By Julian Krasta
The intellectual communities all over the world are waiting in an agony of suspense as to whether John McCain or Barack Obama will be elected the next President of the United States. The suspense is rooted in the hope for granite security and the prospect for lasting peace, which could altogether vanish if, in January 2009, the wrong man raises his hand and takes the oath.
Senator McCain is uncomplicated with respect to the leadership and defense of our country. His fearless patriotism was formed and hardened by an irrefutable fact: The American People’s collective resolve coupled with the actions of our awesome military, in their harshest terms, are proof to our enemies – of the past, present and, yes, future – that we play in a bigger and badder league than they could ever dream.
By stark contrast, Obama requires a daily diet of total compliance and idolization. His word salads are a gross national product of cants and fantasies, and is devoted to injecting chaos into the jellied minds of the crowds of people (here and in countries such as Syria) that play into his fantasies. He has successfully accomplished this because his is a cocktail personality, meaning: He senses other people’s vulnerabilities, he reads their personalities, and performs accordingly. It is the classic sign of a sociopath.
Liberals argue that Senator McCain might be too old, too hotheaded, and too off the mark (and some frustrated Republicans and core conservatives chime in with the fear that he is too liberal-minded). In some respects they are all correct – in some respects. There are even those who poke fun at his banal tone. Again, some of their levity is not entirely unjustified. My view of the Senator, which is shared by many, many other conservative advocates, is quite the opposite. To quote an old saying: “Still water runs deep.”
Moreover, John McCain has served our country faithfully as a Navy fighter pilot (a stone-cold truth not even (Ret.) Gen. Wesley Clark can deny or devalue (notwithstanding Clark’s cheap shots to discredit McCain’s leadership qualifications)). He endured horrible physical pain during his imprisonment in Viet Nam. Primarily, he is lock, stock and barrel more transparent than the Democrats’ candidate claims to be because, good, bad or indifferent, Senator McCain has no hidden agendas. Neither does he feign being anything other that what we see.
Barack has an impressive record of political ineptitude: He and his party strive to expand policies such as welfare (to ensure dependence on the government dole by those below the poverty line in order to fortify their votes). Obama opposes privatizing Social Security, which is supported by Senator McCain – a proposition that would be advantageous to taxpayers in that we would be able to invest and manage our benefits.
Obama opposes school vouchers (one means to the end of our children being short-changed in their education). He used the words “ugly and racist” to depict opponents of the 2007 comprehensive illegal immigration bill, yet it is commonplace (and widely accepted by his supporters and conveniently overlooked by the media) when he repeatedly brings into the fray the fact he is black. This comes from the chosen one of the party that went up against the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution (respectively: abolishing slavery, granting citizenship rights to newly-freed slaves, guaranteeing the right to vote for blacks – Thank you, Larry Elder).
Senator McCain has always been a proponent of nuclear power, and he is calling for no less than 45 nuclear power plants to be built by the year 2030. Barack has said that this might be worth investigating – until he decides to cast his vote in opposition.
Obama possesses a superego and is fully one-dimentional. He has (with the wholesale aid of the liberal mainstream media) caused his supporters, as well as al Qaida and the militant Palestinian group Hamas, to believe that there’s a wizard behind his curtain when, in fact, there is only a brick wall.
Islamist jihadists are determined to dominate this planet, by whatever force necessary, and become our supreme rulers. From the standpoint of their blood-lust adventurism, the very future of the freedoms of the human race has become the issue.
John McCain understands this. Without equivocation, but in peremptory tones, he has said plainly that he is as equally determined to use whatever force is necessary to prevent terrorists from gaining the upper hand and, as President, would not imprudently withdraw our troops from the hot zones.
Obama, on the other hand, is hedonistic with his [politically motivated] litany “I will end the war” and begin bringing our troops home if he becomes president. This move comes under the heading “Miscalculation and Maladroitness.” It would be as foolish as an impatient homeowner ordering the tent removed from his house before the poisoning process can fully and effectively destroy a vermin infestation “…because the tent is an eyesore.”
This smacks of arrogance and audacity. His myopic presumptions equate to reckless endangerment: gambling with our lives here at home as well as the country we call home to satisfy his aspirations – that is (using another analogy), no less irresponsible as when a parent or guardian leaves a baby or a pet locked in a hot car to go shopping.
Moreover, Obama’s ambition has blinded him to the fact that withdrawing our troops, reducing military spending, and suspending or cancelling defense programs would not only weaken the security of our homeland it would sharply increase domestic unemployment in all related sectors of private, public, and government businesses.
Furthermore, if we lose the strength in numbers of trained military personnel now – or a year or two from now – and our country is attacked again, three to four months would need to pass before capable replacement ground, sea, and air combat troops could be expected to reach required potency and supplant those who had been killed and injured. In that time, we could go beyond the crisis level and face unmitigated disaster because of a lack of trained manpower.
Our enemies could exploit this perceived weakness. They might attack, possibly with lethal chemical weapons, and destroy (but not be limited to) municipal and military communications centers and installations, commercial and military airfield complexes, fire, police and energy stations, water and food supplies, roads and railways, all personnel therein, and every civilian within specific radii of those areas.
John McCain is aware of the foregoing, because he is a long-horn, scarred, intemperate and veteran bull. Faith should be invested in him, in that he would exercise every power vested in him as President to go the distance and cut out the fanatic canker that threatens humanity and prevent such attacks.
Obama is a neophyte. His daydreaming has left him deficient of legislative and leadership experience. With neither to his credit, he wouldn’t be able to stop an asthma attack.
It would therefore come as no surprise to the GOP, conservatives or rational Democrats if, as president, he one day swings open the White House doors, flashes a smile at the beast looming above him (whose entrée into our land he helped engineer), and says:
“What a nice horsey – of course I’ll sign for it.”
Monday, July 07, 2008
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Politicians Do Not Own Us, "We" Own Them
By Julian Krasta
Now that the Democrats have, at long last, selected their nominee, “We” need to remind ourselves of long-standing facts concerning those persons we elected to public office. More importantly, the presidential candidates need to hear from us.
The United States is hovering closer to the thin edge of the wedge, because too large a percentage of the men and women we voted to represent our best interests – and those who will yet finagle to win our votes – are preoccupied in grudge matches for supremacy within their club quarters.
Elected civil servants mulishly persist in placing their hands on the wrong end of the stick with regard to their responsibilities to the American People. We need to jog their memories about their job function (the salaries of which we pay for):
Specifically, they, at all times, are to acquaint us with the best possible alternatives for how to shelter and maintain our basic human rights and our country’s integrity. If we do not agree, or find fault, with their proposals, we have the right to say no, and to repeat the word “no” pending acceptable answers and/or solutions.
It is common knowledge that, despite their campaign pledges (and the fact that we elected office holders on the basis of those pledges), they invariably present this wry comeback to our inquiries:
“I plan to set up a task force to look into the matter”
– which is code for “I have no intention of earning my keep.”
Earning their keep requires results, and results would be evidence that they deserve the position for which we elected them. So far, the only proof provided is the majority of those men and women we placed in government positions are all mouth and goiter.
For instance, there is a singular critical matter those elected abjectly refuse to work on and put right: the mounting pressure for America to, once and for all, release itself from its ties to foreign oil. It is far more appealing to members of Congress to stage a mock trial (at taxpayer expense) and drag over the coals American oil executives rather than admit to, and immediately act upon, an obvious way out: the U.S. territory designated ANWR (Artic National Wildlife Refuge).
The crude oil we very badly need is located in abundance within ANWR, in the remotest and uninhabited area, where none of God’s creatures (except mosquitoes) would suffer inconvenience in the exploration and capture of the resource.
A neighbor nation to the south, Brazil, has done this. They tapped into a mother lode oil field approximately 150 miles out at sea, which should help keep them supplied for a significant length of time. I recognize the value of ingenuity in the face of urgency, and am pleased to pass on good wishes to Brazil for taking the necessary steps to ensure their petroleum needs are fulfilled.
In light of Brazil’s achievement, it is lunacy on the part of our elected representatives to mandate that America not exploit every other potential advantage available within our own borders to re-energize our stockpile of fuel.
Meanwhile, the price per gallon to fill our cars’ fuel tanks is rapidly approaching $5.00. This is precisely what Shell Oil’s Chief Executive Officer, John Hofmeister, cautioned the House Committee in late May would come to pass unless and until Congress removes the shackles and allows Big Oil to responsibly explore and drill for oil.
Rather than a constructive debate, an ill-mannered response to Mr. Hofmeister’s statement was delivered by Maxine Waters-(D‑CA) in which she attempted to intimidate the CEO, saying the government would socialize [sic] the oil companies. Her clumsy threat was altogether an embarrassment to the office to which she was elected, counterproductive to those proceedings, and an insult to the People’s intelligence.
From Capitol Hill to our largest cities and smallest townships nationwide, scent of power has clouded common sense and sense of duty. Too many of the elected officials we chose to invest with our trust spend their terms in office undermining the laws specifically written to protect citizens. There are also those who, out of idleness, pursue – and needlessly squander taxpayer money on – phantom resolutions to unsubstantiated conundrums, such as the Lieberman-Warner Climate Change Act.
Elected officials have wrecked the inner cities with their unaccountability and allowed schools to fall to ruin. As our education systems deteriorate, so goes our children’s literacy.
Fortunately, there are diehard educators out there who are determined to fight fire with fire. They want kids to be – as they should be – our number one priority. Unfortunately, this example is one of few exceptions. Suitably educating our youngsters in secure and healthy environments is no longer the blanket rule.
Politicians hamstring law enforcement agencies (as with the deleterious Special Order 40 in Los Angeles). And when such initiatives crash and burn leaving only scorched earth in their wake, they lay blame on the federal government. While the blame games go on, the record of men, women, teenagers and children killed and injured increases by the second. The cycle is vicious.
Once they assume office, elected officials engage a bizarre 4‑stage slant on central issues (e.g., national security precautions, economic stability, health and welfare, education, our country’s independence, protection of our constitutional privileges), which is directly linked to the countless problems we face today:
1. Nothing is going to happen.
2. Something might happen but we should do nothing about it.
3. Maybe we should do something but there’s nothing we can do.
4. Maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now.
Example: It took three U.S. presidents to be assassinated (Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley) before Congress finally authorized the Secret Service to assume the full-time responsibility of protecting our Commanders in Chief.
This same jumbled attitude pertains to the Senate’s points of view today with respect to the War on Terror. They (primarily the liberals amongst them) continue to be tightfisted in recognizing the positive effects of the Surge. They pay no heed to the Iraqi people’s remarkable endeavors – working side by side with our magnificent military – to liberate themselves from fanatic ideologues. Instead, Nancy Pelosi had the impudence to give the credit for the Iraqis’ achieved goals to Iran.
To say the Speaker’s remarks are disquieting would be an understatement. She is, in point of fact, encouraging Iran to be aggressive. Her statements were both precarious and immoral in view of the fact Mahmoud Admadinejad considers the North American continent and the State of Israel his personal kill zones.
On the basis of such recklessness, it is essential that the following be circulated to our elected politicians (above all to those yet to be elected), which is the People’s response to their abortive 4-stage strategy:
1. “We” are not confused adolescents.
2. “We” will not be placated.
3. “We” are not fools.
4. “We” are mature citizens who demand for our children and for ourselves protection from terrorists, street gangs, exploding numbers of illegal immigrants, the escalating cost of fuel, the pandemic of irresponsible and wasteful bureaucrats, and higher taxes.
With a shifty general election looming on the horizon, it is mordantly clear that we become unceasingly involved in our own destiny. This is no longer just optional. It is mandatory.
Serious citizen-voters must take the time, either by telephone, facsimile, U.S. mail or electronic mail, and extend straightforward rulings to our elected representatives on their performance, including imminent and wounding legislation. We must be relentless until they clean up their act and rescind radical propositions, from unconditional amnesty for illegals to a plan (dreamed up by the Democrats’ nominee) to distribute $845 BILLION taxpayer dollars outside the United States, the outcome of which could further weaken our fragile economy as well as break the backs of the American People.
