Security in Afghanistan

Through a demonstrable lack of will to do what it takes to win in Afghanistan, Barack Hussein Obama is ensuring that America and her allies suffer defeat there. Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the combined might of US forces and our allies there could not even preserve the life of Karzai's own brother. Improvised explosive devices kill every day there and now more precision munitions coming in from Iran are proving ever more deadly. The restrictive rules of engagement and tentativeness of allied forces have done the near impossible- unified the Sunni Taliban and al-Qaeda with agents of Shia Iran- a few short years after they were killing each other. Our failure to go all in and wage total war to win has brought together Muslims from Chechnya and beyond on the ground in Afghanistan to murder us. After a trillion dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, there is no security in Afghanistan.

Shifting the Blame

It is incredible to see both major political parties trying harder to evade responsibility and shunt the blame to the other side rather than solve the nation's debt problem. In a country on a path to catastrophe, gaining political points has become more important than the welfare of the United States (and her citizenry). "What can I do to earn your vote?" has been transformed by today's political class into "look at what a louse my opponent is." In a previous age, America had real statesmen who took their responsibility to govern seriously.

Evil By Design

Why would Barack Hussein Obama want to remove the tax deduction for charitable contributions? Could it be that Obama realizes this would sap traditional non-governmental sources for aid to needy people thereby making them ever more dependent on government for their very survival? As private charity by necessity would then diminish, Obama could then spark more class envy by further demonizing the so-called rich for only giving because they could take the contribution off their taxes. President Obama is deliberately fostering more dependency on government while attacking those outside of government who have traditionally provided relief to those in distress in their communities. It is difficult to help a neighbor up when the Federal government is knocking you down, and it is sad to see an attempt to turn America from a nation of communities to a giant central planning commune.

An Uncompromising Mood

In the attempts to raise the US debt limit, it is the Democrat Party that has taken an inflexible and uncompromising stance. It is as if they would rather have default to use as a wedge issue to triangulate votes against Republicans than actually solve the problem. The GOP majority in the US House of Representatives has sent two plans over to the Senate for consideration, first the Ryan Plan that Harry Reid (Democrat-Nevada) ensured was dead on arrival and then this weekend's Boehner compromise plan that was unpalatable to many conservatives but which emerged from the US House only to be immediately tabled by the Democrat majority in the US Senate without debate. The GOP gave ground and even accepted "enhanced revenue" through elimination of certain tax breaks and loopholes, and came to the Democrat position on everything but raising marginal tax rates and maintaining a few tax credits that actually foster higher employment and grow the economy but are easy to demagogue like subsidies for oil exploration and corporate jets. At this time of so much fiscal uncertainty, the Republicans did stick by their guns to try and protect job creators. The Democrats could have worked with the GOP, negotiated, or advanced their own plan, but instead, they play games for political effect. Stephan Dinan's excellent piece in The Washington Times "http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2011/jul/30/democrats-enforce-filibuster-against-own-debt-bill/" demonstrates that even the so-called plan by Harry Reid seems not to have been advanced in good faith to solve the debt crisis. Even the accounting had massive holes in Senate majority leader Reid's plan as it counted savings from wrapping up the Iraq and Afghanistan involvement (which may well not even happen) twice. Double counts and numbers tricks will not repair the financial damage America has sustained. Only meaningful cuts to the Leviathan spending which must include entitlement reform have a chance of returning the United States to the path of prosperity.

Orchestrating America's Destruction

Watching Obama speak is as harrowing an endeavor as can be embarked upon. In his speeches, Obama and the Democrats are not partisan, above politics, and only have the noblest motives for the nation. In reality, Obama and the Democrats are the opposite. Obama is a master of duplicity. He is the chancellor of chicanery and though he pretended that he was willing to be a one-term President who affected real change, it is apparent that wants reelection desperately so that he can finish Israel as a Jewish state, America as we have known her, and the so-called First World off. Obama is determined to spread the misery far and wide where there will be no distinction between rich and poor. Everyone will share an equal measure of Obama prosperity which used to be called "poverty". Never has such a hypocrite occupied the Presidency. Obama, himself, as a US Senator opposed raising the debt limit when George W. Bush was President. This President has two faces.

Disenchanted and Disenfranchised

As I predicted earlier, it appears Republicans are prepared to capitulate again to Obama, this time on the debt ceiling, after closed door meetings between Harry Reid, the majority leader of the US Senate (Democrat-Nevada), Senate minority leader, the putative Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and the Speaker of the US House John Boehner, also reputed to be a member of the GOP but certainly a sob sister. This is once again a sellout of conservative principles and of the vast majority of Republican voters. Conservatives have no voice in America. We are treated as subjects not citizens and even supposed stalwarts of the right fail the ideological purity test over and over. Even Rick Perry, who is being hyped as the great hope of the Right, pushed in-state tuition for illegal aliens and says the perversion of marriage by homosexuals is a states' rights issue. If GOP actions do not now cry out third party, when will America's conservatives say "enough"?

