March 18, 2010
They Fought for You now You Fight for Them by Russ Vaughn
.
They Fought for You now You Fight for Them
by Russ Vaughn
Recently Alan Fraser posted a blog article on AT that showed that the one group of professionals the American public has the most confidence in is the military. That comes as no surprise to those of us who have served within the military system because we learned very quickly that the military is one institution of American culture that operates by strict codes of behavior governing ethics and honor. Repeated failures to conduct oneself by the tenets of those codes can get one's butt kicked out of the military quickly and unceremoniously with a less than desirable discharge.
As a former non-commissioned officer, it is my observation that the system winnows out those with problems adhering to these comparatively strict codes of behavior and tends to reward and advance those who function best within them. Sure, there are self-serving bad eggs who manipulate the system for their personal benefit and aggrandizement, John Kerry and the late John Murtha come to mind, and more recently Eric Massa, but for the most part, successful military leaders tend to be men and women of honor who carry in their hearts a strong sense of service to the nation and a sworn oath to defend the Constitution.
Contrast that with what we have serving in our Congress and our current administration. The contrasts are stark and meaningful. For that reason, Americans should go to this website. There you will find a list of 22 combat veterans from across the country, who are seeking to dislodge many of the liberal incumbents who hold the American people in such contempt. I have immediate knowledge of only one person on the list, my former congressman, Steve Pearce, a strong conservative who gave up his seat to run for the senate and was defeated in the Democrat sweep of 2008. He is running again for his old congressional seat, currently occupied by a Democrat, and in the early polls, Steve is winning. He will get my support and my vote.
Another quality that all good military leaders and very few career politicians possess is a strong sense of loyalty to their troops/constituents. To use an example that most readers can identify with, think of LTC Hal Moore, (later LT GEN) the battalion commander played by Mel Gibson in the hit movie, We Were Soldiers Once, and Young. If you've seen this film, you know the quality of leadership I'm talking about. And the movie depicted him factually. I know because I served side by side with COL Moore for a very intense two days of combat as one of his radio operators during the little-known but important battle at Truong Luong in Vietnam in 1966.
Think about Mel Gibson's character and then think about how we can use that kind of bravery, integrity and loyalty in our political leaders. Go to this webpage and check out these combat veterans who want to continue their public service. If you are a constituent of any of them as I am, you should think very seriously about giving them that chance to serve once again with your vote and your financial support. And all of them can use your financial assistance regardless of where you reside. They've fought for you; now you fight for them.
Oh, and I saved the very best part for last; none of them are Democrats. Surprised?
.
Wild Thing's comment........
We are about to lose our Republic and men such as these are needed right now. God bless them all for stepping up to the bat.
"...Oh, and I saved the very best part for last; none of them are Democrats. Surprised?
No, not surprised in the least.
....Thank you Tom for sending this to me.
Tom
US Army Aviation
Vietnam 1966-68
US Army Special Forces
1970-72
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:47 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
The Martyr’s Prize ~ A Tale Of American Exceptionalism
The Martyr's Prize: A Tale of American Exceptionalism and Ruthlessness in the Age of Religiously Inspired Terrorism.
For Kyle Simms and Jason Lanford, the discovery of a roadside-bomb tutorial will prove a seminal event, changing every aspect of their lives from that moment forward. Posted to an extremist website, the meticulous schematics hint at a new era—one in which the daily death and destruction previously confined to third-world hellholes is to be brought to the American heartland.
A mere touch of the sticky silk is all it takes, and the two find themselves drawn into a world so foreign, both literally and figuratively, that they are forced to reassess everything they previously understood about the history of Western Civilization and the global war on terror.
The Martyr’s Prize tells a tale of American exceptionalism, paying homage to the heroism and professionalism of our Special Forces and Counterterrorism communities while delivering a profound message—the alarming non-fiction groundwork, already in place and presented in the actual words of our enemies, for the future subjugation of the West. This plan, to bring about the elimination of all belief systems beyond their own, is at once spellbinding and horrifying in the face of its likely success.
The author:
Brooks William Kelley is a counterterrorism and news junkie who lives in the American West with his wife and two dogs. He graduatedVillanova University’s School of Business, earning a BSBA with concentrations in Economics and Finance. He has enjoyed success in commercial banking and real estate development. Viewers should not be misled by this website. The author is not a veteran of any of the armed services, only a huge fan of what they do, and not a day goes by when he doesn't hold each and every one of our fighting men and women in his prayers.
From the author:
"We live in The New Orwellian World, where an ongoing public relations battle keeps us continually on our heels. We’re in retreat—at all times—because we spend an inordinate amount of energy narcissistically worrying about whether we’re “good” or not. During a period when we should be extolling the virtues of Western Civilization, attention is instead focused on convincing those who would gladly bring WMDs to downtown Manhattan that we ourselves are not racists. As a reader, you should know that books and movies are being spiked out of fear; fear that those in the media world might be placed in jeopardy—and for fear that you’ll learn the true motivations of our enemies. The Martyr’s Prize pulls no punches in placing blame squarely where it belongs."
Brooks William Kelley at Facebook
Wild Thing's comment......
Brooks is a friend on Facebook. He wrote to me about his book and I was impresssed with what he had done. I wanted to share about his book with all of you.
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:44 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 17, 2010
Pressure Your Representative to Stop Certain Disaster by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Pressure Your Representative to Stop Certain Disaster
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
We are at a critical time in American History, never before has there been such an overt concerted effort on the part of socialist/Marxist to impose their form of social and economic system on America.
Those who have been born into, been nurtured, supported and advanced courtesy of the “government” believe that it is the normal way things are. They grew up in a compartmentalized universe supported by taxpayers and since that is all they know, they believe that is the way it is and should be for everyone. Such Americans and illegal immigrants don’t have a clue as to who their benefactors really are; please allow an introduction: TAXPAYERS!
The Federal Government has enacted a number of social programs over the years that benefit those, who apart from a particular socio-economic program would be forced to rely on their own efforts and resourcefulness.
That fact has unfortunate consequences, government screws things up because in each instance where an economic program favors one over another, the opposite “number” is deprived. Establishing quotas is evil if not unconstitutional, so in “PC” talk, quotas are called, “goals.” Despite the trillions of dollars spent on such programs with quotas, progress has been pathetically slow and painfully ineffective.
Since Obama became President, despite all the whining about the “hand he was dealt,” he has spent or planned to spend more money than all other Administrations in history combined. As much as one may disdain GW Bush’s freewheeling spending, the canard that “it’s Bush’s fault” doesn’t “fly.” Obama should grow up and wise up.
Now he and many Democrats in Congress are working to impose a health care system on Americans that will increase spending that would extend indefinitely into the future and apart from reducing every American to slavery to foot the bill, they have only vague ideas and a lot of “snake oil sales pitches” as to where the money would come from. Most Americans support health care reform, but without destroying the best medical care system and economy in the world. Yes. It can be done but not the present proposal.
Democrats need to give it a break, start over; and next time make it a bi-partisan effort, not the political freeze-out of the past twelve months. Next time do it in an open, honest, and transparent bi-partisan debate as to how to proceed; pound out a proposal that would be fair and balanced.
It’s an idea whose time has come! Washington! Do it!
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment.......
" reducing every American to slavery to foot the bill"
So true, if this bill passes it will make us all slaves to the government.
American Dream it sure was nice to know you, if Obamacare passes.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:47 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 13, 2010
The Problem Is Brainlock, Not Gridlock
.
The problem is brainlock, not gridlock
Monty Pelerin
Complaints about Washington abound. Most consider President Obama the problem. Others consider lack of cooperation or gridlock the problem. There is a problem, even if there is disagreement as to what it might be.
For me, gridlock is not a problem. It is a blessing! I think there should be more of it, rather than less. Pour more sand into the engine of government. Encapsulate all government buildings with impenetrable epoxy glue. Stop everything completely. Hooray!
President Obama is a problem, but he is not the problem. He is a symptom of a much larger problem. To further understand, one need only look at recent Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates. How comfortable were you having to choose between McCain and Obama? Do the names Kerry, Bush, Gore, Clinton, Dole, Palin, Edwards, resonate with anyone as the best and brightest? Remember, these were the survivors from primaries that had even more motley characters.
A process that produces such inferior choices ensured that one day we would get an "oddball." In many peoples' minds that has now occurred. We elected a gifted orator whose only experience was a sophisticated form of Chicago-style street hustling. How is it possible that this man-child, with no experience, could attain the highest office in the land?
The problem is not Barack Obama. Nor is it the process that provides such flawed candidates. Both result from a democratic process driven by the people. Ultimately, the problem resides with the people.
An email from a friend contained the following explanation of the problem. An anonymous responder apparently produced this commentary in response to some Reuters article. I believe it describes the problem quite nicely:
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency.
It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president.
The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.
The republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."
Wild Thing's comment.......
This is excellent, and he brings up something that has been upsetting all of us as well. How America has been changing slowly that has lead to people not listening, not caring about Obama's associations, not wanting to be involved in learning more about candidates and the truth about them. Only wanting to follow the propaganda of the media and not thinking for themselves. Schools teaching socialism as the answer to all their problems and slander of our country in schools, and political correctness effecting every walk of life and not just within our country but in fighting the war. So many things contribute to the dumbing down and the fact that people can say things like how they think Mao is awesome and not even get much grief from it , like it is OK to think that way.
Obama is the end result of many things that have been going on over the years and he is not the only reason we all need to be VERY concerned with what is happening to our country.
......Thank you RAC for sending this to me.
RAC has a website that is awesome. 336th Assault Helicopter Company
13th Combat Aviation Battalion - 1st Aviation Brigade - Soc Trang, Republic of Vietnam
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:50 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
March 12, 2010
Obama’s Ideology and America’s Future by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Obama: "Fundamentally Transforming the United States of America"
....LOOK at his eyes too when he says this! ~ Wild Thing
.
OBAMA EXPLOSIVE: THE TRUTH ABOUT TRANSFORMING AMERICA
August 10, 2009 — "Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it." ~ Obama
This quote goes along with how Obama goes around the world apologizing and putting our country down.He truly believes we have denied freedom to other countries less fortunate. ~ Wild Thing
.
Obama’s Ideology and America’s Future
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Projections about the mid-term elections are rife with doom and gloom about Democrats’ chances in the 2010 elections; and we work and hope for that. And, whereas that may well be the case it is a long way before that fateful date in November. Warning shots fired across Obama’s bow have had little effect on the ideologically driven occupant of the White House while excuses for his failures abound.
What is clear, is that the media and many bloggers are focused on his so called “failures” rather than the more obvious fact of what Obama has been totally open about, “we will totally change America,” “we will totally change the economic system,” “we will change the world,” “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” “I just want to spread the wealth around,” “the time for discussion is over,” and etc.
There are those who like to advance the notion that Obama is attempting to impose a European style of socialism but few have taken the time to read his books wherein without using the word he or his ghost writer eloquently spells out his socialist/Marxist philosophy in the most unobtrusive terms and reveals his disdain for free market capitalism.
On this last he openly attacks big business while advancing big unions, calls for tight regulation of the financial industry while effectively defending the designers and operators of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapse. Obama’s teleprompter proclaims that the recession is over while additional thousands lose their jobs. He prints money with abandon, further devaluing the dollar and in the process prompting calls from diverse sources for a new currency basis of international exchange. Gold speculators have gone wild with the precious metal bringing all-time high prices which are projected to double in the foreseeable future. Alas, I forgot, all this was “GW” Bush’s fault. Sure; and the cow jumped over the moon.
Obama’s election reflected a mood manufactured by the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, i.e. ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, with incessant talk-down of the economy and War on Terror. Their efforts, funded by Soros, and enabled by Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and speculators both large and small in the stock and commodities markets, and housing industries, were successful in bringing about market collapse and created the present economic environment. Republicans also bear a significant part of the responsibility given their efforts to out-democrat the Democrats.
Obama and his ideologically driven administration are working to destroy the foundation of hope, freedom and free market capitalism upon which the U.S. became the world’s pre-eminent nation in virtually every facet of life. Fortunately, Americans are awakening in increasing numbers to the fact that Obama’s is not failure because he knows precisely what he is doing and is acting on it with vigor.
It would be true that if Obama’s intention is to revitalize the American economy he has failed. But, if his purpose was to “totally change the economy,” “totally change America,” devalue the dollar and so increase the debt load that the present and future generations are reduced to becoming virtual slaves of the government through onerous taxes or other means, then government whose job would be to “spread the wealth around” and to expand its role, then he is succeeding. Some call excessive spending “generational theft,” I call it “totally changing the economy” from free market capitalism to socialism. In doing so, he would succeed in totally changing America from an open free society to a police state that could well be totalitarian.
Passage of the present version of health care legislation would move that objective forward. And, that “forward,” dear reader, is the reason that they call themselves “progressives.”
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment.......
Obama is the enemy of our country. The Col. wrote a fantastic article and is so right in that there were so many warning signs. We all tried hard to get the word out, to let others know the things they were not listening to. It sickens me that half of our country voted for this evil, traitor to our land.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 07, 2010
Biden's lost cause ..... By Caroline B. Glick
An armed Israeli settler sits next to a poster depicting President Barack Obama wearing a traditional Arab headdress, as he waits for transport near the settlement of Ma'on, south of the West Bank city of Hebron - June 2009
.
Israeli women gesture to anti-Barack Obama posters calling him an anti-Semitic Jew hater.
.
Biden's lost cause
By Caroline B. Glick
US Vice President Joseph Biden's job is about to stop being easy. Indeed, it is about to become impossible.
On Monday Biden will arrive in Israel for a three-day visit. Biden, who will meet with Israel's leaders, will be the most senior official in the cavalcade of senior US officials that have descended on Israel in recent weeks. Biden will replace Senator John Kerry, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who was here this week. Kerry himself replaced Adm. Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was here two weeks ago.
In his press conference in Jerusalem on Monday, Kerry explained the purpose of these visits. As he put it, "…I am here and other people were here and Vice President Biden is coming shortly… to make sure we are all on the same page and that we are all clear about [Iran]."
Although Biden is just the latest senior US official to visit Israel to try to coerce the government not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, his visit is novel in one respect. In addition to his meetings with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the rest of Israel's senior officials, Biden intends to make a case for the Obama administration's policies towards Iran, the Palestinians and Israel directly to the Israeli public. During his trip he will give what is being billed as a major policy speech at Tel Aviv University.
In light of the gaping disparity between the Obama administration's policies and those of the Israeli government, the apparent goal of Biden's address is to shore up the position of the Israeli Left as an alternative to Netanyahu. Apparently, the picture emerging from all of the senior US officials' meetings with Netanyahu is that Israel's leader still feels comfortable defying them. Presumably, they now believe that the only way to force him to toe their line is by making him believe that the price of defiance will be his premiership.
This of course is a difficult task. The Left after all was roundly defeated in last year's elections. Making it a credible alternative is no mean task.
The Israeli Left for its part is doing its best to tie its own fortunes to the administration. Opposition leader Tzipi Livni placed herself squarely in the Obama camp this week during her confrontation with Netanyahu at the Knesset. Belittling the results of last month's Gallup poll which showed that Israel enjoys the support of two-thirds of Americans, (and 80 percent of Republicans vs. 53 percent of Democrats), Livni blamed the premier for Israel's international standing. By not bowing to Obama's demands and ending all Jewish construction in Jerusalem and accepting the radical peace proposals she and former prime minister Ehud Olmert made to the Palestinians during their tenure in office, Livni claimed that Netanyahu is ruining Israel's diplomatic position in the US and throughout the world.
There is nothing new or surprising about Livni's use of the Obama administration's animosity towards the government as a means of positioning herself as an alternative to the government. And on the surface it makes sense for her to use it. After all, it was by building a partnership with the Clinton administration against Netanyahu the last time he was in power that the Israeli Left was able to bring down his government and win the 1999 elections.
The Left's hope of forming a coalition with Obama against Netanyahu was given its most explicit expression last July in an op-ed by Ha'aretz's editor-at-large Aluf Benn in the New York Times. After expressing his support for Obama's policies, Benn bemoaned the fact that due to Obama's low approval ratings among Israeli Jews, (at the time they stood at 6 percent and later plunged to 4 percent), it would be hard for him to convince the Israeli public to abandon its support for Netanyahu in favor of Obama's — that is the Israeli Left's — policies. To improve this dismal state of affairs, Benn suggested that Obama simply needs to make his case to the Israeli public, which "will surely listen," to him.
As far as Benn — and his fellow leftists were concerned — Obama's credibility problems redounded not to his policies, which the Left supports. Instead they owed to his failure to dazzle the Israeli people with the same rhetorical magic he used on the Arabs and the Europeans. It was Obama's tone, not his programs that needed to be improved.
In arguing thus, Benn, like Livni and their colleagues on the Left are acting on their memories of their glory days with the Clinton administration. As president, Bill Clinton was able to simultaneously embrace Yassir Arafat, and take down Netanyahu without anyone ever questioning his undying love for Israel and the Jews. And because of this, he became the hero of the Israeli Left which he swept back into power in 1999.
As the Left sees it, Clinton retained his reputation as the greatest friend Israel ever had in the White House, despite the fact that his policies were the most hostile policies the US had ever adopted towards Israel, because he knew how to charm the Israeli electorate. His frequent visits to Israel and his saccharine, lip-biting declarations of love for Rabin and Israel were all it took in their view to convince the public to reject the Right. If Obama would just repeat Clinton's practices, he too could bring down Netanyahu and convince the Israeli public to trust him.
When Benn's article was published his recommendation was shrugged off by the administration. So too, the White House rejected repeated requests from the local media for interviews with the President. Now however, with Obama's approval rates slipping and his Iran policy in tatters, the White House apparently decided that it needs to embark on a charm offensive in Israel to make Netanyahu more vulnerable to coercion.
Biden was selected as the man for the job because he is widely perceived as the most pro-Israel senior member of the administration. The fact that before becoming Vice President Biden had one of the most pro-Iran voting records in the Senate has done nothing to mitigate this perception. Indeed, despite the fact that Biden voted repeatedly against sanctions on Iran, claimed that Iran's quest for nuclear bombs was understandable and called for the US to sign a non-aggression pact with the mullocracy while threatening to move for George W. Bush's impeachment if he were to order a military strike against Iran's nuclear weapons programs, Biden continues to be viewed as a solid supporter of Israel.
And indeed, in line with this perception, he can be expected to declare his undying love for the Jewish state several times during his speech. Yet still, and sadly for the Israeli Left and for the Obama administration, his charm offensive will fail to get the girl. The most his visit is likely to yield is a momentary rise in support among Israelis that will quickly recede. And there are four reasons this is the case.
First, Obama himself is far weaker than Clinton was. His obsequious attempts to curry favor with the Arabs and Iran have been even more disturbing to Israelis than his refusal to visit the country. Moreover, unlike Clinton, who was popular with Israelis even before he was elected, Obama has never been popular in Israel. Part of this can perhaps be chalked up to timing. Clinton of course succeeded George H.W. Bush who was deeply unpopular in Israel. Obama replaced his son — who was regarded as a great friend of Israel.
Given Obama's weakness, it is hard to see how he can convince the Israeli public that he will be capable of protecting the country from a nuclear-armed Iran or that he can force the Palestinians and the Syrians to end their support of terror in the event of an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria or the Golan Heights.
Second, the Netanyahu Obama faces is not the Netanyahu Clinton faced in the 1990s. Today the premier leads a far broader coalition than he did in his previous government. It is also more stable. Labor Party chief Defense Minister Ehud Barak knows he cannot unseat Netanyahu. Indeed, he knows he can't even trust his party to continue supporting him if he leaves Netanyahu's government. As for opposition leader Tzipi Livni, the latest polls show her trailing far behind Netanyahu as the people's choice for prime minister. Her party's popularity rates are decreasing, Likud's are growing.
Third, there is the fact that today the Left does not control public opinion to the degree it did the last time Netanyahu was in power. During his first government, due in large part to the media's delegitimization of the Right in the wake of Rabin's assassination, the media was able to market the PLO as a credible peace partner for Israel. Yassir Arafat himself was portrayed by a popular television show as a sweet, peace loving sock puppet who only wanted to make peace with the craven, war mongering Netanyahu. Consequently it became socially unacceptable in polite circles for Israelis to admit that Arafat and the Palestinians were less than devoted to the notion of peaceful coexistence with Israel or that Netanyahu was right not to give up the store. So too, it was socially unacceptable in certain quarters to criticize Clinton who presented himself as Rabin's greatest friend. Today, people are far less embarrassed to make these claims.
This is the case of course, for the fourth reason that Biden will fail in his mission. In the 11 years since Netanyahu was forced from office, the Left's political platform has been discredited by events. Since 1999 the Palestinians — as well as the Lebanese — have demonstrated that the Left's appeasement policies are disastrous. The 1,500 Israelis who have been killed since then by the Palestinians and Hizbullah, the transformation of post-Israeli withdrawal southern Lebanon and Gaza into jihadist enclaves, the rise of Iran, and Fatah's open rejection of Israel's right to exist have all made the Left's policies unacceptable to a wide majority of Israelis.
The public's rejection of the Left's policies is so overwhelming that it has even rejected the Left's current central claim — namely that Israel will lose its Jewish majority if it abstains from surrendering Judea and Samaria. By a 53-28 percent margin, a Ha'aretz poll last month showed that Israelis do not believe that Israel's continued presence in the areas will lead to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.
What all of this shows of course is that it will take much more than a change in tone for the Obama administration to win over the Israeli public. Indeed, Obama's open hostility towards Netanyahu has probably been a significant factor in shoring up the public's approval of his performance in office.
The Israeli public is not interested in a change of tone — from Obama or from the Israeli Left. It is interested in a change of policy. Until it gets it, the public will in all likelihood remain loyal to Netanyahu.
.
Wild Thing's comment.......
Neither Biden nor Obama are friends of Israel. Obama has treated Israel in the worst way since he was elected. He favors the terrorists, and he also favors Iran over Israel. This will be a disaster for Israel for sure. I wish they would just tell Biden to, well you know, go to hell and Obama too.
The images I have at the top of this post are from last June (2009) and Israel has not changed their mind about Obama, if nothing else it feels even stronger about him. As they should he has been a traitor to Israel.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:40 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
March 02, 2010
The Fall of Barack Obama by Paul R. Hollrah
The Fall of Barack Obama
by Paul R. Hollrah
(Paul Hollrah is a senior fellow at Lincoln Heritage Institute)
In a January 20, 2010 editorial, the Editor in Chief of U.S. News & World Report, Mortimer Zuckerman, had this to say: "Obama's ability to connect with voters is what launched him. But what has surprised me is how he has failed to connect with the voters since he's been in office. He's had so much overexposure. You have to be selective. He was doing five Sunday shows. How many press conferences? And now people stop listening to him. He's lost his audience. He has not rallied public opinion. He has plunged in the polls more than any other public figure since we've been using polls. He's done everything wrong. Well, not everything, but the major things. I don't consider it a triumph. I consider it a disaster." And that's what his friends are saying about him.
As the naive president occupied the White House on January 20, 2009 it was predictable that his presidency would last a year, at most, because the things he promised and the things he stood for were so uniquely un-American. Looking back over his year in office, any reasonably precocious fourth grader could make a cogent argument in opposition to nearly everything he's done. In fact, his policies have been so extreme and so far outside the mainstream that he was destined to achieve the most spectacular fall from grace of any American president in history. It was easy to see him serving out the final three years of his term as a virtual exile in the White House. afraid to venture out among any but the most rabid partisans.
Seeing his most ambitious initiative, healthcare reform, die in the flames of the Massachusetts Massacre, Obama made a hastily-planned "sortie" to Ohio for yet another Bush-bashing, self-aggrandizing stump speech on job creation. It was vintage Obama. full of left wing hyperbole and planted questions from the Kool-Ade drinkers in the hand-picked audience. but there were just two things wrong with it: 1) Almost everything he said was either wrong or an outright lie, and 2) He is so overexposed that no one in the television audience really wanted to see him.
Obama Kool-Ade drinkers in the media, and elsewhere, like to describe Obama as a "very bright man, a true intellectual (compared to George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, of course)." If that is the case, why has he demonstrated such a great inability to learn from his failures? The strident words and the in-your-face attitude of his Ohio speech were proof that he has totally misread the meaning of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts . Whatever hopes and dreams he had for his time in the White House, whatever grandiose plans he had for transforming the United States from a constitutional republic with a free market economy into a socialist dictatorship with a centrally planned economy, were all lost on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 one day short of a full year in office. Yet, he appears to have learned nothing from the experience.
Comedian George Gobel once asked, rhetorically, "Did you ever get the feeling that the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?" In the context of 21st century American politics, and assuming that he has any capacity at all for honest self-examination, Obama must be feeling today very much like a pair of brown shoes at a black tie soiree.
When a politically naïve and totally inexperienced young black man, with a glib tongue and an exceptional ability to read words convincingly from a teleprompter, announced that he was ready to serve as President of the United States, liberals and Democrats saw it as a perfect opportunity to expiate whatever white guilt they may have felt. which was apparently considerable among those on the political left. It didn't seem to bother them that, as one pundit has remarked, "every time he walks into a room he is the least experienced and the least qualified man in the room."
Nevertheless, his friends in the worldwide socialist movement and the international banking community figured out how to smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal campaign funds into the country, the black community rallied to his banner, and American liberals and the mainstream media jumped on board the bandwagon. Together, they made it happen for him. But now, just one year later, Obama appears
destined to become the unhappiest man in American politics. unhappier than even former Senator John Edwards, who runs a close second, and former president Bill Clinton.
Clinton will be the third unhappiest man because, after capturing the big prize, he frittered away whatever chance he had of ever being compared favorably with Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of the 20th century's greatest Democratic presidents. Not only was he a politician of unusual skill and insight, he was widely known as a policy "wonk" among policy wonks and he had the drive and the personal charm to be loved and respected around the world. Unfortunately, he was never able to put the public trust at the top of his priority list. Instead, he surrounded himself with a large cadre of trusted enablers who allowed him to conduct himself as if he were, not the President of the United States , but the class stud on an extended spring break in Acapulco .
Now that he's been out of office for nearly a decade and he's married to the current Secretary of State, he spends his days trying to find something useful to do without calling an undue amount of attention to himself. Having lied so shamelessly to the American people, having perjured himself in a court of law, having turned the Oval Office into a sexual playpen, and having suffered the humiliation of impeachment, he's smart enough to know that he has little reputation left to protect. So in order to protect whatever legacy remains, he walks a tightrope every day. and he has many more years to walk it without falling off.
Former Senator John Edwards is destined to be the second unhappiest man in American politics because he will be known forever as the most thoroughly despised scumbag in the political arena. A trial lawyer, Edwards amassed a $60 million fortune by winning large jury awards against doctors, hospitals, and corporations. His specialty was cases in which children were born with cerebral palsy, which he blamed on doctors who had waited too long to perform C-sections, a claim that doctors and medical researchers have described as "junk science."
Then, like Obama, he decided that his experience in the courtroom, his glib tongue, and his one term in the U.S. Senate qualified him to be President of the United States . He entered the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, raising an incredible amount of money for a newcomer to elective office. most of it raised illegally by "bundlers" in plaintiffs' law firms across the country. He was unsuccessful in his quest for the Democratic nomination but was selected by his Senate colleague, John Kerry, as his running mate.
Two years later, in 2006, Edwards met a young blonde film producer, Rielle Hunter, and embarked on a love affair with her. On February 27, 2008, Hunter gave birth to a daughter, for whom Edwards has consistently denied paternity. until now.
Taking into account that all of this was happening while his wife was waging a long battle with breast cancer, Edwards now has the well-deserved reputation of being the sleaziest of the sleazy. He is so universally despised that, if he is on the lookout for a friend, he might as well resign himself to getting a dog. or moving in with O.J. Simpson. Terry Moran, host of ABC's This Week, put it all in perspective. He said, "What's interesting to note is that Edwards' latest admission (that he is the father of Hunter's child) came while he was in Haiti . As if the people of that sad place didn't have enough problems."
Clearly, the one thing Clinton and Edwards share that places them near the top of our list is their sexual peccadilloes, a shortcoming that Obama does not appear to share with them. at least from what we know so far. What we do know about Obama is that, since his teen years, he has been mentored by, gravitated toward, and surrounded by the most dangerous sort of America-hating socialists, communists, and Marxists. from Frank Marshall Davis and Saul Alinsky to Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, George Soros, and countless radical left college professors.
What destines Obama for the top spot on the list of unhappiest American politicians. aside from the failure of his economic recovery program, the failure of his radical cap-and-trade proposal, his failed attempt to give labor bosses unprecedented power to intimidate blue collar workers, and his ill-fated attempt at healthcare reform. is the fact that he carries on his shoulders the hopes and aspirations of every black child in America . It is unfortunate that, because he is so far outside the American mainstream, and because ! he carries so much hatred in his heart for the country he seeks to lead, his failures will be viewed by generations of black children, not as the failure of a black socialist attempting to bring down a constitutional republic, but simply as the failure of a black man.
A man can fail in the eyes of his countrymen and still be dearly loved by those closest to him. But in Obama's case, his wife and his two daughters will be there to suffer every agonizing step of his fall along with him. And for the rest of his life, each time he looks into their eyes, and into the eyes of black people everywhere, he will see the crushing disappointment that his ill-fated attempt at national transformation has caused them.
He will be the country's unhappiest man, living the rest of his life knowing that his daughters know that the whole world sees him as a failure. He is simply the wrong man, in the wrong job, in the wrong country, at the wrong time in history.
Wild Thing's comment.......
This is my favorite line in the story:
“every time he walks into a room he is the least experienced and the least qualified man in the room.”
It would be funny if it wasn’t so true. And to think that he has access to state secrets and nuclear weapons.
Excellent article.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:47 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
February 24, 2010
Cram it!? And Patriotic American’s will Ram it! by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Cram it!? And Patriotic American’s will Ram it!
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
If Democrats thought the election of Senator Brown of Massachusetts was a wakeup call, they “ain’t” seen nothing if they cram their disastrous version health care down the throats of Americans. Their most recent ploy, in the words of Obama’s staff, is a “media event” to be conducted from the Blair House. Obama plans to hold school on people decades older and far wiser than he and that suggests that he and the Democrats have totally lost touch with the American people, that is, if they ever were in touch.
The networks cover for Obama daily while even the closest thing to truth, FOX News makes excuses, blames Obama’s staff as being inept, suggests that he suffers from bad advice or that it is his lack of experience that fails him. Message for FOX News: Socialism is what the left wants, Obama carries its banner and the left is doing its best to force the conservative majority to swallow its swill. For the record, this is not about whether or not there is a need for health care reform, that fact is self-evident. The fight is about the structure, content, system, and costs of the bill; and the manner that Democrats and Obama are attempting to cram it through and that would be disastrous for America!
The sooner Democrats are defeated the sooner the country will begin to recover. However, Obama’s purpose is not recovery, it is to crush, to totally change America. For those who don’t get it, he has repeatedly said so; and from all indications “total change” is to bring America to her knees. The assertion that his actions saved the country from the “brink” is about as far fetched as donkeys flying.
Whereas there is merit in the call for change, Americans do not want the kind or direction of change that Obama and his group of socialist/Marxist are attempting to take the country. These people are serious and conservative Americans had better stop them if they value freedom.
Most agree that there is a need for health care reform: Aspirin that costs $10, regular hospital rooms that cost $1500/night, toe nail surgery that costs $500.00, a three minute doctor’s room visit that costs $100.00 and etc. are beyond the pale, such charges are both ridiculous and obscene. It is argued that such exorbitant charges are required to defray the expense of those who have no insurance but who use emergency rooms to receive care for colds, hangnails, or black eyes as well as other more legitimate reasons. Many, if not most who receive “free” care are illegal immigrants. It is notable that the proposed legislation provides that no illegal immigrants would be entitled to such care. But watch the end run. The Obama axis would make them legal or grant them broad waivers. In short, they would engage in legislative sleight of hand, political hocus pocus and give an offensive jesture to the majority. That would be nothing new from them on that score.
If there are any sane people remaining in Washington, please pay attention: the solution is not to sprinkle fairy dust on illegal immigrants and make them American citizens to garner future votes, rather, the solution is to encourage them to voluntarily return to their homelands; and absent that to use a “stick” to accomplish the goal. For the less astute among the political elite class, that’s called “carrot and stick.” Hoover, Truman and Eisenhower sent them home. Where’s the spine in the current crop of politicians? But ah! ha! It’s not about spine, they care not about America but about political power through votes; and granting amnesty is their game to build those votes!
At the moment, Democrats threaten to pass the bill with 51 votes in the Senate, the “nuclear option,” as much as to frighten Republicans into joining them. Advice for Republicans: Call their hand and there will be a tsunami that will wipe them out! And it may come sooner than later.
Voters must throw OUT Representatives or Senators who make a legislative effort that would grant any form of amnesty to illegal immigrants, or who vote to pass the current version of Democrats’ health care reform! Keep letting them know!
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment.......
I am so glad Col. Pappas writes these articles. Excellent!!!
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 02:50 AM | Comments (6)
February 19, 2010
Obama's Owned — You Can Bank on It by Ann Coulter
Obama's Owned — You Can Bank on It
by Ann Coulter
The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are bristling with the news that Republicans have decided now is the time to suck up to Wall Street. As the saying goes, there is no truer friend than a Wall Street arbitrageur -- they are the salt-of-the-earth, the most loyal men who ever drew a breath!
What are Republicans thinking? While not every money-manipulator on Wall Street deserves to be treated like a heroin dealer, lots do. Could the Republicans be a little more discriminating in picking up the Democrats' old friends?
The Democrats are acting as if they want to punish everyone in the financial services industry, including the innocent, while the Republicans seem to want to protect everyone on Wall Street, including the guilty.
How about just punishing the guilty? The Democrats can't do that because the list of Wall Street's biggest offenders may turn out to be eerily similar to the list of Obama's biggest campaign contributors.
Employees from Goldman Sachs gave more to the Obama campaign than any other organization except the University of California -- with Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase quickly following in sixth and seventh place.
Whatever Obama has in mind for punishing the financial industry, I promise you, he won't punish his friends. After JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon took a $17 million bonus this week, and Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein got a $9 million bonus, Obama said he didn't begrudge them their bonuses, saying, "I know both those guys."
Obama seems to be hoping that his vague bluster about "obscene profits" will lure Republicans into embracing Wall Street welfare recipients -- thereby losing Americans forever.
Never bet against Republicans being outwitted.
Risk-taking and speculation are good. But the Democrats' crony capitalism is the worst of both worlds: risk-taking without any real risk for the risk-takers. It's like gambling with your rich daddy's money, except we're the rich daddy.
Obama, like the rest of his party, is an ideologue who doesn't understand or particularly like the free market. He fundamentally believes in the efficacy of the welfare state, whether the beneficiary is a layabout single mother or a rich Wall Street banker.
As Peter Schweizer describes in his magnificent book "Architects of Ruin," the Democrats have been bailing out investment houses from their bad bets since the Clinton administration. The bankers got all the profits when their risky bonds were paying -- and then gave massive donations to their Democratic benefactors. But once the bets went bad, it was the taxpayers' problem.
Heavily leveraged securities packages put together by Goldman Sachs and others were the HIV virus that killed the American economy. And the reason investment firms piled leverage on leverage on leverage was that they knew the government would bail them out if their house of cards collapsed.
On one hand, Goldman put together toxic securities packages for their clients, but on the other hand, Goldman knew the mortgage securities being sold on the market were crap, so they also took out lots of insurance with AIG on crappy products being traded on the market.
It would be as if, anticipating a major earthquake, Goldman bought massive insurance policies on every house on the San Andreas fault line.
There's nothing wrong with taking risks and making bets, provided that if you bet wrong or if you bankrupt your betting partner with wild gambles: You lose.
The problem was that Goldman and AIG, among many others, knew they wouldn't lose. Twenty years of Democratic bailouts have led them to understand that when their bets go bad, the taxpayer will save them.
Which is exactly what happened.
When the earthquake hit toxic securities, the insurer, AIG, couldn't pay up. Normally, that would result in the insurer going bankrupt, an orderly proceeding in bankruptcy court to distribute AIG's assets, and Goldman recovering only a portion of the insurance payout on the crappy products.
But instead of AIG going bankrupt and Goldman taking a hit, the U.S. taxpayer made good on AIG's securities insurance. In a deal arranged by former Goldman CEO and current Obama BFF, Hank Paulson, Goldman ended up being paid -- by you -- an astonishing 100 cents on the dollar.
So Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's boast that his firm didn't want TARP money and has paid it all back is completely irrelevant. Goldman took billions of dollars -- that's millions with a "b" -- of the AIG bailout money. How about paying that back?
It took The New York Times a year and a half to figure out Goldman's jackpot winnings from the AIG bailout -- $12.9 billion, according to the Times -- so the first thing Republicans ought to do is hold hearings to determine who benefited from the Democrats' crony capitalism, and not take their bluster as fact.
The next step should be to get all the bailout money back.
When the government steps in to save the very financial institutions that poisoned the nation's financial system with contaminated securities and derivatives -- all while the bankers get to keep the fees and bonuses on their bad bets -- we are not talking about a free market.
We're talking about regular Americans being forced to foot the bill for the gambling habits of left-wing multimillionaires by buying the malefactors more chips every time they lose.
Republicans should defend any investment houses that never benefited from a government bailout. But anyone who took huge gambles, lost and got bailed out with taxpayer money should be tortured and then shot, miraculously brought back to life, tortured some more, then shot a few more times.
.
Wild Thing's comment........
Thank goodness for Ann.
I like that last part so much, I will quote it again:
Anyone who took huge gambles, lost and got bailed out with taxpayer money should be tortured and then shot, miraculously brought back to life, tortured some more, then shot a few more times.
Few things will piss off the Kool-aid drinking Progressives more ... Obama is OWNED by Goldman Sachs and Ann Colter’s calling him out on it!
Here are two video's you might like to see. Ann was on the "1/2 Hour News Hour" with Rush twice.
.
....Thank you Jack for sending this to me.
United States Army
1965-1971
Army Combat Engineers
Quang Tri & Chu Lai '68 -'69
67-69
Jack's blog is Conservative Insurgent
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:45 AM | Comments (4)
February 14, 2010
The best way to “Spread the Wealth Around” by by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
The best way to “Spread the Wealth Around”
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
In the interest of getting directly to the point, the solution to the economic mess Bush and Obama have created is to allow free market capitalism to work, (as distinct from Robber Barron CEOs and/or Wall Street neither of which are capitalism but are legalized robbery and gambling and need to be reined in). What follows are seven short, easy lessons.