“We” put them there. It is now time to dust off the weed whacker, which would serve as fitting notice to the incoming POTUS. That is:
“We, the People” take a backseat to no one, particularly politicians “We” vote into office.
Now that the Democrats have, at long last, selected their nominee, “We” need to remind ourselves of long-standing facts concerning those persons we elected to public office. More importantly, the presidential candidates need to hear from us.
The United States is hovering closer to the thin edge of the wedge, because too large a percentage of the men and women we voted to represent our best interests – and those who will yet finagle to win our votes – are preoccupied in grudge matches for supremacy within their club quarters.
Elected civil servants mulishly persist in placing their hands on the wrong end of the stick with regard to their responsibilities to the American People. We need to jog their memories about their job function (the salaries of which we pay for):
Specifically, they, at all times, are to acquaint us with the best possible alternatives for how to shelter and maintain our basic human rights and our country’s integrity. If we do not agree, or find fault, with their proposals, we have the right to say no, and to repeat the word “no” pending acceptable answers and/or solutions.
It is common knowledge that, despite their campaign pledges (and the fact that we elected office holders on the basis of those pledges), they invariably present this wry comeback to our inquiries:
“I plan to set up a task force to look into the matter”
– which is code for “I have no intention of earning my keep.”
Earning their keep requires results, and results would be evidence that they deserve the position for which we elected them. So far, the only proof provided is the majority of those men and women we placed in government positions are all mouth and goiter.
For instance, there is a singular critical matter those elected abjectly refuse to work on and put right: the mounting pressure for America to, once and for all, release itself from its ties to foreign oil. It is far more appealing to members of Congress to stage a mock trial (at taxpayer expense) and drag over the coals American oil executives rather than admit to, and immediately act upon, an obvious way out: the U.S. territory designated ANWR (Artic National Wildlife Refuge).
The crude oil we very badly need is located in abundance within ANWR, in the remotest and uninhabited area, where none of God’s creatures (except mosquitoes) would suffer inconvenience in the exploration and capture of the resource.
A neighbor nation to the south, Brazil, has done this. They tapped into a mother lode oil field approximately 150 miles out at sea, which should help keep them supplied for a significant length of time. I recognize the value of ingenuity in the face of urgency, and am pleased to pass on good wishes to Brazil for taking the necessary steps to ensure their petroleum needs are fulfilled.
In light of Brazil’s achievement, it is lunacy on the part of our elected representatives to mandate that America not exploit every other potential advantage available within our own borders to re-energize our stockpile of fuel.
Meanwhile, the price per gallon to fill our cars’ fuel tanks is rapidly approaching $5.00. This is precisely what Shell Oil’s Chief Executive Officer, John Hofmeister, cautioned the House Committee in late May would come to pass unless and until Congress removes the shackles and allows Big Oil to responsibly explore and drill for oil.
Rather than a constructive debate, an ill-mannered response to Mr. Hofmeister’s statement was delivered by Maxine Waters-(D‑CA) in which she attempted to intimidate the CEO, saying the government would socialize [sic] the oil companies. Her clumsy threat was altogether an embarrassment to the office to which she was elected, counterproductive to those proceedings, and an insult to the People’s intelligence.
From Capitol Hill to our largest cities and smallest townships nationwide, scent of power has clouded common sense and sense of duty. Too many of the elected officials we chose to invest with our trust spend their terms in office undermining the laws specifically written to protect citizens. There are also those who, out of idleness, pursue – and needlessly squander taxpayer money on – phantom resolutions to unsubstantiated conundrums, such as the Lieberman-Warner Climate Change Act.
Elected officials have wrecked the inner cities with their unaccountability and allowed schools to fall to ruin. As our education systems deteriorate, so goes our children’s literacy.
Fortunately, there are diehard educators out there who are determined to fight fire with fire. They want kids to be – as they should be – our number one priority. Unfortunately, this example is one of few exceptions. Suitably educating our youngsters in secure and healthy environments is no longer the blanket rule.
Politicians hamstring law enforcement agencies (as with the deleterious Special Order 40 in Los Angeles). And when such initiatives crash and burn leaving only scorched earth in their wake, they lay blame on the federal government. While the blame games go on, the record of men, women, teenagers and children killed and injured increases by the second. The cycle is vicious.
Once they assume office, elected officials engage a bizarre 4‑stage slant on central issues (e.g., national security precautions, economic stability, health and welfare, education, our country’s independence, protection of our constitutional privileges), which is directly linked to the countless problems we face today:
1. Nothing is going to happen.
2. Something might happen but we should do nothing about it.
3. Maybe we should do something but there’s nothing we can do.
4. Maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now.
Example: It took three U.S. presidents to be assassinated (Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley) before Congress finally authorized the Secret Service to assume the full-time responsibility of protecting our Commanders in Chief.
This same jumbled attitude pertains to the Senate’s points of view today with respect to the War on Terror. They (primarily the liberals amongst them) continue to be tightfisted in recognizing the positive effects of the Surge. They pay no heed to the Iraqi people’s remarkable endeavors – working side by side with our magnificent military – to liberate themselves from fanatic ideologues. Instead, Nancy Pelosi had the impudence to give the credit for the Iraqis’ achieved goals to Iran.
To say the Speaker’s remarks are disquieting would be an understatement. She is, in point of fact, encouraging Iran to be aggressive. Her statements were both precarious and immoral in view of the fact Mahmoud Admadinejad considers the North American continent and the State of Israel his personal kill zones.
On the basis of such recklessness, it is essential that the following be circulated to our elected politicians (above all to those yet to be elected), which is the People’s response to their abortive 4-stage strategy:
1. “We” are not confused adolescents.
2. “We” will not be placated.
3. “We” are not fools.
4. “We” are mature citizens who demand for our children and for ourselves protection from terrorists, street gangs, exploding numbers of illegal immigrants, the escalating cost of fuel, the pandemic of irresponsible and wasteful bureaucrats, and higher taxes.
With a shifty general election looming on the horizon, it is mordantly clear that we become unceasingly involved in our own destiny. This is no longer just optional. It is mandatory.
Serious citizen-voters must take the time, either by telephone, facsimile, U.S. mail or electronic mail, and extend straightforward rulings to our elected representatives on their performance, including imminent and wounding legislation. We must be relentless until they clean up their act and rescind radical propositions, from unconditional amnesty for illegals to a plan (dreamed up by the Democrats’ nominee) to distribute $845 BILLION taxpayer dollars outside the United States, the outcome of which could further weaken our fragile economy as well as break the backs of the American People.
“We” put them there. It is now time to dust off the weed whacker, which would serve as fitting notice to the incoming POTUS. That is:
“We, the People” take a backseat to no one, particularly politicians “We” vote into office.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Fair Warning About Obama
By Julian Krasta
When he first stepped out on the world stage, Barack Hussein Obama seemed to most conservatives both beautiful and disturbing, as one might feel when casting a virgin glance upon a Salvador Dali painting: It makes no sense, it is a bit alarming, but the colors are pretty.
Ambitious politicians address expectant crowds often with “I can,” “I will,” or “I promise.” Typically, there are no images to go with their words.
B. Hussein, however, has, and with broad and uneven strokes, splashed a redesigned America on the blank canvases that are his supporters’ minds. The vision they have grabbed onto is, from a hot-air balloon, a color-blended Utopia. Up close, it is stark, very costly, divided, divisive, and unsafe.
Obama displayed painful earnestness when he proposed a change the people can believe in. Unfortunately for him, comments he made about his grandmother being a ‘typical white person’ – and his backpedaling to attempt to reverse its base meaning – has exposed two irrefutable facts: (1) The “change” is pure fiction, because (2) his pallette, by his own admission, is smeared with only two shades: black on the left, white on the right, which has brought out into the open his guilty secret:
He is a spoiled and bitter child.
In view of these inconsistencies, as well as his rambling discourse following the Wright bruhaha in which his deep-seated obsession over race tumbled out, conservatives and auspicious Democrats have watched his ascent and listened to his avowals with enhanced caution. As he spiraled higher, caution turned to concern, particularly after Wright’s frightful remarks and the ugly and hostile emergence of Michael Pfleger.
Frankly, I am relieved. It has all served to reconfirm that Obama is, underneath the surface shine, just another sloppy pop idol. Like all brat luminaries who are the darlings of the liberal media, he believes – or his puppeteers have led him to believe – that he can say or do anything and get away with it. For anyone to try to convince me Obama is qualified to lead this nation would be the same as trying to convince me Martin Bormann was an OK fella.
Obama, the official glamorizer of the liberals’ fractured philosophy, will go on with his lordly amusement of making outlandish conjectures about how he and he alone can cure America’s troubles. With no list of accomplishments to his credit since becoming a senator, this delinquent naïveté is fast becoming a point of great anxiety.
His most upsetting absurdity is to meet with Iran to discuss stabilizing Iraq. The spoiled child in him refuses to accept the fact that there is no chatting or negotiating with tyrants on any issue – ever.
Iran, a preeminent engine of killing, is flagrantly processing uranium. There is no doubt this uranium is being prepared for nuclear weapons. Yet, B. Hussein thinks he can leap tall buildings over to Tehran; that Admadinijad will crawl out of his sinkhole of iniquity, be waiting for him on the tarmac with open arms and – voilà! – lend a happy hand to the United States.
Obama’s immaturity is so tragic it is almost poetic.
The mainstream media will, as they always do, play down Obama’s numerous faux pas. Obama, in an attempt to maintain his artificial patina, will place the onus for his goof-ups on everyone else.
His resolute followers will write articles defending him and engage in blown reactor shouting matches with us “xenophobes” for our audacity to speak or print the truth about him. Nevertheless, this political ingénue’s words are out there for eternity.
Just as no earthly power can resurrect the dead, Obama can never change what he said.
Obama’s meteoric rise has unquestionably affected how he views his own mortality. Instead of window dressing for his mob of doting fans and highbrow supporters and voicing bizarre and self-congratulatory statements, he should re-register at Occidental College and take a crash course on Ancient Rome. Specifically:
When a general returned from a victorious campaign, he would enter Rome triumphantly in his chariot ahead of his legions wearing gold armor and electrum that flashed brightly in the sun. Thousands of exuberant citizens greeted him. They laid flowers before him and cheered wildly as if he were the god Apollo in human form. The moment must have been exhilarating.
Here is where Rome’s emperors were shrewd. They knew such adoration could easily cause the most sensible man to believe he is invincible and redoubtable – a god. With this in mind, they placed a solitary, unobtrusive man beside the general in his chariot. As they paraded past the adoring mob, the man’s sole duty was to repeat this warning in the general’s ear:
“You are only a man.”
In Barack Obama’s case, the repeated warning in everyone’s ears should be:
“He is only a child.”
When he first stepped out on the world stage, Barack Hussein Obama seemed to most conservatives both beautiful and disturbing, as one might feel when casting a virgin glance upon a Salvador Dali painting: It makes no sense, it is a bit alarming, but the colors are pretty.
Ambitious politicians address expectant crowds often with “I can,” “I will,” or “I promise.” Typically, there are no images to go with their words.
B. Hussein, however, has, and with broad and uneven strokes, splashed a redesigned America on the blank canvases that are his supporters’ minds. The vision they have grabbed onto is, from a hot-air balloon, a color-blended Utopia. Up close, it is stark, very costly, divided, divisive, and unsafe.
Obama displayed painful earnestness when he proposed a change the people can believe in. Unfortunately for him, comments he made about his grandmother being a ‘typical white person’ – and his backpedaling to attempt to reverse its base meaning – has exposed two irrefutable facts: (1) The “change” is pure fiction, because (2) his pallette, by his own admission, is smeared with only two shades: black on the left, white on the right, which has brought out into the open his guilty secret:
He is a spoiled and bitter child.
