The Liar's Liars

Bill Clinton as President would lie to the press and the people with aplomb; Barack Hussein Obama does not have to as the dinosaur media does his deception for him. Obama is like the man behind the mask except in his case all that is there is the mask without the substance behind it to help America. Obama is sawing at our foundations as his amen chorus in the main stream media do the obfuscation for him.

Disassembling the USA

I will not stand silently by while the moral and ethical underpinnings of our nation are deliberately eroded. For those who say that movement conservatives must focus only on economic issues so as not to alienate the moderate or independent voter, I shout "nonsense". The United States of America was conceived as a Providential notion and it would be improvident now to abandon that dynamic covenant that provided the world with greater liberty and prosperity than ever existed before America's rising.

Light of Liberty

Though their flame was extinguished/ The light of liberty still burns bright/ Uncle Ned in his B-24 is dead/ But in a sense, he watches over us/ The oil that keeps the lamp of freedom burning must always remain the blood of patriots

Taken to Extremes

In dinosaur media world, Paul Ryan (the Republican United States member of the House of Representative from Wisconsin) who wants to preserve Medicare and prevent its and the nation's bankruptcy is extreme while Cloward and Piven and Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn who encourage the violent overthrow of America as founded have merely been professorial theoreticians. In this fantasy land, La Raza which seeks to return our Southwestern states to Mexico is mainstream but those who want our borders upheld are extremists and racists to boot. If the manufactured world of dinosaur media manipulation gains traction, then I will proudly call myself extremist. As Barry Goldwater so brilliantly declared, "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice!"

Blessed With West

It was a joy to watch Republican Representative Allen West from Florida on FOX News Sunday. He is plain spoken but eloquent, intelligent but not arrogant, and a true conservative cut from the Ronald Reagan mold. I have no inkling whether he would seek the GOP Presidential nomination this cycle but certainly wish he would. West is also a veteran combat officer and pretends no facile answers to the nation's complex problems but articulately presents his solutions for defense, deficit, and national debt. The all-show, no-go Democrats have no figure as compelling as first term Congressman Allen West.

More Memorial Meaning

The purpose of this weekend holiday is not to sell furniture or move the 2011 units still on the car lot. It is to commemorate the sacrifice of those who gave all that they had to give in the service of our country. It should not be about "deep, deep discounts" but should be about serious contemplation over how much it has taken to vouchsafe America's liberty. I doubt that those young men fighting to the last bullet on Bataan or bleeding out in Bastogne cared how much you would save on your hutch this Sunday. But they gave the "last full measure of devotion" anyway so your daughter could mortify you with her t-back on the first weekend at the beach this year or you could upchuck over the side of a party boat tomorrow on the lake. That though is one of the gifts of freedom their blood earned you- you can be as cavalier as you please- because better men are no longer here having earned you the right to forget the contribution they made and the even greater one they would have made had they survived protecting your freedom. The cost of liberty is blood, the price of freedom is dear, and the worth of a Republic that holds sacred the natural rights of man is incalculable.

An Unprecedented Betrayal

The nations of the G8 with the praiseworthy exception of Canada are all pushing Israel to return to the so-called 1967 borders which are a suicide boundary for the Jewish State. The Europeans have never loved the Jewish people or treated them fondly as is evinced in a thousand years of massacres culminating in the Holocaust. So Israel probably expected little different from the masters of Jewish persecution over the centuries, but the Jewish State had come to expect better of the United States of America- a nation that Jews have regarded as fundamentally just and that has always seen the existential plight that the Jewish nation finds herself in, surrounded by hostile Arab states that seek her eradication. Now, under the leadership of Barack Hussein Obama, Israel finds that not only can she not rely on US protection, but can not even count on the United States to do what is right. And that rightly terrifies all those who love the Jewish State.

The Spiteful Socialists

In the course of history, no force has been as destructive of human life as socialism. What was conceived to promote more equal distribution of wealth, so well-intentioned, in practice, killed millions. Whether in the old Soviet model, or Red China's, or those National Socialists better known as Nazis, no force has been as murderous as the quest for social justice by means of redistribution as embodied by socialism in its various iterations. Spreading the wealth by means of the monopoly of force of government in the interest of fairness never has worked and ultimately never can- it can only spread the misery.

