suffering as a result of it on themselves, but now our allies do not wish to bear the cost in material and men and seek some face saving way to throw in the towel. We must honor the sacrifice of the young Afghan soldier Mohammad, now limbless because he chose to stand with righteousness- with us and all the sacrifice of all those who have fallen in the attempt to thwart fundamentalist madness. We must not compromise with al Qaeda or the Taliban but do what is necessary to defeat them.

Cuba's Raving Lunatic

Fidel Castro, beloved by many on the American left, was reanimated again enough yesterday to be rolled out to lambaste the USA and say that we are seeking and will soon precipitate nuclear war with both North Korea and Iran. Yes, Fidel Castro believes our dove of a US President, Barack Hussein Obama, is so Machiavellian that he deliberately sank the South Korean frigate in a false flag operation so Obama would have adequate provocation to launch a nuclear war against North Korea who Castro sees as an innocent victim. How hard must it be for Castro's defenders on the American campus to defend these preposterous charges leveled against the idol, the ideal President Obama who enjoyed so much acclaim and support from the Castro-loving crowd? Now, they must explain that Fidel is not the same "liberator" they knew and loved but has been warped by age and illness and made a delusional paranoid by the several attempts America allegedly made to assassinate Castro early in his reign. To the Castro apologists in the US who also love Obama, they readily accept Castro's other premise that Israel will attack Iran but to hear Castro heap calumny on Obama is unsettling, like hearing that the inappropriate drunken uncle will be attending the family reunion. The bad news for them is that Castro has always been nothing but a brutal, murderous ideologue, but the good news for us, judging by his frail and failing appearance, is that Castro will soon shuffle off the world stage and off this mortal coil.

Early Voting Starts

Today we have a chance to strike a blow for liberty. Early voting begins in Davidson County and I implore you to exercise your franchise to bring honorable, small government conservatives into office. One candidate who I can not endorse is leading gubernatorial office seeker Bill Haslam who seemed to be going through the motions on the recently televised WSMV debate. Haslam's performance rang hollow and he seemed strangely unprepared- not versed in any depth on the issues. Maybe, Haslam figures with his great oil generated wealth, he can just buy Tennessee's highest office though now allegations emerging that his family's Pilot business fixed fuel prices after a hurricane may be beginning to cloud Haslam's self-certain anointing. On the positive side, I heard an ad air today on 1510 AM WLAC during the Glenn Beck show for the most qualified candidate to take the Fifth District Congress seat from uber-liberal Jim Cooper, a right-thinking conservative I endorse and will gladly vote for- Lonnie Spivak, a family man who knows the value of less intrusive government, less not more regulation, and lower taxes that allow you to keep more of what you earn and a leader who takes national security very seriously and is willing to name the radical Islamic enemy and fight to pursue victory over Islamism. Go out and vote early, but I can not recommend the old admonition in the joke to vote often.

Really Mad Max

I enjoyed Mel Gibson's early performance in the post-apocalyptic Australian conjured fantasy Mad Max. I thought his acting in The Bounty was spot-on. In fact, I have generally enjoyed him as an actor. While I have not dealt with celebrity much on this blog, the recent Gibson revelations released on audio (which ABC's crawl this morning alleged may have been edited before release) leave me questioning Gibson's sanity and with concern for him and those with whom he interacts. He has courted controversy before, with accusations that his Passion flamed anti-Semitism and statements to a California law enforcement officer who was detaining Gibson for drunk driving that did reflect that Gibson did indeed harbor deep anti-Jewish beliefs (it was just Gibson's luck to be pulled over by one of the handful of California police who happen to be Jewish). Now the revelations emerge on tape that Gibson is very troubled and in need of assistance. Let us hope Mel finds help.

The Last Bastion

Over the course of time, everything from religion to politics has been called the "last bastion of scoundrels". With the NAACP's decision to confront the Tea Party movement at their current convention, I would now say "cries of racism are the new last bastion of scoundrels". The Tea Party movement is about smaller, less intrusive government, lower taxes, and the government spending more wisely. No element of race even enters into the equation of why most join the Tea Party cause. Are there individual racists at Tea Party events? I would assume there are, just as you would find a fringe element at any large gathering, but they do not represent the ideas on which the Tea Party is being created and they are not welcomed or tolerated in the ranks. There was much more overt racism tolerated until recently in the ranks of the Democrat Party as can be easily ascertained with a quick perusal of the biography of the recently passed Robert C. Byrd whose early affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan was rationalized by former President Bill Clinton during Byrd's funeral service and whose staunch defense of racial segregation enforced by law was not mentioned. Will I as a minority member (I am Jewish) continue to support the Tea Party and the ideals it represents which if implemented will save the country? To borrow a Palinism- "you betcha".

