Freedom Now

Chavez Lies Again

2009-07-06T08:55:00.000-07:00

Venezuelan Caudillo, Hugo Chavez, was lying when he asserted that he had not interfered in Honduran affairs. He said, “We’re not an interventionist government… It’s cooperation, a mechanism of cooperation with countries that have been exploited”.

Generally, our society is very tolerant of leftwingers and extremely suspicious of rightwingers, even moderate ones. In this permissive atmosphere leftwing strongmen can tell outrageous lies and threaten war with impunity. They are mostly tolerated.

One month after former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya congratulated Chavez for winning a constitutional amendment that lifted term limits on elected officials in Venezuela, Zelaya called for a referendum in Honduras that would allow him to run for re-election. Within several months the Honduran government was united against Zelaya. The country’s Supreme Court, Congress and human-rights ombudsman all declared the referendum illegal.

Yet it was Chavez who printed up the ballots and delivered them to Honduras.

When the nation’s top military chief refused to defy Honduran law by distributing the illegal Venezuelan ballots he was fired by Zelaya. Since the government and the military (which is normally responsible for distributing ballots) were against the referendum, Zelaya resorted to extralegal means to force the vote. He organized a mob and stormed the Tegucigalpa airport to seize the ballots. Zelaya was at the head of the mob as it tore down the gates of the base and swarmed past riot police protecting it.

Of course this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the interventionist foreign policy of the Venezuelan government. One by one the new democracies of Latin America are being subverted by Chavez and his allies.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, democracy spread like wildfire throughout Latin America because leftwing revolutionaries lost their funding and suffered a serious political defeat. Only Cuba resisted change. Now militant Socialists have regrouped and have followed a similar path that the Nazis took to seize power... the subversion of representative democracy.

Don’t be fooled…

Irony Express

2009-06-03T06:39:00.000-07:00

After Obama’s arrival in Saudi Arabia in his first stop of a trip designed to appease Islamist arrogance, CNN had this little tidbit for us:

Middle East expert Mamoun Fandy, (a senior fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy), said Muslims want more than talk; they want action.

They want to hear “that he is very serious about solving the Israeli-Arabian problem, that he is very serious about engaging the Muslim world on the basis of recognizing the equality,” Fandy said.

In addition to Saudi Arabia’s status as the most religiously segregated country on the planet, as well as being home to Wahhabism (the ideology that inspired Saudi Arabia to contribute the most suicide bombers to kill Americans)… Saudi Arabia (a Muslim country!) is also the country that the United States defended for over a decade against the aggression of Saddam Hussein.

So it’s a poor choice for the first stop on this trip.

Then Obama is off to another Muslim country, Egypt, a recipient of almost 60 billion dollars in U.S. aid since 1975. Oh, the oppression!

Enjoy the show. Lets HOPE that Muslims get the equality that they deserve when they take their wives and non-Muslim friends on their Hajj to Mecca.

Iran Offers Conditions for U.S. Surrender

2009-03-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

To chants of “Death to America” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed President Obama’s recent overtures to his country.

In between heaping praise on Iranian culture and expressing verses of poetic love that, “the United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations” – Obama emphasized that, “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist”.

It was instantly declared to be a master stroke of diplomacy that would diplomatically isolate the Iranian Mullahs. Instead Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used the occasion to rally his base and denounce Obama as a liar. The Ayatollah challenged the Obama Administration to back up his flowery words with acts of appeasement when he stated, “Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime? Even the language remains unchanged.”

However, other news that could have diplomatically isolated Iran went unmentioned during Obama’s message. Iranian blogger, Omidreza Mirsayafi, died in prison on the same day as Obama’s rainbow-colored speech. Mirsayafi was jailed for allegedly insulting Iran’s leadership and he died amid claims that the Iranian government was at fault for his death. Bloggers are routinely harassed and jailed in Iran.

Ironically, the blogger was held in Evin Prison, which is the same prison that Iranian-American journalist, Roxana Saberi, is being held. Of course Obama also neglected to mention her in his mating call to the Iranian Mullahs.

Saberi is a brave reporter who defied the Iranian regime when it took away her press credentials in an attempt to silence her. After she was arrested her family didn’t know what happened to her until 10 days later when she finally was able to make a phone call to them. The arrest of Saberi came as the regime began another series of crackdowns on university students. Such oppression may be connected with the upcoming Presidential elections in June.

Saberi’s father publicly stated that, “We told her to hang on, and not give in. The whole world is with her.” Evidently, Obama is not with the whole world on this point. She is an obstacle to his diplomatic overtures.

The Master of Disaster

The Obama Administration is just stumbling around like a chicken without a head. When the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, addressed pseudo-economist Jim Cramer’s critical stance towards the White House’s economic policy he stated, “I think you can go back and look at any number of statements (Jim Cramer) made in the past about the economy and wonder where some of the backup for those are, too”.

Robert Gibbs has a valid point. During the 2008 Presidential Election Cramer was enthusiastic about Obama’s campaign.

On June 22nd of 2008 Jim Cramer appeared on NBC’s, “The Chris Matthews Show”. During that time the show was stumping for Obama’s presidential campaign and so this episode was a veritable Obama-lovefest. During the show Cramer heaped praise on Obama’s economic plans and the following exchange was recorded;

“MATTHEWS: So the Election Day is over, the morning after election, if Obama wins, does the stock market go up?

Mr. CRAMER: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Even though capital gains go up?

Mr. CRAMER: Absolutely. We’re sick of it.

MATTHEWS: Whoa, what a--this is news we’ve made here. Jim Cramer says the market will resound positively to an election by--of Barack Obama.”

Interesting enough, on the day of Obama’s inauguration, the Dow fell in the most dramatic freefall of any other inauguration day in history. Then on March 5th stocks fell to their lowest level in 12 years.

Even as late as December of 2008 Cramer raved about the “Obama Factor”. His ridiculous pro-Obama rants are now quite embarrassing. He boasted that, “When Obama speaks, the market buys, it doesn’t just listen, so listen to Cramer to know where to spend the money!”

The euphoria of the Obama personality cult led to the election of a woefully inexperienced and radically leftwing president. Diplomacy was often held up to be Obama’s strength, but after a comedy of errors the president has been revealed to be too overwhelmed to conduct routine diplomatic affairs.

When British Prime Minster Gordon Brown came for a state visit the Obama Administration neglected to offer a customary press conference and formal dinner as our closest ally is accustomed to. The Administration’s reaction was indignant to the outrage of Britons. A State Department official who was involved in planning Brown’s visit angrily responded that, “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment”.

The thoughtlessness of the Obama Administration seeped into every aspect of poor PM Brown’s visit (it’s a good thing that Great Britain really needs us, my apologies to our friends there). As many bloggers are aware, it is customary on such occasions for leaders to offer each other presents that show good will towards each other. Brown gave Obama a pen crafted from the wood of the 19th Century anti-slave trade ship (which is the sister ship of the vessel that the wood of the president’s Oval Office desk is made of).

Yet Obama gave his counterpart a set of 25 DVD movies, which turned out to be nothing but the first 25 of the American Film Institute’s list of the top-100 American movies. As if that isn’t thoughtless enough… when Brown went home and settled down to watch one of the movies, he discovered that the DVDs were formatted for North American DVD players and cannot be played on DVD players sold in Europe. A message stating, “Wrong Region”, appeared when Brown tried to play them.

Does it get any worse? Incredibly it does… Britons were outraged that two days after snubbing Prime Minister Brown, Obama lavishly hosted former IRA terrorist, Martin McGuinness. British blogger Archbishop Cranmer complained:

“Gordon brown entered the White House through a side entrance and was granted a half-hour chat with the President followed by a working lunch. There was no press conference and the British delegation was limited in numbers.

Mr. McGuinness will walk in through the front door of the White House and be given the full red carpet treatment. It is a de facto State Visit with full retinue and a joint press conference. There shall be two hours of talks and a lavish gala reception at which Mr. McGuinness shall be a guest of honour, seated on the top table.”

And this came after a rare spat of violence in Northern Ireland in which a policeman and two soldiers were murdered in separate incidents.

But don’t forget our illustrious Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and her recent diplomatic blunders…

As if it wasn’t enough to botch her first official visit as Secretary of State to the European Parliament by mispronouncing her counterparts’ names, insulting European sensibilities by saying that American Democracy is older than Europe’s and mocking multiparty democracy... She followed up this embarrassing episode with an “enlightened” visit to Russia.

Complete incompetence was the order of the day when Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a gift meant to symbolize Obama’s diplomatic overtures to the Russian government. She gave him a button that she believed stated “reset” in Russian and expressed her hopes that we could “reset” our relationship with Russia. As she handed Lavrov the gift she said, “We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” He replied that it was incorrect and the button actually stated “overcharged”. So how hard did they work to get one word wrong?

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

I think that it is fair to end this post with the full video footage of our Teleprompter President’s fantasy message to Iran…

The video starts off with Obama saying, “Today I want to extend my very best wishes to all who are celebrating Nowruz around the world. This holiday is both an ancient ritual and a moment of renewal, and I hope that you enjoy this special time of year with family and friends”…

One thing is for certain… Roxana Saberi, an American citizen, could not spend Nowruz with her family and friends because she was locked up in an Iranian prison while her president flirted with her captors.

A Brave New World

2008-12-31T18:02:00.000-08:00

2008 Government Subsidized Auto Show

2008-12-15T16:10:00.001-08:00

Dear Comrades,

What have we learned from the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout? The Democratic Party’s Ministry of Disinformation has taught us that the problem stemmed from the Republican Party’s opposition to regulation and the mortgage industry’s predatory lending.

Of course, neither is true. It was the Democratic Party that blocked all attempts to reform the GSEs and denied that there was any problem, while the Republicans fought to enact new regulatory legislation before it was too late. Additionally, it was the Democratic Party and its allies (like ACORN) that prodded and coerced the mortgage industry into making loans to high risk borrowers.

But just ignore the elephant in the room. Support our glorious seven-digit income automobile executives as they flock to Washington D.C. looking for handouts at the taxpayers’ expense. These robber barons are the vanguard of the revolution.

Everyone knows that all cars are created equal. In the name of justice we must legislate the equality of American automobiles with their foreign counterparts. A “Car Czar” must be appointed to distribute cash to our automobile industry so that we can protect it from the Capitalist evil of competition.

To highlight the urgent need for these measures we present the 2008 Government Subsidized Auto Show. This is a great opportunity to emphasize the many successes of rampant Socialism. All automobile manufacturers are rated according to the Red Star system, with five stars as the highest award.

Zaporozhets:

This vehicle is affectionately known as Zapor, which is short for Zaporozhets. Due to a misfortunate twist of irony zapor means “constipated” in Russian. It’s actually an accurate description of this tiny and cheap car.

When it was first introduced back in the late fifties the sentiment among some Ukrainians was that the car was introduced as punishment by the Soviet Union.

Such a creative chastisement by the Ukrainians’ Communist overlords earns the Zapor two Red Stars!!

Some owners preferred to dispose of their Zapor rather than pay a parking ticket which would be greater than the value of the vehicle.

Trabant:

For about 50 years East Germany was a progressive paradise until the reunification of the country reintroduced Capitalism. The powerful two-cylinder Trabant is a testament to the superiority of Communism over free market economies. Nowhere was that more apparent than in the difference between East and West Germany.

West Germany produced inferior automobiles such as BMW, Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Volkswagen and Audi. On the other hand, East Germany manufactured outstanding automobiles such as the Trabant and Wartburg. East Germany’s auto manufacturers reached a level of craftsmanship that remains untouched these days (Mostly, because they are out of business).

Ladies and Gentleman, Freedom Now is proud to award the Trabant three Red Stars!!! With a plastic body and a hydrocarbon emissions rate of about 10 times that of modern cars, the tiny Trabant makes a strong showing.

Trabant’s Eco-Friendly Chia Car (hat tip to Nanc).

Moskvitch:

Thanks to the theft of an entire German automobile factory after WWII, the Moskvitch was based on the design of the Opel Kadett. Most Eastern European automobiles were based on Fiat designs so this made the Moskvitch unique.

Manufactured at the “Youth Communist League Car Factory”, the appearance and performance of the Moskvitch more closely resembled a tank rather than a car.

The export of the Moskvitch brand to Great Britain actually made a bit of a splash in the early 70s until the Consumers’ Association published an article that questioned the safety of the vehicle. Any fender bender in the imported Moskvitchs could turn into an experience worthy of a ‘slasher flick’ thanks to the incredibly sharp edges of the dashboard and dangerously positioned aluminum handbreak.

Such Soviet engineering boosts the Moskvitch to a four Red Star rating!!!! Congratulations comrades!!!!

A brand new, fully complete Moskvitch just after rolling off the assembly line.

The Yugo:

This was a heroic automobile manufactured in Yugoslavia’s “Red Flag Factory”.

“Every car came with a rear defroster to keep your hands warm as you pushed the car...” A triumph of Communist engineering!!!

During its existence the Yugo earned many enthusiastic reviews. Car & Driver magazine wrote that shifting gears in the Yugo is like “trying to shift a baseball bat stuck inside a barrel full of coconuts”.

Consumers have been happy too. Extra features such as removable doors have boosted the Yugo’s reputation so that no one is surprised to hear that Freedom Now awards the Yugo five Red Stars!!!!!

The Grand Prize Winner, with a souped-up hand warmer!!!!!

Now get out there and make Socialist cars for our Democratic Party bosses!!!!!

Our Ignorant Activist Media

2008-12-05T16:45:00.000-08:00

In the 2008 presidential elections the media threw away any pretense of objectivity and campaigned on behalf of Barack Obama. Most news articles were sprinkled with the conformist nuances of ‘truths’ that are widely accepted by our intellectual elite. The result is that they continue to behave like Pavlov’s dog at every mention of the Iraq War and obediently serve the role that Al Qaeda gave them.

Such bias can only thrive in an environment of ignorance. The media misinforms the American people in its partisan battle against Republicans.

Today, I had enough when reading a New York Times article about the piracy problem in Somalia. Ever since this subject has become headline news the media has pushed a meme stating that the piracy was created by the fall of the Islamic Courts.

Much like our elites mourn the downfall of mass murdering Saddam Hussein, they claim that American and Ethiopian interference led to this piracy problem. These robots don’t have an original thought in their puny collective mind.

I have never seen such utter ignorance as this article entitled, “Grand Theft Nautical”. The writer, John Burnett, relies exclusively on leftwing talking points. If you can read this quote without regurgitating your last meal you have a stronger stomach than I do, or you really don’t understand the issues here…

“There was some semblance of law and order in 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union, loosely linked with Al Qaeda, took over much of the country and imposed Shariah law. Though there were cruel tradeoffs, the Islamists virtually eradicated piracy. (The crime was a capital offense punishable by beheading.)

When Ethiopian forces, supported by the United States, replaced the Islamists with an ineffective transitional government in 2006, piracy returned with an intensity not seen since the 17th century.

It is evident that no nation can impose its will on Somalia; the colonial British and Italians learned the hard way. And certainly no nation can force Somalis to stop the best business in town. But if the West really hopes to eliminate the scourge of piracy in these strategic shipping lanes, then it should consider involving the courts union, the only entity that has proved it could govern the country, and its militant wing, Al Shabaab, in a new government.”

Where to begin? This guy is a complete idiot and makes a lot of money as a result. He writes what our intellectual elite wants to hear. Here is a short history lesson for Mr. Burnett...

Somalia is split into many different regions. Some of them consider themselves to be independent countries, but are not internationally recognized. Somaliland is one of the most prominent of them. At one time the Islamic Courts controlled much of the lawless south, but not these autonomous regions. To the north is Puntland, another autonomous region that unlike Somaliland does not consider itself to be independent. This is where the majority of pirates are headquartered. Local Puntland authorities have developed business links with the pirates who have safe havens there. The Islamic Courts has never had any significant control of any land in Puntland.

How can journalists go to the best universities and still come out so utterly ignorant in the blind pursuit of leftwing political activism?

Burnett wants to give the fascist Islamic Courts influence in a region that they have never had any control?... All so liberals can thumb their nose at Republicans and America’s lukewarm ally, Ethiopia?

Let me be fair. According to a report by the Chatham House, the Islamic Courts eradicated piracy during the second part of 2006 when they rose to a brief supremacy. However, the pirates simply moved to Puntland and continued their expansion of criminal activity. So does Burnett advocate handing over Puntland to the hurting Islamists? (Yes, I know the Islamists have recently made some gains, but they still are a shadow of their former power. It all depends if your glass is half full or half empty… Or rather, if you choose to propagandize on behalf of Islamists or not.)

Funny enough, the report goes on to say that funds from the ransoms paid to pirates have gone to Al-Shabaab. If you recall, Burnett advocated the inclusion of Al-Shabaab in the Somali government as a solution to the piracy problem. Even you overlook the problem that he doesn’t know the difference between the Somali Transitional Federal Government and the government of Puntland, you still have to admit that he doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about.

Obama's Track Record on Unity

2008-10-31T09:55:00.001-07:00

Lipstick on a Politician

Obama’s rhetoric reminds me of a salesman who knows his product, but doesn’t really care about anything more than making a sale. His comments earlier this week are a treasure trove full of irony. For the choice quote of the night he stated;

“In one week, we can choose hope over fear, and unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo.”

It would be comforting to listen to a leader who speaks of “hope over fear” in post 9/11 America, if he was talking about the fear that our enemies have spread… but Obama is not talking about Al Qaeda or the Taliban. He is talking about his fellow Americans as he falseheartedly speaks of unity.