An American Covenant

Citizens of the United States should be educated to have a readily marketable skill or the ability to easily acquire one. There should not be a reliance on a social safety net that actually entraps but instead, job creation to the extent gainful employment again exists for all those who seek it. Medical care should neither be given nor rationed as Obama care dictates. Inroads into curtailing medical costs do not start with doctors or drug makers but with lawyers and so tort reform is urgently needed. The one area where the United States Treasury can not seek a bargain is in the one sacred obligation of the Federal government- our national defense. If Republican candidates expounded on these few virtuous notions, they would win elections resoundingly.

Former Governor Palin

The Left must be terrified that Sarah Palin may run for President. A book has come out smearing her. She is constantly lampooned, lambasted, and made into a cartoon character- Joan Crawfordesque and dumb to boot. Governor Palin is made out to be Cruella Deville with a touch of Adolf Hitler thrown in on the political side. Reports about Palin must be fiction combined with fantasy, or she would have divorced years ago and never been elected to any public office. No one is the monster the dinosaur media and the Left portray Sarah Palin to be.

The Voter Scale

While most Americans are glad that Osama is dead, they realize every US President would have taken similar action to what President Obama did and that this was not the brilliant masterstroke that guarantees Barack Hussein Obama will win reelection. The economy is still reeling, the housing sector is in tatters, and average Americans see no prospects that Team Obama's policies, which have not made the situation better so far, will suddenly improve the economic conditions for America's families. "Bin Laden" will mean vastly less come election time than "been laid off".

Misery in Missouri

Joplin, Missouri is in ruins tonight. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and just as I asked after Nashville's own devastating floods, please give what you are able to the reputable charity of your choice.

A Definite Possibility

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has declared that he is officially in the running to seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States. Governor Pawlenty appeared on the Rush Limbaugh radio show and appeared intelligent, well-reasoned, and with a command of the issues that will confront any American leader. I liked what I heard as Pawlenty seemed an able man with a plan for America's future. I am not certain I will vote for him in the primaries at this point, but should he secure the GOP nomination, I believe him to be far better than his Democrat alternative.

Jewish State Cornered

The Jewish people had claim to the so-called occupied territories before the Muslim people and Islamic religion even existed. There was continuous Jewish presence in Hebron (Hevron to the Jews) from Biblical times until 1928 when an Arab pogrom (massacre) chased the Jews from the city. The Old City of Jerusalem housed Jews until 1948 when the Arab Legion (of Jordan) murdered or expelled them and then proceeded to desecrate or destroy every link that the Holy City had to Judaism. In 1967, the Jews stole absolutely nothing- they liberated areas and restored the rightful owners who had claim prior to any Arab presence on the land. President Barack Hussein Obama pretends to be advancing the cause of peace. In an earlier bid to push the process forward, it was Barack Obama and not the Palestinians who pushed for the so-called "settlement freeze". The Palestinians rapidly embraced this new peace position and walked away from the talks citing Israeli non-compliance. Obama's (supposedly well-intended meddling) actually broke up the peace negotiation. Now once again, Obama lends the belligerents a hand. He sets the border prior to the 1967 Six Day War as the new benchmark for peace, a position that the Europeans, who showed their regard for Jews in the Holocaust, immediately embraced. The Palestinians now have this new internationally-accepted demand against the Jews as the starting point for all future negotiations at least as long as Barack Hussein Obama remains the President of the United States although accepting this would amount to national suicide for the Jewish State. Those who have jumped on to the Obama no possibility of peace plan fall into disparate camps. There are the Obama sycophants who think that Barrack can do no wrong and these include Jews whose first loyalty is to liberalism and in America, to the Democratic Party (or parties even farther on the political left than the Democrats), and then there is the group that disagrees with President Obama on virtually everything else like Pat Buchanan but seems to despise Jews and Israel sufficiently to go along with the US President on this. The supposed good intentions of America's Nobel Peace Prize winning President have destabilized the Middle East and thrown Israel's very existence into question.

