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Saturday, April 25, 2009
STEYN OF THE WEEKENDA doubleshot...
From his 23 April appearence on the Hugh Hewitt Show:
HEWITT: ...Today in the New York Times, there are these two sentences: “Mr.
Obama and his allies need to discredit the techniques he has banned. Otherwise, in the event of a future terrorist attack,
critics may blame his decision to rein in CIA interrogators.” There, Mark Steyn, is the whole explanation for the witch
hunt he has launched this week.
STEYN: Yes, I think that’s likely to happen. I think given that we’re
now, we’ve reset the clock to September the 10th. We’re now in a world of legalism. In fact, it’s
worse than September 10th, because if you look at some of the decisions that are being taken, we’re effectively
extending the protections of the United States Constitution to people who are foreign nationals in foreign countries who’ve
never set foot in this country. I think that’s a disaster, but I think you’re right that in a sense, discrediting,
discrediting the Bush approach, which has kept America safe for eight years now, I think that has to be part of the calculation
just in terms of political protection down the road.
Mr. Steyn commenting on John McCain's Napolitano-esqe comment that some of the 9/11 hijackers did come across the Canadian
border:
In its way, this is worse than Secretary Napolitano. The war on terror is supposed
to be McCain's area of expertise.
As readers well know, I'm all for taking the slightest opportunity to
blame Canada, but this is pathetic: The 9/11 killers filled in joke paperwork issued by the US State Department and were waived
through US immigration by US officials: No Canadians were involved, only the government of the United States. Three thousand
Americans died as a result of the federal bureaucracy's Saudi Visa Express service, but the nation's most senior politicians
can't be bothered apprising themselves of this basic fact.
This is what happens when you take what are meant
to be "citizen-legislators" and bulk them up with a retinue larger than the average Gulf emir. Half these guys are
hopeless when they're off the cue cards, but, even by those standards, this is embarrassing: We're talking about a
basic fact about the defining event of the last decade - and McCain can't even be bothered getting that right.
25 apr 09 @ 5:57 pm edt
WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' HONOR!Over at The American Spectator, Joseph Shattan comments that
Barack The Unready's actions such as shaking hands with Maximum Leader Chavez and bowing to the Saudi Tyrant-King 'demonstrates
that the honor of the United States is not something that matters very much to him. And that is a very bad and dangerous thing'.
He elaborates:
Charles de Gaulle famously observed that "states are cold-blooded
monsters" -- but de Gaulle was only half-correct. What redeems states from total monstrosity is their sense of honor.
An "honorable" state is very touchy about its sovereignty, its good name, and the treatment of its citizens abroad,
but it also follows through on commitments to friends and allies -- even when doing so is inconvenient -- because not doing
so would be "dishonorable." A head of state without a sense of honor is also unlikely to have a sense of dishonor,
and is therefore more likely to behave dishonorably -- to betray allies and renege on his promises -- in an hour of crisis.
...
An American President imbued with a proper sense of the honor and dignity of his country would not
shake hands with a leader like Hugo Chavez, who said, on the day after 9/11, that "the United States brought the attacks
upon itself, for their arrogant and imperialist foreign policy." An American President imbued with a proper sense of
the honor and dignity of his country would not bow to a feudal despot whose kingdom's vast financial resources and intransigent
brand of Islam provide much of the impetus for Islamist terrorism. And a President with a proper sense of the honor and dignity
of his country would realize that his every word and every gesture is carefully scrutinized both by America's friends
(who want to know whether he can be trusted to honor America's commitments) and America's enemies (who want to know
how much they can get away with, before encountering resistance).
As I've said before: our enemies enjoy
feasting on our weaknesses. President Obama not only has no honor, he has no shame. I've seen no
evidence in his actions that he believes America before his advent is worthy of honoring or its history defending. He
considers himself a Citizen Of The World. WWU-AMerica
Please take the time to click here and read the full article.
25 apr 09 @ 5:35 pm edt
WISDOM FROM BEYOND THE GRAVEWhile many of us have been trying to understand the implications of the release
of the so-called 'torture' memos, thankfully, Michael Ledeen has taken out his Ouija Board and contacted the late
James Jesus Angleton, one-time head of CIA Counterintelligence. A highlight from their conversation:
ML: “But still, I have a lot of sympathy for the people after 9/11 who had to deal with a
real Hobson’s Choice: we could either do nasty things that we didn’t much like, or we could work more slowly and
hope we weren’t blown up in the meantime.”
JJA: “Sure, one understands those things, and Obama’s
total lack of comprehension of the existential dilemmas faced by the intel people is very discouraging. He was right
when he said that all these things were behind us, and we should concentrate on the future. But he didn’t do that.
He humiliated the people who were, after all, assured that waterboarding and so forth were perfectly legal, and then he even
hinted that those people might be prosecuted. There’s really no excuse for that. It shows you don’t
value your intelligence agency.”
ML: “I think it’s worse than that. Obama wanted to portray
his predecessors as totally evil, and so he edited a memo on the subject from Admiral Blair. The memo noted that the
harsh methods had ‘worked,’ and had probably saved American lives. But those words were censored.
So there was a deliberate attempt to deceive the public, by portraying the Agency’s behavior as unadulterated evil.”
JJA: “Quite. It’s Carter all over again. I wonder if Obama’s going to have Panetta do
the same thing Carter had Stansfield Turner do: purge the most experienced people from CIA, and promote the newbies, who don’t
know enough to protect us effectively.”
ML: “Well, time will tell.”
JJA: “That’s
just what worries me.”
Me too. If you're the praying type, I would.
Please take the time to click here and read the full conversation.
25 apr 09 @ 5:20 pm edt
BHO'S MOST WANTEDBased on the criteria set forth in the DHS Assessment, Republican Representative Thaddeus McCotter has devised the Top Ten Most Wanted Potential Right-Wing Extremist/Terrorist
List. Here are three:
1. George Washington, a.k.a. "The Father
of Our Country" (Person of Interest): Avowed revolutionary; decommissioned veteran; commander of militia and other armed
forces; Second Amendment zealot and gun owner; alleged murderer and war criminal in the British and French Imperial War of
Empire (North American Theater); racist.
5. Joseph, a.k.a., "Chief Joseph," a.k.a. "Thunder Coming
Up Over the Land From the Water," a.k.a. "In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat" (Person of Interest): Commander of insurrectionary
militia; gun owner; anti-federal government extremist; private property and local rights zealot; inhabitant of a heavily armed
compound; suspected persecution complex.
9. Ronald Wilson Reagan, a.k.a. "Dutch", a.k.a. "The Gipper"
(Person of Interest): Decommissioned veteran; former commander in chief of militia units and other armed forces; religious
and Second Amendment zealot; gun owner; anti-government, "states rights," and anti-reproductive rights extremist;
alleged murderer; suspected international war criminal; suspected racist; rumored architect and leader of the "Vast Right-Wing
Conspiracy" (VRWC).
None of the ten have been labeled as such by the Administration as of yet.
But, don't worry: we're just a scant 100 days into the Year Zero; there's plenty of time. Eventually they
will get around to it—probably on one of his future foreign trips.
Please take the time to click here and see the full list.
25 apr 09 @ 5:11 pm edt
FASCISTS ON THE MARCH!If you needed anymore proof that our Fearless Leader is assembling the most
radically Leftist Administration in American history...
L.A. Times'scolumnist and law professor
Rosa Brooks has been appointed to be advisor to Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michelle Fluornoy. Over at Pajamas
Media, Ryan Mauro catalogues her positions. They are as offensive as they are ignorant as they are radical.
A highlight:
...On more than one occasion, she's questioned the sanity of President
Bush, hardly the tone of respect President Obama sought to bring to today's "broken politics." In her piece
titled " Straightjacket Bush," Brooks says that the president and vice president should "be treated like psychotics
who need treatment."
Even more alarming are her stances
on important national security issues. She opposed the surge, which she says "someday the history books will have harsh
words" for. She also charges the Bush administration with exaggerating the threat from al-Qaeda. "At the time, most
experts say, this description of al-Qaeda simply wasn't true. It was little more than an obscure group of extremist thugs,
well financed and intermittently lethal but relatively limited in their global and regional political pull. On 9/11, they
got lucky," she writes.
Brooks clearly does not see the
horrid event as the culmination of a failed approach to a gathering threat, but an occurrence based on chance. Now, "al-Qaeda
has become the vast global threat the administration imagined it to be in 2001," she says, owing it to the neocon administration's
warped reality.
There's more and its just as bad.
To think that this fool will be walking the corridors of the Pantagon, side-by-side with those who have sacrificed much by
putting on the uniform of this country. It makes one sick at heart.
Please take the time to click here and read the full article.
25 apr 09 @ 4:54 pm edt
KEEP YOU FILTHY PAWS OFF ME...I posted yesterday about Don Obamleone's meeting with the heads of the
credit card companies earlier this week [please click here to read that posting] wherein our Capo Di Tutti Capi ordered them around. What our beloved Obamafather forgot was (1) this is still America
and (2) the CEO's are not indentured servants. You back someone up against a wall and they'll defend themselves
anyway they can. From Kaja Whitehouse, over at the New York Post, we learn:
Washington's crackdown on credit-card issuers could end up hurting consumers more than banks.
That's
because credit-card issuers like American Express and Citigroup are expected to jack up rates across the board in anticipation of rules that aim to stop
them from arbitrarily raising rates and using other tactics that legislators call abusive.
"Back in the day,
all the credit cards charged 19.9 percent. There was no such thing as risk-based pricing," said Bruce Harting, who researches
credit-card companies for Barclays Capital. "My fear is that the unintended consequence of this legislation is going to
bring the industry back to 19.9 percent pricing."
Every kind of credit card holder, no matter how responsible,
will get whacked and all because the thugs in the White House and the Congress, think they have the right to tell
these companies how to conduct their businesses. I don't like the fact that the interest rates on the credit cards
me and Mrs Belvedere have have gone up despite that fact that we are responsible spenders or the fact that the credit limit
on the card the LLC my brother and I have has been lowered despite that fact that we always pay the full amount on time, but
that's between us and the credit card companies. Stay out of it.
