Asserting Russian Primacy

Russia may not be the world's leading power, but it has surpassed the power of the US, in fact, the power of the West itself. The United States for the first time since winning the Spanish-American War is not feared as a force or regarded as a leading nation. Red China has overtaken American hegemony in the Pacific, and Russia now calls the tune in Europe. Obama's retreat in Iraq first and now in Afghanistan has led to America's looming defeat worldwide. In America, our army is about to be reduced to four hundred thousand soldiers. The US military will be numerically inferior to North Korea's armed forces after these cuts. Barack Hussein Obama does not make national security his first priority, and other world leaders know and take advantage of his deliberate sapping of US strength.

Inviting Russian Intervention

The Ukraine is clearly in Russia's sphere of influence. Russia's leader may be a dictator, but Vladimir Putin has something Western leaders lack, that being a backbone. Putin did not threaten to punish the Assad regime in Syria for using chemical weapons, as the United States did, then have his foreign minister say a strike against those committing crimes against humanity would be "incredibly small". Barack Hussein Obama's Secretary of State John Kerry did, going on to say, "unbelievably small, limited kind of effort", and then damaging US credibility further by not taking action at all after promising American retaliation against Syria if Assad crossed the "red line" and used chemical weapons. If the West, NATO nations, and the US could not restrain a dictator in Damascus, then how can they expect to hold Putin back in the Ukraine? If Putin sees it in Russia's interest to take all or part of the Ukraine, he will. The West is weak now, and lacks the will to assert itself even against minor regional powers. Putin demonstrated strength in dealing with Muslim terrorists and protected the Sochi Olympics. Once before in history, a determined leader hosted a relatively successful Olympics on a path of attempting world domination, and those who have any knowledge of history, know how that worked out. The more the West threatens Russia over events in Kiev, the more certain I am that Putin will see it as waving a red flag in front of a bull, and react against what is becoming clear provocation by those in the Ukraine who seek a Western alliance, and those nations in the West that actually fancy themselves as powers who can impose their collective will on Russia. If the US and the old NATO alliance could not hold Assad back in Syria, how will they prevent Putin from acting in Russia's national interest in an area that was an integral part of the former Soviet Union?

Mass Transit Nashville

My hometown wants to institute an express public bus service (that will never be self-supporting but that will be partially paid for with Federal funds) from East Nashville to the major Catholic hospital in West Nashville. The project called "AMP" is expected to cost millions of dollars but is projected to only increase ridership by twenty-three passengers per day. AMP will take lanes away from other vehicle traffic and disrupt access to businesses along the Broadway-West End corridor, which is the so-called main drag of Music City. The project does not make sense economically, but is supported by Mayor Karl Dean and his rubber stamp Metro Council, despite more opposition from the public than support. I am virtually certain the plan will be implemented as Mayor Dean and his progressives want, because they have not thought of a better way to squander that which has been confiscated from taxpayers.

Boko Haram Outrages

When a nation is attempting to develop, education is an essential component. In Nigeria, certain Muslim fundamentalists have made it their mission to eliminate Western learning through violence. The latest massacre they committed has just occurred in Yola, where at least forty students and teachers were butchered with some burnt alive by these conscienceless terrorists from the Boko Haram. The civilized countries of the world should denounce this barbarism and send whatever aid Nigerian military and police forces request to wipe away the threat posed by Boko Haram.

Beware of Russia

Nothing the United States says could prevent Putin from imposing his will in the Ukraine. In fact, the more US National Security Adviser Susan Rice warns Russia, the more likely it becomes that Russia will take military action. Ukrainian military forces would stand no chance against Russian forces who could retake Kiev in a matter of days, if ordered to do so. If Putin opts for action, the US and Western allies would be helpless to rescue democratic forces in the Ukraine, and bellicose words on the part of serial blunderer Barack Hussein Obama or his administration make conflict much more likely. Let us hope that Russia sees no advantage in aggression now, because there is nothing the West could realistically do to prevent Putin from imposing whatever outcome he desires.

A New Ukraine

Could the recent, apparently successful, revolt in parts of the Ukraine herald the creation of two new states, one with allegiance to Europe, governed from Kiev, and the other with fealty to Russia, ruled from Kharkiv? A split along these lines would make sense as the majority of the population of Ukraine near Russia is now comprised of ethnic Russians, whose families often settled there when Ukraine was part of the former Soviet Union. I frankly worried that Putin might have intervened militarily to keep Moscow's ally "President" Viktor Yankovych in power in Kiev, but it appears that Russia is going to show restraint in this instance. In any event, the world is seeing a new Ukraine emerge or perhaps even two new states born out of the shell of the former Ukraine.