In view of these inconsistencies, as well as his rambling discourse following the Wright bruhaha in which his deep-seated obsession over race tumbled out, conservatives and auspicious Democrats have watched his ascent and listened to his avowals with enhanced caution. As he spiraled higher, caution turned to concern, particularly after Wright’s frightful remarks and the ugly and hostile emergence of Michael Pfleger.
Frankly, I am relieved. It has all served to reconfirm that Obama is, underneath the surface shine, just another sloppy pop idol. Like all brat luminaries who are the darlings of the liberal media, he believes – or his puppeteers have led him to believe – that he can say or do anything and get away with it. For anyone to try to convince me Obama is qualified to lead this nation would be the same as trying to convince me Martin Bormann was an OK fella.
Obama, the official glamorizer of the liberals’ fractured philosophy, will go on with his lordly amusement of making outlandish conjectures about how he and he alone can cure America’s troubles. With no list of accomplishments to his credit since becoming a senator, this delinquent naïveté is fast becoming a point of great anxiety.
His most upsetting absurdity is to meet with Iran to discuss stabilizing Iraq. The spoiled child in him refuses to accept the fact that there is no chatting or negotiating with tyrants on any issue – ever.
Iran, a preeminent engine of killing, is flagrantly processing uranium. There is no doubt this uranium is being prepared for nuclear weapons. Yet, B. Hussein thinks he can leap tall buildings over to Tehran; that Admadinijad will crawl out of his sinkhole of iniquity, be waiting for him on the tarmac with open arms and – voilà! – lend a happy hand to the United States.
Obama’s immaturity is so tragic it is almost poetic.
The mainstream media will, as they always do, play down Obama’s numerous faux pas. Obama, in an attempt to maintain his artificial patina, will place the onus for his goof-ups on everyone else.
His resolute followers will write articles defending him and engage in blown reactor shouting matches with us “xenophobes” for our audacity to speak or print the truth about him. Nevertheless, this political ingénue’s words are out there for eternity.
Just as no earthly power can resurrect the dead, Obama can never change what he said.
Obama’s meteoric rise has unquestionably affected how he views his own mortality. Instead of window dressing for his mob of doting fans and highbrow supporters and voicing bizarre and self-congratulatory statements, he should re-register at Occidental College and take a crash course on Ancient Rome. Specifically:
When a general returned from a victorious campaign, he would enter Rome triumphantly in his chariot ahead of his legions wearing gold armor and electrum that flashed brightly in the sun. Thousands of exuberant citizens greeted him. They laid flowers before him and cheered wildly as if he were the god Apollo in human form. The moment must have been exhilarating.
Here is where Rome’s emperors were shrewd. They knew such adoration could easily cause the most sensible man to believe he is invincible and redoubtable – a god. With this in mind, they placed a solitary, unobtrusive man beside the general in his chariot. As they paraded past the adoring mob, the man’s sole duty was to repeat this warning in the general’s ear:
“You are only a man.”
In Barack Obama’s case, the repeated warning in everyone’s ears should be:
“He is only a child.”
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Like It or Not, We Should Prepare for the Worst
by Julian Krasta
While the three presidential candidates scuttle towards the big prize, the real-time issue of national defense against terrorist aggressors here and abroad remains the front-row topic.
Since time in memorial, legions of men of fractured ambition have left carpets of corpses in their wake because of ill-conceived, all-consuming greed, envy and hate. These same neuroses survive today. The disparity now is, tormentors are equipped with weapons of mass destruction and are sway to deluded impulses to gun down and eviscerate the sleeping giant, America.
As this threat persists, two questions beg answers:
1. Is our nation suitably fortified?
2. Do Americans understand the lengths they need to go to be prepared for the worst?
The answer to both is “yes” – but also “no.”
“Yes” to the first, because America has the greatest concentration of ground, sea and air tactical forces in the world: courageous soldiers, sailors, marines and fighter pilots far from home, where they are placing their lives willingly in harm’s way in order to keep us here at home safe from harm. (Many have died. To each, which includes their families and friends, I say, Thank you… and God bless you.)
“No” to question No. 1 arises because our sitting Congress is a twisted mass of liberal red tape. The result is the safeguards necessary for our country’s protection have fallen far down their critical must-do list. Why, you ask? Because, while our homeland is busting at the seams from the countless numbers of illegal aliens for whom everything from soup to nuts is “On the House,” there are not enough of our valiant soldiers to defend cities and states if the worst occurs… again.
Additionally, the “no” to No. 1 has been exacerbated by Democrat members of the House of Representatives, particularly their leaders, on whose necks, in my opinion, the axe should fall without mercy come November. Their gross negligence in purposely allowing the Protect America Act to expire in February is a clear threat to every single American.
The Democrats did not act alone. They worked in concert with trial lawyers who use their “officer of the court” status as an apparatus to beguile specific legislation so that the outcome benefits only them. Those lobbyists won, or rather bought, their argument (and other outrageous conflict-ridden contretemps) by disgorging thousands of favor dollars into the Democrats’ honey pot.
The return on their cash investment was a succès fou. In plain “Americans lose” English, the trial lawyers, with malicious intent, triumphed ignominiously, in that they caused to be blocked all efforts on the part of House Republicans to reinstate the Protect America Act, which has been officially dead in the water as of February 16, 2008.
As for the over-powdered culprits in the House (who anoint themselves daily with the F‑word: “failure” [in Iraq]), by accepting tainted money they are indiscreetly admitting that a fatter party fund is more important to them than the lives and property of the present and future generations of Americans.
Naturally, Nancy Pelosi tidily explained the dismantling of this vital safety provision: “…to protect the financial interests of telecommunications companies and avoid judicial scrutiny of their warrantless wiretapping program…” – which is lawyer-speak for, The House of Representatives have no sense of right and wrong as we gaily parley better seats in hell for us all. (Bear in mind that most, if not all, members of the House share the same parentage with trial lawyers: law degrees. They therefore chat in the same corrupt patois and impart the same parsimonious principles – tied neatly together with strands of low-ethic DNA.)
Whom do you imagine is wedged in the passageways and dead ends of their money-changing labyrinth? You guessed it, the taxpayers. We comprise the low-, middle- and high-income filers and every mom & pop store, every multinational, transnational, public, private, commercial, boutique, average, conglomerate and mega-corporation.
Whether the liberals like to hear it or not, and they do not, it is we the taxpayers – not elected officials – who are the only legitimate body that shapes and keeps alive the amalgam we call America. Yet our hard work, our tax dollars, our earned interest, our safety is more shabbily regarded than the millions of revenue-gluttonous illegal immigrants.
Once again, it falls onto the taxpayers to be vigilant watchdogs for us and our children, and our children’s future. It is up to us to prepare and be ready for the worst, which is in no way difficult.
The answer to question No. 2, above, is this. For all potential large-scale emergencies, there are steps that are vital to ensure we get through the first drastic days. Many Internet sites are devoted to preparedness.
Below are three of the best of those Internet sites. Take the time to study their contents and make emergency lists, and stock up against those lists. You would be surprised (I know I was shocked) to learn just how “unprepared” at home we are once we looked at the drills and supplies essential to keep going when the going gets rough.
Pretend another Hurricane Katrina will be bearing down on your house in seven days’ time. Start now and go to whatever lengths necessary in order to be fully equipped.
It is senseless to depend on backbiting Senators and Congresspersons to protect us and our kids, our family members and pets, or our real property, especially since self-seekers within House chambers have demonstrated that their primary concern is over what brings them and their party political more booty.
(Los Angeles Fire Department Emergency Preparedness List)
(Being Ready)
(72-Hour Food Kit for Emergency Preparedness)
While the three presidential candidates scuttle towards the big prize, the real-time issue of national defense against terrorist aggressors here and abroad remains the front-row topic.
Since time in memorial, legions of men of fractured ambition have left carpets of corpses in their wake because of ill-conceived, all-consuming greed, envy and hate. These same neuroses survive today. The disparity now is, tormentors are equipped with weapons of mass destruction and are sway to deluded impulses to gun down and eviscerate the sleeping giant, America.
As this threat persists, two questions beg answers:
1. Is our nation suitably fortified?
2. Do Americans understand the lengths they need to go to be prepared for the worst?
The answer to both is “yes” – but also “no.”
“Yes” to the first, because America has the greatest concentration of ground, sea and air tactical forces in the world: courageous soldiers, sailors, marines and fighter pilots far from home, where they are placing their lives willingly in harm’s way in order to keep us here at home safe from harm. (Many have died. To each, which includes their families and friends, I say, Thank you… and God bless you.)
“No” to question No. 1 arises because our sitting Congress is a twisted mass of liberal red tape. The result is the safeguards necessary for our country’s protection have fallen far down their critical must-do list. Why, you ask? Because, while our homeland is busting at the seams from the countless numbers of illegal aliens for whom everything from soup to nuts is “On the House,” there are not enough of our valiant soldiers to defend cities and states if the worst occurs… again.
Additionally, the “no” to No. 1 has been exacerbated by Democrat members of the House of Representatives, particularly their leaders, on whose necks, in my opinion, the axe should fall without mercy come November. Their gross negligence in purposely allowing the Protect America Act to expire in February is a clear threat to every single American.
The Democrats did not act alone. They worked in concert with trial lawyers who use their “officer of the court” status as an apparatus to beguile specific legislation so that the outcome benefits only them. Those lobbyists won, or rather bought, their argument (and other outrageous conflict-ridden contretemps) by disgorging thousands of favor dollars into the Democrats’ honey pot.
The return on their cash investment was a succès fou. In plain “Americans lose” English, the trial lawyers, with malicious intent, triumphed ignominiously, in that they caused to be blocked all efforts on the part of House Republicans to reinstate the Protect America Act, which has been officially dead in the water as of February 16, 2008.
As for the over-powdered culprits in the House (who anoint themselves daily with the F‑word: “failure” [in Iraq]), by accepting tainted money they are indiscreetly admitting that a fatter party fund is more important to them than the lives and property of the present and future generations of Americans.
Naturally, Nancy Pelosi tidily explained the dismantling of this vital safety provision: “…to protect the financial interests of telecommunications companies and avoid judicial scrutiny of their warrantless wiretapping program…” – which is lawyer-speak for, The House of Representatives have no sense of right and wrong as we gaily parley better seats in hell for us all. (Bear in mind that most, if not all, members of the House share the same parentage with trial lawyers: law degrees. They therefore chat in the same corrupt patois and impart the same parsimonious principles – tied neatly together with strands of low-ethic DNA.)
Whom do you imagine is wedged in the passageways and dead ends of their money-changing labyrinth? You guessed it, the taxpayers. We comprise the low-, middle- and high-income filers and every mom & pop store, every multinational, transnational, public, private, commercial, boutique, average, conglomerate and mega-corporation.
Whether the liberals like to hear it or not, and they do not, it is we the taxpayers – not elected officials – who are the only legitimate body that shapes and keeps alive the amalgam we call America. Yet our hard work, our tax dollars, our earned interest, our safety is more shabbily regarded than the millions of revenue-gluttonous illegal immigrants.
Once again, it falls onto the taxpayers to be vigilant watchdogs for us and our children, and our children’s future. It is up to us to prepare and be ready for the worst, which is in no way difficult.
The answer to question No. 2, above, is this. For all potential large-scale emergencies, there are steps that are vital to ensure we get through the first drastic days. Many Internet sites are devoted to preparedness.
Below are three of the best of those Internet sites. Take the time to study their contents and make emergency lists, and stock up against those lists. You would be surprised (I know I was shocked) to learn just how “unprepared” at home we are once we looked at the drills and supplies essential to keep going when the going gets rough.
Pretend another Hurricane Katrina will be bearing down on your house in seven days’ time. Start now and go to whatever lengths necessary in order to be fully equipped.
It is senseless to depend on backbiting Senators and Congresspersons to protect us and our kids, our family members and pets, or our real property, especially since self-seekers within House chambers have demonstrated that their primary concern is over what brings them and their party political more booty.