Lesson # 1: Giving a three thousand dollar tax credit to businesses for each employee hired is a non-starter in an economy where there is no need for additional employees. That may be okay in government but is not okay where one has to make a profit to remain in business.
Lesson # 2: Forcing unions down the throats of businesses raises costs because of union scale wages increase costs to consumers, decreases profit margins, decreases business activity resulting in lost jobs which increases unemployment taxes and further exacerbates economic problems.
Lesson # 3: Increasing taxes increases funds to “spread the wealth around” but decreases funds available to income generators and associated business activity which decreases government revenues, and thus decreases funds available to “spread the wealth around.”
Lesson # 4: Recalling back to the second or third grade, spending money that does not exist, then printing it to bring it into existence is a form of theft.
Lesson # 5: Lesson 4 above, devalues all dollars and decreases the ability of all dollar holders to purchase goods and services because #4 inflates the costs of all goods and services in relation to the dollar. Thus it decreases business activity and revenues for the government to “spread the wealth around.”
Lesson # 6: Increasing the cost of fuel via front and back door taxes increases the cost to move products and directly raises the cost of the product therefore decreasing sales and profit which decreases instant and overall business activity, leads to lost jobs and associated revenue to the government for “spreading the wealth around.”
Lesson # 7: Lowering taxes and cutting unnecessary programs makes more funds available for consumption and expansion, increases business activity and associated revenues and thus increases overall volume and amount of revenue to the government; thus more money is available for stimulus spending, shovel ready projects, and what the hell, “spreading the wealth around.”
This is just a start but, get the picture?
Recommendation: Hire some people who have hands on business experience!
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment........
Hello Obama are you listening???? I guess he is too busy with his self love and his hate for the American Dream to listen to anyone that might have some good ideas.
GRRRRRRRRRR Obama is going to end up taking every sent we make.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:47 AM | Comments (3)
February 13, 2010
Wise up and Quit Whining! by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Wise up and Quit Whining!
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
In classic “what goes around comes around” irony a USA Today OPED titled, “We need no Lectures,” by John Brennan, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism -- responded to critics of the Obama administration's counterterrorism policies. He wrote, “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.” They’ve been in office a year, do they actually believe Americans’ memories are so short that they do not remember the left’s treatment of the last administration?
It was for Brennan’s political support of Obama after leaving the CIA that he was considered for its top job. He withdrew from consideration after his involvement in the Bush Administration’s interrogation techniques came to light. Brennan is now one of Obama’s “Czars,” serving as Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
In the article he wrote: “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda. Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill. They will, however, be dismantled and destroyed, by our military, our intelligence services and our law enforcement community. And the notion that America's counterterrorism professionals and America's system of justice are unable to handle these murderous miscreants is absurd.” Brennan is right, but in another vein it is more absurd to spend a billion dollars to try “KSM” in New York! Sane Americans do not want their taxes spent that way given that there are more reasonable alternatives.
It is worth pointing out that despite Brennan’s protestation, for nearly eight years the political left with which Mr. Brennan has now solidified his bonds was treasonous in its attacks on the former Administration. Among those attackers were his present boss, recently deceased Rep. Murtha, and Senate Majority leader Reid, a host of Democrat politicians, not to mention the phalanx of media leftists.
Suddenly, it’s not as much “fun” with the shoe on the other foot. It is also worth noting that Obama’s “Overseas Contingency Operation” is gradually re-emerging as the war on terrorism. Take for example Brennan’s further reaction to administration handling of the “crotch” bomber: “This administration's efforts have disrupted dozens of terrorist plots against the homeland and been responsible for killing and capturing hundreds of hard-core terrorists, including senior leaders in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond — far more than in 2008. We need no lectures about the fact that this nation is at war.”
Message for the White House: Before engaging in removing the “beam” from critics’ eyes, take a look through the “retrospectrascope” to find a “moat” full of leftist bashing in thine own. Alas, when they were doing it was obviously not: “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.” Bovie Scatology!
Semper Fidelis
.
Wild Thing's comment.........
Great write up. Thank you Col. Pappas.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 12:45 AM | Comments (2)
February 11, 2010
Congressman Carney And Obama's Health Care Reform
Christopher Carney ( Democrat ) US Representative for the 10th Congressional District of Pennsylvania
Congressman Carney:
Just received your answer to one of my letters(E-mails). Thank your for the reply it is always good to know that I am not writing to a ghost.
I have been to the Town Hall meetings and was not allowed in because the lines were too long and so many SEIU members were taking up space for real people with real concerns.
I know you voted for this behemoth, progressive, anti-American Health Care Reform bill. No where in the Constitution is Health Care considered a 'God Given Right'. You do agree all of our rights come from God and not the government ? But since you voted as Nancy Pelosi wanted you to vote you don't believe that.
You talk about the exploding cost of covering Medical Bills for the uninsured and those who have pre-existing condition and mention a figure of $4.3 Trillion dollars. You failed to mention the unfunded Liabilities, Medicare, the American people are on the hook for to the tune of $ 74.7 Trillion dollars and that number keeps on growing, as do they all, along with Prescription Drug Liability of $18.7 Trillion dollars plus Social Security 14.7 Trillion for a grand total of $ 107 Trillion dollars. Putting every single citizen in debt for a whopping $340,000.00 each. This unfunded Liability has to be paid. Do you know, Congressman, where this money is going to come from, Your Great grand Children and mine. And if this government keeps aggravating the Chinese and the Chinese call in their marker (over a Trillion dollars), that we owe them , Where is that money going to come from Congressman ? You just voted to raise the debt limit to $1.9 Trillion dollars. Debt is debt Congressman, somebody has to pay for this...Who will that be Hmmmmm?
And whatever happened to the transparency on Health Care that was promised. It was promised to be on CSPAN not behind a LOCKED DOOR where nobody could even get a look at what was being 'cooked up'.
Abortion and Illegal Aliens will get this Health Insurance according to the House Bill you voted for, then there was no reason for Joe Wilson to be censored in the House Chamber, he was telling the truth.
How is this reform of any value to a Taxpayer. When the Government comes between Me and my Doctor and tells my doctor what he can do and what he can not do for me. Since when is the government in the business of studying medicine and knowing what each individual needs, ergo, this is really, rationing. This is what your Health Care system is all about. Special Needs children and Seniors are on the short end of the stick on your Health Care Bill, Congressman. Since when do the American People leave one person behind because of a disability due to either age or a birth defect.
No, Congressman, this is the worst government intrusion into the private lives of Americans ever. At the Chosin reservoir in Korea the Marines even brought out their dead at 30 degrees below zero. We as Americans have a duty to take care of our own not punish them for being sick, not punish them because they don't want your 'Progressive, egalitarian nonsense Health Care Reform'. Blue dog ???
Since you have been in the Navy, and now the House of Representatives, you swore an oath to the United States Constitution, 'to protect and defend it against all enemies foreign and domestic'. As smart as you are, you of all people should know we are not a democracy but a representative Republic.
After the Constitution was ratified, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman on the street, " Sir, what have you given us"?. Franklin, replied, " A Republic, Madam, if you can handle it". I will keep the Republic, Congressman, oh one more thing, remember Massachusetts.
God Bless, America
And Semper Fi, Congressman.
Mark T. Gray
.
Wiild Thing's comment......
Thank you Mark for this excellent letter to Congressman Carney. So often when we send an email, any of us, they seldom respond so that is a ray of hope that he will listen.
Below is some information I thought would be interesting with this:
Other information about Carney:
McCain called Carney, asked him to switch parties
McCain called Mr. Carney at his home in Dimock Twp. to ask whether he would consider joining the GOP, a Carney spokesman confirmed. The effort to persuade Mr. Carney was first reported by Politico, which quoted a GOP aide who said the party received "a nibble" from Mr. Carney.
But Mr. Carney's spokesman, press secretary Joshua Drobnyk, rebutted that part of the report. Mr. Carney in a statement late Wednesday said he was "flattered" but not interested.
"I appreciate the Republican Party's outreach, but I have no plans to change parties," Mr. Carney said.
Mr. McCain is not the only high-profile Republican to court Mr. Carney. He has also received phone calls from U.S. Rep. Peter Sessions, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, a "close friend" who represents a large district in Southcentral Pennsylvania, Mr. Drobnyk said.
Twenty-Eight Blue Dogs Vote For Pelosi's $1.3 Trillion Health Bill
He was also one of the 28 Blue Dogs voting in favor of $1.3 TRILLION Pelosicare (who apparently fear the wrath of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi more than the will of their own constituents).
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 03:47 AM | Comments (2)
February 10, 2010
"I Was a Teenage President" by Greg Lewis
I Was a Teenage President
by Greg Lewis
The Obama administration resembles nothing so much as a big house in the suburbs where the parents are away for the weekend. In the absence of any responsible person to take charge, the Teenager-in-Chief is letting the rest of the adolescents run wild.
They've maxed out their parents' credit cards and have begun working on their overdraft lines in earnest, as the T-I-C's budget, which proposes a $1.5-trillion deficit for the coming fiscal year, attests. With "what, me worry?" aplomb worthy of a Mad Magazine cover boy, Barack Obama delivered to Congress a bloated document which proposes that more than 40 percent of federal spending be done with borrowed money, and some of the rest courtesy of renewed taxes on America's "rich" -- those people and small businesses making unholy annual incomes greater than $250,000.
And although there are several carloads of bullies pulling into the driveway who are about to enter the premises, the partiers inside remain oblivious to potential threats. They're wrecking the furniture, eating their parents out of house and home, and in general carrying on like there's no tomorrow.
Fraternity Boy General Eric Holder insists, with teen-worthy logic, that trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in U.S. federal court will demonstrate to the world how wonderfully the impartial American justice system works -- this after Holder himself arguably contaminated the pool of potential jurors by declaring that after the trial, the "suspect" would be executed. This claim -- that KSM is virtually guaranteed to be convicted in an American court of law, and even if he isn't we'll detain him indefinitely anyway -- was repeated by the Teenager-in-Chief himself and his Smokesperson, Robert Gates.
In the meantime, the head of Gangland Security, Janet Napolitano, was still tired from a pre-Spring Break European jaunt and decided not to appear before a House Committee hearing on the Christmas Day Skivvies-Bomber plot, upsetting even House Democrats. These are the same Democrats who are generally on board with the administration's confiscate-and-squander policies, recently ratcheted up from previous tax-and-spend levels.
Under new laws governing parents' rights with regard to their adolescent children, the Teenager-in-Chief's academic records can't be sent home without the student's consent. That has led to a great deal of speculation about whether the T-I-C really did complete the requirements for his college degrees, and if he did so, whether he distinguished himself as a student. Even though we footed the bill for our adolescent's education and are paying for the consequences thereof, we haven't been afforded so much as a glimpse at the papers he wrote or the marks he received for them.
And though we had our doubts about some of the characters he's hung out with, The New York Teens assured us that no permanent damage had been done by his association with the likes of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and political radical Bill Ayers. And no, the Teens added, Bill Ayers didn't write Obama's autobiography, and he certainly didn't write his college papers. Heck, Ayers and Obama didn't even meet each other until Obama was well on his way to the stunning success he achieved in his early career as a community organizer. How in the world could Ayers have written Obama's college papers? Tell me that! And they surely wouldn't have let Obama teach constitutional law -- at the University of Chicago, no less -- if he weren't qualified, would they?
I mean, jeez, what more do you want? The T-I-C is already working harder than he ever thought he would have to. He barely has time for golf and pickup basketball games and date nights any more, and you know how important those are to any teen. So of course he's angry.
He's angry at the overwhelming problems he "inherited" from the previous administration. And he's angry because despite the fact that he had bulletproof majorities in both houses of Congress, the American public was too stupid to understand his health care initiative and the wonderful things it would do for them, and so he couldn't get that legislation pushed through.
Never mind that his is the anger of manufactured intellectual outrage unconnected to real-world experience. And never mind that it's the anger of psychological pain born in the midst of privilege few generations in the history of our planet have ever enjoyed. It is ultimately an unpleasant and whiny anger, the anger of a rich kid bitching that his parents haven't given him quite enough, the anger of a spoiled child who denigrates those who came before him for not being what he thinks they should have been. He's the Teenager-in-Chief, and he's not about to let you forget it.
Wild Thing's comment.......
Excellent perspective on Obama. And Obama won't release his college records because they would show he couldn't possibly have gone to the schools he did.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:45 AM | Comments (5)
February 08, 2010
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Law by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
You Make the Difference: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Law
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Before embarking on the debate of whether or not to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” it is useful to know the law, not a popular pastime for the current batch of legislators in the Congress. Title 10 U.S. Code sets forth that law which was crafted for the specific purpose of allowing them to serve and is quoted in the entirety below.
It is this law that Obama pledged to repeal and has directed the Secretary of Defense to suspend enforcement of its provisions. Otherwise, if Secretary Gates made such decision on his own he violated the oath he took upon being sworn in as Secretary and should be impeached in the event the President refuses to fire him.
Additionally, if the President refuses, he too should be impeached for failure to uphold the law. It will be interesting to see whether or not anyone in the Congress has the brass to begin the process.
§ 654. Policy concerning homosexuality in the armed forces
(a) FINDINGS.—Congress makes the following findings:
(1) Section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States commits exclusively to the Congress the powers to raise and support armies, provide and maintain a Navy, and make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.
(2) There is no constitutional right to serve in the armed
forces.
(3) Pursuant to the powers conferred by section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States, it lies within the discretion of the Congress to establish qualifications for and conditions of service in the armed forces.
(4) The primary purpose of the armed forces is to prepare for and to prevail in combat should the need arise.
(5) The conduct of military operations requires members of the armed forces to make extraordinary sacrifices, including the ultimate sacrifice, in order to provide for the common defense.
(6) Success in combat requires military units that are characterized by high morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion.
(7) One of the most critical elements in combat capability is unit cohesion, that is, the bonds of trust among individual
service members that make the combat effectiveness of a military unit greater than the sum of the combat effectiveness of the individual unit members.
(8) Military life is fundamentally different from civilian life
in that—
(A) the extraordinary responsibilities of the armed forces, the unique conditions of military service, and the
critical role of unit cohesion, require that the military community, while subject to civilian control, exist as a specialized society; and
(B) the military society is characterized by its own laws, rules, customs, and traditions, including numerous
restrictions on personal behavior, that would not be acceptable in civilian society.
(9) The standards of conduct for members of the armed forces regulate a member’s life for 24 hours each day beginning at the moment the member enters military status and not ending until that person is discharged or otherwise separated from the armed forces.
(10) Those standards of conduct, including the Uniform Code of Military Justice, apply to a member of the armed
forces at all times that the member has a military status, whether the member is on base or off base, and whether the member is on duty or off duty.
(11) The pervasive application of the standards of conduct is necessary because members of the armed forces must be ready at all times for worldwide deployment to a combat environment.
(12) The worldwide deployment of United States military forces, the international responsibilities of the United States, and the potential for involvement of the armed forces in actual combat routinely make it necessary for members of the armed forces involuntarily to accept living conditions and working conditions that are often spartan, primitive, and characterized by forced intimacy with little or no privacy.
(13) The prohibition against homosexual conduct is a longstanding element of military law that continues to be necessary in the unique circumstances of military service.
(14) The armed forces must maintain personnel policies that exclude persons whose presence in the armed forces would create an unacceptable risk to the armed forces’ high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.
(15) The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.
(b) POLICY.—A member of the armed forces shall be separated from the armed forces under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense if one or more of the following findings is made and approved in accordance with procedures set forth in such
regulations:
(1) That the member has engaged in, attempted to engage in, or solicited another to engage in a homosexual act or acts unless there are further findings, made and approved in accordance with procedures set forth in such regulations, that the member has demonstrated that—
(A) such conduct is a departure from the member’s usual and customary behavior;
(B) such conduct, under all the circumstances, is unlikely
to recur;
(C) such conduct was not accomplished by use of force, coercion, or intimidation;
(D) under the particular circumstances of the case, the member’s continued presence in the armed forces is consistent with the interests of the armed forces in proper discipline, good order, and morale; and
(E) the member does not have a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts.
(2) That the member has stated that he or she is a homosexual or bisexual, or words to that effect, unless there is a further finding, made and approved in accordance with procedures set forth in the regulations, that the member has demonstrated that he or she is not a person who engages in, attempts to engage in, has a propensity to engage in, or intends to engage in homosexual acts.
(3) That the member has married or attempted to marry a person known to be of the same biological sex.
(c) ENTRY STANDARDS AND DOCUMENTS.—(1) The Secretary of Defense shall ensure that the standards for enlistment and appointment of members of the armed forces reflect the policies set forth in subsection (b).
(2) The documents used to effectuate the enlistment or appointment of a person as a member of the armed forces shall set forth the provisions of subsection (b).
(d) REQUIRED BRIEFINGS.—The briefings that members of the armed forces receive upon entry into the armed forces and periodically thereafter under section 937 of this title (article 137 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice) shall include a detailed explanation of the applicable laws and regulations governing sexual conduct
by members of the armed forces, including the policies prescribed under subsection (b).
(e) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in subsection (b) shall be construed to require that a member of the armed forces be processed for separation from the armed forces when a determination is made in accordance with regulations prescribed by the Secretary
of Defense that—
(1) the member engaged in conduct or made statements for the purpose of avoiding or terminating military service; and
(2) separation of the member would not be in the best interest of the armed forces.
(f) DEFINITIONS.—In this section:
(1) The term ‘‘homosexual’’ means a person, regardless of sex, who engages in, attempts to engage in, has a propensity to engage in, or intends to engage in homosexual acts, and includes the terms ‘‘gay’’ and ‘‘lesbian’’.
(2) The term ‘‘bisexual’’ means a person who engages in, attempts to engage in, has a propensity to engage in, or intends to engage in homosexual and heterosexual acts.
(3) The term ‘‘homosexual act’’ means—
(A) any bodily contact, actively undertaken or passively permitted, between members of the same sex for the
purpose of satisfying sexual desires; and
(B) any bodily contact which a reasonable person would understand to demonstrate a propensity or intent to
engage in an act described in subparagraph (A).
(Added P.L. 103–160, § 571(a)(1), Nov. 30, 1993, 107 Stat. 1670.)”
We hereby request, urge and demand that Representative Jeff Miller, US Rep, 1st Congressional District of Florida, of which we are resident, initiate impeachment proceedings as a member of the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives either alone or in co-sponsorship with other members.
Representative Miller will undoubtedly want to head off this action by Democrats and Obama that would significantly affect the ability of the Armed Forces to meet quality and quantity recruiting and retention goals and would have a deleterious effect on National Security:
http://jeffmiller.house.gov/Contact/
Washington D.C.
2439 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4136
Fax: (202) 225-3414
Ft. Walton Beach Office
348 S.W. Miracle Strip Parkway, Suite 24
Fort Walton Beach, Florida 32548
Phone: 850-664-1266
Fax: 850-664-0851
Pensacola Office
4300 Bayou Blvd., Suite 13
Pensacola, Florida 32503
Phone: 850-479-1183
Fax: 850-479-9394
Toll Free Phone Number to District Office
Pensacola, Florida
Phone: 866-367-1614
The link to all other House Members is:
http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment.........
Very interesting, I learned a lot from what the Col. has done by looking up the law we already have on this.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 12:44 AM | Comments (4)
February 06, 2010
Obama is Doing Exactly What He Promised! by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Obama is Doing Exactly What He Promised!
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
One year ago we observed here that excessive spending by the Obama and his administration would reduce the U.S. to third world status. A number of readers challenged that statement, but it has been borne out in spades. i.e., what is the Federal debt? [For those who don’t comprehend the magnitude of the issue personally, every taxpayer, (of course those who pay nothing don’t care), is responsible for that debt. And so far it has reached over one hundred thousand dollars per household.] What country is lender and which one is borrower? What happens to the value of one’s monetary assets when the government prints money like monopoly, especially in the global economy? Allow me: the cost of every imported item goes up in proportion to the decrease in value of the dollar at international exchange rates. That everything from fuel to toys!
Even though the U.S. has the greatest economy in the world it is instructive to note that since the Democrats took over the Congress with election victories in 2006 the nation’s economy began an immediate decline. Oh, how the left loves to blame Bush, and where Mr. “Compassionate Conservative” contributed to the problem, this albatross hangs around Democrats’ neck in the political context, and in reality around America’s neck, and that is precisely what Obama promised from the start.
The collapse of financial markets courtesy of Chris Dodd and Barney Frank through their imposition of the requirement on lenders to offer subprime mortgages that were in turn bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and who combined those soon to be “toxic loans” with performing loans then sold them on the world market and in the process poisoned not only the U.S. economy but most world economies as well. Under the Frank/Todd sub-prime scheme, unqualified borrowers would be confronted with subprime adjusted rates at precisely the same time that contrived increases in the cost of crude oil from about seventy dollars a barrel to over one hundred fifty dollars a barrel occurred and the economy would begin to collapse interestingly enough, at election time. Co-incidence?
Those who by any reasonable standard could not afford the houses they were in were suddenly confronted with an adjusted mortgage rate they could not afford and household budgets were catastrophically broken by the combination of mortgages rising from four hundred to a thousand dollars or more at the same time that the cost of commuting doubled due to increased fuel prices. The obvious happened, a cascade then flood of payment defaults and foreclosures that continues to the present and which will enter a second wave shortly, happened just in time to blame Bush and with media help extended to McCain.
Long before the collapse, repeated attempts by the Bush administration to convince the Congress to enact regulations that would ameliorate the banking crisis were repudiated and stonewalled by Democrats as unnecessary. Of course, once the crisis hit, it was “Bush’s fault.” Obama pumped that specious swill during the campaign and it continues to the present with the full expectation that Americans believe it. At first they did, but New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts proves that Americans are awakening.
Obama is clearly of the Vladimir Lenin school of thought: “A lie told often enough becomes truth.” On the one hand Obama and Democrats tell the public that the run-up in spending is necessary to rescue the economy from the evils of the Bush “tax breaks for the wealthy.” (Of course those who paid no taxes got no break so Dems and RINOs gave them a handout to make them feel better. How dumb can they be? Worse, how dumb can Americans be to keep them in office?)
The left loves it as the U.S becomes the world’s largest debtor nation, the U.S. economy is in tatters and Obama tells us we have to rein in spending even as he signs stimulus upon stimulus, prints more money, sells more bonds and further devalues the US dollar. Then he has the temerity to suggest that we need a “deficit panel,” a deficit to which Obama has contributed more than all previous administrations from the founding of the Republic combined! But, “it is Bush’s fault!” B.S., B.O.! Americans have had enough of your childish blame game!
Now Obama wants a 2011 deficit of $1.35 trillion, and a national debt of over $14 trillion?! YGBSM! Enough is enough!
Save up to begin buying pitch forks, you are going to need them!
Semper Fidelis
.
Wild Thing's comment.......
I am so glad the Col. writes and does articles. I hope he knows how much he is appreciated.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 03:48 AM | Comments (4)
February 02, 2010
Fool(s) On The Hill By Dr. Alan Bates, M D.
Fool(s) On The Hill
By Dr. Alan Bates, M D.
Ever heard of that old song? It sure comes to life with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the radical majority leaders in Congress. They just don’t seem to get it. Maybe Harry’s prior boxing career damaged his ability to understand. For Nancy, too much Botox may have seeped into her brain. As I stated in my prior commentary, they need their vision and hearing checked. In reality, their brains are those of stubborn radical liberals who think they can force their malicious agenda on everyone else. As Dr. Lyle Rossiter discusses in his book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness (2006), die-hard liberals are pathologic because they were never able to develop self-sufficiency as they entered adulthood, thereby finding the ultimate parent substitute to take care of them----government. They cannot understand life any other way.
Most Americans are not insufficient and helpless, and do not want or need government to infiltrate every facet of their lives. Due to their own psychopathology, Obama and his friends cannot understand how an individual can be successful and sufficient without Big Brother, and so they feel driven to assure their agenda for a people subservient to government is not stopped. That is why Mr. Obama threw a restrained temper tantrum during the State of the Union address---announcing that he would double efforts to force his political goals upon the American people. Same goes for Pelosi, Reid and their obsession to overhaul an intact U.S. healthcare system. Pelosi cannot seem to understand that WE THE PEOPLE do not want her brand of socialism imposed upon our lives.
For the ‘fools on the Hill’ it is all about control of the people. I suspect the Massachusetts victory for Senator Scott Brown was one of the first shots fired over the bow by ‘to right of center’ America. We must move into high gear and work together through such organizations as the Tea Party movement, GOOOH.com (Get Out of Our House), and FreedomWorks.org to replace these dangerous Fascists who if allowed to accelerate their agenda will steal our freedom, and with it, the American dream.
Wild Thing's comment.......
Good one by Dr. Bates, thank you sir.
He is absolutely right, it is all about control.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:44 AM
January 29, 2010
Oratory, Leadership and Patriotism by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Oratory, Leadership and Patriotism
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Every time I see liberal Barack Hussein Obama in the picture below, I am torn between anger, disgust and pity.
The image above was taken during the early phase of the last general election. It was during a period that Obama had not come to grips with the fact that most Americans honor the flag, not the cloth per se, but the nation it represents.
Obama has been the great pretender for a year and like a five year old has practiced hiding behind his mother’s “economic” skirts. He has repeatedly denied any responsibility for the deepening economic recession brought on, not by “tax cuts for the wealthy,” but by Federal mandates to banks and mortgage companies emanating from Massachusetts Democrat Representative Barney Frank and his cohort, Senator Chris Dodd and agreed to by go along Republicans In Name Only (RINOs). These factors combined with Obama’s record two trillion dollar deficit combined with excessive and irresponsible “compassionate” spending by his predecessor will have an inflationary effect like throwing gasoline on a roaring fire, and portend hyper-inflation.
Now consider, if one is a latent, or for that matter overt socialist/Marxist in Obama’s shoes, what would one’s solution to the economic crisis be? Logically, it would be to expand government control. It is amazing, if not confounding that so many in the media, including “Fair and Balanced” Fox News which incidentally is far and away the best in that regard, fail completely when it comes to illuminating just who Obama actually is, when all it would take is to read his books. (This is not a discussion about who wrote them, but the books are an excellent introduction to Obama’s socialist/Marxist underpinnings.)
Obama’s “spread the wealth around” statement to Joe “the plumber” is all that is needed when combined with his writings to have a completely clear picture of what is going on in the Administration and Congress. Obama’s words: “we will totally change America,” “we will totally change the economic system,” “we will totally change the world,” have repeatedly appeared in these essays. Total change means that his intent is to destroy free market capitalism, obfuscated by later statements in different venues that he supports free markets; and, Congressional Democrats have clearly revealed that they are in lockstep with those proclamations. Every one of them should be booted; and incidentally, there are plenty of RINOs who should get the same treatment.
It was repeatedly noted during the election cycle that, “Obama is an empty suit,” who before going to Washington had managed exactly, nothing. However, he had been a “community organizer,” which translates in plain English to “Chicago thug,” and it shows. One look at his Administration should be alarming but not surprising since he informed Americans that he would surround himself with people of like mind.
The spectacular victory for Americans (including Democrats, even though most are too dense to get it) in Massachusetts, is a watershed that will redirect the flow of U.S. politics. One who is not an economist but knows how to balance a check book and has been around long enough to know the effects of government overspending can conclude that Obama is doing is precisely what he intended, (no one can be so stupid otherwise) and that is to collapse the U.S. economy and replace it with a socialist/Marxist economic model. That is the only way he can effectively “spread the wealth around.” If anyone wondered why all the “hurry and enact” was so important, it was to get it done before anyone caught on to his gambit. During an interview with Diane Sawyer Obama stated, “I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.”
If enacting his socialist/Marxist agenda is how Obama defines “good” Americans should, as Rush Limbaugh stated loud and clear, “want him to fail.” The Massachusetts’ election of Scott Brown was a loud and clear statement to that effect; and many readers worked hard to help make it happen.
THANK YOU! Stand by for more to come!
For example: Florida’s Conservative Marco Rubio vs. Liberal RINO Governor Charlie Crist. Check out Rubio at:
http://marcorubio.com/issues/
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment........
Awesome article , thank you Col. Pappas.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:48 AM | Comments (3)
January 26, 2010
Too Much of a Bad Thing...Who’s panting for Obama speech number 412? Exactly no one! By Mark Steyn
Too Much of a Bad Thing
Who’s panting for Obama speech number 412? Exactly no one
o what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”
But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”
Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He only gave (according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president — and maybe more than all of them put together. But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview — I believe the top-rated Grain & Livestock Prices Report — 4 a.m. Update with Herb Torpormeister on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House.
But what will the president be saying in all these extra interviews? In that interview about how he hadn’t given enough interviews, he also explained to George Stephanopoulos what that wacky Massachusetts election was all about:
“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” said Obama. “People are angry and they’re frustrated, not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years but what’s happened over the last eight years.”
Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they’re voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts. Boy, I can’t wait for that 159th interview.
Presumably, the president isn’t stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it’s dispiriting to discover he’s stupid enough to think we’re stupid enough to believe it.
So who’s panting for that 412th speech? Not the American Left. As Paul Krugman, the New York Times’s “Conscience of a Liberal,” put it: “He Wasn’t The One We’ve Been Waiting For.”
Not the once-delirious Europeans, either. As the headline in Der Spiegel put it: “The World Bids Farewell to Obama.”
And not any beleaguered Democratic candidates trying to turn things around in volatile swing states like, er, Massachusetts. The Barack Obama who showed up last Sunday to help out Martha Coakley was a sad and diminished figure from the colossus of a year ago. He had nothing to say, but he said it anyway. As he did with his Copenhagen pitch for the Olympics, he put his personal prestige on the line, raised the stakes, and then failed to deliver. All those cool kids on his speechwriting team bogged him down in the usual leaden sludge. He went to the trouble of flying in to phone it in.
The most striking aspect of his performance was how unhappy he looked, as if he doesn’t enjoy the job. You can understand why. He ran as something he’s not, and never has been: a post-partisan, centrist, transformative healer. That’d be a difficult trick to pull off even for somebody with any prior executive experience, someone who’d actually run something, like a state, or even a town, or even a commercial fishing operation, like that poor chillbilly boob Sarah Palin. At one point late in the 2008 campaign, when someone suggested that if Governor Palin was “unqualified” then surely he was too, Obama pointed out as evidence to the contrary his ability to run such an effective campaign. In other words, running for president was his main qualification for being president.
That was the story of his life: Wow! Look at this guy! Wouldn’t it be great to have him . . . as community organizer, as state representative, as state senator, as United States senator. He was wafted ever upwards, staying just long enough in each “job” to get another notch on the escutcheon, but never long enough to leave any trace.
The defining moment of his doomed attempt to prop up Martha Coakley was his peculiar obsession with Scott Brown’s five-year-old pickup:
“Forget the ads. Everybody can run slick ads,” the president told an audience of out-of-state students at a private school. “Forget the truck. Everybody can buy a truck.”
How they laughed! But what was striking was the thinking behind Obama’s line: that anyone can buy a truck for a slick ad, that Brown’s pickup was a prop — like the herd of cows Al Gore rented for a pastoral backdrop when he launched his first presidential campaign. Or the Iron Chef TV episode featuring delicious, healthy recipes made with produce direct from Michelle Obama’s “kitchen garden”: The cameras filmed the various chefs meeting the first lady and then picking choice organic delicacies from the White House crop, and then for the actual cooking the show sent out for stunt-double vegetables from a grocery back in New York. Viewed from Obama’s perspective, why wouldn’t you assume the truck’s just part of the set? “In his world,” wrote The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, “everything is political and everything is about appearances.”
Howard Fineman, the increasingly loopy editor of the increasingly doomed Newsweek, took it a step further. The truck wasn’t just any old prop but a very particular kind: “In some places, there are codes, there are images,” he told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. “You know, there are pickup trucks, you could say there was a racial aspect to it one way or another.”
Ah, yes. Scott Brown has over 200,000 miles on his odometer. Man, he’s racked up a lot of coded racism on that rig. But that’s easy to do in notorious cross-burning KKK swamps like suburban Massachusetts.
Whenever aspiring writers ask me for advice, I usually tell ’em this:
Don’t just write there, do something. Learn how to shingle a roof, or tap-dance, or raise sled dogs. Because if you don’t do anything, you wind up like Obama and Fineman — men for whom words are props and codes and metaphors but no longer expressive of anything real.
.
Wild Thing's comment.......
Piercing editorial by Steyn. Mark Steyn topped himself again, hitting the nail on the head... again!
He had nothing to say, but he said it anyway.
Classic line!
But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview — I believe the top-rated Grain & Livestock Prices Report — 4 a.m. Update with Herb Torpormeister on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House.
LMAO gosh I love how he writes. LOVE Mark Steyn.
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:48 AM | Comments (3)
January 24, 2010
Awesome Charles Krauthammer: "This was the best week since spring break!"
Wild Thing's comment.........
I love Charles he is wonderful. This was very simply a great week to be a conservative in America. Charles Krauthammer sums it up quite well in just 30 seconds.
The combination of Scott Brown's stunning win in Massachusetts, the apparent death of ObamaCare legislation, the demise of liberal radio network "Air America," and the U.S. Supreme Court restoring Free Speech rights to all in Political Campaigns, makes it a truly remarkable week indeed
Charles was on the swim team of his college, hit the diving board wrong, and was paralyzed for life. That is why the uneasy laughter from his remark.
I enjoy Krauthammer's sharp political analysis and his wit and wisdom on Obama.
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:50 AM | Comments (8)
January 22, 2010
Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired Comments On De Spiegel’s “The World bids Farewell to Obama”
Comments on De Spiegel’s “The World bids Farewell to Obama”
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
In a January 21, 2010 article titled “The World Bids Farewell to Obama” in German, Der Spiegel, online, editor Charles Hawley writes:
“US President Barack Obama suffered a painful defeat in Massachusetts on Tuesday. With mid-term elections looming, it means that Obama will have to fundamentally re-think his political course. German commentators say it is the end of hope.”
Pappas:
• Your comment: “German commentators say it is the end of hope” assumes people know what Obama’s “hope” is. “Hope” for what? “Change?” “Change” to what? Obama’s orations openly signaled the direction he wanted to take the country which was to: “spread the wealth around,” “totally change America,” “totally change the economic system;” and at one point, “we will totally change the world.” Those who voted for him were swayed by his personal charm and oratorical ability. They did not listen to what he said but how he said it. Thus, the majority of voters in the U.S. and many people in Europe were convinced that Obama was the embodiment of the “second coming of Christ.” Not!
• It is the debate over the role and extent of the Federal Government that is the nexus of the raging debate between the left and the right. I do not know any serious person on the right who would do away with the role of Government as set forth in the U.S. Constitution; but there are an abundance of those on the left including Obama who would make the Federal Government pervasive. In point of fact Obama is the “anti-Constitution-in-Chief” since the Constitution inherently limits/restricts government.
• So, “hope?” If one seeks totalitarian government, Obama is their best “hope;” but if freedom is the political equation Obama fails. It is freedom more than any other factor that was decided in Massachusetts, and the people of Massachusetts voted for FREEDOM.
“US President Barack Obama has had a number of difficult weeks during his first year in the White House. Right after he took office, he had to wade through a week full of partisan bickering over his economic stimulus package combined with a tax scandal surrounding Tom Daschle, the man Obama had hoped would lead his health care reform team.”
Pappas:
• There were considerably more issues, opposition was not as you state, “political bickering” it was deep concern over the level of borrowing on top of what the Bush Administration had borrowed to keep social programs afloat and subsequently rush to rescue troubled financial institutions.
• One of many issues is that Obama is afflicted with the fundamentally erroneous notion that the President of the United States runs the country. Nothing could be further from the truth. The President of the U.S. runs the Administrative Branch of the Government which Democrats generally and Obama and Barney Frank specifically as well as others, who want to use expand the role of government.
“Then there was the last week of 2009, when a failed terror attack on a flight inbound for Detroit exposed major flaws in US efforts to identify and stop potential terrorists.”
Pappas: The failed underwear bomber terror attack was not all and many Americans have little confidence in his desire, much less ability to protect the country: to set the record straight, there the Jihadist attack on a military recruiting station and the Muslim Jihadist attack at Fort Hood.
“This week, though -- a week when Obama should have been celebrating the first anniversary of his inauguration -- may have been the president's worst yet. Scott Brown, an almost unknown Republican member of the Massachusetts Senate, defeated the Democratic candidate Martha Coakley for the US Senate seat vacated by the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The defeat in a heavily Democratic state not only highlights Obama's massive loss of popular support during his first year in office, but it also could spell doom for his signature effort to reform the US health care system.”
Pappas: In point of fact the defeat of the Obama agenda in Massachusetts signaled a rebellion against out of control spending, overreaching government, and weakened national security.
“There were immediate calls for a suspension of health care votes in the Senate until Brown is sworn in. The loss of the Massachusetts seat means that the Democrats no longer control the 60 Senate seats necessary to avoid a filibuster. Obama's reform package, which aims to provide health insurance to most of the over 40 million Americans currently lacking coverage, may ultimately fail as a result.”
Pappas: The figure of those lacking coverage has grown from 15 to over 40 million, amazing! But what is most objectionable about your statement is that you use the word term, “40 million Americans” that’s like including Germany’s entire guest worker population as “Germans;” in the case of the U.S. at least 15 million of any number over 15 million are illegal immigrants who should not be in the U.S. in first place.
“More than that, though, the vote shows just how quickly the political pendulum has swung back to the right following Obama's election. The seat won by Brown had been in Democratic hands for all but six years since 1926. Now, its new occupant is a man who not only opposes the health care bill, but also favors waterboarding as a method of interrogation for terrorism suspects and rejects carbon cap-and-trade as a means of limiting carbon emissions.”
Pappas:
• Senator (Elect) Scott Brown does not oppose health care reform, he opposes the structure that Obama and his leftist allies in Congress are attempting to cram down the throats of an overwhelming majority of unwilling Americans.
• Waterboarding has been declared illegal by the Obama Administration. That’s Obama’s prerogative. But on the real “torture” scale waterboarding wouldn’t even register. Ask Retired Air Force Colonel “Bud” Day what torture is about; as one who knows torture first hand, he’ll tell you that waterboarding is child’s play. One supposes that decapitating one’s opponents with a saw would also qualify as torture, given Muslim jihadists’ predisposition to use that method.