Obama claims to stand for unity while he accuses his opponents of using the politics of fear. He has no right to make such accusations. If Obama didn’t run for president he would still be attending services at his former hate filled church, Trinity United Church of Christ, while denying that it is controversial. He only gave up his church after months of pressure from his critics. So Obama wasn’t able to deliver his closing “unity” speech at his former church.

First Obama lied, issuing denials about what he knew was going on at Trinity:

“Had I heard those statements in the church, I would have told Reverend Wright that I profoundly disagree with them. What I have been hearing and had been hearing in church was talk about Jesus and talk about faith and values and serving the poor.”

Then he admitted the truth:

“Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.”

The disclosure of Rev. Wright’s hateful speeches forced Obama to condemn his pastor’s comments and it was only after this created a public feud between the two that Obama finally left his church. Yet Obama still refused to denounce the divisiveness of his church. As he left his church Obama stated:

“ I’m not denouncing the church and I’m not interested in people who want me to denounce the church.”

Obama refused to condemn his church’s outdated 20th Century Black Nationalism even as he distanced himself from it in the name of political expediency... Black Liberation Theology is the basis of the vision statement of Trinity United and the heart of its philosophy. It is a sick creed of reverse racism. James Cone is the leading advocate of this theology and has described its theories and his feelings towards whites in the following manner:

“Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.”

“Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him.”

“What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.”

“What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world.”

“Whether the American system is beyond redemption we will have to wait and see. But we can be certain that black patience has run out, and unless white America responds positively to the theory and activity of Black Power, then a bloody, protracted civil war is inevitable.”

“All white men are responsible for white oppression. It is much too easy to say, “Racism is not my fault,” or “I am not responsible for the country’s inhumanity to the black man”...But insofar as white do-gooders tolerate and sponsor racism in their educational institutions, their political, economic and social structures, their churches, and in every other aspect of American life, they are directly responsible for racism...Racism is possible because whites are indifferent to suffering and patient with cruelty.”

Some of the quotes that Rev. Wright made infamous are included below:

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America’? No, no, no, not God Bless America. God damn America — that’s in the Bible — for killing innocent people. God damn America, for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America, as long as she tries to act like she is God, and she is supreme.”

“The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.”

Obama claims to be a uniter, but the reality is that this election has forced him to distance himself from his divisive past. We are the ONES who have waited for him to catch up to the 21st Century. Not the other way around as he so falsely suggests.

Before Obama had focused on his ambition to be president, he wrote an autobiography in 1995 entitled “Dreams from My Father, A Story of Race and Inheritance”. This book honestly related his feelings on race and reveals the motivation that led Obama to join such a militant black church. Although his mother was white, he rejected his whiteness and sought to embrace his black heritage exclusively. This was despite the fact that in his teenage years he was raised in a loving white family and experienced no notable acts of racism from whites.

His book, “Dreams from My Father”, describes this transformation. In his own words he decided to “never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself.”

He completely rejected his “whiteness”. As he wrote, “I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.”

My aim isn’t to prove that Obama was (or is) a racist, it is to show that for much of his life his worldview was divisive. I used his own words to map out the ‘us against them attitude’ that drew him to Trinity United Church. Once again from his autobiography he wrote, “To admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self-hatred.”

Obama contemplated Black Nationalism as a political tool overriding all other concerns. Again, in his own words, “I wondered whether, for now at least, Rafiq wasn’t also right in preferring that that anger be redirected; whether a black politics that suppressed rage towards whites generally, or one that failed to elevate race loyally above all else, was a politics inadequate to the task.” He settled this question by joining Trinity and adopting the anger of Black Nationalism as his identity. (Rafiq was a friend of Obama’s who was a member of the Nation of Islam, it is not believed to be his real name.)

I do not accuse Obama of being a Muslim. He was the member of a church that spread a message of hate. There are good Christians and there are bad Christians. Just as there are good Muslims and bad Muslims.

So on what basis does Obama champion the cause of unity? In 2007 the National Journal’s annual vote ratings gave him the most liberal voting record in the Senate. Its interesting that many times Obama uses the word “we” when he is really referring to himself. On Super Tuesday he gave one of the worst speeches that I have ever heard. At one point Obama said, “we are the ones that we have been waiting for”. He states these empty slogans as if they were biblical quotes. I don’t need Obama, McCain or any politician to change my life. Change is constant and my life doesn’t revolve around Obama. Its no accident that at Obama’s rallies his crowd chants “Obama, Obama, Obama”, but at McCain rallies his crowd chants “USA, USA, USA”. Obama’s cult of personality comes at the expense of everything else.

On the other hand McCain actually fulfils a requirement that unity demands. He is not afraid to cross the political aisle. McCain even worked closely with Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy on immigration reform. That is a good example of a Conservative (however moderate he may be) reaching out across party lines to someone widely regarded as an extreme liberal in American politics. McCain is also not afraid to buck his own political party, as he proved when he forced the Bush Administration to accede to the McCain Detainee Amendment. It was a measure to enhance the rights of detainees, which incurred the wrath of many Conservatives.

Obama has no similar credentials, but he still promotes himself as a uniter when all he represents is division. The politics of fear comes from the discharge of suicide bombs and hijacked airliners. They are the tools of our enemies. Obama would be better served by targeting these terrorists with his accusations and not his fellow Americans.

Storm Clouds on the Horizon

Cindy Sheehan is running for Congress against the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Ironically, Pelosi has been an outspoken opponent of the Iraq War and so has Sheehan. Conservative observers have been amused by the friction between the two leftwingers. According to Sheehan’s website:

“Nancy Pelosi is a politician. She declared opposition to the war in Iraq, but consistently votes to fund it. She has offered no analysis of the real reasons motivating the war in Iraq. She voted in favor of invasive wiretapping and immunity for corporations that engage in illegal wiretapping. She has initiated no legislation to fix our ailing schools, health care facilities, the housing crisis, etc. She has accepted money from the following corporations, to name a few of the many: Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Comcast Corp, and Wells Fargo Bank.”

Over the years Bay Area radicals have been expressing their discontent with Pelosi. The feeble Democratic-controlled Congress has been powerless to stop President Bush from escalating the Iraq war and winning a pivotal battle against the brutal insurgents. Obama took a stab at reducing the U.S. role in Iraq, but failed. He didn’t have much time to spend on his attempts to hijack the progress made by the Surge because much of his short career as a U.S. Senator has been consumed with his presidential campaign. He has only been a U.S. Senator since 2005 and has been campaigning for almost two years.

In any case, the same forces that Pelosi’s anti-Iraq policy helped unleash in her raw pursuit of power have boomeranged against her.

In March 2007 CodePink, the radical “antiwar” group, organized a protest they called ‘Camp Pelosi’. It was a round the clock vigil in front of Pelosi’s San Francisco home. The protestors demanded that Pelosi cut the funding of the Iraq war. It became a string of on-and-off protests that continued to dog Pelosi for a long time. Additionally, CodePink wasn’t satisfied with just harassing Pelosi at her home so they took to following her to political events and harassing her there. Since CodePink found that protesting President Bush has been ineffective they started to target Democrats like Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. Gael Murphy, a co-founder of the group, claims that their efforts targeting the Democratic Party have made a difference. During the primaries she said, “We’ve gotten to a place now where Hillary and Obama are falling all over each other to be the leading peace candidate”.

Another co-founder of CodePink, Jodie Evans, has become a bundler for the Obama campaign. She has pledged to raise between $50,000 to $100,000. CodePink’s most visible leader and close Sheehan ally, Medea Benjamin, bragged about the influence that their radical group has on Obama. She declared that, “we have the ability to push from the inside and the outside. And it is being right here in this kind of place and places like this around the country that are the antidote to the people who are pushing Barack Obama to be quote ‘centralist’, which means be a warmonger”.

While CodePink has aggressively attacked leaders of the Democratic Party such as Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, they have been relatively supportive of Obama. CodePink has set up two watchdog groups to attack Pelosi and Clinton, ‘Pelosi Watch’ and ‘Listen Hillary’. Even though CodePink’s grievances with Pelosi and Clinton also apply to Obama, they have been willing to overlook these similarities. Instead CodePink claims to be willing to work with Obama on the same issues that CodePink viciously attacks Pelosi and Clinton. This sentiment is shared with many leading leftwing radicals.

An open letter published in The Nation declares support for Obama and warns that the signatories of the letter will challenge him on issues that they don’t share. One of these issues is “the escalation of the US military presence in Afghanistan”. The letter is signed by prominent leftwingers like Phil Donahue, Juan Cole, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Christopher Hayes (the editor of The Nation) and many others... especially JOURNALISTS.

So what will happen if Obama becomes president? CodePink is concerned that Obama is influenced by “centralists” who take a more favorable stance towards the use of military force. On the subject of Afghanistan they have cause for concern. Both presidential candidates favor increasing the U.S. troop presence in that country. The battle in Afghanistan is often referred to as the “Good War” and no frontrunner in any presidential election has opposed it.

Yet the “antiwar” lobby has been firmly against it. At the very first instance of U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan back in October of 2001, the “progressive” website Common Dreams declared the war a failure. In an editorial, Marion Winik (a commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered”) stated, “Whatever they say, I think we've already lost”. Common Dreams may be a radical publication, but look at the many mainstream writers and prominent Democratic Party loyalists that have graced its pages; Jesse Jackson, Adriana Huffington, Naomi Klein, Paul Krugman, Michael Moore, Ted Rall and many others.

During the 2008 Election the Left has united around Barack Obama. However, if he is elected president, Obama will have a great deal of difficulty maintaining this fractional alliance under his Afghan policy. After the 2004 election, when the Democratic Party stood stunned at its losses in the Congressional and Presidential elections, there was a burning reaction to get even. The same thing can happen to the Republicans in 2008. It is easy to be the opposition party, you merely have to be contrarian. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the partisan warfare during the Clinton Administration shows that the Republicans are just as good at this game.

Since the Republican Party is almost universally united behind the war in Afghanistan, Obama will miss out on a reliable support base on this issue. These bitter Republicans will be consumed with a desire for revenge and dreams of power, much like the Democratic Party has been for the last eight years. Meanwhile Obama’s supporters will be ideologically divided over the Afghanistan War.

I take no pleasure in this partisan bickering. During the Clinton Administration I supported the President against the partisan attacks that he suffered from. If Obama is elected president I will support him on his Afghanistan policy, if he follows it as he has already presented it. My overriding concern is victory over our fascist enemies. I would rather have a leader that I could be confident in, but if Obama wins the election he will have to do in the meantime.

There are two issues that will be of the utmost importance for our next president and Obama is problematic on both issues.

1) The War in Afghanistan
2) The Economy.

Obama’s weak ability to prosecute the Afghan War is scary enough, but he has also taken over $100,000 from Fannie May and Freddie Mac as they slid into a collapse that required a costly bailout. At the same time McCain warned against the problems of the GSEs. When Obama’s serious lack of experience is also taken into account you have to conclude that there is no HOPE for the prospect of an Obama Administration. It’s only an empty slogan...

We Are The One

2008-10-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

Did Obama Write The Original Version of “We Are the World”?

A controversy has erupted over claims that Obama may have written the original version of the hit song, “We Are the World”. Certain sources within the Obama campaign, who wish to remain anonymous, have been leaking a story of dissent within Obama’s staff. These close advisors feel that Obama should come out and take ownership of the song. Obama allegedly wrote it when he first became a community organizer in Chicago’s South Side.

Other cautious advisors fear that such a revelation will reveal that Obama’s ambition to be the messiah stretched back much farther than his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. Those aides in favor of disclosing Obama’s authorship feel that voters will behold, “a light that will shine through their windows, they will experience an epiphany and they will suddenly realize that they must go to the polls and vote for Barack”.

The original version of the song has been leaked to the press:

“We Are Obama”

There comes a time when we need a certain call
When the world must come together as the One
There are people dying
Oh, and it’s time to lend a hand to Obama
The greatest gift of all

We can go on pretending day by day
That someone, somehow will soon make a Change
We’re all a part of Obama’s great big family
And the truth - you know he is all we need

(CHORUS)
We are the One, we are the children
We are the Change we’ve been looking for
so let’s start Believing
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
It’s true we’ll make a better day
When we make Obama the One

When you’re down and out
There is still Hope for all
If you just Believe
There’s no way we can fall
Well, well, well, let’s realize
Our time for Change can only come
When we stand together as the One

(REPEAT CHORUS & FADE INTO GROUPTHINK)

For reference here is the version edited by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson:

“We Are The World”

There comes a time when we need a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
Oh, and it’s time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all

We can’t go on pretending day by day
That someone, somehow will soon make a change
We’re all a part of God's great big family
And the truth - you know love is all we need

(CHORUS)
We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
so let’s start giving
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
It's true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me

When you’re down and out
There seems no hope at all
But if you just believe
There’s no way we can fall
Well, well, well, let’s realize
That one change can only come
When we stand together as one

(REPEAT CHORUS AND FADE)

Obama Bootcamp:

Navigating The Media Spin

2008-10-08T06:38:00.000-07:00

Back in June a frustrated correspondent from the NY Times complained that there wasn’t enough news stories about the Iraq War…

“According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of the war in Iraq has been ‘massively scaled back this year’. Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq war coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The ‘CBS Evening News’ has devoted the fewest minutes to the war, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s ‘World News’ and 74 minutes on ‘NBC Nightly News’. (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.”

The real reason for the journalist panic rears its ugly head later in the article. Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News, relates how she begged to embed with some Navy Seals only to have a CBS producer tell her that, “One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform”. But all is not lost. Don’t be alarmed by the prejudice against our troops that comes from a big shot at CBS. Its not just prejudice that distorts our media, its an agenda. As the article continues:

“In the follow-up phone interview, Ms. Logan said the producer no longer worked at CBS. And in both interviews, she emphasized that many journalists at CBS News are pushing for war coverage, specifically citing Jeff Fager, the executive producer of ‘60 Minutes’. CBS News won a Peabody Award last week for a ‘60 Minutes’ report about a Marine charged in the killings at Haditha.”

You may remember the headlines that this case made several years ago. Congressman John Murtha was infamous for making the false accusation that the marines involved in this incident, “murdered these Iraqis in cold blood”. Despite the fact that the marines were convicted in a ‘trial by media’ before the investigation was even completed, all of the defendants except for one have been cleared of all charges (the last defendant’s charges have been reduced and his trial has been postponed). So as the U.S. is winning the war in Iraq, Ms. Logan is excited about an executive producer like Jeff Fager who keeps alive the media’s hostile view towards U.S. troops. It’s no wonder why Ms. Logan bemoans the fact that the media hasn’t released enough pictures of dead American soldiers when she bizarrely ties that statement to her assertion that our soldiers are forgotten by the public. As if plastering pictures of dead American soldiers everywhere is something that our troops would benefit from, rather than benefit the “antiwar” lobby.

The McCain Doctrine & Republican Revolt

Now that the Surge has dramatically succeeded above expectations don’t expect the media to continue dubbing it, “The McCain Doctrine” or “McCain’s Plan”. Over a year ago the media advocated a meme that McCain was putting himself at risk for being such a staunch advocate of the Troop Surge. This came at a time when the Surge was controversial so there was some truth to this sort of analysis. However, to create a scenario of impending doom that supports this conclusion, the media misled the public about the level of Republican dissent against the war.

In July of 2007 the L.A. Times tried to paint McCain as being slowly isolated from even his fellow Republicans on the issue and that the Republican Party was looking to redefine itself away from President Bush’s Iraq policy:

“As President Bush struggles to maintain support in Congress for his Iraq ‘surge’ strategy, the three leading Republican presidential contenders have been quietly backing away from any commitment to continue the buildup.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson have made it clear that their original support for the escalation does not mean they are signed on to keeping the current 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, even as they have laid out hawkish positions on other aspects of foreign policy.

Their recent moves underscore the president’s growing isolation on Iraq as the GOP begins searching for a post-Bush foreign policy. The shifts also distance the three top contenders from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the former front-runner who Tuesday reaffirmed his commitment to the troop escalation.”

Over a year later it is obvious that this article was pure partisan bullshit. All of these former candidates have faithfully supported the Surge and continue to support the President’s Iraq policy.

You don’t hear much about the alleged Republican Revolt anymore, but over a year ago it was a vital part of the Democratic Party’s strategy that was used to manipulate public opinion with an unbalanced viewpoint of what was really going on. After a suicidal ousting of Senator Joe Lieberman from the Democratic Party during the 2006 elections, an appearance of Democratic Party unity and Republican Party division was created by Democratic Party strategists and a compliant media.

In July 2007 the House passed the “Responsible” Redeployment from Iraq Act (HR 2956), which was designed to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq in less than a year. This legislation was proposed about a month after the Surge officially began. The Redeployment Act was a desperate attempt to destroy the Surge before it had a chance to run its course.

In many cases when anti-Iraq policy legislation is proposed, the Democratic Party has used a handful of sympathetic Republican Party politicians as sponsors or authors to create a false bipartisan appearance. The Redeployment Act had three Republicans who were promoted as cosponsors (out of 43 total cosponsors); Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. However, the voting record shows that only four Republicans voted in defiance of their party to pass this legislation. Unsophisticated observers might still feel that this justified the media’s assertion of a revolt within the Republican Party, but the media and general public missed the fact that 10 Democrats defied their own party by voting against the measure!