Please take the time to click here and read the full report.
Friday, April 24, 2009
REMEMBER ST. GEORGEIn 1933 on Saint George's Day, Winston Churchill spoke the
following words. What applied to Albion then can now be applied to America now:
Our difficulties come from a mood of unwarrantable self abasement into which we have been
cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. The come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion
of our politicians. We are told to believe that patriotism is worn out, except where paying income tax is concerned. But what
have they found to put in its place? Nothing but a vague internationalism; a squalid materialism and the promise of a Utopia….Nothing
can save England if England will not save herself. If we have lost our place and our capacity to guide, if we have lost our
faith in ourselves, then indeed our story is told. If, while foreign nations are everyday asserting a more aggressive, a more
militant nationalism, either by trade or by arms, while we remain paralysed by our own theories. If that be so, then deprived
of the sovereignty of the seas, loaded with debt and taxation, our commerce shut out by foreign tariffs and quotas, England
would sink to the level of a fifth rate power. Never should we accept such a fate for our country.
In the
long run, Albion did not listen to him and is now paying the heavy price: a once great and inspiring nation has sunk to the
level of a second-world country and will soon be engulfed by anti-Western forces that will force it down to third-world status.
We cannot let this happen to us. We have to fight them everywhere they attack all that we hold dear. Obama and
Reid and Pelosi and all their followers and all the fellow travellers have to be stopped. We have to must the courage
of Saint George.
Tip of the fedora to Andrew Stuttaford who comments on St. George's Day here.
24 apr 09 @ 10:38 am edt
I'LL MAKE 'EM AN OFFER THEY CAN'T REFUSEBoss Of Bosses Don Obamleone called in the heads of the credit card families. As reported by Eamon Javers and Carol E. Lee at Politico:
Fourteen credit card industry executives entered the White House Thursday
through the Southwest Gate — avoiding reporters — and filed into an uncomfortable meeting with President Barack
Obama in the West Wing’s windowless Roosevelt Room.
And just like the bank CEOs who met with Obama a month
ago, the credit card executives had to suffer through a lunchtime meeting without a meal. The White House served only glasses
of water.
The message from the president was equally austere: “The days of any time, any reason rate hikes
and late fee traps have to end,” Obama told reporters after the meeting. The president said he wanted to “create
a more stable, more effective, more consumer-friendly system.”
The Don laid out the specifics:
• “Strong and reliable protections for consumers — protections
that ban unfair rate increases and forbid abusive fees and penalties.
•
“All the forms and statements that credit card companies send out have to have plain language that is in plain sight.
No more fine print, no more confusing terms and conditions.
• “Requirement
that all firms make their contract terms easily accessible and provide consumers with the information they need to go online
and do some comparison shopping. It also means requiring firms to offer at least one simple, straightforward credit card that
offers the strongest protections along with the simplest terms and prices.
• “Increased accountability in the system, so that we can hold those responsible who do engage in deceptive practices
that hurt families and consumers. This will require beefing up monitoring and enforcement, and also penalties for any violations
of the law.”
The capos of The Pelosi Family aren't waiting to act on the Capo Di Tutti Capi's
order:
On Capitol Hill, legislation is moving in both chambers that would cut back on
practices often derided as abusive by consumer advocates, such as hiking interest rates on consumers whose credit record hasn’t
changed.
...
And Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), chairman of the Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit
Subcommittee, vowed: “We’re going to pass this bill. The House will act.”
Noted Chicago Mob expert Matthew Vadum comments:
So, on the one hand the government is giving money to banks to help keep them afloat,
and then with the other hand it wants to kneecap them by hindering their ability to make a profit.
Yup,
like Sonny at the tollbooth.
When I first heard the audio of the Don speaking on this while driving this morning,
I nearly drove off the road. Who the hell is he to tell private businesses how to run their companies? This is
out-and-out fascism—nothing more, nothing less. WWU-AMerica. Wake up Americans or y'all through.
24 apr 09 @ 10:06 am edt
A FITTING HONORFrom Josh Painter, over at Red State, we learn:
NRA members, keep an eye out for your copy of May’s American Rifleman, if it hasn’t already arrived. According to the latest edition of the magazine, Bob
Reynolds, gunsmith and owner of Templar Consulting LLC, will make a special presentation at the NRA Foundation Banquet on
May 14.
It’s a modified AR-15(civilian version of the milspec M16rifle), specially customized in honor of Gov. Sarah Palin and dubbed “The Alaskan Hunter”.
Quite fitting, I'd say. I also like Mr. Painter's final comment:
That
sound you hear is being made by Palin-haters’ heads (spontaneously) exploding.
Alaskan Hunter,
how sweet the sound...
Please take the time to click here and read the full posting and see a picture of the rifle [like the Governor herself, she's
a beauty].
24 apr 09 @ 9:45 am edt
RIDIN' ON THE SOWELL TRAINThere very two very good columns by Thomas Sowell published this week...
1) On whether or not the DHS Assessment is a sign of wicked things to come:
In one sense, the Department of Homeland Security paper is silly. In another sense,
it can be sinister as a revealing and disturbing sign of the preoccupations and priorities of this administration —
and their willingness to witch-hunt and demonize those who dare to disagree with them.
Reportedly, the FBI and
the Defense Department are cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security in investigations of returning veterans from
Iraq and Afghanistan. That people who have put their lives on the line for this country are made the target of what is called
the Vigilant Eagle program suggests that this administration might be more of a threat than the people they are investigating.
All this activity takes on a more sinister aspect against the background of one of the statements of Barack Obama
during last year’s election campaign that got remarkably little attention in the media. He suggested the creation of
a federal police force, comparable in size to the military.
Why such an organization? For what purpose?
Since there are state and local police forces all across the country, an FBI to investigate federal crimes, and a Department
of Justice to prosecute those who commit them, as well as a Defense Department with military forces, just what role would
a federal police force play?
Maybe it was just one of those bright ideas that get floated during an election campaign.
Yet there was no grassroots demand for any such federal police nor any media clamor for it, so there was not even any political
reason to suggest such a thing.
What would be different about a new federal police force, as compared with existing
law-enforcement and military forces? It would be a creation of the Obama administration, run by people appointed from top
to bottom by that administration — and without the conflicting loyalties of those steeped in existing military traditions
and law-enforcement traditions.
In short, a federal police force could become President Obama’s personal
domestic political army, his own storm troopers.
Three comments: (1) The FBI abuses it's mandate enough
now as it is; (2) A question arises: would someone named O'Brien run such a force?; and (3) When sober and thoughtful
men such as Mr. Sowell can have such thoughts, it makes me worry that things are worse than even I, a certified, first-class cynical
bastard, think.
2) On the differences between health care and medical care:
Those who think in terms of talking points, instead of trying to understand realities,
make much of the fact that some countries with government-controlled medical care have longer life expectancies than that
in the United States.
That is where the difference between health care and medical care comes in. Medical care
is what doctors can do for you. Health care includes what you do for yourself — such as diet, exercise, and lifestyle.
If a doctor arrives on the scene to find you wiped out by a drug overdose or shot through the heart by some of your
rougher companions, there may not be much that he can do except sign the death certificate.
Even for things that
take longer to do you in — obesity, alcohol, cholesterol, tobacco — doctors can tell you what to do or not do,
but whether you follow their advice or not is what determines the outcome.
Americans tend to be more obese, consume
more drugs, and have more homicides. None of that is going to change with “universal health care” because it isn’t
health care. It is medical care.
When it comes to things where medical care itself makes the biggest difference
— cancer survival rates, for example — Americans do much better than people in most other countries.
24 apr 09 @ 9:37 am edt
PREVENTATIVE ACTIONIn the course of commenting on the attacks by Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs against Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs who plans to attend a European conference on the 'Islamicization of Europe', Robert Stacy McCain issues a very
timely warning to Republicans and conservatives that they must heed:
...The
mainstream "conservative" parties in Europe have refused to address effectively the issues of immigration and multiculturalism.
(In Europe, multiculturalism takes the form of pandering to their massive number of Islamic immigrants.) Because mainstream
politicians have forfeited leadership on these legitimate concerns of their citizens, the vacuum has been filled by the likes
of [neo-Nazi's] Reitz and Worch. Ergo, if there is a conference in Europe addressing the question of whether Islamicization
is a threat, it won't be organized entirely by "respectable" types.
Thus, Johnson's guilt-by-association
attack on Geller highlights the real problem we face in America: If the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement
don't recognize and respond to our own citizens' concerns about immigration and multiculturalism, then those issues
will be taken over by similarly disreputable groups.
...
Anyone who has read William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reichknows that Hitler never would have come to power if the mainstream conservative parties in Germany had more effectively
addressed the problems of the Weimar Republic. The German people were desperate for leadership, a credible alternative to
the ineptitude of the Social Democrats who dominated Weimar, and Hitler -- who had shrewdly studied the tactics of the Social
Democrats in his native Austria -- appeared to offer such an alternative.
Perhaps Glenn Beck is right: we
are not being a banana republic so much as a Weimer-like one.
Please take the time to click here and read Mr. McCain's full posting to get a good background on the whole controversy
and his further thoughts on this subject matter.
24 apr 09 @ 9:12 am edt
UN-AMERICANContinuing on the subject of the immediate posting below...
1) Over at AmSpecBlog, Matthew Vadum succinctly sums up why the prospect of forming 'Star Chambers'
is bad for the country:
Not only is this wrong...it's incredibly dangerous. In America, we resolve
policy differences through elections. We don't use the legal system after officials have left office to prosecute them
for doing their jobs.
That's un-American.
Print out that statement and carry it around with
you to use as a response to the fools who are advocating prosecutions. E-mail it to everyone you know who cares.