Near Universal Enmity

Before his swearing-in as US President, Barack Hussein Obama was supposed to be the force that would unite the globe- a sort of anti-George W Bush- who even won the Nobel Peace Prize, largely in anticipation of future achievement. In the event, that bringing the world together has never quite materialized. In fact, America may be held in lower standing in much of the world than during W's Presidency. The Arab and Muslim world either feared or loved Bush. Formerly allied nations Saudi Arabia and Bahrain now regard the US with suspicion and contempt, fearing that Obama is favoring Iran and Shia Islam, and allowing the Mad Mullahs of Tehran to develop the capacity for nuclear weapons with all the capacity for extortion and violence Iranian weapons of mass destruction would surely bring. Obama is seen as abandoning the people of Iraq and Syria to sectarian violence on an unprecedented scale. Obama is despised by Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and thought to have done less for the rest of Africa than his predecessor with Bush's well-documented effort to fight HIV and AIDS across the continent. The world witnessed how Obama was thanked for his intervention in Libya with the Benghazi Massacre. Obama is hated by many Mexicans who believe the guns he allowed in through Fast and Furious fanned the flames of violence there and killed at least hundreds and is not well-regarded by others because of his failure to deliver on promises of immigration reform. China sees weakness in Obama and is supplanting the US for Pacific hegemony. North Korea's brash young dictator toys with Obama who Pyongyang sees as neither serious nor threatening. Russia did not press the "reset" button that Obama's first Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered, and holds Obama in low esteem. Great Britain rightly felt rebuffed when Obama became the first US President to favor Argentina's claims to the Falkland Islands (Las Malvinas), and sent back the bust of stalwart ally and champion of liberty Winston Churchill. Even Canada has questioned delays to the Keystone Pipeline, which the Canadian government sees as a positive for both nations. Obama has not moved people closer together, but, in fact, further apart.

Obama's Constitutional Salad

America's First Lady has made much show about planting an organic vegetable garden at the White House. Her husband, Barack Hussein Obama is trying to make a salad out of the US Constitution and the rule of law itself. Obama and his toady Eric Holder decided they would cease defending "Don't ask, don't tell" when it was the US Congress-passed, Bill Clinton-signed law of the land. Obama picks and chooses which parts of the Affordable Care Act to delay or enforce or perhaps never implement (at least, so long as his actions support Democrat candidates in their runs for office). Obama has used the Internal Revenue Service as a weapon against TEA Party groups with the support of Democrats and establishment Republicans (or at least, acquiescence on the part of GOP leaders). The US was founded under the principle of the rule of law, not the rule of men. Obama sticks to this enshrined concept as long as it is law with which he agrees.

Chopping Up Amendments

Does Barack Hussein Obama's Federal Communications Commission have any business entering America's newsrooms to "identify and understand the critical information needs of the American public, with special emphasis on vulnerable-disadvantaged populations"? I must have missed that part of the First Amendment. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution is also a target for Obama and his Democrats with Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey proposing "smart gun" regulation that will require all new guns to feature technology that would only permit the owner or authorized users to fire them. These proposals will, if enacted, allow government to manipulate broadcast news and limit legal access to firearms and are contrary to the Constitution and to liberty itself.

Iran's Good Intentions

It would be a close run thing as to whether Iran or North Korea is the most evil regime on earth, but there can be no doubt, because of the "end time" ethos of the religious fanatics that run Iran that Tehran is the more dangerous. While both Pyongyang and Tehran have sponsored international terror, Iran is far more vigorous in expanding its reach and is currently exporting trouble to Iraq and Lebanon, and propping up the Assad dictatorship in Syria. A recent report by the United Nations chronicles how North Korea makes mothers drown or suffocate their own babies (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/17/un-warns-north-koreas-kim-jong-un-strongly-worded-/), but Kim Jong-un is more or less rational and committed to his own survival. Iran's ruling mullahs regard death in service to jihad as the highest virtue and want to initiate world chaos to bring the 12th Imam from his hiding place in the well, meaning that they literally believe they have nothing to lose and all to gain by initiating World War III. The mullahs running Iran routinely have mass public hangings where a carnival atmosphere prevails for such crimes as "making war on God" (apostasy) and string young homosexual men up from gibbet cranes as a lesson in morality. Both Pyongyang and Tehran find themselves in the embrace of wretched fanaticism enforced by extreme brutality, but at least North Korea's young dictator wants to around enjoying the high life for some time to come.