Comes Full Circle

Fulgencio Batista was a corrupt and brutal dictator whose regime collapsed under the weight of its own excesses. Fidel Castro emerged from his crypt yesterday to spew anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric in predicting that these "colonialist oppressor" states will soon start a nuclear war with peace-loving North Korea and those stalwart harmony seekers in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Fidel Castro has for two generations taken whatever wealth, resources, and productivity Cuba enjoyed and while living a superficially modest life, looted his nation for himself and his close cadre while making the proud Cuban people prisoners and dependents first on charity from the old Soviet bloc to now more reliant on his tyrant friend Hugo Chavez and the new revolutionary states that Castro and Chavez have inspired to follow the corrupted socialist path throughout Latin America. Castro's Cuba has always denied holding political prisoners but has just released fifty-two of those non-existent dissidents from jail in a gesture to Spain within the context of a mutual courtship where Spain seeks greater access to Cuba's resources and more extensive trade ties and Cuba seeks more remuneration for the Castroites, now with younger brother Raul Castro nominally running the nation cum family enterprise in the stead of the largely incapacitated Fidel. Pity the Cuban people and pray that they will soon overturn the real oppressor.

Sack of Rome

A cabal has monopolized unprecedented power in America. This group has arrogated authority that should astound. Who could imagine that in less than two years two of the nation's automotive giants, formerly two of the largest industrial companies in the world would fall under government control? Who would have guessed how quickly this country would give up fee for service medical care to allow nameless bureaucrats and their political bosses to control their health care destiny, with hardly a squawk? Who could have imagined an effort to supplant the real economy with a phony cap and trade (and tax and tax and tax) scheme would be near passage through the marionette US Congress pushed through under the ersatz premise of global warming (now such a tough sale with an increasingly skeptical public that those manufacturing it have changed the name to man-caused climate change)? And like Rome, with Vandals and Visigoths at the gates, national security is not being taken seriously with "man-caused disaster" replacing terrorist attacks in the lexicon of those sealing our defeat rather than pursuing victory in the war against the Islamist extremists they dare not even name much less aggressively contest. Just look at the slaughter in Uganda with sixty plus murdered including at least one American aid worker because they had gathered to watch a soccer match- some "man-caused disaster" all right with the US not willing to confront the fundamentalist, expansionist Islamist enemy who have no hesitation to declare their aim to create a world caliphate and impose universal Sharia.

No Savior He

He was supposed to save Cleveland but fell well short in his attempt and has trundled himself off to the greener pastures of Miami. He was supposed by his acolytes to save the nation but has fallen well shy of the mark as the wrong track number in polls has verified. Now both congregations lie rudderless, leaderless, drifting with nothing more certain than future uncertainty. LeBron and Barry- both disappointments in the extreme. Cleveland loyalists will now impart, "LeBron James was no Craig Ehlo" and patriots who love America will intone: "Shame Barack Hussein Obama could not even live up to Jimmy Carter".

Toyota and Tylenol

Two brands that had worked hard to establish worldwide reputations for safety and quality have fallen on hard times and people who were formerly loyal customers of both or either are forced to question their assumptions. Toyota until the last couple of years had a sterling record that they justifiably touted in their ads and owners felt secure not only in their decision to drive every day but knowing that their vehicles would hold their value as well as cars from any other maker in the industry- not so much now. Certainly through no fault of their own, Tylenol had been used a couple of decades ago as an instrument of murder when a criminal had poisoned capsules and several deaths had occurred. The manufacturers had worked hard to recover the trust of the public and had largely overcome the tragedy of the early 1980s that had led wits to call the product "End It All". Just as with Toyota, so much hard work, redoubling the effort to regain the trust of potential buyers has largely gone out the window with recalls causing shoppers to try other brands. The business environment is tough enough now, with the Obama malaise (and no I do not mean Hellmann's) sapping even the strongest labels. Introducing a question of trust now, with safety at stake, can only hurt. But enough for now, I need to jump in the Camry and pick up something for this blasted headache.