Kind of Mystifying

Some of those complaining the loudest about the Netanyahu visit- "how dare that so-and-so lecture our president"- had a good laugh when an Iraqi "reporter" threw his shoes at US President George W. Bush. What a jaded perspective that must be when Netanyahu's foremost concern must be the survival of the Jewish people. This is not a card game or boardroom bullying or a classroom exercise, but the existence of the Jewish State in the balance, and if there is no Israel, a guaranteed haven for those whose very lives are under threat then someday the genocidal project of Hitler may well be completed. In the Nazi era, the non-Jewish elite were convinced of the merit of eugenics and embraced it. Their often more qualified Jewish colleagues were banned from their professions clearing the field for those who did not say a word of protest to this obvious injustice but were only too happy to take the Jews' former positions and enjoy more easy advancement. The world's elite today are little different with even the J Street type Jews who speak from the safety of New York or Washington demanding Netanyahu give in without any regard for the future of the Jewish presence in the Middle East.

Elite Grind Down

Benjamin Netanyahu is being cast by the dinosaur media elite echo chamber as an arrogant down-talker who had the temerity to show-up the US President Barack Hussein Obama, who was generously hosting him in the Oval Office. Those who take The New York Times as the gospel and the Gospels as allegory for the ignorant want Israel thrown to the wolves. These devotees of Krugman and Amanpour seem to believe that Israeli territorial concessions actually will bring peace and in the safety of their Manhattan or Beltway or California or US university bubbles, they think that the right give away by the Jews will pacify the Muslim masses and magically alter the plain text of the Koran that will never permit an unmolested Jewish presence on even one meter of the Holy Land. Prime Minister Netanyahu was attempting to inform Obama of the grim realities that Israel faces every day in attempting to assure the survival of the Jewish people. There was no sanctuary available to the Jewish people as Hitler rose to power, no state of refuge, no place that would accept those who ended up in crematoria or mass graves. If only the single entity of a Jewish State had existed in 1928, the Final Solution would have had so many less victims. Unlike the self-superior elite, Benjamin Netanyahu has the very lives of millions of Jews in his hands and unlike Barack Obama, who still believes in and can afford bloodless academic debate because of mammoth US power, Netanyahu has a sober responsibility.

Friends Like These

The United States of America has a relationship of long-standing with Saudi Arabia. No churches and certainly no synagogues exist there. The most primitive and barbaric punishments are practiced by Saudi authorities including but not limited to the amputation of hands, beheading by sword, and crucifixion (yes- like Roman times). Saudi Arabia practices and promotes the most virulent and intolerant strain of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, funding the establishment and preaching of it in mosques worldwide. The genesis of the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda is the Wahhab vision of the Islamic faith. Fifteen of the nineteen September 11, 2001 hijackers were Saudi and two others were not Saudi-born but were pilots who had worked for Saudi Arabia's national airline. The Saudis are among the most misogynistic nations as well, denying women the right to vote or drive and even sending schoolgirls back into a burning building because they had not had time to put on their all-encompassing veils. Our Saudi "friends" have also enjoyed the benefits of their influential position in the OPEC cartel to artificially inflate the costs Americans sustain at the gas pump, but Saudi Arabia, who recently dispatched thugs to put down a "people's movement" revolt against the Sunni despots of Bahrain, remains America's close and trusted ally while Barack Hussein Obama kicks Israel's proverbial teeth down her throat. As I recall, none of the September 11 murder crew was Israeli. Since electing our President with the foreign-sounding name, the US has found herself with increasingly strange bedfellows.

Obama's True Colors

Barack Hussein Obama despises the founding ethos of the United States of America and is determined to alter the nation after a socialist image. Nothing that Obama has done so far spending literally trillions of dollars has enhanced prosperity an iota beyond the circle of thriving cronies and labor union bigwigs or helped America break free from the economic doldrums that the policies of the Democratic Party have brought us starting with a campaign against wholly manufactured or at the very least, greatly exaggerated charges of "redlining" in banks issuing credit including mortgages that was spun by organizations like ACORN and as a race baiting tactic by Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition. The damage done at home may or may not be recoverable, but the chaos that Obama is creating abroad may never be reversed. America's once stable ally Egypt seems likely to fall into the Islamist camp, governed by the Muslim Brotherhood (an organization Nazi-like in its regard of Jews and certainly no friend of America or the West) which will make common cause with the Islamic Republic of Iran and reject the Camp David accords with Israel that have allowed peace to prevail since the administration of Jimmy Carter. And after destabilizing the Middle East, Obama does not rally to the cause of America's beleaguered ally Israel but sells her out to the tender mercies of Palestinians who Obama thinks now merit a state with contiguous borders in the heartland of Biblical Israel. Yet somehow, Obama thinks that Muslim Arabs who have rejected the very existence of a Jewish State since 1948 will suddenly abandon their determination to rid the Middle East of Jews and call the Jew "a brother". Obama is only informed by self-delusion and not reality if he really believes this.