2) According to Glenn Thrush at Politico, if the prosecutions take place Representative Peter King
wants Republicans to 'go nuke' on the Democrats [tip of the fedora to Dan McLaughlin]:
King, the outspoken ranking member of the House
homeland security committee, said Republicans should "shut down [legislative] activity across the board" if any
Bush-era officials are hauled into court.
"We would need to have a scorched-earth policy and use procedural
means to bring the place to a halt — go to war," he told POLITICO.
This is certainly one of the
options that must seriously be considered because, once the prosecutorial process begins, we will be in a grave constitutional
crisis.
Rep. King is often a blunt man. And in this case, he pulls no punches:
If we have another 2,000 people killed, I want Nancy Pelosi and [liberal philanthropist] George Soros, John Conyers
and Pat Leahy to go to the funeral and say, 'Your son was vaporized because we didn’t want to dump some guy's
head under water for 30 seconds.
Such anger is totally justified. In fact, I wish we had more of it
from our elected representatives, but only if it is followed-up by actions.
24 apr 09 @ 8:37 am edt
Thursday, April 23, 2009
IT'S GOING TO GET UGLIERSo...the Congress and the Department of Justice are gearing up to form Star Chambers
with the goal of prosecuting Bush Administration officials for the advice they gave.
The Editors of The Wall Street Journal have up a spot-on editorial on the matter [tip of the fedora to Jennifer Rubin]. A few highlights:
Mark down the date.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting
the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics
that he and the country will live to regret.
Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics.
Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama's victory in November has given him the right to change
policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S.
political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This
is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.
If this analogy seems excessive, consider how Mr. Obama has framed the issue. He has absolved CIA operatives of any
legal jeopardy, no doubt because his intelligence advisers told him how damaging that would be to CIA morale when Mr. Obama
needs the agency to protect the country. But he has pointedly invited investigations against Republican legal advisers who
offered their best advice at the request of CIA officials.
And...
Just
as with the AIG bonuses, he is trying to co-opt his left-wing base by playing to it -- only to encourage it more. Within hours
of Mr. Obama's Tuesday comments, Senator Carl Levin piled on with his own accusatory Intelligence Committee report. The
demands for a "special counsel" at Justice and a Congressional show trial are louder than ever, and both Europe's
left and the U.N. are signaling their desire to file their own charges against former U.S. officials.
Those officials
won't be the only ones who suffer if all of this goes forward. Congress will face questions about what the Members knew
and when, especially Nancy Pelosi when she was on the House Intelligence Committee in 2002. The Speaker now says she remembers
hearing about waterboarding, though not that it would actually be used. Does anyone believe that? Porter Goss, her GOP counterpart
at the time, says he knew exactly what he was hearing and that, if anything, Ms. Pelosi worried the CIA wasn't doing enough
to stop another attack. By all means, put her under oath.
Mr. Obama may think he can soar above all of this, but
he'll soon learn otherwise. The Beltway's political energy will focus more on the spectacle of revenge, and less on
his agenda. The CIA will have its reputation smeared, and its agents second-guessing themselves. And if there is another terror
attack against Americans, Mr. Obama will have set himself up for the argument that his campaign against the Bush policies
is partly to blame.
As for the Speaker Of The House, Greg Witt reports [tip of the fedora to Brian Faughnan]:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pressed
the case for creation of a special “truth commission” to investigate the interrogation of terror suspects during
the Bush administration.
The California Democrat said several House committees already are examining the issue
amid concerns that brutal tactics were used. But in a roundtable meeting Wednesday with reporters, she suggested “it
might be further useful to have such a commission so that it removes all doubt that how we protect the American people is
in a values-based way.”
'Truth Commissions'...Hmmm...Could necklacing be next?
Ralph Peters's is livid, but his anger doesn't affect his accurate knowledge of history:
WITH the ugly sanctimony of those who never had to make hard decisions, the American left
demands show trials of those who kept us safe after 9/11. Wrapping themselves in repugnant self-righteousness, the MoveOn.org
set wants politicalprosecutions. Should President Obama acquiesce, he won't be furthering the rule of law, but
dismantling it.
Show trials have long been popular with leftists. Those who don't conform to each jot of doctrine
become "enemies of the people." From Stalin down to Putin, and from Mao to Castro, vengeance disguised as law has
been a mega-hit.
Those on the left don't want justice. If they did, they'd be protesting the murderous
torture prevalent in Iran, the Gaza Strip, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela and Russia. Instead, our leftists want us to show the leaders
of those terror states more respect.
The left is out for revenge.It always is. Hatred of those who think
differently is the left's unifying principle. Leftists don't need God, but they see devils everywhere.
For those who have THE ANSWER—the perfect plan for how man should live—dissent cannot be tolerated. This
applies to Leftists and Muslims today. The Right believes man is not perfectible and, therefore, he cannot develop perfect
schemes to make mankind perfect—man can never find THE ANSWER; that is for God.
23 apr 09 @ 2:13 pm edt
HAVE IT YOUR WAYWe learn, via CNN:
The
"morning-after pill" will be available without a prescription to women 17 and older, the Food and Drug Administration
said Wednesday. The minimum age has been 18.
On March 23, a federal court ordered that Plan B, an emergency contraception
pill, be made available over the counter to those 17 and up, the agency said in a statement on its Web site. The agency will
not appeal that order, the statement said.
...
Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile
Richards said in a statement that the FDA's announcement is "a strong statement to American women that their health
comes before politics. And that's the way it should be. This decision is common-sense policy that will help reduce the
number of unintended pregnancies and protect the health and safety of all women."
The morning-after pill --
made by Duramed, a subsidiary of Barr Pharmaceuticals -- is intended to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex. It works
by stopping ovulation and decreasing the chances that a fertilized egg will attach to the uterus. When used within 72 hours
of unprotected sex, it can lower the risk of pregnancy by almost 90 percent, the maker says.
Some critics charge
that the drug's action amounts to an abortion, and opposed making it available over the counter. Others expressed health
concerns.
I was going to comment on this, but Robert Stacy McCain expressed my thinking exactly earlier
this morning over at The Other McCain [this is worth quoting in full]:
Plan B -- the drug that allows guys to breathe a sigh
of relief the morning after using some chick for selfish pleasure -- will now be available to 17-year-olds without a prescription.
Who cares
that she's not even old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes legally? Get her drunk on wine coolers, get what you want,
then the next morning, take her to CVS to get Plan B and make sure there's no chance the slut will show up in a few months
talking child support payments and DNA tests.
So guys, if you screw a 17-year-old and "forget" to use
a condom, remember: Nothing says "thanks a lot, you cheap whore" like the gift of Plan B!
Mr. McCain entitles his posting: What next? Over-the-counter roofies?
To those of you that think that is an absurd statement, I would say: One year ago would you have thought that the Federal
Government would be owning banks and firing the CEO's of private companies?
Please click here to read the full CNN report. [tip of the fedora to Mr. McCain for doing the dirty work of visiting the CNN site]
23 apr 09 @ 11:51 am edt
STEALTH TYRANNYThe Little Oxford Dictionary [Sixth Edition] defines 'insidious'
as 'proceeding inconspicuously but harmfully'. Over at The Corner, John Hood reminds us
of the way governments at all levels us the regulatory power to harm us:
Like nearly
a million of my fellow Americans, I participated in the Tax Day Tea Party movement last week. ...I was glad to see that so
many Americans recognize the tremendous threats to liberty and prosperity posed by fiscal irresponsibility in Washington as
well as many state capitals.
But while targeting the big spenders, big borrowers, and big taxers is essential,
I hope that this new movement towards fiscal conservatism doesn't ignore the staggering cost imposed on households and
businesses by fanatical regulators. Across a wide range of critical industries, from financial services and construction to
energy and infrastructure, regulators in the U.S. and around the world are deepening the recession and hampering recovery
with a host of rules that yield few real public benefits.
Mr. Hood then provides links to several papers
dealing with specific aspects of this major problem.
Having worked in government for over thirty years, I can attest
that he is 100% correct. There is a phrase I have heard many times in many meetings over the years that never fails
to send a chill down my spine: 'regulations have the force of law'. Without being debated and voted on by elected
representatives, these horrid mandates are imposed as if they were proper statutes. Most of the time no public hearings
are held. The courts consistently uphold them and their enforcement. Thus, we are living in an age where bureaucrats
have become mini-tyrants and the governments can impose their wishes via stealth. The TEA Partiers have to educate themselves
about this problem if they are to be effective.
Please take the time to click here and read Mr. Hood's full posting.
23 apr 09 @ 11:28 am edt
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
THERE HE GOES AGAINHe's done it again. Fresh on the heels of yukking it up with Maximum
Leader Chavez and Comandante Ortega, our Fearless Leader has snubbed another ally. From The Jerusalem Post:
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday canceled his plans to attend the
upcoming AIPAC summit, after it became clear that US President Barack Obama would not meet him during the conference.
At least this PM had the smarts not to put up with the treatment. [tip of the fedora to Michael Graham who comments on this here]
22 apr 09 @ 7:00 pm edt
IS SHE OR ISN'T SHE?Over at The Corner this morning, Andrew McCarthy asked the question: Is DHS Secretary Napolitano Just an Ignoramus? His posting is worth quoting
in full:
Janet Napolitano — the Homeland Security Secretary who approved
the moronic intelligence assessment that suggested right-wingers are terrorists waiting to happen and returning combat veterans
from our armed forces are their likely aiders and abettors — has now tried her hand at immigration law. In an interview aired over the weekend, she told CNN's John King, What we have to do is target the real evil-doers in this business, the employers who consistently hire illegal labor,
the human traffickers who are exploiting human misery. And yes, when we find illegal workers, yes, appropriate action, some
of which is criminal, most of that is civil, because crossing the border is not a crime per se.
It is civil. But anyway, going after those as well. [Emphasis added.]
Perhaps the folks at the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement can explain to their boss (whose
mandate includes enforcing the immigration laws) that crossing the border illegally is a crime.