Obamas Living Large

The Bush family that produced two recent US Presidents has the means independent of whatever their position is in public service to live lavishly, but they never did. They would have considered such extravagance ostentatious. The Obamas do not operate under any similar constraint. Prior to entering elected office, Barack Hussein Obama could not have afforded much of the sumptuous lifestyle that he now sees no problem milking out of the taxpayers. If a Republican were in the Oval Office, he would be pilloried for spending a tenth of what Barack and Michelle have on social functions, but as Democrats, and African-American Democrats at that, the Obamas know they are beyond real scrutiny by the mainstream media. Please Mr. President, as you raise taxes, government fees, and Federal regulation, and push American jobs into oblivion, let us mere broken-backed peons eat some of the cake too, or at least sample the crumbs.

Lessons in Lying

The virtue of telling the truth was taught to generations of Americans in part through the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. In this apocryphal tale, our first President declares, "I can not tell a lie". Perhaps our current President could give little George lessons. Barack Hussein Obama lied about the Affordable Care Act providing lower medical insurance costs of twenty-five hundred dollars per family, about keeping your doctor, and said "if you like your coverage, you can keep your coverage". In the event of the implementation of Obama Care, all of Obama's aforementioned positions turn out not to be happening. You likely can not keep your doctor or the medical insurance policy you liked, and your costs have not been reduced but are actually going up. Obama has been just as candid about Benghazi and the gun-walking Fast and Furious scheme into Mexico as he has about the Affordable Care Act. On this Presidents' Day, can you name a more dishonest President on matters of consequence than our current misleader?

Culling the Herd

A high school acquaintance of mine just lost her ninety-one year old father. He had been diagnosed with undifferentiated lung cancer, and the family accepted the verdict of his treatment team that curative efforts would not be worth pursuing and opted for the "comfort care" that was recommended. It seems medical providers want to do as little as possible for patients once they have reached a certain chronological age, where the goal ceases to be preserving life but becomes instead easing death. With this mentality, elderly Americans are treated little better than downer cattle. Our seniors deserve better.

Do Not Resuscitate

Do not resuscitate orders are being placed on patients without their consent or that of their families. This should be a lead story on newscasts and in newspapers but all we hear is resounding silence, a conspiracy of silence, because it does not serve corporate or political interests to expose this crime. This care rationing is another incarnation of eugenics but people who have suffered loss in threes and fours as their loved ones fell to unilateral DNRs have not networked sufficiently to create critical mass to expose this evil practice. We will never be silent though and we will keep on trying.

A Ruinous Winter

With the US economy on an already weak footing, the lower forty-eight states have been battered by one of the worst winters in years. Retailers suffer when customers can not make it in to stores. Builders incur greater costs when projects are delayed by snow and ice. Even shipping services like UPS and Federal Express have to take icy roads into account, delaying deliveries and hurting the bottom line. Municipal snow removal crews are raking it in though, with many cities having to pay overtime to keep roads clear. Such rough weather does an economy teetering on recession (or worse) no good.

Europe Embraces Tradition

An air of anti-Semitism wafts across Europe just as the sickly sweet smell of burning human flesh hovered around the crematoria. Multiple European countries have banned or sought to ban Kosher slaughter and declared or sought to declare religious circumcision illegal. Jews have been attacked on the streets and even murdered. Most of the overt physical violence has been inflicted by Muslims while the systematic effort to deprive Jews of their right to religious ritual has been by Europeans within the political establishment in an echo of the traditional Jew-baiting that led to Nazism. The most dangerous vestige of Jew-hatred to the survival of the Jewish people is the systematic effort to demonize Israel by trying make it out as an apartheid state, complete with a vigorous effort to impose boycott, sanctions, and divestment (BDS) against the Jewish State. This pattern should not be a surprise as no other continent has ever had its majority population try so hard or be so successful at an attempt at genocide as Europe has been in eliminating Jews.

Belgian Baby Butchers

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/02/11/Belgium-set-to-extend-right-to-die-law-to-children was the headline that just confronted me. Dr. Mengele would be proud. Say your child is suffering seemingly unbearably today, so you euthanize him, just before a cure for his condition is announced tomorrow; do you make it a family plan euthanasia and kill yourself out of guilt? This notion of mercy killing in lieu of doing the necessary research to treat and cure illnesses will save governments lots of resources, but if nations do put down the inconvenient and expensive to treat, we will have lost our humanity. You never save the hamlet by burning it down.