Israel Slapped Down

President Barack Hussein Obama has a fantastic notion of what the Middle East of the future will look like- fantastic because it is in the realm of a pipe dream. The first aspect of real and lasting peace anywhere is the genuine desire of each opposing party to reach a peaceful conclusion to a conflict. This has never existed vis-a-vis the genocidal intentions of Arab Muslims versus the survival instinct of the Jewish people. The Jews being forced back to "suicide borders" in no way advances the interests of peace but assures the perpetuation of the conflict with Israel's air space no longer tenable or even defensible against shoulder launched surface to air missiles. Ben Gurion Airport would not be safe, nor would any flightpath in the greatly territorially diminished Jewish State. Giving the Golan Heights to Syria now would be especially foolhardy with the Assad regime just facilitating a large incursion by Palestinian "refugees" across Israel's internationally recognized border while Assad is concurrently massacring his opponents at home. This is a stick in the eye to Israel after America allowed the security assumptions of the Jewish State to be overturned in Egypt when the Obama administration orchestrated or at least endorsed the removal of Hosni Mubarak who was seen as a peace partner, a bedrock of stability, and a hedge against jihadi radicalism in the heart of the Arab world. How can Israel possibly trust Obama's assurances when he pushed Mubarak out the door of power, has demanded Libya's Gaddafi step down but in the event, only given what is essentially lip service to removing him, and has allowed Iran's nuclear project to move forward at full force? Israel can not base her future security (beyond safety to her very survival) to an insouciant stumbler who will likely be a one term President whose term will be remembered for domestic overreach and uninformed pomposity in foreign relations. Israel can not predicate action on consideration about how Obama will afflict them for less than two years (or in a worst case, six years) but must base policy and action on a much more eternal covenant.

Lebanese and Libyans

Once a civil war starts, one can never predict how or when it might end and how much dislocation and carnage will ensue. Of course, the Libyan rebels have the advantage of a NATO air force and NATO sea assets, but Tripoli could sustain just as much damage and be embroiled just as long as Beirut was during the Lebanese Civil War once insurgents start fighting for control of the Libyan capital city.

Parade of Victims

Does anyone else remember the sob stories that Barack Hussein Obama trotted out to show how deficient the United States of America had been without him during his campaign for the Presidency? If there was an intrepid journalist somewhere, perhaps he could track the aggrieved parties that Obama used as human props down and ask them to tell how the Obama victory has materially improved their lives. My guess is that even after all that "hope and change" they are just as bad off now as they were under that heartless capitalist George W. Bush, but I do not see any cameras and microphones giving voice to them now.

Newt's Bejeweled Folly

Newt Gingrich, the Republican Party's first kamikaze candidate, has not merely stuck his thumb in the eye of the GOP's TEA Party wing and offended the large conservative base, but he has reflected that in his personal spending he is equally frivolous with a half a million dollar revolving credit line at high end jeweler Tiffany. Gingrich no longer seems an able competent manager and certainly not the right person to apply the coming austerity that will be necessary to contain the multi-trillion dollar Federal deficit and national debt. CBS used to be known as "the Tiffany network" for its excellence, but Gingrich, who has already torpedoed himself, will never become the "Tiffany President".

Bombing the Queen

Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second is about as innocuous as you can get. She is kind-hearted, soft-spoken, and an octogenarian grandmother. Yet someone has left a bomb on a bus in Ireland to disrupt the aging monarch's visit. The Irish Republican Army has by in large accepted the Mitchell Peace Plan allowing peace to largely prevail. They decommissioned almost all their weapons except for an irredentist faction of hard-liners (some who may even be unbalanced to the point that they become as nihilistic as al-Qaeda). This group that rejects any compromise terms themselves "the Real IRA" and they continue to pose a real threat far beyond the exceptional visit by the queen. I wonder if there are any terms this terror organization would accept or if they are determined to perpetuate the shedding of blood at all costs. Even Protestant stalwarts like Ian Paisley abandoned the path of arms and made real concessions but not so for this handful of violent holdovers from the bad old days. As a note, the old Provos and Sinn Fein's most militant activists were sometimes trained in Gaddafi's Libya and deadly Libyan armament somehow made its way to Northern Ireland. I would not be the least bit surprised if at least some of those still advocating violence had Libyan training.