• Carbon emissions are a farce in the context of what the left is trying to achieve through Cap and Trade. The real issue is to make Cap and Traders rich at the expense of American taxpayers by transferring a portion of the wealth usurped by the government to Obama’s native Kenya…and other third world countries as part of his pledge to “change the world.”
“The omen could be a dark one for the Obama administration heading into a mid-term election year. German commentators take a closer look.”
Pappas: It may be dark for Obama, but bright for the majority of Americans.
Center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung writes on Thursday:
"Obama made a serious misjudgement. Right at the beginning of his first year in office, he saved the banks, rescued the automobile industry from collapse and passed a huge economic stimulus package. He had hoped that these enormous deeds would give him the space to address those issues which are dearest to him: health care reform, climate change and investment in education."
Pappas: Whoa! At least, please try to get it right. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and earlier bailouts were enacted during the Bush Administration not Obama; Bush rescued, if that’s what you care to call it, the automobile industry, not Obama, who later took it over, there is a big difference between the two; and the economic stimulus package was not “stimulus” but partisan political payback largely to Democrats with essentially no effect on stimulating the economy for most Americans. Job growth was a negative 5-6 percent after the “stimulus.”
"Those issues, however, are clearly not priorities for people in the US at the moment. Scott Brown campaigned on two promises, both of which apparently struck a nerve with the electorate. He wants to block health care reform and he wants to find ways to reduce the enormous budget deficit. It is here where the roots of dissatisfaction with Obama are to be found. His reform agenda, in its current form, is highly suspect to Americans. And they have the impression that, if he continues piling up debt, he will be gambling away the country's future."
Pappas:
• It is not true that Brown wants to “block health care reform,” on the contrary he favors a responsible version of reform, not the nonsense that Democrats have passed. He has promised to block the version being advanced by both houses of Congress, a version passed over the strenuous objections of the vast, repeat vast majority of U.S. citizens, which by the way does not include illegal immigrants.
• As for the “enormous budget deficit” Obama’s budget deficit projection is greater than all administrations combined from George Washington forward.
• And Americans don’t have the “impression that he is gambling away the country’s future,” they know he is intentionally destroying the US free market (such as that is) system in favor of a socialist/Marxist system. It’s not what he says, it what he does.
The Financial Times Deutschland writes:
"For Obama, the election in Massachusetts means that he will have to re-evaluate his political style. He could now focus his concentration on his political base and push through his policy agenda. After all, he still has a majority in Congress -- he could back away from his strategy of bipartisanship ... which would mean giving up much of what he spent his first year in office creating."
Pappas: It is laughable to suggest that Obama has or ever has had a strategy of bipartisanship. If bipartisanship means “do it my way because I won” then perhaps, otherwise it is an utterly meaningless farce, in fact it is mindless to suggest that he has made any serious effort at bipartisanship. He does have a majority of empty headed, self-serving Democrats in both houses, but thankfully, that has evaporated with the election of Scott Brown.
"More likely, however, is that Obama will interpret the Massachusetts loss as a signal that he should move further toward the middle and make more concessions to the conservatives -- even if this alienates his base even further, a base which had high expectations from the 'yes we can' candidate."
Pappas: The problem is that his “yes, we can” was to “totally change the US and its economic system.” Americans have begun at long last to catch on to what that means and are rejecting it out of hand.
"For everyone else in the world, this means that they will have to bid farewell to a candidate for whom the hopes were so high. They will have to say goodbye to the charisma they fell in love with. Obama will be staying home after all."
Pappas: Yes, “duped” is more like it. Obama was a great snake oil salesman. But Americans, and judging from the way he has succeeded on the world stage, are on to him and are beginning the cleansing process.
The left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung writes:
"In addition to health care reform, Obama's reputation has primarily been harmed by the high unemployment rate and the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan. It will become even more difficult in the future for the president to push projects through successfully. Not just because Republicans now have a means of preventing it, but also because the Democratic camp is deeply divided. Some would like to see the party shift toward the center -- wherever that may be -- whereas others want the party to position itself to the left. Such a battle is hardly a good sign for the mid-term elections in November. Massachusetts could prove to be an omen."
Pappas: Not bad for a leftist organ. The only thing I would change is the last sentence to read,
“Massachusetts is a good omen.”
The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:
"Of course the president rejects the interpretation that the Massachusetts election was a referendum on his first year in the White House. But he cannot ignore the fact that his health care reform package is not popular, the situation of the country's finances is seen as threatening and many voters blame the high unemployment rate on the party in power -- on the Democrats, led by Obama. The result is a second year in office full of very different challenges than the first. To save what there is to be saved, Obama will have to be prepared to fashion a bipartisan compromise on health care -- a compromise with a Republican Party which has tasted blood and can now dream once again about a return to power."
Pappas:
• “Obama rejects the interpretation” but that does not change the fact that Obama’s person and policy suffered a major, if not catastrophic defeat in Massachusetts.
• The Republican Party per se has little or nothing to do with the attitude of most Americans, Obama and his party brought the reaction entirely on themselves. Americans are overwhelmingly conservative and although many may have been mesmerized during his campaign, they are on to him for what he is increasingly evident: a socialist/Marxist.
• For those Germans who have memories long enough, they should remember that the socialist/Marxist political disease led to the death of about 150 million people in Europe and the Soviet Union.
-- Charles Hawley
Semper Fidelis
.
Wild Thing's comment.......
Excellent break down of the article and others.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 02:40 AM | Comments (4)
January 19, 2010
Save lives in Haiti – end lives in America? by Chuck Norris
Save lives in Haiti – end lives in America?
by Chuck Norris
While White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced on Friday all that the present administration was doing to save lives in Haiti, Gibbs reported that President Obama was meeting at the very moment with both the House and Senate Democrats to resolve how they could provide federal funds via Obamacare to terminate more American lives in the womb.
What a stark and tragic contradiction in agendas, aids, ethics and value of human life. Is it not incongruous to anyone else that our president, who proposes to be an advocate for all minorities, isn't one for the most disadvantaged to survival? What type of health care is there for the least among (and within) us?
Abortion has been called the most hotly contested and challenging aspect of Obamacare, and, if there is no compromise soon between the House and Senate, the battle could possibly lead to the death of the health-care bills.
One thing is certain, and Obama knows it: If the Democrats are to pass their version of health care, with any overt or covert pro-abortion verbiage in it, they need their super-majority of 60 votes intact to block any possible filibuster. That is why it is certainly no coincidence that Press Secretary Gibbs also announced Friday that the president had decided to go to Massachusetts to campaign for 60th-vote Senate candidate Martha Coakley "because she asked."
As we sit on the eve of another Sanctity of Life Sunday (Jan. 24), I'm also struck by the sheer contrasts of President Obama's and our founders' views of human life in the womb.
The truth is, when our country elected Obama as president, we placed a man in the highest office in the land that has the most liberal views and voting record on abortion of any president in American history. As a state senator in Illinois, he led opposition three years in a row (2001-2003) to a bill similar to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which prevents the killing of babies who survived an abortion attempt and were born alive. He also opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion and strongly disapproved of the Supreme Court decision upholding the partial-birth ban. He does not support the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion through Medicaid. He also voted to block a bill that would have required a doctor to notify at least one parent before performing an abortion on a minor girl from another state. Strangely, Obama even once said he would not want his daughters to be "punished with a baby" due to an unwanted pregnancy.
In just his first year in office, President Obama has led and enacted more pro-choice or abortion legislation than all former presidents combined. Restrictions for federal funding for embryonic stem cell research have been lifted. Obama overturned the "Mexico City Policy," now allowing federal taxpayer funds to support international family planning groups that provide abortions. Obama gave $50 million to UNFPA, the U.N. population agency that has been criticized for promoting abortion and having close associations with Chinese population-control officials. And Obama recently signed into law another omnibus bill and its provision that overturns the 1988 Dornan Amendment, which prevented taxpayer dollars to fund abortions in Washington, D.C. Tragically, the bill also appropriates $648.5 million for international family-planning funding (an increase of $103 million over 2009) and contains funding for Planned Parenthood and for the United Nations Population Fund, both of which have pro-abortion agendas.
Still on the horizon, but fast approaching, is the fulfillment of Obama's campaign promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, or FOCA, which is a sweeping bill that will once and for all abolish all pro-life regulations across the nation, from parental notification laws to bans on all federal funding of abortion.
If you think Obama's pro-abortion mission is over, consider the brand new special report, "Promise Audit: Tracking Obama's Progress on Campaign Promises," in which the National Journal examined Obama's abortion track record and gave him a 33 percent completion rating of his campaign promises regarding abortion.
Can you imagine if all the pro-abortion initiatives Obama has accomplished in his first year are just one-third of all he will do before the end of his term?
Not surprisingly, Obama endorsed the House version of the bill before it contained an abortion funding ban (Stupak-Pitts Amendment) and supported the Senate version (with its tabled Nelson-Hatch Amendment) which funded abortions. Just another day and another broken presidential promise for conservatives, who testified just a few months ago on Sept. 9, "Under our (health-care reform) plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."
Obama was not joking when he told Planned Parenthood during his presidential campaign that he would "turn the page" on the abortion cultural wars. The presidential candidate who once proclaimed that estimating when a baby gets human rights was "above his pay grade" has granted more pay to pro-abortion agencies and enacted more pro-abortion legislation to assure millions of more babies' rights are never experienced outside the womb.
Like I said, what a sheer contradiction to our founders' views of life in the womb. Those like Thomas Jefferson who wrote in 1809, "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."
But as long as we have breath, and those in the womb have life, we patriots must fight for American life, the way many of us are now fighting for Haitian life.
Here are nine ways that you can fight for all human life this Sanctity of Life week:
1. Call anyone and everyone you know in Massachusetts to fight for the election of GOP challenger, state Sen. Scott Brown as that state's U.S. senator, and let's stop this super-majority gridlock and anarchy in the U.S. Capitol and simultaneously try to save some of those precious souls in the womb.
2. Tell your own congressmen and senators you want them to value all human life, from the womb to the tomb, like our founders did in the Declaration of Independence.
3. Tell your congressmen and senators that you expect them vocally and with their votes to fight against any pro-abortion legislation, especially within Obamacare.
4. Tell your congressmen and senators to fight for the language from the Stupak-Pitts Amendment and the Nelson-Hatch Amendment in the combined House and Senate health-care bills.
5. Call or write the White House and demand that President Obama quit fighting to terminate life in the womb, and seek instead to value and save human life. We may not change his mind, but we can let him know that he doesn't speak or act on behalf of tens of millions of us.
6. Join 400,000 people who have signed the Manhattan Declaration to fight for the unborn by doing the same at ManhattanDeclaration.org.
7. Share this column with your pro-life pastor, priest, family and friends, and remind them all of the Sanctity of Life celebration this Sunday (Jan. 24).
8. Reflect upon the value of human life in the womb by reading a book like my friend Randy Alcorn's "Why Pro-Life?" or one of the many free articles on his website Eternal Perspective Ministries.
9. Support and get involved with a local pro-life organization or movement, like my wife, Gena, who supports the Dallas Council for Life and the Dallas Pregnancy Resource Center.
I heard Sunday President Obama attended and spoke at a church service in Washington, D.C., in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. That's great. But I wonder if he'll speak again in some church this next Sunday, which is Sanctity of Life Sunday, celebrated by churches all across this land in honor of human life in the womb?
The founders gave their Sanctity of Life testimony in the Declaration of Independence when they declared that all human life is "created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. …"
.
Wild Thing's comment........
Excellent write up. He is right, and I think Obama could care less about the lives of any of the lives in America before they are born or even afterward I will add as well.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 03:49 AM | Comments (8)
December 27, 2009
The Simple Truths of Service: Johnny the Bagger
.
Wild Thing's comment..........
An inspiring video about a grocery store bagger with Down syndrome who changed the company culture and created customer loyalty by providing service from the heart.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 02:45 AM | Comments (9)
December 26, 2009
What is it About “NO” that Democrat Politicians Don’t Understand? by Col. Pappas
What is it About “NO” that Democrat Politicians Don’t Understand?
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
The passage of the Senate’s version of so called, “Health Care Reform” is a great political victory as political victories go, but it is a disaster for America. The core idea was not, is not and never has been to provide truly universal and high quality care for all Americans.
Its purpose was, is and ever will be, in Obama’s words, “to spread the wealth around,” considering the way it was passed, through dictatorial edict. If enacted it would expand government and bureaucratic authority over citizens, that is, except selected officials of the Federal Government, since they have exempted themselves. It was enlightening to listen to the media spin on the debate between Democrats, as though that was a debate. It was more realistically a staged show to suggest that among Democrats there were actually differences. At the end, all Democrats and no Republicans voted for the bill. Republican ideas were not invited and were not considered. It was done entirely behind closed doors; so much for transparency!
That Kabuki may have satiated the media’s appetite for political theatre but it is, as the name suggests, a sham. Democrats will crow that passage is a great day for America in the face of 60% citizen opposition to the two thousand plus page bill. If they actually believe that the bill will survive after they are routed from power, and there will be a rout, they are smoking the same marijuana that Bill Clinton didn’t inhale, or more accurately, they are snorting some of the same cocaine that Obama used, or is it, “uses?”
The bill is unconstitutional on its face. One provision would establish a government bureaucracy to dispense health care cannot be repealed. Such bureaucracies are as a matter of fact death panels because once the program is in place those panels would decide who gets what care based on what the panel(s) deem to be the relative merit of one person’s life over another’s.
It is highly likely that one thing that the panels would immediately do would be to shut down most if not all institutions that provide care for persons with severe disabilities, or at the least pull the plug on such people. After all, they contribute nothing except as objects for research and sources of income for providers, and are therefore a huge economic drain. Another group that will be allowed to expire are the elderly in assisted living facilities or anyone at a point in life where in the panel’s judgment the person is too much of a drain in relation to the cost of keeping “it” alive. Once “it” becomes ill, “it” will be allowed to die for the same or similar economic reasons as those with severe disabilities.
Another component is inherently unconstitutional is the mandatory requirement for all Americans to buy health care enforced through penalties imposed upon those who do not. In a recent television interview, one advocate for the bill asserted that it would be no different than mandating the purchase of automobile insurance. B.arbra S.treisand! Anyone with any sense can instantly make the distinction, but since liberals inherently don’t get it: first, not everyone drives or owns a car so the analogy does not hold; second, it would be a form of “life tax,” i.e. if you are alive one is required to buy insurance.
That fact opens the door for government to dictate who and how many children a family can produce, and runs directly into the issue of “reproductive rights.” It is the back door approach to China’s “one child” policy, enforced by mandatory abortion.
It’s time to send a message to your Senators and Representative and don’t let up. Enlist your friends in this fight for freedom from the tyranny of socialists/Marxists that Democrats embody.
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment.........
Obama and the dems hate to hear No and they hate to hear we the people speak up. Honestly they really are the lowest form of beings every one of them.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 02:45 AM | Comments (3)
December 20, 2009
"Critical Take-Home Message For American Voters" ....By Dr. Alan Bates, M D.
Critical Take-Home Message For American Voters
By Dr. Alan Bates, M D.
Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) has saved the tyrannical Harry Reid Healthcare Overhaul bill so unwanted by most Americans including those in his own state. But alas! Ben thinks he has it figured out like so many others in Congress! He held out until he could fill the Nebraska pig trough with enough pork to guarantee reelection by the voters in his state. To secure his vote for the bill, Senator Reid granted the state of Nebraska an exemption forever for their share of state Medicaid funding!
That means American taxpayers pay Nebraska’s Medicaid tab. Nelson is just another one of the 60 self-anointed ones who are recklessly spending our nation deeper into the ravine with money we don’t have, supposedly to accomplish an objective which could be solved by the private sector at much less cost than the trillion plus taxpayer dollars which this bill will require over the next 10 years.
Yes, the voters in Nebraska may vote for Nelson during his next run since he will remind them of all the pork he has brought home to them from Washington---funded with money paid to IRS by taxpayers across the nation. By the way, where is tort reform? Or the freedom to purchase medications from Canada at half the prices charged in America? Did Congress forget?
There is a lesson which all Americans must learn before the 2010 elections and it is this: you cannot continue to have it both ways. Pork costs money, but we do not have any more money (fiat money printed by the presses of the US Treasury). Each of us must assume responsibility and hold our elected officials accountable to America---not just to our state.
You cannot keep voting the ‘bring the pork home’ guys and gals back into office unless you are willing to give your nation away to the likes of China which has the largest trade surplus of any nation while simultaneously owning huge amounts of our debt—meaning we owe China the shirts on our backs.
I cannot vote in Nebraska’s election for Senator Nelson or any other candidate running in another state besides my own. So while I am amongst the huge majority who want to replace most of Congress, the actual determinant of who is elected rests with a select population residing in the state of the incumbent. And if you poll most voters, their incumbents have a much higher approval rating than the Congress as a whole. Now do you get it?!
Lest I forget, Secretary of State Clinton just obligated you and yours to fund part of a new 100 billion dollar commitment she just made to control carbon emissions in the name of climate control (read redistribution of whatever wealth remains in America to those of other nations who are less fortunate). Cutting through the fluff, this was her attempt to bring something home from Copenhagen so Barry Soetoro would not look impotent after the conference effectively fell apart.
As we close 2009, Americans must remain vigilant, non-complacent and force our elected officials to abide by the Constitution, for these are critical times for our nation. Our nation is under assault from within by radical ideologies.
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, to my Christian and Jewish readers respectively.
Wild Thing's comment........
Excellent article!!
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 03:45 AM | Comments (3)
December 16, 2009
Educating Obama....by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Once each year, it is appropriate for Americans no matter what faith, or if no faith at all, to pause and take stock of just who we are and how we got here. Except for slaves, both black and white who were forcibly brought to this nation or came as indentured servants the remainder of non-native Americans came voluntarily; in fact millions of illegal immigrants continue to beat the doors down to get in.
Whereas Obama may believe that by bowing to an assortment of world leaders; telling the Turks that America is not a Christian nation; telling the French that the U.S. is one of the largest Muslim nations in the world; and in spite of Obama’s self-flagellating apologies to the world for America’s failings which he evidently believes he can wipe out by kissing the fannies of tin horned dictators like Chavez, Castro, and the King of Saudi Arabia, in his recent speech at the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, he at long last got his head screwed on straight enough to inform the audience and world that America is not all bad and that America has actually done much to advance the cause of freedom and human rights.
Whether or not he meant the goods things he said about the U.S remains to be seen, at least he belatedly had something good to say about his own country, assuming that is, that he is actually an American. For this latter day revelation, he merits congratulations, and perhaps he is beginning to learn more about “God damn America” than he knew before he was elected. Perhaps he is belatedly beginning to learn that America is populated by millions of good-hearted, generous, hard-working people from all walks of life unlike the picture he had erroneously imagined, filled with 20 years of hate-America indoctrination by his vicious excuse for a pastor, the one to whom he proclaimed loyalty akin to his own family.
Lesson for Obama: America was founded by Christian men, received independence by the efforts and sacrifices of Christian men, made free by Christian men, advanced by Christian men and women, slaves freed by Christian men, Europe saved twice by largely Christian men, Civil Rights enacted by Christian men and developed the greatest economy in the world by Christian men and women on largely Christian principles.
To the extent that an evil, tyrannical minority comprised of anti-Christian forces in the Congress, media, education and religion have been allowed to dominate the wishes, rights and lives of the silent majority is about to change. When Obama promised “change,” he unwittingly did a good thing although it was likely not what he had in mind. He awakened millions of Americans to their Christian heritage and now those who would quash the Kingdom of God in this great nation, and that evidently includes Obama, unless of course he is a latter day convert are about to learn a lesson. To his credit, his Copenhagen speech is a small indication that there may be genuine “hope” to go along with his mantra of “change.”
One may oppose Obama politically and still pray that God would transform his mind from its dark and evil view as evidenced by those with whom he associates and surrounds himself, to the reality of America, warts and all, being the port in a storm, a beacon of light in a dark and dangerous world, the preeminent guardian of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
This is possible because Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God came, lived, taught, gave himself as a sacrifice, defeated Satan and arose in victory to make it possible.
Merry Christmas; and God save and Bless America!
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment..................
Excellent again by Col. Pappas. Semper Fi Col. and Merry Christmas to you.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 02:45 AM | Comments (3)
December 15, 2009
"Senator Reid prepares us for our second civil war" by Michael Moriarty
Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Michael also plays a heck of a jazz piano
From BIG Hollywood
This is a small portion of a comprehensive interview that originally appeared in the Irish Examiner back a month ago on Monday, November 24th, 2009. Mr. Moriarty, who now lives in Canada.
On GITMO what he thinks about it:
This judicial assault upon Guantanamo in a time of war that is still going on is approaching treason. Leave the suspects in Gitmo until the Islamic extremists cease and desist. Welcoming them into our country is suicidal … but then so is the entire Progressive Program for a New World Order.
His assessment of the Obama administration.
MM: Beyond a disaster!! In light of what Obama swore to at the inauguration – “to uphold the Constitution of the United States” – it’s a grotesque charade, a lie, a black comedy of immensely ominous implications for individual freedom in the world. Obviously Obama will be obliged to claim that at the inauguration the Chief Justice was putting words in his mouth! He never had any real obligation to uphold the silly principles contained in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights! All the President’s so-called plans and achievements are as forbidding as Chamberlain’s concessions at Munich. But, as we “Drunks” say, “Let go, let God!”
.
Michael's lastest writing.
Senator Reid prepares us for our second civil war
By Michael Moriarty
Contact Michael at
December 14, 2009
“Obstructing Obama Care is like obstructing the abolition of slavery!”
Are them fightin’ words, or what?!
And we, who want to “abolish” the tax-funded abortion contained in Obama Care, are the bad guys.
We are apparently the Confederate States challenging the authority of our President of the United States.
Of course, Obama is Abe Lincoln, women are enslaved by pregnancy and we are the rebels who keep them there, right?
That, at least, is how Senator Harry Reid is setting things up for this showdown at the Barack Obama … uh … B.O. Corral.
Isn’t there something rather wrong with this picture?
Possibly upside down?
Maybe I’m a foolish romantic, as many Progressives would label me, but saving someone’s life is almost as good or perhaps even more important than saving and protecting our fellow citizen’s freedom. If our neighbor is not even allowed to live, by virtue of abortion, it would be rather difficult … in fact rather insane … to protect that neighbor’s infancy and his or her right to soil his diapers.
Yes, I think this historically proven tradition in the United States, outlined in detail by our nation’s Declaration of Independence and its subsequent Constitution, plus the Bill of Rights, is the backbone of our resistance to the Progressive Agenda!
Our resistance to the Obama “Transformation of America” has the President’s sidekick, Senator Reid, preparing us all for a civil war … a possibility which the Obama Team has obviously been contemplating for some time.
Such a conflict would, of course, make the President, at least in our eyes, not Abraham Lincoln but rather Jefferson Davis, the President of the Southern Confederacy. The Progressive Movement’s demands for the expansion of legalized abortion into being subsidized by the Federal Government? That indeed resembles the Confederate South’s demands for the expansion of legalized slavery into the western states of America.
Since Barack Obama seems more interested in being the CEO of an increasingly insulated Czardom Inc. rather than the Executive presiding over Congress, the Supreme Court and the Justice Departments of America … the Obama Nation grows more like a Southern Confederacy everyday.
And Harry Reid wants to paint us as the bad guys, the Confederate Rebels.
Hmmm … in your dreams, Harry!
So far the President’s idea of “transparency” is the exact opposite of what most people might expect. In fact, most of what he seems intent upon forcing down America’s throat grows increasingly antithetical to what has always been typically American.
Can, indeed, the “moral high ground” be ours … and this Progressive Government dredging up a kind of Death Panel Dixie?
President Obama seems to be treating his entire tenure in office as a “teachable moment”.
From this lofty and professorial perch, the Progressive Faculty, however, has an increasingly rebellious student body which we most frequently call Americans. The lessons which the Obama Nation is determined to teach us are apparently not unlike the swiftly unraveling crises of Climategate.
There is something about Obama Urgency that rings increasingly hollow with each and every day.
“It must be done now!!”
We’re no longer so sure about that, Mr. President.
Senator Reid’s comparing Progressive Health Care to the abolition of slavery is a rather bizarre escalation of a political battle into the symbolism of our American Civil War. Are The Progressive Democrats trying to tell us something – that the seriousness of their intent has the lock ‘n load gravity of military combat?
If so, what will provoke the first shot on Fort Tea Party?
We’ve already seen over 100 shots fired at Fort Hood … but then again that is not an act of war. That’s the Obama Nation’s “Man Made Disaster!”
The President, however, doesn’t want us to “jump to conclusions”.
Will the Progressive Health Care Package’s possible failure in Congress, the absence of both tax-funded abortion and the Public Option, will that be a “Last Straw” for the White House?
Will such a debacle bode ill for the Cap and Trade legislation coming up?
Can the Progressive Agenda only be instituted under martial law?
Will the United Nations be called upon – like the Confederacy called upon the French – to provide troops to quell the Tea Party Protests?
An Obama/UN Alliance to make the repression look all so internationally agreed upon?
What is in the back of Senator Reid’s bellicose mind when he throws such Civil War coinage on the bargaining table?
Is the Progressive Coalition prepared for a civil war which the Senate Majority Leader has already warned us of?
Do the President and Senator Reid really believe that they hold the “moral high ground”?
Or does the Progressive Coalition, as I suspect, believe that morality is utterly irrelevant in the face of what they call “scientific necessity” … that urgent call to protect any and all Progress of Science, despite some of the growing inaccuracies found in the recent “findings” of Science?
To put it politely, “inaccurate” is my label for a Progressive Science that must re-coin a “Global Warming” into a “Global Change”.
What is increasingly transparent about the Obama administration is its narcissistic blindness, its insular and incestuous self-obsession.
The Opposition, the Republicans and a growing number of Independents in this instance, are protesting more loudly everyday.
Even Senator McCain is losing his usual diplomatic charm and allowing his temper to flare with each new and arrogant display of Progressive egomania.
As Glenn Beck and friends, such as Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government, throw more and more light upon the Obama Administration’s increasingly impenetrable transparency, the popularity and approval ratings for President Obama drop.
Though the military muscle the President put into his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech lifted his ratings a few points, his promise to “fundamentally change the United States of America” has made Harry Reid color blind. What he thinks of as the Blue of Yankee uniforms is actually the Grey of the Obama Nation’s increasingly desperate Confederacy.
A rag-tag gang of Czars and Far Left Rebels.
Mr. President, America is not even Czarist Russia, let alone the Nationalist China that your Czardom’s hero, Mao Tse Tung, murderously forced into his back pocket.
Harry Reid has warned us about just how serious you have been and will be regarding “Change” that obviously only you and your Czarist Democratic Party can believe in.
Harry Reid, more like Jefferson Davis than Abraham Lincoln, is ready for Civil War!
Therefore the first shot, in this instance, must be yours, Mr. President.
Fire it … and we fire back with impeachment, sir!
Wild Thing's comment.........
Michael is back!!! Loved reading this. Michael has been on our side since his run-ins with the Janet Reno tenure under Bill Clinton. Directed very strong statements against her , I believe, for WACO, and actually left the country.
Posted by Wild Thing at 02:48 AM | Comments (5)
December 11, 2009
Two Indisputable facts .... by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Two Indisputable facts
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Anyone who knows even a little about war understands that in most wars there is more than one front. When I hear politicians speak about two wars it tells me they are either stupid or are intentionally misleading people. That is true not only of politicians, but of the media in general, as well. On the other hand there were some, a pathetic few who get it right. The “War on Terror” was until the present cast of characters emerged, a multi-front, i.e. Africa, Asia, South America, Europe, a multi-faceted war with two main fronts, one in Afghanistan the other in Iraq. It is not, except among the partisan, intentionally ignorant, two wars.
Whether there is, or ever will be, agreement on how the war was waged until “Neville Obama,” is another thing. But it is useful to debunk the oft stated claims that “we were lied to about the reasons for invading Iraq.” This is a baseless allegation that is issued loudly and often by the left, most recently repeated by Ohio leftist Representative Dennis Kucinich.
One need not be enamored by the rationale used by the Bush Administration justifying invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam Hussein from power, to recognize that it was a brilliant strategic move. However, I was and remain disappointed in the post invasion handling of the occupation, less so of the transition to Iraqi sovereignty although there was much room for both to have been done better. It is one thing to disagree with the judgment and decision as to how to prosecute the War on Terror, and quite another to make allegations that are on their face, fabrications to suit the democrat political agenda.
It is evident from how the strategic portion of the war unfolded during the Bush years that the two most visible efforts, Afghanistan and Iraq, were designated major and minor, with the major effort being Iraq. Whether or not there is ever consensus on where the war should have been fought is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the people of Iraq are now free and for the first time in half a century in a position to determine their own destiny. More important, removing Saddam and his association of socialist thugs from power positioned U.S. forces to apply pressure on Iran.
As has often appears in these essays for the last eight years, bin Laden is dead, he was killed during the attacks on Tora Bora. The pathetic political nonsense spewed by Senator John Kerry and his lackeys that the Bush administration allowed bin Laden to walk unmolested into a Pakistani sanctuary is hogwash, no, it’s bovine scatology.
However, the administration probably knew that bin Laden was dead, as does this current one, a notion reinforced by a statement made during the waning months of the Bush Administration by Vice President Cheney to that effect; and for that reason among others the Administration chose make Iraq the main effort in the War on Terror. To the dismay of the loony left, it was successful, and that fact drives them nuttier. It is also evident from the way it was sourced that Afghanistan was a holding action.
Obama’s recent claim that requests for more troops for Afghanistan were denied during the Bush era is not borne out by available facts. In fact, Bush Administration, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld challenged Obama’s assertion, urging Congress to investigate as well as issuing a challenge to Obama to produce documents that would support his assertion. (Succinctly put, Obama lied about it, so what’s new for this “most transparent Administration in history?”) Whether or not the Bush Administration chose the best strategy will be political grist for decades.
However, here are two indisputable facts: 1. Democrats did everything possible in the public debate, to undermine the war effort; and, 2. the US was not attacked again during Bush’s two terms in office.
Now, Obama has announced his plan for Afghanistan. In stark contrast to his rhetoric during the election campaign, Afghanistan Hawk, Obama now comes across as a pansy. From reports, civilian leadership at the Pentagon and military leadership believe that the 30,000 troops plus the additional 10,000 Obama expects to receive from NATO will be sufficient to do the job.
However, it is evident that Obama’s strategy is designed to begin withdrawal of forces in time for Afghanistan to be off the table as a 2012 election campaign issue. Consider the fact that most of the forces will not be in place until the Spring of 2010, then overlay the mission of training sufficient Afghan forces to secure their own country from that point in time until the summer of 2011. There are too many tasks, they are too expensive and too demanding to get them all done, so we’ll see how it progresses. Hopefully, it will work but one has doubts.
Here’s my assessment: Afghanistan is and has been for centuries a loosely connected array of tribes scattered across some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth. There is no national transportation, communications, or security infrastructure. Outsiders have tried their hand at dominating Afghanistan for centuries, Afghanis remain, outsiders are gone or are dead.
There are probably a million tribesmen all of whom know how to fight on foot in the Afghanistani environment. Their interest in politics is sufficient to know that they want freedom from foreigners, aside from that they are more interested in eking out a living and procreating than what political party, or who is in power. When it comes to foreigners in their land, they put aside their disparate tribal interests to evict the “invader.” It matters little that a foreign force may not intend to stay, what matters is that there are foreigners in their country trying to control them.
Putin recently asserted that U.S. lead NATO forces cannot win in Afghanistan. That is probably a valid statement absent the will to remain there for a generation: a generation of teaching, hand-holding, butt kicking and expenditure of great treasure. Does Obama have the will? Judging from his speech the answer is, “No.” He is so far over his head that it’s pathetic to observe and scary when understood. Should we care? Obama asserted for the better part of his career in the Senate and during the campaign that Afghanistan is vital to U.S. security, so the answer should be, “Yes.”
But now that it’s put up or shut up time and Obama gave such a tepid speech that one can be sure the Taliban and al qaeda are shaking in their boots while waiting for the clock to run out. On the other hand, they may be so impressed with his ability to read a teleprompter that they will lay down their arms and assemble in peace. One thing is certain, it’s going to be interesting, there and at home.
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment............
Col. Pappas is so good, I like the way he breaks things down and attacks on each thing.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:40 AM | Comments (4)
December 01, 2009
“Thuggery” in the White House ~ by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
“Thuggery” in the White House
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
I am no expert on unions but like many have observed their inner workings off and on from my first job. Succinctly put, unions have been both a blessing and a bane. Whereas they have been at least peripherally responsible for improvement in safety, working conditions and wages, at the height of their public sector power they embraced “thuggery” and other less than civil practices to achieve their goals.
There is a plethora of material available showing connections between organized crime and the nation’s unions. And, to be fair, there is plenty of corruption to go around, whether unions, business or politics, but today is about unions. Think NEA, AFGE, SEIU, ACORN, AARP (yes, I know the difference between a union and an association) and others.
Unions grew, spread and combined until they became large enough to affect not only individual factories, but entire business organizations. Thus emerged national and international trade unions and along with them came labor legislation. In the U.S. union political clout was enough to result in the Department of Labor.
However, as with many well intentioned programs and ideas, unionization was not a panacea for the working class. As a teenager I worked as an assembly line technician in what eventually became the largest school bus manufacturing operation in the world; Blue Bird Body Company.
That was my first experience at observing union organizers first hand. The episode wasn’t anything grand, just that a nice guy working at the Fort Valley, Ga. plant was let go. Since I had met the “organizer” and liked him, and was fairly well acquainted with the owners, at the tender age of 18 I had the brass to inquire as to, why? The answer was short and direct, “he was a union organizer,” and that was the end of the conversation.
I let it pass without further ado but made note of the fact that at the time this “school boy” was making $1.10/hour and the work at Blue Bird was grueling and hot. School bus orders for the fall term had to be filled and school districts typically waited until the last minute to place them.
The workday began at 7 and ended at 5 six days a week, and from morning until evening a typical worker could lose as much as 15 pounds of body fluid. So what’s new? That was grist for a union organizer: schoolboys, $1.10/hour, long hours, and hard work. But it was a job and with my suite of qualifications at that stage of life I was fortunate to have it, although my vanity told me that I could be the CEO.
My next encounter with unions was as a quality control analyst, at Monsanto Company (Monsanto Chemical Co. in those days). There, two years after the Blue Bird experience, I made three times as much money and thought I had tapped the mother lode. Was there a union? Yes, but I was salaried and exempt from union membership. But on my second job I had no choice but to join the union if I wanted to work at Sears.
At the then “mature” age of 20, I learned that union contracts included union rules. Those rules negotiated over months, even years dripped with opportunities for abuse and union members didn’t hesitate to exploit them. One astonishing example involved abuse of overtime.
The essence of the rule was that if an employee was next on the overtime list and wasn’t contacted for whatever the reason, the company had to pay triple-time for that employee to sit at home. That was in addition to the overtime payment to the employee who had been contacted. The payment was referred to as “rocking chair.” Was the rule abused? Yes, often and with enthusiasm. Does it still happen? Yes.
Union contracts, rules, benefits and exorbitant pay increases often forced companies to seek refuge in other locations in the US, but relocation costs were high and fraught with legal battles. Consequently, in the mid 1960s companies began to close their doors and relocate their entire operations to foreign countries. The shoe industry was one of the first to go, textiles followed suit, and soon steel began an exodus. That was the incipient “global economy.”
Are unions all bad? Absolutely not! Labor history is replete with stories of worker abuse, underage labor, and squalid working conditions attributable to greedy owners; and to their eternal credit, unions were the force that changed that. Unfortunately for union members they missed one little fact, neither they nor the union were the owners of the businesses. In most cases, and at the “end of the day,” union power held such a strangle hold on many businesses that it became more advantageous to move manufacturing operations offshore. That story has been repeated thousands of times and continues.
Fast forward to 1990s, the Cold War was over and the global economy took off powered by a host of factors including among others, the World Trade Organization, North American Free Trade Agreement, the European Union, cheap labor in the third world and lack of Congressional intestinal fortitude. Result: industry in full flight, why? Less regulation, lower taxes, cheap labor and you got it, no unions. Manufacturing is becoming extinct in the USA due to a combination of unions and political leftists disguised as environmentalists, and etc.
Until President Nixon went to China as part of his initiative to bring an end to the Vietnam War, (and incidentally, doing so opened the door to explosive trade), most US companies were fleeing to Europe, Japan , Taiwan, or Indonesia. But pick up a cap, shirt, coat, in fact almost any product today, check to see where it is made and 9 times out of ten it will be some foreign country with Communist China dominating the list.
Union strikes, disruptions, and slowdowns, do nothing to retain jobs in the US. All of the foregoing are union tactics, it drives out business and can only damage the very people it is claimed to help, and the nation. That noted, businesses that abuse workers, and cheat customers and investors are every bit as blameworthy as are unions.
However, excessively taxing “business” has been a favorite hobby of Democrats for decades. Until the last general election, most socialists/Marxists-in-Democrat-clothing were careful to not reveal their true colors for fear that they might lose their elected post. However, with the advent of the Obama Administration and Democrat majority in both Houses of Congress, their masks have come off and we now observe them for what they really are.
Those so-called “progressives” are nothing more than socialists/Marxists. Those who want government to run everything are setting the stage for it to take away individual freedom, private property, freedom of expression in both speech, and if they had their way, worship. So far, they don’t have the cojones to go after the latter but they vigorously attack freedom of expression, most of it in the form of political correctness. All one has to do is listen and observe.
Obama and his merry band of socialists/Marxists are advancing the specter of union corruption (What else, he is from Chicago isn’t he?) on a grand scale. Obama’s strategy is to expand the role and power of unions with him as their Commander-in-Chief, along with his “Organizing for America,” and how about his call for a civilian security force:
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”
With that he would attempt to position himself as the Chavez or Castro of the United States, and in the process reduce it to the same third world status.
For those who claim that Obama doesn’t know what he is doing, get your head out of the sand. He knows and is doing it. Unless you want a US version of the Soviet Union with its gulags, 50 million dead and other niceties of socialist-Marxism, it’s time to bring his train to a stop.