Preserving the Empire

In the waning days of the Soviet Union, the parents of military conscripts received the grim news that their unfortunate sons had fallen to a training exercise, a bout of dysentery, or a road accident near camp, when in point of fact, they had lost their lives trying to defeat the American-backed mujaheddin in Afghanistan. The price of territorial expansion by means of military adventurism is often steep which is why peaceniks were so heartened at Obama's ascension to the US Presidency. They actually believed his rhetoric- Obama's promises to withdraw from Iraq and start to wrap up the campaign in the old imperial graveyard of Afghanistan, where Great Britain and Russia had both squandered much blood and treasure to little avail. So when the peace camp accounting is done if it were ever deemed to be sincere, should not the thousands that gathered in the street to protest the last President Bush still gather by the multitude, the horde to denounce the current US Emperor, as our forces are more committed in Afghanistan now than under George W. Bush and in fact remain ever active in the Iraq conflict that Obama had pledged to abandon. In June, fifteen US service members had their lives taken in the old Bush fight in Iraq. Where is the new day Obama promised? Occupations continue and a new war is joined in Libya. I am aware that the US can not be the world's policeman but have enough Pax Americana in me to know a global power can never simply beat a hasty retreat. What amazes me is the disingenuous effort of the US anti-war movement which has proven itself to be not so much against violent conflict but simply against wars of American self-interest and self-defense or preemption when waged by leaders whose party affiliation happens to be the American GOP. If this contention is wrong, where is the street theater with hundreds up in arms, aghast, protesting Obama's aggressive wars?

Not Now Newt

Newt Gingrich, one of the wayward lambs vying for the GOP Presidential nomination, has closed his (or perhaps more aptly, his wife's) revolving line of credit with jeweler to the stars, Tiffany & Co. in an attempt to reinvigorate his flagging campaign. It is too little, too late for the 2012 cycle. Mr. Gingrich will never gain the United States Presidency not because of his taste in stones, but because he alienated his presumptive conservative base twice, first by working with liberal Democrats on health care and then by making a commercial on man-caused global climate change with Nancy Pelosi. Gingrich might as well open an account at Cartier because the Right is shouting, "Not now Newt, not ever."

A Happening Town

Detroit, Michigan was once the roaring dynamo that propelled American prosperity. Detroit was the center of the automotive industry which was the heart of manufacturing in the United States. The companies involved were so flexible that they were able to retool quickly to become the arsenal of democracy for World War II, and so vigorous that after the wartime production of arms and armament ended, they were able to bounce back into automobile production without missing a beat. The vehicles that they produced turned America into the most mobile nation that there has ever been. Detroit even boasted one of the country's most highly regarded restaurants, Lester Gruber's internationally-acclaimed London Chop House. After several decades of Democratic (mis)rule there, all that is left are the memories. The latest affront to logic that Democrats have come up with there, after tearing down abandoned properties did little to help, is to pay people to move into downtown Detroit. Somehow, I doubt the offer will attract many pioneers of the sort who could actually help salvage or bring back the city. In the coming decades, all that may be left is a giant Federal border crossing into Windsor. Detroit has sadly become a former happening town that happens to be disappearing.

Our Prevaricating President

The first post-partisan United States President turns out to be the most partisan American President ever. Barack Hussein Obama is filled with animus toward the GOP, which to a degree would be expected, but he really has it in for America's productive classes, which is really dangerous. Even tonight's debt speech was filled with the rhetoric of class envy, with populist baiting about corporate jets and Marxist-inspired appeals about "working families". The rich by in large work smarter than others and consequently have more wealth and to suggest otherwise is a slander. Have you ever been hired by a poor person? It is the so-called rich who create the vast majority of jobs in America. The debt ceiling will doubtless be raised in any event, but what the nation needs most to break from the economic doldrums is a curb on government spending. The US Treasury can borrow until no else will loan or print fiat money till the presses burn up, but all they will succeed at is destroying the economy and the country.

Sociopath Not Soldier

Authentic warriors go out of their way to protect noncombatants. Our armed forces now even have a commendation for "courageous restraint". Certainly in fighting a battle, war from the air, artillery fire, innocents may be injured becoming collateral damage, victims though they were never the intended target. This is inevitable but that in no way diminishes the tragedy of it. What terrorists of all stripes and all ideological bents do is to focus their wrath on the innocent. That is what happened in Norway. There can never be any absolution or forgiveness for the murderer and there can be be no excuse that he is "deranged". The event took place in a largely peaceful Nordic paradise, but remember, such an attack can happen anywhere. Unfortunately, no degree of vigilance can prevent every potential act, particularly if the attack is conducted by a single individual. A "crusader" only in his own mind has committed an atrocity the world can never forget.