The Sun Banished

That bright golden orb/ In Nashville at least, it seems to have vanished/ I know not what we did and could never guess what we in Middle Tennessee did to merit sunshine being banished/ I know not why we have wound up with an Idaho sky/ But as sky darkened tomato fails to flourish (which needs the shining ray to nourish) , I shall soon go plant a potato.

Hold Assad Accountable

Bashar Assad has not suffered real consequence for turning his nation's military might against peaceful protesters. This emboldened Assad to believe he could distract the world from his brutality at home by launching (or at the very least, permitting) an incursion across Syria's border into Israel. Assad is so confident that he may now even ignite a regional war, if the United States and the West do not rapidly convince him that he will have no sanctuary and no chance of survival if he continues doing Iran's malicious bidding. As there are no relations between Syria and Israel, one can assume back channel communication has been transmitted by the Jewish State that such provocation will not be tolerated and can not be allowed to continue. Unfortunately, Bashar Assad may misread the conflicting signal the world has transmitted and go right on his merry way to starting World War III, an odd thing for a Western-trained physician who recently was still being termed a "reformer" by America's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Middle East remains on the razor's edge.

Israel's Borders Erupt

To deflect the world's attention from their own campaigns of unmitigated brutality unleashed on their own freedom-seeking people, Iran and blood-soaked Syria orchestrated Nakba Day border incursions into the Jewish State by willing dupes from Palestinian refugee camps brought by buses provided by Hizbollah, the Iran proxy in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, which is now also in Tehran's camp. This invasion is meant to divert the world's scrutiny from the increasingly unrestrained violence that Bashar Assad is using to subjugate his restive populace. Undoubtedly, Israel will be condemned for her actions of self-defense by many nations that consistently use more force to suppress the natural yearning for liberty among their own people, but hypocrisy and Jew-hatred are nothing new and Israel will have to predicate her actions on protecting her own citizens without regard for what those who wish the Jewish State never existed say against them.

Dogma Uber Alles

To say that Barack Hussein Obama is doctrinaire, is an ideologue, is inescapably socialist is almost understatement. Perhaps this post could have been part of yesterday's column "Vengeance Is His" because it is certainly apiece with it. President Obama seems to fault those who are successful in the United States for all the ills in the world and remains determined to redistribute their wealth to uplift the least of these whether in Botswana or Bangladesh at the expense of Americans attempting to support their families on an income of a couple hundred thousand dollars per year (which does not in many areas mean these earners are among the rich- just that they may be getting by in expensive places to live like New York City or San Fransisco or that a couple may both be employed as union lifeguards in some beach areas of California). Yet despite the continuing economic dislocation and foreclosure and underwater mortgage crisis, those earning a livable income in America remain in the Obama administration's tax and spend cross hairs that do not merely seek to maintain the dole in the United States but to internationalize it solely at the expense of productive Americans. This is a mighty mean administration determined to spread your wealth.

Vengeance Is His

You really do not want to get on US President Barack Hussein Obama's bad side (assuming he has a good one). Just look what happened to Osama bin Laden. I am sure that ridding the world of Osama was morally justifiable, but I am sure that at least in the short term because jihadists seek to avenge bin Laden that the world will be a more dangerous place. President Obama does not reserve his ire for those that orchestrate attacks against the United States. Obama has plenty of wrath left over for domestic political opponents which may explain why the President refused to grant conservative, largely Republican Texas a Federal disaster declaration to combat the recent epic Texas fires. Let us just hope that Obama remembers his duty to serve the entire United States and not just those areas that support him.

