The Freedom Fighter's Journal

"The [climate change] argument is absolute crap."

2009-12-04T05:51:00.007-05:00

In a stunning piece of good news, the Australian parliament has defeated its version of cap-and-trade—with the Liberal opposition party even going so far as to vote out their leader because he backed the bill. (Australia may be on the underside of the world, but they've got their political terminology right-side-up: the "Liberals" are the generally pro-free-market, pro-liberty party.)

Tom Minchin has sent me a report on this story, which is the feature article below.

Also, as President Obama jets off to Copenhagen to offer his personal promise of massive US reductions in our emissions of carbon dioxide, he has already been rebuked by Democratic Virginia Senator Jim Webb, who put the president in his place: "As you well know from your time in the Senate, only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country."

And before you get to the story from Australia, I wanted to provide a brief run-through of the latest developments on Climategate.

Phil Jones, head of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit—the chief conspirator in the leaked e-mails—has resigned—but only pending the results of an investigation. Similarly, "hockey stick" manufacturer Michael Mann is being investigated by Pennsylvania State University. I don't set much store by such internal investigations, though, because they will have a strong vested interest in minimizing or covering up the scandal.

But there has been a lot of progress in the press. In The Atlantic, Clive Crook writes:

The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.

Can I read these emails and feel that the scientists involved deserve to be trusted? No, I cannot. These people are willing to subvert the very methods—notably, peer review—that underwrite the integrity of their discipline. Is this really business as usual in science these days? If it is, we should demand higher standards—at least whenever "the science" calls for a wholesale transformation of the world economy. And maybe some independent oversight to go along with the higher standards.

And check out a really fiery column in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Probably the biggest new development in terms of cracking this into the American mainstream media is a good overview by right-leaning science columnist John Tierney in the New York Times.

But you don't need to rely on the MSM or anyone else to filter this story for you. All of the evidence is now available in searchable format on the web, at www.eastangliaemails.com.

Australian ETS Melts

Heat of Intellectual Climate Change Responsible

by Tom Minchin

"If you don't understand [the ETS], you shouldn't vote for it. If you do understand it, you'd never vote for it."

"The [climate change] argument is absolute crap."

—Tony Abbott, new leader of the Australian Liberal Party

The Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), Australia's version of "cap and trade," has been rejected by the Australian Senate for a second time. This time, the public opposition to the bill was more intense and better informed; a government pushing such a bill again will risk losing office.

In a perfect stroke of timing, the defeat comes ahead of the attempt to trap the US into agreeing to a massive transfer of wealth and sovereignty to the UN at Copenhagen next week. Australia was supposed to commit an act of economic suicide to set an example.

On Wednesday, December 2, the fight over the bill reached its climax. The Labor government of Kevin Rudd was beaten on the law by a re-invigorated Liberal Party who, one day before the vote, threw aside their old leader, Malcolm Turnbull—a climate change true believer—because he lied about having majority support in his party to pass the ETS. In his place, the Liberals installed Tony Abbott, a Rhodes scholar and former amateur boxer, on the record as calling the climate change argument "absolute crap." A party vote was taken and the true mood of the party was revealed: 55 to 29 wanted rejection of the bill. With 24 hours left to act, Abbott and his Senate leader Nick Minchin moved to do it.

The government's key tactic had been to hide both the content and meaning of the bill. Days before the final vote, a poll on November 27 showed that 80% of Australian voters did not understand the law and 60% opposed rushing it through. As a measure of the government's indecent haste, senators had been asked to vote on it by November 24 even though they had not seen the text of the bill until the day before. (In this, there are strong similarities with the way business is now conducted in the US Congress.)

But the opposition senators refused to be rushed, buying time for the revolt. When the Liberal revolt did occur, within minutes, at his first press conference Abbott declared the ETS "a giant tax on everything." The cat was out of the bag. Then Abbott added the straight truth: Prime Minister Rudd simply wanted "a trophy to take to Copenhagen." This is the kind of plain talking Australians respond to. It was over.

There will be much to write about the role of thinking Australians. They did what they have always done when their politicians try to heavy them: climb to the intellectual ramparts. This was a war fought by thinkers armed with the modern world's equivalent of the longbow: the email and website. The medieval elite, clad in their armor and mounted on their giant horses—like today's mainstream media and politicians—were invincible until the advent of a weapon that could pierce the toughest breastplate at a hundred paces. That was the longbow—today, the Internet.

Honest Australian climate scientists, like Professor Ian Plimer and Dr. Bob Carter, had already given Australian intellectual activists the arrows of truth they needed. Climategate added hundreds of new ones. The Internet gave them the means to fire those arrows with the velocity they needed—the speed of instant.

A great cloud lifted off Australia today. A tax with an opening price tag of $120 billion was defeated. After Climategate, how long will it take the world to follow?

Tom Minchin is a writer, researcher, and businessman in Melbourne, Australia.

ALL THE PREZ'S CLIMATEGATE DENIERS

By MICHELLE MALKIM

December 2, 2009

'The science is settled," we've been told for decades by zealous proponents of manmade-global-warming hysteria. But we now have mountains of documents from the world's leading global-warming-advocacy center that show the science is about as settled as a southeast Asian tsunami.

Yet the White House is clinging to the old eco-mantra: The science is settled.

Never mind all the devastating new information about data manipulation, intimidation and coverups to "hide the decline" in global temperatures over the last half-century, they say.

Never mind what The Atlantic's Clive Crook, after wading through the climate science e-mail files of the U.K.'s Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, called the "stink of intellectual corruption" -- combined with mafia-like suppression of dissent, suppression of evidence and methods and "plain statistical incompetence" exposed by the document trove.

Never mind the expedient disappearance of mounds of raw weather-station data that dissenting scientists were seeking via freedom of information requests from the Climatic Research Unit.

In March, President Obama made a grandiose show of putting "science" above "politics" when lifting the ban on government-funded human embryonic stem cell research. "Promoting science isn't just about providing resources -- it's about protecting free and open inquiry," he said during the signing ceremony. "It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda -- and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology."

Yet the president has surrounded himself with radical Climategate deniers who have spent their entire professional careers "settling" man-made-global-warming-disaster science through fear-mongering, intimidation and ridicule of opponents.

* Science czar John Holdren, who'll testify on Capitol Hill this week at a hearing on Climategate, hyped weather catastrophes and demographic disasters in the 1970s. with his population-control-freak pals Paul and Anne Ehrlich. In 1986, Paul Ehrlich credited Holdren with forecasting that "carbon-dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020." Holdren went on to Harvard and the White House.

Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball notes that Holdren turned up in the Climategate files belittling the work of astrophysicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division. Holdren put "Harvard" in sneer quotes when mocking a research paper Baliunas and Soon published in 2003 showing that "the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium." First, deny. Next, deride.

* Energy Secretary Steven Chu picked derision as his weapon earlier this year when peddling the Obama administration's greenhouse-gas emission policy. "The American public . . . just like your teenage kids, aren't acting in a way that they should act," The Wall Street Journal quoted Chu. He dismissed dissent by asserting that "there's very little debate" about the impact of "green energy" policy on the economy.

There's "very little debate," of course, because dissenters get crushed.

* The Obama team's chief eco-dissent-crusher is climate czar Carol Browner. She oversaw the destruction of Environmental Protection Agency computer files in brazen violation of a federal judge's order during the Clinton years requiring the agency to preserve its records.

Over the past year, the EPA has stifled the dissent of Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the agency who questioned the administration's reliance on outdated research on the health effects of greenhouse gases. Recently, it sought to yank a YouTube video created by EPA lawyers Allan Zabel and Laurie Williams that is critical of cap-and-trade.

And Browner is now leading the "science is settled" stonewalling in the wake of Climategate. "I'm sticking with the 2,500 scientists," she said. "These people have been studying this issue for a very long time and agree this problem is real." Book-cookers are good at making it seem so.

In any case, last year, more than 31,000 scientists -- including 9,021 Ph.D.s -- signed a petition sponsored by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine rejecting claims of human-caused global warming.

But hey, who's counting? The science is settled.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

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Scientists Hide Global Warming Data

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

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The Creepy Obama Speech At West Point

2009-12-03T04:44:00.010-05:00

"Deep down, Obama is still a dyed-in-the-wool leftist who believes that war is a jingoistic distraction from the task of imposing socialism on the economy—that a bayonet is a weapon with a worker on both ends."

Something immediately struck me as strange, creepy really, about Barack Obama's speech at West Point on his new strategy for Afghanistan.

Because I read the speech first, rather than listening to it, my mind immediately filled in a familiar voice to speak these lines—and it wasn't the voice of the current president. Try it for yourself:

We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women, and children without regard to their faith or race or station. Were it not for the heroic actions of the passengers on board one of those flights, they could have also struck at one of the great symbols of our democracy in Washington, and killed many more.

As we know, these men belonged to al Qaeda—a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world's great religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents. Al Qaeda's base of operations was in Afghanistan, where they were harbored by the Taliban—a ruthless, repressive, and radical movement that seized control of that country after it was ravaged by years of Soviet occupation and civil war, and after the attention of America and our friends had turned elsewhere….

Under the banner of this domestic unity and international legitimacy—and only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden—we sent our troops into Afghanistan. Within a matter of months, al Qaeda was scattered and many of its operatives were killed. The Taliban was driven from power and pushed back on its heels. A place that had known decades of fear now had reason to hope.

And later:

I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror. This danger will only grow if the region slides backwards, and al Qaeda can operate with impunity.

Obama's speechwriters always like to crib from past presidents. A little JFK here, a little Reagan there. But I really didn't expect the first paragraphs of this speech—and a few passages later on—to read incongruously like a George W. Bush speech. (Except that Bush's speeches were actually better than this. Obama has always been able to use a smooth, measured delivery to elevate his pedestrian material, while Bush's awkward delivery prevented his audience from realizing what good speechwriters he had.)

That weird similarity sets the tone for the content of the speech, which is Obama's endorsement of a repeat of the Bush "surge" in Iraq—but without the sense of unwavering personal conviction that Bush brought to his decision.

Blaming Bush for all of the challenges he faces is one of Obama's most annoying habits, and he does so in this speech, too—but it only serves as camouflage to cover up the fact that he is basically acting on the Bush legacy. That becomes clear early in the speech with Obama's awkward, indirect admission that we've won the war in Iraq. Or rather, he says that we've "achieved hard-earned milestones in Iraq" which allow us to bring the war "to a responsible end."

We will remove our combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next summer, and all of our troops by the end of 2011. That we are doing so is a testament to the character of our men and women in uniform. Thanks to their courage, grit, and perseverance, we have given Iraqis a chance to shape their future, and we are successfully leaving Iraq to its people.

Does that mean we've won? Of course it does, but Obama's not a big enough man to come out and say so, because that would mean admitting that he was wrong about the "surge," which he opposed.

This is the big context for Obama's speech. By ordering the "surge" in Iraq, Bush demonstrated that America could learn how to fight and win a counterinsurgency war. That was the real answer to the "Vietnam Syndrome." The legacy of Vietnam was not that America couldn't successfully fight a conventional war. It was the fear that foreign insurgencies would always prove to be quagmires and that we were always doomed to lose. In Iraq, Bush provided a model for how to win such a war—and he raised up into positions of command a whole cohort of officers who are experienced at fighting them. One of those officers is Stanley McChrystal.

President Obama has basically accepted this achievement without giving credit for it, and so he goes on to apply to Afghanistan the same reasoning and strategy, the same counter-insurgency "surge," that allowed us to achieve all those "milestones" in Iraq. He even goes so far—and I did not expect this—as to explicitly reject the comparison of Afghanistan to Vietnam and to reject Vice-President Biden's quixotic notion of fighting the war through isolated air strikes against al-Qaeda hideouts.

Even more surprising, given his explicit rejection of this notion in past speeches, Obama caved in on American exceptionalism: "[O]ur country has borne a special burden in global affairs…. We have not always been thanked for these efforts, and we have at times made mistakes. But more than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades—a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and advancing frontiers of human liberty." Thank you for the acknowledgement, Mr. President. It's about time.

And yet there is still one big difference between Obama and Bush. Yes, he backed the Afghan surge, but throughout his speech, Obama conveyed no sense of conviction, of an unshakable personal commitment to victory in this war. Quite the opposite.

To begin with, consider the shallowness of his actual explanation of his "new" Afghan counter-insurgency strategy. As far as I can tell, this is all there really is to it:

The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010—the fastest pace possible—so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers. They will increase our ability to train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.

This is one of the vaguest descriptions I have ever heard of the military science of counter-insurgency. It glosses over virtually everything. President Bush used to talk in detail about "clear, hold, and build" strategies, and during last year's campaign, John McCain spoke authoritatively about reforming the fractured command structure of international troops in Afghanistan. These are the kind of details that convey a sense that a leader is really engaged with and understands the details of the war policy he is ordering.

We should expect as much or more out of President Obama. After all, wasn't his over-prolonged, nearly four-month period of analysis justified by the claim that Obama was thoroughly investigating every detail and considering every possibility? But his speech shows no trace of such an exacting effort. It shows no knowledge of or interest in the details and implementation of the strategy it announces.

For example, the president gives General McChrystal almost as many troops as he asked for, but not quite. Why that many troops and not more? What does he know that his commander in the field doesn't? What objective was going to be accomplished with the extra troops that will now have to be abandoned? Obama offers no explanation.

