Trump's True Colors

I do not watch Donald Trump's television programs but the more I know of him the less I like. In the first instance, what I have heard of his political positions reflect a protectionist and a jingoist full of braggadocio. Then there was the thought that Trump was not serious about running for the Presidency and only attempting to boost the ratings for his "Celebrity Apprentice" NBC show. Trump's persona began to disturb me early on when he said he got along well with "the blacks" sounding more like the character Archie Bunker from the 1970s CBS show All in the Family than a candidate for any office today. Then Trump's performance in Las Vegas capped the conclusion for me- Donald Trump is not running for any public office- or even he would have had the discretion not to drop the "f-bomb" a number of times in a speech. Mr. Trump is a shameless self-promoter and opportunist playing current political discontent in the United States for all that it is worth to advance himself personally with no consideration whatsoever for the fate of America.

A Bleeding America

The United States is hemorrhaging red ink. We have a President and Congress who could countenance breaking the nation. Most Republicans in Congress are just as culpable as the Democrats in the national debt spiraling beyond control. And only a handful of D.C. politicians have the guts to save the country from economic cataclysm. America is a wounded man being treated by an eighteenth century doctor- as the patient's vitality seeped away, even the dumbest physician of that era did not suggest bleeding him on the wrist to stem the flow of blood from his leg. No debtor nation can or ever will spend its way back into prosperity. Printing fiat money only devalues the currency that much more and soon our Chinese and OPEC creditors will no longer feel confident about holding US debt any longer. Stagflation is virtually certain and hyperinflation like the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe becomes an increasing possibility. Unfortunately, the political will does not exist among those with power to do anything to salvage the situation.

Just Block Barack

There is no great hue and cry going forth in the land to raise the debt limit. In fact, as the last national election cycle and the emergence of the TEA Party proved, the majority of voters do not wish to see the Federal government grow but shrink. And what of the Republican Party that can not muster the nerve to block the socialist impulse of President Obama and his Democrats, what of this party that is going along to get along and spitting in the face of their own GOP voters? This is no party marred by the presence of a few Republicans in name only (RINOs). This is certainly not the party carrying the soul of Reagan or his banner of personal responsibility and limited government, not Rush Limbaugh's party, or even Newt Gingrich's insurgent conservatism. The Republicans in Congress are center-left, craven lesser socialists like David Cameron, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, who is more like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, his predecessors from the Labour Party than Margaret Thatcher, the genuine conservative who rebuilt the Tory Party. If, as I suspect, the Republicans in the US House of Representatives rubber stamp a new higher limit for Federal debt, Republican voters should strongly consider forming a new national conservative party that will not concede the 2012 Presidential election to Obama, allowing him four more years to remove America from the vision of her founders, and making the situation unrecoverable, but going with rightist leaders who demonstrate the backbone now to oppose Barack Hussein Obama, before he and the Democrats impose a cradle to grave welfare state with Republicans who as a party only pretend to put up a fight.

A Mourning Person

The United States was ravaged by a massive outbreak of deadly tornadoes. The South, the area in which I have basically spent my life, was devastated. Tuscaloosa, a town of Tide and tradition, has almost ceased to exist after a funnel cloud a mile wide swept through the town at two hundred plus miles per hour. Across the South, it seems sadly inevitable that the death toll will climb into the hundreds. In a moment, Tuscaloosa went from Dreamland to nightmare. Thoughts and prayers go out to all those who found themselves in the deadly and destructive path. The sunny South has seen catastrophe before and has the faith and spirit to rise again.

"Teleprompter Inventor Dies"

President Obama was left speechless.

Not From Mars

A long-form birth certificate emerged for Barack Hussein Obama. Apparently, the President is from Hawaii; it is only his policies, which are so tremendously destructive to the country, that still seem to indicate he may be from Mars.

A Syrian Hitler

America, since Obama came into office, has mystifyingly vested great hopes in Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. The Obama administration hoped to tear him away from his alliance with Iran and even pushed for Israel to make a deal with Assad to relinquish the Golan Heights. In the event, Assad is using tanks against peaceful protesters. He has covert but known chemical weapons programs that rival the worst Saddam Hussein was ever able to assemble and Assad, with the cooperation of North Korea, was evidently constructing a nuclear weapons program as well. There is no degree of barbarity that Hillary Clinton's "reformer" Bashar Assad will not stoop to to hold on to his power.