No Crusading Knight

The murderer in Norway fancies himself a Knight Templar. He is no knight, nothing honorable, and no "defender of the faith". Knights boldly defended the innocent, women and children, they did not blow them up randomly with explosives. Knights did not massacre defenseless preteens and teenagers and herald themselves heroes for it. If this deluded but sane murderer wanted to prove himself a "warrior", he could have joined Norway's military and fought against real enemies with malign intentions and weapons and the ability to use them. But this "knight" attacked the unwary, unprepared, the defenseless- children. The idea that this evil could one day be released from prison is repugnant. There is real nobility and gallantry in Norway and across the globe, displayed by people of every faith in every nation. This foul barbarian is no knight, is no Christian, and does not display the humanity and compassion to even be called a human being.

Worse Than Quisling

The murderer is the worst Norwegian since Vidkun Quisling, and the Norwegian people knew how to deal with him. It is a shame Norway abolished the death penalty, but I doubt the killer could survive a day in the general prison population because even hardened criminals are repulsed by such an unforgivable act.

Remember the Victims

The world cries out at Norway's tragedy and suffers for all that was lost, no not lost, but stolen, taken in the bloom of life. While we can not erase the awful legacy of the perpetrator, we must commemorate the innocents whose futures he robbed, and continue the good they surely would have done in their names. Nearly one hundred lives, with so much potential, so much promise, so much never to be realized joy are senselessly eradicated by an incarnation of scheming evil whose act of calculated barbarism makes all aware evil must be confronted, contained, confined, and defeated by all that is good in our shared humanity.

A Berserk Psychopath?

Could the Norway mass murderer, who evidently committed the worst single massacre by an individual in history possibly be sane? I would contend yes absolutely, that he acted coolly, methodically, with malice of forethought, and coldly executed a meticulously hatched plan. Like Charles Whitman, the University of Texas shooter, or James Huberty, the McDonald's murderer from San Ysidro, California, this creature has secured for himself an infamy, a vile notoriety where all decent people will curse his name.

A Handsome Devil

Preliminary reports have identified the terrorist whose acts of madness rocked Norway as one Anders Behring Breivik. His photo appears in Aftenposten and on their ".no" website with menacing visage and in what appears to be a camel hair overcoat. He is not Muslim, but evidently a Christian rightist who one commentator on BBC termed a "Norwegian Tim McVeigh". The assailant has been called a rightist, neo-Nazi, and Hitler enthusiast. Whatever he is, there is a special place in hell for him. The creature is pictured here from Aftenposten.

The Oslo Outrage

As far as I am aware, no credible claim of responsibility has been issued yet for the "Oslo Outrage" (my term for the horrible act of terror). I would speculate that a jihadist group perhaps affiliated with al-Qaeda is behind it, but the possibility exists that it could have been conducted on behalf of the besieged Gaddafi regime in Libya. Then there is always the chance it could have been some domestic nihilist or anarchist but that is highly unlikely. My bet is that one way or another, the bombing has an Islamic origin.

Living Her Faith

Michele Bachmann has not just talked the talk but has fostered twenty-three (23) children in her walk of faith. This is not just a real political conservative, a leader not merely in word but in action and by example, an Iron Lady a la Margaret Thatcher, but absolutely someone who has lived her values in the most admirable way. To see her family attacked, her husband's business come under assault (from a gaggle of costumed homosexuals), and even her health questioned while Obama destroys the country, is repulsive and harms the cause of those impugning Bachmann while boosting her Presidential campaign itself.

On the Wane

To observe America's fall as it happens is a very sad thing indeed.

Path to Capitulation

Just as the United States has a marked lack of will in dealing with foreign adversaries, the Republican Party lacks the backbone to confront Obama. I have just absorbed the transcript of Rush Limbaugh's conversation with GOP Speaker of the US House of Representatives John Boehner, and I am sadly convinced that he intends to fold, and the Republican Party will once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by giving in to Barack Hussein Obama on the debt ceiling. Agreeing now to go along to get along does not just hurt the GOP and push many Americans that much closer to forming a down-the-line conservative third party but harms the nation. This Republican retreat shows that that political party is willing to accede to what Arizona GOP US Senator and former Presidential candidate John McCain aptly termed "generational theft". If the Republicans give in now, they must earn just recompense at the voting booth.