Conservatives unite! Keep the pressure on your Representative and Senators, and spread the word! Then when it’s time to vote, vote for proven conservative patriots. We’ve all see the bumper stickers, “Take Our Country Back,” well, this time it’s for real.
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment.........
GREAT write up, thank you Col. Pappas. He is soooo good.
I love how there are such awesome people on our side, like all of you here at this blog big time!
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:45 AM | Comments (4)
November 30, 2009
"Travesty" by Charlie Daniels
I keep wondering how long the American people will continue to be blinded by the arrogance and dangerous incompetence of the Obama Administration. It's as if they have set out to destroy America and everything we stand for.
Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that some of the terrorists responsible for the attacks on 9/11, including mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will actually be brought to New York and given a civil trial, which is tantamount to insanity.
The implications of such a trial are so far reaching and potentially catastrophic as to be absolutely terrifying.
These will be nothing more than show trials with headline seeking defense lawyers given access to the CIA's innermost secrets and practices. Names will be named, methods will be exposed, intelligence networks destroyed and the result will be to render the CIA basically impotent and I guess that's what holder and Obama want.
If you believe what the liberal media puts out about the CIA, you would think they're only a bumbling bunch of jaded cloak and dagger has-beens who can't find their posterior with both hands.
Actually, the CIA is made up of the best and the brightest, dedicated people who stick their necks out in defense of this nation only to have it cut off by the Obama Administration.
What this is going to do to the morale and recruitment prospects of the CIA is immeasurable, will take decades to repair and in the meantime America will be more vulnerable than ever.
And is Obama so busy bowing to kings and emperors that he doesn't realize that the streets of New York could once again run red with the blood of innocent men, women and children if suicide bombers decide to intimidate the juries by blowing themselves up on the crowded streets of New York?
Think about this people, Obama is going to destroy America's premiere intelligence gathering agency, expose the people of New York to more terror bombings and send a message to the rest of the world that he is weak and soft on terror and more interested in pursuing his own ultra-liberal political agenda than he is in protecting the country he is sworn to protect.
How many foreign intelligence agencies do you think will be willing to share intelligence with America, knowing that a reckless and unrestrained attorney general and a weak and incompetent president are willing to expose them to the world.
Holder is no stranger to terrorist trials; his former law firm has defended a dozen or so Gitmo detainees, even while he was a senior partner.
And since we are granting constitutional rights to enemy combatants, it is possible that they can claim any information that was obtained through water boarding was coerced, and is inadmissible in court -since this administration has said that enhanced interrogation techniques are torture- and a jury might actually let them walk.
Now that's a terrifying thought.
These trials will corrode the infrastructure of America's ability to protect us, and further demonstrate to the rest of the world just what an unrealistic world the Obama Administration lives in.
Obama's vacillation on sending troops to Afghanistan shows the terrorist community that he is completely lost and in way over his head.
He has this flower child attitude that if we'll just be nice to the terrorist scum of this world they'll reciprocate by not destroying our country a piece at the time.
That is an incredibly dangerous mentality.
The Obama presidency will leave deep scars on this nation. He is destroying the economy. He is trying to destroy the best health care delivery system on the planet, he is destroying the intelligence infrastructure, he refuses to support the troops in Afghanistan, and he is going to bring Islamic fanatics to a prison in our homeland.
I've said this before and I'll say it again. I just don't know if America can survive an Obama presidency.
What do you think?
Pray for our troops, and for our country.
God Bless America,
Charlie Daniels
Wild Thing's comment........
Another good one from Charlie Daniels.
Posted by Wild Thing at 03:45 AM | Comments (9)
November 24, 2009
Houston, Hope and Change has Landed; and It’s Manchurian by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
Houston, Hope and Change has Landed; and It’s Manchurian
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
In 1776 Americans fought for independence from Great Britain, then again in 1812 to maintain that hard won independence and freedom. When the Confederacy broke away from the Union a devastating civil war erupted and at the end American slaves were freed in a crimson tide of blood, and expenditure of vast treasure. There were other wars, but that was the last direct challenge to freedom until the advent of the Soviet Union. From that time forward to today, there has been a constant struggle on the part of freedom loving people to maintain freedom in the face of diverse efforts by Marxists and other evil forces to undermine it around the world, and in particular, in the United States.
Upon each challenge Americans have united and prevailed, that is, until Islamic terrorists attacked the United States. At first Americans were united even against that evil, but it wasn’t long before the self loathers began a campaign to place the blame on the US rather than the ones who carried out the attack. With the passage of time, and consistent with their fundamentally hate-America attitude, the political left comprised of loony liberals and ideological Marxists turned their backs on freedom. They choose rather to tacitly support the enemy in the interest of advancing their radical leftist agenda for America. In Constitutional terms they are guilty of treason. (Nowadays one probably wonders what that, the “Constitution,” is.)
The Christian nature of mainstream American people in general gave rise to liberal politicians whose objectives were at first well intentioned and supported by the Christian ethic of charity and benevolence. Marxists, seeing an opportunity to take advantage of those traits began to infiltrate politics on both sides of the political divide for the purpose of gaining political control. Various pieces of legislation were enacted “for the people” but whose underlying intention was to expand the scope and power of politicians, in particular “liberal” (read, ideological socialist/Marxist) politicians. For too long Americans allowed the Federal Government to dominate issues and the economy; and although most politicians claimed to be against expansion of the authority of government, nearly all of them have been complicit in its expansion.
Then, the confluence of war, economic and government corruption, the economic crash of 2008, the precipitous decline of Christian ethos, the rise of America loathing politicians and the otherwise empty suited expert in teleprompter reading, glib tongue of a philosophical Marxist came together, and the “Manchurian Candidate” managed to eke out an election victory. Playing a salient role in that process was the full force of the major media that long before had been infiltrated and are now dominated by socialist/Marxist thought. The media combined forces with a major segment of the historically “left” entertainment industry and billionaire George Soros, Hungarian immigrant whose life goal has been to destroy free market America, worked together to become the infrastructure and provide resources as a virtual extension of the “Manchurian Candidate’s” election campaign.
Republican careerist politicians, more interested in their own political careers than doing what was right, played directly into Democrat hands often by being more liberal than were Democrats. (A recent example is Dede Scozzafava, of New York’s 23rd Congressional District, a so called, “Republican” who uniformly supports Obama’s policies.) In the 2008 elections voters shifted from liberal Republicans to Conservative (Blue Dog) Democrats. Unfortunately that gave ideological Marxist Democrats control over both Houses of Congress. Meanwhile conservatives, who comprise the majority in the Country were left without representation or leadership; and, the loony tunes with the Republican Party and the whackos in the media wonder why Sarah Palin has such appeal.
Realizing they could have their way (in every context) with the American people, latter day Marxists-in-Democrat clothing worked feverously with the newly elected “Manchurian,” (or is it “Indonesian,” or is it “Kenyan,”) oh, yes, “the first Pacific” President to enact legislation that was advertised to stimulate the economy but will have the effect of creating disastrous double digit inflation thereby squeezing middle Americans the more.
When asked, Obama said, “I want to spread the wealth around.” His methodology however, is aimed at destroying the strongest economy the world has ever known. Obama and his team are working overtime to replace the free market economy with virtual serfdom of which one more example is “Government run Health Care” legislation. This albatross is being railroaded through the Congress despite the wishes of the American people.
Does Obama care? Yes, of course he cares! It is his objective to “totally change America.” On top of the trillion dollar deficits he has already amassed, this would-be Messiah-of-the-poor is piling on additional trillions of future debt from which he intends for Americans to never recover; and, absent sending Obama and his “merry” Marxists packing he would succeed!
However, conservatives are the majority in this country and will not forget during the next election.
Hope and change? What Obama is rendering is Hope only for those who wish for bad things to happen to the US; and if fully consummated would be disastrous Change; but worse, evil will have triumphed without a shot being fired.
If conservatives feel uncomfortable now, wait until he tries to cram “Cap and Trade” and Amnesty for illegal immigrants down Americans’ throats! This present direction is the path to the ultimate tyranny of the minority!
The solution is in part to vote the Marxists Democrat-idiots and RINOs out; and, replace them with patriotic, conservative, nationalist Americans!
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment.........
Thank you Col. Pappas, another great write up. I am so glad he writes these, we are fortunate.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:40 AM | Comments (2)
November 20, 2009
Excused Horrors – by Walter Williams
Excused Horrors
by Walter Williams
Last Tuesday, I had the pleasurable task of being Master of Ceremonies for the Atlas Economic Research Foundation dinner in Washington, D.C., that celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Founded in 1981, the Atlas Foundation assists the formation of free market think tanks around the world to spread the ideas of personal liberty, private property rights and limited government. So far, they have been successful in at least 70 countries. Attending the two-day celebration were think-tank representatives from many of these countries, including those from Croatia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, South Korea, Russia and Brazil.
Alan Kors, University of Pennsylvania history professor, gave the evening's keynote address. What he revealed about the dereliction and character weakness of academics, intellectuals, media elites and politicians is by no means complimentary, but worse than that, dangerous. Professor Kors said that over the years, he has frequently asked students how many deaths were caused by Joseph Stalin and Mao Tsetung and their successors. Routinely, they gave numbers in the thousands. Kors says that's equivalent to saying the Nazis are responsible for the deaths of just a few hundred Jews. But here's the record: Nazis were responsible for the deaths of 20 million of their own people and those in nations they conquered. Between 1917 and 1983, Stalin and his successors murdered, or were otherwise responsible for the deaths of, 62 million of their own people. Between 1949 and 1987, Mao Tsetung and his successors were responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese.
Professor Kors asks why are the horrors of Nazism so well known and widely condemned, but not those of socialism and communism? For decades after World War II, people have hunted down and sought punishment for Nazi murderers. How much hunting down and seeking punishment for Stalinist and Maoist murderers? In Europe, especially Germany, hoisting the swastika-emblazoned Nazi flag is a crime. It's acceptable to hoist and march under a flag emblazoned with the former USSR's hammer and sickle. Even in the U.S., it's acceptable to praise mass murderers, as Anita Dunn, President Obama's communications director, did in a commencement address for St. Andrews Episcopal High School at Washington National Cathedral where she said Mao Tsetung was one of her heroes. Whether it's the academic community, the media elite or politicians, there is a great tolerance for the ideas of socialism -- a system that has caused more deaths and human misery than all other systems combined.
Academics, media elites and leftist politicians both in the U.S. and Europe protested the actions and military buildup of President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately the breakup of the Soviet Union. Recall the leftist hissy fit when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire and predicted that communism would wind up on the trash heap of history.
Professor Alan Kors did not say this but the reason why the world's leftists give the world's most horrible murderers a pass is because they sympathize with their socioeconomic goals, which include government ownership and/or control over the means of production. In the U.S., the call is for government control, through regulations, as opposed to ownership. Unfortunately, it matters little whether there is a Democratically or Republican-controlled Congress and White House; the march toward greater government control continues. It just happens at a quicker pace with Democrats in charge.
You say, "Come on, Williams, there will never be the kind of socialist oppression seen elsewhere here!" You might be right because Americans have become very compliant with unconstitutional and immoral congressional edicts. But what do you think would happen if some Americans began to rise up and heed Thomas Jefferson's admonition "Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." and decided to disobey unconstitutional congressional edicts?
Wild Thing's comment........
“...the reason why the world’s leftists give the world’s most horrible murderers a pass is because they sympathize with their socioeconomic goals, which include government ownership and/or control over the means of production.”
Absolutely correct. Brilliant.
And also the Left gives Islam a pass for similar reasons.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:47 AM | Comments (3)
November 18, 2009
Jihad and the Scandal of " Brain-Dead" Diversity by Mark Steyn
JIHAD AND THE SCANDAL OF “BRAIN-DEAD” DIVERSITY
by Mark Steyn
Shortly after 9/11, there was a lot of talk about how no one would ever hijack an American airliner ever again – not because of new security arrangements but because an alert citizenry was on the case: We were hip to their jive. The point appeared to be proved three months later on a US-bound Air France flight. The “Shoebomber” attempted to light his footwear, and the flight attendants and passengers pounced. As the more boorish commentators could not resist pointing out, even the French guys walloped him.
But the years go by, and the mood shifts. You didn’t have to be “alert” to spot Major Nidal Hasan. He’d spent most of the last half-decade walking around with a big neon sign on his head saying “JIHADIST. STAND WELL BACK”. But we (that’s to say, almost all of us; and certainly almost anyone who matters in national security and the broader political culture) are now reflexively conditioned to ignore the flashing neon sign. Like those apocryphal Victorian ladies discreetly draping the lasciviously curved legs of their pianos, if a glimpse of hard unpleasant reality peeps through we simply veil it in another layer of fluffy illusions.
Two joint terrorism task forces became aware almost a year ago that Major Hasan was in regular email contact with Anwar al-Awlaqi, the American-born but now Yemeni-based cleric who served as imam to three of the 9/11 hijackers and supports all-out holy war against the United States. But the expert analysts in the Pentagon determined that this lively correspondence was consistent with Major Hasan’s “research interests”, so there was no need to worry. That’s America: Technologically superior, money no object (not one but two “joint terrorism task forces” stumbled across him). Yet no action was taken.
On the other hand, who needs surveillance operations and intelligence budgets? Major Hasan was entirely upfront about who he was. He put it on his business card: “SOA.” As in “Soldier of Allah” – which seems a tad ungrateful to the American taxpayers who ponied up half a million bucks or thereabouts in elite medical school education to train him to be a Soldier of Uncle Sam. In a series of meetings during 2008, officials from both Walter Reed and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences considered the question of whether then Captain Hasan was psychotic. But, according to at least one bigwig at Walter Reed, members of the policy committee wondered “how would it look if we kick out one of the few Muslim residents”. So he got promoted to Major and shipped to Fort Hood.
And 13 men and women and an unborn baby are dead.
Well, like they say, it’s easy to be wise after the event. I’m not so sure. These days, it’s easier to be even more stupid after the event. “Apparently he tried to contact al Qaeda,” mused MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. “That’s not a crime to call up al Qaeda, is it? Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?” Interesting question: Where do you draw the line?
The truth is we’re not prepared to draw a line even after he’s gone ahead and committed mass murder. “What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy,” said General Casey, the US Army’s Chief of Staff, “but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.” A “greater tragedy” than 14 dead and dozens of wounded? Translating from the original brain-addled multicult-speak, the Army Chief of Staff is saying that the same fatuous prostration before marshmallow illusions that led to the “tragedy” must remain in place. If it leads to occasional mass murder, well, hopefully it can be held to what cynical British civil servants used to call, during the Northern Irish “Troubles”, “an acceptable level of violence”. Fourteen dead is evidently acceptable. A hundred and forty? Fourteen hundred? I guess we’ll find out.
“Diversity” is one of those words designed to absolve you of the need to think. Likewise, a belief in “multiculturalism” doesn’t require you to know anything at all about other cultures, just to feel generally warm and fluffy about them. Heading out from my hotel room the other day, I caught a glimpse of that 7-Eleven video showing Major Hasan wearing “Muslim” garb to buy a coffee on the morning of his murderous rampage. And it wasn’t until I was in the taxi cab that something odd struck me: He was an American of Arab descent. But he was wearing Pakistani dress – that’s to say, a “Punjabi suit”, as they call it in Britain, or the “shalwar kameez”, to give it its South Asian name. For all the hundreds of talking heads droning on about “diversity” across the TV networks, it was only Tarek Fatah, writing in The Ottawa Citizen, who pointed out that no Arab males wear this get-up – with one exception: Those Arab men who got the jihad fever and went to Afghanistan to sign on with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In other words, Major Hasan’s outfit symbolized the embrace of an explicit political identity entirely unconnected with his ethnic heritage.
Mr Fatah would seem to be a genuine “multiculturalist”: that’s to say, he’s attuned to often very subtle “diversities” between cultures. Whereas the professional multiculturalist sees the 7-Eleven video and coos, “Aw, look. He’s wearing … well, something exotic and colorful, let’s not get hung up on details. Celebrate diversity, right? Can we get him in the front row for the group shot? We may be eligible for a grant.”
The brain-addled “diversity” of General Casey will get some of us killed, and keep all of us cowed. In the days since the killings, the news reports have seemed increasingly like a satirical novel the author’s not quite deft enough to pull off, with bizarre new Catch 22s multiplying like the windmills of your mind: If you’re openly in favor of pouring boiling oil down the throats of infidels, then the Pentagon will put down your emails to foreign jihadists as mere confirmation of your long established “research interests”. If you’re psychotic, the Army will make you a psychiatrist for fear of provoking you. If you gun down a bunch of people, within an hour the FBI will state clearly that we can all relax, there’s no terrorism angle, because, in our over-credentialized society, it doesn’t count unless you’re found to be carrying Permit #57982BQ3a from the relevant State Board of Jihadist Licensing.
Ezra Levant, my comrade in a long battle to restore freedom of speech to Canada, likes to say that the Danish cartoons crisis may one day be seen as a more critical event than 9/11. Not, obviously, in the comparative death tolls but in what each revealed about the state of western civilization. After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up the Afghan camps; after the cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core western values for a quiet life. Watching the decadence and denial on display this last week, I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar light. What happened is not a “tragedy” but a national scandal, already fading from view.
Wild Thing's comment........
The truth is we’re not prepared to draw a line even after he’s gone ahead and committed mass murder.
Steyn again relates to his audience the perfect observance.
Diversity, coupled with "political correctness", will be the impetus that kills America. Steyn nails it, again. ““Diversity” is one of those words designed to absolve you of the need to think.
Three strangers strike up a conversation in the airport passenger lounge in Calgary , Alberta , while awaiting their respective flights.
One is a native Indian from the Sarcee Reserve; another is a cowboy on his way to Lethbridge for a livestock auction. The third passenger is a fundamentalist Arab student, newly arrived at the University of Calgary from the Middle East . Their discussion drifts to their diverse cultures. Soon, the two Albertans learn that the Arab is a devout, radical Muslim and the conversation falls into an uneasy lull.
The cowboy leans back in his chair, crosses his boots on a magazine table and tips his big sweat-stained hat forward over his face.
The wind outside is blowing tumble weeds around, and the old windsock is flapping, but still no plane comes.
To break the silence, the Indian clears his throat and softly speaks: “At one time here, my people were many, but sadly, now we are few.”
The Muslim student raises an eyebrow and leans forward:”Once my people were few, he sneers, “and now we are many. Why do you suppose that is?”
The Alberta cowboy shifts his toothpick to one side of his mouth and from the darkness beneath his Stetson says in a smooth drawl,
“That’s ‘cause we ain’t played Cowboys and Muslims yet .. . . but I do believe it’s a-comin’..”
....Thank you Jack for sending this to me.
United States Army
1965-1971
Army Combat Engineers
Quang Tri & Chu Lai '68 -'69
67-69
Jack's blog is Conservative Insurgent
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:47 AM | Comments (5)
November 15, 2009
September 10? It’s Worse Than That by Andrew c. McCarthy
.
September 10? It’s Worse Than That
by Andrew c. McCarthy
‘September 10 America.” The phrase signifies a reprise of the “terrorism is just a crime” mindset that reigned in the years before the 9/11 attacks. Like other observers, I’ve groused in recent months that we are back to that self-destructive ethos. I was wrong. If the Fort Hood atrocity tells us anything, it is that things are much worse than they were before 9/11.
For one thing, 9/11 has happened. Before it did, perhaps we had an excuse. But we’ve experienced the wages of consciously avoiding Islamism. To have retreated into puerile fantasies about a religion of peace is, at this juncture, unfathomable.
Fathom it, though, we must. In 2008, I wrote a book called Willful Blindness to describe government’s stubborn refusal to deal with the nature and magnitude of jihadism when it first emerged as a domestic threat in the early Nineties. For a long time, I’d resisted writing about the experience of prosecuting Muslim terrorists. I’m very proud of what we did, but the story is a painful one of warning signs missed and lives lost. Having lived it, I wasn’t anxious to relive it.
Yet, more than a decade after Muslim terrorists declared war on the United States by bombing the World Trade Center, we were still making the same errors, with wishful thinking about Islam still substituting for sober analysis. It seemed important to go back to the beginning, to explore why jihadism is a profound threat, why we’ve underestimated it, and why it is so perilous to treat a national-security challenge as if it were a mere legal problem. In a display of my own wishful thinking
Wrong again.
The word incomprehensible does not do justice to the FBI’s conclusion that jihadist saboteur Nidal Hasan’s numerous communications with jihadist imam Anwar al-Awlaki were either (a) not significant enough to warrant further investigation or (b) significant but immune from further investigation on First Amendment grounds.
The first possibility would not pass the laugh test if this were a laughing matter. Anonymous government officials have suggested that the substance of the conversations was innocuous. That remains to be seen — we can’t know until we learn exactly what was said, how it was acted on, who else may have been in the loop, and so on. But even if you buy the innocent-substance theory (I don’t), the occurrence of the communications — between an Islamist infiltrator in our armed forces and a known al-Qaeda recruiter who ministered to some of the 9/11 hijackers — could not be more significant. The mere circumstances were more than enough to turn up the investigative heat.
That’s so palpable that we must worry that about the second possibility: That the FBI and the Justice Department have convinced themselves that the Constitution really is a suicide pact — that a mainstream construction of Islam, calling for our demise as a free people, is somehow insulated from inquiry because we don’t want to confront the stubborn fact that Islamist terror is instigated by Islamic doctrine.
Journalism in the last week has been a feast of fables about Islam, libels about military culture, and gut-wrenching accounts of sorrow and heroism. But the most disturbing thing I’ve read is Ron Kessler’s Newsmax column. It addressed little not already known about the mass murder, but Ron has singularly good sources in the FBI. He provides a window into Bureau thinking that makes the mind reel.
Besides grossly low-balling the number of U.S. mosques that propagate Islamist ideology — the Feebs say it’s about 10 percent of 2,000 mosques; it’s actually about six to eight times that amount — a top FBI counterterrorism official told Kessler:
Those who actively support extremist causes, say America is evil and deserves what it gets, and celebrate the death of soldiers, know they may come to our attention. So they don’t do it as openly now . . . . There was much more of that [before 9/11] because all of it was considered by Justice Department guidelines to be purely protected speech. We do not have incitement laws in America, but once an imam facilitates someone else taking action, he has crossed the line into material support and becomes our business.
Where to begin? Almost 17 years ago, after the Trade Center was bombed, the Justice Department did not believe a Muslim cleric had to “cross the line into material support” before he became the FBI’s business. Indeed, there were no “material support” laws until 1996. In 1995, as detailed in Willful Blindness, I led the team that convicted Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh.” In essence, we prosecuted him for inciting terrorism — the thing the senior official tells Kessler isn’t a crime. Specifically, the Blind Sheikh was convicted of (among other things) soliciting an attack against a U.S. military installation (like Hasan just committed) and soliciting the murder of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
Solicitation is still a federal crime — and there’s no requirement that the incitement actually lead to a terrorist act. Moreover, even before anyone in America ever heard of al-Qaeda — even before there was a 9/11, or bombings of Khobar Towers, the U.S. embassies in eastern Africa, and the U.S.S. Cole — some of us realized that terrorists fueled by viscerally anti-American Islamist ideology, were at war with the United States. And guess what? There’s a statute for that, too: The Civil War–era seditious-conspiracy law makes the waging of such a terror campaign a 20-year felony. And there’s no carve-out for imams.
How was the Blind Sheikh convicted? By presenting to the jury his fiery sermons and private meetings with the faithful, often in mosques where he urged barbarous strikes against America, swaddled in accurate quotations of the Koran and other Muslim scripture. Of course, he claimed that such exhortations were protected speech. That is, he made exactly the same arguments the Islamist Left has spent the last eight years beating into the country, including into the Justice Department and the FBI. But back in 1995, those arguments were seen for the nonsense that they were.
There is no bar to the use of speech as evidence. The First Amendment generally prohibits the criminalization of speech itself — i.e., the act of communicating. But settled law holds that when prosecutors use your speech to prove crimes, there is no First Amendment violation. When the mafia boss tells the button-man “Whack him!” he doesn't get to lodge a First Amendment objection to the introduction of that statement at his murder trial. He’s not being tried for saying “Whack him!” He’s being tried for murder. The statement is evidence.
Nor does the principle change just because the speech happens to implicate religion. In America, you can believe whatever you want, but your actions must be lawful. Not surprisingly, the Blind Sheikh contended that his incitements to terror were beyond prosecution because he was practicing his religion: Specifically, he claimed he had simply been performing the traditional role of an Islamic cleric called on to determine whether proposed courses of conduct (in this instance, mass-murder plots) were permissible under Islamic law. Fourteen years ago, that contention was properly seen as frivolous. In America, we are not under sharia law — not yet. There is no religious exception for violent acts, conspiracies, and incitements to violence that violate American law.
So what has happened? Why did we know these rudimentary, commonsense principles in the Nineties but not now? Because incitement explodes the government’s “religion of peace” narrative. The incitement to Islamist terror is Islamic scripture. The Blind Shiekh was not a hypnotist or a particularly compelling speaker. His authority over terrorist organizations was rooted exclusively in his acknowledged mastery of sharia. Islamic scripture was the source of his power over Muslims.
To concede this would be to concede the obvious but unspeakable fact that there is a nexus between Islam and terror. That would harpoon the lovey-dovey dream that Islam and Western democracy are perfectly compatible. It would upset Muslims — especially the well-organized, deep-pocketed Islamic grievance industry. Today’s hip, progressive FBI, like Gen. George Casey’s modern, slavishly “diverse” military, doesn’t want to upset Muslims. Besides souring State Department cocktail parties and drying up funding for presidential libraries, upsetting Muslims would put a damper on our government’s lavish “Islamic outreach” efforts. These initiatives are premised on the delusion that we’ll stop more terror by having unindicted co-conspirators like CAIR teach Islamic “sensitivity” to our agents than by turning our agents loose to investigate CAIR and its ilk.
So the FBI ignores the significance of a terrorist cleric’s influence over an unabashed Islamist in our midst. After all, their contacts seemed to be religious in nature. We’re told, moreover, that we can’t do anything about the anti-American vitriol oozing out of Islamist mosques under the guidance of our friends the Saudis. After all, the vitriol hasn’t yet “crossed the line into material support.” By the time it does, you might have 13 corpses to tend to, but at least there will be lots to talk about at the next outreach conference — or the next time the attorney general decides to speak at a CAIR-fest.
The post-9/11 era was supposed to be about knocking down walls that obstructed effective counterterrorism. But behold the new wall, more insidious than its suicidal Nineties forerunner: the arbitrary barrier separating terrorism from “protected” incitement — the cagey, generalized, non-specific jihadist rhetoric that is the Islamist cleric’s stock-in-trade. Aside from not being required by law, this new wall will usually mean you can't go after the worst actors (the Islamic authorities and the terrorists they inspire) until after an attack has happened and Americans have been killed.
In other words, be prepared for more Fort Hoods. We’re not in September 10 America. We’ve managed to land in a much more dangerous place.
Wild Thing's comment.......
WOW! Excellent article!
Interesting remark made at the end of this piece about Eric Holder having spoken at the CAIR conference.
Can’t help but wonder if his decision to try Khalid Sheik Muhammad in civil court wasn’t the handiwork of CAIR . These are truly sickening times.
Islam should not be allowed in the United States. It advocates the violent overthrow of the government.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:48 AM | Comments (4)
November 10, 2009
Call This Horror By Its Name: Islamist Terror by Ralph Peters
Fox News Analyst: Fort Hood Suspect 'A Protected Species'
Call this horror by its name: Islamist terror
On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting, "Allahu akbar!" ("God is great!") committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.
What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Fort Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of nondenominational shoplifting.
This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it's an act of terror. Period.
When the terrorist posts anti-American hate speech on the Web; apparently praises suicide bombers and uses his own name; loudly criticizes US policies; argues (as a psychiatrist, no less) with his military patients over the worth of their sacrifices; refuses, in the name of Islam, to be photographed with female colleagues; lists his nationality as "Palestinian" in a Muslim spouse-matching program and parades around central Texas in a fundamentalist playsuit -- well, it only seems fair to call this terrorist an "Islamist terrorist."
But the president won't. Despite his promise to get to all the facts. Because there's no such thing as "Islamist terrorism" in ObamaWorld.
And the Army won't. Because its senior leaders are so sick with political correctness that pandering to America haters is safer than calling terrorism "terrorism." And the media won't. Because they have more interest in the shooter than in our troops -- despite their crocodile tears.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan planned this terrorist attack and executed it in cold blood. The resulting massacre was the first tragedy. The second was that he wasn't killed on the spot.
Hasan survived. Now the rest of us will have to foot his massive medical bills. Activist lawyers will get involved, claiming "harassment" drove him temporarily insane. There'll be no end of trial delays. At best, taxpayer dollars will fund his prison lifestyle for decades to come, since our politically correct Army leadership wouldn't dare pursue or carry out the death penalty. Maj. Hasan will be a hero to Islamist terrorists abroad and their sympathizers here. While US Muslim organizations decry his acts publicly, Hasan will be praised privately. And he'll have the last laugh. But Hasan isn't the sole guilty party. The US Army's unforgivable political correctness is also to blame for the casualties at Fort Hood.
Given the myriad warning signs, it's appalling that no action was taken against a man apparently known to praise suicide bombers and openly damn US policy. But no officer in his chain of command, either at Walter Reed Army Medical Center or at Fort Hood, had the guts to take meaningful action against a dysfunctional soldier and an incompetent doctor.
Had Hasan been a Lutheran or a Methodist, he would've been gone with the simoom. But officers fear charges of discrimination when faced with misconduct among protected minorities. Now 12 soldiers and a security guard lie dead. At least 38 people were wounded, 28 of them seriously. If heads don't roll in this maggot's chain of command, the Army will have shamed itself beyond moral redemption.
There's another important issue, too. How could the Army allow an obviously incompetent and dysfunctional psychiatrist to treat our troubled soldiers returning from war? An Islamist wacko is counseled for arguing with veterans who've been assigned to his care? And he's not removed from duty? What planet does the Army live on? For the first time since I joined the Army in 1976, I'm ashamed of its dereliction of duty. The chain of command protected a budding terrorist who was waving one red flag after another. Because it was safer for careers than doing something about him.
Get ready for the apologias. We've already heard from the terrorist's family that "he's a good American." In their world, maybe he is.
But when do we, the American public, knock off the PC nonsense? A disgruntled Muslim soldier murdered his officers way back in 2003, in Kuwait, on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Recently? An American mullah shoots it out with the feds in Detroit. A Muslim fanatic attacks an Arkansas recruiting station. A Muslim media owner, after playing the peace card, beheads his wife. A Muslim father runs over his daughter because she's becoming too Westernized.
Muslim terrorist wannabes are busted again and again. And we're assured that "Islam's a religion of peace."
I guarantee you that the Obama administration's nonresponse to the Fort Hood attack will mock the memory of our dead.
Wild Thing's comment.........
Good article by Ralph Peters.
If Obama continues to refuse to recognize this for what it was, it's a open door for more to come. Why WOULDN'T more terrorists strike if all they have to do is position themselves and kill. Our country is doomed if everyone insists on burying their heads in the sand. How pathetic.
......Thank you SSGT Steve
SSgt Steve
1st MarDiv, H Co., 2nd Bn, 5th Marine Regiment
2/5 Marines, Motto: "Retreat, Hell"
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:48 AM | Comments (4)
Shooter Exposes Hole in U.S. Terror Strategy by Mark Steyn
Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
By Mark Steyn
Thirteen dead and 28 wounded would be a bad day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan and a great victory for the Taliban. When it happens in Texas, in the heart of the biggest military base in the nation, at a processing center for soldiers either returning from or deploying to combat overseas, it is not merely a "tragedy" (as too many people called it) but a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since 9/11, the "war on terror." Brave soldiers trained to hunt down and kill America's enemy abroad were killed in the safety and security of home by, in essence, the same enemy — a man who believes in and supports everything the enemy does.
And he's a U.S. Army major.
And his superior officers and other authorities knew about his beliefs but seemed to think it was just a bit of harmless multicultural diversity — as if believing that "the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor" (i.e., his fellow American soldiers) and writing Internet paeans to the "noble" "heroism" of suicide bombers and, indeed, objectively supporting the other side in an active war is to be regarded as just some kind of alternative lifestyle that adds to the general vibrancy of the base.
When it emerged early Thursday afternoon that the shooter was Nidal Malik Hasan, there appeared shortly thereafter on Twitter a flurry of posts with the striking formulation: "Please judge Maj. Malik Nadal [sic]by his actions and not by his name."
Concerned tweeters can relax: There was never really any danger of that — and not just in the sense that the New York Times' first report on Maj. Hasan never mentioned the words "Muslim" or "Islam," or that ABC's Martha Raddatz's only observation on his name was that "as for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer's wife told me, 'I wish his name was Smith.'"
What a strange reaction. I suppose what she means is that, if his name were Smith, we could all retreat back into the same comforting illusions that allowed the bureaucracy to advance Nidal Malik Hasan to major and into the heart of Fort Hood while ignoring everything that mattered about the essence of this man.
Since 9/11, we have, as the Twitterers, recommend, judged people by their actions — flying planes into skyscrapers, blowing themselves up in Bali nightclubs or London Tube trains, planting IEDs by the roadside in Baghdad or Tikrit. And on the whole we're effective at responding with action of our own.
But we're scrupulously nonjudgmental about the ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy. We use rhetorical conveniences like "radical Islam" or, if that seems a wee bit Islamophobic, just plain old "radical extremism." But we never make any effort to delineate the line which separates "radical Islam" from nonradical Islam. Indeed, we go to great lengths to make it even fuzzier. And somewhere in that woozy blur the pathologies of a Nidal Malik Hasan incubate. An Army psychiatrist, Maj. Hasan is an American, born and raised, who graduated from Virginia Tech and then received his doctorate from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. But he opposed America's actions in the Middle East and Afghanistan and made approving remarks about jihadists on U.S. soil. "You need to lock it up, Major," said his superior officer, Col. Terry Lee.
But he didn't really need to "lock it up" at all. He could pretty much say anything he liked, and if any "red flags" were raised they were quickly mothballed. Lots of people are "anti-war." Some of them are objectively on the other side — that's to say, they encourage and support attacks on American troops and civilians. But not many of those in that latter category are U.S. Army majors. Or so one would hope.
Yet why be surprised? Azad Ali, a man who approvingly quotes such observations as "If I saw an American or British man wearing a soldier's uniform inside Iraq I would kill him because that is my obligation" is an adviser to Britain's Crown Prosecution Service (the equivalent of U.S. attorneys). In Toronto this week, the brave ex-Muslim Nonie Darwish mentioned that, on flying from the U.S. to Canada, she was questioned at length about the purpose of her visit by an apparently Muslim border official. When she revealed that she was giving a speech about Islamic law, he rebuked her: "We are not to question Shariah."
That's the guy manning the airport security desk.
In the New York Times, Maria Newman touched on Hasan's faith only obliquely: "He was single, according to the records, and he listed no religious preference." Thank goodness for that, eh? A neighbor in Texas says the major had "Allah" and "another word" pinned up in Arabic on his door. "Akbar" maybe? On Thursday morning he is said to have passed out copies of the Quran to his neighbors. He shouted in Arabic as he fired.
But don't worry: As the FBI spokesman assured us in nothing flat, there's no terrorism angle.
That's true, in a very narrow sense: Maj. Hasan is not a card-carrying member of the Texas branch of al-Qaida reporting to a control officer in Yemen or Waziristan. If he were, things would be a lot easier. But the same pathologies that drive al-Qaida beat within Maj. Hasan, too, and in the end his Islamic impulses trumped his expensive Western education, his psychiatric training, his military discipline — his entire American identity.
What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best-trained, best-equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that's the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in Texas.
Wild Thing's comment..........
Steyn is one of the great ones.
The Ft. Hood massacre was indeed terrorism, born by a Muslim. Regardless of what Obama may say, this was indeed a Muslim terrorist who shot over 40 people. He knew exactly what he was doing, and I’m sure has no remorse.
Those soldiers were killed or maimed and injured precisely because of their roles as defenders of US freedoms and upholders of the US Constitution.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:44 AM | Comments (2)
November 07, 2009
Muslim in Sheep's Clothing by Col Pappas
Muslim in Sheep's Clothing
by Col Pappas
Those watching events at Fort Hood have come face to face with the reality of Islamic jihad in America. No doubt excuses will explode with every possible defense of the indefensible, they tell us that Hasan was a patriotic American who because of harassment by some in the Army was forced to kill a dozen unsuspecting soldiers; and was therefore justified in his evil behavior. Those idiots are as evil and full of hatred as “terrorist” Hasan is. Patriotic?! Barbra Streisand! About as patriotic as Jane Fonda and John Kerry.
It should come as no surprise that arguments of that ilk will emanate from the political left. All the while Obama tries to spin it as GW Bush's fault, notwithstanding it was likely his “dithering” about Afghanistan that pushed Hasan over the top, one way or the other.
If memory serves one correctly, and it should, Obama apologized to the world for America's vigorous defense of itself. In that context, Hasan's expectations were evidently elevated to unrealistic heights and he subsequently felt betrayed that Muslim apologist and sympathizer Obama had not followed through on timely delivery of his oft stated pledge to immediately withdraw U.S. forces from the Republic of Iraq, to ostensibly focus on the “overseas contingency operation” in Afghanistan. A major but never mentioned issue for Islamists is the presence of foreign infidels in their “holy” lands. It was for that reason that the late (in my opinion) Osama bin Laden and his “friendly” band of jihadists opened the “holy” war against the “infidel,” “the great Satan” in the first place. Hasan is merely one of Osama’s mindless lemmings, and Obama a sympathizer, given Obama’s naturally spoken, “Muslim faith.”
Obama's “dithering” as it has been put, should come as no surprise given that he is likely stalling until after he receives the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to announce his decision, which incidentally may or may not be to increase force levels in Afghanistan. Consider this: how would it come across for Obama to commit additional forces to Afghanistan shortly before or at the same time he steps up to ‘kiss the rings” of the blithering idiots who awarded him the Prize?
In baseball parlance, Hasan’s was American jihadists' “strike one” in the “Ubeturass,” World Series
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment......