(Los Angeles Fire Department Emergency Preparedness List)
(Being Ready)
(72-Hour Food Kit for Emergency Preparedness)
Monday, March 24, 2008
A Pose by Any Other Name
by Julian Krasta
The veneer is peeling, the wax is melting … and hell may indeed be freezing over – and after what appeared to be a near-perfect pitch campaign that reminded me of the flawlessly timed cadences of Johnny Mathis when he sang ‘Chances Are.’
From where I sit, the wunderkind’s façade has slipped, and what we might be seeing now is the tried and true Barack Obama. Like water seeking its own level, his principles, too, have bubbled up through the glossy surface – and they are appearing not so wunderbar.
Up to now, Obama – using fast & loose rhetoric – has gotten farther up the political ladder than any other non-Caucasian in American history. The devotion and cheering on of the African-American communities and, by enormous measure, the white communities, have aided in propelling him straight toward the most coveted, most powerful executive position this country has to offer.
He has played his role skillfully as he delivered, and continues to deliver, mile-long stretches of imaginative, albeit immature, speculation, which his followers eat up like free ice cream on a hot day. According to those adoring fans, there seems to be nothing he could ever say that is wide of the mark. One liberal lady friend even said to me, “If Barack Obama could sprout wings we’d see him fly!”
His ability to soar above the skyline notwithstanding, Obama’s long-term, personal association with a certain racist pastor has grounded him, at least for the time being. This close association might possibly cancel out a significant share of all the good will, trust, and hope for progress – and I am not talking just in terms of the Presidency. I include the ongoing, exhaustive and frustrating wars against racial prejudice in America in general, which we were winning…we were winning.
Each inch-by-bloody-inch victory broke more and more barriers down and Americans were growing closer. When you add up all those inches that we here in America have gained, no one could deny that we had in fact come a very long way.
I dare compare the nature of our contentions to the centuries-long vicious turmoil in the Middle East where countries are crying out for freedom from mullahs and terrorists – for democracy, for equality. This is a universal refrain everyone can hum in unison regardless of the differences in languages.
Then, just at the moment when evolution occurs, another hothead – another racial ‘jihadist’ – comes scurrying out of his hole and starts hurling verbal IEDs in every direction causing widespread damage. This hothead – this pastor in Christ – refuses to let go of the past, because he is not happy unless he dredges up old ghosts and shoots every good intention in the head to impede advancement.
The stage was set for his ignominious emergence (like an irascible first-time homeowner who purposely blows his leaves into a neighbor’s yard, “…because now I can.”). He must have been thinking that his chummy friendship with Obama gave him the right to platform farcical and hateful statements such as “The government invented AIDS to kill black people,” and “The government is building concentration camps for black people,” and “The government provides drugs to blacks to hold them down,” etcetera, ad nauseum.
When I had read the pastor’s rants I thought for a moment they were Stokely Carmichael’s words rising from his grave (about the cancer that took his life). Carmichael had said, it was “…given to me by the forces of American imperialism and others who conspired with them.” He further claimed that the FBI had put the disease in his body to assassinate him.
Oceans of water have passed since Carmichael was on the scene and sparked the term Black Power. His attitude nonetheless remains inured in the pastor’s heart and mind. He has proven without a shadow of doubt that he, and persons like himself (and certainly not all of them black) who perpetually and unnecessarily let fly the words ‘racist’ and ‘racism’ at our faces and into our collective consciousness, have no intention of changing one iota either their points of view or their off-color tune any time soon.
What I find disturbing is not so much what this pastor blurted but rather that Obama, who has been mentored by this person for over twenty years, claims he was not aware of his pastor’s intimate feelings (all unquestionably uber-radical), and has made clumsy excuses for the man and for what the man has said. Unlike Mitt Romney’s stirring speech concerning his Mormonism in which he emphasized his love and devotion for this country, Obama’s speech made no mention of patriotism or love for America. I welcome correction if I didn’t read it right.
Therefore, it is because of Obama’s obvious reluctance to put the pastor fully and equivocally in his place, and spending far too much time in his speech preaching about the good, bad, and ugly – and on and on and on and on – of race relations in America that I perceive a rapid withering of Obama’s perfect presentation of himself.
Strangely enough, I must thank the pastor for his horrid honesty. Until now, conservatives have decided to regard Obama’s spell over his followers as charming. No prima facie evidence we have presented to Democrats and liberals has been beefy enough to cause them to understand and accept the fact that he is not yet – I repeat: not yet – qualified or experienced to assume the mantle of Commander in Chief, particularly at this volatile time.
The pastor, however, quite possibly has single-handedly delivered the long-overdue hangover remedy the bloated masses of spellbound Obama followers have needed to sober up and face reality. That reality is, if their candidate cannot – or will not – take control over one person’s ravings, how can they expect him to control the White House?
The veneer is peeling, the wax is melting … and hell may indeed be freezing over – and after what appeared to be a near-perfect pitch campaign that reminded me of the flawlessly timed cadences of Johnny Mathis when he sang ‘Chances Are.’
From where I sit, the wunderkind’s façade has slipped, and what we might be seeing now is the tried and true Barack Obama. Like water seeking its own level, his principles, too, have bubbled up through the glossy surface – and they are appearing not so wunderbar.
Up to now, Obama – using fast & loose rhetoric – has gotten farther up the political ladder than any other non-Caucasian in American history. The devotion and cheering on of the African-American communities and, by enormous measure, the white communities, have aided in propelling him straight toward the most coveted, most powerful executive position this country has to offer.
He has played his role skillfully as he delivered, and continues to deliver, mile-long stretches of imaginative, albeit immature, speculation, which his followers eat up like free ice cream on a hot day. According to those adoring fans, there seems to be nothing he could ever say that is wide of the mark. One liberal lady friend even said to me, “If Barack Obama could sprout wings we’d see him fly!”
His ability to soar above the skyline notwithstanding, Obama’s long-term, personal association with a certain racist pastor has grounded him, at least for the time being. This close association might possibly cancel out a significant share of all the good will, trust, and hope for progress – and I am not talking just in terms of the Presidency. I include the ongoing, exhaustive and frustrating wars against racial prejudice in America in general, which we were winning…we were winning.
Each inch-by-bloody-inch victory broke more and more barriers down and Americans were growing closer. When you add up all those inches that we here in America have gained, no one could deny that we had in fact come a very long way.
I dare compare the nature of our contentions to the centuries-long vicious turmoil in the Middle East where countries are crying out for freedom from mullahs and terrorists – for democracy, for equality. This is a universal refrain everyone can hum in unison regardless of the differences in languages.
Then, just at the moment when evolution occurs, another hothead – another racial ‘jihadist’ – comes scurrying out of his hole and starts hurling verbal IEDs in every direction causing widespread damage. This hothead – this pastor in Christ – refuses to let go of the past, because he is not happy unless he dredges up old ghosts and shoots every good intention in the head to impede advancement.
The stage was set for his ignominious emergence (like an irascible first-time homeowner who purposely blows his leaves into a neighbor’s yard, “…because now I can.”). He must have been thinking that his chummy friendship with Obama gave him the right to platform farcical and hateful statements such as “The government invented AIDS to kill black people,” and “The government is building concentration camps for black people,” and “The government provides drugs to blacks to hold them down,” etcetera, ad nauseum.
When I had read the pastor’s rants I thought for a moment they were Stokely Carmichael’s words rising from his grave (about the cancer that took his life). Carmichael had said, it was “…given to me by the forces of American imperialism and others who conspired with them.” He further claimed that the FBI had put the disease in his body to assassinate him.
Oceans of water have passed since Carmichael was on the scene and sparked the term Black Power. His attitude nonetheless remains inured in the pastor’s heart and mind. He has proven without a shadow of doubt that he, and persons like himself (and certainly not all of them black) who perpetually and unnecessarily let fly the words ‘racist’ and ‘racism’ at our faces and into our collective consciousness, have no intention of changing one iota either their points of view or their off-color tune any time soon.
What I find disturbing is not so much what this pastor blurted but rather that Obama, who has been mentored by this person for over twenty years, claims he was not aware of his pastor’s intimate feelings (all unquestionably uber-radical), and has made clumsy excuses for the man and for what the man has said. Unlike Mitt Romney’s stirring speech concerning his Mormonism in which he emphasized his love and devotion for this country, Obama’s speech made no mention of patriotism or love for America. I welcome correction if I didn’t read it right.
Therefore, it is because of Obama’s obvious reluctance to put the pastor fully and equivocally in his place, and spending far too much time in his speech preaching about the good, bad, and ugly – and on and on and on and on – of race relations in America that I perceive a rapid withering of Obama’s perfect presentation of himself.
Strangely enough, I must thank the pastor for his horrid honesty. Until now, conservatives have decided to regard Obama’s spell over his followers as charming. No prima facie evidence we have presented to Democrats and liberals has been beefy enough to cause them to understand and accept the fact that he is not yet – I repeat: not yet – qualified or experienced to assume the mantle of Commander in Chief, particularly at this volatile time.
The pastor, however, quite possibly has single-handedly delivered the long-overdue hangover remedy the bloated masses of spellbound Obama followers have needed to sober up and face reality. That reality is, if their candidate cannot – or will not – take control over one person’s ravings, how can they expect him to control the White House?
The Damage Some Men's Dreams Can Do
by Julian Krasta
With proper upbringing, a boy can grow into a strong, self-reliant and sensible man. If that grown man is also well adjusted and has self-respect, he will neutralize deficiencies in his character (e.g., hubris, and that brother bugaboo “machismo”) to defray misgivings and ridicule by family, co-workers and friends – even his enemies. If a man behaves or speaks idiotically, someone eventually will call him on it.
Generally, men are dreamers … like our Founding Fathers were dreamers. It was upon their collective vision that the foundation of this great country was conceived and created where we live in blessed freedom, to achieve as much as we can in the short time given us – to be as great as we wish to be. I am always happy when trying to explain this to my liberal friends; and, if I am lucky, they will still not understand it and I will have to explain all over again.
But I digress.
I dream, too – of owning one of those ultimate driving machines, turning my baseball cap front to back and pushing the pedal to the metal. Realistically, I dream of owning a handsome house in a neighborhood where I can walk, shop, socialize, sleep and just breathe without feeling afraid – where the fellow next door is not secretly buying thousands of Uzis to ship to Iran.
There are dreamers like Mahmoud Admadinejad who, along with other rogue tyrants, refers to the United States as the Great Satan. If this were true, it would be fair of me to say he is the reincarnation of Josef Stalin, only without the whimsy.
As millions of witless Americans parade in intoxicated revelry over the frenetic campaigning by the Democratic candidates (in my opinion, by the weakest field I can recall), Admadinejad skulks in shadow, waiting restlessly to dare the United States into a confrontation, possibly nuclear. He did it once, almost a year ago – to test our patience and gauge our potential firepower – when he ordered the abduction of British sailors. It was only after his advisors informed him that President George W. Bush ordered the deployment of the USS Nimitz strike group into the Persian Gulf, and with all possible speed, that Admadinijad backed down and released the prisoners to England. Our Commander in Chief had called his bluff, because his ace was, and is, the might of the United States military.
I do not need to know him personally to recognize that Admadinijad’s behavior is the product of a twisted twilight zone for the pathological and squirrelly, which pushed me to wonder: “What dreams does this man have?”
I began my research with the virgins in paradise myth. Its explanation is straightforward (according to Muslim legend):
"The smallest reward for the people of heaven is an abode where there are eighty thousand servants and seventy two wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine and ruby … etc. …"
The wives referred to in this narrative are purported to be black-eyed, voluptuously beautiful virgins awaiting “the faithful” (i.e., martyrs). Who are the martyrs? They are the wretched dreamers who strap explosives to their bodies, pull the cord and destroy the lives of innocent human beings (men, women, children … babies) so that they can catapult to their heaven and luxuriate in the attention of obedient maidens.