Or note the speech's reference to the idea that the added troops will "secure key population centers." This gives us our only clue about the difference between 30,000 extra troops and the 40,000 to 45,000 McChrystal wanted. It implies that some population centers and possibly large swathes of the Afghan countryside will not be secured. But which areas are "key" to victory and which are not? And doesn't this just mean holding the cities while the insurgents control the countryside—the recipe that led to failure for the Soviets? Maybe there's a good answer to these questions, but we sure didn't hear it from the president.

It's looking more and more like Obama's exaggerated period of indecision on Afghanistan was intended to demonstrate to the left that he is thorough and deliberate—the opposite of their caricature of Bush as a "gut player" who rushes into war—in order to give cover for his decision to order a surge. And the decision to cut the number of troops was intended to show his skepticism concerning the claims of his generals—again, in contrast to Bush—while not actually changing the overall strategy.

But the shallowness of Obama's decision is most clearly demonstrated by the way he talks about having a timetable for US withdrawal:

Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground. We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan's Security Forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government—and, more importantly, to the Afghan people—that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country.

Again, is this all we get from the man who spent four months supposedly exploring every angle of the war strategy? He says that this withdrawal timetable will "take into account conditions on the ground"—yet he is predicting it for a specific month, before the Afghan surge has even been implemented and at a point when our position in Afghanistan is still deteriorating. All of this invites the question: what happens if July 2011 arrives and we're not clearly winning yet? Will Obama still insist on a withdrawal?

No wonder Obama advisor David Axelrod was reduced to incoherence when he was asked about this timetable.

Half of winning a counter-insurgency war is conveying a sense of resolve. You want the enemy to sense that continued resistance is futile because you just won't give up, and you want your allies and potential allies to sense that they can rely on you over the long term. But no one wants to cooperate with the US if they suspect that we're stampeding for the exits in July 2011, and their heads are going to end up on display in the town square the next day.

This is the crucial issue of Obama's speech: convincingly demonstrating and explaining the degree of his resolve to achieve victory in Afghanistan. And Obama is disastrously unclear. He announces a surge—while at the same time announcing a withdrawal. Obama doesn't know whether he's coming or going. Or as Der Spiegel put it, "It was a dizzying combination of surge and withdrawal, of marching to and fro."

The deeper impression conveyed by Obama's speech is that he doesn't really care that much about Afghanistan. He's just checking a box on one of his expected responsibilities as president, but his heart isn't in it. I suspect this is the real reason for his extended indecision.

The passage that is most ominous in this respect begins with the most completely non-stirring quotation I have ever heard in a major presidential speech: "Indeed, I am mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who—in discussing our national security—said, 'Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.'"

Obama then cites the more pressing needs of the economy and of his plans for domestic spending: "In the wake of an economic crisis, too many of our friends and neighbors are out of work and struggle to pay the bills, and too many Americans are worried about the future facing our children. Meanwhile, competition within the global economy has grown more fierce. So we simply cannot afford to ignore the price of these wars." To turn Jefferson's famous dictum upside down and inside out, Obama's rule seems to be: trillions for health-care and "stimulus," but billions for defense?—I don't know. We'll have to "balance our priorities."

Deep down, Obama is still a dyed-in-the-wool leftist who believes that war is a jingoistic distraction from the task of imposing socialism on the economy—that a bayonet is a weapon with a worker on both ends.

That's why we're getting a half-hearted surge. The message of Obama's speech is: I'm surging troops into Afghanistan to show the hawks I'm serious, but I really want to get out as soon as possible because I think other things are more important.

The message to the Taliban and al-Qaeda is: wait me out. Sure, the next year is going to be really tough with all of those extra US troops coming after you. But if you can just hang tough until July of 2011, I'll decide America has done all it can afford to do, and we'll leave.

That doesn't mean that we are doomed to lose in Afghanistan. We have many more advantages there than we usually realize. And remember that the crucial turning point came in Iraq in early 2007, precisely at the point when the Democratic Congress was attempting to cut off funding for the war. If I had to bet—and all of us are anted up for this game—I would say that an Afghan surge will produce significant results next year, making it a political success that Obama will want to keep rolling. (God knows he'll need one.) And so the withdrawal timetable will suddenly become very flexible.

But still, signs of wavering and divided priorities in the commander-in-chief are far more significant than anti-war sentiment in Congress. That's particularly true from the perspective of our enemies, who are accustomed to authoritarianism; they know to ignore the carping of the political flunkies and just size up the head guy giving the orders. And Obama's speech must have made him seem weak and uncommitted. As a result, he significantly and unnecessarily undermined the prospects for the success of his own strategy.

SOURCE: THE INTELLECTUAL ACTIVIST

A U.S. Army cadet reads a book entitled "Kill Bin Laden" as he waits with other cadets for U.S. President Barack Obama to deliver an address on U.S. policy and the war in Afghanistan at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York December 1, 2009. Obama is expected to announce a plan to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan over six months in a bid to beat back the Taliban and bring a quicker end to a costly and unpopular eight-year war.

President Barack Obama's Tuesday speech left a bad taste in many mouths.

Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America's new strategy for Afghanistan. It seemed like a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric -- and left both dreamers and realists feeling distraught.

One can hardly blame the West Point leadership. The academy commanders did their best to ensure that Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama's speech would be well-received.

Just minutes before the president took the stage inside Eisenhower Hall, the gathered cadets were asked to respond "enthusiastically" to the speech. But it didn't help: The soldiers' reception was cool.

One didn't have to be a cadet on Tuesday to feel a bit of nausea upon hearing Obama's speech. It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly.

An additional 30,000 US soldiers are to march into Afghanistan -- and then they will march right back out again. America is going to war -- and from there it will continue ahead to peace. It was the speech of a Nobel War Prize laureate.

Just in Time for the Campaign

For each troop movement, Obama had a number to match. US strength in Afghanistan will be tripled relative to the Bush years, a fact that is sure to impress hawks in America. But just 18 months later, just in time for Obama's re-election campaign, the horror of war is to end and the draw down will begin. The doves of peace will be let free.

The speech continued in that vein. It was as though Obama had taken one of his old campaign speeches and merged it with a text from the library of ex-President George W. Bush. Extremists kill in the name of Islam, he said, before adding that it is one of the "world's great religions." He promised that responsibility for the country's security would soon be transferred to the government of President Hamid Karzai -- a government which he said was "corrupt." The Taliban is dangerous and growing stronger. But "America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars," he added.

It was a dizzying combination of surge and withdrawal, of marching to and fro. The fast pace was reminiscent of plays about the French revolution: Troops enter from the right to loud cannon fire and then they exit to the left. And at the end, the dead are left on stage.

Obama's Magic No Longer Works

But in this case, the public was more disturbed than entertained. Indeed, one could see the phenomenon in a number of places in recent weeks: Obama's magic no longer works. The allure of his words has grown weaker.

It is not he himself who has changed, but rather the benchmark used to evaluate him. For a president, the unit of measurement is real life. A leader is seen by citizens through the prism of their lives -- their job, their household budget, where they live and suffer. And, in the case of the war on terror, where they sometimes die.

Political dreams and yearnings for the future belong elsewhere. That was where the political charmer Obama was able to successfully capture the imaginations of millions of voters. It is a place where campaigners -- particularly those with a talent for oration -- are fond of taking refuge. It is also where Obama set up his campaign headquarters, in an enormous tent called "Hope."

In his speech on America's new Afghanistan strategy, Obama tried to speak to both places. It was two speeches in one. That is why it felt so false. Both dreamers and realists were left feeling distraught.

The American president doesn't need any opponents at the moment. He's already got himself.

DER SPIEGEL

Obama Assassination Movie

2009-12-02T18:46:00.003-05:00

“They’re sitting around talking about how they want to take their country back,” said local filmmaker Chris Townsend, who finally finished his controversial movie.

“Yes We Can” is about four rural Virginians and their plot to assassinate Barrack Obama at a campaign visit in Lynchburg. Townsend says he based the characters off people he’s met in his life.

“There’s people out there that aren’t tolerant of other races or ethnicities and it’s interesting to me to see that type of ignorance,” said Townsend.

He says his edgy production almost got shut down by the secret service. The director didn’t give in, and now wants others to see his creation.

Townsend says he’s tried to set up a screening in Lynchburg so local people can see his movie, but he hasn’t found a venue that will let him show his controversial film.

To get his movie viewed, film festivals are his next focus. Townsend’s in the process of applying to several national film festivals and he’s confident he’ll get in.

“I think this film is strong. I think it’s different. I think the ending itself is extremely compelling and I think that people will be in shock when they get to the end of it,” said Townsend.

The young movie maker says he isn’t looking to be famous or get attention.

“There is a lesson in this film. It’s not just all kill Obama, kill Obama, kill Obama. It’s a love story and it has a deep meaningful lesson to it,” said Townsend.

He hopes you’ll be able to see his story on the big screen sometime next year.

SOURCE: AMERICAN RESISTANCE RADIO

Obama And Bush At West Point: A Comparison

2009-12-02T07:35:00.004-05:00

THE CADETS GO WILD FOR BUSH!

CADETS FIGHT TO STAY AWAKE WHEN ADDRESSED BY OBAMA

The Freedom Fighter's Journal Wins Award

2009-12-02T06:58:00.006-05:00

Boss Nigger: I think we have a winner.

Like Christmas, and puberty, the Oscar movie season gets earlier every year. This year, one ambitious writer even declared "The Oscar Season Begins In August With Tarantino's 'Inglourious Basterds.'" But by any measure, we are now well into the time of year when Oscar-hopeful films get dumped into theaters to be ignored by almost everyone. This season's crop? The Road, Brothers, Broken Embraces, Precious, A Single Man, Crazy Heart, The White Ribbon, Invictus, Nine, The Lovely Bones, It's Complicated, An Education, Avatar and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. (Up in the Air is disqualified for basically being the 40-Year-Old Virgin with moodier lighting.) But what about Oscar season for the crowd who thinks all those liberal Hollywood movies are for socialist pansies? For them, there is Photoshop.

Photoshop (MS Paint?) has become a powerful tool for the right to express its fears, feelings and frustrations with the current administration. Manipulating movie posters proves to be a fun and infectious way to get out the message. The Obamatized movie poster is a staple of right-wing message boards and sites. However, they are very often bad.

What follows is only the best of the Photoshopped Obama movie posters of 2009.

Climategate And Other Leading News Stories With Commentary

2009-12-02T06:37:00.004-05:00

Climategate has now started to become fodder for satire, including an amusing new song from Minnesotans for Global Warming (whom you may remember from a previous song extolling the benefits of global warming for residents of northern Minnesota).

The Daily Telegraph's James Delingpole—whom the paper credits with first using the term "Climategate"—has a follow-up post on the best "dog ate my homework" excuses from global warming advocates.

Speaking of the dog eating your homework, new reports confirm previous suspicions that much of the raw historical temperature data used by the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit was deleted some time ago, leaving only the processed temperature record—processed according to very dubious methods which now cannot be checked or confirmed because no one thought it was important to keep the raw data. Doesn't that just say it all?

The London Times article that reports on the data destruction also makes clear how Climategate strikes to the heart of the whole global warming establishment:

The CRU is the world's leading center for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change skeptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. "The CRU is basically saying, 'Trust us.' So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science," he said.

See also the discussion by Christopher Booker, in the main link below, about how central the CRU and the other Climategate figures are to the propagation of the global warming hysteria.

The most interesting aspect of this scandal is that it now has reluctant skeptics—those who were previously too timid to take a stand publicly—coming out of the woodwork. Mathematician-turn-political commentator John Derbyshire, who says he previously "stayed clear of the topic" speaks up, as does Peter Hitchens in London's Daily Mail, who confesses:

[I]f I mention my doubts at public occasions, I can feel the swelling wrath of the unreasoning mob gathering against me. There's seldom time to make more than a few points before you are howled down by righteous zealots.

But the most common response—one that I think will be typical of the average person who hears about this scandal—is expressed eloquently in the headline of another Daily Mail article: "I might not know the truth about climate change, but I recognize trickery and slippery excuses when I see them."

As I mentioned before, this scandal is also going to drag down the mainstream media, which will face some very hard questions about why it refused to break such an enormously important story. The latest revelation is that all of the incriminating CRU e-mails were sent to BBC reporter Paul Hudson a full month before they were posted online. Presumably this was because Hudson had written an unusually honest article acknowledging the recent decline in global temperatures.

Yet when Hudson was handed the scoop of the century, he sat on it. Glenn Reynolds points to the importance of the Internet in breaking this story, which might have been buried if the MSM still dictated what news was "fit to print."

"Climate Change: This is the Worst Scientific Scandal of Our Generation," Christopher Booker, Daily Telegraph, November 28

What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely—not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it….

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team," such as Dr. Mann himself, Dr. Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr. James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself….

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is—what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programs, always to point in only the one desired direction—to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr. McIntyre caught Dr. Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played—to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU….

The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society—itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause—is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.

2. Climategate and "the Totalitarian Personality"

Corruption and dishonesty don't quite cover what is revealed in the Climategate e-mails. Rather, as I have already observed, what is dangerous about those e-mail is the combination of corruption and dishonesty with self-righteousness. These people acted like villains while telling themselves they were heroes—a combination that is the signature of an evil ideology at work.

That's why I like the comment below, which describes Climategate as the product of "the totalitarian personality" which seeks to "airbrush out of the record" any facts or persons who challenge its pre-conceived ideological conclusions.

"Green Totalitarianism," Melanie Phillips, The Spectator, November 23

What appears to be the case is that these scientists did not set out to mislead the world so much as try to force data which did not correspond to their ideology of anthropogenic global warming to support that ideology….