"Islamic jihad in America."......that is exactly what it was at Fort Hood. There should be more people forinstance in the media saying this.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:40 AM | Comments (2)
November 06, 2009
A Warning To All Americans by Naval Aviator, Commander Jerry Wilson
From Naval Aviator, Commander Jerry Wilson
We lived in California during the winters of 2007 and 2008. We became addicted to Fox News and watched O'Reilly and Hannity and Colmes every night. When we got back home, we upgraded our cable to get Fox. I watched the Presidential campaign very closely. Initially because I thought the Democrats would nominate Hillary Clinton and then in astonishment when they chose an even more hard-left candidate. All of last year I told everyone I could that Obama was not a Democrat, he was a Marxist. He is far to the left of any European leader and even our far left party, the NDP.
I read Saul Alinsky when I was in University. I studied him and his writing carefully. When Bill Ayers and his idiot wife were bombing and killing people at random in the Weather Underground. Weather Underground and the Black Panthers were closely allied. I read David Horowitz's account of changing from a Marxist to a conservative after seeing that the government was afraid to prosecute members of the Panthers for murdering his personal assistant. He suddenly understood the evil that Marxism really was.
After the student radicals failed in creating a Marxist revolution in the United States by violent means, they embraced Alinsky. You would be wise to read "Rules for Radicals" because it outlines how Hillary and Obama planned to get into power, and what they intended to do when they got it.
Socialism is not the correct descriptor for what Obama and the Democrats are doing. They are going to be much more far reaching than anything Sweden has ever been able to do. Obama is following Alinsky's plans, those set out in "Rules for Radicals" and his other writing. The Democrats are attempting to create one party rule in the U.S. and in achieving that, will create crisis after crisis by their own actions and use those crisis to nationalize the means of production in the U.S. You are in the middle of a communist revolution and few in the U.S. . can actually see it for what it truly is.
The U..S. is now on the path of financial destruction. The Constitution has been shredded and individual human rights are being trampled. In less than 8 months Obama has used a recession to take over the two largest industries in the U.S. He will debase the Dollar and is on the road to creating an incredible energy shortage that will allow him and Congress to take over the energy industry.
But by and large I think that by the 2010 elections, the Democrats will have gerrymandered electoral districts to the point that it will be impossible for them to lose control of both houses of Congress. The incredible increase in the money supply is going to create Zimbabwe and Venezuela style inflation, and with it, controls on the currency and the amount of money that can be taken out of the country.
I love America , I cannot believe how the ignorance of the American public has created a situation whereby they are going to lose their Republic and slip into an age of repression and tyranny.
I may be nuts, but so far I have been 100% in my predictions of what Obama was going to do, because I merely had to look at "Rules for Radicals" to see what was coming next.
I read Glenn Beck's book, "Common Sense" and in it re-read Thomas Paines pamphlet with the same name. I recommend the book.
When the storm finally hits (and it will), those of you who supported the Obama administration will be affected as well. It won't just be us gun owners or Flat-Taxers, or Pro-Lifers that get hit. You'll be right there next to us.
You all thought the Conservatives were nut cases. You know, all of us who believe in God, small government, the Second Amendment, etc. You thought you could just go back to sleep after the election was over. In your world, America will continue as before. You'll still have the same rights, the same nice house, the same big screen television. After all, your high school football team won and the other team lost - go team! Even if you have bothered to look up from the daily grind since Nov 4th, you dismissed everything that has occurred as "politics as usual-the same old stuff".
In the end, it'll all be OK won't it? Not this time.
There are a growing number of citizens in the US that are ready to fight to shut down the government's grab of personal freedom, it's blatant abuse of the constitution, and it's attempt to replace the American way of life with socialism. You have to listen carefully to hear them, but they are there. I won't start that fight, but when it goes down I will join it.
As for you, why, you'll be shocked because you didn't see it coming. And eventually you'll be saddened when you see that we have truly lost the way of life with which you grew up. You'll be saddened that your children and grandchildren live in a socialist, government-controlled gulag where their every movement from cradle to grave is tracked by the government. But most of all, you'll be saddened by the death of friends and relatives who are brave enough to fight and die for something they believe in.
You know, McCain wasn't much of a candidate. I'll give you that. He was the lesser of two evils for most of us. I don't blame you for not voting for him since, at the time, you didn't know what we all know now. But at least John McCain was an American. He was a supporter of the American way of life and he understood that you can't negotiate with terrorists. He understood and appreciated the sacrifice made by my father and other members of the Greatest Generation.
Mark my words friends. All across America groups are forming. They are forming out of anger and out of desperation at the thought of losing America .
They're not militia groups, terrorists as the Department of Homeland security would have you believe; they are Americans, loyal to the constitution. They are mothers and fathers and grandparents. They belong to groups like the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, the Peaceful Resistance, the Constitution Party, the Young Conservatives, the 9/12 Project, and Grassfire. Right now they are fragmented, each focused on their own cause.
But sometime in the next two years, our government is going to do something really stupid and these groups will come together. Watch for it, wait for it-get ready. It will happen.
When that event happens, whatever "it" is, our great country is going to plunge into chaos for a while.. I pray to God that we make it through that time and emerge a stronger, smarter country.
Naval Aviator, Commander
Jerry Wilson
Live Free or Die Fighting
Wild Thing's comment.......
We saw it so clearly that we couldn't believe that the rest of America couldn't see it too. And still there are so many blind to what is going on . don't understand is why people couldn't see it in these people before they voted for him and his buddies?? It was so evident that it was like a red flag waving before a bull.
Obama's every action has been to destroy the free market and republican principles of this nation. His every foreign policy move has weakened us.
It is his intent...it is all part of his fundamental change. He is a marxist ideologue and he, his adherants, and his handlers mean to destroy American as we have known it.
....Thank you Horace for sending this to me.
Horace
U.S.Army
Horace Smith, Pvt. E-1, USAR
1956-1964
Posted by Wild Thing at 03:40 AM | Comments (3)
October 24, 2009
Our Constitution is on Life Support
Our Constitution is on Life Support
by Mark Alexander
"Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." --Benjamin Franklin
That wise old sage, Ben Franklin, was prescient back in 1748, when he issued his simple Rx for success. Unfortunately, the wealth and wisdom of generations of Americans have been progressively supplanted by our central government's exercise of unconstitutional authority.
In regard to wealth, I refer most directly to our government's colossal spending and debt accumulation, and unlawful taxation.
As to wisdom, well, there's not much of that emerging from government-run school systems.
Having already depleted the wealth and wisdom of our great nation, the Obama juggernaut is determined to do likewise to health, that third prong of Franklin's trident. If successful, then we may rightly fear it as a deathblow to the greatest experiment in human history.
Where is Doctor Franklin when we really need him?
Simpletons across the United States and, indeed, the world, are beguiled by the Democrat health scare cacophony. While so much has been said, so too has so little. And, as we approach the seemingly inevitable passage of some such diabolical legislation, almost to a citizen everyone is screaming, "Stop the world, I want to get off!" Indeed, only elitist Democrats are charging full-steam ahead, constituents be damned.
Intentionally lost in all this noise is the Leftist tactic of drowning its opposition in waves of excessive and ever-changing health care minutia. With the devil being so well hidden in the details, this ensures that we remain distracted while Rule of Law is further usurped by the rule of man.
As Patriots, we are summoned to slice through this diversionary blather. And, to obtain proper analysis of this overarching objective, we must seek guidance from our founding documents, the Constitution of the United States of America and its superordinate document, the Declaration of Independence.
In a search of the Constitution, we find that the words "health," "medicine" or "medical" are mentioned -- drum roll please -- not even once: not within the original text, nor within 220 years of amendments. (A search of the Articles of Confederation yields similar results.)
To some, this exclusion indicates that the Founding Fathers were unconcerned about the health of their countrymen. But, supporters of this argument expose their condescension, and it is here mentioned to disabuse them of their disdain. For our Founding Fathers sacrificed so greatly for the birth of our nation -- in both blood and treasure -- that to posit such indifference does a great and grotesque disservice to their honor and their memory.
To others, this exclusion indicates that health care was mercifully omitted since medical care of the 1700s was so "primitive" that the cure often caused more harm than the ailment. They further argue that, given the foresight of modern medicine, our Founders would have surely incorporated universal health care within the Constitution. But, supporters of this argument expose their arrogance, and it is here mentioned to disabuse them of their haughtiness. For the medicine of our Founding Fathers was actually advanced in its day, just as the U.S. medicine of today is advanced, and just as tomorrow it will be thought primitive. This, of course, assumes that we successfully restore Rule of Law.
Alas, we discern seemingly little counsel from the Constitution.
And, as we turn to the Declaration, a search for the words "health," "medicine" or "medical" once more yields exactly zero results. Furthermore, the itemized grievances therein make nary a hint concerning health, even considering the "primitive" conditions discussed above.
Alack, we also discern seemingly little counsel from the Declaration.
However, neither do the Constitution nor the Declaration counsel us with direct verbiage concerning agriculture, textiles, construction and the whole raft of goods and services upon which those everyday necessities of food, clothing and shelter are stationed.
But, the Declaration does aver that all men are created equal, not of outcome but of opportunity; that they are endowed with the right to Life, not a guaranteed good life, not a guaranteed healthy life, but life with all of its miraculous potential; that they are endowed with a right to Liberty, the fusion of freedom and personal responsibility; and that they are endowed with a right to the pursuit of Happiness, the eclectic amalgamation of hopes and dreams and desires and necessities as defined by each individual -- not by faceless, nameless bureaucrats.
Furthermore, the Constitution's Preamble declares that its purpose is to establish Justice, the even-handed application of law to all citizens; to insure domestic Tranquility, the exclusion of class warfare; to promote (not provide) the general Welfare; and to secure the blessings of Liberty, there again, the fusion of freedom with personal responsibility.
So, our founding documents do guide us to proper health care legislation: for it is that which encompasses equality and liberty for consumers and providers alike; that which promotes life above death panels; that which encourages the medical hopes and dreams as defined by each individual; that which constrains, not magnifies, class warfare; and that which secures "the blessings of Liberty, to ourselves and our Posterity."
Anything more than this is an affront to constitutional order and Rule of Law. As Thomas Jefferson so keenly observed: "Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." And, it takes little thought, or even imagination, to extend his estimation to the current health care debate.
The bottom line is that Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution, which addresses powers of the legislature, never endowed Congress with authority to regulate or collect taxes for banking, mortgage or automaker bailouts. Neither does it present authority for them to subsidize production or service sectors such as health care. Indeed, James Madison wrote, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..."
Sadly, not one Democrat bill addresses "health care" so much as it seeks omnipotent centralized government power and control, the currency of the Left. However, the proposals certainly betray the Left's condescension and contempt for Rule of Law, along with their frontal assault upon our Essential Liberty.
Patriot Readers, the U.S. Constitution is on life support. To prevent it from flat-lining, we must exude high dudgeon, we must slice through the Left's onslaught of minutia, and we must surgically endeavor with our every thought and deed to restore a healthy Rule of Law.
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Wild Thing's comment..........
Great column by Mark Alexander. I hope there is some way to stop this madness of this husseincare bill. The courts or someone has got to.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:49 AM | Comments (8)
October 07, 2009
Hypocrisy Of The Radical Left-A Call To Action by By Dr. Alan Bates, M D.
Hypocrisy Of The Radical Left-A Call To Action
How could a radical minority be elected by Americans to run our government particularly when that minority embodies values which are the antithesis of our founding documents and their emphasis on personal liberty? Most Americans value honesty, integrity, and self-sufficiency, and care not one whet about controlling others' lives. But that is hardly the case with the Far Left which has reached critical mass in Congress and the Administration.
There are two reasons for this.
The first is that those of us who hold our religious beliefs, morality, integrity and hard work as our guiding principles have been relatively silent and non-confrontational, with the belief that since our values represent those of the majority and are protected by the Constitution, that it is virtually impossible to see those who loathe such values elected to government positions and then move to take away our freedoms which were hard-won two centuries ago and defended in several worldwide conflicts. THAT is complacency!
Just as significant is the harsh reality that the values of the majority which made America a nation of dreams and opportunities have been increasingly challenged by individuals and groups who are opportunists in a perverse sense, waiting to take advantage of others through the development of various mechanisms of control. These consist of indoctination of the poor and uneducated, as well as redevelopment of school curricula which is (no longer not so subtly) designed to indocrinate our children so that they will submit to the far Left agenda as adults. Why have math, science and reading test scores of American children fallen behind those of other industrialized nations over the past two decades? For the Left this is all about CONTROL of others through destruction of capitalism and its incentives for personal success which have empowered America to become the strongest nation economically and militarily bar none
I cannot recall during my lifetime seeing our government dominated by those so at odds with the long-held values of the American majority. But after spending decades dumbing down our schools and gaining the support of the poor and uneducated largely through control of the major media, the Monster has taken control in Washington. Their hidden agenda is more obvious as each day passes.
For those of you who 'figured things would work out' and have looked the other way, your complacency in the face of insidious radicalism now permits these threats to your personal freedoms which are being systematcially attacked through very organized efforts at both the governmental and non- governmental levels. Witness the Democratic leadership threatening to force upon Americans unwanted and destructive government-controlled healthcare and energy legislation via 'reconciliation' (what a misnomer!). Witness the huge number of powerful 'czars' created by Obama without Congressional oversight, most of them former revolutionaries or off-the-wall weirdos with a personal agenda. Witness the Administration's naïve approach in dealing with Iran and the Taliban.
Witness the Attorney General playing a game of double jeopardy with CIA operatives who were already exonerated after investigations into 'torture' of captured terrorists. Witness the ACLU seeking to destroy religious expression in all public venues. And the list goes on.
Even after the Left's failed social engineering programs designed for redistribution of wealth through the mortgage markets led to the worst economic and financial collapse since the Great Depression, and even with the struggling Social Security and Medicare programs on the brink of failure because of their bloated bureaucracy and systematic looting of the Social Security "Trust Fund" for pork-barrel spending projects---yes, even after all this the Left presents us with unconvincing and hollow excuses buttressed by outright lies as to why we should allow them to overhaul and control the nation's entire healthcare system and our energy utilization.
Most of us know these issues would be best resolved and funded OUTSIDE the federal government as Conservatives have proposed. But the Congressional leadership is so dishonest that it will not so much as acknowledge the Republicans' affordable proposals through private sector intiatives as it 'interferes' with the their carefully orchestrated plans to ulimately control every part of our personal lives.
The time is NOW that believers in freedom, honesty, hard work, and charity stand up to the misrepresentations and lies of the Far Left and their abuse of powers which are not even sanctioned by our founding documents. Americans who have scoffed at conspiracy theories (including myself), or simply looked the other way, must now be vigilant and take every opportunity available to restore our government 'for the people and by the people' or we will very soon find ourselves as subjects of a tyrannical government.
The 2010 elections are critical, but until then we must increase our support for those Congressmen and media outlets which stand by our principles and boycott the rest. Are you willing to take a stand to save our children from the tyranny which opportunistically and insidiously waits in the wings?
Wild Thing's comment.......
Excellent article by Dr. Bates.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:40 AM | Comments (3)
September 30, 2009
Netanyahu’s Quiet Success by Daniel Pipes
Netanyahu’s Quiet Success – by Daniel Pipes
Almost unnoticed, Binyamin Netanyahu won a major victory last week when Barack Obama backed down on a signature policy initiative. This about-face suggests that U.S.-Israel relations are no longer headed for the disaster I have been fearing.
Four months ago, the new U.S. administration unveiled a policy that suddenly placed great emphasis on stopping the growth in Israeli “settlements.” (A term I dislike but use here for brevity’s sake.) Surprisingly, American officials wanted to stop not just residential building for Israelis in the West Bank but also in eastern Jerusalem, a territory legally part of Israel for nearly thirty years.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched the initiative on May 27, announcing that the president of the United States “wants to see a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions,” adding for good measure, “And we intend to press that point.” On June 4, Obama weighed in: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. … It is time for these settlements to stop.” A day later, he reiterated that “settlements are an impediment to peace.” On June 17, Clinton repeated: “We want to see a stop to the settlements.” And so on, in a relentless beat.
Focusing on settlements had the inadvertent but predictable effect of instantly impeding diplomatic progress. A delighted Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority responded to U.S. demands on Israel by sitting back and declaring that “The Americans are the leaders of the world. … I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements.” Never mind that Abbas personally had negotiated with six Israeli prime ministers since 1992, each time without an offer to stop building settlements: why should he now demand less than Obama?
In Israel, Obama’s diktat prompted a massive popular swing away from him and toward Netanyahu. Further, Netanyahu’s offer of even temporary limitations on settlement growth in the West Bank prompted a rebellion within his Likud Party, led by the up-and-coming Danny Danon.
Poster showing Barak Obama in Arab headdress, seen in downtown Jerusalem on June 14, 2009.
The geniuses of the Obama administration eventually discerned that this double hardening of positions was dooming their naïve, hubristic plan to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict within two years. The One’s reconciliation with reality became public on Sept. 22 at a “summit” he sponsored with Abbas and Netanyahu (really, a glorified photo opportunity). Obama threw in the towel there, boasting that “we have made progress” toward settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and offering as one indication that Israelis “have discussed important steps to restrain settlement activity.”
Those eight words of muted praise for Netanyahu’s minimal concessions have major implications:
■Settlements no longer dominate U.S.-Israel relations but have reverted back to their usual irritating but secondary role.
■Abbas, who keeps insisting on a settlement freeze as though nothing has chaed, suddenly finds himself the odd man out in the triangle.
■The center-left faction of the Obama administration (which argues for working with Jerusalem), as my colleague Steven J. Rosen notes, has defeated the far-left faction (which wants to squeeze the Jewish state).
Ironically, Obama supporters have generally recognized his failure while critics have tended to miss it. A Washington Post editorial referred to the Obama administration’s “miscalculations” and Jonathan Freedland, a Guardian columnist, noted that “Obama’s friends worry that he has lost face in a region where face matters.”
In contrast, Obama critics focused on his announcing, just one day after the mock summit, that “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements” – a formulaic reiteration of long-established policy that in no way undoes the concession on settlements. Some of those I admire most missed the good news: John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, stated that Obama “put Israel on the chopping block,” while critics within the Likud Party accused Netanyahu of having “prematurely celebrated” an American policy shift. Not so. Policy winds can always change, but last week’s capitulation to reality has the hallmarks of a lasting course correction.
I have repeatedly expressed deep worries about Obama’s policy versus Israel, so when good news does occur (and this is the second time of late), it deserves recognition and celebration. Hats off to Bibi – may he have further successes in nudging U.S. policy onto the right track.
Next on the agenda: the Middle East’s central issue, namely, Iran’s nuclear buildup.
Wild Thing's comment.........
BiBi Netanyahu is a good man and he loves his country. This is an excellent article by Daniel Pipes.
Obama better chill out on his demands to BiBi. I am so fed up with Obama threatening anyone that does not do what he wants or speaks the truth about him.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:45 AM | Comments (2)
Where History Gets Weird
Where History Gets Weird
By Mark Butterworth
Barack and Michelle Obama find themselves in an odd psychological trap with Bill Ayers. It finally appears that Jack Cashill's landmark work in exposing the real authorship of Barack Obama's books, has found corroboration in "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage," by Christopher Andersen.
The weight and plausibility of Cashill's findings of similarity between Ayer's writing and Obama's first autobiography were substantial, but now appears confirmed by Andersen.
Cashill quotes Andersen: With the deadline pressing, Michelle recommended that Barack seek advice from "his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers."
To flesh out his family history, Obama had taped interviews with various family members. Andersen writes, "These oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers."
This brings up a curious and odd psychological situation for the Obamas. They have become rich through the work of the white Ayers. Work that Barack Obama could never have succeeded at alone.
In fact, any study of B. Obama's own writing (what little there is), his speeches, and his extemporaneous manner of speaking demonstrate a singular lack of originality in expression, analogy, analysis, precision, concision, metaphor, and figurative language. Obama is hopelessly dull in prose and gassy in speech.
His second book, The Audacity of Hope, better illustrates Obama's tin ear, verbosity, pomposity, and dullness than the Ayer's penned Dreams From My Father, based as it is on his unfocused and platitudinous speeches.
There are meta-ironies wedged into the fact of Obama's wealth from the sale of his first book for he and Michelle.
Let's take Michelle first.
James Lewis noted in 2008: ". . . Barack and Michelle seem to suffer from real feelings of inferiority. Michelle is a Princess of Privilege -- Princeton University, Harvard Law School and her 300K job today. And yet, she tells us that she spent years feeling bad about being black in America, as she told the world in her undergraduate thesis, at the very time when blacks are moving ahead faster than ever before in human history."
Michelle wrote in her thesis introduction, "My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before," and that "I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich (sic) I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second."
At best, she prophesied for herself a marginal future - "further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant."
She has proven to be resentful over the fact that her accomplishments have come through affirmative action and not merit as when told in high school she wouldn't qualify for an Ivy League college because her test scores weren't high enough, and later had trouble with the Illinois bar exam.
A lot of colleges like Princeton also do a bang up job of making sure that minority students (who have included Obama and Sotomayor) never bond early on with whites students by holding separate orientation sessions for them, thus further encouraging any sense of alienation and separateness they feel.
All of Michelle's adult achievements have come through whites. The Ivy League colleges, the law firm she worked at, and then the University of Chicago. The same is true for Barack.
As for Barack, he is half-white and raised as a relatively privileged white boy except for his time in Indonesia when he was bullied for being culturally different and black .
Culturally, though, Barack is white. He learned to think, observe, speak, and imagine life through white culture and family. His life story is the unrelenting quest to purge all that whiteness from himself that he might assume the mantle of his coal black father, and ascend to lead his "people" (the oppressed) to freedom and prosperity out of the hateful clutches of the White Man.
The way for Barack to escape the problem of thinking "white" was to adopt Marxism as a way out of his dilemma: a black who'd been raised white. He now saw the world in purely class and racial terms.
Yet, everything he is and became depended on whites. His privileged education, his community work, his law firm and professorship - all provided by whites.
And Bill Ayers, whose help in Obama's adult life remains hidden to a large extent, has nonetheless been critical. Especially for the money conscious Michelle who complained $600 from a tax rebate to folks was only good enough for a decent pair of earrings, and spends $540 for a pair of fashionable sneakers (or kicks).
"You're getting $600. What can you do with that? Not to be ungrateful or anything. . . And then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings."
The Obamas, both of them, have been accused of being racists. Barack for his Marxist sentiments and worldview, his association with the vicious Rev. Wright ("white people's greed runs a world in need" which he wholeheartedly endorsed vuia 20 years' regular attendance), the remark of his grandmother being "a typical white person", comments in his books, "that's just how white folks' will do ya", and his classic explanation to a group of rich, elite whites how their low class brethren in Pennsylvania are "bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment".
But, some will say, the Obamas are surrounded by whites, they have white friends, they've always worked and played with whites. They can't be racists.
Liberals think that white racists, KKKers must hate all blacks. That's not how it works. A person can very much like, enjoy, work with individuals of other races without any difficulty, but find collective fault or general dislike for another race as a whole.
Barack gives Bill Ayers and the other whites of his circle a pass because they have transcended membership in an evil class of people by despising their own race as much as people from other races and cultures do. Marxists and liberals deracinate themselves in the eyes of people like the Obamas; just as people like Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Junior, Louis Armstrong, and numerous other blacks seemed deracinated and non-threatening to whites throughout the 50's and 60's.
Barack likes individual whites like David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and so on, but he is filled with rage at whites in general for all that went wrong with his childhood, his abandonment by his father, and so forth; whereas Michelle was raised with a chip on her shoulder in white-run Chicago, marinated in the resentments and attitudes of Jesse Jackson and his ilk to blame everything wrong with blacks on slavery and unrelenting, ever oppressive racism of whitey.
Many critics of Obama have observed that the narcissistic Barack appears to be a compulsive liar. Part of that pathology, though, appears to be his ability to convince himself of things that never were.
He loves to repeat his life story in hopes of inspiring others how he was abandoned by his father at the age of two and managed to become President of the United States. Which is no mean achievement. Yet, the facts are that after his birth, his mother never lived with Barack Sr. again. Instead, his mother moved with their newborn baby a mere fifteen days after his birth to Seattle to go to school there.
Barack never knew his father at all. Not even as an infant or toddler.
Granted that his story of abandonment at age two is sad enough that it hardly needs embellishment, still, we see a crumb of pathos in that additional, fictional amount of time that says, "I did know my dad a little for a tiny little while." Kind of like, "we at least had Hawaii for a brief time together."
But he didn't even have that.
So here we have Barack -- raised by whites, protected and privileged by whites, guided by whites, funded by whites, managed by whites, and finally, elected by whites. And someone who has turned all his inner rage into a diatribe against the society of whites and its free markets, liberties, government, culture, traditions, and beliefs.
And we have Michelle, affirmed by whites, promoted by whites, enriched by whites, and angry that all her success came, not from her own community, but as spoils from condescending whites, liberal guilt and noblesse oblige to less brilliant "coloreds" such as herself.
Think of what they owe Bill Ayers and the trust they've placed in him. He could spill the beans of what he's done for them at any time, but he won't. Obama is his Manchurian Candidate, his Trojan horse, his Quisling for Marxism and the ruin of white America.
But Obama can't destroy America anymore than Wilson, FDR, Jimmy Carter could. He can damage it, but never transform it, which means Obama fails, retires to private life like Jimmy Carter. He can certainly enrich himself as an ex-President as Bill Clinton has done, but underneath it all there lingers the sub-conscious knowledge for he and Michelle that it all began with a lie, unearned wealth, and white privilege.
This is history being weird.
Wild Thing's comment........
Good article about Obama and Michelle, the implications are mind boggling.
Obama has done NOTHING in his ‘career’ other than be a minority. He brings nothing himself to the table. Obama never had to “adopt” Marxism-—he was in essence a red diaper baby who heard a steady stream of anti-American and anti-capitalist opprobrium from Gramps Dunham, Frank Davis, and Mommy Dearest, Stanley Ann.
He gravitated to the radicals and Marxists in school because he was just like them from the get-go. In fact, he could have given them lessons about how rotten capitalism was.
And, of course, Trinity UNC was just one more stop on the radical Marxist highway. The stuff Wright preached was standard fare for Barack Obama ...it was what he knew and what he has always believed.
Think of what they owe Bill Ayers and the trust they’ve placed in him. He could spill the beans of what he’s done for them at any time, but he won’t. Obama is his Manchurian Candidate, his Trojan horse, his Quisling for Marxism and the ruin of white America.
"But Obama can't destroy America anymore than Wilson, FDR, Jimmy Carter could. He can damage it, but never transform it, which means Obama fails, retires to private life like Jimmy Carter."
This at the end is the only thing I disagree with. Obama is dangerous much more then the others they are listed in the statement. He has done more in less then a year to mess with our Constitution then the others did and he has only begun. But the rest of the article is excellent.
......Thank you RAC for sending this to me.
RAC has a website that is awesome. 336th Assault Helicopter Company
13th Combat Aviation Battalion - 1st Aviation Brigade - Soc Trang, Republic of Vietnam
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:40 AM | Comments (4)
September 29, 2009
An Enfeebled Obama by Caroline B. Glick
By Caroline B. Glick
If Zbigniew Brzezinski had his way, the US would go to war against Israel to defend Iran's nuclear installations. In an interview with the Daily Beast website last weekend, the man who served as former President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor said, "They IAF fighter jets] have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? We have to be serious about denying them that right. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not."
Brzezinski has long distinguished himself as one of the most outspoken Israel haters in polite circles in Washington. Under normal circumstances, his remarks could be laughed off as the ravings of a garden variety anti-Semite. But these are not normal circumstances. Brzezinski served as a senior foreign policy advisor to President Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign, and his views are not terribly out of place among Obama's senior advisors in the White House. In an interview in 2002, Samantha Powers, who serves as a senior member of Obama's national security council, effectively called for the US to invade Israel in support of the Palestinians.
The fact of the matter is that Brzezinski's view is in line with the general disposition of Obama's foreign policy. Since entering office, Obama has struck a hard line position against Israel while adopting a soft, even apologetic line toward Iran and its allies.
For eight months, Obama has sought to force Israel to the wall. He has loudly and repeatedly ordered the Netanyahu government to prevent all private and public construction for Jews in Israel's capital city and its heartland in order to facilitate the eventual mass expulsion of Jews from both areas which he believes ought to become part of a Jew-free Palestinian state.
Until this week, Obama conditioned the resumption of negotiations towards peace between Israel and the Palestinians on such a prohibition of Jewish building and so encouraged Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas to further radicalize his positions towards Israel. Until Obama came around Abbas had no problem negotiating with Israeli leaders while Jews were building homes and schools and other structures in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. But with Obama requiring a freeze of all such construction, Abbas made clear in an interview with the Washington Post in May that he couldn't talk to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu without looking like a sellout.
At the same time, Obama made no equivalent demands of the Palestinians. He did not precondition talks on freezing illegal Arab construction in Jerusalem, or dismantling the Aksa Martyrs terrorist group, or even simply on setting aside the Palestinian demand that Israel release convicted terrorists from its prisons. To the contrary, he has energetically supported the establishment of a Palestinian unity government between Fatah and Hamas - which the US State Department has since 1995 designated as a foreign terrorist organization to which US citizens, including the US President are required by law to give no quarter.
As for Iran, during his meeting with Netanyahu in May, Obama gave the clear impression that the Iranian regime had until September to accept his offer to negotiate the disposition of its nuclear installations. But it is now September, and in its belated response to Obama's generous offer of engagement, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime rejected the terms of Obama's engagement out of hand. Obama did not retaliate by taking his offer to negotiate off the table or - perish at the thought - working to implement the sanctions he pledged would follow an Iranian rejection of his open hand. Instead, Obama announced that he is sending a senior US official to meet with the Iranians on October 1. And with that announcement, any residual doubt that Obama is willing to live in a world in which Iran is armed with nuclear weaponry dissipated completely.
In the meantime, in his address to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday and in his remarks at his meeting with Netanyahu and Abbas on Tuesday, Obama made clear that, in the words of former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, he has "put Israel on the chopping block." He referred to Israeli communities located beyond the 1949 armistice lines as "illegitimate." Moreover, Obama explained that Israel can no longer expect US support for its security if it doesn't bow to his demand that it surrender all of the land it has controlled since 1967.
Apparently it is immaterial to the US leader that if Israel fulfilled his demand, the Jewish state would render itself defenseless against enemy attack and so embolden its neighbors to invade. That is, it matters not to Obama that were Israel to fulfill his demand, the prospect of an Arab war against Israel would rise steeply. The fact that Obama made these deeply antagonistic statements about Israel at the UN in itself exposes his hostility towards the country. The UN's institutional hostility towards Israel is surpassed only by that of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
So given Obama's positions towards Israel on the one hand and Iran and its allies on the other, it seems clear enough that the logical endpoint of Obama's policies would look something like Brzezinski's recommended course of action. Moreover, Obama's foreign policy as a whole makes it fairly easy to imagine him ordering the US military to open hostilities against a US ally to defend a US adversary - even as that adversary goes out of its way to humiliate Obama personally and the US in general.
Since Obama took office, he has been abandoning one US ally after another while seeking to curry favor with one US adversary after another. At every turn, America's allies - from Israel to Honduras, to Columbia, South Korea, and Japan to Poland and the Czech Republic - have reacted with disbelief and horror to his treachery. And at every turn, America's adversaries - from Iran to Venezuela to North Korea and Russia - have responded with derision and contempt to his seemingly obsessive attempts to appease them.
The horror Obama has instilled in America's friends and the contempt he has evoked from its enemies have not caused him to change course. The fact that his policies throughout the world have already failed to bring a change in the so-called international community's treatment of the US has not led him to reconsider those policies. As many Western Europeans have begun to openly acknowledge, the man they once likened to the messiah is nothing but a politician — and a weak, bungling one at that. Even Britain's Economist is laughing at him. But Obama is unmoved by any of this, and as his speech at the UN General Assembly made clear, he is moving full speed ahead in his plans to subordinate US foreign policy to the UN.
Obama's stubborn insistence on advancing his feckless foreign policy in the face of its already apparent colossal failure is of a piece with his unswerving commitment to his domestic agenda in spite of its apparent colossal failure. Obama's economic stimulus package failed to stimulate the US economy and increased the US's economic deficit to heights undreamed of by his predecessors. His nationalization of major US corporations like General Motors, his cash-for-clunkers program to stimulate the US auto industry and his massive encroachments on the banking and financial industries have done nothing to increase economic growth in the US and indeed, unemployment has reached generational highs. And yet, rather than reconsider his belief in vastly expanding the size of the federal government's control over the private sector, Obama has insistently pushed for further governmental control over the US economy - most notably in his drive to transform the US health care industry.
Both Obama's supporters and his opponents have claimed that his presidency may well stand or fall on his ability to pass a health care reform law in the coming months. But the fact of the matter is that if he succeeds in passing such a law, his success will be a Pyrrhic victory because Obama has promised that his plan will do the impossible, and therefore it will unquestionably fail. Obama has promised that the health care plan he supports will increase access to health services and improve their quality, but simultaneously will not increase the size of the federal deficit or be funded with tax hikes - and this is impossible. Obama's health care plan will fail either to pass into law, or if it becomes law, it will fail to live up to his promises.
Obama's failures in both foreign and domestic policy have weakened him politically. His response to this newfound weakness has been to put himself into the public eye seemingly around the clock.
Apparently the thinking behind the move is that while Obama's policies are unpopular, Obama's personal popularity remains high, so if he personalizes his policies, it will become more difficult for his opponents to argue against them.
But alasm this policy too has failed. The more Obama exposes himself, the less he is able to leverage his personal celebrity into political power.
The question for the US's spurned allies in general -- and for Israel in particular — is whether we are better off with a politically strong Obama or a politically weak Obama. Given that the general thrust of his foreign policy is detrimental to our interests, America's allies are best served by a weak Obama. Already this week Israel benefitted from his weakness. It was Obama's weakness that dictated his need to stage a photo-op with Netanyahu and Abbas at the UN. And it was this need — to be seen as doing something productive — that outweighed Obama's desire to put the screws on Israel by preconditioning talks with a freeze on Jewish construction. So Obama was forced to relent at least temporarily and Netanyahu won his first round against Obama.
During a television interview this week Senator John McCain was asked for his opinion of Brzezinski's recommendation that the US shoot down IAF jets en route to Iran in a hypothetical Israeli airstrike against Iran's nuclear installations. He responded with derisive laughter. And indeed, the notion that the US would go to war against Israel to protect Iran's nuclear installations is laughably absurd.
The weaker Obama becomes politically, the more readily Democrats and liberal reporters alike will acknowledge that attacking US allies while scraping and bowing before US foes is a ridiculous strategy for foreign affairs. Certainly no self-proclaimed realist can defend a policy based on denuding the US of its power and forsaking a US-based international system for one dictated by its foes.
It is true that a weakened Obama will seek to win cheap points by putting the squeeze on Israel. But it is also true that the weaker Obama becomes, the less capable he will be of carrying through on his bullying threats against Israel and against fellow democracies around the world.
Brzezinski: Shoot Down Israeli Planes If They Attack Iran
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who enthusiastically campaigned for U.S. President Barack Obama, has called on the president to shoot down Israeli planes if they attack Iran. “
"They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?” said the former national security advisor to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in an interview with the Daily Beast. Brzezinski, who served in the Carter administration from 1977 to 1981, is currently a professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Maryland.
“We have to be serious about denying them that right,” he said. “If they fly over, you go up and confront them.
His enthusiasm for President Obama has waned in the past several months. He recently told a London-based newspaper that the United States may be "sliding into a deeper conflict with various segments of the world of Islam ” because of the president’s failure to carry out his promises to the Muslim world.
Brzezinski said the Obama administration is "diddling around" in trying to reach an “evasive compromise” between Israel and the Arab world.
Wild Thing's comment........
Israel should drop this Brzezinski out of a plane along with bombs when they bomb Iran.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:40 AM | Comments (1)
September 27, 2009
"'Too Big to Fail?" by Mark Alexander
'Too Big to Fail?
by Mark Alexander
"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington
"An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself... A murderer is less to fear." --Marcus Tullius Cicero
As reported two weeks ago in *The Patriot Post* (and practically nowhere else), Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking review of the legality of the Obama-forced bankruptcy of Chrysler, LLC.
Mourdock is petitioning the Court to rule on Barack Obama's blatant disregard of the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, which explicitly authorizes Congress, and *not* the president, to determine bankruptcy laws. In particular, Mourdock is challenging the president's unashamed indifference to more than 220 years of bankruptcy precedent, which puts senior, or secured, creditors ahead of junior, or unsecured, creditors during bankruptcy proceedings.
With regard to the latter, BO unilaterally declared a 55 percent ownership stake for the UAW, a junior creditor, and he donated a 20 percent ownership stake to non-creditor and non-investor Italian automobile maker Fiat, which was also given options for an additional 15 percent. (Fiat exchanged not even one penny for its ownership stake or options, and the jury is still out as to the politics behind that unsavory deal.)
Adding insult to injury, BO announced that he would bestow senior creditors only 29 cents on the dollar for their bond holdings. From the onset of this fiasco, the largest senior creditors, representing $6.6 billion, calculated Chrysler's value to be at least 90 cents on the dollar. Other private and public senior creditors, representing $300 million, along with private analysts, concurred. Even Chrysler itself argued that it was worth more than 29 cents per dollar.
But, when BO and his Treasury thugs held firm, everyone prepared to do battle in bankruptcy court. Then, one morning, the largest senior creditors withdrew their opposition. In an act of cowardice, California and Michigan public funds decided to play along with Obama's scheme, so as not to jeopardize potential federal bailout moneys.
Only Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock, fiduciary of three relatively small Indiana public funds ($45 million total invested in Chrysler bonds), stood firm.
During the discovery phase, under threats and intimidation from the "tolerant" Left, Mourdock documented how the largest senior creditors had changed position because Obama officials had assured them overnight, Chicago-style, that they were "too big to fail," and that their substantial losses as Chrysler bondholders would be recovered through other government programs.
While a stay to prevent the Obama-forced bankruptcy was eventually rejected by the full Supreme Court, no ruling was ever made based upon the legal merits of the case. Hence, the appeal.
Of course, this is not the only instance where BO (and George W. Bush before him) has, with a Democrat-controlled Congress, used the "too big to fail" ploy. Banking, investing, insurance and mutual funds are other economic sectors that have also been usurped over the last 12 months by Big Brother.
While each of these events, in and of itself, has been devastating to our liberty and our pursuit of happiness, they have been mere tactics in an end-game strategy -- that of engendering Democrats themselves as too big to fail.