This fantasy worries me a great deal, because I suspect Admadinejad’s dreams are loftier – that they exceed the 72-virgin limit. Why do I presume this? My wise dad once told me:
“To know your enemy you must learn to think like him – to imagine every possible angle and move that runs through his mind, like a chess game.”
Armed with this counsel, I deduced the following:
If a couple of sticks of dynamite earns a murder-suicide bomber 72 chaste females, Mahmoud Admadinejad might believe (or is being led to believe by mullahs, or his own demons, or both) that he would be rewarded with a thousand, maybe a million, times the legal limit if he sets off a nuclear device. The incentive is there if he accepts as true his craven ideology’s party-line propaganda of being forever fondled by nubile nymphs.
He and others like him could avoid such razzle-dazzle if they instead bought a membership at the Emperor’s Club in New York, where Governor Eliot Spitzer had found his paradise – several times, according to the reports. There a man does not have to be blown to bloody bits in order to attain nirvana.
I have a second, even greater worry. It is about the liberals and Democrats amongst us, whose foresight is, at best, fanciful. They dismiss the fact that it was daring and enlightened dreams that built America – that Admadinejad’s blasphemous trances could propel him and others to destroy it.
On the bright side, if Hillary Clinton becomes president her political party should split in about four months. On the down side, if Barack Obama succeeds to the Presidency this country could split in four weeks. We would then not need to concern ourselves over what aggressions Admadinejad might or might not attempt, because we (“we” includes every Barack-head who thinks he or she is exempt from being hit with taxes that will sustain Obama’s dream changes) will be drowning in the muck of his sausage factory, oxymoronic statements, such as:
“My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you’ll join me as we try to change it.”
That is the same as saying, “The Rolls Royce is the most beautifully appointed, masterfully built automobile in the world. Come on down and join in on its transformation. And bring your hammer, duct tape and can of spray paint.”
If the next President of the United States turns out to be either fantasist Democrat (both guaranteeing to fulfill a campaign pledge to leave the Middle East militarily unattended), we might as well draw a pentagram on the ground, face Mecca and join hands, and chant:
“The door is open. Do your worst.”
With proper upbringing, a boy can grow into a strong, self-reliant and sensible man. If that grown man is also well adjusted and has self-respect, he will neutralize deficiencies in his character (e.g., hubris, and that brother bugaboo “machismo”) to defray misgivings and ridicule by family, co-workers and friends – even his enemies. If a man behaves or speaks idiotically, someone eventually will call him on it.
Generally, men are dreamers … like our Founding Fathers were dreamers. It was upon their collective vision that the foundation of this great country was conceived and created where we live in blessed freedom, to achieve as much as we can in the short time given us – to be as great as we wish to be. I am always happy when trying to explain this to my liberal friends; and, if I am lucky, they will still not understand it and I will have to explain all over again.
But I digress.
I dream, too – of owning one of those ultimate driving machines, turning my baseball cap front to back and pushing the pedal to the metal. Realistically, I dream of owning a handsome house in a neighborhood where I can walk, shop, socialize, sleep and just breathe without feeling afraid – where the fellow next door is not secretly buying thousands of Uzis to ship to Iran.
There are dreamers like Mahmoud Admadinejad who, along with other rogue tyrants, refers to the United States as the Great Satan. If this were true, it would be fair of me to say he is the reincarnation of Josef Stalin, only without the whimsy.
As millions of witless Americans parade in intoxicated revelry over the frenetic campaigning by the Democratic candidates (in my opinion, by the weakest field I can recall), Admadinejad skulks in shadow, waiting restlessly to dare the United States into a confrontation, possibly nuclear. He did it once, almost a year ago – to test our patience and gauge our potential firepower – when he ordered the abduction of British sailors. It was only after his advisors informed him that President George W. Bush ordered the deployment of the USS Nimitz strike group into the Persian Gulf, and with all possible speed, that Admadinijad backed down and released the prisoners to England. Our Commander in Chief had called his bluff, because his ace was, and is, the might of the United States military.
I do not need to know him personally to recognize that Admadinijad’s behavior is the product of a twisted twilight zone for the pathological and squirrelly, which pushed me to wonder: “What dreams does this man have?”
I began my research with the virgins in paradise myth. Its explanation is straightforward (according to Muslim legend):
"The smallest reward for the people of heaven is an abode where there are eighty thousand servants and seventy two wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine and ruby … etc. …"
The wives referred to in this narrative are purported to be black-eyed, voluptuously beautiful virgins awaiting “the faithful” (i.e., martyrs). Who are the martyrs? They are the wretched dreamers who strap explosives to their bodies, pull the cord and destroy the lives of innocent human beings (men, women, children … babies) so that they can catapult to their heaven and luxuriate in the attention of obedient maidens.
This fantasy worries me a great deal, because I suspect Admadinejad’s dreams are loftier – that they exceed the 72-virgin limit. Why do I presume this? My wise dad once told me:
“To know your enemy you must learn to think like him – to imagine every possible angle and move that runs through his mind, like a chess game.”
Armed with this counsel, I deduced the following:
If a couple of sticks of dynamite earns a murder-suicide bomber 72 chaste females, Mahmoud Admadinejad might believe (or is being led to believe by mullahs, or his own demons, or both) that he would be rewarded with a thousand, maybe a million, times the legal limit if he sets off a nuclear device. The incentive is there if he accepts as true his craven ideology’s party-line propaganda of being forever fondled by nubile nymphs.
He and others like him could avoid such razzle-dazzle if they instead bought a membership at the Emperor’s Club in New York, where Governor Eliot Spitzer had found his paradise – several times, according to the reports. There a man does not have to be blown to bloody bits in order to attain nirvana.
I have a second, even greater worry. It is about the liberals and Democrats amongst us, whose foresight is, at best, fanciful. They dismiss the fact that it was daring and enlightened dreams that built America – that Admadinejad’s blasphemous trances could propel him and others to destroy it.
On the bright side, if Hillary Clinton becomes president her political party should split in about four months. On the down side, if Barack Obama succeeds to the Presidency this country could split in four weeks. We would then not need to concern ourselves over what aggressions Admadinejad might or might not attempt, because we (“we” includes every Barack-head who thinks he or she is exempt from being hit with taxes that will sustain Obama’s dream changes) will be drowning in the muck of his sausage factory, oxymoronic statements, such as:
“My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you’ll join me as we try to change it.”
That is the same as saying, “The Rolls Royce is the most beautifully appointed, masterfully built automobile in the world. Come on down and join in on its transformation. And bring your hammer, duct tape and can of spray paint.”
If the next President of the United States turns out to be either fantasist Democrat (both guaranteeing to fulfill a campaign pledge to leave the Middle East militarily unattended), we might as well draw a pentagram on the ground, face Mecca and join hands, and chant:
“The door is open. Do your worst.”
Friday, February 15, 2008
Missing WWII Airmen Are Identified
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
No. 132-08
February 15, 2008
[Source]
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of three U.S. servicemen, missing from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors.
They are 2nd Lt. John F. Lubben, of Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.; Sgt. Albert A. Forgue, of North Providence, R.I.; and Sgt. Charles L. Spiegel, of Chicago, Ill.; all U.S. Army Air Forces. They will be buried on April 18 in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
Representatives from the Army met with the next-of-kin of these men in their hometowns to explain the recovery and identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the Secretary of the Army.
On Dec. 12, 1944, these men crewed an A-20J Havoc aircraft departing from Coullomiers, France, to bomb enemy targets near Wollseifen, Germany. The aircraft was last seen entering a steep dive near Cologne, Germany. Several searches and investigations of this area and reviews of wartime documents failed to provide information concerning the incident.
In 1975, a German company clearing wartime mines and unexploded ordnance near Simmerath, Germany, reported the discovery of a gravesite northeast of Simmerath where American servicemembers were buried. U.S. officials evaluated the remains and determined they represented three individuals, but they could not make identifications at that time. The remains were subsequently buried as unknowns in the Ardennes American Military Cemetery in Neupre, Belgium.
In 2003, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) was notified that a group of German citizens had information correlating the three servicemembers who were buried as unknowns with the crew from the 1944 A-20J crash. Based on that information, JPAC exhumed the three unknown graves from the Ardennes American Military Cemetery in 2005.
Among dental records, other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory also used mitochondrial DNA in the identification of the remains.
For additional information on the Defense Department's mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/ or call (703) 699-1169.
No. 132-08
February 15, 2008
[Source]
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of three U.S. servicemen, missing from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors.
They are 2nd Lt. John F. Lubben, of Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.; Sgt. Albert A. Forgue, of North Providence, R.I.; and Sgt. Charles L. Spiegel, of Chicago, Ill.; all U.S. Army Air Forces. They will be buried on April 18 in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
Representatives from the Army met with the next-of-kin of these men in their hometowns to explain the recovery and identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the Secretary of the Army.
On Dec. 12, 1944, these men crewed an A-20J Havoc aircraft departing from Coullomiers, France, to bomb enemy targets near Wollseifen, Germany. The aircraft was last seen entering a steep dive near Cologne, Germany. Several searches and investigations of this area and reviews of wartime documents failed to provide information concerning the incident.
In 1975, a German company clearing wartime mines and unexploded ordnance near Simmerath, Germany, reported the discovery of a gravesite northeast of Simmerath where American servicemembers were buried. U.S. officials evaluated the remains and determined they represented three individuals, but they could not make identifications at that time. The remains were subsequently buried as unknowns in the Ardennes American Military Cemetery in Neupre, Belgium.
In 2003, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) was notified that a group of German citizens had information correlating the three servicemembers who were buried as unknowns with the crew from the 1944 A-20J crash. Based on that information, JPAC exhumed the three unknown graves from the Ardennes American Military Cemetery in 2005.
Among dental records, other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory also used mitochondrial DNA in the identification of the remains.
For additional information on the Defense Department's mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/ or call (703) 699-1169.
WELCOME HOME, BOYS.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
"We, the People"
By Amil Imani
In the United States, the oath of office for the President of the United States is specified in the U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 1):
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
For other officials, including members of Congress, they "shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support the constitution." They must recite an oath to support and protect the United States citizens from her enemies:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.”
In an oath of office, no matter in what capacity one serves as a public servant, he or she must be reminded that everyone at all levels must first and foremost focus on the needs and the security of its citizens rather than on the desires of his or her services. With that in mind, one must be ready to follow the bylaws as his or her guide and exercise the functions of the office with which he or she is entrusted.
Democracy, by its accommodating and benign nature, is susceptible to corruption and even destruction by forces from within and from without. With this realization in mind, the founding fathers of the United States enshrined the Constitution to safeguard and protect the rule of the people.
While America opens its doors to the poor, the hungry and the oppressed of the world, Americans open their hearts to the less fortunate people of various lands by their unsurpassed generosity. No nation gives more aid to international charities, as a percentage of its gross domestic product, than the American people.
Recent migration of Muslims to non-Islamic lands began as a seemingly harmless, even useful, trickle of cheap and necessary labor. Before long, greater and greater numbers of Muslims deluged the new territories and as they gained in numbers—by high birth rate as well as new arrivals—Muslims began reverting to their intolerant ways by, for instance, demanding legal status for Sharia (Islamic laws), the type of draconian laws that, for the most part, resemble those of humanity’s barbaric past.
There is no need to belabor the point that Islam is not, and has never been, a religion of peace. Islamism has set a new record for brutality, contrary to the contention that there is no reason to worry about it. Jihadist Wahabism’s tentacles are reaching out from its cradle in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf Arab Emirates. And murderous Shiism, led by the Islamic terrorist state in Iran, is racing to arm itself with the ultimate weapon, and is doing whatever it can to ensnare the world into Islam’s nation, the Ummeh.
President George W. Bush, on several occasions, has repeated the mantra and attributed the horrific violence committed under the banner of Islam to a small band of extremists. The President on his latest trip to Turkey said, "I think Turkey sets a fantastic example for nations around the world to see where it's possible to have a democracy coexist with a great religion like Islam and that's important.” Ironically, the Turkish Parliament voted on Saturday to amend the constitution to lift a decades-old ban on Islamic headscarves at Turkey's universities, despite fierce opposition from the secular establishment.