All the manipulation, distortion and suppression revealed by these emails took place because it would seem these scientists knew their belief was not only correct but unchallengeable; and so when faced with evidence that showed it was false, they tried every which way to make the data fit the prior agenda. And those who questioned that agenda themselves had to be airbrushed out of the record, because to question it was simply impossible. Only AGW zealots get to decide, apparently, what science is. Truth is what fits their ideological agenda. Anything else is to be expunged.

Which is the more terrifying and devastating: if people are bent and deliberately try to deceive others, or if they are so much in thrall to an ideology that they genuinely have lost the power to think objectively and rationally?

I think that the terrible history of mankind provides the answer to that question. Nixon was a crook. But what we are dealing with here is the totalitarian personality.

3. The Empty Suit's Empty Promise

With the entire empirical foundation for the global warming myth crumbling, President Obama chose to announce that he will attend the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen. And Obama is going to personally pledge an enormous reduction in American energy usage.

This is an empty promise. Note that he is jetting in to make that pledge at the beginning of the Copenhagen conference, on his way to accept his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo—he couldn't make it to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, but this he has time for—yet he's skipping the end of the conference, which is when all of the really substantial negotiation actually happens. So as with the Nobel, Obama's appearance is all for show, with no substance behind it.

And of course, the president can promise whatever legislation he wants, but Congress has to deliver, and Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe—the most dogged congressional opponent of the global warming hysteria—tells the Wall Street Journal's Kim Strassel that after Climategate, "cap and trade is dead." That is, unless Obama tries to bypass Congress altogether and implement energy rationing by executive coup.

Speaking of bypassing Congress, a good Fox News story uncovers documents that describe the agenda behind Copenhagen: an attempt to establish UN environmentalist organizations as a kind of shadow global government, using global warming to establish the idea that "Environmentalism should be regarded on the same level with religion 'as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity'," and that it should be made "'the center of political and economic decision-making' around the world."

This is what Climategate is going to stop in its tracks.

"Obama to Go to Copenhagen with Emissions Target," John M. Broder, New York Times, November 25

At the international climate meetings in Copenhagen next month, Mr. Obama will tell the delegates that the United States intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions "in the range of" 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, officials said.

The figures reflect targets specified by legislation that passed the House in June but is stalled in the Senate. Congress has never enacted legislation that includes firm emissions limits or ratified an international global warming agreement with binding targets….

By making the pledge in an international forum, Mr. Obama is laying a bet that Congress will complete action on a climate bill next year and will be prepared to ratify an international agreement based on the commitment.

But White House officials acknowledged that those outcomes were uncertain. They will depend in large measure on whether the Democratic sponsors of the legislation can win 60 votes for a measure that is at the moment unpopular and whether major developing nations, notably China and India, deliver credible emissions reduction pledges of their own….

Andreas Carlgren, the Swedish environment minister, said that Mr. Obama had now raised expectations for the Copenhagen talks, but he expressed a note of disappointment about the timing of his visit. He said he hoped Mr. Obama would come in the final days of negotiations, when dozens of other heads of government were planning to arrive.

A White House official said a return trip was "highly unlikely."

4. The New Litmus Test

This year's tea party movement is not just about fighting the Obama administration or the left in general. It's will also involve some significant house-cleaning within the right.

TIA Daily reader Ed Mazlish brought my attention to one such attempt: a proposal to create a ten-point litmus test for Republican candidates, who must declare agreement with at least eight out of the ten points in order to receive financial and organizational support from the party.

It's a pretty good list, and note particularly what is not on it. Missing from this list of "essential" Republican principles is virtually the entire religious agenda, including the original political "litmus test": abortion. Only gay marriage ranks as its own separate item, and abortion gets only a mention in a list of other objections to government-controlled health care.

The kicker? The guy who wrote the resolution and is promoting it is general counsel for National Right to Life, an anti-abortion group. It should give you some idea how far the religious wing of the right has fallen in terms of its sense of its own political power, when they create a litmus test for Republican candidates and don't even have the confidence to put their own issue on it.

"A GOP Purity Test," Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro, MSNBC, November 23

First Read has obtained a resolution being e-mailed around to Republican National Committee members for comments that proposes a conservative litmus test of sorts….
The "Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates" outlines 10 conservative principles the group of signees wants potential candidates to abide by….

"President Ronald Reagan believed, as a result, that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent," the resolution states.

But if a candidate disagrees with three of the above, then the group wants the RNC to withhold financial assistance and an endorsement from that candidate….

RNC Committeeman Jim Bopp, Jr., is the author of this resolution and general counsel to the National Right to Life….

Here's the text of the resolution:

Proposed RNC Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates…

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership….

5. Honduras Wins

In general, having a weak and ineffectual empty suit as a president is a disaster in foreign policy. But at least it means that he is ineffective in following through on the most evil aspects of his foreign policy.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration attempted to help Hugo Chavez impose a socialist dictatorship in Honduras. The administration described the Honduran Supreme Court's attempt to preserve the nation's constitution as a "coup"—and the US proceeded to impose sanctions and specifically to target leading figures in the Honduran government in order to coerce them into giving up their liberty.

But now it looks like the US has completely caved in, allowing Honduras to go forward with a free election and recognizing the results of that election, despite the fact that the Honduran government gave into none of the Chavez/Obama demands.

Hopefully, people around the world who care about liberty and who used to rely on the help of the United States will now find the courage, as the people of Honduras did, to stand up for their liberty on their own—until the US elects a new president who cares about the cause of human freedom.

"In Elections, Honduras Defeats Chavez," Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal, November 29

Unless something monumental happens in the Western Hemisphere in the next 31 days, the big regional story for 2009 will be how tiny Honduras managed to beat back the colonial aspirations of its most powerful neighbors and preserve its constitution….
The completion of these elections is a national triumph in itself and a win for all people who yearn for liberty.

The fact that the US has said it will recognize their legitimacy shows that this reality eventually made its way to the White House. If not Hugo Chávez's Waterloo, Honduras's stand at least marks a major setback for the Venezuelan strongman's expansionist agenda.

The losers in this drama also include Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Spain, which all did their level best to block the election. Egged on by their zeal, militants inside Honduras took to exploding small bombs around the country in the weeks leading to the vote. They hoped that terror might damp turnout and delegitimize the process. They failed. Yesterday's civic participation appeared to be at least as good as it was in the last presidential election….

At least the Obama administration figured out, after four months, that it had blundered. It deserves credit for realizing that elections were the best way forward, and for promising to recognize the outcome despite enormous pressure from Brazil and Venezuela. President Obama came to office intent on a foreign policy of multilateralism. Perhaps this experience will teach him that freedom does indeed have enemies.

SOURCE

World Views: CAN MOSLEMS BE GOOD AMERICANS?

2009-12-01T10:18:00.002-05:00

World Views: CAN MOSLEMS BE GOOD AMERICANS?

THE SEVEN TRUTHS ABOUT OBAMA

2009-12-01T04:16:00.004-05:00

Presidential politics is about storytelling. Presented with a vivid storyline, voters naturally tend to fit every new event or piece of information into a picture that is already neatly framed in their minds.

No one understands this better than Barack Obama and his team, who won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition. The pro-Obama narrative featured an almost mystically talented young idealist who stood for change in a disciplined and thoughtful way. This easily outpowered the anti-Obama narrative, featuring an opportunistic Chicago pol with dubious relationships who was more liberal than he was letting on.

A year into his presidency, however, Obama’s gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering. As Washington returns to work from the Thanksgiving holiday, there are several anti-Obama storylines gaining momentum.

The Obama White House argues that all of these storylines are inaccurate or unfair. In some cases these anti-Obama narratives are fanned by Republicans, in some cases by reporters and commentators.

But they all are serious threats to Obama, if they gain enough currency to become the dominant frame through which people interpret the president’s actions and motives.

Here are seven storylines Obama needs to worry about:

He thinks he’s playing with Monopoly money

Economists and business leaders from across the ideological spectrum were urging the new president on last winter when he signed onto more than a trillion in stimulus spending and bank and auto bailouts during his first weeks in office. Many, though far from all, of these same people now agree that these actions helped avert an even worse financial catastrophe.

Along the way, however, it is clear Obama underestimated the political consequences that flow from the perception that he is a profligate spender. He also misjudged the anger in middle America about bailouts with weak and sporadic public explanations of why he believed they were necessary.

The flight of independents away from Democrats last summer — the trend that recently hammered Democrats in off-year elections in Virginia — coincided with what polls show was alarm among these voters about undisciplined big government and runaway spending. The likely passage of a health care reform package criticized as weak on cost-control will compound the problem.

Obama understands the political peril, and his team is signaling that he will use the 2010 State of the Union address to emphasize fiscal discipline. The political challenge, however, is an even bigger substantive challenge—since the most convincing way to project fiscal discipline would be actually to impose spending reductions that would cramp his own agenda and that of congressional Democrats.

Too much Leonard Nimoy

People used to make fun of Bill Clinton’s misty-eyed, raspy-voiced claims that, “I feel your pain.”

The reality, however, is that Clinton’s dozen years as governor before becoming president really did leave him with a vivid sense of the concrete human dimensions of policy. He did not view programs as abstractions — he viewed them in terms of actual people he knew by name.

Obama, a legislator and law professor, is fluent in describing the nuances of problems. But his intellectuality has contributed to a growing critique that decisions are detached from rock-bottom principles.

Both Maureen Dowd in The New York Times and Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post have likened him to Star Trek’s Mr. Spock.

The Spock imagery has been especially strong during the extended review Obama has undertaken of Afghanistan policy. He’ll announce the results on Tuesday. The speech’s success will be judged not only on the logic of the presentation but on whether Obama communicates in a more visceral way what progress looks like and why it is worth achieving. No soldier wants to take a bullet in the name of nuance.

That’s the Chicago Way

This is a storyline that’s likely taken root more firmly in Washington than around the country. The rap is that his West Wing is dominated by brass-knuckled pols.

It does not help that many West Wing aides seem to relish an image of themselves as shrewd, brass-knuckled political types. In a Washington Post story this month, White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, referring to most of Obama’s team, said, “We are all campaign hacks.”

The problem is that many voters took Obama seriously in 2008 when he talked about wanting to create a more reasoned, non-partisan style of governance in Washington. When Republicans showed scant interest in cooperating with Obama at the start, the Obama West Wing gladly reverted to campaign hack mode.

The examples of Chicago-style politics include their delight in public battles with Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (There was also a semi-public campaign of leaks aimed at Greg Craig, the White House counsel who fell out of favor.) In private, the Obama team cut an early deal — to the distaste of many congressional Democrats — that gave favorable terms to the pharmaceutical lobby in exchange for their backing his health care plans.

The lesson that many Washington insiders have drawn is that Obama wants to buy off the people he can and bowl over those he can’t. If that perception spreads beyond Washington this will scuff Obama’s brand as a new style of political leader.

He’s a pushover

If you are going to be known as a fighter, you might as well reap the benefits. But some of the same insider circles that are starting to view Obama as a bully are also starting to whisper that he’s a patsy.

It seems a bit contradictory, to be sure. But it’s a perception that began when Obama several times laid down lines — then let people cross them with seeming impunity. Last summer he told Democrats they better not go home for recess until a critical health care vote but they blew him off. He told the Israeli government he wanted a freeze in settlements but no one took him seriously. Even Fox News — which his aides prominently said should not be treated like a real news organization — then got interview time for its White House correspondent.

In truth, most of these episodes do not amount to much. But this unflattering storyline would take a more serious turn if Obama is seen as unable to deliver on his stern warnings in the escalating conflict with Iran over its nuclear program.

He sees America as another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe

That line belonged to George H.W. Bush, excoriating Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988. But it highlights a continuing reality: In presidential politics the safe ground has always been to be an American exceptionalist.

Politicians of both parties have embraced the idea that this country — because of its power and/or the hand of Providence — should be a singular force in the world. It would be hugely unwelcome for Obama if the perception took root that he is comfortable with a relative decline in U.S. influence or position in the world.

On this score, the reviews of Obama’s recent Asia trip were harsh.

His peculiar bow to the emperor of Japan was symbolic. But his lots-of-velvet, not-much-iron approach to China had substantive implications.

On the left, the budding storyline is that Obama has retreated from human rights in the name of cynical realism. On the right, it is that he is more interested in being President of the World than President of the United States, a critique that will be heard more in December as he stops in Oslo to pick up his Nobel Prize and then in Copenhagen for an international summit on curbing greenhouse gases.

President Pelosi

No figure in Barack Obama’s Washington, including Obama, has had more success in advancing his will than the speaker of the House, despite public approval ratings that hover in the range of Dick Cheney’s. With a mix of tough party discipline and shrewd vote-counting, she passed a version of the stimulus bill largely written by congressional Democrats, passed climate legislation, and passed her chamber’s version of health care reform. She and anti-war liberals in her caucus are clearly affecting the White House’s Afghanistan calculations.

The great hazard for Obama is if Republicans or journalists conclude — as some already have — that Pelosi’s achievements are more impressive than Obama’s or come at his expense.

This conclusion seems premature, especially with the final chapter of the health care drama yet to be written.

But it is clear that Obama has allowed the speaker to become more nearly an equal — and far from a subordinate — than many of his predecessors of both parties would have thought wise.

He’s in love with the man in the mirror

No one becomes president without a fair share of what the French call amour propre. Does Obama have more than his share of self-regard?