Obama's disregard of the Constitution is also evident in his naming of some 30 so-called czars, policy coordinators who usurp even Democrat-controlled congressional constitutional authority, bypassing the budgetary responsibilities of the House of Representatives and the advice-and-consent responsibilities of the Senate.
With Leftist Democrats in control of the House and with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (and an occasionally traitorous Republican), Democrats are ramming through legislation unwanted by the American public (Card Check, Cap-and-Tax, government-run health care). In addition, they are stonewalling certain investigations and pursuing others so as to suit their immediate political needs.
More egregiously, Leftist Democrats are surreptitiously scheming to legalize 30 million illegal aliens and to force same-day voter registration across the country, thereby allowing them to convert these freshly minted "citizens" into millions of new Democrat votes.
Another dire consequence of this veto-proof Senate majority is that Democrats are packing our courts with "living Constitution" judges. Unlike Democrat hero Franklin D. Roosevelt's efforts to pack the Supreme Court directly, this modern Democrat tactic seeks to stock the appellate court level. After all, little attention is paid to appellate nominees, and appellate courts can be altered more stealthily than can the Supreme Court.
Significantly, packing the appellate level furnishes Democrats with a layer of insulation between their election-stealing shenanigans and the Supreme Court. If, for example, informed and patriotic voters were able to file suit over a rigged election (quite challenging and expensive, in and of itself), these "living documenters" could stymie or accelerate appeals, depending upon which rulings would support the desired outcome.
The fulcrum of this too-big-to-fail strategy is Obama's coercion of his own party members, especially those vulnerable in the 2010 elections. First, consider the frustration and outrage displayed during the August congressional recess. Then, consider Democrat incumbents' disdain and mockery of constituents who dared to challenge their Leftist agenda. Under "normal" circumstances, the prognosis for such an incumbent would be very dark. Alas, these are not normal days.
Be it by persuasion or coercion, every vulnerable Democrat is being forced to march in Leftist lock-step, to walk the plank on each and every piece of legislation, and, ultimately, to vote in favor of immigrant legalization and same-day voter registration to garner the ensuing millions of voters.
Couple these tactics and advantages with ACORN's illegal get-out-the-vote efforts, BO's hundreds of millions in campaign fund dollars, and the Democrat shakedown of industries and companies around the world, and the 2010 Democrat congressional candidates would appear to be positioned as "too big to fail."
Team Obama, however, lacks one major element in their nefarious conniving -- the truth. Indeed, it is their brazen lying, half-truths and obfuscations, which have awakened the sleeping giant of American Patriotism.
We are a generous and tolerant nation, the greatest in the history of mankind. We have freed other nations and peoples from tyrannies and oppressions, and we have done so at great cost of our blood and treasure. But, we have reached the limit with Obamanism, this nascent American Communism.
While *The Patriot Post's* motto, Veritas Vos Liberabit, takes its inspiration from John 8:32, "The truth shall set you free," as Ronald Reagan noted, "There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right."
And, Edmund Burke once noted, "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."
George Washington urged, "We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times."
Are Obama and his Democrat minions too big to fail? I say, emphatically, NO! Indeed, they already are failures.
Still, there is much to be done to save our Republic. To paraphrase Thomas Paine, freedom is being hunted, reason is considered as rebellion and the slavery of fear makes men afraid to think. Fortunately, as Paine further observed, "[S]uch is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing."
If we continue to shine the light of Truth, we may yet force these Leftist cockroaches to scurry for cover. Let us pray for Almighty God's guidance. Let us roll up our sleeves and extend to our posterity proof that we were worthy of the title "American."
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander....his bio is also great and interesting
Publisher, PatriotPost.US
Wild Thing's comment.........
What an awesome column.
God bless Richard Mourdock and I hope and pray the Supreme Court does the right thing.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 03:48 AM | Comments (6)
September 22, 2009
Vietistan by Bruce Walker
Vietistan
By Bruce Walker
Barack Obama and the Democrats spent years defaming the national security policy of the United States during a time of war. This opposition transcends criticism of policy or attacks on President Bush. Senator Reid, while our troops were in the field, pronounced the Iraq War lost. Other Democrat senators equating the conduct of our soldiers with Nazis or with rogue forces that bombed villages. The Democratic Party feted such surreal conspiracy freaks as Michael Moore and appointed anti-American Marxists like Van Jones to important federal offices. "Bush lied, People died" bumper stickers popped up like ugly pimples on the back of countless vehicles in America. Our current Secretary of State essentially called General Petraeus a liar, without the slightest evidence.
Now, as Jeremiah Wright put it, "the chickens have come home to roost." The Democrats, indeed, those Democrats most vociferously hostile to our military forces and their commanders, now run Washington. They control not only the Executive Branch but also have comfortable, filibuster-proof majorities in both houses of Congress. President Obama and his party also have complete responsibility for what happens in our war on global terrorism.
Iraq, despite the protestations of Democrats in the years in which Bush was president, was in pretty good shape when Obama took office. The policies of President Bush, ultimately, prevailed. There are many things he might have done differently in Iraq and in other parts of the Middle East (overthrowing the terrorist sponsor, Syria, at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom comes to mind; giving all support short of direct military intervention to the Iranian freedom movement also would have been smart.) The salient fact, though, is this: under Bush, America was never attacked by terrorists and under Bush we did end the regime of a monstrous, anti-American thug in Baghdad. We also held Afghanistan and routed al-Qaeda there. The strategic strategy of Bush was similar to the strategic strategy of Reagan in the Cold War: we win, they lose.
Large numbers of Obama supporters, however, do not think that America should win the strategic war on terrorism. They blame the CIA more than al-Qaeda for the dangers in the world today. They view anti-American tyrants in Venezuela and Iran as democratically elected leaders, rather than the American people, as the heroes on the world stage. As Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a Democrat herself, said at the 1980 Republican Convention "They always blame America first." Nothing, really, has changed. Carter, toward the end of his presidency, seems to have "discovered" that Soviet Communism was aggressive, amoral, and armed. Teddy Kennedy, so recently eulogized for having done, really, nothing, visited with the Kremlin behind the back of President Reagan to try to weaken Reagan politically. LBJ learned the hard way just how hostile to American success many of his fellow Democrats could be.
During the Vietnam War, there were several thoughtful options. Was it in our strategic interest to stop Communism in Vietnam? Maybe so and maybe not. France was a SEATO member and the former colonial ruler of Indochina. Why was it not the duty of France to keep South Vietnam free? Britain was another SEATO member, yet our ally ignored its treaty obligations and even traded with North Vietnam. There was a reasonable argument that America should have stayed away from Vietnam and preserved our military strength and national will for threats which addressed us more directly.
Barry Goldwater advocated fighting the war, but using our overwhelming superiority in the air and at sea to directly attack North Vietnam. Our Iowa class battleships could hit almost any target in North Vietnam with very accurate sixteen inch naval gun shells at no risk of American lives (and we had four such battleships.) Mining Haiphong Harbor, through which the majority of North Vietnamese supplies came, could have been done without any risk of American lives. The suppression of air defenses by naval guns could have given our air forces the ability to disrupt or destroy almost everything of military or economic value in North Vietnam.
Instead, Lyndon Johnson valued international opinion, the support of fellow Democrats, and the fear of Soviet power more than he did the lives of the hundreds of thousands of conscripted ground troops that he sent into South Vietnam to try to win a guerrilla war in difficult terrain. Even worse, he crippled the operational actions of our ground troops by requiring White House clearance for artillery strikes and placing certain sanctuaries off limits. We bled because of his craven incompetence. We lost a war which we either should not have fought or should have fought and won.
It looks like Lyndon Baines Obama is about to repeat the mistakes of his Democrat predecessor. If our goal is to win in Afghanistan, then we should win. Obama should whip Democrats into support or silence. He should reach across the aisle to Republicans. He ought to apologize, even if indirectly, for demonizing President Bush and his war on terror. Obama shows no inclination to do either of those things.
If he is going to keep American troops in Afghanistan, those brave men and women deserve a commander-in-chief who is willing himself to make sacrifices for them. He should do what the military leaders in the region feel is necessary. He should explain to the American people our mission and our goals. He should speak of Afghanistan as part of "our common and united war on global terrorism." He should publicly insist our NATO allies to keep their forces, whether military or noncombatant in Afghanistan for practical and psychological reasons.
He won't. Obama will not withdraw from Afghanistan, but he will not really try to win. Like four decades ago, Americans serving their nation will be led by a leader who will not lead. Like forty decades ago, our brave countrymen will be killed and maimed for no purpose greater than the political cynicism of a corrupt politician. Obama will have his Vietistan and those who risk their lives for us will pay the price.
Wild Thing's comment.......
The left has never seen a war that they wanted to win.
RAC said it well!
"It's always nice to know that our corrupt politicians are more than willing to hide behind the dead bodies of our military which they hate so much. War is started by politicians, waged by the military, and ultimately decided by politicians. This is so wrong!"
......Thank you RAC for sending this to me.
RAC has a website that is awesome. 336th Assault Helicopter Company
13th Combat Aviation Battalion - 1st Aviation Brigade - Soc Trang, Republic of Vietnam
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:50 AM | Comments (7)
September 13, 2009
"We've Figured Him Out" by Ben Stein
As President Barack Obama's poll rating head south, Ben Stein explains why in The American Spectator:
Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed?
Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths:
The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith.
They ignored his anti-white writings in his books. They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright.
They ignored his refusal to explain years at a time of his life as a student. They ignored his ultra-left record as a "community organizer," Illinois state legislator, and Senator.
The American people ignored his total zero of an academic record as a student and teacher, his complete lack of scholarship when he was being touted as a scholar.
Now, the American people are starting to wake up to the truth. Barack Obama is a super likeable super leftist, not a fan of this country, way, way too cozy with the terrorist leaders in the Middle East, way beyond naïveté, all the way into active destruction of our interests and our allies and our future.
The American people have already awakened to the truth that the stimulus bill -- a great idea in theory -- was really an immense bribe to Democrat interest groups, and in no way an effort to help all Americans.
Now, Americans are waking up to the truth that ObamaCare basically means that every time you are sick or injured, you will have a clerk from the Department of Motor Vehicles telling your doctor what he can and cannot do.
The American people already know that Mr. Obama's plan to lower health costs while expanding coverage and bureaucracy is a myth, a promise of something that never was and never will be -- a bureaucracy lowering costs in a free society. Either the costs go up or the free society goes away.
Mr. Obama knows Americans are getting wise and will stop him if he delays at all in taking away our freedoms.
There is his urgency and our opportunity. Once freedom is lost, America is lost. Wake up, beloved America .
Wild Thing's comment.........
Ben did good, thank you. I agree, I think that is one of the big reasons Obama is in such a hurry. He knows people are waking up to what he is FINALLY!
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:47 AM | Comments (2)
September 06, 2009
"I am Tired" by Robert A. Hall
"I am Tired" by Robert A. Hall
Robert Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the
Massachusetts State Senate.
This man makes so much sense that it is hard to believe he has served as a
politician from Massachusetts. Never, ever have I heard anyone from that
state speak with such lucid common sense and a grasp of what exactly is
going on in today's world.
"I'm Tired" by Robert A. Hall
I'll be 63 soon. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce, and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked, hard, since I was 18 Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in
sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.
I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth around" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy or stupid to earn it. I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help
But if they bought Mansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them with their own money.
I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros, and Hollywood entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Christian people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela. Won't multiculturalism be beautiful?
I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers" ; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to. I believe "a man should be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin." I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial world of Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of US Senators from Illinois.
I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the emancipation proclamation.. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less arrogantly of an all-knowing government.
I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama's, at triple the cost, were wonderful. That thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control
weight and stress, that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his, that slammed Palin, with two years as governor, for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever.
I Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News ? Get a clue.
I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America, while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue, or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.
I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five
miles to our jobs. We also own a three -bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's, and if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough for me.
I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don't think Gay people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs.
And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana. I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers," especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on welfare or crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, Undocumented Pharmacists"? And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I'm willing to
fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person, who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military... Those are the citizens we need.
I'm tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people than themselves. Do bad things
happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years-and still are?
Not even close.So here's the deal. I'll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who
ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear.
I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers-bums are bipartisan. And I'm tired of people telling me we need bipartisanship. I live in Illinois, where the "Illinois Combine" of Democrats has worked to
loot the public for years. Not to mention the tax cheats in Obama's cabinet as well.
I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers, and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught..
I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor. Speaking of poor, I' m tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn't have that in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The poverty pimps have to
keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination, or big-whatever for their problems.
Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my grandchildren.
.
A little more about Robert Hall
Robert A. Hall joined the Marines in 1964, upon graduation from high school in Collingswood, NJ. In 1966, he volunteered for Vietnam, serving what he calls "an easy tour for a Marine" as a Radio Relay team chief. Following his discharge as a corporal in 1968, he attended Mount Wachusett Community College and the University of Massachusetts, graduating in June of 1972 with a degree in Political Science.
In November of that year, Hall was elected to the Massachusetts state senate, defeating a powerful Democrat by a nine-vote margin (out of over 60,000 votes cast) in a 4 to 1 Democratic district that had not been won by a Republican since 1938. Hall was 26 at the time. He was re-elected four times by large margins, and in 1976, was nominated by both the Republican and Democratic Parties, defeating a Democrat by running on stickers in the Democratic primary. He was the Republican Whip of the senate when he retired undefeated in 1982.
While in the senate, Hall rejoined the Marine Reserves, serving from 1977 until time conflicts with a new job forced him to leave the Corps in 1983 as a Staff Sergeant. He also earned a Masters Degree in History in 1980, taking night courses at Fitchburg State College. Since leaving politics, Hall has successfully managed non-profit associations for 23 years. A Certified Association Executive, he is currently Executive Director of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry in Madison, WI (www.aacd.com), where he lives with his wife, Bonnie. Hall is a frequently-published freelance writer, with opinion columns, articles, short fiction and poetry appearing in over 50 national and local magazines and newspapers. His work is included in Chicken Soup for the Veteran's Soul; and in Before the Memories Fade, published by Author House.
Wild Thing's comment.......
Great writing thank you Mr. Hall. I have the book "Chicken Soup for the Veteran's Soul". And this is the second time I have read something he wrote. I really like it.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 02:47 AM | Comments (7)
September 01, 2009
Health Care Bill Breeches IRS Privacy
Health Care Bill Breeches IRS Privacy
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann
08.31.2009
As if Obama’s health care proposals were not flawed enough, CBS News reports a previously unnoticed provision of the bill which makes a shambles of any privacy surrounding your federal tax returns. Under the House bill, the IRS is required to make available to the new government Health Choices Commissioner” established by the legislation and to each state health program all of your personal tax information.
In a blog, CBSNews’ Declan McCullagh reports that “Section 431 (a) of the bill says that the IRS must divulge taxpayer identity information, including the filing status, the modified adjusted grow income, the number of dependents, and ‘other information as is prescribed by’ regulation” to the “new Health Choices Commissioner and state health programs.”
And, McCullagh also reports that, under Section 1801(a) “the Social Security Administration can obtain tax return data on anyone who may be eligible for a ‘low-income prescription drug subsidy’ but has not applied for it.”So the Health Choices Commissioner and anyone in his office, the fifty state health programs and their staffs, and the vast Social Security Administration will all now have access to your personal tax information. It might as well be published in the newspapers. The rationale for providing this confidential tax information to all these people is not only to check on the eligibility of those who are seeking federal subsidy – a possibly appropriate use of it – but, also, to those who have not applied but might be eligible. This later20provision essentially authorizes the Social Security Administration to seek and obtain anyone’s income tax information under the guise of determining if they should have applied for a subsidy.
In his blog, McCullagh quotes Tom Giovanetti of the Institute for Policy Innovation as saying “How many thousands of federal employees will have access to your record? The privacy of your health records will be only as good as the most nosy, most dishonest, and most malcontented federal employee.” And not just your health records, your financial records too!This legislation requiring an agency-to-agency transfer of confidential tax information runs against the general policy of the Privacy Act which prohibits such a paper flow. Generally, information has to come from the individual involved and cannot simply be passed from one government bureau to another. The IRS takes particular pains to keep tax returns confidential and leaks are rare. But this legislation will end any hope or pretense of privacy.
Wild Thing's comment......
But....but Obama is above all laws. Could obama leave any part of our existence alone? I guess he will have his ACORN pod people working on this too.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:49 AM | Comments (6)
Election Puts Anti-American Radicals In Charge...by Dr.Alan Bates
Election Puts Anti-American Radicals In Charge: The Inarguable Evidence
Dr.Alan Bates
Never would most of us conceive that self-avowed Marxists and Communists would be placed 'in charge' by a man poorly vetted and elected by complacent voters to the highest office of our government. The radicals of the late 1960s and onward, many of whom participated in violent acts against America and advocated violent overthrow of the US government, have very effectively used their networks to amass huge sums of campaign money from unions and overseas anti-American pro-Marxist factions to buy national television network time in order to convince a 'dumbed down' younger generation and minorites that they offer changes which will accrue to their benefit, thus essentially accomplishing an infiltration of government through non-violent means.
The factual reality is summarized below (without iterating detail due to space limitations). Now that Obama and friends' intentions are being discovered belatedly by many, his advisors and sheeple followers cannot figure out any better strategy than to insult their critics as being racists, since Barack Obama happens to be partially black. What convenient tools skin color and dwelling on past inequities are for disarming their adversaries! That however is purely projection of their own neuroses upon others who merely see the Administration and its many appointed Czars and officers for what they truly represent. It is their way of distracting the naïve masses away from any chance they will also recognize what the rest of us understand before a totalitarian takeover of our nation is complete.
So who are Obama and his mentors?
Mr. Obama's real resume is replete with symbiotic associations and participation with admitted anti-American radicals many of whom advocated destruction of American 'imperialism' and capitalism even if through violent means.
The lineup includesWilliam Ayers, Khalid Al Mansour, Rhashid Khalidi, and Jeremiah Wright along with their mentors Sol Alinsky and James Cone. While space here is too limited to lay out the chronology and details, you can read about some of these individuals online: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2169. Some of the organizations which they used to front their anti-American cause included Weatherman (Weather Underground), STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement), the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), the Woods Foundation of Chicago, the Arab-American Action Network and ACORN (Associations of Community Organizations For Reform Now) which received major funding from Annenberg Challenge while Obama was director. According to Worldnetdaily, while "Obama chaired the board of the CAC, more than $600,000 was granted to an organization founded by Ayers and run by Mike Klonsky, a former top communist activist. Klonsky was leader of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, which was effectively recognized by China as the all-but-official U.S. Maoist party."
Most of these groups have committed crimes against the United States and its citizens with Weather Underground responsible for at least 30 bombings according to Ayers. Ayers himself, who escaped conviction (due to a legal technicality) for the crimes he admitted to----bombing the NYC Police Headquarters in 1970, the Capitol Building in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972----stated in his book Fugitive Days that he does not rule out committing similar acts in the future. Notably, Obama was director of CAC, codirector of the Woods Foundation and served as the legal reprentative for ACORN which ultimately helped him win his elections. And lest we not forget another mentor to Obama mentioned in his book Dreams From My Father as 'Frank', who has been identified as Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis. And does it not instill confidence to read Obama's statement from Audacity of Hope: "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction"?
What about 'Van' Jones (real name Anthony Jones), who was appointed by Obama to the newly created green jobs advisor position which takes charge of coercing a paradigm shift in the nation's energy policy to 'green energy' and away from fossil fuels which are vital to our international security? Jones was a founder of the Communist revolutionary organization STORM, and it was he who led a vigil the day after the mass murder of '9/11' to express solidarity with Arab and Muslim Americans as well as what he called the victims of "U.S. imperialism" around the world. The fallacy of manmade global warming is beyond the scope of this commentary, but it a tool of Marxists to convert our nation to a Fascist state through redistribution of wealth to the poor and to foreign fascist regimes under the guise of 'saving our environment' while simultaneously barring development of our abundant fossil fuel resources which are vital to our national security.
And Jeff Jones, cofounder of Weather Underground with Ayers, is the New York chair of the Apollo Alliance which is designing the White House's stimulus package and assisting the state of New York in how to spend their stimulus money.
And how about Mark Lloyd, 'FCC Diversity Officer and avowed pro-Chavez radical recently appointed by Obama to rein in free speech over the airways by reorganizing the FCC and placing a tax equal to annual operating costs on local radio stations to be paid to their respective state NPR station or lose their license to a minority owner? His allotted budget is half a billion dollars! This represents the repudiation of freedom of speech.
What does it take to wake Americans to the internal threat posed by radicalism which has infiltrated the top levels of our government?
Ask yourself why Obama pledged to balance the national budget when in fact he has now committed more to our national deficits than all past presidential administrations combined at the expense of future generations. The current deficit projections are 9,000,000,000,000. dollars, which could ultimately destroy the value of the US Dollar, leading to out-of-control inflation and ultimate collapse of the US economy (a perfect setting for destruction of capitalism and instituting a Fascist regime?).
What did Obama's chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel mean when he said he wanted to use severe economic weakness as an opportunity to make changes in America?
How could Obama appoint a string of tax-cheats to top positions including the Secretary of the Treasury?
Why did Obama in concert with the UAW take control of the failing domestic auto industry and appoint a czar who has zero experience in business?
Do not such giveaways as 'cash for clunkers' play right to the benefit of UAW and serve as examples of redistribution of wealth at the expense of taxpayers?
Why do Obama and his socialist collegues want to take over the nation's healthcare system which comprises almost one-fifth of our economy, including gaining access to personal financial information?
Why did Obama promise to remain Israel's ally but now abandons Israel and asks the Jews to turn over half of Jerusalem to the Palestinians with no offer to help Israel in the event of an Iranian attack?
Why did Obama internationally apologize on behalf of the United States for past defense against tyranny?
He views our nation as an imperialist nation of arrogance rather than a noble nation which has occasionally made errors. He is the first President to chastise our allies and appease our enemies! Why is Obama developing a 'national security force' which in its early stages is known as 'Organizing For America' (OFA) and which targets young college students who will be brainwashed with the philosophy of fascism? Will they be the 'browncoats' of yesteryear?
Why has Obama through Attorney General Eric Holder handcuffed and taken over the CIA, which has long been the most critical independent information-gathering resource safeguarding our national security?
Why does he reveal and condemn CIA's interrogation methods which were previously approved by Congress and cleared by the Justice Department, as though to demonstrate to terrorists that they need not fear us, even while the terrorists decapitate innocent captives?
In conclusion, Mr. Obama exhibits personal characteristics of narcissism and arrogance partly veiled by his spoken empathy. He ignores our national well-being as he fulfills promises and payback to his radical associates at the expense of national financial solvency and individual liberties, which heretofore have been defended during two world wars with great sacrifice. Some of the electorate have let their guard down, and now we must defend against the Administration's attempts to move control of the census to the White House so as to prevent those currently in power from permanently stealing elections through continued funding of ACORN and other radical groups which have no conscience or respect for existing law.
The United States is now immersed in the 'perfect storm'---a severe financial calamity the stage of which was set by socialists during the Carter years, and a pack of wolves who have carefully laid their framework over the past decade to achieve their transformation of capitalism and personal liberty to fascism or worse. Americans have several ways to stop this process with the most peaceful being the elections coming up in 2010.
Meanwhile we must all write or call our national and state legislators and ask them to protect our Constitutional rights and the nation's remaining cracked foundation. Speak out now or be content with accepting the ultimate demise of your liberty.
.
Wild Thing's comment......
Great article and extensive about Obama and his anti-American radicals.
After all these months I still am shocked that someone, Obama was voted into power. He has not done one thing I could even say well ok that is ok but all the rest you do is against America. The people, the radicals as the article says, every one of them, people that do not love America either just like Obama.
I am wide awake but the shock persists all the same.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:44 AM | Comments (4)
Coal Cellars and Common Sense by Don Bendell ( Vietnam Veteran)
COAL CELLARS and COMMOM SENSE
by Don Bendell
As Vietnam veterans; for decades, we were like the shiny black lumps in our coal cellar when I was a little boy. That coal bin was dark, cold, scary, and out of sight of the neighbors. That is where the American public shoveled all of us after Vietnam. Out of sight, out of mind after-all. We were not seen or heard from for years, except as psycho killers in movies and TV shows. War is always hell, but a lot of our real pain came from the heartbreak of Americans not giving us enough credit. Newsmen said it, so many thought we all lost our values and character that we grew up with. Instead, in the publics’ minds; amazingly, we became brain-washed, robotic killers, and rapists after only a year or two of military training. Please! It was chilly and emotionally-barren in that coal bin all those years, because we, “Vietnam Untouchables,” were blanketed by an icy coldness of public shame and apathy.
Then, a few years ago, we came into vogue. Even the left saw us as fashionable, so now there are 11,000,000 Vietnam vets running around. Except for one problem, there were only 2.7 million of us in Vietnam. People finally learned though that we are not sociopaths, that only 17% of us were black, which was commensurate with that racial percentage nationally, that we did not mostly come from low income families, and most of us were; like me, volunteers, not draftees. And so many more myths about Vietnam have been exploded.
So what now, a parade, a national holiday? No, our President and our congressional leaders, instead of honoring us, want us to start figuring out how we want to die, (so we will not be a burden to their spending plans, I believe). I have a copy of Obama’s now infamous “Death Book for Veterans.” It is actually called “Your life, Your Choices,” and camouflages itself as a guide for living wills. In actuality, it encourages euthanasia if you feel depressed, are wheelchair–bound, in a nursing home, are a burden to loved ones, either emotionally or financially, or in similar circumstance. And this book is real; morbid and shameful, but real. There is page after page about “pulling the plug,” the horrors of comas, and other debilitating conditions. It is indeed a macabre guide, and much unlike any military field manual I have ever read. This one is how to lose, not win.
Since FDR was wheelchair-bound as our President, I wonder how he would have felt about self-euthanasia. Then I remembered that the President and Congress are too good for our health care plan. In fact, if our health care system is so bad, why didn’t Teddy Kennedy go to Canda, Great Britain, or maybe Cuba for his brain cancer? Why do all their terminal cancer patients come to the US for care? And, do you know what they call many of them who don’t? Corpses.
Any nation takes care of its troops during war, but the true test of a nation’s greatness is how that nation treats its warriors when they come home. Can they seek shade, rest, and peace on the porches of America or must they immediately head for the coal chute “out back?” Obama and Congress want us to save them money and head to the boneyard so they can spend some more.
The problem is that this is not just about vets. It is about a government-run and mandated healthcare program for America. I am a disabled Vietnam veteran and am treated by government-paid doctors, nurses, druggists, and administrators. In other words, I am taken care of by government-run healthcare through a dysfunctional bureaucracy that is broken. No, not broken, trashed, in case you haven’t read. Now, get this: Our leaders in Washington want to create a much, much larger bureaucracy in the midst of a recession and saddle our entire nation with what my brother vets and I go through but on a grander scale. What are they, nuts?
Let’s see, just in 2009 alone, our government began “Cash for Clunkers,” and it went broke in just weeks. People traded in big American-made cars, and most purchased new foreign-made cars. Wow! The government sure is taking care of American auto workers . . . not. Car dealers have not been paid their promised federal dollars either.
How about the still-naïve one-third of Americans who want Big Brother to provide us with Obamacare? How has our government done over the decades managing other federal programs? Just look at: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Amtrak, Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security. And say, what about the US Postal Service? Even the President joked in a speech in August about their incompetence compared to FEDEX or UPS. Do you want to go to the post office on the day that some worker comes in “disgruntled?”
We have legislators actually suggesting we copy Great Britain’s healthcare system. In Great Britain, MS patients are forced to wait two and a half years there for the latest MS medicines and treatments. I have two daughters with MS, probably because I was exposed to Agent Orange. One of them is even a liberal and may even want Obamacare, not realizing what will happen to MS patients if it happens.
Over two-thirds of Americans, democrats and republicans are against Obamacare, but legislators at town halls are still trying to cram it down our throats. They are not listening to the majority, only their own spin-doctors insulting us, the citizens. Our so-called leaders forgot that the hidden coal in the coal cellar of my youth, also provided my family with life-giving warmth and comfort during the cold Ohio winters. Similarly, my fellow veterans and I did not lose our warmth or fires of passion hidden away all those years.
These “empty suit” pinheads in Washington think I am going to let my daughters get re-victimized? The real problem is, that just because some us were dumb enough to elect them, they think we are all stupid. I have news for them and any of their co-dependent hangers-on just wanting more government freebies. Veterans are not like giggling, slogan-chanting Woodstockers and peaceniks. American veterans actually risked our lives for what we believed in. In Vietnam, 58,000 gave up theirs. It is not just veterans though. It is an American public, democrats, republicans, and independents who feel like me: I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.
Ronald Reagan was faced with a greater recession, higher inflation, much higher interest rates, and much higher unemployment than Obama faced. Democrats and Republicans alike voted for Reagan, and he drastically cut taxes and immediately started us on the road to recovery. Obama put us $3 trillion deeper in debt with a worse economy to show for it. Reagan studied world leaders before becoming President. Obama’s mentor prior to heading off to college was Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party USA, who was a heavy pot-smoker, and wrote a porno book. Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama have one major similarity though: One term Presidents due to pie-in-the-sky unworkable fiscal policies.
The first thing we must do to fix our sky-rocketing medical care is not talked about. If a surgeon passes gas in the operating room, a patient files a multi-million dollar lawsuit against him for causing air pollution. Trial lawyers run the democratic party and a good portion of the republican party. We must force our legislators to pass good, rock solid tort reform legislation. The insurance premiums doctors, especially those in private practice, and hospitals, pay is through the ceiling.
My Solutions:
1. Tort Reform: We must get the size of lawsuits, especially in the medical profession, significantly lowered back to earth, insurance rates will come down, and health care costs will start dropping immediately.
2. Conservatives must take back the congress in 2010, lower taxes, and ease the ludicrous government regulations. “Checks and balances” works.
3. Moderates and Conservatives must unite behind one common Reagan-like Presidential 2012 candidate who understands economics.
4. We must continue tea parties, phone calls, emails, and faxes to our legislators.
5. We must start supporting those who want to run for Congress who have proven they want to serve country first, not self, and not party.
6. While we are at it, regarding the various attacks now on-going against our Constitution, let’s just use the 2nd Amendment for example. 11 years ago, Great Britain outlawed private ownership of firearms. Their Violent Crime Rate increased by over 340%. It was worse in Australia. In comparison, NOBODY will ever break into my house or carjack my car. Why? People know, either my wife or me will shoot them very dead with very large bullet holes ventilating their carcasses. Pretty good motivation to obey the law around my property and family.
7. And speaking of the Constitution, our nation only functions with our system of checks and balances. Czars are not accountable to anybody, and that must be changed by Congress. The unethical utilization of that loophole tells me all I need to know about Obama’s so-called “transparency in government.” Action walks and BS talks.
Freedom is a very jealous mistress. To possess her, we must reject her longtime competitor; slavery to governmental intrusion. Lady Liberty will not accept a divided allegiance, and freedom comes as a package deal. With freedom comes responsibilities and consequences. Government intrusion is the dirty lonely coal cellar, but freedom is like soap. It smells sweet, is clean, and loses all its effectiveness if it is watered down.
May God bless America, and may Americans get back to praising God.
Don Bendell, 62, is an author of 26 books, including his newest novel, DETACHMENT DELTA, about modern day Delta Force, which was released worldwide in January, 2009 by Berkley Books (Penguin-USA), with over 2,000,000 copies of his books in print worldwide. Don is a popular editorialist who has appeared on FOX NEWS LIVE, and many national radio shows. A 70% disabled vet, Don served as an officer in 4 Special Forces (Green Beret) Groups, including a 1968-1969 tour on an A-team in Vietnam, as well as in the Top Secret Phoenix Program and has two sons in Special Forces. A 1995 inductee into the International Karate Hall of Fame and a Grandmaster in 5 martial arts, he and his black belt master wife, Shirley, also own karate schools in southern Colorado. Don is “a real cowboy with a real horse” and lives outside Florence, Colorado.
You can write to him at don@donbendell.com
.
Wild Thing's comment.......
Thank you Don for your column, fantastic! And for your service to our country.
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:40 AM | Comments (6)
August 23, 2009
"Now is the Time to Take a Stand!" by Col. Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret.
It’s time to take the tea party movement directly to Washington, D.C. Please join thousands of local organizers and grassroots Americans from across the country as we gather in our nation’s capital to deliver a message to the politicians: Enough!
Everyone is gathering on 9-12-2009 to deliver our message in person that we’ve had enough!
.
Now is the Time to Take a Stand!
by Col. Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret.
Days after he was sworn in Obama repeatedly warned that without the economic stimulus of 787 billion dollars it would be catastrophic for the economy. That was after the Bush Administration had already foisted the 700 billion dollar Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP on to American taxpayers. Then on top of those two the Democrat Congress enacted an additional 400 billion dollar omnibus spending bill. So, in less than six months, two administrations, one Compassionate (stealth socialist) Conservative and the other, "spread the wealth around" (socialist in all but the name) placed over 1.8 trillion dollars of additional tax burden on American taxpayers, with the Obama government planning to spend more money than all previous administrations in the entirety of the county's history, combined!
Part of the present problem is that instead of helping the economy, both actions only helped the rich to hold onto their "troubled assets" and has done nothing for Middle America, much less the poor. In fact, fear mongering about the economy over the past two years by Obama and other democrats during the campaign, is at the heart of loss of consumer confidence and has been so successful with the help of the media that when combined with the likes of Barney Frank, Chris Dodd forcing banks to make toxic (that were predictably non-performing) loans to unqualified buyers, combined with oil speculators driving the cost of energy through the roof succeeded in bringing the economy crashing down.
Having fostered, if not created this recession the political left is now full force doubling down with excessive spending, and imposition of government programs that will destroy the economy if allowed to go forward. And, according to Obama that is precisely his plan, why else would he recently say that, "the economy is on track" as the economy tanks? Once national economic collapse is achieved the political left will wave its ugly tentacles, stand on its hind feet and try to declare the end of free market capitalism as a matter of law. Should that succeed, the bright shinning light of the world will plunge to third world darkness, tin-horned dictator actors presuming to be gods will either carve up their own little fiefdoms, or using a "re-educated" military impose the same totalitarian evil empire upon Americans that were the hallmark of tyranny for seven decades under Leninist/Stalinist communism in the USSR. Think it can't happen? Think again. I never thought the U.S. would come this far, this fast. If the left has its way, the United States will join the line of great nations that rose and fell, and it will happen right before our eyes.
The American political left has steadfastly argued that their brand of socialism/communism would be different because of their superior vision, moral authority and culture. Yet all the while they have systematically destroyed the Judeo-Christian culture that actually made America the greatest country the world has ever known; and, in the name of being law abiding citizens we have let them. The left has been replacing the Judeo-Christian way using the courts and their propaganda arm, the so called, mainstream media with a hedonist, godless, secular society all in the name of "Progressive" politics.
These are not true liberals, they are vicious, hateful, evil people whose objective it is to destroy America, and they have the temerity to call themselves "patriots." Barbra Streisand! Or, as General "Stromin" Norman Schwarzkopf liked to say, "bovine scatology!"We have in the democrat controlled government a façade of righteousness and heart of evil. Obama's Chicago style governance is repugnant to those who understand liberty, free markets and a free society. Anyone who knows anything knows that conservative Americans believe in and practice charity to a far greater extent than any political so called, "liberal" ever imagined or dreamed of doing. We don't need government forcing us to do anything. Maybe it's about time that the silent majority engages in some civil disobedience of its own, such as praying in school, and other public places. What are they going to do lock up over 250 million American conservative taxpayers? I don't think so at least not for now. However, believe me, the loons on the left would evaluate if not act on the notion of killing those who resist them. After all, that would have the salutary effect of reducing the number of people and their damaging effect on the environment. Right? Additionally, it would reduce the size and cost of universal health care. Killing the opposition is the hallmark of socialists and communists, and just because this is America doesn't change that. Anyone who knows non-revisionist history knows what happened in Russia, China, Cuba, Germany, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Iraq and every other country dominated by socialist thinking and governance. The time has come to take a stand, to push back against decades of tyranny by the ideological minority on the left (they comprise 29% of the population), and be ready for a long and difficult fight. Join the March on Washington scheduled for September 12.
It is time to actively express outrage at the behavior of democrat Washington elitists and let them know that Americans are going to take this country back from their "Manchurian" objectives and consign them to history. And if perchance RINOs think they are untouchable, think again; this is not a game. What America needs is: smaller, less intrusive Constitutional government, lower taxes, a balanced budget, borders closed to illegal entrants, and strong, vital Armed Forces.
Be visible, patient, persistent, and be steadfast. Plan to drive in and out of Washington either the same day or over two days; stay with friends, or whatever accommodations you can arrange, take plenty of water, wear comfortable clothing and shoes, an umbrella as a shield from the sun, and be prepared to walk. Those who are not able to participate financially or physically join local events; but engage in all legal activity that expresses outrage at the direction that the political left is trying to take the country. Encourage your friends to join the March or participate in local events. It's time to turn this around, put a stake through the "vampire's" heart and never let it happen again.
Finally, this could actually be a blessing in disguise, because now the majority can see the danger clearly for what they are.
Semper Fidelis
.
Wild Thing's comment........
Col. Pappas is always good. It sure is time to take a stand, speak out and let our voice be heard.
.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:49 AM | Comments (4)
August 21, 2009
Socialism by Any Other Name by Col. Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret.
Socialism by Any Other Name
by Col. Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret.
For those who still want Obama to succeed, they must be oblivious to what made America the greatest economy in the history of the world, and that the debate is not about health care, it is about control and changing of the US free market system to a socialist/communist government economic system. What is “spreading the wealth around,” otherwise? The mindless attacks by those on the left (who incidentally have benefited more under the free market system than any other people in the history of the world), on conservative writers, commentators and TV hosts illustrates the weakness of their arguments in the face of widespread, increasing public opposition. Their arguments about Medicare and Medicaid in support of government run programs are so pathetic that they are laughable. In fact take a minute and laugh at them.
Everyone knows that Democrats and most other politicians know better what is good for America than do the people who elected them. They are the smartest, most eloquent, most knowledgeable, most likeable, the smoothest, and most trustworthy; and therefore they are the “elect.” All except Barney Frank whose arrogant attitude means the American mainstream would do well to lick his loafers.