The President’s assertion is either based on ignorance of the facts about Islam or his attempt at political correctness. Perhaps the President’s reticence to speak on the true nature of Islam was due to his desire to avoid inflaming the already charged feelings of many about Islam. In any event, truth is sacrificed and the public continues to cling to the false notion that Islam is a peaceful religion. People who dare to disclose the true nature of Islam run the risk of being castigated as a bigot and a hatemonger.
Calling Islam a great religion and misrepresenting it is not simply a harmless gesture of goodwill and peacemaking. This is flaming the fire that has every intention of consuming us. Therefore, it is imperative that in November 2008, we choose the chief custodian of our constitution, the President, with great care. We must entrust the helm of our nation to the hands of a person of impeccable integrity who is unconditionally loyal to the constitution, who does not sacrifice principles and truth at the altar of expediency, and who is not shirking from what he must do to ensure our nation’s survival in the face of internal and external assaults.
The pundits, the analysts and the politicians indeed are doing a great disservice to the public, each segment for its own expedient reasons, by parroting the mantra regarding the peaceful nature of Islam. As a matter of fact, the so-called small band of Islamic extremists is the true face of Islam.
Islam is indeed misrepresented. Islam is not misrepresented by its “detractors.” It is misrepresented by Islamic mercenaries, organizations and individuals generously funded by states as well as wealthy believers who are making billions of dollars pumping and selling oil at astronomical prices. Prestigious universities in the West, always looking for handouts, are tripping over one another to establish Islamic studies programs staffed by professors who sing the praise of Islam. Newspapers are routinely intimidated by Islamic associations if they dare to print the truth about Islam. Legions of lawyers, both Muslims as well as hired guns, are on the lookout to intimidate and silence any voice speaking the truth about Islam. The media that falls in line may receive generous advertising and other incentives from Islamic lobbyists.
All extreme solutions, if unwise, are fraught with extreme dangers. During the presidential campaign of the Vietnam War, Barry Goldwater proclaimed, “Extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice.” The collective wisdom of the American public prevailed and Goldwater didn’t get a chance to put his belief into practice. It is prudent to reserve extreme measures for extreme cases. Just as important, it is best to follow the less glamorous solutions of the problems as they gather momentum and diffuse them.
The U.S. government should, without delay, underwrite a massive program of making the nation energy independent so that the Islamic gas station nations will no longer be able to hold the country hostage for oil. Each citizen, in the meantime, must do everything possible to conserve energy and deny the flow of dollars to the coffers of the enemy.
The -- not-- so grateful world owes the U.S. an infinite debt of gratitude for defeating the evil of Nazism, and then the scourge of Soviet Communism. We all have to do what each one of us can to right the wrongs of this world. We don't have to be Einstein -- each one of us must do something according to his or her capacity. Once again, this champion nation of freedom is called upon to defeat the most tenacious and deadly enemy, Islamofascism.
In the United States, the oath of office for the President of the United States is specified in the U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 1):
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
For other officials, including members of Congress, they "shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support the constitution." They must recite an oath to support and protect the United States citizens from her enemies:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.”
In an oath of office, no matter in what capacity one serves as a public servant, he or she must be reminded that everyone at all levels must first and foremost focus on the needs and the security of its citizens rather than on the desires of his or her services. With that in mind, one must be ready to follow the bylaws as his or her guide and exercise the functions of the office with which he or she is entrusted.
Democracy, by its accommodating and benign nature, is susceptible to corruption and even destruction by forces from within and from without. With this realization in mind, the founding fathers of the United States enshrined the Constitution to safeguard and protect the rule of the people.
While America opens its doors to the poor, the hungry and the oppressed of the world, Americans open their hearts to the less fortunate people of various lands by their unsurpassed generosity. No nation gives more aid to international charities, as a percentage of its gross domestic product, than the American people.
Recent migration of Muslims to non-Islamic lands began as a seemingly harmless, even useful, trickle of cheap and necessary labor. Before long, greater and greater numbers of Muslims deluged the new territories and as they gained in numbers—by high birth rate as well as new arrivals—Muslims began reverting to their intolerant ways by, for instance, demanding legal status for Sharia (Islamic laws), the type of draconian laws that, for the most part, resemble those of humanity’s barbaric past.
There is no need to belabor the point that Islam is not, and has never been, a religion of peace. Islamism has set a new record for brutality, contrary to the contention that there is no reason to worry about it. Jihadist Wahabism’s tentacles are reaching out from its cradle in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf Arab Emirates. And murderous Shiism, led by the Islamic terrorist state in Iran, is racing to arm itself with the ultimate weapon, and is doing whatever it can to ensnare the world into Islam’s nation, the Ummeh.
President George W. Bush, on several occasions, has repeated the mantra and attributed the horrific violence committed under the banner of Islam to a small band of extremists. The President on his latest trip to Turkey said, "I think Turkey sets a fantastic example for nations around the world to see where it's possible to have a democracy coexist with a great religion like Islam and that's important.” Ironically, the Turkish Parliament voted on Saturday to amend the constitution to lift a decades-old ban on Islamic headscarves at Turkey's universities, despite fierce opposition from the secular establishment.
The President’s assertion is either based on ignorance of the facts about Islam or his attempt at political correctness. Perhaps the President’s reticence to speak on the true nature of Islam was due to his desire to avoid inflaming the already charged feelings of many about Islam. In any event, truth is sacrificed and the public continues to cling to the false notion that Islam is a peaceful religion. People who dare to disclose the true nature of Islam run the risk of being castigated as a bigot and a hatemonger.
Calling Islam a great religion and misrepresenting it is not simply a harmless gesture of goodwill and peacemaking. This is flaming the fire that has every intention of consuming us. Therefore, it is imperative that in November 2008, we choose the chief custodian of our constitution, the President, with great care. We must entrust the helm of our nation to the hands of a person of impeccable integrity who is unconditionally loyal to the constitution, who does not sacrifice principles and truth at the altar of expediency, and who is not shirking from what he must do to ensure our nation’s survival in the face of internal and external assaults.
The pundits, the analysts and the politicians indeed are doing a great disservice to the public, each segment for its own expedient reasons, by parroting the mantra regarding the peaceful nature of Islam. As a matter of fact, the so-called small band of Islamic extremists is the true face of Islam.
Islam is indeed misrepresented. Islam is not misrepresented by its “detractors.” It is misrepresented by Islamic mercenaries, organizations and individuals generously funded by states as well as wealthy believers who are making billions of dollars pumping and selling oil at astronomical prices. Prestigious universities in the West, always looking for handouts, are tripping over one another to establish Islamic studies programs staffed by professors who sing the praise of Islam. Newspapers are routinely intimidated by Islamic associations if they dare to print the truth about Islam. Legions of lawyers, both Muslims as well as hired guns, are on the lookout to intimidate and silence any voice speaking the truth about Islam. The media that falls in line may receive generous advertising and other incentives from Islamic lobbyists.
All extreme solutions, if unwise, are fraught with extreme dangers. During the presidential campaign of the Vietnam War, Barry Goldwater proclaimed, “Extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice.” The collective wisdom of the American public prevailed and Goldwater didn’t get a chance to put his belief into practice. It is prudent to reserve extreme measures for extreme cases. Just as important, it is best to follow the less glamorous solutions of the problems as they gather momentum and diffuse them.
The U.S. government should, without delay, underwrite a massive program of making the nation energy independent so that the Islamic gas station nations will no longer be able to hold the country hostage for oil. Each citizen, in the meantime, must do everything possible to conserve energy and deny the flow of dollars to the coffers of the enemy.
The -- not-- so grateful world owes the U.S. an infinite debt of gratitude for defeating the evil of Nazism, and then the scourge of Soviet Communism. We all have to do what each one of us can to right the wrongs of this world. We don't have to be Einstein -- each one of us must do something according to his or her capacity. Once again, this champion nation of freedom is called upon to defeat the most tenacious and deadly enemy, Islamofascism.
Monday, February 11, 2008
The Homeless Conservative
By Lance Thompson
Ideally, voters join the party which most represents their views. Historically, the Republican party is more conservative, the Democrat party more liberal. Thus, conservatives make up a majority of the GOP, liberals a majority of the Democrats. These majorities constitute the "bases" of the parties–the stalwarts who contribute, volunteer, get out the vote, and sustain the party.
Having associated with the parties which most represent their views, the base voters in turn exert influence on the positions of their respective parties. The Democrats have been greatly influenced by the liberal base of their party, so much so that Hillary Clinton has had to backtrack and dissociate herself from her vote to authorize military force to remove Saddam, even though many other Democrats also voted for the authorization.
But what is a base voter to do when the party he or she supports no longer represents his or her views? Obviously, a voter will usually not agree with every item of a party’s plank, but there is ordinarily general agreement on a majority of issues. But party leaders will say, "We stand for most of the things you believe in, and certainly more of them than the other party stands for." In a two-party system, this is a compelling argument. The Presidential election always comes down to two choices, and a vote is cast for that candidate whose views are closer to that of the voter.
Conventional wisdom holds that parties cater to their bases during the primaries, when candidates are competing for the votes of their own parties, then try to appeal to a wider audience during the general election, hoping to attract more middle-of-the-roaders than the other side.
But if the party’s front-runner has never catered to the base, has always made a greater effort to accommodate the other side, and does not stand for the base’s issues, then that candidate risks alienating the base. For the GOP, John McCain is such a candidate.
The Republican party leadership encourages all Republicans to forget their differences and unite behind John McCain. After all, the alternative–Obama or Clinton–is surely more objectionable than a moderate Republican. And if we don’t support McCain, the Republicans risk losing the presidential election.
But if the party and its candidate no longer represent the principles and values of the party members, what claim can the party have to their votes? There are only two possible outcomes in a presidential election. If McCain, the Republican candidate who voted against Bush tax cuts because they favored the rich, wants to close Guantanamo Bay, voted to extend citizenship to illegal aliens, voted to limit free speech in political campaigns, voted to fund stem cell research with federal money, was a charter member of the Keating Five and the Gang of 14, wins the contest, what have we achieved? We have placed in the White House a candidate marginally more conservative than his liberal Democrat opponent.
A McCain victory will demonstrate to the Republican party that a moderate Republican can overcome either the heir to the last Democrat dynasty or a tremendously charismatic Senator from the new generation of Democrat leadership. Republican leaders will conclude that conservative credentials are not necessary to win a national election–they are, in fact, a hindrance. Candidates in subsequent elections will be required to show that they are bipartisan, moderate, and able to work with Democrats and see things from the Democrat point of view. This will set conservative values back for several election cycles.
It is also possible that McCain could lose to his Democrat opponent. This would result in a marginally more liberal president than McCain, who would probably also enjoy a majority in Congress. The liberal agenda could be enacted with dispatch–higher taxes, withdrawal from Iraq, socialized medicine, and amnesty for illegal aliens. This agenda could prove beneficial to the nation or, more likely, disastrous, and by the time the next election comes around, the nation will be ready for a change, as it was after four years of Jimmy Carter. The party of change would be the party that stands for conservative values. The GOP candidate would not be a middle-of-the-road accommodator, but a strong, proven conservative.
The GOP leadership will argue that we all want what’s best for the country, regardless of whether a moderate or conservative Republican wins. But if conservatives truly believe in their own principles, they must also believe those principles are best for the country. They must believe a liberal agenda, conversely, is bad for the country. And, on many if not most issues, John McCain stands for a liberal agenda. He is less liberal than his Democrat opponents, but only by degree, and not by nature.
The Republican party must not take its conservative base for granted, must not assume we will go along with any candidate because we fear the prospect of the Democrat alternative. None of us wants a Democrat in the White House. But a Republican who caters to Democrats is very little better, and self-defeating in the long run. If McCain enacts sixty, seventy, or even eighty percent of what the Democrats hope to accomplish, each vote for McCain is in equal percentage a vote for the Democrat agenda.