It’s a common theme of Washington buzz that Obama is over-exposed. He gives interviews on his sports obsessions to ESPN, cracks wise with Leno and Letterman, discusses his fitness with Men’s Health, discusses his marriage in a joint interview with first lady Michelle Obama for The New York Times. A photo the other day caught him leaving the White House clutching a copy of GQ featuring himself.

White House aides say making Obama widely available is the right strategy for communicating with Americans in an era of highly fragmented media.

But, as the novelty of a new president wears off, the Obama cult of personality risks coming off as mere vanity unless it is harnessed to tangible achievements.

That is why the next couple of months — with health care and Afghanistan jostling at center stage — will likely carry a long echo. Obama’s best hope of nipping bad storylines is to replace them with good ones rooted in public perceptions of his effectiveness.

SOURCE

ISLAM IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH A REPUBLIC

2009-12-01T04:05:00.003-05:00

Every Muslim is not a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim.
~ Dr. Zakir Naik, president, Islamic Research Foundation

When I first started writing for WorldNetDaily, almost three years ago, I wrote "Is Islam compatible with a republic?" My thesis then was to use the Constitution, reason, history and philosophy out of the Judeo-Christian traditions of intellectual thought, including Natural Law, to state authoritatively why Islam is not compatible with a republic. Why? Because Islam contains none of the essential components of what philosopher Booker T. Washington called the "fundamentals of civilization."

What are some of the fundamentals of civilization?

Belief in God (the moon god, Allah, is a very different entity);

veneration of the intrinsic value of all life;

the rule of law;

a written constitution based on truth, equity, liberty and morality;

laws that don't discriminate based on race, creed, wealth, gender or national origin;
freedom of religion.

These are just a few of the fundamentals of civilization Islam under Shariah law has no conception of and utter contempt for.

Islam is not compatible with a republic.

Last Monday I drove down to Columbus, Ohio, to attend a rally for the 17-year-old Christian convert, Rifqa Bary, who was tricked to come back from Florida where she had fled in mortal fear. She returned to her native Ohio to attend a juvenile court hearing that may force her to move back with her family, who are devout Muslims from Sri Lanka. Rifqa fears that her father will perform an honor killing upon her for "blasphemy against Islam" because of her conversion to Christianity.

Brigitte Gabriel combats politically correct notions about the "religion of peace" in "They Must be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It"

The event was organized by my friend, Florida radio host and publisher Pamela Geller. One of the speakers, Nonie Darwish, also a Christian convert from Islam, made this profound statement:

This [Islam] is not religion. It has nothing to do with religion. Religion is a relationship with God. ... Islam is a relationship with the State. Islam is a one-party, totalitarian system. It's a one-party State that will not allow you to speak. And it will kill anybody who challenges or questions.
Islam is not compatible with a republic.

Last Tuesday the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ordered Lynne Stewart, a convicted terror-coddling civil-rights lawyer, to begin serving her prison sentence.

Stewart, 69, was convicted over four years ago, in February 2005, of conspiracy and providing and concealing material support of terrorism for her actions in smuggling messages from "blind sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman to his followers in the Islamic terror group Gama'a al-Islamiyya.

As irony would have it, last week President Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, brought five terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be tried in a criminal court in New York. This act is tantamount to treason and is essentially overturning 230 years of American constitutional law and over 400 years of common-law traditions by permitting enemy combatants caught on foreign territory waging war against American soldiers to have full constitutional rights rather than being speedily tried by a military tribunal.

Last year I wrote a book, "The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust," on this very issue of coddling extreme war criminals and clogging up our criminal courts with people as irredeemably wicked as the Nazis, who, after World War II, should have all been tried by a military (not an international) tribunal and summarily hanged in the public square as a lesson to future would-be dictators that the civilized world means business.

They didn't. Instead, in November 1945 the civilized world at the Nuremberg Trials miserably failed to dispense swift, comprehensive justice against Hitler's Nazis. Now, their anti-Semitic allies then and now, the Muslims, seek to finish what Hitler started.

Obama and Holder's decision to bring these religious fanatics to New York is an insane policy that no constitutional lawyer worth his salt could tolerate, but instead of a unified front against this double-crossing policy from the American Bar Association, the National Trial Lawyers Association and the ACLU, all I hear is the sound of shekels jingling in moneybag of Judas as legions of shyster lawyers from NYU, Columbia and Harvard are lining up to become the next Lynne Stewart – the next traitorous terrorist lawyer who will get 24/7 media coverage and a king's ransom for defending these murderers.

The Obama administration at every opportunity is bending over frontwards and backwards to convince the world that America is a nice country since GWB left office and Obama is in charge. Conversely, this Neville Chamberlain policy of appeasement has only demonstrated to the world our societal decadence, our duplicity and our utter lack of moral resolve to fight an avowed enemy like radical Islam with the same passion and merciless tactics they have leveled against the civilized world.

As Nonie Darwish said, Islam is a totalitarian political ideology feigning as a religion; indeed, Islam is anti-religion. It has no belief in a God of love, but in Allah, the pagan moon god that predates the prophet Muhammad and the Quran. Islam has no respect for the intrinsic value of all life, but is a cult of death that celebrates death by promoting homicide bombers and "killing the infidel where you find him."

America's republic respects a written Constitution based on God, Natural Law, liberty and truth; therefore, truly just laws should not discriminate based on race, creed, gender or wealth (within biblical traditions, of course). However, Shariah law under Islam openly discriminates against others based on every conceivable difference. In other words, according to the Quran, everyone not a Muslim is considered a second-class citizen or worse, can be abused, sold into slavery or even summarily killed. The Quran commands: "A Muslim must not enslave another Muslim but is free to do so with a non-Muslim."

And that's why, in my opinion, Islam is not compatible with a republic.

SOURCE

Muslim Student: "IT IS FUN TO BLOW PEOPLE UP!"

2009-12-01T03:53:00.004-05:00

Is Ahmad Ibrahim Fares-Hammad yet another misunderstander of Islam, hoping to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah (Koran 8:60) or just a jihad prankster trying to make a point in a perverse way about "racism" and "Islamophobia" ("You think because we are Arab we will blow people up. I won't blow you up.")? We will probably never know, because one thing is certain: authorities and the mainstream media will not ask the right questions.

"FBI: UTEP student made false bomb threat, said 'it is fun to blow people up,'" by Joe Villasana for KVIA.com, November 25 (thanks to Joe):

EL PASO -- An electrical engineering student at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) appeared before a U.S. Magistrate Judge Wednesday on charges he allegedly made a bomb threat to a UTEP employee.

According to the criminal complaint, Ahmad Ibrahim Fares-Hammad "maliciously" made the false bomb threat to an administrative assistant at the Biological Science building on November 18, 2009 and told her "it is fun to blow people up."

The FBI agent investigating the incident said the employee claimed Fares-Hammad walked into the department's office carrying a small device with short metal poles that had yellow, red and blue wires.

The employee told the investigator she had never seen Fares-Hammad inside the building and addressed him in regards to the device. "What's that," the employee asked," it looks scary."

Investigators said Fares-Hammad answered, "It is a remote control used to blow people up." The employee then remarked, "That is mean and not very nice." Fares-Hammad then told her, "It is fun to blow people up," according to the FBI investigator who interviewed the employee.

Fares-Hammad then asked the employee for water and she directed him to a water tank. Fares-Hammad noticed there were no water cups attached to the tank and told the employee he needed a cup. At that point, he told her, "You think because we are Arab we will blow people up. I won't blow you up," according to the FBI investigator. The employee then asked him, "You think I'm flattered by that?" Fares-Hammad replied, "You should be flattered," according to the investigator....

Wednesday, Fares-Hammad appeared in federal court to hear the charges against him. He is charged with "maliciously making false information concerning alleged attempts to injure, kill, or unlawfully damage or destroy a building by means of explosive," according to the criminal complaint....

SOURCE

Civil War In America? I Agree With The Russians...

2009-11-30T06:25:00.008-05:00

The Russians hit the nail on the head. I have predicted a civil war in the USA since 2005. America is a nation divided - The Left hates the Right with a passion and the the sleeping giant of the Right has finally awakened. The election of Obama in 2008 was the fateful crossing of the Rubicon and the cast of the dice was the most radical Leftist Administration in American history, which has united a diverse Right wing in resistance.

I would say armed rebellion will very likely break out in the next several years, or as early as next spring. Indeed, as Shakespeare might say, this is the winter of our discontent; however, I am of the opinion that American patriots will wait until the 2010 elections before launching civil war if a Republican majority is not elected to Congress.

Russian Military Analysts are reporting to Prime Minister Putin that US President Barack Obama has issued orders to his Northern Command’s (USNORTHCOM) top leader, US Air Force General Gene Renuart, to “begin immediately” increasing his military forces to 1 million troops by January 30, 2010, in what these reports warn is an expected outbreak of civil war within the United States before the end of winter.

If Obama signs our sovereignty and freedom away and brings foreign troops to suppress our freedom will you fight back? Answer this question now on our poll on top left of this site.

According to these reports, Obama has had over these past weeks “numerous” meetings with his war council about how best to manage the expected implosion of his Nations banking system while at the same time attempting to keep the United States military hegemony over the World in what Russian Military Analysts state is a “last ditch gambit” whose success is “far from certain”.

And to Obama’s “last ditch gambit”, these reports continue, he is to announce in a nationwide address to his people this coming week that he is going to expand the level of US Military Forces in Afghanistan by tens of thousands of troops, while at the same time using the deployment of these soldiers as a “cover” for returning to the United States over 200,000 additional American soldiers from the over 800 bases in over 39 countries they have stationed around the Globe bringing the level of these forces in America to over 1 million, a number the US Military believes will be able to contain the “explosion of violence” expected to roil these peoples when they learn their economy has been bankrupted.

These reports further state that at the same time Obama will be attempting to keep his Nation from violent disintegration, the tens of thousands of additional troops he will send to Afghanistan are to be ordered to Kandahar where the Americans and their NATO allies will begin their final attempt to secure their TAPI (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India) pipeline, which without the Western Nations, due to their grave lack of alternative energy resources, and being cut off from these vast Central Asian supplies (which both Russia and China are seeking to insure), are warned will totally collapse.

Making the American’s (and by extension the West’s) situation even worse are new reports coming from the International Energy Agency stating that “under pressure” from the US government they have been “deliberately underplaying” a looming Global oil shortage for fear of triggering panic buying and raising the Americans fear over the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to our World’s last remaining oil resources.

To the scariest “end game” maneuvers being made by Obama, in his attempt to protect Americas Global hegemony, is his record shattering move in plunging the United States $3.5 Trillion further into debt, and which raises the total amount owed by the United States, to its citizens and the World, to the unprecedented height of over $106 Trillion.

So alarming has Obama’s actions become (especially since they are being imitated by all of the Western powers) that the managing-director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, warned this past week that the “stimulus actions” of the West (which in essence is nothing more than the printing of money with nothing to back it up) has now become a “threat to democracy” as millions of people are expected to erupt in violence against their governments over the theft of their money and their futures.

Most unfortunately for the American people though is that this IMF warning fell on “deaf ears” in the United States with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President, James Bullard, saying this week that the US would continue its “stimulus actions” because they “would give more flexibility to US policymakers”, a most absurd statement especially when viewed in the light of the unprecedented debt payments currently looming over the American economy they have no ability whatsoever to pay.

To the ability of the West’s banking giants to save their Nation’s economies, even worse news came this week with the US ratings giant Standards & Poors issuing a warning that “every single bank in Japan, the US, Germany, Spain, and Italy included in S&P’s list of 45 Global lenders remain unsafe”, a warning which then lead to one of Europe’s largest banks, Société Générale, warning its clients to prepare for a “total Global Economic Collapse”.

To the fears of Obama over the United States erupting into civil war once the full extent of the rape and pillaging of these peoples by their banks and government becomes known to them, grim evidence now shows the likelihood of this occurring much sooner than later, especially in new poll figures showing that Obama’s approval rating among white Americans has now fallen to 39%. A number made more significant when one realizes that the white population of the United States comprises 74% of their estimated 398 million citizens, or put more ominously in these reports as “over 220 million American people armed to the teeth and ready to explode”.

And so fearful has the white population of the United States become that upon the election of Obama to the Presidency he was named as the “Gun Salesman of the Year” by the Outdoor Wire, the US’s largest daily electronic news service for the outdoor industry, who report “panic buying” of weapons and ammunition by those fearful of the destruction of their country at the hands of man they believe is not even an American citizen and had been foisted upon them by their elite classes seeking to enslave them.

Though the coming civil war in the United States is being virtually ignored by their propaganda media, the same cannot be said of Russia, where leading Russian political analyst, Professor Igor Panarin has long warned that the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the US is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts. Professor Igor Panarin further stated in his warning that “the US Dollar is not secured by anything. The country’s foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse.”

What remains to be seen, and these reports do not speculate upon, is if the citizen-soldiers of the United States will fire upon and kill their fellow countrymen during the coming conflict, but if history is to be our guide clearly shows this will be the case as the once great American Nation continues its headlong plunge into the abyss of history. May God have mercy upon all of them.

SOURCE: AMERICAN RESISTANCE RADIO

Mein Kampf Best Seller In The Muslim World

2009-11-30T06:06:00.003-05:00

Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945) looking out of a barred window in Landsberg jail where he dictated his autobiography, 'Mein Kampf.'