As one who has had significant experience with perpetrators of fraud while working in government, on the internet, and in business, it is noteworthy that people with attributes noted above are the most frequent perpetrators. They are the ones who would take grandma’s last pennies and run to the bank; they promise the sun, moon and stars and make it believable; then when things go wrong, they are skillful enough not only deflect blame, but to spread it around to others, even to the victim. They never see anything that they did or might do would be wrong and always paint themselves as the victim.
In a recent attempt at fraud, a telephone marketer who was selling business insurance contacted my business. I informed her that the business was well covered and appreciated her interest, but “no, thanks.” She asked me to confirm that the nature of the business was flooring, that is, carpet, tile, wood, etc. Then immediately exclaimed “serendipity” because she needed carpet, and requested I visit, measure and provide an estimate to carpet hers and her husband’s home. Later that day she “dripped with honey” as I proceeded to measure and diagram the floor plan. After selecting a style and color, and as I prepared the estimate, she described her telephone marketing work and experience. Then she suggested that she would like to do telephone marketing for my flooring business. It seemed to have possibilities so I engaged her further. Then after providing the carpet estimate, I thanked her and left with the expectation of hearing more from her later.
The following day she faxed a couple of contacts and shortly afterward called on the telephone. Keep in mind that I met this person only once, one day earlier. The essence of the discussion was that she wanted me to advance her credit toward the purchase of the selected carpet in exchange for time she spent contacting potential customers. Further, she wanted me to go ahead with the installation and would pay it off by means of referrals. I explained that I would be happy to work with her but would pay a commission only after a sale had been consummated, not before. I also explained that I did not offer store credit. Then she began to spin along the line that she deserved better treatment and that I should extend credit during these difficult times. I restated that the store did not offer credit, but if she chose I would be happy to accept her credit card as the means of payment.
By the end of the conversation she was whining that I should trust her, that she had been in the marketing business for twenty five years and that I needed to engage in due diligence to confirm her credibility. Checking her out would not change the no store credit policy for her, or anyone else, and would also not change the policy regarding first earning a commission before payment was proffered.
During the two day, on again, off again dialogue, this person endeavored to obtain a product without payment, with no money down and after offering two referrals that came out of the telephone directory as a gesture of work ethic. When I didn’t bite, she proceeded to attempt to intimidate me by asserting that I was unethical for not believing her and unfeeling for not “working with her.” What do you think, was she a liberal or a conservative?
This episode had the ring of a number of issues: entitlement, demand for credit, inability to pay, personal feelings and fraud in the solicitation; have a familiar ring? It is a good example of the something for nothing, progressive, socialist redistribution of wealth scheme.
If your Representative or Senators do not listen and enact “single payer” (code word is for “socialist”) health care; and cap and trade (code for tripling the cost of gasoline and other forms of energy) legislation being advanced by Obama and socialist democrats in the Congress, dump them and don’t look back.
Semper Fidelis
.
Wild Thing's comment.......
Fantastic! I agree, dump them and don't look back.
This next election I pray with all my heart people stick to their guns and vote these horrible pwoer hungry politicans out.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:46 AM | Comments (4)
August 20, 2009
"Back on Uncle Sam's Plantation" by Star Parker
Back on Uncle Sam's Plantation
by Star Parker
Six years ago I wrote a book called Uncle Sam's Plantation. I wrote the book to tell my own story of what I saw living inside the welfare state and my own transformation out of it.
I said in that book that indeed there are two Americas -- a poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism.
I talked about government programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS), Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children (EANF), Section 8 Housing, and Food Stamps.
A vast sea of perhaps well-intentioned government programs, all initially set into motion in the 1960s, that were going to lift the nation's poor out of poverty.
A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation. Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from "How do I take care of myself?" to "What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?"
Instead of solving economic problems, government welfare socialism created monstrous moral and spiritual problems -- the kind of problems that are inevitable when individuals turn responsibility for their lives over to others.
The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city schools, and broken black families.
Through God's grace, I found my way out. It was then that I understood what freedom meant and how great this country is.
I had the privilege of working on welfare reform in 1996, passed by a Republican Congress and signed 50 percent.
I thought we were on the road to moving socialism out of our poor black communities and replacing it with wealth-producing American capitalism.
But, incredibly, we are going in the opposite direction.
Instead of poor America on socialism becoming more like rich American on capitalism, rich America on capitalism is becoming like poor America on socialism.
Uncle Sam has welcomed our banks onto the plantation and they have said, "Thank you, Suh."
Now, instead of thinking about what creative things need to be done to serve customers, they are thinking about what they have to tell Massah in order to get their cash.
There is some kind of irony that this is all happening under our first black president on the 200th anniversary of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.
Worse, socialism seems to be the element of our new young president. And maybe even more troubling, our corporate executives seem happy to move onto the plantation.
In an op-ed on the opinion page of the Washington Post, Mr. Obama is clear that the goal of his trillion dollar spending plan is much more than short term economic stimulus.
"This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending -- it's a strategy for America 's long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, healthcare, and education."
Perhaps more incredibly, Obama seems to think that government taking over an economy is a new idea. Or that massive growth in government can take place "with unprecedented transparency and accountability."
Yes, sir, we heard it from Jimmy Carter when he created the Department of Energy, the Synfuels Corporation, and the Department of Education.
Or how about the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 -- The War on Poverty -- which President Johnson said "...does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done. It charts a new course. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty."
Trillions of dollars later, black poverty is the same. But black families are not, with triple the incidence of single-parent homes and out-of-wedlock births.
It's not complicated.. Americans can accept Barack Obama's invitation to move onto the plantation. Or they can choose personal responsibility and freedom.
Does anyone really need to think about what the choice should be?
Wild Thing's comment.......
Star Parker should get more press she is good.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:45 AM | Comments (5)
August 19, 2009
Keep the Pressure On! by Col. Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret.
by Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired
When Jimmy “Caata” moved into the White House in January 1976 it was like the Beverly Hillbillies coming to Washington. From my position at the Pentagon 4E 789 where I served as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, until I left in September 1977, then from more distant observation from Japan then Camp Pendleton, California, the four years of the Carter Administration played out as a combination of comedy and tragedy.
It is not necessary to draw the parallel here, because the similarities of then and now should be obvious. The distinction is that the current occupant is of dubious eligibility to serve, despite “official” statements to the contrary, has zero management experience, and is an ideological socialist if not communist. Despite lopsided support and funding, and all the negative press heaped on John McCain and Sarah Palin, the reality was an election that was relatively close.
Obama promised that he would bring “change” to America leading chants of “yes, we can.” He promised to totally change the economic system, (for lemmings, that’s from free markets to socialism/communism); to spread the wealth around; to withdraw American forces from Iraq immediately upon becoming President; to immediately close Guantanamo Bay; to focus on and win in Afghanistan; to sit down without preconditions with America’s enemies; to “restore” America’s place of respect in a malcontent world; to increase the price of energy; to enact universal health care; to rein in the compensation of top level CEOs; to put the brakes on credit card lenders; to not raise taxes one penny on the middle class and etc., to note a partial list.
What Obama had in mind when he promised “total change” was precisely what America is witnessing unfold, the destruction of the greatest economy in the world to be replaced by pervasive government, in short socialism the intermediate step to communism; and he’s using Rham Emmanuel’s “don’t let a good crisis go to waste” as his entrée.
I am no fan of those who manipulate stock prices for their personal benefit to the detriment of average American investors; no fan of Chris Dodd and Barney Frank; no fan of inept regulators, tax cheaters, and lying, cheating bankers; I am no fan of oil and housing speculators and if it were up to me would overhaul banking and financial markets. Aside from that I would cut taxes, reduce the size of government, get it out of the way and let Americans do what they do best, and that is to be innovative and entrepreneurial.
I am also no fan of excessive government programs and self-serving, careerist politicians the latter of which represent the large majority of Washington’s political class without regard to party. Left to me, I would invoke the essence of the Declaration of Independence
(“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,…”)
against the present tyranny and reduce to rubble their cozy relationships with special interests represented by lobbyists. Undoubtedly, there are some who deserve the continued support of the silent majority, but they are few and far between. We should follow Jesus’ lead, but instead of chasing the money changers out of the Temple, we should drive government thieves out of Washington.
Is it any wonder that American’s are angry about the manner which this Administration and Democrat Congress are “rhaming” legislation through without reading, without debate, without the consent of the American people? This is a Republic not a Democracy but one does not expect one’s representative to go to Washington, and equipped with the blinding enlightenment gained from the wallets of lobbyists, abrogate their representative function.
Bill Clinton may think that Obama’s popularity would rebound with passage of universal health care, but as one American told her representative at a recent town hall meeting, “the sleeping giant has awakened,” so, for “Slick Willie” “it ‘ain’t’ goin’ back to sleep.”
Jimmy “Caata,” served one term and so will Obama, then after taking their country back, Americans will undo the damage. In the process Obama and his socialist vision for America will disappear into the dust bin of history forever. For now, Obama urges a fight using his union and ACORN thugs, with his admonition to “push back twice as hard.” Okay. This is not Russia 1917, or Germany 1933, and he will get more fight than he bargained for.
KEEP THE PRESSURE ON AND DON’T QUIT!
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment.......
The Col. is absolutley right, he is always so good.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 08:44 AM | Comments (6)
August 14, 2009
What Obama and My Wife Have in Common....by Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris says, "I agree with CNN's Lou Dobbs ... make public your original birth certificate"
What Obama and My Wife Have in Common
Dear Mr. President:
First, happy birthday. I do hope today is an enjoyable day for you and your family. Coincidentally, I also will be celebrating this week the birth of someone dear to me, my beloved wife, Gena, whose birthday is Aug. 9.
Speaking of birthdays, I couldn't help but hear and read all over the news this past week about the fresh attention to your constitutional eligibility and natural-born citizen status. I hardly can believe that individuals are offering bounties — one for $100,000 — for any personal witness or sufficient evidence to your American birth.
Believe it or not, I'm not writing you to challenge whether or not you were born in America, though I see nothing wrong with the American public's voicing that constitutionally based grievance with someone in your esteemed position. As one blogger wrote, after all, "We aren't talking about a 12-year-old qualifying to play Little League here." Or as Ronald Reagan once said, "Trust but verify."
I must admit that I find it a bit of a groundless stretch not to believe in the birth announcements in two major Hawaiian newspapers in August 1961, in which Hawaii's Health Department would have been required to post information it received directly from hospitals: "Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy., son, Aug. 4." Nevertheless, that proof doesn't answer why you refuse to reveal your original birth certificate and end the growing tides of controversy.
I'm writing you because this is no longer a matter merely about proving you meet a presidential prerequisite in the Constitution. Refusing to post your original birth certificate is an unwise political and leadership decision that is enabling the "birther" controversy. The nation you are called to lead is experiencing a growing swell of conspirators who are convinced that you are covering up something. So why not just prove them wrong and shut them up?
I agree with CNN's Lou Dobbs, who was chastised by his own media outlet for demanding the release of your original birth certificate. Why was that such a bad request? We certainly know why Jon Klein, the president of CNN/U.S., thought it was a bad idea. He previously declared that CNN researchers had determined that your 1961 birth certificate no longer exists.
But Hawaii officials confirmed again last week that they indeed have your original birth certificate on file.
Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, repeated her October 2008 statement that she had seen with her own eyes the "original vital records."
Some claim that even you cannot see or request your own personal birth certificate because Hawaii's disclosure law (Hawaii Revised Statutes 338-18) states that "it shall be unlawful for any person to permit inspection of, or to disclose information contained in vital statistics records, or to copy or issue a copy of all or part of any such record."
But the law further states that Hawaii's Health Department "shall not permit inspection of public health statistics records, or issue a certified copy of any such record or part thereof, unless it is satisfied that the applicant has a direct and tangible interest in the record " (emphasis added).
Isn't categorically satisfying constitutional requirements for a president or answering the First Amendment grievances of hundreds of thousands of Americans or ending a national debate or healing a country's divisions enough "direct and tangible interest"?
Mr. President, as more and more people realize that you are refusing to release your original birth certificate, further questions will fuel the fires of debate or at least hinder the embers from ever being snuffed out. Questions such as, "Does it really contain the Hawaiian physician's name?" "Does it disclose something other than his birthplace that he wishes others not to see?"
Of course, not every U.S. citizen has access to his original birth certificate, but you do, and yours is the only one under debate. As valuable as copies can be, textual critics know that nothing outweighs an original, especially when only it contains the information under question.
Again, why don't you simply request, release and give permission to make public your original birth certificate?
Mr. President, you promised the American people that you are "committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government." In fact, in your July 23 prime-time news conference, you said that your administration has been more transparent than previous administrations: "I think that we have provided much greater transparency than existed prior to our administration coming in."
So again, I ask: Why not live out that transparency promise by posting your original birth certificate and end the division and debate?
Well, I have a birthday to plan, so I had better get going.
Again, happy birthday, Mr. President.
Yours Truly, Chuck Norris
To find out more about Chuck Norris and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CHUCK NORRIS
.
Wild Thing's comment.......
Good for Chuck. And oh and don't have a nice day Obama...heh heh
Posted by Wild Thing at 08:47 AM | Comments (4)
August 13, 2009
"When in the course of human events…"
"When in the course of human events…"
By Justin Williams
Many historians agree, the United States of American was founded with federalism at its core. This meant that each state would have it's own jurisdiction to govern its citizens on all accounts that were not granted to the federal government or banned to the states.
A "state" is defined by Merriam-Webster as "a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory; especially: one that is sovereign" [emphasis theirs]. But it is clear that the states that were once near-independent bodies are now nowhere near sovereign.
And increasingly, as the Obama Administration turns the screws on states rights, the sovereign citizens are fighting back.
They understand, as did the founders, that the centralization of power was a bad idea. As Thomas Jefferson put it "The way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to."
Federalism, through the competition between states for taxpayers, gave citizens of the United States another mechanism to check their governments -- and that was with their feet. But, like other well-intended programs, it didn't take long for the federal government to encroach upon this vital principle.
One example of this is the legislation called the No Child Left Behind Act, which brought blankets of red tape into a sector of the government that had historically been reserved for the states. And the usurpacious Interstate Commerce Act has imposed myriad restriction upon the individual states tying funding to meeting dictates.
But, millions of Americans now decided that enough is enough, and Obama's health care and economic "reforms" have finally triggered a states right revolt. Thirty-seven states have proposed a resolution to exert their state as sovereign. And more are expected to follow.
The Governor of Texas, Rick Perry (R), has been one of the staunchest supporters of reinstitutionalizing state rights ever since legislation was proposed by the federal government to socialize health care. He stated, "that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state..." and suggested the possibility of secession.
In short, the current growth of government under the past two administrations has put the states in a situation where they must threaten to leave the union -- all because the federalism ideal has been forgotten.
While the founders argued that the states needed a central authority to defend themselves against a common enemy, they did not make the argument that the states should give up their sovereignty to achieve that. And, they never even remotely imagined that the "common enemy" would become the federal government itself.
But that is exactly what has happened.
Of course, the Obama Administration and Congress are showing no signs of stopping the fleecing of the American people. So, the states and the people have decided to stand up and take back their state sovereignty before their state citizenship, like private health insurance becomes, a thing of the past.
Soon, the "feds" may be faced with a dire choice: either return to the tenets of federalism or be prepared for today's "ragtag army" of rebels to echo the actions of the founders and "dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another."
Mr. Obama, meet Mr. Jefferson.
.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept,
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare,
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
.
Wild Thing's comment.......
Today, it would seem, the United States has seated as president a man who possess no value for the tenets of Natural Law; who sees no duty to maintain the beacon of freedom and liberty; and who purposely and deliberately turns a deaf ear to the cries for freedom from every corner of the Earth in deference to the will of the one-world philosophy of neo-Marxism.
Today, because of neglecting our constitutional duty to civic responsibility and governmental oversight, politics has replaced government and Marxist collectivist ideology has replaced the philosophies and belief systems of our Founding Fathers.
Today, we are told by the powers that be that if you believe in defending the United States Constitution, that if you believe in the sanctity of our Charters of Freedom, that if you believe in sovereignty and allegiance to our great nation, that the Department of Homeland Security considers you someone about whom they should be concerned.
....Thank you Richard for sending this to me.
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:47 AM | Comments (5)
August 12, 2009
Dirty Secret No. 1 in Obamacare by Chuck Norris
Dirty Secret No. 1 in Obamacare
by Chuck Norris
Health care reforms are turning into health care revolts. Americans are turning up the heat on congressmen in town hall meetings across the U.S.
While watching these political hot August nights, I decided to research the reasons so many are opposed to Obamacare to separate the facts from the fantasy. What I discovered is that there are indeed dirty little secrets buried deep within the 1,000-plus page health care bill.
Dirty secret No. 1 in Obamacare is about the government's coming into homes and usurping parental rights over child care and development.
It's outlined in sections 440 and 1904 of the House bill (Page 838), under the heading "home visitation programs for families with young children and families expecting children." The programs (provided via grants to states) would educate parents on child behavior and parenting skills.
The bill says that the government agents, "well-trained and competent staff," would "provide parents with knowledge of age-appropriate child development in cognitive, language, social, emotional, and motor domains ... modeling, consulting, and coaching on parenting practices," and "skills to interact with their child to enhance age-appropriate development."
Are you kidding me?! With whose parental principles and values? Their own? Certain experts'? From what field and theory of childhood development? As if there are one-size-fits-all parenting techniques! Do we really believe they would contextualize and personalize every form of parenting in their education, or would they merely universally indoctrinate with their own?
Are we to assume the state's mediators would understand every parent's social or religious core values on parenting? Or would they teach some secular-progressive and religiously neutered version of parental values and wisdom? And if they were to consult and coach those who expect babies, would they ever decide circumstances to be not beneficial for the children and encourage abortions?
One government rebuttal is that this program would be "voluntary." Is that right? Does that imply that this agency would just sit back passively until some parent needing parenting skills said, "I don't think I'll call my parents, priest or friends or read a plethora of books, but I'll go down to the local government offices"?
To the contrary, the bill points to specific targeted groups and problems, on Page 840: The state "shall identify and prioritize serving communities that are in high need of such services, especially communities with a high proportion of low-income families."
Are we further to conclude by those words that low-income families know less about parenting? Are middle- and upper-class parents really better parents? Less neglectful of their children? Less needful of parental help and training? Is this "prioritized" training not a biased, discriminatory and even prejudicial stereotype and generalization that has no place in federal government, law or practice?
Bottom line: Is all this what you want or expect in a universal health care bill being rushed through Congress? Do you want government agents coming into your home and telling you how to parent your children? When did government health care turn into government child care?
Government needs less of a role in running our children's lives and more of a role in supporting parents' decisions for their children. Children belong to their parents, not the government. And the parents ought to have the right -- and government support -- to parent them without the fed's mandates, education or intervention in our homes.
Kids are very important to my wife, Gena, and me. That's why we've spent the past 17 years developing our nonprofit KICKSTART program in public schools in Texas. It builds up their self-esteem and teaches them respect and discipline. Of course, whether or not they participate in the program is their and their parents' choice.
How contrary is Obamacare's home intrusion and indoctrination family services, in which state agents prioritize houses to enter and enforce their universal values and principles upon the hearts and minds of families across America?
Government's real motives and rationale are quite simple, though rarely, if ever, stated. If one wants to control the future ebbs and flows of a country, one must have command over future generations. That is done by seizing parental and educational power, legislating preferred educational methods and materials, and limiting private educational options. It is so simple that any socialist can understand it. As Josef Stalin once stated, "Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."
Before so-called universal health care turns into universal hell care, write or call your representative today and protest his voting Obamacare into law. Remind him that what is needed in Washington is a truly bipartisan group that is allowed an ample amount of time to work on a compromise health care law that wouldn't raise taxes (for anyone), regulate personal medical choices, ration health care or restrict American citizens.
.
Wild Thing's comment......
Total control means total control! The left wing Democrats want them schooled in left wing dictatorial indoctrination.
This proves once again this bill has very little to do with health care.
.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:50 AM | Comments (14)
August 08, 2009
"Spreading the Wealth Around" by Col. Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret.
"Spreading the Wealth Around" by Col. Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret.
by Col. Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret.
The political left is always amusing; especially amusing is the "one" in the White House. But in this instance the amusement is different. The left is amusing because it utters false information, not because they are funny. The amusing part is that they actually believe that cogent people believe them.
At the top of their list is the ABSOLUTE falsehood that Obama does not want a single payer system (government run) of healthcare. Democrats' treatment of that subject does not even qualify as spin; it is an out and out distortion of the truth, a lie. If the Democrats in Congress are so out of touch with and so driven by their ideology that they feel compelled to cram their overreaching, socialist version of health care down the throats of the American people, they are about to learn that despite all of their efforts and their alliances with their propaganda arm, the so called, "mainstream media," that they will be voted out of office in crushing defeat. That's good. But in the meantime they may succeed in passing their toxic legislation and that's bad. Further, any legislation they enact will necessarily have to be repealed, and "empty suit's" veto will be overridden. The rendition of examples could fill a number of pages, but this one will suffice.
It is amazing that many continue to refer to Obama as a 'liberal." Message to those who have that mistaken opinion: This guy is no a liberal; he is a committed socialist, if not a communist, with mounting evidence that the latter is likely. Watch what he is doing, not on what he is saying. What he is doing is socialistic in virtually every context from fiscal policy to health care; from abortion to ownership of what were once private companies. From news conferences to twitter; he chafes that the Constitution restricts government's role, on the contrary he is an advocate of expansive and invasive government.
Underneath Obama's charming smile, and it is indeed charming; underneath those eloquent "words, just words" is a malicious, hate America, racist, bigot whose evident objective is to destroy everything that has made America great. The latter greatness has afforded even those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder better opportunity, more abundant prosperity and better health care than any nation on earth, ever, without exception!
The most recent "twitter" of dubious legality from the Obama White House is for neighbors to spy on neighbors, specifically for anyone engaged in any activity that seems "fishy" as it relates to opposition of pending health care legislation, to report it to the White House. That, dear reader has a familiar "Cold War" ring to it, except in Cold War days, the "report your neighbor" tactic was used by communists to intimidate, persecute or prosecute anyone who didn't agree with the communist party. Now it's a different name and location but the same tactics.
It is increasingly evident that this administration is a coalition of leftist liberals, socialists, communists and Chicago thugs. A look at the list of the White House roster of czars alone confirms that observation. To be fair, Obama has at least two and there are probably more, patriotic Americans on his team: Retired Marine General Jim Jones as National Security Advisor; and Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. Most others seem to be of the tax cheat, drug addict, communist or socialist variety. So far, this administration makes the marijuana smokers of the Clinton Administration seem patriotic, albeit less sexually fixated, or at least I think so for now.
Not much ruffles me, but when my fellow Americans are so utterly disconnected from what the socialists/communists are succeeding at doing in this country it kinks my rope. Good, decent, law abiding Americans are just cruising along without a clue as to what is going on around them; and that of course is precisely what the vicious loons on the left want. Where's the media, with the possible exception of FOX News and sometimes it too is suspect? Where's the quality investigative journalism? Where's the journalistic integrity? The short answer to each is: they are cheerleaders for the left; they are more interested in Obama's golf game; and they have none!
Too many give Obama a pass for his lack of experience. Everyone had to opportunity to know what he was before the election if they paid the least bit of attention; there was plenty of information available for even the least curious. But they didn't pay attention and even now too many are either asleep, duped, or drugged.
Too many want to give him time; I don't, I've read his books! This man is motivated out of bitterness, manifest racism, and hatred of American success out of some distorted psychological notion of social vengeance, not justice; "No! Not God bless America, God damn America," said Obama's Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who either molded Obama's view or the two were symbiotic. Obama sat for twenty years at Wright's hate filled "feet" and did not do one thing, nada, zilch, nothing to bring unity between the races, then has the temerity to call the Cambridge police "stupid" for making a perfectly legitimate arrest; and, now the most he can do to bring unity is to have a beer garden photo op at the White House? What a crock! Anyone who falls for that tripe deserves the impending re-education camps he has in store for them.
A national TV host recently asked his guests who appeared individually, what kind of grade Obama should have for his first six months in office. His question missed the entire target; this is not about a grade, this is about Obama changing the country from a free market, Constitutional Republic to a government run/controlled socialist dictatorship with himself as dictator. If the vast and too silent eighty percent majority allow the activists in the twenty percent minority to lead them around by the nose down the socialist path, it will be tragic. Reach over and do something "fishy" to wake them up, so that you too can be on the White House enemies, twitter list!
Patriotic Americans must not allow the Democrats to ram down our collective throats a form of government that we do not want. At the current rate this is soon to be no longer a country where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people. It is rapidly CHANGING into a government, of the government, by the government and for the government where the people work to support that government. Why else do you think that Obama has accrued more National Debt in six months than all other administrations in the history of the country combined? Answer: So that wage earners will be forced to turn their wages over for Obama (higher taxes, get it?) to "spread the wealth around." Get it?
The latest email from the White House is to thirteen million of its campaign supporters urging them to go to Congressional Town Hall meetings to silence the "angry mobs." Now that has the potential to get really interesting.
If thou sleepest, WAKE UP!
Semper Fidelis
Wild Thing's comment........
Awesome article by Col. Bob Pappas. He is always so good. Gio bless him for saying it like it is and not being PC about it. I am so sick of some of the writers and TV hosts walking on egg shells. This is about our country and it is life and death for it to survive, the last thing we need to do is be PC with Obama or anyone else that is the enemy of our country.
"A national TV host recently asked his guests who appeared individually, what kind of grade Obama should have for his first six months in office, His question missed the entire target.".....
The host is is writing about is the jerk Bill O'Reilly and he is right about him.
.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:44 AM | Comments (6)
July 30, 2009
We've Figured Him ( Obama) Out by Ben Stein
We've Figured Him Out
Ben Stein
( Ben is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes "Ben Stein's Diary" for every issue of The American Spectator.)
Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed?
Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths:
The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith.
They ignored his anti-white writings in his books. They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright.
They ignored his refusal to explain years at a time of his life as a student. They ignored his ultra-left record as a "community organizer," Illinois state legislator, and Senator.
The American people ignored his total zero of an academic record as a student and teacher, his complete lack of scholarship when he was being touted as a scholar.
Now, the American people are starting to wake up to the truth. Barack Obama is a super likeable super leftist, not a fan of this country, way, way too cozy with the terrorist leaders in the Middle East, way beyond naïveté, all the way into active destruction of our interests and our allies and our future.
The American people have already awakened to the truth that the stimulus bill -- a great idea in theory -- was really an immense bribe to Democrat interest groups, and in no way an effort to help all Americans.
Now, Americans are waking up to the truth that ObamaCare basically means that every time you are sick or injured, you will have a clerk from the Department of Motor Vehicles telling your doctor what he can and cannot do.
The American people already know that Mr. Obama's plan to lower health costs while expanding coverage and bureaucracy is a myth, a promise of something that never was and never will be -- a bureaucracy lowering costs in a free society. Either the costs go up or the free society goes away.
These are perilous times. Mrs. Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, has given Iran the go-ahead to have nuclear weapons, an unqualified betrayal of the nation. Now, we face a devastating loss of freedom at home in health care. It will be joined by controls on our lives to "protect us" from global warming, itself largely a fraud if believed to be caused by man.
Mr. Obama knows Americans are getting wise and will stop him if he delays at all in taking away our freedoms.
There is his urgency and our opportunity. Once freedom is lost, America is lost. Wake up, beloved America.
.
Wild Thing's comment..........
Some people are waking up, but the damage is done. I really am praying the Obamacare and Cap and Trade can be stopped . To have the most dangerous man in America elected to the highest office in the land is a shock I won't get over.
The politicans think that they are invincible, and we have allowed them to think that. We have to take that away from them. The many phone calls telling them they will not get another vote from us has got to open their eyes and they have to learn we mean it.
.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:40 AM | Comments (9)
June 08, 2009
Know thy enemy: This is not your mother's Democratic Party
Know thy enemy: This is not your mother's Democratic Party
by Andrew Breitbart
(Andrew Breitbart is the founder of the news Web site www.breitbart.com and is co-author of "Hollywood Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon - The Case Against Celebrity." and Big Hollywood blog)
The Democratic Party's attitude to elections is admirable: Win. And recent history has shown it will do anything to do so.
When, if not now, will Republicans develop such a fighting spirit?
Democrats invest - with taxpayer money, mind you - in groups like ACORN that, among other sordid tactics, seek out Skid Row bodies and wheel them to polling places. All the Democratic National Committee needs are vans and smelling salts. Pop culture and the "education system" have done the rest, making "D" the default choice on Election Day.
Democrats brazenly take policy positions - think government services and even amnesty for illegal immigrants - not because they are the right thing to do, but because they are time-tested demographic bribes. Forget cigarettes and beer, Democrats would distribute needles, methadone, medical marijuana and biscotti in voter goodie bags if they could get away with it.
Democrats long ago jettisoned America's melting-pot ideal - E Pluribus Unum ("Out of Many, One") - because it imperils their campaign for permanent rule. Splitting the country into separate identity groups and playing them against each other works a lot better. And anyone who disagrees is a racist.
Win. Win. Win.
One of the first things President Obama attempted to do after taking office was to take control of the Census Bureau, an act that could redraw congressional districts and ensure Democratic majorities for years to come. The new president also etched out an enemies list, focusing on conservative talk-radio hosts, including Rush Limbaugh. He also appears to have singled out Fox News. Comedians and mainstream journalists who are usually contemptuous of government bullying and First Amendment threats also continue to do the president's bidding.
These overt political gestures were done amid economic chaos and mainstream media delirium to ensure permanent victory for a newly radicalized Democratic Party. Moveon.org, George Soros and the ghost of Saul Alinsky are in charge now. It's not just "tea party" protesters who think we've tilted far left. Self-avowed anarchists and open socialists proudly brandished Obama placards at well-attended May Day parades.
When elected, the Democrats dole out billion-dollar bonuses to their core supporters at taxpayers' expense. Witness the $787 billion stimulus package, an orgy of special-interest payback for labor unions, liberal activist groups and multinational corporations. One would be hard pressed to name a Democratic policy that is motivated more by principle than by winning.
Where is the media to expose this blatant corruption when the media are in the middle of the pile? NBC News, whose parent company General Electric is getting billions in stimulus cash to perpetuate Democrat-friendly "green" technologies and health care information systems, is at the forefront of a bizarre campaign to act as a check on the party that is out of power, not the party in power. NBC anchor Brian Williams bowed to the new president; MSNBC is a Fellini-esque exercise in liberal triumphalism.
With Democrats holding comfortable majorities in the House and Senate, as well as controlling the executive branch, it's only logical that the mainstream media to focus their scrutiny on Mr. Limbaugh, ex-Rep. Tom DeLay, former President George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, the governor of one of the least populous states. Right?
NBC News and MSNBC are certainly not along among the government watchdogs that have been tamed. The New York Times expends its considerable yet waning clout to ensure that our future is in a one-party state. Vocal, liberal Hollywood celebrities - on the same page as the Huffington Post and Keith Olbermann - spread the venom by making membership in the Grand Old Party seem like an anti-social act for young voters.
Such brazenly reprehensible Democratic lawmakers as Nancy Pelosi, John P. Murtha, Barney Frank, Harry Reid and Christopher J. Dodd are not trotted before the media because of their telegenic appeal and oratorical skills, but to act as symbols of what politicians can get away with it. It's a big-league taunt - like gang members in prison sporting "tear" tattoos under their eyes to brag about their kill count. Yeah ... What are you going to do about it, Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell?
Yet Democrats at least wield a logical and workable strategy to defeat their enemy. And "enemy" is precisely how they view the Republican Party.
Republicans, on the other hand, act like a snobby condo board and appear to seek out potential voters for their savoriness. The party expects pre-existing respectable organizations, Protestant churches in particular, to do the heavy lifting. In this day of dwindling Republican appeal, the party's ace in the hole is heard at the end of the polling day: "Have they counted the overseas military vote yet?" It's amazing Republicans ever win.
Most disturbing, Republicans seem to think Democrats can be their friends. Not only does the Republican Party not have a Ronald Reagan, the Democratic Party has no Tip O'Neill. Washington doesn't have end-of-the-day, cross-party social sessions over single-malt scotches. There is no bipartisanship that doesn't end in Republicans acquiescing in defeat of their core principles. A coordinated Democratic campaign against mainstream middle-of-the-road Republicanism is here to stay. And our strategy, as best as I can decipher it, is to be more liked than the last go around.
In the next election cycle, things need to be drastically different. Democracy is not Augusta National Golf Club. It's a messy free-for-all, and in a two-party system, the GOP will not survive if it doesn't accept the fact that the Democrats are its enemy and that it must begin to play for keeps. That means finding another Lee Atwater - only meaner - and not apologizing when we get him.
Wild Thing's comment.........
Wow! Excellent piece!
What Breitbart is saying was demonstrated in action yesterday in the European Elections in Europe, particularly in France.
GOP and all Conservatives should take note and study these elections closely.
France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy began a detailed, meticulously planned and executed, politics as blood sport campaign to demolish the leftist opposition, and did it.The PS (Socialist Party) was in total disarray after two years of Sarko, and in his strong campaign in the EU elections, the Socialist were literally wiped out. This giant tsunama reverberated in a wave of Rightist victories throughout Europe. I always remember when the President of France came here to visit President Bush, how much he loved America and was such a refreshing change from the past president of France. A night and day difference and what Obama is with his hate for our country. I am no hufge fan of Nichoas Sarkozy, but when he does something right I sure willl give him credit and this he has done right.
BREITBART SAYS:
“In the next election cycle, things need to be drastically different. Democracy is not Augusta National Golf Club. It’s a messy free-for-all, and in a two-party system, the GOP will not survive if it doesn’t accept the fact that the Democrats are its enemy and that it must begin to play for keeps. That means finding another Lee Atwater - only meaner - and not apologizing when we get him. “
Posted by Wild Thing at 07:50 AM | Comments (8)
June 04, 2009
Obama Knew What He Was Getting With Sotomayor
Obama Knew What He Was Getting With Sotomayor
by David Limbaugh ( this is Rush's brother)
It amazes me that for all the attention Judge Sonia Sotomayor has attracted for a racially charged statement in a 2001 speech, few are tying her attitude to President Barack Obama's. Just as he knew precisely what his 20-year pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was about and approved, he knew, prior to nominating her, what Sonia Sotomayor is about and approved. In both cases, he just didn't want us to know.
In her 2001 speech at Berkeley, Sotomayor said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Obama's apologists claim Sotomayor's statement was taken out of context. But the context of her prepared remarks makes the statement more -- not less -- incriminating.
The sentences preceding the statement were: "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge (Miriam) Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice (Sandra Day) O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am ... not so sure that I agree with the statement."
First, it's important to note that she's not talking about trial judges, for example, who might be more or less lenient in their sentencing within the prescribed sentencing guidelines, but about appellate judges applying the law.
Next, Sotomayor is not just saying that as imperfect human beings, judges sometimes rule differently because, try as they might to be impartial, no human being can be totally impartial.
Nor is she merely saying that women, based on their gender, rule differently from men or that those of different nationalities rule differently based on those differences, but that they should do so and that their rulings usually are superior because of it.
Are you getting this? She is saying women and minority judges should not even strive toward objectivity, impartiality or blind justice, but should indulge their subjective experiences to apply the law with partiality aforethought, presumably to remedy past perceived or actual wrongs, even if unwarranted by objective application of the law. They should ignore or twist the law to achieve their desired policy result.
To the objection that Sotomayor was just theorizing in a harmless speech, I would respond by reminding you -- again -- of her pivotal role in that now-notorious concrete case of Ricci v. DeStefano, in which she summarily and cavalierly affirmed a district court's decision to cheat firefighters of their duly earned promotions because no black candidates passed the tests.
Talk about empathy all you want, but she and her fellow judges displayed no empathy for those who played by the rules. With strokes of their pens, they discriminated against successful candidates and caused them real damage by changing the rules after the fact -- not to mention the damage their ruling might have caused to the quality of fire departments, whose job is to save lives and property.
Those ordinarily quickest to cry "racism" are expressing outrage that certain commentators have used that term to describe Sotomayor's statements and rulings that would be universally condemned if made by, say, Trent Lott. But the fact remains that Sotomayor apparently approves of reverse discrimination, and President Obama must have known that in advance. Obama is a militant proponent of get evenism, that is, using the power of the state -- actually, misusing the power of the state -- to even the score for minorities and/or the economically less fortunate.
It was Obama, after all, who said: "Solving our racial problems in this country will require concrete steps, significant investment. We have a lot of work to do to overcome the long legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. It can't be purchased on the cheap." Are we to assume that the Civil War and the civil rights movement were "on the cheap"?
And it was Obama's Justice Department that just inexplicably dismissed a slam-dunk case against the New Black Panther members who intimidated voters and polling judges at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008. This, despite the fact that one civil rights lawyer said it was the most blatant form of voter intimidation he had ever seen and the fact that the defendants didn't even bother to file pleadings with the court or raise any defenses to the charges.
Whether or not race played a factor in this dismissal, President Obama has a long way to go before claiming he's a post-racial president. Reverse discrimination is still discrimination, and reverse racism is racism. None of us is exempted of our duty to rise above them.
Wild Thing's comment........
If ANY of the quotes attributed to the newest nominee to the Supreme Court had been uttered by an individual whose last name ended in (R), there would at this moment be an uproar throughout the land that would shake the heavens.
.
....Thank you Jim for sending this to me.
Posted by Wild Thing at 06:45 AM | Comments (4)
May 24, 2009
"Cheney Takes On The Man"...... by Kevin Jackson
I love it when the bad guy wins and gives it to "the man." Finally in the Bizarro World that is now Amerika (it's spelled 'left'), the bad guy finally won. Of whom do I speak? I speak of Cheney, a true patriot—publicly exposing Obama, a complete fraud.
Lamestream media to the rescue, because their messiah is getting publicly flogged. To think that we were told how "smart" Obama is. Well if brains were dynamite, Obama couldn't blow his nose! So taking on Cheney, a true intellectual with a real track record of achievement is just asking for trouble.
So we get reports that America is experiencing "Cheney overload." This is liberal code for "Cheney is too effective, let's create public opinion that he is the Anti-Christ." Maybe the Left is tired of Cheney, but conservatives are energized. I predict many fence-sitters are as well. "Feels good don't it!"