Before the Flood

After last year's thousand year flood, my hometown of Nashville, Tennessee is once again experiencing a deluge. We are expecting a six inch accumulation of rain complete with flash flood watches. To those affected, stay aware and safe, do not drive through standing water which is how most flood deaths occur, and keep listening for the tornado warnings that may accompany the storms. Stay safe.

Windfall Profits Tax

One sector of American industry is having a good year and that must have Barack Hussein Obama salivating. America's oil industry is holding its own while many other businesses are crashing. And when you have an overt socialist in the White House, causing so much economic dislocation, finding a profitable corporation to stick it to is like a pig finding a truffle. This is Obama's proverbial opportunity to get even with a successful going concern and my bet is that he will do it. With Exxon profits expected to rise sixty percent (60%), Obama and/or the Democrats in Congress will soon call for a windfall profits tax to be imposed on US oil companies. Obama will not even be the first so-called leader to start the windfall profits tax ball rolling, his good friend Hugo Chavez, you know the new Fidel who handed Obama a book accusing the US of criminal colonialism and imperialism in Latin America and received a hearty Obama hug in return a couple of years back at Obama's first Summit of the Americas as President, is going to force a windfall profit tax on the non-government owned oil companies in Venezuela, the formerly prosperous country that Chavez has ruined through his misrule. So at least from Obama's perspective, when he foists a new tax on some of the few American corporations still able to pay shareholders a dividend, he will be in good company with Latin America's worst current despot, Hugo Chavez.

Cauldron of Carnage

The autocrats that rule the nations of the Arab world are showing how they truly regard their own people. Many of them liked to present the pretext that they are "fathers" to their citizenry who are like their own "children" with any discontent in their countries caused by a Protocols of the Elders of Zion-like world Jewish conspiracy. Somehow, all the suffering in Daraa or Damascus was presented to the Syrian people and the world not as anything deficient or heaven-forfend even repressive about the Assad regime but caused wholly and solely by the Zionist entity and somehow the West accepts that if Israel just makes sufficient concessions to Palestinians, Mideast peace and prosperity will suddenly prevail. In reality, we see the Arab despots fear and despise their own populace and are willing to employ every bit of force their regimes possess to retain power without any consideration of Israel's continued existence or the plight of the Palestinians. And the evidence is ample and measured in blood that the likes of Yemen's Saleh, Libya's Gaddafi, and now Syria's Bashar Assad are tyrants equal to the worst the world has ever seen.

Observing Syria's Slaughter

The regime of Bashar Assad rightly belonged but mysteriously was not included on the last President Bush's Axis of Evil. Damascus hosts a number of terror organizations that have murdered innocents and have American blood on their hands. Syria fueled the insurgency against the so-called US occupation (more rightly termed liberation of Iraq). Syria has effectively dominated Lebanon and likely had a hand in the murder of Lebanon's popular independence leader Rafiq Hariri. Syria was probably the repository for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction which could easily have been transferred across the Iraq-Syria border in the long run up to the US invasion of Iraq as Iraq's thwarting successive United Nation's resolutions made that conflict inevitable. Syria certainly has weapons of mass destruction production facilities of their own and may have covertly been attempting to produce nuclear weapons until Israel bombed a facility being constructed with the aid of North Korea, another member of the Axis of Evil. Neither Bashar Assad nor his late dictator father in the dynastic tyranny broached any dissent. And yet the Obama regime returned a US ambassador after the position had been abolished during the Bush administration as a reproach for Syria's bad conduct. Bashar Assad continued acting counter to America's interest while advancing Iran's evil agenda. Yet recently, America's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Bashar Assad a "reformer". Even after Bashar Assad's thugs murdered peaceful protesters on the street, all our State Department could muster was a mild rebuke. Yesterday, Assad forces killed eighty-eight civilians and finally the Obama administration shows America's indignation. Bashar Assad is in no way a reformer and deserves the fate of fellow despot Saddam Hussein. Just like the Libyan people, long suffering Syrians deserve freedom.

A Good Friday?