Booksellers on the streets of the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka have discovered a surprise hit: Adolf Hitler's manisfesto Mein Kampf. The tome is selling as well as Dan Brown's latest book, the Lost Symbol. "For some reason Hitler's book is all the rage among educated people," one street seller told the BBC. What's the appeal? "I think it's because many people have seen Hitler in films and want to know more about him," said the vendor.

It couldn't be that the so-called "educated [Muslim] people" agree with Hitler's anti-Semitism and attempt at world conquest, now could it?

SOURCE

Thank The Lord That John McCain Lost

2009-11-30T05:48:00.004-05:00

“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” - Eric Hoffer

As we linger in the trough of the recession, I have to admit that America has had a tough couple of Thanksgivings. Here in the midwest, the real estate market looks like Amy Winehouse’s hotel room after a weekend binge and if we were to make a movie about the local employment picture we would have to call it “Dim and Dimmer.” Friends and associates have seen their pensions de-funded, their companies shuttered, and their families strained by fear and financial insecurity. Several local car dealers have committed suicide, recalling the depths of despair reached during the Great Depression where once-wealthy tycoons leapt to their demise from tall buildings. One might expect widespread angst to pervade our daily lives and steal our joy.

But most Americans are made of sterner stuff. Thanks largely to our Christian roots, our American ideals and the common sense approach to daily life that they entail, we remain buoyed by the gift of gratitude. At least those of us here in my neck of the corn do, here in Indiana. Despite the kind-heartedness and gratitude I see in those around me, a great many Americans seem to be sorely lacking in the spirit of thankfulness we celebrate this week. Our President, for example, who probably has more reason to be grateful for the life he has been given than any of the rest of us, focuses instead on whining and complaining. Rather than recognizing the greatness of the country that made his life and rise to the most respected office in the world possible, B.O. focuses instead on apologizing for our country’s lack of perfection and derides our nation and its founding heroes at nearly every turn.

“Saying thank you is more than good manners. It is good spirituality”
Alfred Painter

The best tool in our spiritual tool-box remains our ability to focus our attention on the positive things in our lives. While our consciousness is comprised of both attention and intention, it is what we pay attention to in our lives that determines our state-of-mind and whether or not we can be happy. Unfortunately, one of our two political parties has decided its raison d’etre is to focus on, and develop grievances. Thus we have a constantly stoked sense of victimhood in that large percentage of our American population agitated and serviced by the Democrat party. Democrats attempt to maintain a nearly continual focus by their constituents on what is wrong with their lives. And my, oh my, what an unhappy bunch they are.

“There is no greater difference between men than between grateful and ungrateful people.” R.H. Blyth

I, for one, choose to be happy. So I set out this Thanksgiving week to make a list of all the things I am grateful for, that I might recognize how much I might be taking for granted, even in these somewhat difficult times. While the usual suspects populate my list: good health, lovely wife, bright, happy children, and a nice home in a good community; I realized that the things at the top of my list where somewhat more intangible.

When one sees the squalor and struggle in sub-Saharan Africa or other third world nations, it’s easy to be grateful to have been born here in our healthy, wealthy nation. Regardless of the best efforts of the American Gang of Four to create an American Cultural Revolution, the worst efforts of B.O., Nanzi Pelosi, Harry Reid and their Alinskyite Geppetto, George Soros, America still provides an opportunity for anyone from anywhere on the planet to thrive and prosper here. Yes, the American Dream lives on, even though the Gang of Four has most of us losing sleep. If one remains as positive as one can be, and as flexible as one can be, the results here in the U.S.A. remain overwhelmingly likely to be fruitful in most any pursuit.

The most startling result of the enumeration of that for which I am grateful became the realization that I am perhaps most grateful that John McCain was defeated in his pursuit of the Presidency in 2008. Of course, I reluctantly voted for him. Anyone who has read my work or has had a casual conversation with me realizes that I am no fan of Barack Obama. The evidence of his incompetence and lack of preparation at nearly every task he pursues grows daily. His domestic policies are dictatory, uninformed and childish and his foreign policy is prissy and weaker than circus lemonade. He lacks the economic comprehension of a child running a kool-aid stand while worshipping at the altar of big government-run-rampant.

The suggestion by his promoters and the sycophantic media that B.O. is a uniter is like some sort of sick joke. Except for the Civil War era, our nation has never been more divided than it is at this time. For a brief moment in time, Barack Obama was carried to the zenith of political power by an anti-establishment left working like moles beneath the radar since the late 1960’s. Embedded in various American bureaucracies, particularly in the media and education, they strove to enlarge the size of government and to expand and enforce their sacraments of multiculturalism, wealth redistribution and political correctness.

A large majority of Americans, however, remain what were once called Reagan Democrats or what Nixon termed members of The Silent Majority.

“The silent majority is an unspecified large majority of people in a country or group who do not express their opinions publicly… and who did not enthusiastically participate in public discourse or the media.

The Silent Majority was mostly populated with the blue collar people who allegedly didn't have the ability or the time to take an active part in politics other than to vote. They did, in some cases, support the conservative policies of many politicians. Others were not particularly conservative politically, but resented what they saw as disrespect for American institutions. (Ibid wiki)

As a result of the tin-earred, over-confident leftist majority’s over-reach, a large contingent of white-collar folks, including small business owners and professionals have joined this no longer silent majority.

If John McCain had somehow been able to defeat Barack Obama in the Presidential race in 2008, the silent majority would likely have remained silent. One might argue that this enormous block of conservative voters did, in fact, remain silent and weren’t motivated enough by the wishy-washy Republicanism of the aisle-crossing Senator from Arizona to actually come out and vote. Our first glimpse of the re-birth of the Silent Majority as an activist voting bloc came with the nomination of Sarah Palin as McCain’s Vice Presidential candidate.

With the advent of the Obama administration and its huge majority in Congress came a rush to capitalize on what the left perceived as a mandate for their policies. Obama’s electoral victory had nothing to do with policy, however, for he was never really required to reveal any policy ideas in his brief strut upon the political stage prior to his election as POTUS. Assisted by Rahm Emanuel and Nanzi Pelosi, the rush to “let no crisis go to waste” began immediately as the Democrats took power and exacted a hard left..

Many of us remain incredulous at the audacity of the leftward lurch the Democrats have tried to impose upon us. From the non-stimulating stimulus, to the government takeover of the auto industry, to the outright lies put forth to support the government takeover of our health care system and on to Obama’s mulitplicity of czars, nearly every day Americans are faced with news about some attempt at American government reform that appears to be right out of the Communist Manifesto.

If John McCain had been elected President, we would have been likely to be willing to endure the inexorable leftward drift of our country. McCain’s selection of campaign staff and the laughable campaign he ran against a thoroughly beatable candidate clearly demonstrated once and for all how it was possible for the young McCain to finish last in his class at Annapolis. Why should we believe he would be any more intelligent about running the country?

McCain’s policies on illegal immigration, global warming and the stimulus are very little different from Obama’s. And Senator McCain is every bit as vested in the whole PC- multiculturalism-diversity canard as our underperforming Scattergood-in-Chief. Don’t ever forget that it was John McCain who refused to discuss Obama’s connections to Reverand Wright and Bill Ayres, or to even utter Obama’s Islamic middle name during his campaign. In hindsight, these campaign malpractices were probably the deal-breakers.

If John McCain had been elected President, Cap and Trade may have actually passed and the chimera of bi-partisanship would have truly been enshrined in the White House. B.O.’s in-your-face patisanship has thankfully dampened Republican enthusiasm for the crossing-the-aisle shuffle. Since taking power, the left, egged on by the combativeness of Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel and Harry ”Pugilistic Dementia” Reed, has clearly drawn its lines in the sand

And the no-longer-silent majority, in the form of the tea-party movement and a revitalized Republican party continues to marshall its resources and is assuming the battlements. The results in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections are only the beginning of the American pendulum’s dramatic swing back to the right. Would we have seen the dramatic blue state takeovers with cranky, old, Gang of Fourteen Johnny sitting in the White House? Not a chance. So this Thanksgiving, let’s all send out a special thanks to Steve Schmidt, Nicole Wallace and John McCain for forcing us to face the reality of the abominable leftward drift we have passively accepted these last 30 years.

Thanks to the revitalized Silent Majority, we can continuing striving for 30 and out.

SOURCE

Public Option Health Care In Britain: Coming Soon To America!

2009-11-30T05:30:00.005-05:00

70 deaths on ward of shame: Patients neglected by lazy nurses in a filthy, blood-spattered casualty unit, says damning report

Dozens of patients died needlessly as a result of filthy conditions in an NHS hospital, a shocking report said last night.

Appalling nursing care in Basildon University Hospital contributed to a mortality rate that was more than a third higher than the national average.

At least 70 people may have died who should have been saved.

It is the latest example of patients paying the ultimate price for Labour's failure to stamp out Third World conditions in the NHS - despite trebling taxpayer funding over the past decade.

Dirty: When inspectors visited the Basildon University Hospital in Essex, they found serious breaches in hygiene standards

The Essex hospital is run by one of the supposedly 'elite' foundation trusts, which have greater freedom to manage their finances. Last night there were angry calls for its entire management team to resign.

Unannounced visits by inspectors from the Care Quality Commission found blood spattered on curtains and chairs in the A&E ward, a catheter bag on the floor, poorly-trained nurses and patients treated on trolleys.

A commode was soiled under the seat, nurses were failing to feed frail elderly people and patients had pressure sores.

There was no paediatric nurse for most of the time so children were not getting the best care.

The mortality rate in the A&E ward was 6.1 per cent in 2008, more than a third higher than the national average of 4.4 per cent.

The scandal mirrors what happened at Mid Staffordshire foundation trust - a much bigger trust than Basildon - where 400 people died over three years.

Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association said last night: 'The entire board should most certainly resign.

'If there was one member who had any concerns, they should have been raising them.

'We're sick and tired of NHS managers and senior staff walking away unscathed when families are left with a life sentence of grief.'

Alan Whittle, the trust's £150,000-a-year chief executive, said they were confident of returning conditions to an acceptable standard before the deadline of next Monday set by the Care Quality Commission.

But last night he ignored calls to resign.

'We are deeply disappointed that we were found wanting in three of the 15 measures covered by this inspection,' Mr Whittle said.

'I am confident the actions we, and our cleaning contractor, are taking will return us to compliance by November 30.

'I am also grateful to the CQC for pointing out in its report that our infection rates have fallen year on year and are lower than the majority of similar trusts.'

Trust chairman Michael Large said: 'That Monitor has found us to be in breach of our terms of authorisation as a foundation trust is an extremely serious matter and we do not seek to underestimate its gravity.

'I want to reassure our local community that the safety and well-being of our patients is our highest priority.'

But the CQC, which said 'systemic failings' had led to 'persistently high mortality rates', has ordered in a taskforce from the regulator Monitor to push through improvements, saying it has lost confidence in management's ability to do so.

Monitor has the power to sack trust bosses.

It also emerged last night that the CQC awarded the trust 13 out of 14 points for cleanliness only last year, rating it 'good'. It was only the spot checks last month which uncovered the failings.

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: 'When the appalling standards of care at Stafford Hospital were revealed we were assured by Labour ministers that it was "an isolated case". That sort of complacency is simply not good enough.

'I am extremely disturbed by this news and the effect that these shocking conditions may have had on patients. It is unforgivable if any lives have been needlessly lost.'

The inspectors carried out their unannounced check on October 8 to 'see the hospital as a patient or visitor would see it'.

They also analysed complaints, from which they learned that many elderly patients had not received help with eating.

In its report, the CQC said its main concerns were persistently high mortality rates, a poor care environment, inadequate arrangements to treat children, poor nursing care, breaches of infection control standards and a lack of leadership at both board and ward level.

Management of the A&E department was poor, with problems including lack of leadership, poor environment and huge delays.

There was no system to ensure staff could observe patients in the waiting room, meaning they could not spot if a patient's condition deteriorated.

Patients had little privacy, with curtains separating cubicles. Some were cared for on trolleys around the edge of the major injuries area and, in busier times, in the centre.

Arrangements for children were also criticised. There were no special areas for children in the major injuries area.

There were few nurses with psychiatric training and no consultant with a paediatric speciality.

The ward spent more time without a paediatric nurse than with one.

Basic nursing care was also ' inconsistent'. Complaints from patients showed nurses failed to monitor, feed and give drugs correctly.

Up to 20 patients in 1,000 had evidence of pressure sores - as against 11 per 1,000 nationally.

Scandal: Over three years, 400 people died at Staffordshire General Hospital in a similar case to Basildon

Local care homes repeatedly expressed concerns about residents coming back with pressure sores.

It was unclear who was in charge of the nurses, and those meant to be in charge lacked the 'professional maturity' required.

Inspectors also found that the trust was not effectively decontaminating reusable equipment or maintaining a clean and appropriate environment in the A&E department.

They found 11 out of 12 trolley mattresses were stained and two had a 'foul odour'.

It says: 'Nurses we spoke to were not aware that mattresses could be opened and checked.'

Blood pressure cuffs and suction machines for clearing airways were dirty and dusty.

Half the curtains that separated cubicles were soiled, some with blood - and the system for changing them was not working.

CQC chief executive Cynthia Bower said last night: 'The trust has taken our concerns seriously but improvements are simply not happening fast enough.

'We have lost confidence in the management's ability to deliver on commitments and turn the situation around. We have therefore asked Monitor to use its formal powers to kick-start improvement.'

LibDem spokesman Norman Lamb said: 'People have a right to know how on earth a hospital can be rated "good" a few weeks before such serious failings come to light.

'This government has set up a labyrinth of bodies and inspectors which are meant to ensure high quality standards in our hospitals but it simply isn't working.'

Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association said: 'Yet again the regulator's assessment of a hospital has proven to be farcically inaccurate. It is nothing but a tick-box exercise that didn't reveal any of these problems.

'Yet again patients are being neglected. Lack of monitoring, lack of help with feeding, lack of dignity, avoidable pressure sores.

'How many times do the public need to keep hearing about this before the Government is embarrassed enough to do something about it?'

Health minister Mike O'Brien said: 'Patient safety must be a top priority for the NHS and all patients deserve the highest quality of care.

'We expect these issues to be dealt with quickly and effectively to ensure high quality, safe care for patients. Their progress will be closely and rigorously overseen by Monitor.'

The trust has two hospitals providing care for around 300,000 people in South-west Essex. Most of the inpatient care is at the 777-bed Basildon University Hospital, while outpatient care is at Orsett hospital.

SOURCE

OBAMA: "OPERATION SOCIALISM ON SCHEDULE"

2009-11-29T05:34:00.004-05:00

*CLICK TO ENLARGE

THE ART OF POLITICAL WAR

2009-11-27T04:59:00.003-05:00

A specter is haunting America – the specter of a people rising. All across the nation Americans are waking up to the threat of a leftist elite determined to fundamentally change America, push through a socialist agenda, and make every citizen dependent on the state. The Obama machine is spending trillions of tax-payer dollars to finance their takeover of the American workplace and stifle the independence of the American people. But America is resilient nation, built on the principles of private property and individual freedom, and the resistance to their socialist plans has already begun.

In May 2009, just five months into the Obama administration, the people of California launched a tax revolt in the biggest spending state in the nation. So reckless were the leftist Democrats who run California (and have done so for as long as anyone can remember) that its deficit alone was larger than the budgets of most other states in the Union and of many of the nations of the world. Leftwing politicians don’t cut budgets; they propose new taxes. And California’s leftwing legislature did just that. But thanks to a constitutional amendment put in place by the California electorate through the state Initiative process, California legislators can’t raise taxes without a two-thirds referendum of the people. So they were forced to hold a special election in May to appeal to the electorate to pass five new ballot Initiatives to raise taxes.

But when the votes were counted, all five tax-raising Initiatives had been defeated by 60% margins. Even in San Francisco. A sixth Initiative designed by tax opponents to punish legislators who do not balance the budget passed by a more than 70% margin. Even in San Francisco. If one of the most liberal states in the Union is saying no to the soak-the-public philosophy of leftwing legislators, Obama socialism is in big trouble.

The revolt in California quickly spread to the entire nation through the efforts of the Tea Parties movement, the most innovative, exciting and powerful grassroots force in the history of American conservatism. It is vital to the health of this country that the Tea Parties movement grow. More to the point: it is essential to American survival that the Tea Parties movement succeed. On the eve of the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama said “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming America.” The Tea Parties movement is the American people saying no to Obama’s plans for revolution.

* * *

A movement without an effective strategy for defeating its opponents cannot succeed. Therefore it is important to reacquaint ourselves with the art of political war.

While Democrats are morally bankrupt and clueless about policy – about what makes things work — they still win elections because they understand a simple fact: American politics is driven by the romance of the underdog, the story of the little guy who goes up against the system and triumphs in the end. It is a story about opportunity and fairness. To win the hearts and minds of the American voter, you have to tap the emotions the romance of the underdog evokes. Whoever does so has a winning edge.

America’s heroes are all cut to this common mold. Whether it is George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Davy Crockett, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Amelia Earhart, Jackie Robinson, Ronald Reagan or Colin Powell, the theme is always the same: The common man who rises against the odds. America’s political romance is “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” to make things right. It is “Meet John Doe” who speaks for the voiceless. It is Luke Skywalker who saves the planet by using the good side of the Force to defeat the Empire. It is the odyssey of individuals who challenge power, overcome adversity and rise to the top. Everyone in America thinks of themselves as an underdog and aspires to be a hero.

The cause of the underdog wins American hearts because it resonates with our deepest religious and moral convictions of doing good and helping others. And because it is America’s own story. We began as a small nation, standing up to the world’s most powerful empire. We dedicated ourselves to the idea that all men are created equal. We are a nation of immigrants and a generous people who arrived with nothing and made fortunes in a new world. This is the American Dream.

It’s a story that will get you every time. But at election time, it’s the political left and the Democratic Party who know how to wield it as a political weapon, and Republicans and conservatives generally who don’t. Of course the Tea Parties have changed all that. And that is another sign that we are in an extraordinary political moment. The Tea Parties draw on the heritage of America’s own revolution as an underdog nation and are the voice of the people, oppressed now by their own government which is out of control and determined to crush them.

*

In positioning themselves as champions of the under-represented, neglected and oppressed, leftists employ a version of America’s story that they have manufactured through their grip on the media and the academic culture. They have transformed America’s story from an epic of freedom into a tale of racism, exploitation and domination. In their telling, American history is no longer a narrative of expanding opportunity, of men and women succeeding against the odds. Instead, it is a Marxist Morality Play about the powerful and their victims.

In staging their political dramas, progressives invariably claim to speak in the name of America’s alleged “victims.” Every policy of the Democratic Party is presented as a program to help these “victims”—women, children, minorities and the poor. Simultaneously, Democrats describe Republican policies as programs that will injure the weak, ignore the vulnerable, and keep the powerless down.

Republicans play right into the Democrats’ trap because they approach politics as a problem of management. To Republicans, every issue is a management issue—the utility of a tax cut, the efficiency of a program, the optimal method for running an enterprise. Republicans talk like businessmen who want a chance to manage the country so that it will turn a profit.

There is nothing wrong with instituting good policies and running things efficiently or turning a profit. But while Republicans are performing these Gold Star activities, Democrats are engaged in a different kind of drama. They are busy attacking Republicans as servants of the rich, oppressors of the weak and defenders of the strong. And enemies of “the people.”

Listen to Mario Cuomo describing Republicans to the Democrats’ 1996 National Convention:

We need to work as we have never done before between now and November 5th to take the Congress back from Newt Gingrich and the Republicans, because ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, the Republicans are the real threat. They are the real threat to our women. They are the real threat to our children. They are the real threat to clean water, clean air and the rich landscape of America.

Mario Cuomo knows the language of political war.

Democrats connect emotionally with people’s fears and concerns. The appeal to help the underdog and defend the victim resonates with all Americans. This is because Americans are a fair-minded people. Most successful Americans came from humble origins themselves. They want to help others. They want everyone to have the chance to succeed.

So do Republicans and conservatives. But they rarely connect their policies and principles to this political romance.

There’s a good reason for this. Conservatives are busy defending the real America against the left’s attacks and the anti-American caricature they have constructed. Conservatives know that America is still a land of opportunity and freedom, and that nobody in America is really “oppressed.” (Otherwise, why would poor, black, Hispanic and Asian minorities be desperately seeking to come here? Why wouldn’t they be leaving instead?)

But politics isn’t just about reality. If it were, good principles and good policies would win every time. It’s about images and symbols, and the emotions they evoke. This is a battle that conservatives generally lose.

In the romance of the victim, as progressives stage it, Republicans and conservatives are always on the side of the bad guys—the powerful, the male, the white and the wealthy. It’s easy to see how patriotism plays into this trap. Defending America is readily mis-represented as an attitude that says: “I’m all right Jack, so you should be too.” The left relishes the opportunity to smear patriots as members of the selfish party instead of as defenders of individual freedom.

Ann Coulter has described the motto of the left as this: “Speak loudly and carry a small victim.” For the Democrats, the romance of the victim stirs the souls of their supporters and energizes their base. Equally important, it provides the nuclear warhead of their political attack. Conservatives are targeted victimizers, and leftists as the champions of the oppressed. Learning how to turn this around will turn around the political war as well.

Going On The Attack

Fortunately, conservatives can use the left-wing attack against them. Contrary to the left’s view, America is not a land of victims. It is a highly mobile society, with a citizenry that aspires upwards through the system, not against it.

Conservatives can also turn the left’s oppression myth around, and aim its guns at them. In fact, using the romance of the underdog against the left is the best way to neutralize their attack.

The way to do it is to recognize that the most powerful forces obstructing opportunity for poor and minority Americans, the most powerful forces oppressing them, are progressives, the Democratic Party, and their political creation—the welfare state.

There is really nothing new in this idea. Conservatives already oppose the programs of the left as obstacles to the production of wealth and barriers to opportunity for all Americans. What is new is the idea of connecting this analysis to a political strategy that will give conservatives a decisive edge in battle—that will neutralize the class, race and gender warfare attacks of the political left.

The Principles

Here are the principles of political war that the left understands but conservatives do not:

1. Politics is war conducted by other means

2. Politics is a war of position

3. In political wars the aggressor usually prevails

4. Position is defined by fear and hope

5. The weapons of politics are symbols evoking fear and hope

6. Victory lies on the side of the people

Here are the principles explained:

Politics is war conducted by other means.

In political warfare you do not fight just to prevail in an argument, but to destroy the enemy’s fighting ability. Conservatives often seem to regard political combats as they would a debate before the Oxford Political Union, as though winning depends on rational arguments and carefully articulated principles. But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules are entirely different.

For starters, you have only 30 seconds to make your point. Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach (the undecided and those in the middle who are not paying much attention) wouldn’t get it. Your words would go over some of their heads and the rest would not even hear them (or be quickly forgotten) amidst the bustle and pressure of daily life. Worse, while you’ve been making your argument the other side has already painted you as a mean-spirited, border-line racist controlled by religious zealots, securely in the pockets of the rich. Nobody who sees you this way is going to listen to you in any case. You’re politically dead.

Politics is war. Don’t forget it.

Politics is a war of position.

In war there are two sides: friends and enemies. Your task is to define yourself as the friend of as large a constituency compatible with your principles as possible, while defining your opponent as their enemy wherever and whenever you can. The act of defining combatants is analogous to the military concept of choosing the terrain of battle.

Choose the terrain that makes the fight as loaded in your favor as possible. But be careful. American politics takes place in a pluralistic framework, where constituencies are diverse and often in conflict. “Fairness” and “tolerance” are the formal rules of democratic engagement. If you appear mean-spirited, nasty, or too judgmental, it will make the task easier for your opponent to define you as a threat, and therefore as “the enemy.” (See principle 4)

In political warfare, the aggressor usually prevails.

Conservatives often pursue a strategy of waiting for the other side to attack. In football this is known as a “prevent defense.” In politics it is the strategy of losers.

Aggression is advantageous because politics is a war of position. Position is defined by images that stick. By striking first you can define the issues and your adversary. Defining the opposition is the decisive move in all political war. Other things being equal, whoever is put on the defensive generally winds up on the losing side.

In attacking your opponent, take care to do it right. Going negative increases the risk of being defined as an enemy. Therefore, it can be counter-productive. Ruling out the negative, however, can incur an even greater risk.

Position is defined by fear and hope.

The twin emotions of politics are fear and hope. Those who provide people with hope become their friends; those who inspire fear become enemies. Of the two, hope is the better choice. By offering people hope and yourself as its provider, you show your better side and maximize your potential support.

But fear is a powerful and indispensable weapon. If your opponent defines you negatively enough, he will diminish your ability to offer hope. This is why Democrats are so determined to portray conservatives as mean-spirited, and hostile to minorities, the middle class and the poor.

It is important to work away from the negative images your opponent wants to pin on you. If you know you are going to be attacked as intolerant and bigoted it’s a good idea to lead with a position that is inclusive and fair-minded. If you are going to be framed as mean-spirited and ungenerous, it’s a good idea to put on a smile and lead with symbols that project generosity and charity.

The weapons of politics are symbols evoking fear and hope.

Conservatives lose a lot of political battles because they come across as hard-edged, scolding, scowling and sanctimonious. A good rule of thumb says be just the opposite. You have to convince people you care about them before they’ll care about what you have to say.

When you do get to speak, don’t forget that a sound-bite is all you have. Whatever you have to say, make sure to say it loud and clear. Keep it simple and keep it short. (A slogan is always better). Repeat it often. Get it on television. Radio is good, but with few exceptions, only television reaches a public that is electorally significant. In politics, television is reality.

Of course, you have a base of supporters who will listen for hours to what you have to say if that’s what you want. In the battles facing you, they will play an important role. Therefore, what you say to them is also important. But it is not going to decide elections. The audiences that will determine your fate are audiences that you will first have to persuade. You will have to find a way to reach them and get them to listen. And get them to support you. With these audiences, you will never have time for real arguments or proper analyses. Images—symbols and sound-bites—will always prevail.

Therefore it is absolutely essential to focus your message and repeat it over and over again. Lack of focus will derail your message. If you make too many points, your message will be diffused and nothing will get through. The result will be the same as if you had made no point at all.

Leftists have a party line. When they are fighting an issue they focus their agenda. During legislative battles, every time a Democrat steps in front of the cameras there is at least one line in his speech that is shared with his colleagues. “Tax breaks for the wealthy at the expense of the poor,” is one example. Repetition insures that the message will get through.

When Republicans speak during legislative battles, they all march to a different drummer. There are many messages instead of one. One message is a sound-bite. Many messages are an indecipherable noise. The result of many messages is that there is no message.

Symbols and sound-bites determine the vote. These are what hit people in the gut before they have time to think. And these are what people remember. Symbols are the impressions that last, and what ultimately defines you.

Carefully chosen words and phrases are more important than paragraphs, speeches, party platforms and manifestos. What you project through images is what you are.