Cain Is Able

Even with Newt Gingrich, the father of the GOP takeover of the US House of Representatives in 1994, declaring his candidacy for the Presidency, Herman Cain remains the most intriguing and enigmatic contestant for the Republican nomination to contest Barack Hussein Obama for our nation's highest office. Cain has been a private sector success on his own merit, not inheriting wealth or title. Cain has done impressive public service, sacrificing entrepreneurial opportunity to serve as chairman of one of the regional branches of the Federal Reserve. Like Ronald Reagan, Cain has unreserved praised for the United States for freedom and the opportunity that freedom has afforded. And most important of all, Herman Cain has never made common cause with those who have tried to undermine the founding virtues of America. Unlike Gingrich, he has not attempted to compromise by splitting the baby with the worst of political Leftists as the former Speaker of the House did with Nancy Pelosi over the manufactured myth of man-caused global warming. Cain has voiced the gospel that the TEA Party's rise and the US House candidates that were carried to victory by it were sent to Washington to block Obama not to join him in overturning the free market capitalist basis of more than two hundred years of United States prosperity.

Police State Murder

Secretary of State Clinton's "reformer" Bashar Assad is now sending tanks against residential neighborhoods. Could the Obama administration be any more discerning?

House Poor America

The double dip of recession in home prices seems to be confirmed by the recently released Zillow report. I believe there never was a robust recovery if any discernible improvement at all. On a purely anecdotal basis, I will say my neighbor's home to the east has been on the market a year, and it is a large lovely home complete with three acre or more yard, a commercial kitchen, and a metal workshop for a seemingly reasonable price. On the west side of our home, one house away, a gorgeous updated home has been on the market three years. In the US in any other era of modern times except the Great Depression, in 37205, the most desired zip code in Nashville, these moderately priced, magnificent properties would have sold like hotcakes, but they have sat empty now through large portions of the Obama resurgence- or wait, maybe there has not been any real measurable progress in ending the US recession- merely some manipulated numbers to make a flagging administration look good.

Swarm of Cicadas

Every decade or so, something reminiscent of a Biblical plague descends on middle Tennessee. Horrific little creatures with alien-form and beady unblinking red eyes spring forth from our soil and into our hair. They are a legion of locusts that Moses probably would have recognized. They are mighty ugly but as they do not sting, essentially harmless unless you happen to have a heart attack when scores of them land on you. Over the ages people have aptly called the grotesque cicadas "repulsive" which I imagine is exactly what they think of the enormous creatures befouling their thirteen year amorous locust adventure and even swatting and stepping on quite a few of them.

Our Pyrrhic Victory?

I will not attempt to diminish or gainsay a singular accomplishment in the battle against world jihad- the elimination of Osama bin Laden. I must, however, point out that in the so-called war on terror (or what could better be called the struggle against expansionist Islamism) similar military feats by the West have not slowed hostilities in any significant way. As example of this, let me point to the strategic and tactical planner for Hizbollah Imad Mughniyeh, who prior to the rise of bin Laden and al Qaeda was the most sought after terrorist on the face of the earth. His reign of murder allegedly stretched from the US embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon to the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Someone, presumably Israel, sent him to his reward in Hades but did the organization he stewarded collapse at his assassination? No, Hizbollah is stronger, better armed, more capable, and powerful than ever after his death. In fact, that terror group has subsumed Lebanon. So in the jubilation that was evident on the dinosaur media Sunday morning chat shows, there should be a note of caution. And to bring us back from irrational exuberance to reality, President Obama is still no general's general like George Marshall; he is no great strategic thinker like Eisenhower; he has not demonstrated physical courage to rival Audie Murphy (being given credit ad nauseum by the talking heads today for "nerve") when he did what every single other US President would have done given the same circumstances including the palpably weak Jimmy Carter and the sexually distracted Bill Clinton, and Obama's actions to terminate the arch-terrorist bin Laden did not end or win what will still be a long and bloody war. If Barack Hussein Obama had not acted on actionable intelligence over bin Laden's whereabouts, it surely would have emerged at some point to damage any political future and sully his legacy. Obama did nothing brave or brilliant, he simply acted in his own interest and at this point, this expediency served the country, advanced our national interests, and may have made the world a bit safer (although not being able to see the future, that can not be said with certainty).

Is Enough Enough?