So despite all claims of a Republican Revolt, more than double the amount of Democrats revolted against their own party and the top “three” presidential candidates from the Republican Party have remained steadfast supporters of President Bush’s Iraq policy. As the minority in Congress, the Republican Party needed to remain loyal to Bush in order to beat back the many legislative attempts by the Democratic Party to reverse the Surge. While the Republicans brilliantly maintained party discipline amid an unpopular war, the Democrats were not as successful.

The hysterical chatter of a Washington Post columnist (Harold Meyerson), who called the GOP a bunch of “gutless wonders”, reveals that the Republican Revolt was just a creature of wishful thinking by partisan journalists and the Democratic Party. He displayed some extreme bitterness towards the few dissenting Republicans who supported the Democratic Party on this issue, but failed to change our Iraq policy. Its as if he wouldn’t be happy with them unless they became suicide bombers…

“They have seen the folly of our course in Iraq. The mission, they understand, cannot be accomplished. The Iraqi government, they discern, is hopelessly sectarian.

In wisdom, they are paragons. In action, they are nullities. Perhaps they are simply farsighted. They have seen the problem with Nouri al-Maliki’s administration in faraway Baghdad. They seem unable to see the problem with the Bush administration at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Lugars and the Warners seem to share with many of their Democratic colleagues a common assessment of our presence in Iraq: It has become an unfocused and costly occupation in a land beset by civil war. We should, in good order, pull back, leaving behind only what we need to deter jihadists who threaten us.”

This article is worth reading in its entirety in order to digest the full extent of the conformist, bullying tactics of those who were determined to defeat the Troop Surge. It is mind boggling to imagine that intelligent people once thought that the withdrawal of the majority of U.S. forces from Iraq would lead to conditions that could deter jihadists in that country. At the same time those who defended such a highly unpopular policy as the Surge were accused of being gutless. A year later it is now obvious that those whom Meyerson labeled as gutless were actually very brave to help enable the enormously successful Surge operation against all conventional wisdom and savage criticism.

Leadership & the Mortgage Crisis

If you want a great example of leadership then look no further than Senator John McCain’s stance on the Surge. It was pointed out that his enthusiastic support for this unpopular issue could have hurt his presidential campaign, but he took the risk because he felt that it was worth taking.

Both leading presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain support the recent $700 million dollar bailout package for the financial industry that passed last Friday. Yet McCain has taken a beating for temporarily suspending his campaign in order to get House Republicans to support the bill. Critics have labeled his effort as grandstanding, but just like the Surge it shows that McCain is willing to take risks that come at his own expense for the sake of the country.

As Obama takes a back seat on the issue and can only hope for change, he and his fellow Democratic Party partisans blame their Republican counterparts for the current financial crisis. At this point in the election the media’s collective memory only extends to whatever benefits Obama’s presidential campaign. Its up to bloggers to force the media to cover more than just the Democratic Party’s talking points.

Back in 1999 the NY Times wrote about the pressure that Fannie Mae was receiving from the Clinton Administration to take on more risky loans. It was an ominous sign of the negative influence that the Democratic Party was to play in this crisis:

“Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.”

Ironically, the Democratic Party has taken to blaming the crisis on the Republican Party’s support for deregulation, but the American people are not getting the whole story of what really happened. In 2003 the NY Times relates the following:

“The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.”

Guess who opposed President Bush’s attempt to enforce meaningful reform of the regulation of these GSEs?… Almost any blogger knows that the Democratic Party joined ranks to fight it. Get a load of this infuriating statement from Rep. Barney Frank, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee:

“These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Rep. Melvin L. Watt, a fellow Democrat, continued to display the same attitude of downplaying the risk of subprime lending that got us into this mess in the first place:

“I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing.”

Attempts to pass this legislation were thwarted along partisan lines as the Democratic Party solidly voted against any attempt to reform the regulation of the GSEs. However, the Republican Party continued to struggle with the obstructionist Democratic Party voting bloc. In May of 2006 John McCain addressed the Senate about a different regulatory reform bill:

“For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.”

When the Obama campaign accuses McCain of being against regulation of the GSEs and that Obama warned about the potential problems of the financial crisis in 2007, you have to wonder how biased the media is in order to understate such an outrageous lie. The resistance of the Democratic Party to such regulation for years is lost in the memory hole. By 2007 it was obvious even to the staunchest supporter of risky loans like Barney “Not facing any kind of financial crisis” Frank that the Democratic Party could no longer deny that subprime lending had created a disastrous situation. On the other hand, McCain had cosponsored legislation going back to September 2003 calling for regulation of the GSEs.

Interesting enough, Opensecrets.org compiled a list of the top recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions over the last 19 years. Its no surprise that Democrats top the list; but as a freshman U.S. Senator, Barack Obama incredibly came in third place even though he’s only been in office for less than four years! As number three on the list he actually beat out Barney Frank who’s been in office for the entire 19 years that the survey covers. So if Obama was so concerned about the root causes of this crisis; why did he take so much money from these two GSEs in such a short period of time, even as the financial crisis unfolded into catastrophic proportions?

Almost all legislation attempting to reform the regulation of the GSEs was drafted, sponsored and voted for by Republicans. In addition, many Democrats are on record defending Fred and Fannie, going as far as denying that there was a problem with them.

H.R.1409: Secondary Mortgage Market Enterprises Regulatory Improvement Act - Apr 4, 2001

H.R.2575: Secondary Mortgage Market Enterprises Regulatory Improvement Act - Jun 24, 2003

Thank you to Rep. David Scott (D-GA), who was the only Democrat to cosponsor the bill out of 21 cosponsors. Unfortunately, this bill was not able to make it out for a vote.

H.R.2803: Housing Finance Regulatory Restructuring Act of 2003 - Jul 21, 2003

S.1508: Federal Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2003 - Jul 31, 2003

John McCain was a cosponsor of this bill.

S.190: Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 - Jan 26, 2005

John McCain was a cosponsor of this bill.

H.R.1461: Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005 - Apr 5, 2005

The bill made it out of the House, but the vote was more or less along party lines with the majority of Democrats voting against it. Thank you to the only two Democratic Representatives who cared enough to vote for the bill… Sam Farr (CA) and Gene Taylor (MS). 208 Republicans and only 2 Democrats voted Aye.

H.R.509: Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 1461) to reform the regulation of certain housing-related Government-sponsored enterprises, and for other purposes. - Oct 25, 2005

Passed by the House. 220 Republicans and 0 Democrats voted Aye.

Then after years of denials by the majority of the Democratic Party… all of a sudden in 2007 new reform legislation is introduced by Barney Frank, a politician who previously stated the following during a House Financial Services Committee hearing addressing regulatory reform in 2003:

“I worry, frankly, that there’s a tension here. The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios.”

Then look at this favorable exchange between Frank and executives from Fred and Fannie which transpired at another hearing. It is unbelievable the amount of deference that Frank shows them when he should be grilling them instead:

“Rep. Frank: Let me ask [George] Gould and [Franklin] Raines on behalf of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, do you feel that over the past years you have been substantially under-regulated?

Mr. Raines?

Mr. Raines: No, sir.

Rep. Frank: Mr. Gould?

Mr. Gould: No, sir. . . .

Rep. Frank: OK. Then I am not entirely sure why we are here… I believe there has been more alarm raised about potential unsafety and unsoundness than, in fact, exists.”

So this is the same politician who introduced the following bill:

H.R.1427: Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2007 - Mar 9, 2007

Many long-term Democratic deniers voted for this bill, allowing them to be so duplicitous that a year later they would claim to have warned the American people about the subprime crisis and that they are champions of regulatory reform of the GSEs. This is despite the fact that only a handful of Democrats were in favor of reform before this bill and the absolute majority of Republicans were in favor. The Democrats only jumped ship after it was no longer credible (even in a compliant media) to deny the problems with regulating the GSEs. Incredibly it is John McCain who is being painted as a flip flopper on this issue.

Besides Barney Frank, another Democrat who voted for the 2007 bill (H.R.1427) was Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY). This “Johnny-come-lately” stated the following during the same hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee in 2003 that Barney Frank issued his bogus denials:

“…I am just pissed off at OFHEO [Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight] because if it wasn’t for you I don’t think that we would be here in the first place. And Freddie Mac, who on its own, you know, came out front and indicated it is wrong, and now the problem that we have and that we are faced with is maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place, you have given them an excuse to try to have this forum so that we can talk about it and maybe change the direction and the mission of what the GSEs had, which they have done a tremendous job…”

In addition to Frank and Meeks there were other “Johnny-come-latelies” who voted for this bill. Take Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr. (D-MO) for instance. At a 2004 hearing concerning allegations of accounting and management failures by Fannie Mae, he was adamant in his defense of FM:

“…I find this to be inconsistent and a rush to judgment. In informal conversations with the executives from Wall Street and individual large brokerage houses, I get the feeling that the markets are not worried about the safety and soundness of Fannie Mae, as OFHEO says that it is. But of course, the markets are not political…”

Clay’s best sound bite of the evening was when he declared, “this hearing is about the political lynching of Franklin Raines (the ex-Fannie Mae chief executive officer)”. Hmmm… Eventually Raines was forced to pay a settlement of $24.7 million in that accounting scandal. In addition, Fannie Mae paid a $400 million civil fine in a settlement with OFHEO and the Securities and Exchange Commission back in 2006. Clay’s accusations of political partisan politics were clearly acts of projection, as revealed by his hypocritical defense of a guilty party for political purposes.

Incredibly, the media reports that McCain is losing in the polls due to the financial meltdown caused by the mortgage crisis. Yet he has a record going back to 2003 of cosponsoring legislation to reform the regulation of the GSEs responsible for this mess. At the same time the Democratic Party has a solid record of opposing such efforts and in Obama’s short experience in the U.S. Senate he has taken an enormous amount of money from them.

Lacy Clay said that the allegations of misdeeds by the GSEs were politically motivated. This is how the Democratic Party’s attempt to cover up financial mismanagement by the GSEs led to unwarranted attacks on the Republicans who only wanted the truth. See the following quote from an article published back in 2004 when Fannie Mae’s CEO Franklin Raines was under fire. The author, Henry Blodget, is an Obama supporter who sometimes writes for Slate.com and the Huffington Post. Check out how he twists and turns in order to protect Raines:

“…Maybe … or, maybe, more likely, he (Franklin Raines) is the same man of discipline, intelligence, honor, and integrity that a half-century of actions and words suggest. If so, we need another explanation for the Fannie proceedings and the assault on Raines.

The simplest, and most conspiratorial, is that the Fannie investigation represents a Republican payback for Enron and Halliburton. Conservatives are delighting in the gutting of Raines and Fannie Mae—a Democratic boss of a Democratic-leaning company. Former Fannie CEO James Johnson, who got some of the bonuses OFHEO criticized, has also been short listed as a possible Kerry treasury secretary. The accounting investigation, if nothing else, has probably made both Raines and Johnson untouchables to a Democratic president.

My fellow bloggers you have every reason to be angry with the media, but please keep in mind that they are eager to smear and misrepresent your voice. They are very protective towards Obama when it comes to what they can construe to be smears. However, they are quick to ignore the torrential amount of smears hurled at McCain and Palin. Obama has never suffered from an attack as vicious as Sarah Palin had to put up with. Nothing compares to accusations that she lied about giving birth to her last child Trig. The assertion that her husband had sex with her daughter and that Trig was born as a result of incest is the worst campaign smear that I have seen in a long time. Yet it is Obama who is continually painted as a victim.

The extent of the media memory hole is proof that a Representative Democracy is only as healthy as those who participate in it. So spread the word and keep our country strong!!!

To Surge or Not to Surge

2008-07-27T18:15:00.000-07:00

Sunni Arab politicians ended a yearlong boycott of the Iraqi Parliament. This is a major breakthrough for reconciliation in Iraq. Despite the huge significance of this event, it occurred with little notice.

The boycott was a reaction of the Sunnis to the sentiment of their leadership that the government was not addressing the violence of Shiite militias. A solution was implemented when the Iraqi government launched a military operation against the Shiite Mahdi Army in the wake of the vast military successes of the U.S. Troop Surge. While the government offensive met with some initial setbacks in the city of Basra, the operation ultimately turned out to be a decisive victory.

So despite the findings of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), military operations like the Surge and recent operations against the Mahdi Army have led to serious political gains in addition to security. A report by the ISG that was released in December of 2006 stated the following, which was widely accepted as conventional wisdom at the time:

“Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq, which is the absence of national reconciliation.”

Back in January of 2007 current presidential candidate Barack Obama went even farther than the report and insisted that sending additional troops to Iraq would actually increase sectarian violence. Obama refused to acknowledge the Surge’s success, even as the evidence was piling up. Powerline has an excellent post that tracks the history of Obama’s stubborn adherence to his disinformation agenda:

Obama said, on January 10, 2007, on MSNBC:

“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

On January 14, 2007, on Face the Nation, he said:

“We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality - we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.”

(What kind of experts was he talking to?)

On March 19, 2007, on the Larry King show, he said:

“[E]ven those who are supporting - but here’s the thing, Larry - even those who support the escalation have acknowledged that 20,000, 30,000, even 40,000 more troops placed temporarily in places like Baghdad are not going to make a long-term difference.”

On May 25, 2007, in a speech to the Coalition Of Black Trade Unionists Convention, Obama said:

“And what I know is that what our troops deserve is not just rhetoric, they deserve a new plan. Governor Romney and Senator McCain clearly believe that the course that we’re on in Iraq is working, I do not.”

On July 18, 2007, on the Today show, he said:

“My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now.”

On November 11, 2007, two months after General David Petraeus told Congress that the surge was working, Obama doubled down, saying that the administration’s new strategy was making the situation in Iraq worse:

“Finally, in 2006-2007, we started to see that, even after an election, George Bush continued to want to pursue a course that didn’t withdraw troops from Iraq but actually doubled them and initiated a surge and at that stage I said very clearly, not only have we not seen improvements, but we’re actually worsening, potentially, a situation there.”

…If we had listened to Barack Obama, all U.S. combat forces would have left Iraq in a phased withdrawal that would have began on May 1, 2007. So the Surge would have been crippled before it fully got off the ground on June 15, 2007.

When Obama introduced a failed piece of legislation entitled, “The Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007”, his office had already declared the Surge a failure before it even began.

“The Obama plan offers a responsible yet effective alternative to the President’s failed policy of escalation.”

It brings to mind the ear screeching protests of the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, who stated; “I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week.” Reid’s premature declaration came almost two months before Surge operations would fully get under way.

A vital component in any decision making process is to compute your findings based on reliable data. By declaring the Surge a failure before it officially began, Harry Reid and Barack Obama showed an eagerness to rush to a hasty judgment based on either on a critical lack of analytical skills or political expediency.

While we should give them some benefit of the doubt that they could be honest morons instead of deceitful politicians, I just can’t see these people reaching such high places without the ability to think analytically on such a basic level. The facts reveal that it is much more likely that they just view the Iraq conflict through the narrow prism of political gain.

How can we believe someone who lies so effortlessly as Barack Obama does? Take a look at the quotes from Powerline above. There is a long paper trail that documents Obama’s continual claims that the Surge would fail to reduce violence and actually make it worse. Then read his more recent statement from January of 2008 in which Obama whitewashed his previous stance;

“Now, I had no doubt, and I said at the time, when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place 30,000 more troops in there, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence.”

Obama’s aborted visit to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany during his world campaign tour sheds a lot of light on the subject. When the Pentagon told Obama that he couldn’t bring his campaign staff with him while visiting the medical center, he just bowed out. Obama was only interested in using this visit as a campaign event although the Defense Department has a directive prohibiting “the use of military installations for campaign events or speeches”. What a typical politician.

Lets not forget the Democratic Party’s rough treatment of our greatest general, David Petraeus. In the circus surrounding his testimony to Congress on the progress of the Surge in September 2007, the Democratic Party issued a storm of disinformation:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated the following about General Petraeus;

“He has made a number of statements over the years that have not proven to be factual. I have every belief that this good man will give us what he feels is the right thing to do in his report, but it’s not his report anymore. It’s Bush’s report.”

Senator Dick Durbin declared;

“By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working. Even if the figures were right, the conclusion is wrong.”

Representative Rahm Emanuel, claimed;

“Instead of a new strategy for Iraq, the Bush administration is cherry-picking the data to support their political objectives and preparing a report that will offer another defense of the president’s strategy. We don’t need a report that wins the Nobel Prize for creative statistics or the Pulitzer for fiction.”

Representative Robert Wexler grilled General Petraeus during his testimony;

“In your testimony today, you claim that the surge is working and that you need more time. With all due respect, General, among unbiased, nonpartisan experts, the consensus is stark. The surge has failed, based on most parameters… Cherry-picking statistics or selectively massaging information will not change the basic truth.”

Then there was Senator Hillary Clinton’s classic accusation against General Petraeus;

“Despite what I view as your rather extraordinary efforts in your testimony both yesterday and today, I think that the reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief.

In any of the metrics that have been referenced in your many hours of testimony, any fair reading of the advantages and disadvantages accruing post-surge, in my view, end up on the downside.”

The Democratic Party has done everything it can to force a retreat and it failed. Instead of relying on defeatism, we implemented a military solution that made the difference when our intellectual elite said it wasn’t possible.

Eli Pariser, a spokesman for MoveOn.org, defended their anti-Petraeus debacle: “We stand by our ad — every major independent study and many major news organizations cast serious doubt on Petraeus’ claims”.