Victory lies on the side of the people.

This is the bottom line for each of the principles and for all of the principles. You must define yourself in ways that people understand. You must give people hope in your victory, and make them fear the victory of your opponent. You can accomplish both by identifying yourself and your issues with the underdog and the victim, with minorities and the disadvantaged, with the ordinary Janes and Joes.

This is what leftists do best, and conservatives often neglect to do at all. Every political statement by a leftist is an effort to say: “We care about women, children, minorities, working Americans and the poor.” And: “Conservatives are mean-spirited, serve the rich and don’t care about you.” This is the left’s strategy of political war. If conservatives are to win the political war we have to turn these images around.

We also have to make our campaigns a cause. During the Cold War, conservatives had a cause. They were saving the country from Communism. It was a cause that resonated at every level with the American people. The poorest citizen understood that their freedom was at stake in making sure that conservatives were elected to conduct the nation’s defense.

In a democracy, the cause that fires up passions is the cause of the people. That is why politicians like to run “against Washington” and against anything that represents the “powers that be.” As the left has shown, the idea of justice is a powerful motivator. It will energize the troops and fuel the campaigns that are necessary to win the political war. Conservatives believe in economic opportunity and individual freedom. The core of our ideas is freedom and justice for all. If we can make this intelligible to the American electorate, we will become the majority again and stop the socialist juggernaut that threatens our American future.

SOURCE: DAVID HOROWITZ

WHITE HOUSE INVOLVED IN CLIMATEGATE

2009-11-27T04:51:00.002-05:00

Yesterday Brian Williams delivered an NBC Nightly News report about President Obama attending the Copenhagen global warming summit. Guess what hot topic was left untouched? If you had guessed Climategate you would have been correct. Not only Williams but also the other TV networks, with the exception of FOX News, have completely ignored what is considered to be the biggest scientific scandal in history. However, new Climategate revelations made by the Canada Free Press about a White House connection to the scandal will soon make it much more difficult (and ridiculous) for the networks to ignore.

Canada Free Press editor Judi McLeod and Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball reveal the involvement of White House Science Czar John Holdren (photo) in the Climategate Scandal. The picture presented of Holdren is not a pretty one:

The Complete Article Here

Obama: Aristocracy Reborn Video

2009-11-27T04:47:00.000-05:00

SECRET SERVICE SCREWS UP AGAIN

2009-11-27T04:41:00.003-05:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Secret Service is investigating how an uninvited couple was admitted to U.S. President Barack Obama's White House state dinner, penetrating layers of security, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

The agency charged with protecting the president and other high-level officials is conducting a comprehensive review of the security breach on Tuesday at the dinner in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, U.S. Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan said.

The Washington Post first reported that a northern Virginia couple, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, not on the official guest list, crashed the White House party but were never seated at a table in the South Lawn tent where the dinner was held.

The White House has asked the Secret Service for a full review of what happened, an official said.

"An initial finding has identified one of our checkpoints that did not follow proper procedures to ensure that the two individuals that were named in the Washington Post story were on the invited guests list," Donovan said. But he said no one at the dinner was ever in danger.

"I want to stress that these individuals went through magnetometers and several other levels of screenings just as all of the guests attending the dinner did," he said.

"We don't rely on just magnetometers or the level of screenings," he added." That's why we have the agents with our protectees at all times."

The couple, described by The Washington Post as aspiring reality-TV stars and polo-playing socialites, were seen arriving at the White House.

According to the Post, the uninvited guests were in the same room as the Obamas and Prime Minister Singh, but it is not known if they met.

A dozen pictures posted on Facebook appear to show the couple posing with dinner guests including Vice President Joe Biden, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, CBS News anchor Katie Couric, and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

SOURCE

The Real Story of Thanksgiving By Rush Limbaugh

2009-11-25T11:35:00.001-05:00

This is a special Thanksgiving show. We have a tradition on this program. Every Thanksgiving we read from my book. See, I Told You So. Book #2. That book also sold over 2.4 million copies in hard cover. The first two million copies were sold in eight weeks during November and December, when the book came out. It was the second book. Of course they said second books never do as well as the first. Just another one of these little bits of conventional wisdom that we here at the EIB Network have blown up. But it's the true story, the Real Story of Thanksgiving is something that wasn't even taught when I was in school. I was in school back in the '50s and early '60s in grade school when all this stuff was taught. Here's the basic synopsis of what I was taught about Thanksgiving, what everybody, I think, was taught. And when I began to research this for the book, it's why I was so surprised.

So this is really nothing new. This history revisionism is not something that's been going on since outcome based education. It's been going on for quite a while. The supposed true story of Thanksgiving can be summed up very quickly. The Pilgrims came from England to escape oppression. They arrived in a new land and were immediately overwhelmed with their own incompetence as human beings. They couldn't grow food. They couldn't feed themselves. They couldn't protect themselves. They had no clue what to do. The Indians, who greeted them with friendly leis and bouquets upon their arrival said, "Oh, we're the Indians, we're glad you're here," fed the Pilgrims and taught them how to grow corn and how to hunt and basically taught them how to live.

And that's what the first Thanksgiving was, and then of course the Pilgrims continued to populate and propagate, and eventually killed all the Indians and took over their country and that was the thanks the Indians got for their niceties in feeding the Pilgrims and keeping them alive -- and, hence, the evil white European tradition was born. That's all poppycock. That is all absolute BS with a capital B and a capital S. It's almost the exact opposite of that, in fact, the truth of the real Thanksgiving, and I'm going to have that. I've researched it and published it in this book and it's a tradition on the day before Thanksgiving to read from those few pages of the book. It starts on page 66 in the hard cover edition of See, I Told You So, if you want to grab your copy when we do this. Maybe read along, or read it in advance and be prepared for what's coming.

It's time for the real story of Thanksgiving and the George Washington 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation. The real story of Thanksgiving in my second book, See, I Told You So. It's in the chapter that begins on page 66, and the title of that chapter is "Dead White Guys Or What Your History Books Never Told You." Now, as is so often the case with much of what has happened on this program, the details of this story are now all over the Internet under other people's names and bylines, which is fine with me. I'm like Ronald Reagan: I don't care how the truth gets out. I don't care who gets the credit for it, as long as it gets out. The more people that get it out, the more people that understand it, spread it, the better. But this book goes back to 1994 or '93, actually, and the true story of Thanksgiving prior to that time, I didn't see it anywhere. Like I was telling you at the beginning of the program, I'm like everybody else.

When I was going to grade school and it was time to teach us about Thanksgiving, the basic synopsis of what I was told was the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, a bunch of destitute white people. When they arrived; they had no clue what to do, didn't know how to grow corn, didn't know how to hunt, basically didn't know how to do anything. And if it weren't for the Injuns who befriended them and gave them coats and skins and taught them how to fish and shared their food and corn with them, the Pilgrims wouldn't have survived and the Pilgrims thanked them by killing them and taking over the country and bringing with them syphilis, environmental destruction, racism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia.

That's basically the Thanksgiving story we were all raised with. The latter part of that has been recently added as part of the politically correct multicultural curriculum. But basically the story of Thanksgiving that we all had was that the Pilgrims arrived, were basically inept, incompetent white people, the Indians were very compassionate and nice and shared everything that they had with them and for their thanks, the Pilgrims wiped them out, created the cavalry and basically took over the country, stole it from them, and then amen -- and so we all grew up thinking that that's what happened. The Indians were great people but now they live on reservations and how did this happen since they were so nice to us way back when. That's not anywhere near the truth. It really is nowhere near the truth. I have the real story in the book.

Here now, the real story of Thanksgiving from the book, See, I Told You So, by me. It starts on page 69. The chapter this is contained in begins on page 66 of the hard cover edition:

"Well, folks, let's allow our real undoctored American history lesson to unfold further. If our schools and the media have twisted the historical record when it comes to Columbus, they have obliterated the contributions of America's earliest permanent settlers, the Pilgrims. Why? Because they were a people inspired by profound religious beliefs to overcome incredible odds. Today, public schools are simply not teaching how important the religious dimension was in shaping our history and our nation's character. Whether teachers are just uncomfortable with this material or whether there's been a concerted effort to cover up the truth, the results are the same. Kids are no longer learning enough to understand and appreciate how and why America was created.

"The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century (that's the 1600s for those of you in Rio Linda, California). The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs. A group of separatists first fled to Holland and established a community. After eleven years, about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships, but could live and worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible.

"The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work. But this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims – including Bradford's own wife – died of either starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper!

"This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments. Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well. Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives.

"He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. That's right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn't work! Surprise, surprise, huh? What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future."

Now, I'm going to cease and desist at this point because I don't want to get started and have to interrupt myself for a commercial break with the passage from Bradford in his journal about the decision to scrap socialism, this common share business, and he turned everybody loose, and this new social experiment, forerunner to capitalism, is profoundly detailed in his journal, but I don't want to, as I say, interrupt myself in the process. So we'll get to that and the rest of the story after the commercial break. We are going to post the George Washington 1789 Thanksgiving proclamation at Rush Limbaugh.com, and I haven't decided yet, folks, but I might make the reading here of the first story of Christmas an MP 3 file so you can download it, and take it with you to Thanksgiving dinner, and if you start getting some grief from liberals, just say, "Here, I got something I want you to listen to and make them listen to it. Ask them as a favor on Thanksgiving."

Here now, in its entirety, the William Bradford journal, what he wrote about the social experiment after abandoning what essentially was socialism shortly after the Pilgrims had arrived in the United States or in the new world:

"'The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,' Bradford wrote. 'For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense...that was thought injustice.' Do you hear what he was saying, ladies and gentlemen? The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community try next? They un-harnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products.'"

Not just use themselves and not just send to a common store but they could market. They could grow as much, they could sell it for what they could get for it, and the incentive was clear to do as much as possible on both sides. "And what was the result? 'This had very good success,' wrote Bradford, 'for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.' Bradford doesn't sound like much of a Clintonite, does he? Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? Yes. Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41. Following Joseph's suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the 'seven years of plenty' and the 'Earth brought forth in heaps.' (Gen. 41:47) In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves. So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the 'Great Puritan Migration.' Now, let me ask you: Have you read this history before? Is this lesson being taught to your children today? If not, why not? Can you think of a more important lesson one could derive from the Pilgrim experience?

"Guess what? There's even more that is being deliberately withheld from our modern textbooks. For example, one of those attracted to the new world by the success of Plymouth was Thomas Hooker. Thomas Hooker established his own community in Connecticut, the first full-fledged constitutional community, perhaps the most free society the world had ever known. Hooker's community was governed by the fundamental orders of Connecticut, which established strict limits on the powers of government. So revolutionary and successful was this idea that Massachusetts was inspired to adopt its body of liberties. The body of liberties included ninety-eight separate protections of individual rights, including no taxation without representation, due process of law, trial by a jury of peers, and prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. Now, those no doubt sound familiar to you and they should because these are ideas and concepts that led directly to the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Bill of Rights."

"Nevertheless, the Pilgrims and the Puritans of early New England are often vilified today as witch burners and portrayed as simpletons. But to the contrary, it was their commitment to pluralism and free worship that led to these ideals being incorporated into American history, and our history books purposely conceal the fact that these notions were developed by communities of devout Christians who studied the Bible and found that it prescribes limited representative government and free enterprise as the best political and economic systems. Now, there's only one word for this, folks. It's censorship. There was a time when every schoolchild did learn these basic lessons of the American culture. Now these truths are being and have been systematically expunged from history books in favor of liberal social studies clap trap," and the chapter goes on. "This brings us to our Founding Fathers, the geniuses who crafted the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

"These were men who shook up the entire world by proclaiming the idea that people had certain God-given freedoms and rights and that the government's only reason to exist was to protect those freedoms and rights from both internal and external forces -- and that simple, yet brilliant, insight has been all but lost today in liberalism's relentless march toward bigger, more powerful, more intrusive government," and that's why I wanted to add to the reading today the George Washington First Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789. Thanksgiving was about thanking God for bounty and freedom and opportunity and blessings. Thanksgiving is a time we celebrate the Pilgrims realizing the best way to enjoy prosperity in a new world that was foreign to them. Yes, there was cooperation with the Indians and, yes, the Indians did extend the handshake of freedom when we arrived by teaching the Pilgrims how to farm and so forth, but after that, all the bounty that was created by the first settlers were shared with the Indians.

There was no wiping them out. There was no infiltration. There was no introduction of various diseases and -isms like environmental wackoism or sexism or racism or any of this, as have been attached in recent multicultural curricula to the so-called white Europeans who invaded this pristine land and destroyed the goodness and the oneness that the Indians enjoyed with this land. That's what's being taught today. What is not being taught today is the devotion to God that these people had, but the failure of a socialist compact to adequately provide for the residents of the first colony and how William Bradford himself saw it was failing almost from the outset and devised a new compact which was basically capitalism and unfettered competition, and incentive, and then it was Katie bar the door. All of these things are part of the original Thanksgiving, and even when I go back and remember my days in school, I was not taught this. I was not taught the involvement and the references to God.

I was not taught that the Pilgrims had all this bounty after awhile and shared it with the Indians. It was quite the opposite. The purpose of teaching Thanksgiving when I was a kid was to tell all of us just how wonderful the Indians were and how well they treated us when we arrived because we were basically inept and incompetent. I enjoy passing this story along every Thanksgiving because we've been doing it here since I published and wrote the book, and the book is actually 1993. It came out in November of '93. By the end of the year, it had sold two million copies, and since then, I guess this is our 11th year now of reading the real story of Thanksgiving, and it always reaches new people. Every year we do it, people who have never heard it before are amazed. Now, if I was able to find it and get the true story, it's out there, but it's not in conventional history textbooks that you'll find in many of the public schools.