On one of the most sacred days on the Christian calendar, I noticed President Barack Hussein Obama's curious misspeak as he offered a prayer. The traditional and typical reading uses "iniquities" with an "I" as in sin, but our leader supplanted deliberately or in a Freudian slip this term for transgression with "inequities" with an "E" which seems intentional and no slip of the tongue as he has so consistently focused on "fairness" and redistribution of wealth. I am not certain whether our President is a Christian with little grasp of the meaning of his own faith because of his long association with the Black Liberation Theology church of Jeremiah Wright, or whether he is actually agnostic or an atheist selling himself to America as a Christian to remain electable, or if he is merely an "apostate" Muslim who never found a basis for faith after the Muslim instruction he received in Indonesia in his youth. In any event, I do not think using "inequities" was anything but intentional and part of a wider campaign among Democrats to separate America from her Christian foundations. In recent weeks, President Obama and other high ranking Democrats including Harry Reid, the Democrat leader in the US Senate, have deliberately excluded "under God" from America's Pledge of Allegiance and Obama himself recently omitted the phrase "by their Creator" from the Declaration of Independence during his California fundraising speech in San Francisco. So it seems we have one of the major parties in our country comporting themselves like the old Communist Party in the former Soviet Union and at least to an extent at the highest levels, trying to banish the Lord from the public square. Not great news on this Good Friday, but let us look at the rest of the world. Are peace and good will prevailing? Not hardly as Cambodia and Thailand fired on each other today, Libya is riven by civil war with the West including the USA now intervening more forcefully (with armed drones in America's case and advisers arriving to aid the rebels from France and Italy, so far, with greater escalation by NATO on behalf of the anti-Gaddafi forces likely), with Americans still fighting in Afghanistan, our troops still on the ground to Iraq and exposed to danger, with revolutions still ongoing across the Middle East, and with a terror attack yesterday in Kirachi, Pakistan fourteen more died. So on Good Friday, this day of peace, violence and chaos prevail and we are led by cunning deceivers who do not have our best interests at heart.

War Correspondents Fall

One of my favorite tomes of youth was Ernie Pyle's final book. Before today's age of the helmet camera, valorous journalists like Pyle and Robert Capa brought war back to the drawing rooms of the home front. While one might argue that in the age of cellular phones and the Internet that the necessity of "embedded reporters" is diminished, it in no way lessens the elan displayed by these brave souls from Afghanistan to Libya. They may not wish to be considered heroic, but they volunteer to expose themselves to the same risk as the combatants themselves. And generally (though with rare exceptions) they do not shoot back. Armed only with a camera and courage, journalists have given their lives to show the public back home the true face of war. (Editor's note: After publication of yesterday's "City of Misery" that commemorated the life and contribution of Tim Hetherington, it was revealed that Chris Hondros, who had been reported as wounded, also tragically succumbed to his injuries. Mr. Hondros was as committed to his profession as Mr. Hetherington was, and deserves equal mention as both fell in service of transmitting an essential story to the world. Their work will be missed but that in no way measures the loss felt by their close colleagues, family, and friends.)

City of Misery

Misrata until recently was a relatively thriving, peaceful Libyan city that like so many others was notable for Arab hospitality and welcoming the stranger. Today, the internationally-acclaimed photojournalist Tim Hetherington was killed there by indirect fire most likely coming from the government forces of Muammar Gaddafi as that noted butcher turns that formerly prosporous town into a cauldron of carnage that those who are able are rapidly fleeing. God rest the intrepid who have fallen and spare the innocents in Misrata, Libya, and this troubled world.

How Biofuel Killed

This is a story about a kind of butterfly effect. You might ask how a program to produce ethanol in the United States could trigger the civil unrest in Tunisia that led to the revolutions of the Arab Spring? So here is how it all played out: It started in farm states in the good old USA where farmers wield inordinate political power and used their clout to persuade America's politicians from both political parties at mainly the Federal level (but with some cajoling at the state level) to require the production of ethanol to prop up the price levels of grain, particularly corn, and in so doing, to supposedly reduce our dependence on foreign oil and in so doing, to keep gasoline prices low (which in the event looking at four dollar per gallon gas, obviously did not happen). But what it did do was warp the market. We had grain that should have been food for people or at the very least animal feed turned into a fuel blend that only was feasible to produce because of government subsidies. Did ethanol produce price stability in corn or grain? No, prices have soared only enriching farmers and corporate farmers at the expense of everyone else at home and abroad. Because corn was now being sold at a price artificially inflated by the hand of government rather than the invisible steadying hand of the market, the cost of other staple crops also rose as demand to supplant the more expensive corn rose as a consequence. Now in the markets across the Arab world, in the food stalls, the prices of every item by necessity went up. Food was becoming more scarce and less affordable, and soon you had riots in the street. There were certainly local factors- police brutality, overt government and police corruption- but what began distorting food prices was efforts at price support and government subsidy to farmers, in the developed world, particularly the United States. And now, we and the world must contend with the bloody fallout of a little political manipulation as a sop to farmers.