Assault on Decency

Democrats in Congress want to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act which was conceived to protect the institution of marriage as being between one man and one woman. Evidently, the Democrat Party as it exists today views that covenant bond as seen in the Bible as being just too darn confining in our liberated age. Two men marrying fine with them, two women terrific- so how about an old farmer who really loves his sheep or his goat- would our open-minded Dems have any problem with that? Medical marijuana with a dispensary across from your child's Federally-subsidized daycare, more power to them and legalize harder drugs beyond that. Government-endorsed promiscuity with warped sex-education in grade school or even kindergarten and now "homosexual history" (whatever in God's name that is) mandated in California schools. If you wanted America to go the way of decadent decline, the way of the Roman Empire, you have made a good start. Then there is Obama turning against Israel which is of course the source of Biblical morality. A nation which sets herself against the Lord can not long stand.

A New Species

If you thought RINOs were bad (and no doubt they are), just wait until you get a load of the chameleon rat which comprises the Republican part of the Gang of Six. These are Senators who will shake your hand while stabbing you in the back with a smile. Can anyone explain how a trillion dollar tax increase will help Americans prosper in the teeth of our ongoing recession? Recession is a term of art some say might not apply because manipulated numbers supposedly showed that the "Bush" recession had ended, and that America had not double dipped into another. My contention based on experience which others might conclude was purely anecdotal is that we have never really exited the downturn brought on by anticipation of Obama's ascension. Market confidence was shaken by the prospect of the United States being subjected to her first outright socialist President. In the event, Obama has shown himself to be just that or worse- a Marxist in the making, in charge of the highest office on the planet. Yet a handful of faux Republicans still think Obama has the answers and are willing to go along with Democrats who have neither their nor the country's best interest at heart.

Fires the Imagination

Michele Bachmann leads for the first time in polls for the GOP Presidential nomination. Can you imagine how quickly the nation could recover if someone who loves and believes in America comes to lead the nation again? A true conservative is leading and I am stoked. God bless Bachmann and God bless the USA.

Spent Enough Yet?

If trillions of dollars in Obama spending have not cured what ails the economy, precisely how much more does he plan to spend to stimulate recovery? Obama can not create prosperity. Government expenditure can not save America. All the Federal government is capable of is putting a giant thumb on the scale of private enterprise to ensure that only a certain, limited number do well at the expense of all the rest. We need vastly less government to free up American dynamism and ingenuity to return us to the engine our Founding Fathers designed and envisaged us to be.

Gaddafi Humiliates West

A tin horn, comic opera dictator has withstood all the West could throw at him for months. Gaddafi remains in Tripoli solely because the United States and her Western allies are possessed of a total lack of resolve, subjugate national interests to the United Nations, and try to fight wars on the cheap. Gaddafi may well celebrate Obama's loss in the 2012 US plebiscite while still ruling over a piece of his divided country. If America and her European allies are not willing to finish the task they selected for themselves, they must at least arm and train the rebels to depose Gaddafi. Once you declare removal of Gaddafi as the US and multilateral aim, you must complete that quest. You sink if you half cross the Rubicon.

Perfect Comedic Timing

When Barack Hussein Obama declared that he will "save" the United States four trillion dollars, there ought to be uproarious laughter. That is one of the funniest things any politician has ever uttered. When his term in office ends in 2012, Obama should hit the comedy club circuit or revive the old television classic "That's Incredible" because he just has to be seen to be believed (or perpetually doubted if you happen to have an I.Q. higher than that of your pet rock).

Assessing Jihad's Threat

Before you make a decide how you feel about the construction of Saudi-funded Wahhabi mosques across America, perhaps you should do some research. My knowledge of the threat has been greatly expanded by listening to Brian Michael Jenkins of the RAND Corporation, Steven Emerson, and Robert Spencer, the director of the excellent Jihad Watch. To learn about the deadly nature of Shariah, explore the work of Nonie Darwish, who saw firsthand the evolution of terrorism as her father fell in service as one of Gamal Abdel Nasser's terror master henchmen, and Brigitte Gabriel whose family suffered as jihad invaded her native Lebanon and shariah began to take hold of the once Christian country. While some of the aforementioned scholarship emerges from the Right, from the Left, the warning is heard just as clearly. Former Muslim and former parliamentarian for Holland, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has chronicled and been threatened by the danger of Shariah confronting the West. The peril posed to author Salman Rushdie for his book, The Satanic Verses further evinces this. The Leftist Christopher Hitchens, an overt atheist, has copiously spoke and written of the dire threat posed by political Islam. Geert Wilders, considered by some a populist, has organized his career of service to the Netherlands around containing the rise of Shariah in Europe. Austrian housewife Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff has risked being jailed or even murdered to warn her neighbors of the wretched excesses she saw spending time in an Arab nation suffering under the yoke of Shariah. There are other sources of knowledge of the threat posed by Islamic law, expansionist Islam, and the violence they spawn and I do not mean to give short shrift to other excellent sources here. One other means of exploring what the incursion of Islamism means to the West is the study of an aggressive history that took Islamic conquest through much of Spain, into France, and to the gates of Vienna. If you read Arabic, delve into the Koran and the hadiths of the religion itself or if not, seek a trustworthy translation. If you have a strong stomach, you can use a search engine to find examples of Shariah in action, where you will find video of people being lashed, having their hands and/or feet chopped off, being shot to death, being stoned to death, being murdered for "apostasy" or for insulting "the Prophet", and being beheaded in fields or public squares. You can see Christian schoolgirls with their heads severed in Indonesia, fatal torture including rape of Catholic schoolgirls in the former Indonesian "protectorate" of East Timor, and you can read the story from the font of the Wahhab menace itself of how other schoolgirls, who were themselves devoted to Sunni Islam, being forced back into a burning schoolhouse to their deaths by fire as the religious police would not let them leave without their all-covering veils even though the building was burning. Moderate Islam is a largely Western construct and Jihad as presented to make palatable in the West as a "personal struggle"does not exist in any Muslim majority country and is designed to hide a mortal danger from those who are the target.