Rush Limbaugh: The greatest communicator of conservative thought since Sir Winston Churchill.

THE RAPE OF SARAH PALIN

2009-11-25T06:01:00.003-05:00

When I was in college, I read a book that changed my life. It was Susan Brownmiller's tome, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, which explained rape as an act of power, not just lust. What I found particularly chilling was the chapter on war -- how rape is used to terrorize a population and destroy the enemy's spirit.

While edifying, the book magnified the vulnerability I already felt as a female. Fear of rape became a constant dread, and I sought a solution that would help shield me from danger.

The answer: seek safe harbor within the Democratic Party. I even became an activist for feminist causes, including violence against women. Liberalism would protect me from the big bad conservatives who wished me harm.

Like most feminists, it was a no brainer to become a Democrat. Liberal men, not conservatives, were the ones devoted to women's issues. They marched at my side in support of abortion rights. They were enthusiastic about women succeeding in the workplace.

As time went on, I had many experiences that should have made me rethink my certainty. But I remained nestled in cognitive dissonance -- therapy jargon for not wanting to see what I didn't want to see.

One clue: the miscreants who were brutalizing me didn't exactly look Reagan-esque. In middle and high schools, they were minority kids enraged about forced busing. On the streets of New York City and Berkeley, they were derelicts and hoodlums.

Another red flag: while liberal men did indeed hold up those picket signs, they didn't do anything else to protect me. In fact, their social programs enabled bad behavior and bred chaos in urban America. And when I was accosted by thugs, those leftist men were missing in action.

What else should have tipped me off? Perhaps the fact that so many men in ultra left Berkeley are sleaze bags. Rarely a week goes by that I don't hear stories from my young female clients about middle aged men preying on them. With the rationale of moral relativism, these creeps feel they can do anything they please.

What finally woke me up were the utterances of bitch, witch, and monster toward Hillary Clinton and her supporters early last year. I was shocked into reality: the trash talk wasn't coming from conservatives but from male and female liberals.

I finally beheld what my eyes had refused to see: that leftists are Mr. and Ms. Misogyny. Both the males and the females don't care a whit about women.

Women are continually sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. If under Radical Islam women are enshrouded and stoned and beheaded, so be it.

My other epiphanies:those pony tailed guys were not marching for abortion rights because they cherished women's reproductive freedom. It was to keep women available for free and easy sex.

And the eagerness for women to make good money? If women work hard, leftist men don't have to.

Then along came Sarah, and the attacks became particularly heinous. And I realized something even more chilling about the Left. Leftists not only sacrifice and disrespect women.

It's far worse than that: many are perpetuators.

The Left's behavior towards Palin is not politics as usual. By their laser focus on her body and her sexuality, leftists are defiling her.

They are wilding her. And they do this with the full knowledge and complicity of the White House.

The Left has declared war on Palin because she threatens their existence. Democrats need women dependent and scared so that women, like blacks, will vote for liberals.

A strong, self sufficient woman, Palin eschews their protection. Drop her off in the Alaskan bush, and she'll survive just fine, thank you very much. Palin doesn't need or want anything from liberals, not hate crimes legislation that coddles her, not abortion, which she abhors.

Palin is a woman of deep and abiding faith. She takes no marching orders from messiah like wannabes, like Obama.

And so the Left must try to destroy her. And they are doing this in the most malicious of ways:

By symbolically raping her.

Just like a perpetuator, they dehumanize her by objectifying her body. They undress her with their eyes.

They turn her into a piece of ass.

Liberals do this by calling her a c___t, ogling her legs, demeaning her with names like "sexy flight attendant," and "Trailer Park Barbie," and exposing her flesh on the cover of Newsweek.

And from The Atlantic Magazine's Andrew Sullivan: "Sarah Palin's vagina is the font of all evil in the galaxy."

Nothing is off limits, not actress Sandra Bernhard's wish that Palin be gang raped or the sexualizing of Palin's daughters.

As every woman knows, leering looks, lurid words, and veiled threats are intended to evoke terror. Sexual violence is a form of terrorism.

The American Left has a long history of defiling people to control and break them. The hard core 60‘s leftists were masters of guerilla warfare, like the Symbionese Liberation Army repeatedly raping Patty Hearst. Huey P. Newton sent a male Black Panther to the hospital, bloodied and damaged, from a punishment of sodomy.

The extreme Left still considers themselves warriors, righteous soldiers for their Marxist cause. With Palin, they use sexual violence as part of their military arsenal.

Palin is not the only intended victim. As the book, Against Our Will described, the brutality is also aimed at men. By forcing men to witness Palin's violation, the Left tries to emasculate conservative men by rendering them powerless.

The wilding of any woman is reprehensible. But defiling a mother of five, with a babe in her arms, and a grandmother, is particularly obscene. It is, of course, Palin's unapologetic motherhood that provides fuel to the leftist fire.

Because, as a mother, and a fertile woman, Palin is as close to the sacred as a person gets. She is not just politically pro life. Palin's whole being emanates life, in stark contrast to the darkness of the left, the life despoilers.

These "progressives" are so alienated from the sacred that they perceive nothing as sacred. And they will destroy anyone whose goodness shines a mirror on their pathology. The spiritually barren must annihilate the vital and the fertile.

It has been almost two years since I woke up and broke up with liberalism. During these many months, I've discovered that everything I believed was wrong.

But the biggest shock of all has been realizing that the Democratic Party is hardly an oasis for women. Now that it has been infiltrated by the hard Left, it's a dangerous place for women, children, and other living things.

In the wilding of Sarah Palin, the Left shows its true colors. Rather than a shelter for the vulnerable, leftists will mow down any man, woman, or child who gets in their way. Not a movement of hope and change, it is a cauldron of hate.

From Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.

In these dark times, with spiritually bankrupt people at the helm, thank God we have bright lights like Sarah Palin to illuminate the darkness.

A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a psychotherapist and a recovering liberal in Berkeley.

SOURCE: AMERICAN THINKER

The Cloward-Piven-Obama Plan To Destroy America

2009-11-25T05:53:00.002-05:00

What most people don’t get is that the economic recovery and health care reform plans are not supposed to work. They are not really intended to reduce unemployment, stop the flu, save the planet, insure the uninsured, rescue the dollar, or lower the deficit.

The internal architecture of this administration’s political strategy is very different from the public pablum dutifully parroted in the media, but is far from hidden. Even so, most of its supporters are oblivious to the true underlying agenda, and are merely making the public confessions and professions of faith, expected of fundamentalists and loyalists to the progressivist cause.

What’s going on, as Simpson points out, is actually Cloward-Piven on steroids, propelled into lunar orbit, and magnified to continental size.

Cloward and Piven’s original goal was to revolutionize society by finding unintended loopholes in the law, which could be exploited into a feeding frenzy of state and local spending, and so overload the system that government programs and agencies would collapse.

But opportunity comes to those who wait. Instead of impatiently yipping at the heels of the beast, in a glacially long march, picking off one target at a time, the whole magilla fell into their laps all at once.

Morphing from local to national, from gecko to tyrannosaur, the next-generation architects can now implement the folkloric Cloward-Piven strategy on a gargantuan, unprecedented scale. And no one else can turn off the flood at the spigot, as long as citizens remain spellbound, loyal or faithful to the new masters of the federal fountainhead.

Will national collapse be the ultimate crisis, the historic Messianic opportunity, to finally bring about revolutionary change - the long-sought hope and dream of progressive politics?

Diogenes Jones, M.D.

SOURCE: AMERICAN THINKER

More Black Racist Violence Against Whites

2009-11-25T05:42:00.004-05:00

Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman said that groups of young black males from the Rollin’ 60s Crips and the Black Gangster Disciples gangs approached single white or Latino men late at night and struck them in the head, often after berating them and calling attention to their race, but sometimes attacking without warning.

Victims in the LoDo and 16th Street Mall attacks suffered broken noses and shattered eye sockets, among other head injuries. Sometimes wallets and other small items were stolen.

“We have seen coordinated efforts before, but not by this large of a group,” Whitman said as the arrests were announced Friday.

Yet no concerted effort was made to alert residents to the unusual nature of these violent crimes, or their apparent racial motivation.

Police say there may have been 26 such attacks, almost all against white males, but investigators stress there could be other victims and more are coming forward. A few are women.

Monday, police spokesman Sonny Jackson told us all but one of the 35 suspects are now in jail, each on a $1 million bond due to the racial bias involved. The mostly young men and teenage boys are charged with aggravated assault, aggravated robbery and bias-motivated crimes.

The situation was so grave even the FBI got involved.

Who knew? Certainly not the young white and Latino men who were at risk of being attacked.

Though Denver Police issued a warning on Sept. 3 that they were aware of “a pattern of assaults and robberies,” they simply said “single males” should be on the lookout.

Jackson said that at the time, police weren’t yet aware of the full scope and biased nature of the attacks. Once the warning went out and police heightened their presence, he said, the attacks “dried up.”

Therefore, Jackson told us, it was unnecessary to issue a more explicit warning, even as investigators learned the more menacing aspects of the crimes.

Jackson said keeping the warning broad should have been enough. “We didn’t want anyone to take their guard down,” Jackson said.

But if police know that a particular segment of the population is being targeted, don’t they have a responsibility to give potential victims a specific warning?

SOURCE: MICHELLE MALKIN

COMRADE OBAMA ALLOWS COURTS MARTIAL OF PATRIOT SAILORS

2009-11-25T05:28:00.005-05:00

Obama ought to step in and halt this persecution of brave patriots immediately. But he won't. He's not fit to wipe their boots.

The enemy is O's friend and America is O's enemy. He is painfully unqualified. The man never worked a real job. He scammed the system the radical leftist way, he never served in the military, never lived one day as a proud American, and surrounds himself with America haters and agitators. These SEALs are cooked.

I wonder how the families of four U.S. contractors gruesomely killed during a convoy through Fallujah in 2004 took this news.

Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist FOX (hat tip big mac)

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class (SO-2), is facing three charges: dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee, making a false official statement, and assault.

Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, SO-2, is facing charges of dereliction of performance of duty and making a false official statement.

Petty Officer Julio Huertas, SO-1, faces those same charges and an additional charge of impediment of an investigation.

The three SEALs will be arraigned separately on Dec. 7. Another three SEALs — two officers and an enlisted sailor — have been identified by investigators as witnesses but have not been charged.

FoxNews.com obtained the official handwritten statement from one of the three witnesses given on Sept. 3, hours after Abed was captured and still being held at the SEAL base at Camp Baharia. He was later taken to a cell in the U.S.-operated Green Zone in Baghdad.

The SEAL told investigators he had showered after the mission, gone to the kitchen and then decided to look in on the detainee.

"I gave the detainee a glance over and then left," the SEAL wrote. "I did not notice anything wrong with the detainee and he appeared in good health."

Lt. Col. Holly Silkman, spokeswoman for the special operations component of U.S. Central Command, confirmed Tuesday to FoxNews.com that three SEALs have been charged in connection with the capture of a detainee. She said their court martial is scheduled for January.

United States Central Command declined to discuss the detainee, but a legal source told FoxNews.com that the detainee was turned over to Iraqi authorities, to whom he made the abuse complaints. He was then returned to American custody. The SEAL leader reported the charge up the chain of command, and an investigation ensued.

The source said intelligence briefings provided to the SEALs stated that "Objective Amber" planned the 2004 Fallujah ambush, and "they had been tracking this guy for some time."

The Fallujah atrocity came to symbolize the brutality of the enemy in Iraq and the degree to which a homegrown insurgency was extending its grip over Iraq.

SOURCE: ATLAS SHRUGS

Sarah Palin In Danger of Assassination By Traitors

2009-11-24T07:09:00.005-05:00

As Sarah Palin's popularity increases at the expense of Barack Obama, so does her chance of being assassinated by a hate filled Leftard Fan of Keith Olbermann:

OLBERMANN: [to Palin] Madam, you are a clear and present danger to the safety and security of this nation. Whether the ‘death panel’ is something you dreamed, or something you dreamed-up, whether it is the product of a low intellect and a fevered imagination, or the product of a high intelligence and a sober ability to exploit people, you should be ashamed of yourself for having introduced it into the public discourse, and it should debar you, for all time, from any position of responsibility or trust in the governance of this nation or any of its states or municipalities….

And you might as well have told the vast unthinking throng that mistakes your ability to wink for leadership, that they should start shooting at Democrats. There would be no need to tell them to bring guns. Others have done that. Somebody left his at an Arizona Town Hall…

The only ‘death panels,’ Ms. Palin, are the figurative ones you have inspired with such irresponsible, dangerous, facile, vile, hate speech. The death of common sense. The death of logic.The death, perhaps, of Democracy, at the hands of mob rule. If someone is hurt at one of these Town Halls, pro-Reform, anti-Reform, or, most likely, as these things tend to play out in the real life you know so little about, Ms. Palin — if the hurt befalls an innocent bystander —you will have contributed to the harm.

You might very well become, Ms. Palin, the very thing you have sought to create in the lurid imaginations of those spoiling for a fight, waiting for an excuse, looking for a rationalization of their own hatred, their own racism, their own unwillingness to accept Democracy. You, Ms. Palin, may yet become the de facto chairman of a Death Panel. Your higher calling, Ms. Palin. God forgive you, Ms. Palin.