Try Another Swap

Now that the spy for prisoner swap has been pulled off- seemingly without too many glitches, I am all for another trade that will certainly aid the United States, even if it does not do much for Russia. How about we offer our not so sub rosa Marxist leader, Barack Hussein Obama, who after all let his true colors out as a redistributionist when he was caught in his "Joe the plumber" moment, for a former Communist who is more open about past associations with Marxists and now practices capitalism albeit of the let us help my oligarch crony-capitalism variety, Russian strong man Vladimir Putin? At least Putin does not go around apologizing for his own country or for that matter, does not spend much time bashing the United States unlike Barack Hussein Obama, who has seldom let an opportunity to point out what he sees as America's flaws, pass. Putin also no doubt knows how to wage war- total war aimed at total victory and would not tie Russian troops' hands with rules of engagement that would not permit them to fully protect themselves- much less win. I think many Americans would give this offer some consideration. Hey Russia, how about a one for one swap?

Our Racial Crucible

We were supposed to become a harmonious Utopia with the ascension of Barack Hussein Obama to the US Presidency. All the acrimony of slavery and segregation would be put behind us by our first "post-racial" President. In the event, things have not actually turned out that way with more ethnic and racial polarization than ever. Just look at how Attorney General Eric Holder still exploits race grievance and diminishes the legal rights of the white voter by failing to pursue the New Black Panther voter intimidation case in Philadelphia. We are now living on Animal Farm with some of the denizens just a little more equal and worthy of protection than the others. We are no longer equal under the law but under Obama's caprice in America.

Tennessee's Next Governor

Tennessee's sitting Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, is term-limited, meaning come November that my home state will be electing a new leader. There are three serious Republican contenders, Zach Wamp, Ron Ramsey, and Bill Haslam, and one Democrat, former Governor Ned Ray McWherter's son, Mike. So in my assessment, we have two legacy candidates, one from each party- McWherter who likely would not be considered viable had his father not been Governor, and Haslam who would be no where were it not for his father's several hundred million (or more) dollars. I also sense from his tenure as Knoxville's mayor that Haslam is a down the line moderate in the line of Lindsey Graham and John McCain, a Rockefeller Republican whose values conflict with the down home aims of our state GOP, but I have no doubt that if Haslam uses his vast resources and a split occurs in the conservative vote between Ramsey and Wamp allowing Haslam to win the primary that he will gain the grudging support of Tennessee's right wing who will not want a member of Barack Hussein Obama's party to win the general election. I see this as the likely outcome- a GOP Governor Haslam approximating the weak as water middle road approach taken by Lamar Alexander serving the next four years in a state more conservative than he is with the nation in opposition to Obamaism tilting right.

Israel's Gaza Quarantine

Gaza as it exists now is in the thrall of Hamas and is therefore afflicted with a fever that promotes the genocide of world Jewry. Israel's blockade of Gaza is limited to supplies of war or those materials with dual uses that could facilitate the construction of fortifications, tunnels, or bunkers. As Barack Hussein Obama meets today with Israel's Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, Obama demands that the Jewish state lift all restrictions on what the Jewish state permits into the terrorist-controlled enclave- really. It has long been said that if the Arabs disarm, there would be peace, and if the Jews put down their weapons, there would, in short order, be no Jews. This has never been more true than the situation that prevails at this moment. The West is portraying Israel as Goliath with huge boot on the throat of infant Palestine rather than the reality that Israel is still David under the guns of a half a billion Arabs and a billion and a half Muslims now joined by the growing menace of Persian nukes emanating from Iran. Do not pity the poor Palestinians who have rejected every offer of peace up to and including Ehud Olmert's offer of 95% of the West Bank and continue incitement to murder Jews unabated. If Israel were to follow President Obama's diktat and clear the path to Gaza, does anyone doubt that all sorts of munitions would enter that territory to be turned against the Jews? If Israel concedes to Obama, a virtually endless supply of Kassams to launch at Israel would be bound to be constructed in the Gaza Strip and more accurate and destructive Katyusha rockets would be supplied through the newly opened Gaza port. Hamas has always used any weapon at its disposal to attack Jews and also, incidentally, has American blood on its hands as well, including in all likelihood, the three State Department security personnel murdered by a roadside bomb in Gaza on October 15, 2003. If Israel removes impediments to Hamas acquiring arms, they will be directed against Israel and Israel will be bound to respond to defend herself from the reinforced Hamas. Israel will retaliate. Ironically, if Israel complies with what Obama is pressing them to do, and implements Obama's suggestion that free access to and from Gaza somehow advances peace, Obama is actually assuring a regional war where Iran's proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, will jump in to the fray, certainly aided by Syria and this might well be the spark to ignite many of the rest of the Arab states hostile to Israel to have a go at the Jewish state, who they feel they have successfully weakened with their campaign to delegitimize and isolate the tiny democracy.