As Julie Kirchner of FAIR (the Federation for American Immigration Reform) explains, Section 1325 of the federal immigration laws (Title 8, U.S. Code), makes it a misdemeanor
on a first offense and a felony thereafter. [H/T: Michelle Malkin.]
So the question is: Is Napolitano just a dimwit or is she willfully misrepresenting
the law as a rationale for not enforcing it? In any event, this is quite the administration. The president has just turned
the attorney general loose to prosecute political adversaries for actions that were not crimes and saved American lives, while
the Homeland Security Secretary, fresh from slandering the the president's political adversaries, is either in ignorance
or denial about the actual crimes it's her job to go after.
Mr. McCarthy lists only two of the things
she has said and done that would qualify such a term being applied to her. From the Editorial Board of the National Post we learn:
In an interview broadcast Monday on the CBC, Ms. Napolitano attempted to justify
her call for stricter border security on the premise that "suspected or known terrorists" have entered the U. S.
across the Canadian border, including the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack.
All the 9/11 terrorists, of course,
entered the United States directly from overseas. The notion that some arrived via Canada is a myth that briefly popped up
in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and was then quickly debunked.
Informed of her error, Ms. Napolitano blustered:
"I can't talk to that. I can talk about the future. And here's the future. The future is we have borders."
Just what does that mean, exactly?
Just a few weeks ago, Ms. Napolitano equated Canada's border to
Mexico's, suggesting they deserved the same treatment. Mexico is engulfed in a drug war that left more than 5,000 dead
last year, and which is spawning a spillover kidnapping epidemic in Arizona. So many Mexicans enter the United States illegally
that a multi-billion-dollar barrier has been built from Texas to California to keep them out.
In light of
all of the above, I am prepared to issue the following proclamation:
Whereas U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security
Janet Napolitano has equated Canada's border with the United States to Mexico's in defiance of reality;
Whereas
said Secretary has claimed falsely that the 9/11 highjackers entered the territory of the United States through the Canadian
border;
Whereas said Secretary has displayed an appalling ignorance of the laws she is charged with enforcing;
Whereas said Secretary has declared all conservatives potential terrorists, worthy of spying on by law enforcement;
Whereas said Secretary has displayed a profound ignorance of The Constitution;
We hereby declare
her to be an IGNORAMUS in the FIRST DEGREE.
We also hereby declare that, because of all
the above and considering the caliber and beliefs of the man who is currently President, she will keep her
job for four years.
So say we on this 92nd Day in this First Year
of Our Lord Obamacus I.
Please take the time to click on the following links: Michelle Malkin has two
very good postings on this here and here; CTV has a story here. [tips of the fedora to Michelle Malkin, Andrew McCarthy, and the Drudge Report]
22 apr 09 @ 6:24 pm edt
VDH-PALOOZAI just caught up with Victor Davis Hanson's columns and postings from last
week. All are, per usual, worthwhile reads.
1) On pirates, Mr. Hanson posted some random thoughts over at Pajamas Media. Here are two:
A larger malady. Pirates are always a symptom of international
instability and global inability or unwillingness to stamp them out. At present we are at a dangerous juncture. The US, in
the “post-American” world that Obama is trying to articulate abroad through apologetics and promises of mulitpolarity,
cannot or won’t exercise unilateral leadership. And under postmodern notions of morality, and in the present climate
of “We’re not George Bush’s Guantanamo-renditions-wiretapping-preemptive America,” it makes it hard,
if we are to remain saintly, to do much of anything at all, except the occasional heroic efforts that we just witnessed to
free hostages.
Moreover, there is a whiff in the air that the pirates have some connection, remote or not, with
Islamic terrorism, or maybe it is that they are seen as 1990s-style Somali victims in need of understanding, or bad memories
from the Blackhawk Down days. In any case, bombing the crap out of them if they don’t quit is apparently provocatively
Neanderthal—while letting the clueless ship or yacht that falls into their clutches is, well, a higher code of moral
restraint. The pirates (”We are not afraid of America”), of course, all know this.
They
feast on the weaknesses of their foes.
Pirates are nice guys. In the last thirty years in the academic world, several theses have been published romanticizing
pirates, in the manner they are celebrated in popular Disneyland-like culture—misunderstood jolly fellas, prone to a
little excess from time to time.
For the deskbound academic who does not work on a ocean-going container ship,
history’s pirate can be a Robin-Hood redistributionist who takes from the mercantile class and spreads booty to the
poor; or he is anarchist who defies the bourgeoisie norms of an oppressive society; or he is a sexual libertine—a cross-dresser,
a sexually ambiguous Steppenwolf, a polymorphously perverse rebel, who has said no to the straightjacket of heterosexual norms;
or he is an egalitarian who constructs an alternate “pirate community” that is without racial, gender, and class
bias. There are all sorts of noble Jewish, black, and female pirates in academic discourse, far better folk that the British
navy that tried to stamp them out.
I say all that since it seems such rarified academic nonsense has filtered down
to popular discussions of the Somali pirates. While watching television, I heard Geraldo hope that Iran (that exports into
Iraq shaped charges to blow up Americans) will soon join us to patrol the seas for civilization. Hillary let out that now
well-known weird cackle about the problem. Some in the State Department worried that killing the pirates might “escalate”
the tensions, inasmuch as heretofore they have been largely “nonviolent.” Such strange reactions to all this.
Reminds one of the anthropomorphism of animals by Disney, et. al. that PITA et. al. have exploited so successfully
to where people care more about an abused animal than they do about abused fellow human beings.
2) VDH believes that Barack The Unready's foreign trips so far will bring about results that are not pretty:
In short, we have a return of Jimmy Carter’s postnational idealism, but this
time with the charismatic face of a Ronald Reagan. For 40 years we have had well-meaning moral equivalence, utopian pacifism,
and multiculturalism taught in our schools, and we are now learning that all that was not just therapy, but has insidiously
become our national gospel. The world is hearing a deeply pessimistic view of what America was and is — now offered
in mellifluous cadences by a messianic president who not so long ago in more unguarded moments called for more oppression
studies and reparations.
President Obama will get his much-needed praise and adulation abroad, and Americans will
finally be somewhat admired for a while. And thereafter, there will be real hell to pay — either abject U.S. appeasement
as the world heats up, or some sort of frantic eleventh-hour hyper-response to restore stability and lost deterrence.
Just watch.
Methinks we'll get both. The Left always hyper-responds in such a situation as if
they're trying to re-establish their manly bona fides after behaving like such weaklings.
3) From his syndicated column of 16 April:
Despite American apologies and softer language, radical Islamists still think we are
at war — and that they can defeat us. In short, we are in a new surreal — and dangerous — phase of the old
war, doing enough killing to enrage our enemies even as we act sometimes as if we are not.
George Bush may have
railed against "Islamic terrorists" and been ridiculed as a cowboy, but he at least prevented another September
11 attack. Plus, we knew we were in some sort of war.
Fighting a clear war against enemies is dangerous. Clearly
not fighting a war against enemies may be more dangerous. But sort of fighting a war while acting as if we are sort of not
may be the most dangerous thing of all.
I've been having a re-occurring nightmare lately. Its
a very simple one—no convoluted plotting or strange landscapes and such. No...it just consists of Barack The Unready
standing with head down, eyes crammed closed, fingers in his ears, humming loudly a discordant tune like a kid not wanting
to hear something bad. I have this dream.
4) On the The Messiah's motives for constantly criticizing America while abroad:
My only confusion is over motive. Does Obama do this for (a) domestic political purposes:
trashing Bush abroad, coupled with fawning foreign crowds and photo-ops, reminds Americans that someone made them liked abroad
after someone else did not?
(b) Is it more personal, as in messianic: he sees himself as a sort of Mandela/Gandhi
figure, post-national, post-patriotic, post-American in whom the souls of 6 billion are invested for ‘hope and change’?
(c) Is there a touch of Democratic savvy as well—the more these “breakthroughs” are associated with
Obama, the more Hillary seems sidelined, and / or forced to implement his lead? Compared to the high Rice profile, her stature
seems more and more dwarfish.
(d) Does he really believe in conflict resolution theory that postulates escalating
disagreements arise from miscommunication and misunderstanding rather than far more often an aggressive party sensing that
its putative opponent cannot or will not impede it—in other words faith in the UN rather than age-old balance of power,
deterrence, and ‘quiet but carry a big stick’ preparedness?
(e) Does Obama, whether being nourished
on the mother milk of Wright, Ayers, Khalidi, etc, or from his university training and Chicago organizing, really see the
U.S. as historically a uniquely oppressive society in terms of race, class, and gender, and hence perhaps have empathy for
a Castro or Chavez, at least more than he does for Americans of the sort who go to tea parties and listen to Fox News?
I’ll let readers decide, but so far his rhetoric has been harsher to those on Wall Street, his opponents in
Congress, those who make over $250,000, and those who criticize him than it has to those who clearly don’t like us abroad.
I wish I knew the answer. Perhaps, his motive is a stew whose ingredients include all five. A thought:
if this be true, there seems to be a double portion of (e) in there.
22 apr 09 @ 10:35 am edt
22 APRILOver at The Corner, John J. Miller wonders if it is a coincidence
that today is both Earth Day and Lenin's Birthday.
I think its rather fitting.
22 apr 09 @ 8:56 am edt
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
REDUCTIVE NARCISSISMIn the aftermath of the recent Summit [where our Fearless Leader was all
smiles and laughs with Maximum Leader Hugo Chavez], Jay Nordlinger points out something that occurred that was missed by many:
...You know what Ortega did at that Americas summit, right? He delivered a long
diatribe against the United States, which included a blast at the Bay of Pigs operation. He allowed, however, that Obama could
not be held responsible for that operation. And what did our president say, in answer? “I’m grateful that President
Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.”