Supply and Demands

2008-06-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

Some of us remember how Congresswoman Maxine Waters threatened to socialize the American oil industry last month at a congressional hearing on high oil prices. She blurted out;

“…And guess what this liberal will be all about. This liberal will be all about Socializing… ahhhh ummm… (pause) will be about (pause) basically taking over and government running all of your companies.”

The idea of the takeover of the oil industry by an incompetent congresswoman is bad enough, but other Democratic Party hacks are playing hardball to hinder the ability of our Iraqi allies to sell oil. Democratic senator Charles E. Schumer sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threatening retaliation if the government of Iraq issues modest contracts to four foreign oil companies. One is from the U.S. (Exxon Mobil), one is from the Netherlands (Shell), one is from France (Total) and the last is from Great Britain (BP).

This bizarre letter claims that awarding modest no-bid oil contracts to foreign oil companies will result in some sort of Armageddon… stating, “It is our fear that this action by the Iraqi government could further deepen political tensions in Iraq and put our service members in even greater danger”. So what is Schumer’s solution?… Unless he and his comrades get their way they threaten to further deepen political tensions by cutting off financing for unnamed programs in Iraq that they claim are not directly in support of American troops.

There aren’t many U.S. government funded programs in Iraq that are not in direct support of American troops. This is a war against terrorist guerillas that attack civilian infrastructure. Part of the reason that Iraq is producing more oil these days is because the terrorists have suffered many major defeats and their ability to attack civilian utilities has been hampered. A crucial tactic of Counter Insurgency operations is the usage of humanitarian projects to win over the local populous (something referred to as winning the “hearts and minds” of the population). Other efforts to help the local government and security forces are important as well.

That leads me to believe that this latest threat is just a projection of the Democratic Party’s desire to encourage instability in Iraq. Much like the Copperheads during the Civil War, the Democrats have done everything they can to hamper our ability to wage this war and instead focused on “bringing our troops home”... also known as “cutting and running”. These Copperheads even have the nerve to deride loyal American military officers as traitors and liars, while these soldiers put themselves at risk during a time of war.

The Democratic Party has focused its efforts on oil speculators as the cause of the recent upswing in oil prices. However, at this time there is no concrete evidence that the oil market is being manipulated by foul play. I have no problem with legislation that ensures the transparency of such speculating, but the Democratic Party is also proposing hostile legislation that will interfere with legitimate business practices. In effect they are legislating against a problem that they do not understand and may not even exist, because they have no evidence of such activity other than their own speculation.

Again, I agree that the possibility should be investigated and if the current high oil prices are proven to be the result of artificial price gauging by speculators, then we can legislate a solution. Yet the law of supply and demand shouldn’t be dismissed so lightly in favor of sentiment that has not progressed beyond the stage of conspiracy theories.

Rather than driving oil trading overseas to less regulated markets, we should enact legislation that will not exacerbate high oil prices. This means regulating intelligently by passing legislation aimed at a proven problem instead of using a shotgun to cure cancer.

Recent proposals to reduce fuel taxes make sense if we sincerely want to reduce gasoline prices. Europe is notorious for high fuel taxes and as a result many countries in the region pay twice the amount per gallon that Americans do. They have faced deadly riots and protests because of this. So even a small decrease in fuel taxes will help consumer confidence and will surely influence speculators if combined with the opening up of American oil drilling in restricted regions that are known to have huge untapped oil reserves.

Attacks by ruthless rebels on Nigerian oil installations recently drove up oil prices, as such attacks usually do. At its peak Nigeria had an output estimated at 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd). The country is Africa’s largest oil producer and is a founding member of OPEC. Here in the United States it is estimated that we have up to 2 million bpd that could be tapped from proposals to open up drilling in areas currently prohibited by legislation. Just like any trading market, psychological factors weigh in almost as strongly as the physical transactions that are being traded. So even though we will have to wait 10 years until oil production in these currently protected areas can begin, it will still have some effect on the market now (especially in combination with fuel tax breaks). Even more importantly, since it takes about 10 years to begin production, we’d better start now rather than waiting until the problem is worse.

Just in April an article from the Obama-worshipping blog, Daily Kos, was advocating the raising of gas taxes and attacking Hillary Clinton as an anti-progressive heretic for having a moderate idea (the summer tax holiday). This is a mainstream movement in the quasi-Socialist Democratic Party. A week after the failure of a recent climate tax bill, which over 20% of Democratic Party senators opposed, Obama and the Democratic Party leadership suffered another defeat when they pushed for a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Remember the deaths and riots happening in Europe? The Democratic Party wants that here.

No matter how high the price of gasoline gets, the Democratic Party continues its desire to increase taxes on the oil industry. Even last August the Democratic Party was pushing for $16 billion in taxes on the oil industry (this effort also thankfully failed). It is naïve to think that taxing the oil industry is going to result in lower prices yet Representative Tom Udall (D-NM) had the nerve to say, “This (bill) will save consumers money”. We have a working model for high oil industry taxation in Europe and that surely isn’t the case.

Instead of banning, taxing and penalizing the Democratic Party needs to learn good government practices. Oil industry profit margins are no larger than most industries and are actually modest compared to many. They, “average, at 8.3 cents for every dollar of sales, compared to the chemical industry’s 12.7 cents for every dollar of sales, the computer industry’s 13.7 cents and the pharmaceutical industry’s 18.4 cents for every dollar of sales”. It is the government that is the biggest profiteer from high oil prices. In 2005 the Tax Foundation reported that since 1980 oil companies “remitted more than $2.2 trillion in taxes, after adjusting for inflation, to federal and state governments”. You may recall that 1980 was the year that Congress was actually successful in slapping a windfall profit tax on the oil industry. This disaster forced “oil companies to reduce production of crude oil and increased our dependence on foreign oil by an estimated 8 to 16 percent”.

Offering more incentives and subsidies will be much more effective than heavy-handed tactics that do more harm than good. We cant afford such knee-jerk reactions which only results in restrictive legislation that does nothing but hamper business and creates the usual divisive politics that the Democratic Party is so good at.

The real problem lies in the developing world. China and India subsidize the sale of oil. This dramatically lowers the price of oil and gasoline in those countries and increases consumption at astronomical rates. Bob O’Brien, the online stocks editor at Barrons.com, stated;

“China is undergoing this economic boom and is effectively willing to pay any price. Just by the nature of the market, the product is going to seek out the end user that is willing to pay the most. And that dynamic is not going to change anytime soon.”

William Anderson hilariously characterizes the Democratic Party as “criminalizing higher oil and gasoline prices”.

He goes on to state, “When in doubt, Congress makes something a crime. Keep in mind that while they are first speaking of $5 million fines, ultimately they will be throwing people in prison for ‘economic crimes’, and ‘speculation’, which was the hallmark of the former Soviet Union.”

While his Libertarian tendency to exaggerate government abuse of power is a bit overboard, his conclusion is right on the money;

“…we have bluster, threats, and measure after measure that would further strangle and regulate production of oil and oil-related products. Congress always tells us that it knows best, but once again, we see nothing but economic ignorance from Washington’s finest. For now, they have been held back by a filibuster, but I fear that such a reprieve is only temporary - that Congress and the others in political power in this country will not be satisfied until they have fully destroyed the US economy and replaced it with something we thought would disappear when the Iron Curtain finally fell so many years ago.”

The Audacity of Dishonesty

2008-05-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

Before Reverend Jeremiah Wright was purged in order to save Barack Obama’s presidential bid, the hate-filled reverend claimed that his quotes were only sound bites taken out of context.

NPR enthusiastically covered the reverend’s objection that “his comments have been taken out of context and that the attacks on him are actually toward the entire black church” (Trinity United Church of Christ).

Yet even Obama refused to back up his former pastor on this subject… stating, “Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy.” Obama also said that if Rev. Wright didn’t retire then he would have left his church.

It’s interesting to note that according to Newsweek one of the major reasons former-churchgoer Oprah Winfrey left Trinity in the 1990s was Rev. Wright. However, Obama stayed for 20 years.

Rev. Wright knew his days were numbered and he said; “If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said, ‘Yeah, that might have to happen.’” It’s a pity that not much good can be said about Obama’s sense of loyalty. In light of his comment in which he called his grandmother a “typical white person” this is not surprising. Not only did Obama save his political career by ditching his former mentor, but he saved the Trinity United Church as well.

It has escaped the notice of the media that even before Rev. Wright became pastor, the church adopted a racially separatist agenda. According to a key Trinity lay leader at the time, Vallmer E. Jordan, the church leadership decided that, “For years we had prided ourselves on being a middle-class congregation within a mainline denomination, but suddenly the values within the black community had shifted. Aspirations for integration and assimilation were being replaced by those of black pride and separation.” (Speller, Julia 2005. “Walkin’ the Talk: Keepin the Faith in Africentric Congregations.” Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 80)

Even a staunch Trinity apologist like Jason Byassee admits the following…

“There is no denying, however, that a strand of radical black political theology influences Trinity. James Cone, the pioneer of black liberation theology, is a much-admired figure at Trinity. Cone told me that when he’s asked where his theology is institutionally embodied, he always mentions Trinity. Cone’s groundbreaking 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power announced: “The time has come for white America to be silent and listen to black people... All white men are responsible for white oppression… Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man ‘the devil’... Any advice from whites to blacks on how to deal with white oppression is automatically under suspicion as a clever device to further enslavement.” Contending that the structures of a still-racist society need to be dismantled, Cone is impatient with claims that the race situation in America has improved. In a 2004 essay he wrote, “Black suffering is getting worse, not better... White supremacy is so clever and evasive that we can hardly name it. It claims not to exist, even though black people are dying daily from its poison”.

Rev. Wright fit the mold of what church leaders like Jordan were looking for. After all, Rev. Wright asserted on the behalf of his African-American congregation that, “We are descendants of Africa, not England. We have a culture that is African in origin - not European. The Bible we preach from came from a culture that was not English or European”.

In the 21st Century I strongly disapprove of Cone and Rev. Wright’s racial separatism. American culture owes a great debt to Africa. Our music, arts and dance are strongly influenced by the continent and I wouldn’t want to be associated with a European-American congregation that resented African culture because their ancestors came from England. Either way it is a step backwards away from tolerance and a step closer to hatred.

CNN relates that bulletins from the Trinity United Church back in June 10, 2007 include comments (reprinted from other sources), which maintains that South Africa and Israel worked on “an ethnic bomb that kills blacks and Arabs”. They also quote a historian who said, “What the Zionist Jews did to the Palestinians is worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews”. Another one of those church bulletins, from July 22, 2007, includes an article refusing to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist by Mousa Abu Marzook, deputy of the political bureau of Hamas. At the bottom of the page, the bulletin has a copyright in Rev. Wright’s name. He regularly published such disgustingly anti-Israeli articles.

So it’s interesting to note that Democratic Party Frontrunner, Barack Obama recently said that John McCain’s quote stating that the militant Islamic group Hamas favors Obama is “offensive” and a “smear”. While the Obama campaign demanded that McCain should apologize for “repeating tired and divisive attacks about Barack Obama that he knows are flat-out untrue”.

Well, the fact is that Ahmed Yousef (a political adviser for the militant organization Hamas) stated the following in an interview with New York’s WABC radio station, “Actually, we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle”.

Therefore McCain’s statement is a factual one. So what’s next? Will statements saying that, ‘since Obama is a freshman senator - he doesn’t have much foreign policy experience’, be “offensive” or “a smear”?

In order to win the liberal, Democratic Jewish vote Obama is trying to prove that he is pro-Israel. So all of a sudden, he dumped his reverend and fired one of his Middle East policy advisers who has regular contacts with Hamas. But after 20 years of attending Trinity, Obama still claimed as recently as March that:

“I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.”

Then when video tapes of Rev. Wright starting appearing on prime time TV and on the Internet he back tracked to say:

“I did not hear such incendiary language myself personally, either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew.

So besides Ophray Winfrey, did any one else at Trinity hear these speeches? Was the clapping of hundreds of enthusiastic churchgoers in the Rev. Wright videos piped in? Obama has to repudiate the church members who didn’t sleep through Rev. Wright’s incendiary remarks and instead cheered him on.

It is unfortunate that if Obama wasn’t running for president he would have never disowned his reverend-mentor and would still be calling him his spiritual advisor. To believe that after 20 years of membership in this congregation that one election cycle can purge such hatred is not realistic unless Obama comes clean. If he really wants to be a president who unites this country then he must give up his hateful church and denounce it for what it is.

Rev. Wright isn’t an expendable scapegoat who can be the fall guy for the sins of the entire church. Almost every word he preached was met with adoring cheer. For 36 years Rev. Wright led the flock. He built up the church from 87 members to 10,000. Right before Rev. Wright came to Trinity, church leaders had determined that the decline in membership was due to changes in the values of the black community. If you recall, church lay leader, Vallmer E. Jordan, named these values as black pride and separation. Additionally, it should be pointed out that the church’s vision statement is based on James Cone’s racist liberation theology.

So we’re not just talking about Obama’s connection to Rev. Wright, his connection with his church is important too. Obama has to admit that his church spread hate during his many years of membership there and that he knew it. Obama needs to come clean before any intelligent person can ever believe him again. How could someone aspire to the presidency of the United States of America and for 20 years not realize that his church, (Trinity United) is controversial? Not only has Obama been dishonest about that, but he has also been intentionally misleading about his knowledge of his pastor’s inflammatory statements.

Before Obama changed his story, he claimed on March 2008 that, “Had I heard those statements in the church, I would have told Reverend Wright that I profoundly disagree with them... …What I have been hearing and had been hearing in church was talk about Jesus and talk about faith and values and serving the poor.”

Yet back in January 2007 Obama asked Rev. Wright to deliver a public invocation at the announcement of his presidential campaign, but Obama knew that his reverend spoke about a lot more than just “Jesus” and “faith”. A month later he revoked his request and invited Rev. Otis Moss III (Rev. Wright’s replacement at Trinity and a firm ally of the retiring reverend) to deliver the invocation, but Moss refused out of loyalty to Rev. Wright. The clincher is that when Obama spoke to Rev. Wright he said, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public”. So Obama abandoned Rev. Wright not because of his offensiveness (as he clearly knew about all along), but only to further his campaign for the presidency.

Much like the reason he all of a sudden loves Israel after 20 years of going to a church that enthusiastically promoted anti-Israeli propaganda. In 2005 the United Church of Christ (UCC) Synod even passed a resolution calling for divestment from doing business with Israel and the dismantling of Israel’s security barrier (which has saved many Israeli lives from Palestinian terrorism). The Simon Wiesenthal Center called the resolution, “functionally anti-Semitic”. Two years later when Obama spoke before the Synod, “Israel’s newly christened friend”, never mentioned the resolutions. Only a dysfunctional media can miss the issue here. For a man running on a platform of “Change We Can Believe In”, the only thing that you can really believe in is that Obama will continue the age-old campaign strategies of dishonest politicians.

(Note: The IRS has notified the United Church of Christ, that they have opened an investigation into Obama’s address at the UCC’s 2007 General Synod because the church was engaging in political activities.)

The chance of Obama denouncing his church is slim because it has been the center of his power base for a long time. Trinity is a nepotistic hydra with many heads. When Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate back in November 2004 his vacated seat was filled by Kwame Raoul... Who just so happens to also be a member of the same church as Obama, “Trinity United Church of Christ”!!! It’s a political machine that Obama has relied on for years and the church will increase its influence through him unless he does the right thing for the American people. Now is finally the time for Obama to fully divest himself from hatred.

Lets give Rev. Wright the last word;

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America’. No, no, no, not God Bless America. God Damn America - that’s in the Bible - for killing innocent people. God Damn America, as long as she pretends to act like she is God, and she is supreme.”

The Road To Kuwait

2008-04-13T12:32:00.000-07:00

Saddam Hussein, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Muqtada al-Sadr.

If the United States is losing the Iraq War as some insist, then these bitter opponents must be the winners.

In reality the United States, the Coalition and its Iraqi Allies have won every important battle.

You’d have to be sick to want them to lose…

It was too late for these victims of Saddam’s regime.

Terror Tourism

2008-04-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

Back in December of 2007 the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce and MSNBC brought you a publicity campaign to increase tourism in the biblical city of Bethlehem.

If the Palestinian Department of Tourism can have a spokesman like Ahmed Balboul, a terrorist from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, then by all means let us devise a Tourist Adventure Package worthy of their high standards. We don’t have to create something brand new. No, we can benefit from existing terror-tourist guidelines. Take the accommodations that are already offered by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

This tour package gives you the opportunity to prove that Liberals support the right to bear arms… well, at least weapons that belong to terrorists, of course.

ISM “Peace Activists” pose with weapons under the supervision of a terrorist from the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade (on the right). Please note that the woman in this picture, Gabi, is disguised as an Orthodox Jew. This is a great example of the deceitfulness of the ISM. She is not even Jewish, let alone Orthodox. (The photo is from Stoptheism.com)

Many people want some adventure when they take a holiday and the ISM put together this package especially for thrill seekers who love to get their adrenaline flowing. The ISM holiday tour allows you to enter a war zone with the mission to protect terrorists and their weapon smuggling tunnels. At the end of the day you can even sleep in the bed of a terrorist and live to tell about it.

Paul Larudee, a leader of the ISM in Northern California, is notorious for proudly exclaiming that he slept in the bed of a suicide bomber. If you ever wondered how self-professed pacifists could justify their support for terrorism against democratic countries just take a look at how Larudee rationalizes the unthinkable. In his own words…

“Although we are totally dedicated to nonviolence, we recognize not everyone in the Palestinian community is dedicated to nonviolence and under international law we recognize that violence is necessary and it is permissible for oppressed and occupied people to use armed resistance and we recognize their right to do so.”