Law Defying Logic

When law and regulation are being enforced to the extent that it becomes an affront to common sense, that law, code, or statute must be changed or repealed. The TSA, codes inspectors, zoning regulators have run amok and stripped citizens of dignity and even sanity. To preserve liberty, shrink the authority of government at all levels.

Death of America

Reading today's Drudge Report provided ample evidence of the terminal erosion of freedom in America. After yesterday's report chronicling the invasive search of a ninety-four year old woman (94) by the TSA, I was further disheartened by stories of a Michigan woman criminally charged by out of control bureaucrats for planting a garden and children harried out of a lemonade stand by government buffoons in Midway, Georgia. Then a story appeared where lunatic zoning fascists in New Jersey demand a restaurant owner from Greece, who wanted to show his love of his country of forty years and therefore installed American flags for the July Fourth Independence Day celebrations must remove them because they could "distract drivers". America used to be a free country where sane people made logical decisions. What ever happened to that?

Barack Obama's Choice

If the US debt ceiling is not raised, whether Social Security recipients receive their checks is entirely left to President Barack Hussein Obama's discretion, as that power is vested in the executive branch of the Federal government. If the Social Security stipends are delayed, it should certainly put the lie to the notion that a "Social Security lock box" ever existed and prove Social Security to be no more than another ponzi scheme run by the government. SSI and Social Security Disability Insurance payments could still go out though as the Federal government still takes in between two and three hundred billion dollars a month and after servicing the debt, would still have ample cash left to pay Social Security recipients, veterans' benefits, and the cost of waging the wars, if only Obama would make the decision to cut somewhere else- but he will not- preferring to politic the issue for all he and his cabal think it is worth. Today is not the mid-1990s though, where Bill Clinton and his main stream media flacks were able to place blame on the GOP for that Federal government shut down, and there is enough alternate media to combat the pro-Obama spin from the dinosaur press trying to place the default onus solely on the Republican Party.

Legacy Writ Small

There can be little question that Barack Hussein Obama is America's worst ever President. The only question that remains is how much more damage that Obama will do before his term ends.

Walking Them Back

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives evidently did more damage than simply facilitating the crossing of high-power weapons to drug gangs in Mexico. Operation Fast and Furious in the Southwest was apparently accompanied by a similar scheme by the BATFE in Florida whereby similar weapons were transferred to gangsters in Honduras. This sick manipulation was put in practice to deny law-abiding American citizens their gun rights by arming Latin criminals and then blaming the ensuing carnage south of the US border on the ease with which firearms can be obtained in the United States. Those responsible for this assault on the Second Amendment and on sanity must be forced out of government.

Such Spiteful Spirit

Apropos of yesterday's theme of resentment (on this forum) and reinforcing Barack Hussein Obama's bitterness is the President's suggestion that physicians are as a class callous charlatans, cutting off legs for no reason beyond "$30,000 or $40,000" and unnecessarily ripping out the appendix of a healthy patient merely to collect ill-gotten reimbursement. Obama advanced this ridiculous and repulsive proposition during his pitch for health care reform which he pushed through over the objections of the majority of the American people. After Obama spewed such bile suggesting doctors are motivated by only the most mercenary of motives, it is amazing that Obama was able to round up enough white-coated socialists to present as photo opportunity props while attempting to gain support for the Obama Care push. Even yesterday, conservative talk radio was broadcasting these quotes portraying the most noxious notion about a helping profession that has literally been the difference between life and death for almost all of us. Only the most self-loathing members of the medical profession will vote for Obama in 2012 after he has smeared them as greedy and money-grubbing and dismissed their integrity by so impugning their motives.