America's Medical Secret

If you do not want any "heroic efforts" to extend your life and sign a "living will" indicating that, your treatment team including your doctors will gladly honor your wishes and place a DNR (do not resuscitate) order at the front of your chart and all over your room. If, on the other hand, you want everything done to sustain life, and you and/or your surrogates are demanding full code, the treatment team may well ignore your instruction and employ an overt DNR, telling you and your family members (surrogates) that you are a hopeless case and tell you further effort at keeping you alive is futile, or a covert DNR in which the treatment does not tell you they intend to withhold care but do so anyway. The looming "death panels" will accelerate this culling of the aged and/or infirm, but whether medical providers are honest and tell patients and their representatives that they intend to deprive the patient of what it takes to sustain life remains to be seen. I fear they will simply say the decision was taken out of their hands and that the Federal Independent Payment Advisory Board would not permit them to try to extend the life of the patient. It remains to be seen how hard families of the aged fight to keep their loved ones alive, and if physicians and medical staff will side with life and join them or rubber stamp the will of a government that wishes to rid itself of people whose lives have become expensive to preserve.

Death American Style

I had prayed that my Dad's care-rationing imposed death was an anomaly- a one off, if you will- but am saddened to find others already in the same boat. Medical futility is being employed at least routinely if not rampantly in the United States to hasten the passing of those whose treatment teams decide to supplant their judgement for God's time clock. If you or your loved one is elderly, chronically-ill, or expensive or complex to treat, beware that the doctor may not do everything or even anything to sustain life. I listened to my Father plead for pineapple juice and a cracker, only to be told that he could not have them as that could cause him to aspirate, I watched his tube feeds discontinued and saw his drip hydration allowed to run dry, and was such a layman to medical procedures that I did not recognize that a covert "DNR" (do not resuscitate order) had been placed on Dad and that the place we had turned to for help when my Father was at his most vulnerable was actually deliberately truncating his life. It will chill you to the bone to read of a similar horror, but if you or someone you love may need to be hospitalized, go to http://holycrosshealth.com to read of Israel Neustadter, a gentleman who had miraculously survived Auschwitz only to be killed because he had become ill at an advanced age by a Maryland hospital.

The Ice Follies

A member of the US Olympic team was trapped in his bathroom in Sochi. There have been news stories that the tap water there is not potable. There are reliable reports that surveillance cameras have even been placed in the showers. I had hopes that Russia would have been more efficient, but the only area that is really consequential is safety, and so far Russian authorities have kept the Games and spectators safe. Let us hope Putin's monumental counter-terror effort is a glowing success.

The Chihuahua Cough

I was shopping at the West Nashville location of the world's largest retailer. In the men's department of the Arkansas-based giant, a Mexican coughed right in my face (of course, without attempting to cover his mouth). When I approached one of the registers, he was checking out in front of me with his wife and three children, including what I presume is their "anchor baby". In spite of the fact that the parents evidently did not speak a word of English, they knew all about our welfare system, and they paid for two shopping carts of food with with an EBT card. I would assume they also take advantage of the TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) that is available to them due to their little red, white, and blue bundle. I am certain that the volume of merchandise they purchased, or rather, more properly, we purchased for them, exceeded one hundred dollars; yet, as they left, I did not hear them thank a single taxpayer. No nation that abandons heritage and patrimony and gives foreigners enormous largess at the expense of citizens can survive.

America Inviting Terror

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/06/administration-eases-restrictions-on-asylum-seekers-with-loose-terror-ties/?intcmp=latestnews is a story that should worry Americans. After the Department of Homeland Security has warned that armed veterans pose a terror threat, the administration of Barack Hussein Obama sees no problem admitting those with known ties to terror into the United States. Why is there disquiet in Team Obama about those who served in our military but no evident alarm about opening our borders to Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers? How will letting these undesirables in not raise our risk and make us less safe? The policy of not screening out those who have demonstrated they support those who want to do us harm is absolutely insane.