This pattern of doublespeak is shared by the terrorist allies of these pacifists. Check out how the wanted terrorist and tourism advocate, Ahmed Balboul, sends ‘a message to tourists all over the world’:

“Welcome to Bethlehem, Bethlehem a holy city. I and my nation/people refuse the terrorists and we like the life, we like all the world and I say to them they are welcome to Bethlehem. This is a holy place and a holy city.”

And how exactly does Ahmed Balboul “refuse the terrorists”?

Well… he closely associates himself with the commander of Islamic Jihad in the Bethlehem area, Mohammed Shehadeh, and two other Islamic Jihadists. Shehadeh was an expert bomb maker who was behind several terrorist bombings including a suicide attack on the Jerusalem Hilton.

It’s sad that our media is so quick to give terrorists the benefit of the doubt, but not our troops or democratically elected leaders. The article that inspired this post was entitled, “Normal Life Escapes Palestinian Militant”. It made the dubious claims that Balboul disavowed violence and expressed his support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

While it is true that Balboul has postured for peace, the truth is that he only wanted amnesty for his crimes. If the Emmy award-winning journalist who wrote this article was capable of researching Balboul’s claims to the standards that an Emmy award supposedly requires, she would have to reveal that Balboul actually condemned the peace process and of course associated with terrorists who still supported violence against innocent Israelis.

In December of last year Balboul held a press conference with his terrorist comrade-in-arms, Mohammed Shehadeh, denouncing peace with Israel. In his last interview before his death Shehadeh used children as human shields and declared, “…I don’t ask any pity from the occupation, the opposite, one must be cruel before it…”

Balboul’s association with the Islamic Jihad leader cost him his life because Israel had recently stepped up its efforts to kill Shehadeh. When they finally caught up with the terrorist Balboul was beside his comrade as always. This is a severe setback for the Bethlehem tourist industry. They may now be forced to recruit spokesmen who are not terrorists with innocent blood on their hands. It is a stark example of how Israeli military operations are hurting tourism in Bethlehem.

Sympathy for El Diablo

2007-12-23T18:03:00.001-08:00

So the ailing Cuban Dictator, Fidel Castro, states; “My elemental duty is not to cling to positions, or even less to obstruct the path of younger people, but to share experiences and ideas whose modest worth comes from the exceptional era in which I lived.”

The truth is that this tyrant has clung to power for almost 50 years. Since 1959 he has ruled Cuba as his personal gulag while executing or jailing his political opposition. Suddenly Castro expects the world to believe him when he declares that he wouldn’t selfishly cling to power. Even a casual observer would have to note that this statement is only the result of his deteriorating health and his desire for the continued oppression of his country after his death. However, Castro is not a political figure that is viewed critically in our media or among our political elites.

Latin America’s most hated dictator was Chilean General Augusto Pinochet. He is well known for the repression of civil liberties, murder and torture that was committed by his junta in the seventies. His regime is believed to have murdered about 3,000 people and no sane person could praise the dictator’s morality. On the other hand, Fidel Castro has murdered about 14,000. So Castro’s regime has been much more repressive than Pinochet’s and the Cuban dictator has not given up power to make room for democratic reform like Pinochet did.

Yet many prominent Americans openly admire this Communist dictator. Take these quotes for example…

“Cuba’s Elvis!” (Dan Rather.) “Castro is the most honest and courageous politician I’ve ever met! Viva Fidel!” (Jesse Jackson.) “If you believe in freedom, justice and equality, you have no choice but to support Fidel Castro!” (Harry Belafonte.) “Castro is a genius and Cuba is a Paradise!” (Jack Nicholson) “The greatest hero of the century!” (Norman Mailer) “One helluva guy!” (Ted Turner.)

Barbara Walters is one of many American journalists who have expressed admiration for both Castro and his protégé, Hugo Chavez, the most authoritarian rulers in this hemisphere. Over the last century the Americas were rife with dictatorships. Today all of the rightwing dictatorships are gone and have been replaced by republics with a much more democratic representation of the people. Castro’s leftwing junta is the only dictatorship left and Venezuela teeters at the brink thanks to their despotic leader, Hugo Chavez.

Despite this, Walters is infamous for stating, “For Castro, freedom begins with education”.

Why do prominent journalists act as such willing dupes for totalitarians?

In this picture Barbara Walters meets with Chavez cronies in their Caracas stronghold, giving them a treasure trove of publicity. Jose Gregorio Cedeno, in the red cap, is president of a Chavez-controlled community council. The woman in blue, Doris Seren, is a teacher and member of the council. Such teachers are important to the “Revolution”, which emphasizes a complete revision of history to reflect the Socialist viewpoint that almost all conflict throughout history was the result of class struggle. It reminds me of the Castro statement… Walters would have been closer to the truth if she changed just one word…

“For Castro, freedom begins with RE-education”.

In any case, the picture was taken as a part of a staged political propaganda tour that was orchestrated by Chavez in exchange for an interview that was to occur shortly thereafter. The tour and the interview were eagerly promoted in the Chavez controlled media. One advertisement stated, “We invite all Venezuelans to watch the interview of the year. The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, ‘Comandante’ Hugo Chavez Frias, leader of the XXI Century Socialism, in an exclusive interview with the journalist Barbara Walters, star anchorwoman of the main US network ABC news”.

While Walters felt obligated to address a few of the many negative characteristics that define Chavez, she clearly has a great deal of affection for the Venezuelan strongman. In her interview she never challenges him over the abuses of power that have made Chavez an object of concern for the Venezuelan people. The closest she comes is by asking this pampered question, “Venezuela elected you to a second term. They would have to amend the constitution for you to run for a third term. You want them to do that?”

These are not the words of an educated woman who would at least be vaguely aware of how Chavez has already changed his country’s Constitution for personal gain, packed the courts with his cronies and labored so hard to get these “reforms” passed that he declared the following warning to those who would vote against the Constitutional changes that he proposed… “He who says he supports Chavez but votes ‘no’ is a traitor, a true traitor.” Why is it that Conservatives are almost always exclusively labeled as divisive and suffering from an “Us Against Them” mentality when their leftwing opponents are so unapologetic in such sentiments?

Mostly Walters glowingly refers to Presidente Chavez as “dignified”, “warm” and suffering from “misconceptions” in the U.S. She took the approach of tough love and was sure to stroke the strongman’s ego by complimenting his character and asking biased questions like, “You are not married now. Are you -- Do you want to marry, or are you married to the revolution?” The interview with an eligible bachelor like Chavez obviously sparked Walters’ romantic notions about the “Revolution”.

After wrapping up the interview on 20/20 she expressed her true feelings in a statement that could have been written by a Commissar working at the PRAVDA news desk…

“…when you meet him, when you see him in the navy blue suit and not the red shirt that he’s in, um, he’s passionate about his dislike for George Bush. He does like this country and he’s passionate about his feelings about America. And he feels that with a new President, that we can be friends. He cares very much about poverty. He’s a Socialist. What he’s trying to do for all of Latin America, you know, they’ve been trying to do it for years, is to eliminate poverty. But this is not the crazy man that we have heard.”

Since Walters is so open in her admiration for Chavez it’s no surprise that she reacted sympathetically when the Venezuelan despot lost his recent bid to be president-for-life. As a comparison I find it just a wee bit ironic that she said the following about President Bush;

“He is the president, he is not a king.”

So while Walters glosses over major infractions against the freedoms of Venezuelans by Hugo Chavez (who has also consolidated a massive amount of political power into his presidency and political party) she accuses President Bush of being an autocrat simply because she was annoyed at the security in the capital of the United States, Washington D.C. Right across the water from the Pentagon which was attacked on 9/11.

We need a truly objective media, not this.

San Diego Fires

2007-10-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

The scene today about six miles away from my home.

For those concerned about the San Diego fires, you will be pleased to know that I am safe. The area where I live, off of Freeway 15 in Rancho Penasquitos, is on the edge of a dangerous area that is very vulnerable to fires. However, my home is in no immediate danger.

Since the fire is so unpredictable I have to be prepared for the worst and I have good reason to. It is scary that I am on the very edge of the evacuation area. Only one block north and one block east everyone has been ordered to evacuate. So far around 500,000 people have been evacuated and we are lucky for now. Probably half of my neighbors have already fled. Those of us who stayed are looking out for each other.

The smell of smoke is very strong. There is quite a bit of ash on my balcony and near my windows which I had open yesterday. That was a big mistake! Amazingly the sun is making it through the haze which is a good sign, but when watching videos from areas where reporters were covering raging fires, they experienced the same condition.

I am now almost fully packed and ready to go at a moments notice. I will take my computer if evacuated so I wont lose any data.

The situation is very tense because the fire is raging out of control and cannot be stopped with these high Santa Ana winds. Due to these winds our aircraft have not been able to contribute to the firefighting efforts as much as they could, but unlike the 2003 fire, this time San Diego did not send the bulk of its assets up north only to find that the fire spread down here as well. About 1,000 firetrucks from northern California are on the way down to pitch in.

In 2003 the big object of concern was the flammability of shingle rooftops. This time everyone is pointing out how eucalyptus trees are quick to catch fire. I think that in the future you are going to find a lot less of these trees in Southern California just like shingle rooftops have went the way of the dodo bird... At least in neighborhoods vulnerable to fire.

Thank you for checking in to see if I’m OK.

Update: 10/23 6:54pm PDT

Things have dramatically improved for the city of San Diego. Residents just east of me in Scripps Ranch have been allowed back in their homes. You may recall that this neighborhood was hit really hard in the 2003 fires. The community lost the most homes in that disaster, a total of 343. This time only a small portion of the city limits has been damaged. Unfortunately, the fire still rages in almost all directions; north, east and south.

I am proud to say that the reaction to this fire is dramatically better when compared to the 2003 debacle. None of the confusion that we had last time was in evidence. The Governor immediately came to San Diego and was not combative like the Davis Administration. Governor Davis and his staff took serious offense to our local Congressman, Duncan Hunter, who criticized his slow allocation of federal resources and his bureaucratic attitude. Basically Hunter had secured some C-130 firefighting aircraft from the military and all Davis had to do was ask for them, yet Davis refused.

The Director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, Dallas Jones, sarcastically remarked that Hunter was “all wet”... Now lets take a deep breath here. This is not a partisan attack on Davis. I voted against the recall election that targeted him. He should have completed the term of office that he was elected for, instead of falling victim to the power-grab of that special election. I will admit that his handling of the energy crisis and California’s budget problems was lackluster, but he is not the only person that deserves blame. Regardless, the reaction of his office to the disaster in 2003 was miserable.

Right off the bat it was incongruous of Jones to say that Hunter was “all wet”. That was the problem to begin with. He wasn’t all wet. The man lost his home and everything except an old station wagon in that fire. I saw Congressman Hunter in a press conference yesterday during the height of the emergency and he is hardly the political sideshow hack that Davis painted him out to be. Although the speaker gave Hunter a friendly introduction and the opportunity to use his time in front of the media to promote himself, Hunter was all business. He said what he needed to and allowed public officials to continue their dissemination of vital disaster information. Hunter didn’t take the opportunity to campaign or even pull at the public’s heartstrings, despite the fact that the speaker introduced him as a victim of last year’s fire. This is why Hunter will not win the presidency. He is a public servant that puts his job before his political ambitions.

Anyways, I’d like to thank the firefighters who are still battling the blaze in 90-degree temperatures against 1,000-degree flames. They have cleared fire control lines, set backburn fires to redirect the flames away from inhabited areas and made heroic stands to defend individual homes. Firefighters have come down from Sacramento and Camp Pendleton, despite the fact that the fire has reached the Marine base.

Our authorities have done a fantastic job protecting our lives and property. The backwards 911 system has worked almost flawlessly. When a neighborhood needs to be evacuated our emergency services call each home to give them the warning. This has doubtlessly saved many lives and only two are confirmed dead so far. Such procedures are especially important because this fire is much larger than the 2003 disaster, which killed 15 people in San Diego County. (Note: the NY Times has erroneously stated that the 2003 fire was bigger. They included the total acreage burned by all 15 fires during the 2003 Firestorm. These were separate fires throughout California.)

San Diego has pulled together. Volunteers and donations have been pouring into our biggest shelter, Qualcomm Stadium. So many donations were received that authorities declared that no further donations are needed unless requested. Although I have been thoroughly dissatisfied with Governor Schwarzenegger and wont be voting for him in the next election, I have to admit that he is much more effective than the hapless Governor Davis. Military C-130s have already arrived to fight the fires.

My thoughts go out to those who are still in danger as I write. Thanks to everyone who has pitched in!

October Blog of the Month - Moonbattery

2007-10-16T01:44:00.000-07:00

The Blog of Month for October was referred to me a long time ago by my muse, Nanc. She raved about the website so much I just had to take a look for myself. Since Halloween is coming up Moonbattery.com is the perfect choice for the occasion.

Moonbattery is the best blog that highlights the antics of the people referred to as “moonbats”.

Reference.com has an incomplete entry for the term “moonbat” in their encyclopedia and they are at least consistent enough to make the same oversight for their entry on “wingnut”.

Moonbat (also “barking moonbat” and “moonbat crazy”) is a term often used currently in U.S. politics as a political epithet referring to anyone that is liberal or on the left.

The term, Moonbat, clearly refers to EXTREMIST liberals, but they leave out that important word in this listing (yet correct themselves elsewhere).

In any case, moonbats offer a rich reservoir of material that Moonbattery.com eagerly taps into. Take this article for instance, “Muslim-Moonbat Marriage on the Rocks?”

Self-labeled “Progressives” from Latin America and Iran organized a conference to build-up the alliance between leftwing and Islamist revolutionary activists. Any rational person hearing about this for the first time will chuckle at the prospects of that alliance, despite the fact that they do indeed march side-by-side at protests in the United States and at the very least maintain parallel political campaigns against our country.

The lovefest quickly fell apart when Hajj Saeed Qassemi, “The Coordinator of the Association of Volunteers for Suicide-Martyrdom” spoke about leftwing superhero Che Guevara. Check out the Moonbattery article to find out what happened.

Closer to home Moonbattery.com relates how moonbat activist, Sean Penn, strikes a strong chord among terrorists. “Terror chiefs from Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, two of the most deadly terror organizations in the world, praise Penn’s stance on Iran, Iraq and the war on terror. The terror leaders go so far in their adoration of Penn that they are tapping him as the official spokesman of their terror rings.”

Welcome to the world of Moonbattery.

A Love Story - Project 2,996

2007-09-11T02:54:00.001-07:00

Last year I participated in Project 2,996. This is a web-based tribute to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. I was assigned to write about James Berger, who worked at the World Trade Center for Aon Corporation. It was an honor to have the opportunity to pay tribute to such a brave man. Although the loss of such a loving human being is a great tragedy, his story was so touching that I found it to be very inspirational.

This year’s tribute has left me with quite a different feeling. I haven’t felt this way since the attacks happened six years ago. Intense anger and an overwhelming sense of sadness has shaken me while composing this story.

My choice for the 2007 tribute was Nurul Huq Miah. I chose him because I wanted to honor an immigrant who represents everything that America stands for. In the end I wound up with a lot more than I bargained for.

As I began my research I started to notice that online guest books dedicated to him made references to Shakila Miah and used the feminine pronoun, “her”, as a description. I was a bit confused. Was this is a reference to someone else or were the people making these comments just mistaken because of their unfamiliarity with foreign names?

I didn’t like the answer. It turns out that Shakila Miah was his wife who was also killed in the September 11th attacks. This is how I learned about a beautiful love story and its tragic ending.

The couple were both immigrants from Bangladesh and it is a custom for many Bengalis to be wed in arranged marriages. However, the Miahs were a “love match”. This means that they met outside of parental supervision and fell in love on their own. Naturally when the girl’s parents found out that their daughter was dating someone they were apprehensive and frowned upon the relationship.

In order to communicate with his girlfriend Nurul would leave messages on her answering machine with a deer caller device that is used by hunters. This was his secret signal to her and you could imagine the delight of the young woman whenever she heard it.

The persistence of their love convinced Shakila’s parents to arrange a meeting with the suitor. You have to keep in mind that in Bangladesh society there are many stigmas attached to such courtships. It could be an unbearable embarrassment if the parents are perceived to have lost control over their children in such a manner and many Bengalis would argue that such relationships have corrupted traditional values. So Shakila’s parents showed a very open mind by setting up this meeting.

In an interview with Newsday her father remarked on the overwhelmingly positive impression that Nurul made on his family, “He captured all of our hearts with his behavior. Everybody liked him”. The parents were happy to give their approval and the couple had a traditional Bengali Muslim ceremony attended by hundreds of friends and family.

That’s right, they were Muslim! For all their talk of holy war Al Qaeda has no compunction about killing innocent Muslims. In Afghanistan and Iraq the terrorist group kills more Muslims than “infidels”. The holy war against America is a sham.

It was the United States that intervened in the Suez Crisis to stop Britain and France from seizing Egyptian land illegally. It was the U.S. that helped Saudi Arabia develop its oil reserves without exploitation while European nations plundered Middle Eastern oil. It was the U.S. that helped Muslims in Afghanistan against the atheist Communists. It was the U.S. that bombed the Serbian Christians in order to stop their genocide against the Kosovo Muslims. It was the U.S. that helped two conservative Muslim countries against the aggression of Saddam Hussein’s secular regime. And it was Al Qaeda that killed innocent Muslim Americans like Nurul and Shakila Miah.