Rein in Government

The cost of operating the Federal government in the United States is clearly out of control, but the reach of government at all levels needs to be curbed. Can you imagine the Founding Fathers permitting zoning regulation to determine how they could use land that they already owned? Would those who revolted over the forced quartering of British soldiers, a small duty on tea, and the Stamp Act have accepted being told what kind of light bulb to buy, what type of water heater to use, and how much water their flush toilets could consume had any of those apparatus existed back then? No way!

Is Syria Next?

Will Syria, the lapdog of Iran, the dark hand over Lebanon, the seeming bedrock of stability, be the next Arab regime to face a revolution? It appears so as violence now rocks the Syrian street. It is far from certain that the Syrian people will be able to muster sufficient force to overturn the long-term Assad family dictatorship which has an ugly history of using the most brutal methods of repression to hold power. And like the other Arab countries in tumult, one can only imagine what sort of government might emerge if Bashar Assad is replaced. One thing seems certain, if Assad, who has been an archenemy of Israel, is removed, the new government will be even more aggressive against the "Zionist Entity".

Enemy of Enemies

There is an ancient saying in the Middle East: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." This idiom is qualitatively different than "friend of friends" and does not necessarily hold true for the United States in our dealings with Libya's rebels. While those opposing Muammar Gaddafi certainly have come to rely on the assistance of NATO, particularly in the realm of air power, reports continue to emerge that we are now figuratively "in bed" with fighters formerly (and possibly currently) associated with al-Qaeda. No one will ever doubt that Gaddafi has been a tyrant at home, an exporter of terror for years, and in ways a comic opera clown, but if the West ousts him, we must consider that something even worse will fill the void- and an al-Qaeda linked regime would surely be a greater thorn in America's side than Qaddafi has ever been.

More on Harvard

Not only has Harvard become a repository of radicalism but has become an affront to patriots and comfort to America's enemies. Harvard banned admittance to military and Central Intelligence Agency recruiters and expelled the Reserve Officers' Training Corps during the tumult of the Vietnam era. Even after this nation was mercilessly attacked on September 11, 2001, the ROTC and recruiters remained banished (incidentally- under the advice of Elena Kagan then serving Harvard and now sitting as an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court- but Harvard shamefully continued to accept large contributions from oil sheiks) from America's preeminent university under the pretext of fighting discrimination against homosexuals that was supposedly practiced by the US military under "don't ask, don't tell". Harvard, founded as a Christian institution, has now stood firmly against both traditional morality and the very institutions charged with keeping the nation safe. Instead of being the profound asset that the university could have been, Harvard has, in a time America was attacked, let the nation down.

Harvard Yard's Prisoners

One would assume that there would be free thinkers by the score attending the nation's most prestigious university, but sadly, most undergraduates at Harvard seem as doctrinaire and boilerplate liberal as could be imagined. Instead of independent thought, too many seem captive of Leftist ideology. The situation in Cambridge is in no way unique- radical ideologues are being churned out by universities and colleges across America, and this pool of young voters will be one of the bastions of strong support for the Obama Presidential campaign for 2012. These indoctrinated young minds will work hard to support the "leader" and along with organized labor will be the boots on the ground in the national grassroots effort to reelect Obama. There are a few (a literal handful) of schools like Hillsdale College which stand against the ruinous tide but by in large, the university community is among the most reliable Leftist voting blocks with as many overt communists teaching on the campus as open Republicans. Harvard certainly is a key to the corridors of power in America and for this access alone, being able to attend is rightly regarded as a prize, and at least so far as I know, Harvard has not lost any promising co-eds to lathe accidents like Yale.

The President Declares

President Barack Hussein Obama portrayed himself as so above politics when he was candidate Obama that he said he would rather be a one term leader who accomplished an ambitious agenda than a two term mediocrity. In the event, after announcing his intention to seek a second term, let us hope he is a one term wonder. Obama will have many advantages in running for reelection including his handmaiden dinosaur media which since his emergence on the national stage has had his back and no doubt will continue to proselytize for Obama while mercilessly attacking any serious potential opponent, a billion dollar reserve in campaign funds, and the rabid support of labor unions, but the President will have one glaring disadvantage- his record.