Our Constitution's Enemy

Does enough common sense remain in the United States Senate Republican delegation to do what is necessary (a filibuster) to thwart the rise of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court? We are not talking courage here on the part of the GOP, merely rejecting a candidate for the court more manifestly unqualified for our highest court than roundly rejected George W. Bush prospect Harriet Miers. At least Miers was not a partisan hack bent on undermining the Constitutional basis of our government by judicial fiat. Kagan has stated arguing before the Supreme Court that the Federal government has the authority to ban pamphlets. This position is a direct assault on the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. If pamphlets are subject to such restriction- what about books, newspapers, debate of all sorts on the Internet? As to the right to keep and bear arms as propounded by the Second Amendment, Kagan had the nerve to compare the National Rifle Association, an organization that reverences our Constitution and laws, to the Ku Klux Klan. Obviously, Ms. Kagan has little respect for either of the first two articles of our Bill of Rights. Kagan is an opponent of the freedoms and immunities afforded by Natural Law and codified in the US Constitution that have made us America.

The Final Fourth

A whirlwind has arisen to extinguish the flame of liberty/ Heard with martial drumbeat since the Yorktown victory/ To quiet into silence the heart of man that yearns to beat free/ These rights should never be forsaken as they redound to us from on High/ And to preserve them, men have gladly paid the price and watched their brothers die/ To wrest these natural rights from George- a foreign king/ Was bought in bloody battle and no easy thing/ Not communal rights descended from some book/ From socially just intentions or giving Marx a look/ Will those in ivory towers who have mocked it for so long/ Still be laughing at it when liberty is gone/ Once freedom vanishes that they seem to scorn/ Will they see the error in their ways and our lost liberty mourn?/ Those who hid behind her shield but never bore the cost/ Yet used the license granted to saw it to the ground/ Will reckon only memory when what is lost can not be found/ 'Twas just an oft repeated fable told to children with glee/ When freedom has done passing into history/ Stop the tyrants now/ Before our fate is sealed/ It is not yet cast in stone/ We can still be healed/ Take the message here revealed- Shine bright this beacon liberty/ Stand fast this blood-bought honor/ Let this not be the last vestige of a nation great/ Remembered only with sorrow.

Steve Cohen: Defeatist

Steve Cohen, one of the members of the United States House representing the Memphis, Tennessee area and a Democrat, showed his true colors yesterday, which are white as in the flag of surrender and yellow as in a coward of the lowest order. Cohen echoed what we heard as the the Bush/ Petraeus troop surge was taking place from the then and current but soon to be replaced US Senate majority leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada), then in the context of Iraq but now in regard to Afghanistan- that "the war is lost". If this attitude had prevailed when Bush authorized the surge, Iraq would likely now be in Iran's hands as Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army would have mobilised the Shia majority of Iraq into confederation with their nuclear bomb seeking brethren in Iran (or Iraq could have descended into utter nihilistic terrorist chaos with ethnic strife escalating into total open warfare between the Kurds, the Shia, and the Sunnis who would be aided by the Saudis and in common cause with al-Qaeda). If Cohen/Reid type of thinking had won the day in World Wars I or II, the United States would obviously have been defeated. When ever we have suffered reversals in earlier campaigns, when we have faced setbacks as is inevitable in every endeavor (as we are fallible as human beings), when the going got tough as happens every time troops are forward deployed where people are doing their best to kill them, we have persevered. If a change in tactics or strategy is necessary, by all means do all that is possible to create conditions for victory. If rules of engagement (ROE) are too restrictive and bind and endanger our troops, free them up to fight. It is an abomination to deploy forces and then tie their hands or make them fight with inferior tools and shortages of men and material. We must call upon our NATO allies to follow through with their commitments where they have been trying to work on the cheap and free the ROE where air, close air, and artillery support can perform the role they have traditionally played since the US entered World War II to overcome the adversaries' advantages of knowing the terrain and hiding within the local populace. Our concern to avert civilian casualties is being cynically used by the Taliban to do our troops on the ground great harm. We should have no pity for the Afghan people who sat by silent and allowed al-Qaeda to marshal the forces for the September 11, 2001 attacks on Afghan soil and gladly send opium poison to the rest of the world. The Afghans are no more innocent than the German or Japanese people who we directed our righteous wrath against during World War II. Why should we care more for their welfare than they do themselves? William Tecumseh Sherman, who ravaged much of the Southern part of our own nation during the US Civil War, said famously "war is hell". Let me amplify that, war is not a lemonade social but the most difficult endeavor on which man can embark and there is only one way to wage it- ruthlessly.