Mark Steyn's comment on this is spot-on:
What struck me (aside from its unfortunate echoes of his self-absolvement with
regard to what William Ayers did when young Barack was eight years old) was the reductive narcissism of the answer. Barack
Obama is not a banana-republic coup-leader resetting the calendar to Year Zero. When he travels abroad, he represents two-and-a-third
centuries of constitutional continuity. The impression he gives that that's all just some dreary backstory of no real
relevance to the Barack Obama biopic he's starring in 24/7 is very unusual in the chief of state of one of the oldest
democratic polities on the planet. And not entirely reassuring.
While the Divine Obamacus may not have led
an actual coup, what is most certainly true and can be said after His ninety-plus days in office is: He does believe
He has set the calendar to Year Zero [are the month names next?] and He is doing his damndest to turn America into a banana
republic and, as far as He is concerned, U.S. history before Him is a dreary backstory.
Instead of further comment,
I offer the following...
According to the 2002 McGraw-Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine:
narcissistic personality disorder Autophilia, narcism, narcissism, self-centeredness,
self-love Psychiatry A condition characterized by '…a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior),
need for admiration, and lack of empathy that begins in early adulthood…'; ±1% of the general population,
and 2-16% of the clinical population has NPD.
Narcissistic Personality
Disorder > 5 of following criteria
1. Requires excessive admiration
2. Grandiose sense of self-importance; believes self to be superior
3. Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success,
power, brilliance
4. Believes that he/she is special and should have only the best
5. Has sense of entitlement,
ie deserves special favors or treatment
6. Exploits interpersonal relations, ie takes advantage of others
7. Lacks
empathy and concern for others
8. Is envious of others or believes them to be envious of him/her
9. Displays arrogance
It would seem that he meets all nine criteria, God help us.
21 apr 09 @ 7:11 pm edt
RAHMING SPEEDYesterday, I reported on how R. Emmett Tyrrell took Don Obamleone to the woodshed in a recent column. Over at The D.C. Examiner, Quin Hillyer delivers Underboss Emanuelli a Sicilian message:
White House Chief of Staff and partisan hit-man-in-chief Rahm Emanuel wouldn’t know
a real idea if was served up to him on a fish platter.
On ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Emanuel
had this to say about President Barack Obama’s critics on the right: “When you're the party of no, when you're
the party of never, when you're the party of no new ideas, that's not constructive…. The challenge will be:
Will the Republicans come to the table with constructive ideas?”
Emanuel, a foul-mouthed would-be tough guy
best known for having sent a decomposing 30-inch fish to a pollster he didn’t like, clearly doesn’t even want
to pay attention – because conservatives have been pushing innovative ideas for just about every issue of national importance.
To show just how readily available those ideas are, here’s a list that I am literally writing off the top of
my head, without even doing a shred of new research, much less needing to search high and low as if conservative ideas are
difficult to find.
The list that follows proves conclusively that Mr. Hillyer is right. Please take the time to click here and read the full column to see for yourself.
My favorite of the conservative ideas floating around is the following:
For
a small but significant reform of how the entire government operates - and one which surely would save oodles of taxpayer
money - [Rep. John] Shadegg again is the idea man, annually proposing that all federal legislation carry a clause identifying
which part of the Constitution allows the federal government to carry out the bill's activity.
Call
me cynical, but, sadly, I don't think alot of elected Republicans in the Congress would vote in favor of this idea.
21 apr 09 @ 6:41 pm edt
ANOTHER ANOTHER ONE WHO, FINALLY, GETS ITCharles Krauthammer on last night's Special Report:
The most telling moment, however, was when Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua, delivered
a 53-minute excoriating attack on the United States. And Obama's response was "I'm grateful that President Ortega
did not blame me for the things that occurred when I was three months old."
Does the narcissism of this man
know no bounds? This is not about him. It is about his country. This is something that occurred under John Kennedy —
the Bay of Pigs is what he is referring to. And what he is saying is that it's OK that he attacked John Kennedy, as long
as it wasn't me.
Doesn't it occur to him that he ought to defend his country even if stuff happened before
him? It doesn't all start with him.
Really? How dare you, sir! Please refrain from speaking
of President Hubris Narcissus Obama in that way. Also, please be advised that He has transcended mere citizenship and
patriotism; that kind of sentiment is useless in this brave new world! Report to you nearest FEMA Re-Education
Camp immediately.
Tip of the fedora to The Corner [please click here to read the full posting].
21 apr 09 @ 11:32 am edt
ANOTHER ONE WHO GETS ITOver at Contentions, Peter Wehner succinctly defines The Obama Doctrine:
The Obama Doctrine means criticizing past presidents, Democratic and Republican;
apologizing for past American sins, real and imagined, to both allies and enemies of the United States, on domestic and, preferably,
foreign soil — in the hope that doing so allows Obama to speak with greater moral force and clarity. The overriding
goal of the Obama Doctrine is to make the person it is named after look good, rather than, and if necessary at the
expense of, the nation he was elected to represent.
Perhaps, it should be more accurately called
The Narcissus Doctrine?
21 apr 09 @ 11:16 am edt
TEA FOR TWOJonah Goldberg has a very good observation on the TEA Partiers:
It seems to me that one reason the political establishment snickered so much at the tea parties
last week was that so many of the events looked amateurish. ...As fans of P. J. O’Rourke have been pointing out, while
the Left has created a sizable protest-industry over the last half-century or so, conservatives have had these things called
“jobs.”
...
...what we used to call the “silent majority” of Americans don’t
really know how to do people-power (personally, it's one of the things I like about them). With the exception of the occasional
pro-life march, the Right is generations behind the Left on this stuff, which is one reason why they found it necessary to
go back to 1773 — the original Boston Tea Party — to find a useful precedent.
...
As an
inactivist, I think the amateurishness of the protests is something to take pride in. Protesting isn't supposed to be
a way of life.
Hear, hear. All of the participants should be proud.
Please take the time to click here and read the full posting.
By the way: If you ever find your anger at what is going on in Washington flagging, please remember this comment by
Paul 'The Slimy Weasel' Begala during a recent appearance on Imus In The Morning:
Why are they out there whining with this Tea Party thing? Just a bunch of wimpy, whiney,
weasels who don't love their country and don't want to support - there are guys at Walter Reed who gave their legs
for my country, and they're whining because they have to write a check?
Tip of the fedora to Matthew Vadum over at AmSpec Blog.
21 apr 09 @ 11:06 am edt
HE'S YOUR BACKDOOR MANThe public don't know what the little progressies understand.
Over at The Corner, Larry Kudlow comments on the Don Obamleone Administration's latest scheme:
White House and Treasury officials are now talking about turning government TARP loans into
common stock for the 19 biggest banks. It’s clearly a backdoor path to nationalization, as Uncle Sam would be the largest
shareholder in these institutions. What’s more, it’s not at all clear that the administration will even let certain
banks pay down their TARP loans.
This is government intervention into the private sector on a grand scale. It is
financial/industrial policy. Banks will be kept on a very short leash regarding compensation, loans, credit-card issuance,
mergers, acquisitions, and all the rest.
Not surprisingly, stocks opened down 200 points today — with banks
leading the freefall — and finished down about 300 points.
Government control of the banks is going to get
worse. Team Obama won’t let go without a fight. And the hook may well be the so-called economic stress tests
that will show certain big banks in need of more capital. The Treasury (a.k.a. the taxpayer) already owns 36 percent of Citigroup’s
common stock, a position that comes with full voting rights. Now it looks like more of this is on the way.
As a
political excuse, the White House says it’s not going to get more TARP money from Congress, so its next best step is
to convert TARP into common-stock government ownership. But there’s a clear agenda here: to keep banks under the heavy
boot of the government policymakers.
Well...what did you expect? This is a typical Leftist tactic.
Their goals are such a anathema to the American people that they can only achieve them via deception and lies.
Beware the shadowplay action.
Please click here to read the full posting.
21 apr 09 @ 10:55 am edt
WHAT ARE YOU REBELLING AGAINST TODAY JOHNNY?The great Iowahawk has done it again. The man has obtained
a transcript of an educational film put together by the Department Of Homeland Security entitled: It Could Happen
Here. This is must-viewing for anyone concerned about The Red State Menace [and I don't just mean
the website] that is infecting Obamiana. A highlight:
NARRATOR
This is Pinewood Lane, in Anytown, USA. A street probably a lot like yours.
Happy citizens enjoying the bounty of living in this great land of ours. At 1102 we find the Baxters -- Mom and Pop, teen
twins Bobby and Debbie, little Susie and Grandpa. A typical family who knows what it means to be an American. Why, here comes
Gus the Mailman! I wonder what he's got in his mailbag for the Baxters?
How about that -- it's a mortgage
bailout for Pop, an NEA grant for Mom's transgressive performance art collective, and guaranteed student loan applications
for the twins. They're off to State U next fall to study Lacanian Semiotics, you know. And for Gramps, a letter from Medicare
-- they've finally approved that gender reassignment surgery he's always wanted.
Yes sir, that's a
mighty fine benefits package the Baxters harvested today, all courtesy of the United States of America in Washington DC. Hey,
wait Gus! Before you head off to your next stop, Pop has something for you, too. It's his annual tax contribution ready
for delivery. Patriotic Pop is mailing it early this year because he knows the wise folks in Washington will put that money
to work for all of us through the collective magic of economic stimulus. No wonder Pop sealed it with a kiss!
That's
the beauty of our American Free Prize System - regular folks bundling our money together for our leaders, who return it a
thousandfold in free prizes for all. How does it work? All we really need to know is that it's the best system in the
world. A lot of us take it for granted - but there are some who want to take it away.
hoodlum peers behind a tree at the Baxters; sneers, combs greasy mop with a switchblade comb
HORNS
bomp bomp BAAAAAAAAH!
fade out
NARRATOR
It's first period American History at Anytown Chomsky High. Hey, it looks like there's a
new face in class -- could it be the mysterious young stranger from Pinewood Lane?
MS. ANDERSON
All right, students, calm down. We have a new boy
joining in class. John? John Smith, stand up and say hello to your new classmates.