There is no doubt that the cowards in Congress will raise the debt ceiling. Talk is over the amount (purported to be two trillion dollars to allow the Federal national debt to rise to over sixteen trillion dollars). GOP stalwarts (a joke) are seeking a trillion dollars in concurrent cuts, but ultimately will capitulate and go along with Obama, Geithner, Bernanke, and their Democrat Congressional colleagues with a much smaller amount to show "serious" intent to somewhere down the line actually start cutting something from the budget. And the Republicans further depress their support base by fielding five Presidential aspirants who are essentially nobodies in the first Presidential debate. There is talk among the political elite and Republican power brokers that Barack Hussein Obama with the power of incumbency and a billion dollar war chest is just too tough to oppose and that real GOP contenders for the Presidency should just "keep their powder dry" until 2016- at which point the country would be unrecognizable and unsalvageable. If Republicans persist in going along to get along, if they were scared to oppose Obamaism even before his success in ridding the world of Osama bin Laden (and every indication is that they were), and if they continue to spit in the eye of the majority of American voters who are right of center, we will not have a country by 2016 and the GOP will no longer be a political party but only remembered by patriots and cursed.

Clash of Civilizations

The war on terror has never existed, what is actually being fought is a war between the forces of freedom and benighted, nihilistic expansionist political Islam, and this fight sadly did not end with Osama bin Laden's death. Terror was simply the tactic of choice and necessity employed by those who required asymmetry to do damage to those with large and powerful conventional forces. So long as even a small percentage of those practicing a religion with more than one billion adherents cling to an ethos of superiority over other faiths and feel divinely called to spread their way of thinking by the sword, no accommodation will ever be reached with them. An idea prevails in large sectors of the Western elite that if Israel is served up to the mercies of the Muslim world now, Islam will finally be appeased. This is wrong, wrong-headed sophistry that will seal defeat for the West. If Israel is forced to relinquish her heartland, radical Muslims will say this vindicates the use of terror, will rally millions more currently uncommitted Muslims to the cause of jihad, and be the recipe for the undoing of Europe which will be transformed from a largely peaceful, secular continent with Christian roots into a battlefield with combat between deeply religiously convicted Muslims and those who will still have the gumption to resist a religiously imposed tyranny. Selling out the Jews once again and putting the clamps to Israel will not further global peace but trigger unimaginable carnage.

Rational Debris Removal

In some parts of the world, Osama bin Laden is being mourned, and there is anguish at the way the arch-terrorist's bitter flame was extinguished. Even a human rights luminary as distinguished as Fidel Castro complains about US conduct in bringing justice to bin Laden. The narrative of what actually transpired coming from the Americans has changed as details become clearer, and eventually the full sequence will likely emerge. Perhaps, in retrospect, it would have been better for the world if the puppet master pulling the strings of so much carnage had been captured and tortured to find what murderous plots are in the pipeline, but have no doubt, the world is a better place without bin Laden around to orchestrate the next September 11.

The Next Libya

Is Syria going to be the next target in the nebulous new doctrine of responsibility to protect? If America and the West are not hypocritical, then they must consider the blood shed in the streets of Syria just as reprehensible as that in Libya that they intervened to stop. If Syria was freed from Assad family oppression, it would likely lift Syria's tentacles from Lebanon and separate the emerging free Syria from her world-threatening alliance with Iran. It would have the added benefit of making a peoples' revolution against the mad mullahs and Ahmadinejad in Iran that much more likely. If Syria were freed it would be a win-win situation for the Syrian people and the world. That is probably why it will never happen.

Feeling Just Ducky

This morning as the ground around our home became saturated with what we prayed would not be our second consecutive year of thousand year flood, our reliable Marvin (named for a late uncle) Mallard made his rainy day appearance. He swam gracefully just steps from the front door in what before these alarmingly regular "monsoon" rains used to be the green, green grass of home, which I have now taken to calling our low maintenance swimming pool. I almost thought the poor old duck was going to ring the door bell and request an umbrella. Well, all seemed to be recovering relatively well until I went to collect the mail, walking on water (or in it as it were), and I noticed a wire down all the way across the front yard that had even dislodged the mailbox which instead of facing the street was now askance and facing downtown Nashville. Not wanting to be a hero and unceremoniously join Osama bin Laden, I assumed it was a live wire and came in to alert the power company. So, that is how I spent most of the day, surviving another adventure in Third World living in what purports to be the most exclusive zip code in Tennessee.

Pakistan- the Key?