Give Me Inspiration

Some days, no particular news item cries out for immediate reaction or extended commentary, but I count on our political leaders to provide grist for the mill. There are always old standbys like the wooden Al Gore who can be contradicted on his climate prognosis on an almost daily basis. Then there is the Hollywood crowd who offend normal sensibilities with fair regularity. Of course, war, including the war on terror, may summon up further exploration. Indeed, even today in the context of the Winter Olympics, authorities are warning toothpaste tubes may be turned in explosive devices. Soon, passengers will almost surely be forbidden from bringing toothpaste on airliners. I have never been convinced that preventing the millions of travelers who are not terrorists from carrying nail files, bottled water, or shampoo aboard planes prevents terror, but that focusing not on items, but on potential terrorists as Israeli security does, might be the better way to keep the flying public safe.

Armored Car Robbery

A father doted on his daughter and wanted to give her everything but could never quite afford to give her much. One day he had an inspiration that he could provide her the life she deserved if he could just steal a huge amount of cash. He succeeded in a brazen armed robbery and gained millions of dollars but suffered a mortal wound in the process. If you think the daughter should be able to keep the pilfered money, then you must also support the "Dream Act". If not, you should fight "comprehensive immigration reform" with every fiber of your being.

A Plane Crash

A private plane crashed in Nashville yesterday killing all four souls aboard. The accident was several miles from my home but the impact of the plummeting airplane as it contacted the ground was sufficient to cause the neighbors' sensitive car alarm to go off and rattled our windows. The pilot evidently sacrificed his family to save more than three hundred people in the Bellevue YMCA that he narrowly managed to miss (at a reported distance of only twenty feet). My sympathy and prayers go out to the surviving family members in Kansas where the flight originated.

A Miserable Spectacle

A sporting event watched by the multitude took place last night. The contest for the championship of American professional football was neither competitive nor entertaining. The first play from scrimmage set the tone and gave the team from the Pacific Northwest momentum and a lead they would never relinquish as the snap from center went astray and the team from the Mile High City crumbled. The team of the superstar quarterback seemingly lost the will to compete after that botched snap and some hard hits by the league's most dominant defense. Even the special teams of the boys from the Rocky Mountains failed them as they gave up a touchdown on a long return to a former Florida Gator who had been out with injuries all season. In this instance, the commercials were more interesting than the football but that is not saying much.

Path to Victory

The game plan for Republicans to hold their majority in the US House of Representatives and gain a majority in the US Senate is not to pass an amnesty for illegal aliens couched in the term "comprehensive immigration reform". The road map to a GOP win does not start with Republican thinkers figuring out a way to make Obama Care work. Republicans will not win by making common cause with Barack Hussein Obama. The path to regaining control of Congress and incidentally to gaining the Presidency in 2016 is not to repudiate and do battle against the TEA Party, but to embrace conservatism including the smaller government, more personal responsibility ethos of the TEA Party and banish John Boehner and Eric Cantor from leadership in the House because they support the bill of terribles I have just enumerated and do not want to oppose the President as he drags the country leftward but to find areas of agreement where they can work with Obama. The political consultants who have advised the GOP into two Presidential election losses in a row to a man who is at most an incompetent version of a Northern European socialist (and in my mind, even further left than that) are telling GOP leadership in Congress that they must not be seen as an obstacle to the President and that they can not afford to be cast in the light as "obstructionists or a do-nothing Congress" if they want to win majorities of the twenty percent of the nation who vote independent of party affiliation. If the GOP listens and acts on the ideas of these consultants, they will cause huge numbers of conservatives who have heretofore backed Republican candidates to first try to primary moderate Republicans, and if they fail to defeat the sellouts to conservatism in the primaries, to vote third party or stay home on election day. Republican candidates will once again triumph only when they return the party to conservative values.

Fiesta for Illegals

I do not torture language and thought by calling "illegal aliens" "undocumented workers". As often as not they end up on the dole. When they do hold jobs, they either work off the books or have engaged in identity theft to steal a Social Security number from a legal resident or citizen. Many DUI crashes including fatal ones involve a drunken illegal. We hear news reports where a murder suspect is described as a Nashvillian then you hear a Spanish surname and they say they are seeking the suspect in Mexico. He was never a Nashvillian but an illegal alien who came up here and killed someone. What part of "illegal" do our politicians pushing amnesty not understand? When the DC elite talk about comprehensive immigration reform, Americans should insist that start with as secure a Southern border as is feasible, no path to citizenship to those who broke into the country, and any path to legal residency for sneak-ins being stringent and costly and forcing them to the back of the line behind those who took the trouble to enter America the legal way.