Economists Foiled Again

Jobless claims surged "unexpectedly" while the producer price index rose more than economists had anticipated. Our experts are baffled again. Maybe we need to find some new authority who is not wrong more often than right and whose success is not tied to that of the Obama administration. If unemployment in the United States was not being tabulated to further a particular agenda and was calculated to objective standards, the true jobless rate would not be hovering at just over eight percent but probably double that and if underemployment was factored in would certainly be over twenty percent. Add in those whose jobless benefits are exhausted and those "discouraged" job seekers who have lost hope and given up looking and you will see America is not in the midst of a great recovery but trapped in an economic catastrophe that will be worsened irreparably if Obama's recent job-killing budget prescription is followed. If Democrats are heeded now and have their way, America (at least as we have known and loved her) can not be salvaged.

Fooled US Once

Republican leadership in the United States House of Representatives has gone along with Democrats to sell the citizenry a bill of goods with a phony $38 billion reduction just agreed to for the Federal budget. Evidently, these are not by in large new cuts but mostly comprised of parts of earlier continuing resolutions, some accounting tricks with unspent but already appropriated funds including some of the stimulus money, and only two to five billion dollars of new real cuts. This must be measured against a multi-T trillion dollar budget for the Federal government that is actually nearly eight hundred billion dollars greater than last years behemoth. How can anyone credibly contend that there has been a budget cut when the Federal government continues to grow at an unprecedented pace that taxpayers simply can not afford? Sadly RINOs who infest the US Senate and include the new House leadership led by "weeping willow" Speaker of the House John Boehner (who postures as a conservative Republican but does not lead like one) have overwhelmed the TEA Party caucus to sell out that portion of voters who are serious about trying to save America. Note: After initial publication of this post, the Associated Press (not exactly a conservative mouthpiece) reported that the deficit will actually be reduced a mere $353 M million dollars for the Federal fiscal year. It seems much of the voting public has been played for suckers.

Why Topple Gbagbo?

Was Ivorian ruler Laurent Gbagbo an ideal leader? No, but he was on a par with or better than many of the other kleptocrats and psychopaths who have lorded over other African nations for years. Aggression against Gbagbo by France and UN troops in the service of a questionably elected Alassane Ouattara, whose forces have already been accused of massacre, smacks of a new colonialism developing that perhaps is also seen farther north on the continent in Libya. If there was sufficient rationale to remove Gbagbo and attack Qaddafi, then why not remove Robert Mugabe who lost an election but clung to power in Zimbabwe as world powers claimed Gbagbo had done in Ivory Coast? Mugabe has used his so called "war veterans" to brutally silence opposition and has driven whites from formerly productive farms with a campaign of murder that had the unintended consequence of starving the people of Zimbabwe after the white farmers had managed to turn that nation into the "breadbasket of Africa". If the world wants clean governance in Africa, there are vastly more rulers who should be ousted than should remain.

Barbarous Belarus Blast

The residents of Minsk experienced the horror of their own 9/11 yesterday with the detonation of a powerful and deadly bomb in the major underground station. Belarus faced the kind of banditry that Russia has seen emanating from Muslims in the Caucasus though to this point there has been no claim of responsibility. The attack was wanton, directed against innocent civilians, and cowardly. May those responsible be quickly discovered and eliminated. At this moment, all civilized people stand in solidarity with Minsk.

Great Technical Achievement

Israel has over the years found herself under attack by various missiles and rockets. American produced Patriot anti-missile missile batteries provided a limited degree of protection from longer range missiles such as the Scuds launched by Saddam Hussein's forces during the First Gulf War from Iraq. These Patriots and similar indigenously produced Israeli anti-missile missiles provided absolutely no defense against shorter range rockets like Kassams and Grad Katyusha rockets. Now, Israel has for the first time on earth managed to develop a system that can actually knock down these tools of terror and murder harmlessly from the sky. Israel has used a locally created system called Iron Dome to knock out incoming terrorist launched rockets. Israel has almost miraculously hit a bullet with a bullet, but much work still needs to be done to insure the safety of innocents in Israel and other places where rockets may be employed to terrorize civilian communities.