JOHNNY
Hey Toots, I go by "Johnny," see?
class laughs, Bobby and Debbie Baxter exchange concerned looks
MS. ANDERSON
That will be quite enough,
students! And I suggest you watch that sassy mouth of yours, Mr. Smith. Now everyone open your textbook to page 23, "Iraq:
America's Imperialist Hegemony Chickens Come Home to Roost."
NARRATOR
Bobby and Debbie notice that there's something just quite not right
about Johnny. The air of contempt. The pasty complexion. The way he slouches and fidgets in his desk when when the teacher
explains America's legacy of genocidal racism.
MS. ANDERSON
Now who can tell me how capitalist phallocracy gave rise to Military-Industrial
Complex? Mr. Smith?
Johnny snaps his fingers rhythmically, unaware he
is being called on
Mr. Smith... is that a transistor radio earphone?
JOHNNY
Oh yeah...
hey, teach, like, it's cool, I'm listening to NPR. Terri Gross is talking about gay marriage chapels in Vermont.
Ms. Anderson walks over and grabs the radio out of his motorcycle jacket
MS. ANDERSON
Just
as I thought... AM talk radio! Young man, report to re-education hall this minute for fairness cleansing!
Johnny swaggers out of the class, combing his hair; Bobby and Debbie Baxter exchange concerned
looks; fade out.
Please take the time to click here and read the full transcript of this timely, doubleplusgood film.
21 apr 09 @ 10:36 am edt
Monday, April 20, 2009
DID YOUR MOTHER HAVE ANY CHILDREN THAT LIVED?Robert Stacy McCain was kind enough recently to add me to his list of favorite
blogs over at his exceptional site: The Other McCain. Thank you Mr. McCain.
In accordance
with Rule 2 [The Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around] of How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog [promulgated by the said Mr. McCain], I have created a new section [Fellow DHS-Certified Right-Wing Extremists] in
the right-hand column of this page where I have begun listing my favorite bloggers [You will notice my shameless placement
of RSM at the top; see Rule 1]. I'm working on Rule 5.
20 apr 09 @ 8:28 pm edt
A MONKEY ON OUR BACKSIn his latest column over at The American Spectator, Quin Hillyer
issues an important set of warnings to conservatives. The first:
What's
left for forward-looking conservatives, then, is to figure out how to keep Obama's false Utopia from becoming a reality
before a somnolent American public wakes up. And we cannot do it -- absolutely cannot -- unless we understand, and prepare
for, the reality that proto-fascist Keynesian economics will appear to work in the short term. Conservatives are justly warning
that Obama's economic interventionism is a profoundly dangerous new opiate that eventually will lead our free economy
into a quivering, junkie-like existence. But we make a big mistake if we don't realize that opiates do produce a real
(if short-term) high.
When the economy begins to come down from this high, Barry 'The Rooster' will claim we need another dose, another fix, of his stuff.
Mr. Hillyer then explains expertly why it will
be hard for conservatives to beat the Dealer-In-Chief. Even if we are successful in avoiding our looking
like Chicken Littles, we will still have a problem:
And even if conservatives are
careful to couch their warnings in terms that only consider the long term, that distinction will be of little use to the huge
percentage of Americans who these days (unfortunately) think only in the short term. There's just no way conservatives
can win by making onlythe argument about the long-term detriments of Obamanomics. Sure, conservatives can and should
warn about hyperinflation and stagflation. Conservatives can and should warn about massive debt heaped on our children and
grandchildren. But that can't be our primary message. Today's text-message attention span and instant-gratification
ethos won't reward that sort of appeal.
Smart conservatives, therefore, will find another overarching theme.
We must find a way to pound home an understanding of the infringements on liberty that Obamanomics represents. We must find
a way to explain how it would interfere with our own free choices, how it would mire us in bureaucratic red tape, how it would
lead to rationing of some goods or services we take for granted.
These warnings must be heeded if we are
going to have any chance of success. Mr. Hillyer has given us a lot to think about. We have to get our act in
order very, very soon before too many get hooked on the government junk. Keep your eye on the sparrow.
Please take the time to read the whole of the column.
20 apr 09 @ 7:31 pm edt
PLEASE REPORT TO THE NEAREST FEMA DETENTION CENTERI've been sailing through the ether again, careful to avoid the pirates of
progressivism, gathering up more commentary on the DHS Assessment [please click here for my previous round-up]...
1) Over at The American Spectator,Matthew Vadum on the unnamed group cited as a reliable source in the Assessment
[emphasis mine]:
Without identifying the Southern Poverty Law Center by name, it quotes approvingly from
the SPLC's 2006 reportthat claimed "large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other white
supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the [U.S.] armed forces."
The problem is that relying
on data from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which I previously profiled, is always problematic. The reports it publishes are slow, painful journeys through
tortured thinking.
One example of the Center's bizarre outlook is that decades after the civil rights movement
forever changed America, the SPLC claimed that race relations in the nation were worse than in the days of Jim Crow.
And then there are all those Nazis the Center fantasizes about. Even Indiana Jones, it seems, can only kill so many of those
guys.
According to an edition of the Center's Intelligence Report publication, admirers of the Third
Reich have infiltrated the U.S. armed services, and the fact that Aryan Nations graffiti somehow turned up in occupied Baghdad
is a big problem.
The SPLC also published an article claiming that the immensely popular film, The
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, was "little more than a glorified vision of white patriarchy."Another
SPLC author argued that the "Harry Potter" book series, which uses the term "half-blood" in a discussion
of how characters acquire magical powers, was racist. Who knew the endearing little magicians of Hogwarts were actually agents
of Nazi-like racial pseudoscience?
One SPLC article warns against the dangers of little girls dressing up as princesses
on Halloween: "Too often, beautiful at Halloween means white, blonde, princess masks. What statement does your Halloween
costume make about what constitutes beauty -- and about who is beautiful and who isn't?"
The Center lumps
all sorts of groups on America's political right together, labeling them enemies of the Republic. Conservative, libertarian,
anti-tax, immigration reductionist and other groups are all viewed as legitimate targets for vilification. To the SPLC, you
practice "hate" whenever you fail to genuflect with politically correct reverence before every human difference.
2) Diana West provides us with an example of 'rightwing extremism' [tip of the fedora to Robert Spencer]:
Presto -- the federal government has just taken key conservative positions, from opposition
to Islamic law to support for security along our Mexican border, and cast them as primitive, "primarily hate-oriented"
pathologies that are therefore beyond civilized political discourse. So, too, is opposition to overweening federal powers
and "single-issue" opposition to abortion. What we are seeing, in other words, is the most extraordinary governmental
attempt in history to limit the spectrum of debate by demonizing a range of positions as "right-wing extremism."
This attempt is surely not only unconstitutional but also un-American.
But not in the Obama era. This is a time when
the following statement would surely set off a red alert with all federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement authorities
who received Homeland's report:
"What we have to do is bring back the recognition that the people of this
country can solve its problems. I still believe the answer to any problem lies with the people. I believe in state's rights
and I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. I believe
we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution
to that federal establishment."
In the language of Homeland Security, which "right-wing extremist"
preparing for "right-wing radicalization and recruitment" said that?
Ronald Reagan.
3)
In his column of 17 April, Jonah Goldberg sums up the faults of the Assessment in one short paragraph:
The problem with it is that it makes little effort to document or demonstrate its contention
that “extremist” groups are resurgent, that they are right-wing, or that they may be formed from the ranks of
“disgruntled military veterans.” Worse, it’s very sloppy about what qualifies someone as “extremist”
in the first place. Basically, it’s fancy bureaucratese for: We’re guessing bad people will do bad things because
the economy is bad and the president is black. But we have no real evidence.
He then provides the Left with
a history lesson:
The idea that American “hate groups” are right-wing and
bristling with vets got new life with JFK’s assassination at the hands of a disgruntled vet named Lee Harvey Oswald.
Everybody knew right away that Oswald was an agent of “hate” — and hate was code for right-wing and racist.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren summed up the instantaneous conventional wisdom when he blamed the “climate
of hatred” for Kennedy’s death. Everybody knew that the Right was involved.
There was just one inconvenient
truth: Oswald was a Communist who, according to the Warren report, had “an extreme dislike of the rightwing” and
had actually tried to murder a right-wing former Army general.
He who controls the text books controls the
past.
4) Over at NRO, Andrew McCarthy points out something that many of us have failed to comment on: the document
urges law enforcement officials to spy on the Right:
We on the Right are deeply concerned — more concerned, historically, than our opposite
numbers — about threats to civil society. Ordered liberty requires order. When there is a domestic terrorist threat,
regardless of the taxonomy of its motivational forces, government must be vigilant.
But several qualifiers are
worth bearing in mind. First, as the Supreme Court observed in its 1972 Keithcase, the law of the United States recognizes
that foreign threats, such as that presented by al-Qaeda, call for more expansive executive authority in intelligence-gathering
and other countermeasures than do potential domestic insurrections involving American citizens, whose rights of privacy and
dissent are protected by the Constitution. Second, the stepped-up surveillance against radical Islam in 2001 followed sneak
attacks that claimed more American lives than Pearl Harbor and capped a series of atrocities stretching back several years
— and which, according to its perpetrators, were only part of a coming onslaught. Third, by contrast, there is no domestic
terror threat at this time — DHS admits as much, and its expressed fear that such a threat may materialize is rank guesswork:
“rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits,” the bad economy “could create a fertile recruiting environment
for rightwing extremists,” and so on.
That is no basis on which to hound American citizens, much less to
smear conservative convictions as “drivers” of terrorism. Yet DHS concludes by promising to train Big Brother’s
probing eye on “rightwing” politics. The agency, we’re told, “will be working with its state and local
partners over the next several months to ascertain with greater regional specificity the rise in rightwing extremist activity
in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the political, economic, and social factors that drive rightwing extremist
radicalization.”
Well...at least out hit counters will register more hits.
5) Robert Stacy McCain lays out the conditions for becoming a DHS-Certified RWE in this video [this link takes
you to his site; after viewing it, please take the time to enjoy what else The Other McCain has to offer.]. Wolverines!