A Resentful Presidency

Former US Presidents have always been gracious, frequently expressed gratitude for the opportunity America has offered, and have often given public thanks for what the nation afforded them personally. Barack Hussein Obama seems to have inverted this proposition and apparently feels the United States should feel grateful to have him as he has toured the world apologizing for America's alleged past misdeeds on foreign soil. Obama seems to feel unencumbered by traits displayed by his predecessors like courtesy to foreign guests (as we saw demonstrated by Obama in his discourteous interaction with Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu during a White House visit), as we saw with Obama's open insult to the US Supreme Court justices at one of his State of the Union addresses, as we just observed when Obama stormed out of the debt ceiling meeting with Republicans, we must profess this is a truly unique Presidency. Of course, the dinosaur media will not report Obama's hubris or if they mention incidents that in a sane world would be held against the President, they are artfully spun in Obama's favor.

Murder in Mumbai

A deep sense of revulsion grips the decent when Mumbai, one of the world's most inclusive, tolerant, cosmopolitan cities, is marred by senseless violence. The civilized world cries with you now.

Maoist or Muslim

As there has been no credible claim of responsibility yet for the Mumbai bombing, care to speculate if it was perpetrated by Maoist insurrectionists or Islamic radicals? My bet is jihadists acting under the pretext of liberating Kashmir, most probably from the Lashkar-e-Taiba movement perhaps with the assistance of rogue or not so rogue elements of the Pakistani intelligence service (the ISI), but I would not entirely preclude Maoist involvement even here with Muslim extremist bombers as we saw Basque ETA separatists allegedly provide the explosives for al-Qaeda to execute the Madrid train bombings in 2004. Terrorism can make strange bedfellows. Our hearts, our prayers, and our solidarity go out to the people of India.

The Waning Hours

The United States of America is inching ever closer to the manufactured crisis of our Federal government default. National default would be catastrophic with US bonds and Treasury Notes being pushed to junk level. President Barack Hussein Obama has threatened that he is not even certain that he will be able to send out military pay and Social Security checks. In the event that happens, lay all the blame on Obama himself as it would be entirely his choice as after the debt service payments, it would be left completely to the President to prioritize where the remainder of government receipts are spent. Of course, America would not be in such a tenuous situation, if Obama and his Democrats were not on a spending spree unprecedented in human history. Will America default? Maybe so, but if it happens only Barack Hussein Obama and the socialists who have backed him should be held to account in the November 2012 election.

The Blame Game

The most remarkable aspect of the current debt ceiling debate is how the dinosaur press portrays Barack Hussein Obama as either a spectator who bears no responsibility for the nation's debt and deficit or as the only one trying to do the right thing. The main stream media will not even call Obama on threatening Medicare and Social Security with his vow to take on entitlement spending as part of his proposed "grand bargain" with Republicans that will evidently never be sealed. What else would you expect though from propagandists who have long-since taken sides and the side they have taken is not that of the GOP? Like Bill Clinton, because of complicity on the part of TV networks other than FOX and "newspapers of record" with a few notable exceptions like The Wall Street Journal, Barack Obama is enjoying a Teflon Presidency.

Laying the Groundwork

The path to prosperity to return in America will not be a short one. Just as the economic dislocation did not happen overnight, neither will recovery be quick or easy. But the certain foundation of resurgence must be serious spending cuts by government, allowing the private sector to breathe again. Regulation by government must have its ceaseless expansion reversed. Taxes must not be raised as Democrats demand, but lowered with a fair or flat tax system implemented to spark growth. It is always bleakest before the dawn and before the American people vote the bums out and return responsible stewardship to government.

Cavalcade of Snakes

The already poorly regarded profession of journalism suffered yet another blow with the hacking scandal enveloping the Rupert Murdoch tabloid empire in Great Britain. The Murdoch catastrophe displays a rare level of predation with even the emails of a slain soldier being eavesdropped- hard to conceive that any event could darken an institution so widely held in disrepute- but this did. While what happened in London was glaring and obvious, what happens every day in America is little better if much more subtle. In America, the main stream press is no fair arbiter or even earnest advocate but a dishonest broker who attempts to conceal an activist agenda. Watching the Sunday pundit shows one sees a near constant stream of unmerited credit being given to Democrats and unwarranted blame heaped on Republicans. In some instances, even the sheen of objectivity is abandoned for baldfaced partisanship as is the case on MSNBC. But make no mistake, the side is taken and that side is the Left. NBC's anchor Brian Williams said (in)famously that conservatives see "black and white with little room for gray matter in between". No one much is watching CBS but Scott Pelley seems to veer just as far left as Katie Couric did. On ABC, George Stephanopoulos was an active member of Bill Clinton's team, Christiane Amanpour is married to Clintonista Jamie Rubin, and withered beauty queen Diane Sawyer is web to Hollywood liberal Mike Nichols. All these network talking heads slant the story to put Barack Hussein Obama in the best possible light with no benefit of the doubt ever afforded to members of the GOP. One could reach the stark conclusion from the conduct of "journalists" today that sometimes the devil's best advocate is the devil himself.