A Parasitic Horde

The dole dwellers will continue to grow and thrive under the continuing resolution just passed to prevent a so-called shutdown of the Federal government. There are more people on some form of assistance from the Federal government now than at any time in US history. We are courting the Balkanization of America by rewarding illegal aliens by giving their spawn birthright citizenship and carte blanch into America's welfare state, giving people who are not stakeholders lifetime benefits by virtue of dropping a baby often conceived elsewhere on our soil and in all likelihood at our expense from the moment the mother enters the delivery room. A recent story chronicled how Chinese were flying in specifically to have an anchor baby on our soil. No country can open borders, relinquish sovereignty, and breed dependence and still be called a nation.

The Deficit Fighters

Moderate Republicans and Democrats of all stripes in the US Congress are dislocating their shoulders by patting themselves on the back so hard as they celebrate averting a Federal government shutdown. They are claiming the title "deficit hawks" as they cut a laughably minuscule thirty-eight billion dollars ($38,000,000,000) from a total of at least 1.6 trillion dollars (and this is not the national debt which already stands at an incomprehensible fourteen trillion dollars but merely the operating deficit of the Federal government). These "painful cuts" are not saving the country but are a joke and an invitation for the nation's conservatives to start a third party that believes in and will give the citizens lower taxes and more limited Federal government.

Claiming Another Scalp

The dinosaur media started crowing about the coming departure of Glenn Beck from FOX News that was announced yesterday. There are cataclysms happening all over the globe at the moment but media competitors to Beck chose to devote much air time to Beck's supposed looming downfall. Beck has many other irons in his fire, and I hope his brand continues to grow and flourish just as Rush Limbaugh's career continued to skyrocket after he ended his syndicated television show. There is a cost to telling the truth in opposing the Obama administration, but we individual American citizens are suffering the brunt of out of control government policies much more than a media magnate with a growing empire like Glenn Beck. Never feel sorry for Beck, he has the resources to thrive even under Obama's misrule. Weep not for Glenn but for America.

Surviving the Shutdown

Can America endure even a few days without the generous hand of the Federal government supporting us? Can we live without the Obama largess for a week or two? How can we trust aircraft in America's skies without a stalwart air traffic controller asleep at or near the radar station? Can we make it through a few days without a Federal airport screener nude scanning us and then patting us down while waving through the jaunty fellow in the keffiyeh merrily chanting "Allahu akbar" as he boards our flight with his one way ticket purchased with cash? We can not be certain till the dread event, but I think we might just make it.

The Spin Cycle

The dinosaur media machine is in overdrive, racing to cast blame on Republicans for the coming government shutdown that GOP members in Congress have actually bent over backwards to avoid. On this front, Republicans are being over cautious and too accommodating because they fear that the onus of blame for the shutdown will fall on them as it did during the Clinton era shutdown of 1995. But this is a new age, with the New Media tearing deeply into legacy media hold over the narrative. Then, the Internet was in its infancy and talk radio was but a babe up in arms personified largely through the single voice of Rush Limbaugh. Now, America has the FOX news network, hundreds of conservative talk radio shows not only at the national but at the local level, and vibrant voices from the right all over the world wide web. This is not 1995 and Barack Hussein Obama is no Bill Clinton.

The Budget Police

A man is drowning but there is no lifeguard near. A nation is drowning in debt but there is no lifeline there. We are being spent into oblivion by a narcissistic, insouciant egoist and power mad Democrats in the United States Senate. And in comes Republican Paul Ryan, an unassuming but serious young father and patriot from beleaguered Wisconsin, our shining light in the US House of Representatives and his cadre of insurgent TEA partiers who want nothing more than to save the country. Who in this piece is the culprit, the wanton villain and who is the cop, at least trying to save the day?

Search and Enjoy

Has anyone noticed that some TSA screeners seem to enjoy their jobs too darn much? When most people talk about cracking open a cold one, they don't mean a 737 at thirty-eight thousand feet. Gee, America is supporting the installation of a new leader in Ivory Coast who happens to be a Muslim Outtara who will incidentally be supplanting a Christian Gbagbo. Outtara's forces seem to have massacred a thousand or so Christians who had taken refuge at a Catholic compound, but somehow Outtara has been selected as the better alternative by the UN and world powers over a leader with sticky fingers in Gbagbo who may have pocketed a little more than the cocoa companies wanted to pay him. As the globe seems to be on fire, try to keep an extinguisher handy.