20 apr 09 @ 7:06 pm edt
LET'S TAKE A MOMENT TO TALK ABOUT SHOP SAFETY...From Charles Krauthammer's column of 17 April, we learned:
WASHINGTON -- Franklin Roosevelt gave us the New Deal. John Kennedy gave us the
New Frontier. In a major domestic policy address at Georgetown University this week, Barack Obama promised -- eight times
-- a "New Foundation." For those too thick to have noticed this proclamation of a new era in American history, the
White House Web site helpfully titled its speech excerpts "A New Foundation."
Frankly, I'd
rather entrust these guys with building it than our Fearless Leader:
20 apr 09 @ 6:15 pm edt
THE MOTIVE THAT THEY DARE NOT NAMEThe Somali pirates we have been dealing with are Muslims. But are they actively
pursuing Jihad? Raymond Ibrahim believes the evidence shows that some are. He lays out his argument over at Pajamas
Media. Two highlights:
...it need be acknowledged that, doctrinally
speaking, the jihad has various manifestations; it is not limited to bearded, "Allah Akbar"-screaming mujahidin
fighting in Afghanistan and lurking in caves. Along with jihad al-lissan and jihad al-qalam (jihad of the tongue and pen,
respectively, i.e., propaganda jihad), one of the most important forms of jihad is known as jihad al-mal - or "money
jihad."
The money jihad is fulfilled whenever a Muslim financially
supports the more familiar violent jihad. The Koran itself declares: "Go forth, light-armed and heavy-armed, and strive
with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah! That is best for you if you but knew" (9:41).
Several other verses (see 9:20, 9:60, 49:15, and
61:10-11) make the same assertion and, more importantly, in the same order: striving with one's wealth almost always precedes
striving with one's life, thereby prioritizing the former over the latter, at least according to a number of jurists and
mufasirin.
And...
Finally,
for those readers who refuse to interpret modern-day events in light of "antiquated" history or religious doctrine,
here's an August 2008 Reuters report revealing that what top news analysts are now dismissing as a bunch of random pirates
scouring the coast of Somalia are directly related to the mainland, if not international, jihad:
An explosion of piracy this month off the coast of Somalia is funding a growing insurgency onshore
as the hijackers funnel hefty ransom payments to Islamist rebels. ... According to our information, the money they make from
piracy and ransoms goes to support al-Shabaab activities onshore.
Al-Shabaab ("the youth"), of course, are the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamists currently
taking over Somalia.
We have to factor in the Jihad motive
if we are going to solve the pirate problem. We have to acknowledge that it is another theater in the War Against Islam.
This is reality. From the fact that the Administration is denying that we are in a war and that they intend to treat
Islamic terrorism as a law enforcement issue, we can safely conclude that the problem will not be solved by any U.S. efforts.
Please take the time to click here and read the full article.
20 apr 09 @ 5:35 pm edt
GO TO YOUR EAST ROOM, NOWIn a recent column, R. Emmett Tyrrell took Little Barry out to the woodshed.
Two highlights:
...His tour of Europe was the burlesque of a preening popinjay.
He gave the Queen an iPod. His wife gave her a friendly squeeze. Oh yes, and the President declared that the official language
of German-speaking Austria is "Austrian." All that was amusing, but the criticism of his homeland while in Europe
was not. Actually I am tired of hearing his criticism of his homeland when he is at home. We know he believes America was
a failed state before he became president. Now let him return the country to the bipartisanship that he promised.
While in Europe, our sententious president blamed America for genocide and torture. He brought up Hiroshima and Guantanamo.
He accused us of arrogance. What can President Obama possibly have against arrogance? Since his emergence on the national
stage a year or so ago, he has given me the impression that he considers arrogance among the virtues.
No
doubt about it.
And...
There was a time a couple of decades ago when this
sort of carping about America was cited as the product of "liberal guilt." Doubtless had President Obama been sounding
like this in 1984, say, at the Democratic National Convention, critics such as Jeane Kirkpatrick would be chiding him for
"liberal guilt." Mind you, at the time I took issue with this diagnosis of our liberal friends. Then and now, they
do not believe they have been guilty of any moral or intellectual failing. If you listen to the precedent-shattering President
Obama you will note that he is accusing other Americans of failures and vice, not himself. This is not liberal guilt;
it is liberal arrogance. It was liberal arrogance in the past, and so it is today. It is going to wear thin with my fellow
Americans very shortly.
Let us pray.
Please take the time to click here to enjoy the full spanking.
SIDENOTE: What a great line and perfect summation of this Presidency so far: 'the burlesque of a preening
popinjay'.
20 apr 09 @ 5:17 pm edt
SAME OLD, SAME OLDWe have been told that Good King Barack will be asking his Privy Council, er,
Cabinet to come up with one hundred million dollars in cuts over the next three months. The Cato Institute'sTad
DeHaven posted this response:
...If the impetus for this announcement is the series
of taxpayer tea parties that took place across the country last week, I am going to venture a guess this political stunt will
backfire. At least it should.
Given the president's proposed $3.6 trillion budget for the coming fiscal year,
$100 million dollars is the amount of money the federal government will spend in just 15 minutes. 15 minutes is probably how
much time the average American spent eating breakfast this morning. According to the Post, an unnamed administration
official says the cuts "are intended to signal the president's determination to cut spending and reform government."
With all due respect, Mr. President, proposing a $1.2 trillion deficit and then promising to shave $100 million off
the iceberg shows a determination to overspend and insult our intelligence....
What do you think the Divine
Obamacus has been doing since he ascended to His throne?
Please take the time to click here and read the full posting.
20 apr 09 @ 5:05 pm edt
DON'T YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'RE A-RIDING ON A DOWNBOUND TRAIN?Michael Ledeen has a spot-on posting up over at Pajamas Media.
He writes some justifiably harsh words on the Dali Bama's response to the sentencing of American/Iranian journalist Roxana
Saberi to eight years in prison. Mr. Ledeen then comments on Barack The Unready's handling of the mullahs in general:
Obama is committed to the “talking cure” with Iran, and he seems destined
to live through the humiliation to which his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, was subjected. He might go back and watch
some of the old “Nightline” shows, beginning with a count of the number of days America was “held hostage.”
That’s exactly where Obama is headed.
The president may well feel that this is all very unfair.
He didn’t ask for this. Indeed, he thinks he has given Iran every reason to behave nicely towards
him (he seems disinclined to think in terms of the nation, it’s all about him). He doesn’t seem to
realize that all his sweet talk is very provocative, it plays into the mullahs’ fantasy world in which they are routing
us all over the world (they know it’s all about us, not about him), and soon the American president will kneel to the
Supreme Leader. He actually seems to believe that it is possible to convince the Iranian leaders to give up their
nuclear program, when every major figure in the Islamic Republic has said that Iran will never, ever, abandon that program.
The only thing they are willing to discuss is how we will accommodate to the fact of a nuclear Iran.
Meanwhile,
their agents and proxies are killing Americans from Egypt and Saudi Arabia to Iraq and Afghanistan. And Obama
does nothing in response, except to make gesture after gesture demonstrating his lack of will to confront those who have been
killing Americans for thirty years.
President Hubris Narcissus Obama, get ready to meet Dr. Nemesis.
And, if you need confirmation that the Iranians have no intention to abandon their nuclear program, we received this
gem from Ahmadinejad this past weekend:
As I have declared before, the nuclear train of Iran has neither brakes nor reverse gears. Again today I tell the people of the entire world that the train of progress in Iran has
neither brakes nor reverse gear.
Tip of the fedora to Michael
Rubin for the quote [please click here to read his commentary on it].
Please take the time to click here and read Mr. Ledeen's full posting.
20 apr 09 @ 4:58 pm edt
STEYN OF THE WEEKENDA doubleshot...
From his latest appearance on the Hugh Hewitt Show [emphasis mine]:
HEWITT: Now Mark Steyn, that’s Susan Roesgen from CNN.
What do you make of that?
STEYN: Well, for a start, let’s say she’s missing the point. The guy
was right. Taxes are a liberty issue. When she stands there and she says oh, but you’re going to be getting a $400 dollar
check from the government, I say keep it. I don’t want a $400 dollar check from the government, I don’t want a
$4,000 dollar check from the government, I don’t want a $40,000 dollar check from the government. I want my liberty.
I want to be able to live my life the way I want to live it without having to account to an all-powerful state that gives
me lollipops in return. And the condescension of this woman, here is an informed man talking to her about Lincoln’s
principles, the condescension of this woman, it’s sort of talking on a completely different track saying oh, but you’re
eligible, you’re eligible for a $400 dollar check. This guy wants his freedom.
HEWITT: Yup.
STEYN:
This guy understands the point of the original Tea Party. What’s pathetic is that the CNN reporter doesn’t. King
George…this is why America rebelled against my king, George III. And if George III came back today and had
been running against John McCain and Barack Obama, he’d be the small government candidate. That’s how out of whack
things are.And as for CNN, you know, this is like the Boston Globe. It’s a dying network. If it weren’t
for the fact that every time you catch a lousy forty minute commuter flight you have to sit at the gate while the plane’s
delayed watching six hours of Wolf Blitzer, there would be no detectable ratings for CNN.
From his weekly syndicated column:
But in America, tea is not a soothing beverage to be served with McVitie’s
Digestive Biscuits. It’s a raging stimulant. It’s rabies in an Earl Grey bag. At America’s tea parties,
there’s no McVitie’s, just McVeighs — as in Timothy of that ilk, as in angry white men twitching to go nuts.
To Paul Krugman of the New York Times, the tea party is a movement of “crazy people” manipulated by sinister
“rightwing billionaires.” To the briefly famous Susan Roesgen of CNN, the parties are not safe for “family
viewing.” Which is presumably why the Boston Globe forbore to cover them last week. The original Boston Tea
Party was so-called because it took place at Boston Harbor, which I gather is a harbor somewhere in the general vicinity of
the Greater Boston area. So there would appear to be what I believe the journalism professors call a “local angle”
to Wednesday’s re-enactment. Might be useful for a publication losing a million bucks a week and threatened with closure
by a parent company that in one of the worst media acquisitions of all time paid over a billion dollars for a property that
barely a decade later is all but worthless.