There is talk of the GOP "suicide voter," described as some one who disagrees so much with McCain that he or she plans to vote for the Democrat. I don’t know how many such voters are in the Republican ranks. But I do know that the conservative base of the party, the marrow of the GOP, has no passion for McCain. There is no enthusiasm on the GOP side to match the mesmerized crowds at Obama rallies, or the determined passion of the Clinton supporters. Only a true conservative can mobilize that base, and John McCain is not that candidate.
John McCain has enjoyed favorable press, including an endorsement from the New York Times. He has worked closely with Democrats in Congress, even considering a spot as John Kerry’s running mate in 2004. He has branded himself a maverick, willing to defy conservatives in Congress and in the White House. So in the coming election, let John McCain call upon his friends in the press, his moderate supporters, his colleagues "across the aisle" when he seeks campaign workers, volunteers, donations, and support. They may be hard to reach, however. Because when the general election comes, they will all be working for the real Democrat candidate.
Ideally, voters join the party which most represents their views. Historically, the Republican party is more conservative, the Democrat party more liberal. Thus, conservatives make up a majority of the GOP, liberals a majority of the Democrats. These majorities constitute the "bases" of the parties–the stalwarts who contribute, volunteer, get out the vote, and sustain the party.
Having associated with the parties which most represent their views, the base voters in turn exert influence on the positions of their respective parties. The Democrats have been greatly influenced by the liberal base of their party, so much so that Hillary Clinton has had to backtrack and dissociate herself from her vote to authorize military force to remove Saddam, even though many other Democrats also voted for the authorization.
But what is a base voter to do when the party he or she supports no longer represents his or her views? Obviously, a voter will usually not agree with every item of a party’s plank, but there is ordinarily general agreement on a majority of issues. But party leaders will say, "We stand for most of the things you believe in, and certainly more of them than the other party stands for." In a two-party system, this is a compelling argument. The Presidential election always comes down to two choices, and a vote is cast for that candidate whose views are closer to that of the voter.
Conventional wisdom holds that parties cater to their bases during the primaries, when candidates are competing for the votes of their own parties, then try to appeal to a wider audience during the general election, hoping to attract more middle-of-the-roaders than the other side.
But if the party’s front-runner has never catered to the base, has always made a greater effort to accommodate the other side, and does not stand for the base’s issues, then that candidate risks alienating the base. For the GOP, John McCain is such a candidate.
The Republican party leadership encourages all Republicans to forget their differences and unite behind John McCain. After all, the alternative–Obama or Clinton–is surely more objectionable than a moderate Republican. And if we don’t support McCain, the Republicans risk losing the presidential election.
But if the party and its candidate no longer represent the principles and values of the party members, what claim can the party have to their votes? There are only two possible outcomes in a presidential election. If McCain, the Republican candidate who voted against Bush tax cuts because they favored the rich, wants to close Guantanamo Bay, voted to extend citizenship to illegal aliens, voted to limit free speech in political campaigns, voted to fund stem cell research with federal money, was a charter member of the Keating Five and the Gang of 14, wins the contest, what have we achieved? We have placed in the White House a candidate marginally more conservative than his liberal Democrat opponent.
A McCain victory will demonstrate to the Republican party that a moderate Republican can overcome either the heir to the last Democrat dynasty or a tremendously charismatic Senator from the new generation of Democrat leadership. Republican leaders will conclude that conservative credentials are not necessary to win a national election–they are, in fact, a hindrance. Candidates in subsequent elections will be required to show that they are bipartisan, moderate, and able to work with Democrats and see things from the Democrat point of view. This will set conservative values back for several election cycles.
It is also possible that McCain could lose to his Democrat opponent. This would result in a marginally more liberal president than McCain, who would probably also enjoy a majority in Congress. The liberal agenda could be enacted with dispatch–higher taxes, withdrawal from Iraq, socialized medicine, and amnesty for illegal aliens. This agenda could prove beneficial to the nation or, more likely, disastrous, and by the time the next election comes around, the nation will be ready for a change, as it was after four years of Jimmy Carter. The party of change would be the party that stands for conservative values. The GOP candidate would not be a middle-of-the-road accommodator, but a strong, proven conservative.
The GOP leadership will argue that we all want what’s best for the country, regardless of whether a moderate or conservative Republican wins. But if conservatives truly believe in their own principles, they must also believe those principles are best for the country. They must believe a liberal agenda, conversely, is bad for the country. And, on many if not most issues, John McCain stands for a liberal agenda. He is less liberal than his Democrat opponents, but only by degree, and not by nature.
The Republican party must not take its conservative base for granted, must not assume we will go along with any candidate because we fear the prospect of the Democrat alternative. None of us wants a Democrat in the White House. But a Republican who caters to Democrats is very little better, and self-defeating in the long run. If McCain enacts sixty, seventy, or even eighty percent of what the Democrats hope to accomplish, each vote for McCain is in equal percentage a vote for the Democrat agenda.
There is talk of the GOP "suicide voter," described as some one who disagrees so much with McCain that he or she plans to vote for the Democrat. I don’t know how many such voters are in the Republican ranks. But I do know that the conservative base of the party, the marrow of the GOP, has no passion for McCain. There is no enthusiasm on the GOP side to match the mesmerized crowds at Obama rallies, or the determined passion of the Clinton supporters. Only a true conservative can mobilize that base, and John McCain is not that candidate.
John McCain has enjoyed favorable press, including an endorsement from the New York Times. He has worked closely with Democrats in Congress, even considering a spot as John Kerry’s running mate in 2004. He has branded himself a maverick, willing to defy conservatives in Congress and in the White House. So in the coming election, let John McCain call upon his friends in the press, his moderate supporters, his colleagues "across the aisle" when he seeks campaign workers, volunteers, donations, and support. They may be hard to reach, however. Because when the general election comes, they will all be working for the real Democrat candidate.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Book Report on Ronald Kessler's "The Terrorist Watch"
from Amil Imani
Ronald Kessler has written an extremely important book that discloses the inside story of the War on Terrorism. He takes a complex subject full of long functional names and leads the reader to relatively easy comprehension. He has exposed the incredibly difficult counterterrorism job of protecting this nation from Islamic extremists. This book was very difficult to write but Kessler has humanized the people of the FBI and CIA by telling their personal story as part of the massive efforts they undertook that overhauled our defenses from September 11, 2001 to today. There has not been a successful al Qaeda attack on American soil since 9/11. And these folks are entitled to our praise for their fine work. Along the way, Kessler reveals the distortions and harm that the left leaning media and especially the New York Times and Washington Post have done to the nation’s efforts to protect our citizens.
Mr. Kessler performed the difficult task of providing a documented and readable history of the seven-year period starting in 2000, but he reaches back in history when the circumstances require. There are no footnotes, but the work retains an academic documented quality by providing prolific actual quotes from interviews of the approximately 50 government employees, which Kessler interviewed to bring the story together.
Almost fiction like, the author starts the book with a Prologue, which brings the reader into the world of counter intelligence as it is today. He displays the immense power and cooperation between agencies that is being brought to bear now. Then he steps back in time and in conjunction with cases in progress involving the infamous names like Khalid Sheik Mohammad, Jose Padilla, Abu Zabaydah and others, he introduces the major stumbling blocks facing the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies that existed from 2001.
A most significant stumbling block in 2001 was the artificial legal “Chinese Wall” in place at each criminal investigative agency to isolate the crime enforcement personnel of the agency from the intelligence personnel. Kessler does a good job of explaining how that procedure came into being. It isn’t simple to explain but he does a good job. An attorney in the FBI Office of Intelligence Policy Review (OIPR) came up with the idea of using the mechanism of the Chinese Wall to be extra sure that a criminal indictment was never thrown out because the prosecutor had used information to make his criminal case where that information had been obtained under an investigation authorized under the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA). This Wall procedure required the FBI to maintain separate files for Intelligence Investigations and Criminal Investigations and disallowed the Criminal prosecutors access to Intelligence files. This fear of overturn arose because evidence obtained in foreign electronic interception of a communication that originates outside US is not necessarily subject to the same Constitutional requirements for a search warrant as is an interception (search) in the US of a US person.
The above paragraph is to explain the problem to be addressed by the “Chinese Wall”. But it is understandable that most non-lawyers will still be confused. The Chinese wall mechanism is a well-known procedure in many other legal situations. But the above paragraph was simply the definition of the nature of the issue. Even more burdensome was the fact that there were rules set in place by the OIPR to handle exceptions. These rules were extraordinarily complex and were not generally understood even by the attorneys in the OIPR. Further, OIPR put out the word that anyone who violated the rules was going to be disciplined. So, as is the usual case with human beings, everyone in the agency opted to take the easy way out. The FBI, CIA and other Intelligence agencies adopted the practice of never permitting criminal prosecutors or intelligence investigators to see the other investigators files. Although this was an interpretation unwisely set in place by Attorney General Janet Reno and therefore was only applicable to the FBI and the Justice Department it was eventually adopted by the CIA as well. This “Chinese Wall” problem explains why the FBI was unaware that the CIA had intercepted several al Qaeda transmissions that might have related to the 9/11 plot including a message on 9/10/01 that stated “Tomorrow is zero day.” None of that information was shared with the FBI.
Immediately after 9/11/01 bombing, President Bush asked for an investigation of the “Wall” problem, which showed that no Court had ever thrown out a case because of the feared mixing of information. Unfortunately, the OIPR had adopted an overkill solution that was too complex for the problem and the work around was too easy. The “risk avoidance” or CYA solution was predictable. Every manager needs to be on guard because every perceived possible future problem is not necessarily a real problem, or the fix, as here, can be worse than the problem. FBI Director Mueller immediately withdrew the “Wall” requirement and Congress specifically removed any Wall requirement in the Patriot Act in 2003. As an aside, the Patriot Act amendment kicked off major left-leaning media objections to alleged expansion of governmental power and potential violations of the civil rights of American citizens.
The FBI and CIA immediately after 9/11/01 with President Bush’s full support attacked its other problems including its incredibly outdated computer record systems, diminished morale at the CIA because of President’s Clinton’s de-emphasis in counterterrorism, and inadequate human intelligence at the CIA.
Kessler provides the entire engaging story relating to the reliance by Secretary of State Powell on information from German intelligence in preparing his speech to the UN in which he asserted that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Powell had refused to use the US generated intelligence information and he independently reached the same conclusion. Ultimately the Iraqi source that had provided intel to German Intelligence was much later proven to be unreliable. He turned out to be a lower level Iraqi employee in the Saddam nuclear program that was seeking asylum in Germany. Again, the left media accused General Powell and the Bush Administration of intentionally lying in the run up to the Iraq war about Saddam’s possession of WMD.
The real facts underlying the Washington Post story of Dana Priest relating to alleged thousands of CIA’s prisoners being held in secret prisons around the world to enable the CIA to torture prisoners. This story earned her a Pulitzer Prize and caused many European nations to cease cooperating with the US in Afghanistan. The facts were that there were no secret prisons and fewer than 100 prisoners had been rendered to anti-terrorist agencies of countries cooperating with the US in the war on terror. Also many of those prisoners originated in those countries.
Kessler also related the embarrassing story about Brandon Mayfield. Brandon was a US attorney, a recent convert to Islam that had given funds indirectly to Hamas. His fingerprint had showed up on a plastic bag discovered in the Spanish train bombing and he was planning a trip to Barcelona. Multiple experts had confirmed the finger print match. Brandon was arrested but there was no other links. Ultimately, in a raid on the terrorist hideout in Spain, the Jihadists blew themselves up to escape capture and the authorities found a finger, the print of which perfectly matched the plastic bag print. Mayfield got $2M settlement and the FBI imposed a higher standard requiring a greater level of assurance on a finger print match.