The Gifted One

The United States announced last week that America would cease involvement in the air campaign in Libya by Thursday last except in "extraordinary" circumstances. Spokesmen for American forces then declared that the deadline had been extended and that US bombers would continue attacking Qaddafi regime targets for "forty-eight hours". Do you think if the last President Bush was still in office that the dinosaur media would have let him off over a similar backtracking, almost without comment? When a potential Republican contender for the Presidency emerges to challenge Barack Hussein Obama, flies from Washington D.C., to her home in an upper Midwest state, and then with no rest or chance for advance preparation flies back east to New Hampshire and is handed remarks prepared by staff that she has never even seen and certainly not had a chance to study and rehearse, and following this text prepared for her by others blurts out that "Concord" in that state played a crucial role in the American Revolution, does this disqualify her for higher office? Should she become fodder for derision on both the main stream media evening newscasts and the so-called comedy shows? Sure she should- when the anchors and comedians mock our current President for his "fifty-seven states" or even bother to mention that he is systematically disassembling the nation as the Founding Fathers intended it. What about the former speaker of the US House of Representatives who might stand against Obama whose association with a gambling magnate is now being scrutinized based on unproven charges against the casino owner? Where was the similar curiosity about or press investigations into Barack Obama's relationship with Tony Rezko who not only was alleged to be involved in wrongdoing but now stands convicted of criminality? We have an absolutely partisan dinosaur press which is in league with the Obama administration in ways never seen with any previous US President. They have made Obama immune from criticism or inquiry while lambasting any potential rival for his office. Unsurprisingly, Barack Obama has just announced that he will be seeking reelection, and he does so knowing the legacy media is in his corner and has his back.

Provocation or Pretext

Did the burning of a single Koran by an American pastor with a few dozen followers really cause murder and butchery half way around the globe? I would contend that it did not. Afghanistan is the most illiterate nation on earth. The congregation of the local mosque does not explore world events on their own but under the influence of the imam or mullah. In this event, a story that only received so much attention in Afghanistan because President Hamid Karzai railed against the Koran destruction, the local Islamic clerics in the city of the massacre wildly exaggerated the desecration in Florida, falsely claiming"hundreds of Korans were burned". This was deliberately done to inflame the passions of the mob. If an imam would stir up and incite a massacre, would it be beyond him to simply fabricate a provocation to achieve the same evil end? With a simmering combination of atavistic, misogynistic, fanatic seething illiterates being led by a religious authority that despises "infidels" in general and the West, America, and Israel in particular, it is a wonder that more such outrages do not occur against those who have reached out from abroad to help the Afghan people. Unrepentant raging savages should be carpet bombed.

Hot Button Issue

A bunch of craven Republicans in the United States Congress are willing to "split the difference" in negotiations with the Democrats over the relative pittance in budget cuts each party is willing to accept. For many years, I have contended both parties are essentially socialist to varying degrees with Democrats as fully socialist with rare exceptions and the GOP lesser socialists with a handful of holdover capitalists of long-standing consistently fighting the Democrats now joined by some more fiscally sane members of the so-called T(taxed)E(enough)A(already) party in resisting the unchecked expansion of the scope and cost of the Federal government. I would much rather have the chance to fight a strong armed robber than lose my wallet to a pickpocket. I would rather contend with an honest self-identifying socialist like Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont) than a weak as water Republican Senator Susan Collins (Maine) who will often vote with Democrats on polarizing issues. It is a shame that so many politicians will shake your hand when they are willing to proverbially stab you in the back. At least the honorable ones are willing to figuratively cudgel you square in the face and not pretend to be something they are not.

Make a Bet

The dinosaur media announced breathlessly yesterday that the job situation was improving in the United States of America. Would you not wager that before the next Presidential election Barack Hussein Obama will be crowing that he has fulfilled his promise that unemployment will be under eight percent? Do not forget that Obama said that he would not permit the jobless rate to rise to 8% if he were elected President- a pledge that he has already failed to keep. In any event, the positive new job creation and jobless numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. They seem to be massaged (read as deliberately manipulated) as a propaganda tool for the administration. How many readers sense any general confidence in the US economy with costs for everything soaring due largely to the surge in the price of oil? Whether you trust the numbers or not, would you not concede that the American economy is more fragile now than at any point since the Jimmy Carter malaise years?