But I digress. Asked about the tea parties, President Obama responded
that he was not aware of them. As Marie Antoinette said, “Let them drink Lapsang Souchong.” His Imperial Majesty
at Barackingham Palace having declined to acknowledge the tea parties, his courtiers at the Globeand elsewhere fell
into line. Talk-show host Michael Graham spoke to one attendee at the 2009 Boston Tea Party who remarked of the press embargo:
“If Obama had been the King of England, the Globe wouldn’t have covered the American revolution.”
20 apr 09 @ 4:40 pm edt
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS THAT RIGHTWING [sic] EXTREMIST?I apologize for not having posted on Saturday and getting such a late start today.
Life intruded again in the form of a leaky flat-roof that needed repair before it did anymore damage to the cabinets I built
last year in the new pantry. Having not performed any DIY projects in the past several months [with, believe it or not,
Mrs. Belvedere's blessing] I discovered on Saturday how truly out of shape I am. The only treatment at the end of
the day that I knew would prove effective was a constant, intravenous-like flow of Maker's Mark into my bloodstream.
This proved quite effective—as it always does—but it rendered me quite incapable of mustering the necessary ire
and cynicism required to produce effective blog entries here. All was right with the word for a few hours, but now,
back to business.
20 apr 09 @ 4:30 pm edt
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And it's only one fight in the battle, and we have to keep fighting.'
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—Robert Belvedere
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We thank you, sir.'
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Captain Ohab:
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heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned Fox News.'
I may be reached at
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T E R M S
Let us make precise and clear-cut the terms we should be using.
Aristotle wrote that A is A; you may also call it B, but
it always remains A. A thing is what it is and, to say it is something else, is to deny reality. There is a lot of denial
of reality going around these days.
As John Adams wrote: 'Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes,
our inclinations, the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence'.
POINT 1: There is no "War in Iraq"
or "War in Afghanistan". Like the Pacific and Europe in World War II, Iraq and Afghanistan are
just parts of a larger war. Unlike them, they are not separate from each other. Therefore,
they are part of the Middle East Theatre of Operations [METO] as the Pacific was the PTO and Europe the ETO.
POINT 2: Many on the Left and some on the Right want to "end
the War". There are only two ways to end a war: (1) by achieving Victory or (2) by being Defeated.
A pullout, before Victory is achieved, is Defeat. They want Defeat. Pullout may
be the best policy―I am not arguing that here―but, leaving without achieving our objective is Defeat.
POINT 3: We are engaged in a War Against Islam.
The term is more correct than "War against Islamo-Fascism" or "War On Terror".
Islam has been at war with all non-Muslims since the
time of its founder, Muhammad [his name be cursed]. Like the Hundred Years' War, there have been periods
of peace in this long conflict, but the Muslim has never stopped believing that he is at war with all non-Muslims.
He can't: Allah commands that all of the world be conquered in his name and he must submit, in all things, to the
will of Allah [the word Islam means "submission", sometimes rendered as "surrender"]. Any
periods of peace we in the West have enjoyed have only occurred after we have dealt them such a devastating blow that they
have not been able to wage their jihad and then have pursued polices that have kept them subjugated. This
began to fade in the latter half of the 20th Century as we forgot the dangers posed by this militant religion and
as they regrouped under new and committed leaders.
If you
doubt that Islam is at war with all non-Muslims, keep in mind this:
Islamic apologists
often point out that Islam is not a monolith and that there are differences of opinion among the different Islamic schools
of thought. That is true, but, while there are differences, there are also common elements. Just as Orthodox, Roman Catholic,
and Protestant Christians differ on many aspects of Christianity, still they accept important common elements. So it is with
Islam. One of the common elements to all Islamic schools of thought is jihad, understood as the obligation of the Ummah to
conquer and subdue the world in the name of Allah and rule it under Sharia law. The four Sunni Madhhabs (schools of fiqh [Islamic
religious jurisprudence]) -- Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali -- all agree that there is a collective obligation on
Muslims to make war on the rest of the world. Furthermore, even the schools of thought outside Sunni orthodoxy, including
Sufism and the Jafari (Shia) school, agree on the necessity of jihad. When it comes to matters of jihad, the different schools
disagree on such questions as whether infidels must first be asked to convert to Islam before hostilities may begin (Osama
bin Laden asked America to convert before Al-Qaeda’s attacks); how plunder should be distributed among victorious jihadists;
whether a long-term Fabian strategy against dar al-harb is preferable to an all-out frontal attack; etc. [Source: Gregory M. Davis, Islam 101, section
4g, found at http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam101/]
They have been at war with us for
centuries and we, therefore, have been at war with them. We are engaged in a War Against Islam whether
we want to say so or not. In an interview with a Pakistani TV network on 23 July 2008, Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid,
Al-Qaeda's No. 3 man and top commander in Afghanistan, has this to say: “Islam does not distinguish between the
American people and the American government, since both are in a state of war with Islam”. [Source: http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD200008]
POINT 4: The term "Islamo-Fascism" seems
to have been created by Leftists. Since (1) they wrongly place fascism on the Right, (2) they believe [rightly]
Muslims want to establish a theocratic regime on Earth, and (3) anything political that has any connection with religion is
bad and emanates out of rightwing thinking, the term makes sense to them. Therefore, the term is nothing
but a way to associate Islam with the right-wing. Muslims believe in a totalitarian way of governing; in
submission [that word] to an all-powerful Islamic leader or leaders.
POINT 5: As to the term "War On Terror",
it is just plain silly: how can you wage war on a thing?
POINT 6: What is fascism? It is when a government
allows private property to exist, but controls and manages the use and disposal of property in all its forms. Citizens
retain all of the burdens and responsibilities associated with property ownership, but are not allowed to control and shape
its use.
As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied
bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone
liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism
and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism.
Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through
direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally
private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their
property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a
few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance
of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled
the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.
[Source: Sheldon Richman, The Concise Encylcopedia Of Economics,
Liberty Fund, found at http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html]
On the political spectrum, therefore, it is located between modern liberalism
and socialism.
POINT 7: What is socialism? It is when a government
allows no private property to exist, and controls and manages the use and disposal of property in all its forms.
Citizens are not allowed to control their lives and are subject to the whims of bureaucrats and officials. If they
retain freedoms and liberties, they do so at the discretion of them. On the political spectrum, therefore, it
is the next logical stage after fascism; some would argue that it lies between fascism and communism.
POINT 8: What is pragmatism? It is a tool used by Leftists,
or those operating under the influence of Leftist logic, to achieve Utopian ends—heaven on earth through social, political,
cultural, and spiritual engineering. It is merely a tool of ideology, part of the means to an end.
POINT 9:The Big Lie - When confronted with truths that reflect
unpleasantly on them, the Leftists deflect it buy claiming over-an-over ad nauseum that these truths apply to and are products
of the Right. This practice is known as The Big Lie. It has been successfully practiced by the
Left since, at the very least, the French Revolution. Thus, we have the now-widespread belief that the Nazis and the
Black Shirts of Italy were right-wingers when the reality-the truth-is they were both people of the Left. I suspect
the violent objections from the Left to conservatives use of the term 'fascist' arise from the fact that they have spent well
over seventy years trying to convince the world of The Big Lie that it is not and never has been a Leftist
ideology.
How does one practice this distortion truth and why is it effective? In a report issued during
World War II by the OSS, the author provided an explanation for all practitioners by describing how Hitler practiced it:
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault
or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame;
concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than
a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
By repeating
their lies over and over, the Left creates a false reality that supplements the real world. In this false reality, the
lie is the truth, the truth is the lie. A is not A. [But we know that A must always be A.]
The Left
also practices a variation of The Big Lie that I like to call The Big Deception which involves
a Big Deflection away from the reality of the situation. None of their policies or actions can survive
direct questioning, so the Leftists must turn the tables on the questioners and make it seem as though the inquisitors have
bad or evil intentions. Overtime and after constant and unrelenting hectoring, the Left's way of thinking triumphs.
They successfully infect enough people so that this diseased mode of thinking becomes chronic, deep-rooted, instinctual. If
the Devil's greatest triumph was that he convinced people he did not exist, the Left's greatest triumph has been to convince
people that the Leftist way of thinking is normal. It is not. It is a perversion of reason and a horribly mutant
form of logic. It is antithetical to human life. Nothing but decay and destruction are left [pun intended] in it's wake.
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—Smitty—
'Staunch Rule 5 aficionado Bob Belvedere, is shameless indeed (I have so much respect for this man)!'
—The Classic Liberal—
'Who knew he was such a fan of the undead?'
—Smitty—
'We need fighters, and I suspect Beck will fight 'til ev'ry foe is vanquished.
Bob Belvedere gets it. Phyllis Chesler gets it.
We defend truth and
liberty against lies and tyranny. Every eye is upon us and we are surrounded by enemies as numerous as the grains of sand
on the shore. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer.
WOLVERINES!'
—Stacy McCain—
'Bob Belvedere, you're a nasty piece of work.'
—Anonymous—
'you charming rogue'
—Robert—
'The sad decay of Bob Belvedere into a Rule 5 junkie saddens us all.'
—Smitty—
'Belvedere went slightly crazy on us.'
—Smitty—
'And thank you, Dr. Belvedere, for setting me straight on Rule 5! I tell ya, that Belvedere Dude
is Funny!'
—Irish Cicero—
'Kevin Binversie is not nearly so shameless a blogwhore as Troglopundit . . .
but then again, nobody really is. OK, maybe Bob Belvedere, as if anyone could compete with Bob.'
—Stacy McCain—
'Lord Fatheringay von Whoopsie of the Dung Heap Hooter'
—Anon. —
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