After Shakila found employment at the World Trade Center her father suggested that she should look for a better job because Shakila only had a temporary position at Marsh & McLennan. Since she worked only four floors above Nurul there was nothing in the world that could make her leave his side. Every day they went to lunch together and every day they went home together. The couple was never separated. They lived together and died together. In the year and a half that they were married they shared the deepest love that most people will never know throughout their entire lives.

Shakila liked to sing songs like this one written by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.

Sept Blog of the Month - Regime of Terror

2007-09-09T23:39:00.000-07:00

The Blog of the Month is “Regime of Terror”, a blog that I found when googling for information about sectarian violence in Iraq.

While apologists like George Galloway, Ramsey Clark and the legions of other anti-Bush propagandists wax nostalgic about Saddam’s regime, this blog publishes evidence of the crimes of the Baathist occupation of Iraq. The blog primarily focuses on their promotion of terrorism.

To this day elements of the illegitimate regime have continued their time-proven tactics of fostering political violence and “Regime of Terror” makes sure to document that as well. As the insurgency has developed the blog has painstakingly patched together a clear picture of Baathist and Al Qaeda cooperation. So it is an excellent starting point for those looking to educate themselves about the past and current activities of Saddam’s regime and its supporters.

Apologists long for the peaceful days of the Baathist regime. These pictures of the victims of the Baathist regime are a monument to those “idealistic” times before President Bush “ruined it”.

Spirit of America Update - August 2007

2007-08-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

“Dear Blog Community,

Welcome to the first Spirit of America (SoA) monthly update. A new outreach program designed to keep the blogger community informed of the projects that we engage in. We are a non-profit organization dedicated to helping our troops make a difference in the war torn countries of Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa. Spirit of America facilitates the donation of humanitarian supplies that our troops distribute to civilians in those strategic regions of the world. This assistance is vital towards the creation of jobs and the restoration of public services like education and medical care. Thank you to the blogger community for your support.

Sincerely,
Spirit of America”

This Month’s Topics:

Help us reach out to our Military
A Special Iraqi School Project
Quick Response to Afghan Farmers Request
Women’s Burn Unit & Maternity
Join our Mailing List, pass it on

REACHING OUT
For our first blogger update we would like to ask for your help in order to reach out to our military personnel serving in Spirit of America’s theatre of operations (especially in Ramadi where our forces have had some huge successes recently).

Many front line troops are not aware of the services that we provide to help them assist civilians living in those critical regions that they serve in. We can help facilitate their outreach to these civilians. Such humanitarian aid is vital to advance the cause of freedom, democracy and peace.

Quite often our military personnel have requests for goods like school and medical supplies, sewing machines, hand tools, watches, water barrels, clothing, soccer gear and toys. Since 2001 we have successfully completed many of these supply projects and urge our servicemen and women to contact us to see if we can help them make a difference.

Email Us

SPECIAL IRAQI SCHOOL PROJECT
Would you say that four years is a long time? It’s a fair chunk of change, but it’s hardly an extreme amount of time unless it is spent under extreme circumstances. In the case of Staff Sergeant (SSG) Steven Gardner you can say that he has experienced more in the last four years than most people have in their entire lifetimes.

SSG Gardner has served his country in war torn Iraq since April 2003!!! For almost the entire conflict that has reshaped our times he has been deployed in many different provinces of the country. Throughout this time SSG Gardner witnessed how a brutal insurgency has victimized the Iraqi people.

In order to give the Iraqis an alternative message of hope SoA is undertaking a special project with SSG Gardner to help a local school in the northern Iraqi city of Habur Gate. This endeavor is being conducted in the true spirit of our service men and women. It is something that is not fully appreciated by the general public. Consider the fact that last year 807 schools serving 322,800 students nationwide were completed using American funding and supervised by our military forces. In addition projects like “The America-Iraq School Partners Program” and many others have been completed by SoA to bolster what our troops have accomplished. Despite all of that hard work, this new project is made special by some very unique circumstances.

While many of the military personnel that work on humanitarian relief projects with SoA are very enthusiastic about these efforts, few can say that they have been serving continuously in Iraq for so long. As much as we are concerned about how our soldiers and their families will have to endure extended tours as much as 15 months long, SSG Gardner won’t be going home to his family until 2008. That will make his tour of duty five years long!!! And as if that isn’t enough, he wants to contribute even more to the people of Iraq.

“All of this started because of what I have seen and been through. I want to leave here knowing I came, I fought and I made a difference in someone’s life here. This area is safe or reasonably so. The people are good.”

“The kids are great and the teaching staff try and make do with what they have but with funds and materials not available, they can only do so much. The school is set-up so that the kids attend from middle school through high school. The blackboards are a wreck. No fans or cooling systems in the classrooms. No computers. No sports equipment. There are no sports uniforms (they take a lot of pride in soccer). No art supplies to speak of. Basically, they need an overhaul.”

There can be no better example of the quality of our men and women serving in Iraq than SSG Gardner. SoA is proud to support such an American patriot and friend to the Iraqi people. He doesn’t ask for glory or any form of undue attention, he only desires to help those in need.

Please visit our project page to learn more.

QUICK RESPONSE TO AFGHAN FARMERS REQUEST
WOW!!! Due to your overwhelming show of support, this project is already well underway. Here is the Sergeant Major’s response when told that we had raised $13k in the first five hours:

“I didn’t expect the project to be such a big hit. I am really pleasantly surprised that the project has raised so much already!”

SoA is also working to find the zargol type of saffron which prospers in Iraq. If you have information on where these bulbs can be found or would like to donate saffron bulbs for these farmers, please send an email to us with the subject: Saffron Bulbs for Afghanistan.

The Sergeant Major says:

“The amount of heroin that is produced from this country (about 90% of total world’s production) is unbelievable. Poppy fields stretch for miles. The Taliban use poppy grown in Afghanistan to generate funding for their activities...

...This region is where saffron originally came from, before cultivation spread to Europe. Right now Afghanistan’s neighbor in the west, Iran, grows the largest quantities of saffron, that it exports globally as the world’s most expensive spice by weight...

...I think that if it were more available, saffron would be grown here in greater quantities, taking cash away from the Taliban.”

Please visit our project page to learn more.

WOMEN’S BURN UNIT & MATERNITY
After the rule of the Taliban and decades of war, Afghanistan’s healthcare system has been neglected. Equipment is in short supply and hospitals are in disrepair. Army Colonel Wendell Hickman in cooperation with attorney Melinda Lord seeks your help in improving conditions for at least one community - Herat, Afghanistan.

Nearly two-thirds of the Afghan population is without access to basic health-care facilities. Women and children are especially affected as Afghanistan has one of the word’s highest maternal and child mortality rates. Some studies estimate that an Afghan woman dies giving birth every 30 minutes. In addition, women are often burn victims either at the hands of angry relatives or self-inflicted as a protest against harsh circumstances.

The 400-bed Herat Hospital is the only non-military hospital in this entire province in Western Afghanistan. Supply needs are critical for the Burn Unit where cream, bandages and IV saline are the only solace available for patients, some of whom are tragic victims of the difficult intentional burnings.

Your support of this project will enable SoA to contribute critical supplies to the Herat Burn Center, Gozahra Clinic and similiar facilities throughout Western Afghanistan. In addition to the items listed above which SoA will provide with your help, we will partner with Orchard International in shipping an ocean container of supplies donated specifically for Herat Hospital including incubators, baby warmers, and vitamins.

A very sparse Delivery Room in Herat

You can visit our project page to learn more.

PLEASE ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
Our recent drive for signups to our mailing list only netted about 65 new subscribers. We are hoping that by reaching out to bloggers that we jump start this effort. There’s no risk to pass it on to family and friends, we never share your email address. It’s also very easy for you, at any time, to unsubscribe on our site.

Bloggers please contact us if you wish to publish these monthly updates on your blog or volunteer your time in any way. We are looking for a volunteer Web Technology Director, volunteer Administrative staff and volunteer writers. If you would like to post this article on your blog please contact us by clicking on the email link below or leave your email address in the comments. If you leave your email address in the comments we will delete the comment after we retrieve your contact information in order to protect your privacy. Then we will email you the text and html so you can just copy it into a new post on your blog.

Thank you for taking the time to read our project update. The War on Terror is beginning to pick up steam and our country has finally been able to get out the word due to the contributions of the blogger community. Bloggers like Michael Yon, Bill Roggio and Michael Totten are bringing America’s side of the story directly to the people. In the past when we won important victories like the capture of Saddam Hussein, the conclusion of successful elections, the recapture of Fallujah and many others - the significance was lost on the general public because of the lack of awareness about what is really going on.

That ignorance has led some Americans to remain unaware that our troops do more than just kill the enemy. They spend much of their time building relationships with Iraqi communities, assisting them to defend themselves, coordinating reconstruction projects and distributing humanitarian aid.

Now that we have found our voice it is time to step up our efforts. The blogger community has done a great job so lets keep up the good work. We have a long way to go.

Email Us

All the best,
The Spirit of America Team
http://www.spiritofamerica.net/

Bloggers with the Spirit of America

2007-07-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

Please Help The Iraqi Reconstruction

Many of us have become bloggers because we are outraged at the brutality of our enemy and the callous disregard for reason by some of our countrymen. We wanted to do something to make a difference in the War on Terror. A successful businessman named Jim Hake felt the same way.

He started a charity called Spirit of America to support our troops in the field. This is a non profit group that gives humanitarian aid to Iraqis, Afghanis and civilians from the Horn of Africa. The aid is distributed by our troops in goodwill bridgebuilding missions.

Spirit of America is reaching out to the blogger community to get the word out. Please post this blog ad in your sidebar if you would like to help them.

All you have to do is copy and paste the following html code into your blog template. To retrieve the code just click on the comments section and it is located in the first comment. Highlight the text and click “Control” + “C”.

If you need help just let me know in the comments.

Thanks

The War Against Iran Finally Begins

2007-07-17T16:51:00.000-07:00

While the media focuses on the Surge battle plan in Baghdad, another major operation has begun against Iran. It is a two pronged offensive with one pincer rooting out Iranian backed militias in the Shia south and the other decimating the Revolutionary Guard in Iran.

Some liken the operation to a game of whack a mole, but in reality it is more like a squirrel or a badger. Animal rights activists have called it a humanitarian nightmare because of the unconventional tactics utilized by Coalition Forces.

In southern Iraq British troops have unleashed an onslaught of Ferocious Honey Badgers that have terrorized Shia militants and emotionally scarred their children. Human rights leaders have condemned the attacks as indiscriminate against civilians and demand that the exploitation of these animals must cease immediately.

In the meantime these Vicious Badgers have taken their toll on the unsuspecting population. A Basra housewife, Suad Hassan, claimed to have been attacked by a British Badger as she slept. She reported;

“My husband hurried to shoot it but it was as swift as a deer. It is the size of a dog but his head is like a monkey.”

Facing mounting pressure from criticism by anonymous government sources a UK military spokesman, Major Mike Shearer, denied responsibility.

“We can categorically state that we have not released Man-Eating Badgers into the area.”

However, members of Parliament have announced an official inquiry. In order to deflect attention from his upcoming suspension from Parliament, disgraced MP George Galloway declared that he will intervene on the badgers’ behalf.

“I pledge by the blood of the resistance that I will use the money that I received from Saddam’s oil-for-food program to build a rest home and amusement park for the badgers after they convert to Islam.”

The other prong of the operation entails a much riskier tactic that requires deep penetration into Iranian territory. In order to move much quicker, in lightening thrusts, the Coalition has opted for Attack Squirrels that move over vast amounts of land at a greater speed than Badgers.

Initial raids by Squirrel Scouts resulted in their capture by sharp-eyed border guards, but Iran is concerned that they have lost track of the main body of elusive rodents and expect attacks in their rear lines. To defend against such circumstances they have fortified their positions bringing up tanks and artillery.

The Iranian state-sponsored news agency IRNA reported:

“In recent weeks, intelligence operatives have arrested 14 squirrels within Iran’s borders. The squirrels were carrying spy gear of foreign agencies, and were stopped before they could act, thanks to the alertness of our intelligence services.”

Experts agree that this military operation has unnecessarily raised tensions in the Persian Gulf. President Ahmadinejad made a historic speech to the Iranian people stating that all squirrels and badgers “will be wiped off the map”.

While this post is a bit outlandish it is still based on real news stories. If you don’t believe me then check the links for yourself. Even though the game is deadly serious you just have to laugh at the absolute wackiness of these accusations. Other insane conspiracy theories are not quite as funny, but just as crazy…

Iran’s Sahar 1 TV aired a hateful weekly series called “Zahra’s Blue Eyes”. The show accused Israel of stealing body parts of Palestinian children. It featured graphic scenes of Palestinian children whose eyes have been surgically removed and stolen by Israel.

Iran’s daily newspaper Jomhour-ye Islami blamed U.S. soldiers for stealing organs from Iraqis. It based its accusations on European ‘secret’ military reports. “The reports confirm the finding of tens of thousands of mutilated cadavers missing parts… These teams offer $40 for every usable kidney and $25 for an eye…”

Iran’s Mehr News Agency ran a story accusing Israel of inflicting cancer on the Arab world. It was titled, “Israel Exporting Carcinogenic Foodstuff to Arab States”. They stated, “The trend has led to an increase in leukemia and liver and stomach cancer in the Arab countries which have imported Israeli foodstuff”.

Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV broadcast a program claiming that Zionists were spreading diseases amongst Arabs. It stated that there were, “Zionist attempts to transmit dangerous diseases like AIDS through exports to Arab countries”.

Hat tips to Right Truth via Atlas Shrugs & Steven Stalinsky at JWR

A Squirrel Commando attacks an Iranian offshore oil facility on behalf of his Zionist masters (Photo by AP).

The Veto Rides Again!

2007-07-12T19:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday’s failure by Vermont Democratic Party lawmakers to override a veto by their Governor cast an ominous shadow over today’s Troop Withdrawal Vote in Washington D.C. The Vermont vote was an effort by majority Democrats to slap substantial taxes on their local utilities, but they faced stiff opposition from their fellow party members. Evidently 11 Democrats felt that the CO2 Scare was not worth risking the bill’s adverse effects on Vermont’s economy or angering their constituents with higher energy bills.

So the stage was set for today’s vote in D.C. where Democrats want to set a withdrawal date for our troops in Iraq. The legislation was passed 223-201 in the House. This margin is nowhere near enough to override President Bush’s veto. Almost as importantly, the voting record has shown that the media’s focus on growing Republican opposition to President Bush was overblown. The Herald Tribune and Bloomberg both reported that only four Republicans backed the measure, three of whom co-sponsored the legislation to give it a false bi-partisan appearance. This is a common tactic which is used quite often by the Left.

Over the past week the press has been eagerly devoting massive amounts of coverage to the defection of a handful of Republicans who support a change in strategy in Iraq. The Democrats have eagerly helped promote these unbalanced news stories by getting those dissenting Republicans to co-sponsor the latest withdrawal bill.

Appearances are everything in these days of Al Qaeda and Baathist terrorism. The rhetoric is so high that the media ignores the fact that there is a bigger revolt in the Democratic Party than there is in the Republican Party. 10 Democrats voted against party lines and rejected the bill.

It just goes to show that it’s only a matter of what we focus on that decides popular opinion. If America united instead of fighting amongst ourselves the war would have been over already. Its not as if these years of divisive politics have occurred in a vacuum. Even the remotest corners of our planet have access to the worldwide media. Al Qaeda often cites current events like U.S. elections when releasing threatening videos and tape recordings. They know what John Kerry, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi say. It’s no secret!!! Jihadists around the world take heart from the political opportunism of the Democratic Party.

In this day and age its almost as if I cant accuse these “dissenters” of being unpatriotic because nothing short of waging civil war is considered unpatriotic. At least that means that our democracy is the strongest it has ever been. It’s amazing that we are so tolerant during wartime and I am encouraged by the greatness of our country. However, I still reserve the right to criticize these power hungry buffoons.

Year Round Patriotism

2007-07-07T19:02:00.000-07:00

I hope that everyone had a fantastic Independence Day. It would have been nice to have more time off from work to celebrate, but I have to take what I can get... So Happy 231st Birthday America!!!

Patriotism in the U.S.A.

A burning hatred for the Republican Party is a common theme that unites all of the many varieties of leftwing radicalism. Since the Republican Party emphasizes patriotism as one of its most coveted ideals, patriotism is quite often derided by the Left as “blind obedience”.

So when the Fourth of July comes around it is always time for some doublespeak about how patriotic the Left claims to be. In some cases they don’t even bother with such false pretenses and they openly find it distasteful to have to endure the popular expression of patriotism.

Such animosity leads to some wildly inaccurate evaluations of what American patriotism means. Take the Million Workers Rally speech by Dahlia Wasfi. She asserts that patriotism is “a thin veil for racism”. Only an outdated ideology of ignorance could say such a thing in the 21st Century. Ms. Wasfi even admits how uninformed her circle of close associates are by stating that, “Prior to August 2, 1990, when Saddam Hussein moved forces into Kuwait, few of my friends had ever even heard of the country Iraq.”

Fans of Where’s Waldo were disappointed with the release of “Where’s Waldo, the Million Workers Rally Edition”.