In the Wings

Early in the campaign season for the GOP stalwart to contest Obama for the US Presidency, second-tier candidates are dominating the hustings. These are understudies not stars and even those who are ideologically in accord with the vast body of Republican voters probably have little chance of unseating Barack Hussein Obama. Orthodox conservatives include Rick Santorum who has neither traction nor name recognition, Michele Bachmann who is mocked in the dinosaur media and whose campaign is certainly not in overdrive yet, and Herman Cain who revs up a crowd like Reagan but who the main stream media assiduously avoids even mentioning. Among those who are not movement conservatives are Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney who also both happen to be Mormons that many Christians from other denominations simply will not vote for in a primary. Gary Johnson is more Libertarian than Republican, and Tim Pawlenty seems a nowhere man who has only merited recent mention for heralding the "sex appeal" of fellow Minnesotan Michele Bachmann. Ron Paul is popular among Constitutional fetishists but can not win. Newt Gingrich is a dead issue, and to this point, almost no one knows who Thaddeus McCotter is. These are the players that you cannot tell even with a scorecard as giants Rick Perry and Sarah Palin wait in the wings.

Our Jobless Prosperity

New employment numbers in the United States are anything but rosy. The figures were not as glowing as was expected with unemployment marked at 9.2% but that does not factor in those whose benefits are exhausted and those who have found a position but are wildly underemployed. This can not hearten the crew trying to orchestrate Obama's reelection, but I have a feeling that before November of 2012 that the numbers will have been massaged sufficiently that joblessness will (only nominally) be within the eight percentile. The only group really prospering now seems to be crony capitalists who have an in with the ever-encroaching government. The group holding its own seems to be Federal workers while virtually everyone else is losing ground. Unless average Americans have a palpable sense that their situation is improving, I find it hard to see how President Obama can earn their votes.

Delirious With Deceit

If Barack Hussein Obama who ran for President as a defender of Social Security and Medicare and the Congress including nominal Republicans conclude some kind of "grand bargain" on the budget and the debt ceiling, it could include the most stunning betrayal of America's senior citizens in the nation's history. A dire warning on this forum has been the prospect of inflation, even the fear that the rampant printing of fiat money could impel hyperinflation as was seen in the Weimar Republic and more recently in Zimbabwe. America's elderly are too often completely dependent on government and if they forfeit their cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) as is now more possible than ever, it could cost their very lives. There has been no boom in the economy of these seniors (if there has been any recovery for anyone) and if they lose their COLAs in the teeth of rising inflation, the stark choice of food or medicine could become all too real for vulnerable older Americans. No grand bargain should be made that targets grandma and grandpa.

A Tad Pricey

The Federal government has completed tabulations for the cost of each "stimulus" job created and has announced that each position cost a mere two hundred and seventy-eight thousand dollars ($278,000). If we take into account that many of those hired were short-term, like workers for the US Census, or were hired for construction or similar projects that have already been completed, or were specific for a contract that has been fulfilled and the employment is long-since over, more than a quarter of a million dollars per job created is yet one more proof that Obamaism is untenable. Keynesianism did not work in the FDR-era of the thirties and has failed at enormous cost to the taxpayer even more now. It would have been cheaper and more effective to lower marginal tax rates across the board and more employment would surely have been created. Even a semi-socialistic negative income tax could have yielded more if the Federal government had sent five families fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) each, allowing more than twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) for administrative costs with each $278,000 essentially squandered, but because that makes some degree of sense, the Democrats in Washington will never permit it to happen.

"Anthony Not Guilty"

The headline speaks for itself. Let me be the first to posit a couple of other equally plausible propositions: 1.)Mahmoud Ahmadinejad studying to become rabbi. 2.)Golden Retriever to address joint session of United States Congress. One has to wonder what is in the heads of the Florida Anthony trial jurors. One thing is certain, it is not an overabundance of high-functioning brain matter.

Tennessee Assaults Speech

On July 1, two different laws took effect that are a direct frontal assault on and should chill free speech in Tennessee. Our moderate Republican Governor Jim Haslam either hates liberty or was too dumb to recognize that signing a law banning "images that offend" on the Internet and green lighting another law prohibiting "offensive bumper stickers" is an attack on the First Amendment of the US Constitution. I am the furthest thing in the world from a supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union with their defense of Westboro Baptist with their deliberate attack at troop funerals on the families of dead soldiers and their advocacy some years back for Nazis marching in Skokie, Illinois which hosted the largest percentage of Holocaust survivors in such a concentrated area anywhere in the United States. But even for someone who is no fan of the ACLU, I hope they overturn the over-broad, overly subjective restrictions of speech that have just gone into effect in my home state of Tennessee. Sweeping legislation like these new laws kills a fly with an atom bomb. What might offend me might not offend you and vice versa. Some folks might want to see a car pulled over and ticketed because of and old "W" sticker from the last President Bush's reelection and others might not like the "O" displayed by Obama supporters. Some people might not like anti-abortion messages on the web because they show the grim aftermath on a pro-life webpage. These limits on speech do not meet Constitutional muster and will not survive the scrutiny of Federal courts. Gee, I hope no one is so put off by my characterization of Governor Haslam that they report me to Tennessee's new web censors.