The Great Recovery

Not since the halcyon days of Herbert Hoover have we seen such glorious economic news. The number crunchers who fix the outcomes to make the Obama administration look good actually said unemployment was down two-tenths of one percent in a month where 125,000 jobs were lost and more than six hundred thousand unemployed simply gave up the job search or settled for marginal employment. How much more of this Obama prosperity can we afford?

Another Artless Dodger

It is Obama's lobster boil and we who love freedom are all his luscious little crustaceans. And the latest chef to join the lineup of liberty robbers and cook US is Elena Kagan, almost certain to be confirmed to her place on the nation's highest court unless she burns the American flag at her Senate hearings. Kagan's performance has been an abysmal insult to thinking people. She proclaims she does not know what "progressive" means, yet she is somehow fit to judge on the nation's Supreme Court. Her answers have been cagey. She has been evasive not about how she would rule on cases that could come before the Court in the future but on virtually every question a Republican Senator has asked her while she has been massaged and stroked by her Senate Democrats who are in her corner and have her back, not allowing the GOP to really press Kagan. Kagan is so unctuous that I have had to shower after watching the hearings and she is contemptuous of the public and the process with answers that are insults- do not insult our intelligence, your slipperiness is not artful, it just makes you and the President who selected you look like idiots. But any Obama high court choice will be a doctrinaire leftist sent up to hide these views that are anathema to much of the electorate at Senate confirmation hearings. Elena- you may portray yourself as an insouciant ignoramus to get by and stand over us as you rule from the bench pushing abortion on demand and banning our guns, but you have not fooled anybody, America knows exactly what you are.

Leaving Space Behind

Barack Hussein Obama promised in his campaign for the highest office to be the "science President", emphasizing what he saw as his difference with George W. Bush who was lampooned as something of a Luddite. One of the areas of science where great progress had been made by the United States has been space exploration. America is the only nation to have put men on the moon, has led in the development of satellite technology, and there have been numerous subsidiary benefits from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ranging far beyond Velcro and Tang. Yet our so-called science President is gutting NASA, limiting resources dramatically for future space exploration and a return for man to the moon, and all but destroying the prospect of a manned mission to Mars, all while killing the Space Shuttle program and leaving the thousands of workers associated with it, particularly those in Florida, jobless or in retraining programs with no real prospect of finding other employment in the teeth of the Obama recession which some are euphemistically calling our jobless recovery. The original purpose of America's entry into the space race was of course national defense, embarked upon after the Soviet Union gained an early advantage by launching Sputnik. Now, the United States is contracting out all our journeys to the International Space Station to the Russians, the very same nation who we have just accused of spying on us. And it only gets worse from there with the Obama administration pursuing space cooperation with Communist China who already used contacts with President Clinton's administration to gain Loral technology that was supposed to be for peaceful space research to accuracize her missiles and create MIRVs, in this case multiple independently targeted warheads attached to one intercontinental ballistic missile. So we will be sharing our most high tech advancements with a nation Red China which is definitely seeking regional domination and may well be after world hegemony. It is uncertain what China will be giving us in this relationship as they are clearly several generations of technology behind us, so they have everything to gain and nothing to lose in a space partnership with America. Obama is about to give away our technological advantage.