The salt on the wound is how these people pretend to support our troops. Wasfi goes on to say, “So should we support the troops? Yes, in the only way we can. Bring them home. Stop them from blowing up children. Stop them from shooting fleeing families. Stop them from murdering demonstrators practicing their freedom to assemble. Stop them from giving up their own lives in the name of Israel, oil, and powerbroker profit.”

Now if U.S. troops really practiced this scale of genocide why would anyone want to support them? Wasfi leaves no question that she believes these accusations so she is clearly lying when she says that she supports the troops. This style of Orwellian propaganda is not unique to isolated extremists like her. Rosie O’Donnell, the popular television host, recently became engaged in a controversy regarding a statement in which she argued that the U.S. is a state sponsor of terrorism.

“I’m saying if you were in Iraq, and the other country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?”

To defend herself from the fallout that resulted Rosie claimed to “support our troops”, but at the same time she continued to accuse them of committing those 655,000 murders and insisted that our “enemy are innocent civilians”.

Rosie didn’t just pull that number out of the air, she got it from the Lancet Study. This report has the dubious distinction of being released the October before every major national election since 2004. It is the Left’s favorite reference source because its numbers are drastically exaggerated more than any other organization that compiles casualty statistics of Iraqi civilians. That includes, the Iraqi Body Count (IBC), the United Nations and the Iraqi Ministry of Health (the Brookings Institution relies on statistics from IBC and the UN). One thing that all of these organizations have in common is that their statistics compile the number of deaths from suicide bombings, criminal activity and sectarian violence from militias. So in other words, these are the statistics of murders committed by America’s enemies in Iraq. They get away with blaming these deaths on America because as an occupying power we are responsible for the welfare of the Iraqi people, much like our government is responsible for the welfare of its own citizens.

It’s a rather shaky justification; but to say that every Iraqi civilian who lost their life in a car bombing by Al Qaeda, every Iraqi civilian victimized in a murder of passion and every Iraqi civilian executed by a sectarian militia … were all killed by the U.S. is 100% wrong. That’s like saying that the U.S. killed every American that lost their lives on September 11th.

…And here the circle is complete because Rosie also claims that explosives were used to bring down WTC 7. She consistently blames the U.S. for terrorism and excuses the terrorists who commit those acts, a required character flaw for all leftwing activists. In her own words she said, “Don’t fear the terrorists. They’re mothers and fathers.” What could inspire such illogical ramblings? President Bush, V.P. Cheney and many of our troops in Iraq are parents too. Why doesn’t she make excuses for them?

Just because Rosie insists that she supports the troops and gets offended when her friends don’t believe her doesn’t mean that she really supports them. Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels once stated, “If you repeat a lie often enough, it will be accepted as truth”. Rosie is familiar with the techniques of executing this theory.

Last year a small group of self-righteous Leftists gathered together for the 2nd Annual Old Time American Flag Burn in Santa Cruz. I don’t know if they’ve held one this year because I haven’t heard a peep about it. I did a quick Google check to no avail.

So this group got together in order to “share” their personal beliefs about flag burning and oh yeah… burn some flags. I wonder about the emotional maturity of those that relish such activities. It is just a spiteful act with no real substance behind it, BUT “I Still Support the Resistance” (that’s for all you Rosie fans out there!).

Seriously, I am 100% against any legislation to ban the burning of American flags. As a matter of fact when I was a young punker in the eighties I burned some flags to protest because back then it was actually illegal. We won the battle, but some day you have to grow up. There’s nothing more pathetic than a former 60s radical that still goes around burning flags while claiming that his or her rights are being taken away. Especially when the best he or she can say is that President Bush is maneuvering to steal those rights and hasn’t actually taken any away yet. So basically it’s a game of fortune telling what could happen, but hasn’t despite six and a half years of alarmist predictions.

If you want to burn a flag go ahead, its no skin off my back. However, there are people that are offended by it and I think many leftwing activists are committing such acts just to hurt those who view the flag as a sacred object. That means that flag burning can be an act of hatred. It certainly is for Islamists in the Middle East who condone acts of terrorism in the name of their religion. I wouldn’t want to replicate the actions of people like that. Yet protestors have that freedom.

In this day and age the only acts of treason that the state finds worthy of suppressing are those in which dissidents attempt to take up arms against our country, directly assist those who commit violence or commit acts of vandalism. During WWI things were different. Anarchist activist Emma Goldman spent two years in jail just for giving public speeches against the draft. After she was released she was deported back to her native Russia. Jump to 2003 and a much-changed United States is the host to massive protest rallies against the liberation of Iraq. Meanwhile Saddam’s regime tolerates no dissent, but imports Western protestors to serve as human shields.

And guess what? I say this is good. We have a healthy democracy in the middle of a war. So how can protestors bellyache about their lack of freedom? If they want to know what real oppression is like they should take a look at Germany during WWII. The White Rose, a student protest group, peacefully opposed the Nazi regime’s war effort and six of their members were beheaded in 1943 for their activism. The crime which they were executed for was the distribution of leaflets.

That is real oppression, not the fantasies of a protest movement that thinks the opposition to Islamist and Baathist fascism is unjust. If you name all of the countries of the world that have tolerated massive protest movements and activism from prominent citizens during wartime you will only be able to compile a list of Western democratic countries. Looking back since WWI the United States has only become more liberal. Even if you don’t go back that far and look back to more recent events like the Vietnam War you will still find that our country has liberally progressed by great strides.

This Fourth of July we had good reason to celebrate the greatness of our country. We must remember that it is up to us, the citizens of this noble nation, to counter the lies of our political opponents. Communists and Anarchists have the freedom to speak out and even get rich from their activism. We actually pay them to insult us with their accusations of an oppressive government. Osama Bin Laden may take this as a sign of weakness, but he is wrong. He underestimates the strength of a democratic government that is not afraid of its own citizens. The supporters of our country may have had difficulty countering the message of our totalitarian opponents, but we should not be counted out yet.

We know that our soldiers fight not just with guns. They oppose the brutality of our enemy with humanitarian aid projects. Our country is not the bloodthirsty bogeyman that our enemies are. Time and the truth will show us to be right.

Our political opponents have no faith in our country. They harbor totalitarian attitudes that make them think that if their will is not fully embraced by the entire country then something is wrong with it. I leave you with the parting words of Cindy Sheehan, an activist that never appreciated our values and gave comfort to totalitarian regimes by visiting Cuba and Venezuela. From there she denounced our country’s human rights, but never spoke out against the massive attacks on civil liberties by her host countries.

“Good-bye America…you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.”

I love this country, but I am not so arrogant that I demand that the will of the majority must match my beliefs 100%, nor do I demand that our country must do exactly as I say before I give it my love. I believe in the greatness of our people and because of that I feel in my heart that we will prevail in this current conflict. Iraq will be free!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The bottom line is that it is easier to destroy than it is to create...

Zarqawi Revisited

2007-06-13T17:12:00.000-07:00

One year ago last week on June 7, 2006 the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a U.S. air strike. Unfortunately Al Qaeda didn’t have to scratch up a publicity campaign in order to perform damage control. No… they had the luxury of relying on Western Liberals to do it for them.

There was a flurry of articles stating that the insurgency would not suffer from this loss and some even claimed that the insurgency would actually be invigorated by the death of its most prominent figure. Such sentiment was echoed by political hacks like the culture critic at the Washington Post, Philip Kennicott. In addition to his optimism that the insurgency could benefit from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s “martyrdom”, Kennicott cried foul because he was worried that the death of Zarqawi was being politicized by our government. Yet Kennicott ignores his own politicization of the event. Furthermore, he doesn’t bother to consider that during times of war our government has the right to promote such victories in order to support our troops in the field … At least as much as he has a right to harangue his readers in an effort to undermine the hard work that our troops put into tracking down Zarqawi.

The government was only doing its job by congratulating our troops on a job well done. In times of war this is not unprecedented. Take for instance the Doolittle Raid which was conducted on April 18th, 1942 at the low point of the American war effort against the Japanese Empire. Shortly after this raid the fortress of Corregidor fell and the Japanese conquest of the Philippines was completed. Basically the raid was militarily insignificant because it failed to cause any lasting damage and was not immediately followed up by more air raids. However, it was a propaganda triumph since it marked the first time that the U.S. successfully bombed the Japanese home islands. Our government zealously used the raid to promote its efforts against our enemies and our current government could hardly be blamed for doing the same in the case of Zarqawi’s death. If any motives should be suspect it should be of those Americans who criticize the promotion of a military success that benefits our troops in Iraq and instead explores every possible avenue to spread propaganda against them.

I am not saying that the freedom of speech for such activists should be curtailed in any way. I am merely making the observation that their accusations should be put into proper context and I hope that my own freedom to criticize them in turn is respected as well. Freedom of Speech needs to be a two-way street.

An article in the NYC newspaper, The Indypendent, highlights the extremes that self-professed Advocacy Journalists or Alternative Journalists would go to spin Zarqawi’s death. One of The Indypendent’s writers by the name of A.K. Gupta declared, “…Bush Administration policies promoting sectarianism and death squads also ensure the fighting will continue…”

In a calculated gesture of misinformation Gupta breezes by Al Qaeda’s dependence on sectarian violence and blames President Bush for it. The real source of the current violence should not be glossed over so quickly. Zarqawi championed the complete elimination of the Shia. Two months before his death Zarqawi issued a recorded statement which dictated that, “The Muslims will have no victory or superiority over the aggressive infidels such as the Jews and the Christians until there is a total annihilation of those under them such as the apostate agents headed by the rafidha (Shiites)…” So Zarqawi actually viewed the Shia as a worse enemy than the United States!!! He was rather direct on this point, “The danger from the Shia… is greater and their damage is worse and more destructive to the (Islamic) nation than the Americans… we will hurt them, God willing, through martyrdom operations and car bombs.”

Zarqawi’s words were backed up by a campaign of mass murder that was orchestrated to spark all out war between the Sunnis and Shiites. In March 2004 he was responsible for attacks on Shia shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, which killed over 180 people. In December 2004 he masterminded car bomb attacks against Shiites in Najaf and Karbala, claiming over 60 lives. In addition to many other sectarian attacks he is also believed to be responsible for the bombing of the Golden Mosque in early 2006, which finally succeeded in instigating all out sectarian warfare between the Sunni and Shia. After Zarqawi’s death Al Qaeda continued to use the same sectarian tactics. Just today the Golden Mosque was attacked once again. Sectarian warfare is clearly the policy of the Sunni insurgency and they benefit the most from the instability that it causes.

The Indypendent article was so biased that it actually echoed Al Qaeda propaganda by stating that Zarqawi’s death was a boon for his supporters. Gupta pronounced, “Not that everything is lost for Zarqawi’s followers. Now they have a new martyr to rally around.” It was a very similar tone to a statement published on an Al Qaeda website stating, “We announce the martyr death of our sheikh, fighter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. (His death will) only reinforce our determination to pursue jihad so that the word of Allah gains the upper hand.” (Only the religious fervor is missing from the Indypendent’s article.)

Despite their cheerleading, the Indypendent is not consciously on Al Qaeda’s side. They just harbor a pathological aversion to President Bush. So they fail to ponder the fact that their staunch opposition to the U.S. –in combination with– their silence against the brutal methodology behind terrorism is as charitable as donating weapons or money to Al Qaeda. It’s actually worse because weapons and money are only the means by which Al Qaeda seeks to achieve its goal of generating such media stories. The success of their manipulation of the media only encourages more brutal attacks against innocent civilians because it makes such violence a much more valuable commodity.

These news stories are vital to terrorists because they cannot raise an army large enough to defeat an enemy like the United States. They can only hope to break the will of their opponent’s civilian population to support its war effort and shift the blame for their own violence to their enemies. Ever since World War I warring armies have gained a greater appreciation for the value of propaganda. No one understands this better than modern-day terrorists. They actually wage war with the intent of using it for propaganda and don’t use the traditional model of promoting propaganda to support their war effort.

Unfortunately the Indypendent willingly follows the path laid out for them since they actually train future generations of journalists to corrupt their writing. The newspaper holds weekend-long workshops on journalism that teaches its students to assume a one-sided bias in order to discredit the establishment that they hate so much (Al Qaeda is not a part of the establishment so they don’t warrant a second glance, unless it embarrasses the Bush Administration.)

In a discussion of these workshops they addressed their students’ concerns about objectivity in the media. While they make a good point that accuracy is one of the most important aspects of journalism, the workshop goes on to promote political activism as a higher virtue than objectivity. Editor John Tarleton stated, “…we shouldn’t forget that power tends to corrupt and that those who hold power and wealth will often abuse it while trying to conceal or spin their activities. What we’re striving to do is tell the story of the world around us from the bottom-up instead of with the usual top-down perspective of the giant media corporations.” Interesting enough, earlier in the linked article Tarleton had also cited ‘open-mindedness’ as another important aspect of journalism, but judging from the previous comment he has already made up his mind about what to write before starting any story. ‘Open-mindedness’ in this case is complete agreement with his activism against the alleged conspiracies of a conniving upper class.

The leading intellectual of this school of thought is Noam Chomsky. His idea of media bias was the accusation that the Cambodian dictatorship of Pol Pot was unfairly criticized due to the alleged anti-Communist sentiment of the media. The opposite was true. Chomsky defended the Khmer Rouge because of his anti-American bias. Under Pol Pot the Khmer Rouge exterminated an estimated one to three million Cambodians. So in recent times it is not surprising that he is also a leading critic of the Iraqi reconstruction. He consistently takes the side of America’s enemies no matter how reprehensible they may be.

The prevalence of such a strong leftwing bias against the US government led to a hysterical reaction to Zarqawi’s death. Take Michael Berg for example. He is the father of Nicholas Berg, an American civilian who was believed to have been personally beheaded by Zarqawi. Although his son was killed by Al Qaeda, Michael Berg blamed President Bush for his son’s death.

Even before his son’s killer finally paid for his crimes Michael Berg displayed a bizarre sympathy towards Al Qaeda that was akin to something like Stockholm Syndrome. In the wake of his son’s death he said, “I am sure that he (Nicholas Berg) only saw the good in his captors until the last second of his life. They did not know what they were doing. They killed their best friend.” Such cloudy reasoning could have been attributed to Michael Berg’s grief, but it is also consistent with his statements made years later after he had time to reflect.

During this time Michael Berg rarely condemned Zarqawi, instead he reserved almost all of his bitterness towards our President, who he insisted was as bad as or worse than Zarqawi. This was his reaction to Zarqawi’s death in an interview video taped by CNN’s Mary Snow;

“I think it is a tragedy when any human being dies, but Zarqawi’s doubly because Zarqawi, aside from being someone’s son who is now going to suffer what my family suffered, he is also a political figure. And he and George Bush are involved in this cycle of revenge and revenge begets revenge… I think that one is cowardly. The man in the oval office doesn’t look at his victims when he kills them…”

When challenged if he thought that the murder of his son by Zarqawi was a brave act Michael Berg responded, “No I’m not saying that Zarqawi committed a brave act, I abhor what he did, I’m just saying that he looked into Nick’s eyes when he killed him.”

Wow! ... There is a serious lack of context in Michael Berg’s reasoning here. Whether he intends to or not he gives credit to Zarqawi for not being a ‘coward’, as he accuses President Bush of. He also gives Zarqawi a small measure of legitimacy by saying that he was “a political figure”. Did Zarqawi run for election? How can a terrorist be elevated to an equal or even higher level than an elected official that is the legal representative of his people?

This derangement is the result of a propaganda echo chamber that elevates the hatred of our President into a fever pitch. Michael Berg tortures himself with his political activism and this is no way to mourn such a loss. The whole situation is actually a best case scenario for his son’s killers and it is no mystery as to why they chose the tactics that they do. For the most part, terrorism increases because these tactics are so effective against its target audience, Western Liberals. That’s why in victory or defeat Al Qaeda could count on their message to be echoed by Western Liberals and filtered out to the media.

Let’s take another look at Michael Berg’s reaction to Zarqawi’s death. He added, “…My feelings this morning are feelings of sorrow for the loss of yet another human being. I know he’s the one that is supposed to have killed my son, but I have learned to forgive a long time ago and I regret mostly that his death will bring about another wave of revenge from his cohorts in Al Qaeda.”

Why does Michael Berg continually forgive the terrorist who killed his son and yet refuse to forgive President Bush who did not commit the murder? Pacifism and loving forgiveness are some of the highest human traits that makes us a more advanced species than any other creature on this planet. However, there is no love in this forgiveness, only spite for President Bush. I understand that leftwing activists believe the President to be a “liar” and a “warmonger”, but is beheading an innocent civilian the measure of honesty or bravery? Zarqawi was a terrorist before Bush became president, why does he deserve forgiveness and Bush doesn’t?

Anyways, we’ve examined how the Washington Post, The Indypendent and Michael Berg have exhausted every argument to convince the public that Zarqawi’s death wouldn’t make a difference or could actually benefit Al Qaeda. … But is there any truth to these claims?

Iraq is certainly as violent as ever so in one crucial aspect it could be said that maybe they are right… However, there have been some dramatic developments over the year and the death of Zarqawi was an essential ingredient that enabled an important shift in the composition of the counterinsurgency.

Up until Zarqawi’s death the terrorist mastermind was consolidating the insurgency under his leadership. Even in the wake of his worst defeat, the Battle of Fallujah, two Iraqi insurgent groups joined forces with Zarqawi, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army and the Islamic Army in Iraq. Through his adept hand at using the latest technology to promote his propaganda, his fearsome brutality, his ability to elude capture and the perception that he crafted of an effortless transfer of his terrorist operations to Ramadi - Zarqawi pervaded a superhuman aura that magnetized the insurgency around him.