A Consecrated Endeavor

To hold the light of liberty on high/ To see freedom's fireworks light the sky/ As we proclaim from South to North/ And celebrate from Fourth to Fourth/ One of America's sacred days/ When the sunshine of liberty broke through tyranny's haze.

In the Ascendancy

I still believe in America. If we can elect a true conservative to replace Obama, I am confident our best days are not behind us. America's promise can be kept, must be kept, as we take the course of liberty to return us to our salad days. The Founders' notion of liberty, Reagan's vision of a freer future, the Spirit of '76 remains as relevant today as ever and is the best hope for a bright future for the United States and as we are the cradle of liberty, for the world.

Curtain of Darkness

Mankind has suffered under the cloud of tyranny throughout the ages. The United States of America was conceived, created, and then maintained as the breath of freedom for humanity suffering thousands of years under the air of oppression. Liberty was neither easy nor cheap but hard and costly in blood and treasure. America has been a light to the immigrant and a beacon of liberty in an all too often benighted world. Americans owe no fealty to king or potentate, but we are forever in debt to those we can never repay who shed their blood so we may walk down the streets and avenues free.

A Spiteful Socialist

Barack Hussein Obama plays the class-envy game in a more frank and overt manner than any main steam American politician since Huey Long. With his corporate jets or health care for children press conference this week, Obama proved himself to be a prevaricating populist and a dictatorial demagogue bent on pitting the have-less against the haves in this society. America has few true have-nots as even those in public housing have amenities about which the middle class in other countries can only dream. Who do you think lives better? An American in subsidized housing who does no work or a farmer who works from daylight to dusk in the province of Hunan? Who has greater opportunity to rise out of circumstance- a welfare mom in Houston or a Havana or Haiti hardworking mother? We have no cause for class grievance in America because before the deceived or dunces voted Obama into office, the United States was the most upwardly mobile society that had ever existed on earth. You may have been brought up in unfortunate circumstances but you had no reason to remain in them in the Land of Opportunity. The Obama electorate all too often thought they would be dancing on easy street, but even many Obama voters are waking now to the fact that they only waltzed over good sense. In Obama's way of thinking, you may well be able to put it to the rich, but if you succeed at this, do you rise in the morning with a greater opportunity of generating wealth for yourself?

Dancing With Depenence

Those physically and mentally able should provide for themselves. The earliest ethos in colonial America was those who do not work, do not eat. What is being created by Barack Hussein Obama is fundamentally un-American. This nation was not borne from a socialist impulse and was never intended by her founders to become a welfare state. To see perfectly able-bodied adults drawing a government check must have those freedom lovers who created the United States rolling in their graves. Dependency breeds despondency and is the opposite of freedom.

Iran Imperils Israel

This week Iran unveiled missiles that could carry a nuclear payload to Tel Aviv. The US and multilateral bodies have imposed sanctions on Iran over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, but these sanctions have not measurably slowed Iran's progress toward atomic weaponry. The measures taken so far to thwart Tehran's nuclear drive amount to little more than lip service. Israel is not the only nation rightly worried over the aggressive nature of Iran's actions. Saudi Arabia announced that if Iran gained nukes, the Saudis would as well as a cascading arms race would no doubt engulf the Middle East. The Saudis would be a target for Shia Iran as they are Sunni, but the primary focus of Iran's hostility is bound to remain the Jewish State. The Arab world and Europe have much to lose should Iran succeed, but for Israel, the threat is already existential.

Affirmative Action Forever

Affirmative Action is, plain and simple, discrimination endorsed by government. The citizens of Michigan voted to end this race preference in university admission but the Federal court has just ruled that the people's will as expressed by their votes "unduly burdens minorities". What about unduly burdening those more academically qualified by excluding them from entrance to college because they happen to have white skin? The very idea now with a black President of the United States, a black United States attorney general, dozens of blacks in Congress, blacks at the helm of numerous corporations, and blacks among the wealthiest Americans that blacks are systematically excluded because of race from any aspect of American life is on its face nonsense. Affirmative Action has become institutionalized discrimination for the sake of discrimination at the expense of fairness, particularly handicapping white males.