In confronting the worst president in history (and Obama ain't even finished polishing his turd) Cheney was absolutely brilliant—the epitome of leadership. Cheney has no dog in this fight, no agenda. As he said, he has "no favors to garner." Cheney desires but one thing…to protect America.
He speaks with eloquence and passion—backed with substance! For you liberal idiots who think the teleprompter president is riveting, take a gander at "the bad guy," the old white Republican boogeyman. Cheney speaks with the passion of reality, and not the fad of idealism.
Meanwhile, "Junior" is still trying to sell America on the idea that he is willing to do anything to protect America—anything except [fill in the blank]. In typical Obama style, he accomplishes two things in his speech: (1) demonize the previous administration for protecting us, and (2) blame America for terrorists wanting to kill us.
According to Obama, Americans are barbarians, and Bush is the former Chief of the Barbarians. Sort of like another "great" racist Democrat president Andrew Jackson calling the Native Americans "savages" for protecting their lands and families. That makes me a proud "savage."
No surprise here, but Obama wants to reserve the right to do exactly what the Bush administration did! [pp] "Just in case I need to, I reserve the right to unsay what I just said, and do what Bush did." What else is new?
Yet again Obama confirmed what conservatives know about liberals—they don't love America; they tolerate America. Liberals want to declare veterans and hard-working taxpaying conservatives as extremists; and declare terrorists as "man-made disasters."
It is long overdue that somebody stepped up and confronted the lunacy of the Left. Who better than a 40-year veteran of Washington, and no-nonsense guy like Cheney—a man of real accomplishment and credentials. Cheney has forgotten more about running a country, than the no talent hack currently occupying the void will ever know.
Barack "Empty-suit Apologist" Obama believes that the way America treats people trying to kill us has made the people trying to kill us more determined. Really? How much more determined can you get than vowing and attempting to kill us? Is there a level of heinous above that?
Here's the wrap:
Obama has produced no evidence that harsh interrogation didn't work. However, he has implied that he may have been able to coax critical information out of our enemies—maybe?
Coincidentally, the documents are unavailable—ObamaSpeak for "the documents are being altered so that I won't look like a liar. If not doctored, they will be destroyed." Or they are being put in the same vault that holds his university records and his Kenyan birth certificate.
America is fortunate to have true a patriot, a real "bad guy" like Cheney to confront the evil that now occupies the White House. I love the irony this time of the bad guy winning and sticking it to "the man." I also like that America is finally exposing who "the man" really is.
That's my rant!
Kevin Jackson
The Black Sphere blog
A lilttle about Kevin.........
"Due to the death of my mother when I was 5, I was raised by my grandparents who were staunch Democrats. I recall as a child watching Reagan give a speech in his unsuccessful run for the presidency. After Reagan finished, I said to my grandparents, “Why are we Democrats, when what we believe is what that guy [Reagan] just said?” Thus was the birth of The Black Sphere.
I am just a poor kid, who was fortunate enough to have been exposed to what the world has to offer, and I was raised to be an optimist. My grandparents instilled in me a “no excuses mentality” and work ethic. That is my definition of America,"
.
Wild Thing's comment..........
Love it from the Guardian....
"Dick Cheney: Washington trembles at the return of 'Darth Vader'"
Dick Cheney was a formidable backroom operator during his eight years as vice-president in the Bush administration. Having abandoned his short-lived retirement in Wyoming, he is now leading the Republican charge against Obama from the front.
Part of the explanation for the bout of jitters is that Obama is struggling to contain an ever-growing row over the future of Guantánamo Bay and the security apparatus created by the Bush administration as part of its "war on terror". But there is another factor: the return of an opponent the Democrats had thought of as politically dead: Dick Cheney. The sinister, reclusive figure at the heart of the Bush administration, who attracted labels such as Darth Vader and Dr Strangelove, has returned to the heart of Washington and is causing havoc.
He has forced Obama on the defensive for the first time since becoming president, giving demoralised Republicans something finally to cheer about.
"Cheney is seriously the only person who's got the White House to change its policy," Dan Senor, a foreign policy adviser in the Bush administration, told the Washington Post
Cheney has rattled Obama over the proposed closure of Guantánamo and the CIA's use of waterboarding. And not only Obama, but the next most prominent Democrat after him, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who on Friday refused to answer any more questions about whether she had been briefed by the CIA about torture six years ago. She denies she was: the CIA says it did.
The conservative Weekly Standard is also cheering. Another influential conservative, William Kristol, writing in the current issue, said: "While most senior Bush alumni were in hiding, Dick Cheney - Darth Vader himself, Mr Unpopularity, the last guy you'd supposedly want out there making the case - stepped on to the field. He's made himself the Most Valuable Republican of the first four months of the Obama administration."
LOL I love this so much! The democrats are hating it, Obama is not liking it and uncomfortable.
Have any of you noticed yestersday when they played snipets of Obama talking his voice is weak. At first I thought he might be sick or have a cold. But honeslty the more I thiink about it and the reaction Cheney has gotten, I have to wonder if it is just that Obama has gotten the wind knocked out of him by VP Dick Cheney.
Thank you God!!!
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:44 AM | Comments (8)
May 20, 2009
American Capitalism Gone With a Whimper
American Capitalism Gone With a Whimper
Stanislav Mishin
The article has been reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?
These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.
Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.
So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.
.
Wild Thing's comment..........
We have a president too far left for Pravda; but the MSM assures us that anyone who opposes him is an ‘extremist’.
This is an interesting article and he says a lot of things that are very acurate as to what has been happening.
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:55 AM | Comments (14)
May 08, 2009
"Being Ann" ~ by Lisa De Pasquale
Being Ann
by Lisa De Pasquale
When Ann Coulter was a little girl she wanted to be “head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with a Republican president.” Or a “fairy princess.”
Instead, Coulter became the Rush Limbaugh of the printed word. She is author of six (soon to be seven) New York Times best sellers, a nationally syndicated columnist and one of the most popular speakers among young and old alike. Coulter has become the most successful conservative writer working today, with more than 3 million books sold. No 21st century conservative writer—male or female—comes even close. Like Limbaugh, her audience keeps growing. When a new book is released, liberals and delicate self-proclaimed conservatives say that “this time she’s gone too far” and predict the end of her career. The book then sells better than her last. She drives the Left into a sputtering rage, and she loves it.
I first met Coulter at the 2000 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. Following the success of her first book, “High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton,” Coulter was given CPAC’s Conservative Journalist of the Year Award. That year she also spoke at Young America’s Foundation’s journalism lunch. She has remained a favorite of young conservatives for her tenacity, wit and accessibility. Like many of them, she became active in the conservative movement during her college years.
During a time when famous people brag about their difficult childhood and airing family secrets become a badge of honor, Coulter doesn’t apologize for having a normal childhood in New Canaan, Conn. She says her parents, John and Nell, were “immeasurably important” in shaping her beliefs and career choices.
After years of boisterous political discussions with her parents and brothers around the dinner table, Coulter would blossom in the liberal stronghold of higher education. As one of Coulter’s close friends told Time magazine, “For a younger girl with two older brothers, you’ve got to learn to mix it up, stand up for yourself. Older brothers are not going to cut you any slack. If you say something stupid, you figure, next time, I’m going to be better at it.”
Coulter left Connecticut to attend Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. She said, “During my first few years of college, I was a community organizer of sorts—I went to sorority and fraternity parties, met lots of new friends, played lacrosse, went to church, chatted in the library and danced at Ujama House parties.”
It wasn’t long before she started making waves on campus. Cornell, which continues to be a breeding ground (or cemetery) for liberal thought, was the perfect environment for Coulter: “My junior year I became more of a think-tank- type political activist upon noticing I was at a world class university and hadn’t really been taking advantage of it.”
Coulter co-founded the conservative Cornell Review, which still exists today. She then went on to the University of Michigan School of Law. “I founded the University of Michigan chapter of this kooky, radical fringe group that believed in individual rights, the rule of law, and the Constitution of the United States of America, known as ‘the Federalist Society.’”
One of the highlights of her time in law school was bringing in Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia through the Federalist Society. Much like she does when faced with a hostile crowd or commentator, Coulter thrived in the liberal campus atmosphere. “To quote Bill Ayers,” she told me, “I don’t regret one minute of my student activism. In fact, I wish we had done more.”
A few years ago, I met the niece of Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce, who also attended Cornell around the same time as Coulter. Though they didn’t know one another, Luce’s niece was the photographer for the Cornell Review and other campus publications. Like Coulter, Ambassador Luce reached the height of success within the conservative movement. She was a playwright, managing editor of Vanity Fair, staunch anti-Communist, ambassador to Italy and congresswoman from Coulter’s hometown district. While at the University of Michigan School of Law, Coulter became a fan of Ambassador Luce and her smart-aleck writing.
One summer afternoon in 2000, Coulter and I spent hours in the Manuscript Room of the Library of Congress, combing through some of the more than 800 boxes of personal and professional papers that had belonged to Ambassador Luce. Coulter was keen on finding a biting line she remembered then-Congresswoman Luce saying on the House floor to a liberal congressman. She found the line and quoted it in her weekly column a few months later.
Coulter loves finding a tidbit of information or unknown fact. Though it goes unnoticed by right- and left-wing commentators alike, many of Coulter’s “outrageous” statements tend to become conventional thinking. “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” impeached a President. “Slander” busted the elite media. “Treason” vindicated Sen. Joe McCarthy and put Democrats’ patriotism into the public square. “Godless” shed light on the religious cult of liberalism. Her newest book, “Guilty,” goes a step further to expose the phony “victims” propped up by the Left.
On March 23, 1999, Coulter gave her first college speech for Young America’s Foundation (YAF) at Brandeis University. She has since spoken on more than 60 college campuses and is YAF’s most popular speaker. The foundation also says that their Ann Coulter poster is the most popular in their poster series. It graces the walls of campus dorms, military barracks across the world, and my office.
This is a wonderfully written 2 page article on Ann Coulter, to continue reading PLEASE CLICK HERE.
.
Wild Thing's comment.......
I am glad we have people like Ann on our side. What a huge difference in the two parties, we just need to make the gap wider like it used to be.
.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:40 AM | Comments (4)
May 05, 2009
"CHECK, PLEASE! " by Mark Steyn
CHECK, PLEASE!
Steyn on the World
Tuesday, 05 May 2009
HAPPY WARRIOR
At the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, they’re premiering a new ballet about a young French boy who’s befriended by a giant helium-filled balloon. Any balletomanes at the US embassy might be forgiven for assuming it to be some hastily concocted metaphor to Euro-American harmony in the Age of Obama: a lithe young Continental prancing around the stage enraptured by his dazzling bag of gas. But, as it happens, The Red Balloon is an adaptation of some fey French movie from the Fifties, when a twirling Euro-ninny and his novelty gasbag were the stuff of cinematic whimsy and not the twin pillars on which western civilization has come to rest.
As is now well known, President Obama’s outreach to the Europeans – talking up the Continent’s “leadership” in the world and managing to keep a straight face while doing it – went unreciprocated.
When it came to the good war – Afghanistan, the one the anti-Iraq types claim to be in favor of – Nato, a “military” “alliance” of 28 countries, rewarded the impeccable multilateralist with an extra 5,000 troops - or approx 180 soldiers per nation. And by “soldiers” they don’t mean men with guns who fire them at the enemy but “non-combat” forces who man the photocopier back at the barracks while the Third Infantry Division and a few brave lads from Britain, Canada and a couple of other places are up in the hills sticking it to the Taliban all day long. Our allies are happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with us, as long as there are a couple of provinces between their shoulders and ours.
On the other hand, the Obama happy talk seemed to go down well with the North Koreans, who promptly held one of their missile tests, and with members of the piratical community, who seized an American vessel for the first time in a couple of centuries. As the New York Times headline writer put it: “Standoff With Pirates Shows U.S. Power Has Limits.”
Well, all power has limits. Today, the salient feature of the modern world is the urge to self-limit. The wealthiest jurisdictions on the planet have no “power” as it’s conventionally understood – and, indeed, that’s the point: They’re projecting post-power power, which, being that it’s non-existent, has no limits whatsoever.
In 2002 the Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen gave a speech in London saying that “the EU must not develop into a military superpower but must become a great power that will not take up arms at any occasion in order to defend its own interests.”
Good luck with that. Mr Lipponen objected to my derision by suggesting I’d missed some subtle nuances of his along the way, but for the life of me I can’t see what they are. Aside from anything else, anyone urging a Continent capable of “taking up arms” would be up against basic Euro-math: You can have massive welfare or a credible military, but not both. Indeed, with Europe’s deathbed demography, the former is barely affordable even without the latter.
Shortly after 9/11, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, John Manley, conceded that his country was dining in the best restaurants without paying its way – or, as he put it, "You can't just sit at the G8 table and then, when the bill comes, go to the washroom." That’s the sort of straight talk politicians do when they want to sound as if they’re getting real but have no intention of doing so. And so the horrors of 9/11 faded, and Canada and Europe resumed their habit of dining at the Nato table and stampeding for the washroom when the check came. The idea that Continental nations are going to find money to upgrade their militaries any time soon is delusion: A few years ago, the US spent 3.4 per cent of GDP on defense, the other Nato members spent on average 1.9 per cent. The most recent figures show the US spends 4 per cent, while the rest of Nato now averages 1.7 per cent – and it’s mostly high wages for unionized armies keeping it even at that level: The Continental country with the highest defense spending is Greece, and that’s almost all on personnel. The average age of a Belgian soldier is 40 – which at least ensures that the eternal Democrat plaint that we’re sending “our children” into harm’s way is replaced with the faintly surreal alternative of sending our late middle-aged into harm’s way.
Meanwhile, Susan Rice, America’s UN ambassador, urges Iran to “halt its illicit nuclear program” and “take the steps that would enable it to be a responsible member of the international community”.
You mean like Belgium or Finland? Lacking the exquisitely refined sensibilities of Mr Lipponen, the mullahs can’t see what’s in it for them.
My old colleague at The Daily Telegraph in London, the historian Sir John Keegan, likes to say that “without armed forces a state does not exist”.
The European Union exists only because for half-a-century they’ve been under American military protection: Promoted as a counterweight to the US hegemon, the EU in fact exists only because of it.
So what happens when America embraces Euro-sized government? The US can’t buck the basic arithmetic any more than Sweden can: A social-democratic America at home presupposes cuts in Pax Americana abroad. Those allies in tough neighborhoods – Israel next to Iran; India next to Pakistan; Japan next to North Korea; Eastern Europe in the shadow of a resurgent Russia – have already noted America’s passivity in the face of explicit threats. But eventually Western Europe will, too: at the top table, the big guy is heading for the washroom.
.
Wild Thing's comment........
"The Red Balloon is an adaptation of some fey French movie from the Fifties, when a twirling Euro-ninny and his novelty gasbag were the stuff of cinematic whimsy and not the twin pillars on which western civilization has come to rest."
Obama...the Red Buffoon.
"Any balletomanes at the US embassy might be forgiven for assuming it to be some hastily concocted metaphor to Euro-American harmony in the Age of Obama: a lithe young Continental prancing around the stage enraptured by his dazzling bag of gas."
LOL Steyn can really turn a phrase .
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:40 AM | Comments (4)
April 30, 2009
Muslims: 'We Do That On First Dates'
by Ann Coulter
Without any pretense of an argument, which liberals are neurologically incapable of, the mainstream media are now asserting that our wussy interrogation techniques at Guantanamo constituted "torture" and have irreparably harmed America's image abroad.
Only the second of those alleged facts is true: The president's release of the Department of Justice interrogation memos undoubtedly hurt America's image abroad, as we are snickered at in capitals around the world, where they know what real torture is. The Arabs surely view these memos as a pack of lies. What about the pills Americans have to turn us gay?
The techniques used against the most stalwart al-Qaida members, such as Abu Zubaydah, included one terrifying procedure referred to as "the attention grasp." As described in horrifying detail in the Justice Department memo, the "attention grasp" consisted of:
"(G)rasping the individual with both hands, one hand on each side of the collar opening, in a controlled and quick motion. In the same motion as the grasp, the individual is drawn toward the interrogator."
The end.
There are rumors that Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney wanted to take away the interrogators' Altoids before they administered "the grasp," but Department of Justice lawyers deemed this too cruel.
And that's not all! As the torments were gradually increased, next up the interrogation ladder came "walling." This involves pushing the terrorist against a flexible wall, during which his "head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a C-collar effect to prevent whiplash."
People pay to have a lot rougher stuff done to them at Six Flags Great Adventure. Indeed, with plastic walls and soft neck collars, "walling" may be the world's first method of "torture" in which all the implements were made by Fisher-Price.
As the memo darkly notes, walling doesn't cause any pain, but is supposed to induce terror by making a "loud noise": "(T)he false wall is in part constructed to create a loud sound when the individual hits it, which will further shock and surprise." (!!!)
If you need a few minutes to compose yourself after being subjected to that horror, feel free to take a break from reading now. Sometimes a cold compress on the forehead is helpful, but don't let it drip or you might end up waterboarding yourself.
The CIA's interrogation techniques couldn't be more ridiculous if they were out of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch:
Cardinal! Poke her with the soft cushions! ...
Hmm! She is made of harder stuff! Cardinal Fang! Fetch ... THE COMFY CHAIR!
So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions. Well, we shall see. Biggles! Put her in the Comfy Chair! ...
Now -- you will stay in the Comfy Chair until lunchtime, with only a cup of coffee at 11.
Further up the torture ladder -- from Guantanamo, not Monty Python -- comes the "insult slap," which is designed to be virtually painless, but involves the interrogator invading "the individual's personal space."
If that doesn't work, the interrogator shows up the next day wearing the same outfit as the terrorist. (Awkward.)
I will spare you the gruesome details of the CIA's other comical interrogation techniques and leap directly to the penultimate "torture" in their arsenal: the caterpillar.
In this unspeakable brutality, a harmless caterpillar is placed in the terrorist's cell. Justice Department lawyers expressly denied the interrogators' request to trick the terrorist into believing the caterpillar was a "stinging insect."
Human rights groups have variously described being trapped in a cell with a live caterpillar as "brutal," "soul-wrenching" and, of course, "adorable."
If the terrorist manages to survive the non-stinging caterpillar maneuver -- the most fiendish method of torture ever devised by the human mind that didn't involve being forced to watch "The View" -- CIA interrogators had another sadistic trick up their sleeves.
I am not at liberty to divulge the details, except to mention the procedure's terror-inducing name: "the ladybug."
Finally, the most savage interrogation technique at Guantanamo was "waterboarding," which is only slightly rougher than the Comfy Chair.
Tens of thousands of our troops were waterboarded over the past three decades as part of their training, but not until it was done to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- mastermind of the 9/11 attack on America -- were liberal consciences shocked.
I think they were mostly shocked because they couldn't figure out how Joey Buttafuoco ended up in Guantanamo.
As non-uniformed combatants, all of the detainees at Guantanamo could have been summarily shot on the battlefield under the Laws of War.
Instead, we gave them comfy chairs, free lawyers, better food than is served in Afghani caves, prayer rugs, recreational activities and top-flight medical care -- including one terrorist who was released, whereupon he rejoined the jihad against America, after being fitted for an expensive artificial leg at Guantanamo, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.
Only three terrorists -- who could have been shot -- were waterboarded. This is not nearly as bad as "snowboarding," which is known to cause massive buttocks pain and results in approximately 10 deaths per year.
Normal human beings -- especially those who grew up with my older brother, Jimmy -- can't read the interrogation memos without laughing.
At Al-Jazeera, they don't believe these interrogation memos are for real. Muslims look at them and say: THIS IS ALL THEY'RE DOING? We do that for practice. We do that to our friends.
But The New York Times is populated with people who can't believe they live in a country where people would put a caterpillar in a terrorist's cell.
.
Wild Thing's comment.........
Another winner by Ann. I love her humor that she adds and the title is perfect.
Posted by Wild Thing at 05:40 AM | Comments (16)
April 26, 2009
"Pantywaist" Obama Doing the Job For Our Enemies
Barack Obama and the CIA: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?
Is it just me?
by Gerald Warner
If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.
Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.
That is why he opened Pandora's Box by publishing the Justice Department's legal opinions on waterboarding and other hardline interrogation techniques. He cynically subordinated the national interest to his partisan desire to embarrass the Republicans. Then he had to rush to Langley, Virginia to try to reassure a demoralised CIA that had just discovered the President of the United States was an even more formidable foe than al-Qaeda.
"Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks," he told intelligence officers. Is he kidding? Thanks to him, al-Qaeda knows the private interrogation techniques available to the US intelligence agencies and can train its operatives to withstand them - or would do so, if they had not already been outlawed.
So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers.
Obama promised his CIA audience that nobody would be prosecuted for past actions. That has already been contradicted by leftist groups with a revanchist ambition to put Republicans, headed if possible by Condoleezza Rice, in the dock. Talk about playing party politics with national security. Martin Scheinin, the United Nations special investigator for human rights, claims that senior figures, including former vice president Dick Cheney, could face prosecution overseas. Ponder that - once you have got over the difficulty of locating the United Nations and human rights within the same dimension.
President Pantywaist Obama should have thought twice before sitting down to play poker with Dick Cheney. The former vice president believes documents have been selectively published and that releasing more will prove how effective the interrogation techniques were. Under Dubya's administration, there was no further atrocity on American soil after 9/11.
President Pantywaist's recent world tour, cosying up to all the bad guys, excited the ambitions of America's enemies. Here, they realised, is a sucker they can really take to the cleaners. His only enemies are fellow Americans. Which prompts the question: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?
Wild Thing's comment.........
Good read...Loved this line: “President Pantywaist Obama should have thought twice before sitting down to play poker with Dick Cheney. “
"Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail."
The 60s radicals are now running the country Obama is much better fit to be a member of the Black Panther Party or the Weather Underground with his buddy Ayers then he is to be president. He is the biggest danger to our country. That would make him in violation of the oath of office to protect the nation. There is no bigger threat to America than it’s poser fake president. He is malignant destroyer, filled with hatred for what he wants to destroy.
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:46 AM | Comments (6)
April 25, 2009
Ann Coulter's Mother Passes Away
Nell Husbands Martin Coulter
A lot of people claim to be my No. 1 fan -- God bless them -- but my true No. 1 fan left this world last week. My mother quietly stopped breathing last Tuesday, as she slept peacefully, holding my hand.
She was the biggest fan of all of us -- Father, me and my brothers John and Jim.
After reading the eulogy column I wrote for Father last year -- not to excess, probably only about 4,637 times -- Mother realized to her chagrin that she wouldn't be able to read the eulogy column I'd be writing for her, and started hinting that maybe I could rustle up a draft so she could take a peek.
But I couldn't do it, until I had to.
The only thing Mother wanted to be sure my brothers and I included in her remembrances were her contributions to the Republican Party, the New Canaan Republican Town Committee and the Daughters of the American Revolution.
She was a direct descendant of at least a dozen patriots who served the cause of the American Revolution and traced her lineage on both sides of her family to Puritan nonconformists who came to America in 1633 seeking religious freedom on a ship led by Pastor Thomas Hooker. Or, as Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano would call them, "A dangerous right-wing extremist hate group."
Even back in the Puritan days, Mother's female ancestors were brought up on charges for their heretical dressing styles (and then sassed the judge). During the Revolution, one female ancestor, Effie Ten Eyck Van Varick, contributed to the rebel cause by donating lead for bullets from the curtain weights in her home in what was, even then, traitorous, loyalist Manhattan.
Mother's deep-seated political activism saved me on more than one occasion.
At the 2004 Republican National Convention, I was taking my parents to a lot of the parties in New York and, at one of them, Herman Cain walked up to me and told me he was a big fan even though I probably didn't know who he was.
Cain was the former president and CEO of Godfather's Pizza who was then running for the U.S. Senate from Georgia. I had seen him on Fox News' "Cavuto" -- but I couldn't remember his name for the life of me.
Luckily for me, Mother was standing next to me and she piped in, "I know who you are -- I donated to your campaign." Thank you, Mommy!
Mother probably contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to various conservative outfits over the years -- all in her little $20 checks -- especially to any organization that claimed it was going to stop Hillary. In fact, if they mentioned Hillary in their letter, Mother sometimes made it $25.
My brothers and I always figured we'd have no inheritance, but there would be a lovely memorial to Oliver North somewhere.
Mother may have thought her most notable characteristic was her Republican activism, but, for the rest of us, it was her constant, unconditional love. She was a little love machine, spreading warmth and joy wherever she went.
Every time she'd see me, even after just a few days' absence, she'd hug me as if I had been lost in the Himalayan Mountains for the past 20 years.
On Mother's birthday last year, I had a dinner party for her with Rush Limbaugh, Conrad Black and my friends Peter and Angie.
Mother was always delighted to be with people talking about politics -- actually she told me that, lately, she was delighted to be around any conversations that didn't involve who had a doctor's appointment or who had died that day.
So I let her stay up until 3 a.m. that night, well past her bedtime. Mother was so happy that after I had her all tucked in and the lights out, I heard her singing herself to sleep.
Even on the rare occasions when I'd be cross with her, she'd completely forget about it, and within 10 seconds would be telling me what a wonderful, precious daughter I was. My brother Jimmy found out recently that she'd even forgotten that he had caused her to miss Reagan's first inauguration by getting in a car accident the night before we were leaving -- and she never should have forgotten that.
Everyone wanted my mother to be his mother. (The "his" in that sentence is grammatically correct and Mother would never let us forget it.) I'm sure everyone thinks he has the perfect mother, but we really did.
Since I was a little girl, friends, relatives and neighbors would bring their problems to Mother. She had a rare combination of being completely moral and completely nonjudgmental at the same time -- the exact opposite of liberals who have absolutely no morals and yet are ferociously judgmental.
You could tell Mother anything, get good counsel and not end up feeling worse about yourself.
Several of Mother's New Canaan friends sent us notes last week, calling her a "gentle lady" and remarking that she never had an unkind word for anyone.
As a family member, I can assure you that -- much to our annoyance -- she really did never have an unkind word for anyone. I mean, except Democrats, but not anyone she knew.
Whenever the rest of us would be making fun of someone -- trust me, always for good and sound reasons -- Mother would somehow manage to muster up a defense of the miscreant. Father would always smile and say, "Your mother defends everyone."
She was, in fact, such a "gentle lady" that I had to go to her doctors' appointments and hospital visits with her and be her Mother Lion. If officious hospital administrators had told Mother to get off a gurney, go outside in the pouring rain and stand on one foot for three hours before the doctor would see her, she'd thank them profusely and apologize for being such a bother.
She viewed her doctors' appointments as social visits, which is the other reason I'd have to go with her, to make sure we eventually got around to the business end of the appointment.
When she began her final decline last fall, she had to go to her Connecticut doctor without me to find out what was wrong. This was the first time she didn't seem to be getting better after a chemo treatment.
So I had been worrying about her appointment all day, but when I called her that night, she immediately turned the subject to me and asked me how my book was going.
I insisted on knowing if she had seen the doctor and she perked up and brightly told me that, oh yes, she had seen him, he had all my books in his office, he was worried about Obama, too, and he has such beautiful children!
Before she launched into a spirited discussion of his children's extracurricular activities and triumphs on the athletic field, I had to ask her, "Mommy, did the doctor happen to say anything about why you're feeling lousy?"
It turned out, of course, that it was the ovarian cancer -- as well as the massive amounts of poison she had been receiving to kill the cancer over the past five years. That was the beginning of the end.
Now I'll never be able to introduce my Mother to friends and surprise them with her charming Southern accent.
And I'll never see my mother's beautiful face again, at least not for the next several decades here on Earth. I've been looking at her across the room in doctors' offices over the past few years, thinking to myself: There will come a point when you won't see that face again.
Her angelic face always looked like home to me. My whole life, as soon as I'd see my mother's face I'd know I was safe, whether I was a little girl lost in a department store or a big girl with a problem, who needed her mother.
Thanks to the doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and mother's fighting Kentucky spirit, we got to see that face much longer than anyone ever expected.
So now she's with Daddy and Jesus. Every single day since Daddy died last year, Mother would say how much she missed him and gaze at his photo, telling us what an amazing man he was and repeating his little expressions and jokes. Even though I miss her, I'm glad they're together again.
I don't know about Jesus, but I think Daddy was getting impatient. But Mommy was always running a little bit late.
.
Wild Thing's comment.........
God Bless you Ann. My Condolences to you and your beautiful family for the loss of your mother. God Bless
.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 07:40 AM | Comments (6)
April 23, 2009
"Arrogant Americans, Mr. President?" by Peter Heck
As I was sitting in church waiting for the start of the service, my grandpa came walking towards me pointing his finger. No matter how old I get, and no matter how long he's been out of the U.S. Navy, that's still an intimidating sight. As he approached me, his voice quivered as he said, "We saved that continent twice...how dare my president apologize for this country's arrogance." My grandpa is right. Americans need not apologize to the world for their arrogance; rather, Americans should apologize to their forefathers for the arrogance of their president.
Barack Obama's first foreign trip as President of the United States has confirmed the naiveté so many of us feared during the election cycle. But worse than that, it has also demonstrated that our president suffers from either a complete misunderstanding of our heritage and history, or an utter contempt for it. Neither is excusable.
Garnering cheers from the French of all people, President Obama declared, "In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." Consider that Obama spoke these words just 500 miles from the beaches of Normandy, where the sand is still stained with 65 year old blood of "arrogant Americans."
Indeed, columnist Mark Whittington observes, "One should remind Mr. Obama and the Europeans how America has 'shown arrogance' by saving Europe from itself innumerable times in the 20th Century. World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the wars in the Balkans were largely resolved by American blood, treasure, and leadership." But all that appears lost on the president's seemingly insatiable quest to mend fences he imagines have been tarnished by the bullish George W. Bush.
If Obama wishes to continue trampling the presidential tradition of showing class to former office holders and publicly trash Bush for his own personal gain, so be it. But all Americans should make clear that no man - even if he is the president - will tarnish the legacy of those Americans who have gone before us. Ours is not a history of arrogance. It is a history of courage, self-sacrifice, and honor.
When abusive monarchs repressed the masses, Americans resisted and overthrew them. When misguided policies led to the unjust oppression of fellow citizens, Americans rebelled and overturned them. When millions of impoverished and destitute wretches sought a new beginning, Americans threw open the door and welcomed them. When imperial dictators were on the march, Americans surrendered their lives to stop them. When communist thugs threatened world peace, Americans bled to defeat them. When an entire continent was overwhelmed with famine and hunger, Americans gave of themselves to sustain it. When terrorist madmen killed the innocent and subjugated millions, Americans led the fight to topple them.
This is the legacy that generations of Americans have left. If President Obama seeks stronger relations with the world community, perhaps he should begin by reminding them of these very truths, rather than condemning his own countrymen on foreign shores.
This "obsessive need to put down his own country," has caused blogger James Lewis to call President Obama a "stunningly ignorant man" who has evidently never spoken to a concentration camp survivor, a Cuban refugee, a boat person from Vietnam, a Soviet dissident, or a survivor of Mao's purges.
Unfortunately, I can no longer bring myself to give Mr. Obama that benefit of the doubt. Not after looking at the pain in my grandpa's eyes...a man who still carries shrapnel in his body from his service to this country.
As a student and teacher of history, I recognize that America has made mistakes...plenty of them, in fact. But one of the great things about our people has been their courage and humility in admitting and correcting those mistakes. God willing they will prove that willingness again in four years and correct the mistake that is the presidency of Barack Obama.
Wild Thing's comment........
I have never heard of this writer before, he is excellent. I really like what he wrote.
Obama is a traitor to our country!!! We used to punish traitors, how pathetic we are as a nation that so many no longer care if we have traitors in our government. I wish only those that voted for this Muslim would be the ones to pay the price for putting this guy in office.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at 07:40 AM | Comments (9)
April 22, 2009
"The Audacity of Vanity" by Charles Krauthammer
Special Report with Brett Baier, the panel including Charles Krauthammer, was especially prescient in describing the pitfalls of Obama's South American visit, his time with Chavez, his complacent acceptance of Daniel Noriega's 50-minute anti-US screen, as well as America's endurance of Mahmoud's tirade about Israel being a "racist regime."
.
The Audacity of Vanity
By Charles Krauthammer
Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast -- a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins -- would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.
What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation. When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.
Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush the elder -- who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap -- called "a Europe whole and free"?
Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)
Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?
Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.
It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history -- "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" -- when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.
Obama may think he's King Canute, but the good king ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute sycophantic aides who suggested that he had such power. Obama has no such modesty.
After all, in the words of his own slogan, "we are the ones we've been waiting for," which, translating the royal "we," means: " I am the one we've been waiting for." Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his lectern, until general ridicule -- it was pointed out that he was not yet president -- induced him to take it down.
He lectures us that instead of worrying about immigrants learning English, "you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish" -- a language Obama does not speak. He further admonishes us on how "embarrassing" it is that Europeans are multilingual but "we go over to Europe, and all we can say is 'merci beaucoup.' " Obama speaks no French.
His fluent English does, however, feature many such admonitions, instructions and improvements. His wife assures us that President Obama will be a stern taskmaster: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism . . . that you come out of your isolation. . . . Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?
We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when "our planet began to heal." As I recall -- I'm no expert on this -- Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.
.
Robert Godwin, PhD (Clinical psychologist) also weighs in on pathological and malignant narcissism:
“Obama seems to suffer from malignant narcissism whereby he feels he is exceptional, acts like he is exceptional and his followers believe he is exceptional. On the basis of his followers opinion, Obama feels even more justified in his exceptionalism...”
To nail that reality down further:
“..The pathological narcissist imagines he’s giving you milk when he’s actually feeding you poop; in short, he’s not a bountiful breast but a toxic a$$hole. Once you get a feel for this, you can really appreciate the ubiquity of the dynamic. Ever wonder how Noam Chomsky can be so prolific? Because the large intestine never sleeps. Likewise, mass culture is a sewer. Literally. ...
Look at Obama. What is he? That’s part of the problem, because he clearly doesn’t know. He’s certainly not “priestly” or spiritual, based upon his long-time membership in a racist cult. He’s not intellectual, based upon his skin-deep grasp of the issues, and a mind that seems to consist of little more than recycled leftist cliches with no discernible center. He’s not a warrior; quite the opposite, as he has no feel whatsoever for military culture. He’s not a leader, as his basic masculinity is too much in doubt. He’s pretending to be something, but even he doesn’t seem to know what it is. Apparently, he wasn’t even a good community agitator, like Al Sharpton. ..” ~ Gagdad Bob (Robert Godwin, PhD)
.
Wild Thing's comment........
This is such a great column. I have always like Charles Krauthammer. He really nails it.
Posted by Wild Thing at 04:40 AM | Comments (8)
April 20, 2009
"President of the World" by Victor Hanson
The globe is hearing a deeply pessimistic view of what America was and is.
by Victor Davis Hanson
Given Obama’s performance on his recent trip, three developments were quite astounding.
First, despite this fresh climate of atonement, there was a complete absence of a single apology from any other foreign leader — odd for the new shared spirit of multi-polarity and reciprocity.
Not a word came from Britain about colonialism. Nothing from Germany on the Holocaust, or its trade with Iran. Not a peep from France about Algeria or Vietnam.
Turkey was mum on the Armenian killings and its own tough anti-Kurdish policies. Russia said nothing about the 30 million murdered by Stalin — or its present assassinations abroad, much less its leveling of Grozny or its destruction of Afghanistan. Nothing came from China about the 70 million who perished under Mao or its present role in subsidizing North Korean nukes — or its violation of global copyright laws. We won’t hear anything in the “New Asian Hemisphere” about Muslim Uighurs or Tibet.
Second, there was no other example of “He did it!” about supposedly inept predecessors. Mr. Medvedev said nothing about Putin’s brutish rule. Sarkozy and Merkel did not trash the shady Chirac or Gazprom’s bought lobbyist Schroeder, and their role in harming the Atlantic alliance. Gordon Brown was quiet about Tony Blair and Iraq. China did not mention a reset button. The new Berlusconi did not trash the old Berlusconi.
Third, we saw no concrete evidence of any help — or hope and change — from any foreign leader. Zilch. There were expectations of American concessions, but nothing new or helpful from anyone else.
Instead I think a number of astute foreign leaders — rivals, enemies, and friends alike — have already drawn the following conclusions.
I. An Obama visit
A vast entourage will descend on your capital in campaign mode. Most of your functionaries will wish to get a photo-op with the rock-star president. The American president at some point will request a “town-hall meeting,” press conference, or open-air handshake session with the crowd. All this is largely for domestic consumption back home, and is designed to offer an antidote for the concessions or apologies that follow. It is quite successful in generating temporary goodwill toward the new Obama administration.
II. “I’m sorry.”
Obama will apologize for almost anything one can imagine. First comes the generic lamentation about Bush, the need for a reset button, and America’s characteristic “arrogance.” Then there are the “we are at fault” lines on spec, tailor-made mea culpas for the country in question.
If you are Turkish and Islamic, you get a threefer: the morally equivalent reference to the American treatment of the Indians, the pledge that we are not at war with Islam (forget that no president ever said we were), and the reminder that we are not a Christian nation.
In Europe, you receive apologies for Bush, Iraq, and the financial meltdown. Each leader gets a unique version of Obama’s somewhat narcissistic “Them, not me” — either a strain of something like “Bush did it” or “Every American except me is arrogant.” We can console ourselves only that Obama has not contextualized or apologized to the Somali pirates — yet.
III. “You’re Right!”
Differences that your country has with the United States will be resolved in your favor. Foreign leaders already sense that Obama’s success hinges on his “hope and change” ecstasy back home — which cannot for long sustain stories of difficult diplomacy and public manifestations of international trouble and acrimony, of anything really that suggests he is not mesmerizing the world in the manner he did the American electorate.
Europe? Take your pick. No more combat troops to Afghanistan; an international financial “czar”; no additional financial deficit stimuli; no Guantanamo prisoners on European shores; American acknowledgment of culpability for the financial crisis; no mention of Europe’s own reckless lending, protectionism, or pre-September 2008 declining GDP. But goodwill aplenty.
China? It gets praise when it ridicules the dollar, but offers no help on North Korea. Nothing new about trade violations. Hope is expressed that they will still buy our growing debt.
Russia? Let us count the ways. No more missile defense for Eastern Europe; no mention of Russia’s human-rights violations or its policy of serial assassination abroad; de facto abandonment of advocacy for former Soviet republics’ autonomy; Russia’s energy blackmail is Russia’s business; no help with de-nuclearizing Iran