A year before his death U.S. military intelligence revealed that Zarqawi commanded thousands of fighters from various rival groups and dominated the smaller resistance groups in the pivotal city of Ramadi. A resident of the city related the following; “His men announced through leaflets that all Shia should leave Ramadi or face ‘the iron fist’. At first local Sunnis didn’t want anything to do with it, but they know how powerful Zarqawi’s group is, that it doesn’t hesitate to kill and is not afraid to die. They control Ramadi now. They have the best weapons and the most money, and more and more men. They walk openly on the streets when the Americans aren’t around. So the Shias left, by their thousands.”

In order to counter Zarqawi’s hold on Ramadi American commanders held meetings with local Sheiks in November of 2005. Although the Sheiks were enthusiastic about American proposals for cooperation, Zarqawi squashed the potential alliance in a fit of violence.

However, in the aftermath of Zarqawi’s death Al Qaeda lost its momentum. There was a short spike in violence, but something was dramatically different. Al Qaeda in Iraq seemed directionless. A website frequently used by Islamic militants announced that a little known terrorist named Sheikh Abu Hamza al Muhajir was appointed as Zarqawi’s replacement. This led to a stir of confusion by terrorist experts. The U.S. military came to the conclusion that al Muhajir was actually an alias for Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an experienced associate of Zarqawi who based his operations in Iraq even before the ouster of Saddam in 2003. Egyptian lawyer, Muntasir al-Zayyat, claims that the person identified as al-Masri is really a fellow Egyptian named Yusif al-Dardiri.

Whatever the identity of al Muhajir may be, Al Qaeda could not handle the disarray that they added to the mix when a video by a spokesman of its Islamic State of Iraq announced that al Muhajir was only the Minister of War in the “cabinet” of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. Al-Masri then pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi in a muddy succession that failed to impress anyone. Clearly both parties are not as strong willed as Zarqawi and cannot live up to the legacy of their predecessor. This demonstrates that Al Qaeda in Iraq has lost much of its flair for propaganda. Most Americans don’t even know the name of any Al Qaeda operative in the country anymore. Despite claims that al-Masri was killed early this spring, the terrorist has failed to personally issue a message of denial. While it looks like the claim might have been false, it is telling that while Al Qaeda has denied his death they were only able to scrounge up an old audio tape of al-Masri which denies that there is infighting between the Sunnis and Al Qaeda, but doesn’t even mention claims of his death. It is an uncharacteristic for Al Qaeda to be so defensive and not to seize upon an opportunity to drum up some valuable press by releasing a mocking video or audio tape that the Western media would have fallen over themselves to cover. The authoritative guidance of Zarqawi is clearly missing and it shows. Iraqi Sunnis have taken notice.

[The announcement of Al Qaeda’s “Islamic State of Iraq” was a comically pathetic attempt to look sophisticated. Even the well funded terrorist organization could have afforded a lot more than just an empty desk and a flat screen monitor with speakers…]

Earlier I mentioned that Zarqawi had scored some successes in Ramadi. He kicked out a large portion of the Shiite population and dominated the local Iraqi police force. If it wasn’t for the presence of American troops he would have seized complete control over the city just like he did in Fallujah. However, since his death things have dramatically changed.

In response to Zarqawi’s brutal campaign in Ramadi U.S. Army Col. Sean MacFarland began to implement aggressive new tactics in the city. He started to establish combat outposts deep in Al Qaeda strongholds. These outposts were so strongly defended that Al Qaeda couldn’t remove them, putting a serious dent in their over-inflated reputation. The new stations enabled our troops to directly support our Sunni allies where they needed it. So when Al Qaeda’s attacks against these outposts failed they focused their attacks once again on pro-American Iraqis. In an attempt to replicate the decisiveness of Zarqawi’s thuggery his successors made a huge mistake by killing a Ramadi Sheik and not allowing the family to bury him for four days. This event was the catalyst of a sustained Sunni revolt against Al Qaeda. The formation of the Anbar Salvation Council went mostly unnoticed when it began operations against Al Qaeda only a few months after the death of Zarqawi (in September of 2006).

The organization is headquartered in Ramadi and was founded by a prominent Sunni Sheik, Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi. He was a former member of the secular neo-Baathist insurgent group Al-Awda and had actually been imprisoned several times by the Americans. The Anbar Salvation Council has since pushed Al Qaeda out of Ramadi and most of the Anbar province. To prevent Al Qaeda from re-entering the city Ramadi police have had to set up a screen of checkpoints on its outskirts because the terrorists have been retaliating by sending suicide bombers from their remaining pockets in Anbar and other Iraqi provinces. In Western Ramadi U.S. troops haven’t experienced a single death in four months and have had only one serious injury during that time. Only the eastern portion of the city has a few insurgent holdouts.

By May of 2006 the whole city of Ramadi had 254 attacks total, but during the same months in 2007 there have only been 30 (and U.S. troops didn’t win control over the city until March). For all of 2006 only 1,000 Iraqis volunteered for the Iraqi Security Forces in the entire Anbar Province, however, since the beginning of 2007 over 12,000 Iraqi citizens have volunteered. These developments were significant because the 2004 U.S. victory in Fallujah created an exodus of fighters to Ramadi and the city became the new capital of the insurgency. The loss of another base of operations is a major blow to Al Qaeda.

The stakes are high so any American success story is guaranteed a chorus of naysayers. Last year Common Dreams featured an article about Ramadi that was originally published by the L.A. Times. They reported, “The death last week of Jordanian-born terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi may have dealt a psychological blow to the Iraq insurgency, but it is not expected to dent the destabilizing power of anti-American guerrillas in Al Anbar.”

Such activists found the Holy Grail in a classified intelligence report entitled, “State of the Insurgency in Al-Anbar”. It was partially leaked in late 2006. This was only a few months before the unraveling of Al Qaeda in the Anbar province and just in time for the November elections. Although the details of the report were not publicly revealed because the report was top secret, the media and “antiwar” movement seized upon it as evidence of the failure of American policy in Iraq.

Here is an excerpt of the report printed by the Washington Post; “Al-Qaeda itself, now an ‘integral part of the social fabric of western Iraq’, has become so entrenched, autonomous and financially independent that U.S. forces no longer have the option ‘for a decapitating strike that would cripple the organization’, the report says. That is why, it says, the death of al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June ‘had so little impact on the structure and capabilities of al-Qaeda’, especially in Anbar province.”

Incredibly, an NBC News correspondent (Jim Miklaszewski) used the report to chase a reporter’s pipedream to be the first to announce a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq (or at least a partial withdrawal). Miklaszewski creatively added his own interpretation of the situation by stating, “The top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday there has been some military and economic progress in Anbar, but for the first time, it appears the U.S. military is preparing to concede a large piece of Iraq to the enemy and leave it entirely to the Iraqis to eventually sort it out.” If you look at the source of the quote you will see that it was made by Marine Major General Richard C. Zilmer, who was a regional commander in the province and not the top commander in Iraq as Miklaszewski erroneously states. It should also be pointed out that Zilmer never mentioned any preparation to evacuate his command so the second half of the sentence is a complete fabrication. As General Zilmer said earlier in the article, “Recent media reports fail to accurately capture the entirety and complexity of the current situation”. The NBC article shows that the general was being too generous in his assessment.

In the linked Washington Post article above there is also a video interview with Thomas Ricks, a reporter for the Post who sums up what he claims to be the Pentagon’s views on the state of Iraq. Basically his news brief is on par with what you would expect from a junior high school social studies report. I would be extremely disturbed if Ricks did not misrepresent the Pentagon by either quoting those that are not in a position to represent the agency or if he merely used his own artistic license to craft their words into his own. I can grudgingly live with activist journalists, but our military leaders should be free from this kind of political maneuvering.

When asked if the Pentagon agrees with President Bush’s assessment that Al Qaeda has fomented the sectarian violence in Iraq through their brutal attacks against the Shiites, Ricks goes off the board. He concludes that, “the Pentagon analysis definitely says that the roadside bombs which are the main killer of American troops are not an Al Qaeda operation and tend to be Iraqi insurgents”. What the hell does roadside bombs that target Americans have to do with sectarian violence in Iraq? This is clearly an argument built upon political activism. If we were talking about sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims then Ricks (or whoever he is quoting, if he didn’t take their stance out of context) would at least have some evidence that is almost relevant to justify such a stance. The reality is that insurgent IED Attacks on American troops do not contribute in any appreciable manner to the sectarian violence that is plaguing the Sunnis and Shiites. This is just shoddy reporting.

The news brief just gets worse from here. Ricks is then asked if the Pentagon has a strategy for dealing with the problematic Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. So he launches into a rant about how powerful the Pentagon believes that Al-Sadr is becoming. Ricks went as far as to say that, “He (Al-Sadr) now has an armed force of between 40 to 60,000 which makes him probably a much more effective military force than the Iraqi government itself...”

In times of war most intelligent military leaders typically attempt to intimidate their enemies and motivate their support base by exaggerating the capabilities of their forces. In modern times America’s enemies are relieved of such pursuits because the American media will invariably engage in such propaganda on their behalf.

At the time of Rick’s report there were about 319,000 trained and equipped Iraqi Security Forces (now there are about 350,000). While the quality of these recruits can legitimately be challenged, the performance of Al Sadr’s militia has proven them to be of the lowest quality. The Mahdi Army draws its recruits from Iraq’s poorest slums and in many cases their militia members have been sent into battle barefooted and under equipped. Most importantly they have failed in every major military objective. Al Sadr’s militia has only been able to score any success when they have significantly outnumbered their enemies. In any case, having almost 300,000 less fighters than the government hardly gives the militia military superiority over the Iraqi government. (Which is also allied to the powerful Coalition forces. That’s another 100,000+ troops with heavy armor and airpower.) This analysis reeks of the biased ignorance that could be expected from a journalist with an agenda. Actually I can’t see how such an incorrect evaluation could be labeled as an analysis. It is clearly nothing but propaganda.

Anyways, the NBC reporter that was interviewing Ricks had to interrupt him because he was not addressing the question. So he rephrased it by saying, “Its one thing for the Pentagon to have an assessment about the capability of Muqtada al-Sadr, but do they have a plan for dealing with it?” You just have to watch the video to believe Ricks’ answer.

He said;

“I don’t think that they really do. Their plan is… the political people should come up with a political compromise that takes care of Muqtada al-Sadr. But I think there’s kind of a despair of that they don’t see that happening and so I was really surprised when I was doing this interview at the Pentagon that what was said was WE PROBABLY SHOULD ABANDON THE POLICY OF RECONCILIATION, of trying to get the Sunnis and the Shiites to sit down together and really throw in our lot with the Shiites and the feeling was that’s the way we might diffuse Muqtada al-Sadr and make him more of a political act and less than a military one.”

Ricks claimed that this statement came from a top Pentagon official. He continued by saying this official insisted that, “We tried reconciliation now for several years, it hasn’t worked, we should tell the Shiites OK you have the country you’re in control. He said yes, the Sunnis will probably walk out at that point and we are going to have to pay that price and just say OK it didn’t work. The Shiites are now in control of this country and then he said double the size of the Iraqi army and police and hire every Shiite you can find and create a Shiite Kurdish military. He said this is a prospect the Sunnis aren’t going to like, but this is a situation the Sunnis have now created.”

I would love to know who this mysterious top Pentagon official is. When such buffoons look at Iraq they don’t see anything except President Bush. As a high ranking defense official this person has access to more detailed data on Iraq than anyone else on the planet, yet he or she has lost the ability to interpret this information rationally (if this person actually exists).

The biggest problem the U.S. has had in the Sunni provinces of Iraq is the extreme difficulty to set up effective police forces. In areas with active insurgents Sunnis are reluctant to volunteer so Shiites and Kurds fill in. As outsiders they are resented by the local population and they are not familiar with the people or territory they patrol. To add to the mix, Shiite policemen have been accused of sectarian violence against Sunnis. The premise that the complete subjugation of the Sunni is the only way to subdue the insurgency is laughable. This short-sided fix is a recipe for a permanent insurgency with no hope for reconciliation. Well… it’s actually against reconciliation! This is typical of the wisdom of those who think they have a better plan.

While Ricks is cautious and claims that he is only the messenger, I have seen him use this ploy before. He clearly sees this as a more desirable strategy than reconciliation because he said, “I think they’re both (the Pentagon and the ISG) looking at that kind of radical changes in our posture in Iraq to try to do one last best chance at getting this right”. As he finishes that sentence the screen ominously flashes a text message saying that, “Sunnis Comprise the Overwhelming Majority of the Muslim World”. Due to the fact that the ISG Report or any Pentagon Report that I’ve seen hasn’t released such a drastic recommendation like the scenario Ricks produced I am all the more curious about Ricks’ unidentified source.

Such activist journalism has ensured that the legacy of Zarqawi’s death is not fully appreciated by the general public. I do not make this point to prove that the U.S. has won the war, but that the death of Zarqawi was a legitimate U.S. victory.

This must be pointed out because there is an established pattern here. Every notable U.S. victory like the referendum on a new Iraqi Constitution, the election of Iraq’s first truly democratic government, the capture of Saddam Hussein, the killing of Zarqawi and military successes like Fallujah, Najaf and Ramadi are all undermined as much as possible. This is not only true about radical activists and the Democrats, but in the media as well.

On the flipside U.S. setbacks are exaggerated through fabrications and misinformation. Data is continually held out of context. Body counts are repeated over and over and artificial milestones are proclaimed as much as possible. Yet figures like these are virtually ignored…

Pentagon Press Brief May 31, 2007

(Operational Results in Iraq since January 15th, 2007)

29 Car/Truck bomb factories neutralized

6 IED Cells dismantled

17,946 Detained

3,184 Enemy killed (A figure that is higher than the total number of U.S. military personnel Killed in Action since March 2003. As of June 8, 2007 the total of U.S. soldiers KIA was at 2,864. The other 627 died of other causes.)

Over 1,700 High Value Targets (291 killed, 1,499 detained)

2,493 Caches found and cleared

The naysayers said that nothing good would come from Zarqawi’s death, but back in Ramadi Colonel Sean MacFarland knew otherwise. He said that, “When a tribe ‘flipped’, attacks on U.S. soldiers and Marines in that area dropped to zero almost immediately”. This was not possible when Zarqawi was alive.

Under Zarqawi’s Mujahideen Shura Council the Anbar Province was dominated by Al Qaeda. With his death their aura of invincibility was cracked and the tribes rebelled. The Abu Risha tribe was the first to reject Al Qaeda’s self proclaimed sovereignty over its self declared Islamic State. The resentment of these foreigners declaring their own country in Iraq was enough to jump start the dissent. Al Qaeda’s harsh reaction to this dissent led to outright warfare not only with the tribes, but with Sunni insurgent groups as well.

A slow trickle of infighting has led to full scale war. Sunni insurgent groups like Jaysh Mohammed, 1920 Revolution Brigade, Iraqi Armed Forces, The Al-Awda Party and The Islamic Army have turned against Al Qaeda in bitter fighting (a truce between The Islamic Army and Al Qaeda was recently declared, but it is unclear if it is holding.). Former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, tried his hand at getting Sunni insurgent groups to cooperate against Al Qaeda last year, but had no success. We have finally been able to win some cooperation now that Zarqawi is gone. Without his leadership Al Qaeda has made some major mistakes like the declaration of its own state and its inability to continue their brutal treatment of civilians, just as Zarqawi was able to do, without completely alienating a large block of their Sunni supporters.

Not long ago it was unthinkable to imagine Sunni insurgents joining forces with U.S. soldiers. Yet they have banding together to wrestle control of the Sunni neighborhood of Amiriyah in Baghdad. Fighters from the 1920 Revolution Brigade and the Islamic Army in Iraq have waged all out warfare against Al Qaeda. They are being supplied by the Americans and are actually patrolling side by side with them as well. Even just as important was the fact that at least two Imams who were previously against the American presence in Iraq have agreed to cooperate with U.S. forces. Such clerics are crucial for winning local support of the population and chipping away at the terrorists’ support base.

It has been called by some a bargain with the devil or a gamble that could backfire. I have even heard some say that the U.S. is just creating new militias when that is the last thing we need. However, if these ‘militiamen’ are currently organized into insurgent groups that kill Americans, isn’t it better to turn them into pro-American militias instead?

Throughout this post I have torn into the press coverage of Iraq, but I must admit that we need the media. It is a complex situation. On one hand their inaccuracies and biased reporting must be addressed. Then again it is a mistake to needlessly alienate the press. That’s why the use of the terms like MSM and Old Media has always disturbed me. Not that it is morally wrong or anything of the sort. It’s just that I feel that if you denounce the press you should use specific examples of why you feel that way. Showing such hostility doesn’t do any good since we can’t compete with the sensational headlines that Al Qaeda’s brutal terrorism creates.

Civilization could fall before such tactics unless we can win the battle of perception. We need to check our own perceptions first…

There are some who say that there are no moderate Muslims in these days of Jihad. They should look to President Bush’s trip to Albania. He went there looking for Muslim allies and got mobbed by adoring crowds. When the President called for the independence of Kosovo he got out the message that America is not against Muslims.

In Iraq our policy of reconciliation is finally showing some signs of success. The secular nature of their society is rejecting Al Qaeda’s fundamentalism. Christian America needs to embrace the idea of working with Muslim Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites, Turkmen and the neighboring Kuwaitis… If a working relationship is not nurtured with them then it will spell disaster for all of us.