Many feel and with no small amount of justification that Iran is and has been the head of the snake when it comes to fostering the kind of activity that destabilizes and endangers the world. That is surely a plausible contention but one could also reasonably say Pakistan is a grave source of chaos and has fostered more than her share of international jihad. After all Pakistan has been the source of many terror plots against India, was the seedbed for the 7/7 London terror attack, and has been the hub for the Taliban in orchestrating attacks against the US and her allies in Afghanistan and even directed against innocent fellow Pakistanis. And the one item that Pakistan alone deserves blame for is nuclear proliferation complete in North Korea and still seeping into Iran through the A. Q. Khan network. Now ponder the addition of Osama bin Laden living in relative comfort before American justice found him and one could say jihad and international trouble-making have two heads-one hissing in Iran and the other snarling in an equally culpable Pakistan.

Did Pakistan Know?

Osama bin Laden departed this mortal coil in a city dominated by Pakistani military installations and populated in no small number by active and retired members of the Pakistani armed forces. It beggars the imagination that no members of the military and power hierarchy in Pakistan knew bin Laden's exact whereabouts or at least had strong suspicions that the terror "sheik" was the denizen of the highly fortified mansion that was evidently constructed five years ago to accommodate someone who needed walls three times higher than usual then topped with razor wire, had all sorts of security cameras, but curiously no telephones or Internet connections, oh- and in a million US dollar home in a deeply impoverished country- had no trash collection service instead opting to burn their own garbage. But somehow the neighbors had no idea that a terrorist or terrorists of high value to the West were residing there. The ISI, the intelligence service of Pakistan, which is unbelievably intrusive into even seemingly innocuous measures in the daily lives of fellow Pakistanis (even to the extent of quizzing their countrymen about contacts with cousins who happen to reside in rival India) had to be aware of or at least have more than an inkling of bin Laden's exact location in Abbottabad. If Americans believe anything beyond that members of Pakistani intelligence have given aid and comfort to Islamist terrorists, those Americans are fooling themselves.

Bravo for America

The United States can breathe a sigh of relief and give thanks that Osama bin Laden, the master terrorist and author of the September 11, 2001 outrage is indeed dead, killed by US forces, and that his remains are in American custody. To our forces and those of our allies who have fought al Qaeda, to our intelligence agencies and the intelligence agencies allied with us to combat the nihilistic forces of terror, to all those who stand for justice against Islamist fanaticism, I give thanks. Praise the Lord for righteous ends to evil doers but remember a long hard fight remains.

PBS on Horses

The political spin that permeates America's public broadcasting is repulsive. Hearing about "global warming" and "human encroachment" in almost every "nature program" is sickening. Having Cuba, a slave state that has killed thousands of her own citizens and left millions more in a state so desperate that they are willing to brave hundreds of miles of open ocean to flee, portrayed as some sort of pastoral paradise, somehow preserved in a natural state by Castro is a joke. Brutal repression and murder may indeed thwart human progress but there is no virtue in what taken to its logical extension would of course mean the elimination of humanity in service of the earth itself. So, a woman doubtless erudite and educated to a fault takes her camera out to make some pretentious statement about "horse society"- a polity that the horses themselves are blissfully unaware even exists and imbues a rather dumb animal with characteristics that even Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa did not have. Come on nice all-concerned liberal lady- these are horses, not members of a college faculty or some esoteric priestly caste. You really ruin your own work for folks with any discernment and force us to watch with the volume off. Get off your high horse and just let the film of the pretty horses speak for itself without projecting a bunch of balderdash on your viewers.

Meat du Jour

Arab and Muslim people are being slaughtered throughout the Middle East and on the Asian subcontinent largely by other Muslims and by thugs working in the service of their own so-called leaders. They are not being killed by in large by US or NATO forces or by the Israeli Jews. Last night, Muammar Gaddafi's youngest son and several of his grandchildren were evidently blown up in a NATO-launched attack. For the sake of decency if we are targeting Muammar Gaddafi himself as part of "command and control", if those allied in the effort to unseat Gaddafi for whom I and the world would bear little grief if he were actually assassinated, NATO must at least be honest about the effort so if infants and children are near Muammar when he is targeted die, they will have been placed there in full and open knowledge that their grandfather is being targeted and their blood will not be on the hands of the West for inadvertently killing them due to their proximity to an evil dictator, but by placing innocents near him knowing an attack was likely all the blood would be on Muammar Gaddafi's own hands.