There are many more interesting stories including the identity leak of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. Although this investigation lead to the conviction of Vice President Chaney’s deputy for lying to the FBI, in the end, Richard Armatage, the ex-Deputy Sec. of State, a critic of the Bush Administration was revealed to be the leak to Robert Novak. Although both the Washington Post and NYT were on a daily rampage to show Chaney was the source of the Plame link, when the true identity of the leaker broke, the Washington Post ran it on Page 6 and the NYT ran it on Page 12. I find both those papers disgusting.
This book describes several investigations in minute detail. The manpower and the resources it takes to gather all the facts about the alleged actors and the potential links of their brothers, sisters and friends, the travels of each, schools of each, etc, etc mushrooms gigantically. Everyday the investigators evaluate the risk of the advancement of the plot to the point where continuation of the investigation risks injury to citizens and property. Sometimes where an investigation is centered abroad, and there are domestic actors linked to the plot, when we are warned by the foreign agency that it is going to roll up the plot in their country, the US must make the decision if it is better to place the US actors under 24/7 surveillance to see their response to the foreign arrest or to arrest them. How and where they respond when the branch of their plot is arrested is frequently revealing of the cell.
Home grown US terrorists are a new concern. Several networks have already been rolled up involving prison grown networks of Islamic extremists with serious plans of bombing and destruction. Fortunately these groups have not been sophisticated so far.
The public is aware of only the tip of the counter-terror iceberg. In 2007, there were 60-70 terror plots in US being investigated every day. Every morning in the NCTC at 8:00 AM the Threat Matrix involving these treats is evaluated. Vice Admiral Redd, NCTC, with his small group of representatives from all the security agencies prepares a list of 25-30, which list is further reduced to 10-20. These are brought into the daily videoconference involving the President, National Security Council, DHS, and National Intelligence Director. In 2004 alone, the Justice Department reported 379 convictions related to terrorism.
The NCTC is a 10,000 sq. ft. facility built like a TV network control center with 32 large screens and 350 computer stations. They operate a web page for 5000 worldwide intelligence analysts. They control the no-fly list, and they are available for instant communication countrywide access from police, customs or immigration officers having a suspicious incident involving a terror risk. Someone on the no-fly list, if stopped for a traffic violation, can be held for a surveillance interview. There are 400,000 names on the NCTC list of terrorist entities.
Kessler points out that a major concern of our all of counter-terror officials is the demoralizing effect of the attacks by the left leaning media. The effectiveness of the terror investigations depends to great degree on the assistance and cooperation of the public. To the extent that the left is successful in engendering suspicion of the counter efforts it will further damage our security. At the current level, even though less than 1% of the open tips actually have lead to a terrorist, they are a valuable eye on the ground that has been extremely important especially regarding the new home grown Jihadist threat.
This book is a MUST READ for all Americans. It contains stories of hundreds of specific events, arrests and convictions and hundreds of details that could not be mentioned in this report.
Ronald Kessler has written an extremely important book that discloses the inside story of the War on Terrorism. He takes a complex subject full of long functional names and leads the reader to relatively easy comprehension. He has exposed the incredibly difficult counterterrorism job of protecting this nation from Islamic extremists. This book was very difficult to write but Kessler has humanized the people of the FBI and CIA by telling their personal story as part of the massive efforts they undertook that overhauled our defenses from September 11, 2001 to today. There has not been a successful al Qaeda attack on American soil since 9/11. And these folks are entitled to our praise for their fine work. Along the way, Kessler reveals the distortions and harm that the left leaning media and especially the New York Times and Washington Post have done to the nation’s efforts to protect our citizens.
Mr. Kessler performed the difficult task of providing a documented and readable history of the seven-year period starting in 2000, but he reaches back in history when the circumstances require. There are no footnotes, but the work retains an academic documented quality by providing prolific actual quotes from interviews of the approximately 50 government employees, which Kessler interviewed to bring the story together.
Almost fiction like, the author starts the book with a Prologue, which brings the reader into the world of counter intelligence as it is today. He displays the immense power and cooperation between agencies that is being brought to bear now. Then he steps back in time and in conjunction with cases in progress involving the infamous names like Khalid Sheik Mohammad, Jose Padilla, Abu Zabaydah and others, he introduces the major stumbling blocks facing the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies that existed from 2001.
A most significant stumbling block in 2001 was the artificial legal “Chinese Wall” in place at each criminal investigative agency to isolate the crime enforcement personnel of the agency from the intelligence personnel. Kessler does a good job of explaining how that procedure came into being. It isn’t simple to explain but he does a good job. An attorney in the FBI Office of Intelligence Policy Review (OIPR) came up with the idea of using the mechanism of the Chinese Wall to be extra sure that a criminal indictment was never thrown out because the prosecutor had used information to make his criminal case where that information had been obtained under an investigation authorized under the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA). This Wall procedure required the FBI to maintain separate files for Intelligence Investigations and Criminal Investigations and disallowed the Criminal prosecutors access to Intelligence files. This fear of overturn arose because evidence obtained in foreign electronic interception of a communication that originates outside US is not necessarily subject to the same Constitutional requirements for a search warrant as is an interception (search) in the US of a US person.
The above paragraph is to explain the problem to be addressed by the “Chinese Wall”. But it is understandable that most non-lawyers will still be confused. The Chinese wall mechanism is a well-known procedure in many other legal situations. But the above paragraph was simply the definition of the nature of the issue. Even more burdensome was the fact that there were rules set in place by the OIPR to handle exceptions. These rules were extraordinarily complex and were not generally understood even by the attorneys in the OIPR. Further, OIPR put out the word that anyone who violated the rules was going to be disciplined. So, as is the usual case with human beings, everyone in the agency opted to take the easy way out. The FBI, CIA and other Intelligence agencies adopted the practice of never permitting criminal prosecutors or intelligence investigators to see the other investigators files. Although this was an interpretation unwisely set in place by Attorney General Janet Reno and therefore was only applicable to the FBI and the Justice Department it was eventually adopted by the CIA as well. This “Chinese Wall” problem explains why the FBI was unaware that the CIA had intercepted several al Qaeda transmissions that might have related to the 9/11 plot including a message on 9/10/01 that stated “Tomorrow is zero day.” None of that information was shared with the FBI.
Immediately after 9/11/01 bombing, President Bush asked for an investigation of the “Wall” problem, which showed that no Court had ever thrown out a case because of the feared mixing of information. Unfortunately, the OIPR had adopted an overkill solution that was too complex for the problem and the work around was too easy. The “risk avoidance” or CYA solution was predictable. Every manager needs to be on guard because every perceived possible future problem is not necessarily a real problem, or the fix, as here, can be worse than the problem. FBI Director Mueller immediately withdrew the “Wall” requirement and Congress specifically removed any Wall requirement in the Patriot Act in 2003. As an aside, the Patriot Act amendment kicked off major left-leaning media objections to alleged expansion of governmental power and potential violations of the civil rights of American citizens.
The FBI and CIA immediately after 9/11/01 with President Bush’s full support attacked its other problems including its incredibly outdated computer record systems, diminished morale at the CIA because of President’s Clinton’s de-emphasis in counterterrorism, and inadequate human intelligence at the CIA.
Kessler provides the entire engaging story relating to the reliance by Secretary of State Powell on information from German intelligence in preparing his speech to the UN in which he asserted that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Powell had refused to use the US generated intelligence information and he independently reached the same conclusion. Ultimately the Iraqi source that had provided intel to German Intelligence was much later proven to be unreliable. He turned out to be a lower level Iraqi employee in the Saddam nuclear program that was seeking asylum in Germany. Again, the left media accused General Powell and the Bush Administration of intentionally lying in the run up to the Iraq war about Saddam’s possession of WMD.
The real facts underlying the Washington Post story of Dana Priest relating to alleged thousands of CIA’s prisoners being held in secret prisons around the world to enable the CIA to torture prisoners. This story earned her a Pulitzer Prize and caused many European nations to cease cooperating with the US in Afghanistan. The facts were that there were no secret prisons and fewer than 100 prisoners had been rendered to anti-terrorist agencies of countries cooperating with the US in the war on terror. Also many of those prisoners originated in those countries.
Kessler also related the embarrassing story about Brandon Mayfield. Brandon was a US attorney, a recent convert to Islam that had given funds indirectly to Hamas. His fingerprint had showed up on a plastic bag discovered in the Spanish train bombing and he was planning a trip to Barcelona. Multiple experts had confirmed the finger print match. Brandon was arrested but there was no other links. Ultimately, in a raid on the terrorist hideout in Spain, the Jihadists blew themselves up to escape capture and the authorities found a finger, the print of which perfectly matched the plastic bag print. Mayfield got $2M settlement and the FBI imposed a higher standard requiring a greater level of assurance on a finger print match.
There are many more interesting stories including the identity leak of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. Although this investigation lead to the conviction of Vice President Chaney’s deputy for lying to the FBI, in the end, Richard Armatage, the ex-Deputy Sec. of State, a critic of the Bush Administration was revealed to be the leak to Robert Novak. Although both the Washington Post and NYT were on a daily rampage to show Chaney was the source of the Plame link, when the true identity of the leaker broke, the Washington Post ran it on Page 6 and the NYT ran it on Page 12. I find both those papers disgusting.
This book describes several investigations in minute detail. The manpower and the resources it takes to gather all the facts about the alleged actors and the potential links of their brothers, sisters and friends, the travels of each, schools of each, etc, etc mushrooms gigantically. Everyday the investigators evaluate the risk of the advancement of the plot to the point where continuation of the investigation risks injury to citizens and property. Sometimes where an investigation is centered abroad, and there are domestic actors linked to the plot, when we are warned by the foreign agency that it is going to roll up the plot in their country, the US must make the decision if it is better to place the US actors under 24/7 surveillance to see their response to the foreign arrest or to arrest them. How and where they respond when the branch of their plot is arrested is frequently revealing of the cell.
Home grown US terrorists are a new concern. Several networks have already been rolled up involving prison grown networks of Islamic extremists with serious plans of bombing and destruction. Fortunately these groups have not been sophisticated so far.
The public is aware of only the tip of the counter-terror iceberg. In 2007, there were 60-70 terror plots in US being investigated every day. Every morning in the NCTC at 8:00 AM the Threat Matrix involving these treats is evaluated. Vice Admiral Redd, NCTC, with his small group of representatives from all the security agencies prepares a list of 25-30, which list is further reduced to 10-20. These are brought into the daily videoconference involving the President, National Security Council, DHS, and National Intelligence Director. In 2004 alone, the Justice Department reported 379 convictions related to terrorism.
The NCTC is a 10,000 sq. ft. facility built like a TV network control center with 32 large screens and 350 computer stations. They operate a web page for 5000 worldwide intelligence analysts. They control the no-fly list, and they are available for instant communication countrywide access from police, customs or immigration officers having a suspicious incident involving a terror risk. Someone on the no-fly list, if stopped for a traffic violation, can be held for a surveillance interview. There are 400,000 names on the NCTC list of terrorist entities.
Kessler points out that a major concern of our all of counter-terror officials is the demoralizing effect of the attacks by the left leaning media. The effectiveness of the terror investigations depends to great degree on the assistance and cooperation of the public. To the extent that the left is successful in engendering suspicion of the counter efforts it will further damage our security. At the current level, even though less than 1% of the open tips actually have lead to a terrorist, they are a valuable eye on the ground that has been extremely important especially regarding the new home grown Jihadist threat.
This book is a MUST READ for all Americans. It contains stories of hundreds of specific events, arrests and convictions and hundreds of details that could not be mentioned in this report.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Rush Limbaugh on Super Tuesday
Limbaugh: Romney Is a 3 Legs Conservative
Tuesday, February 5, 2008 8:01 AM
By: Newsmax Staff
Reversing his previously stated belief that none of the Republican candidates for the GOP presidential nomination have all three legs of the conservative stool, Rush Limbaugh told his listeners Monday that Mitt Romney is indeed a three-leg conservative.
Describing the three legs as "national security/foreign policy, the social conservatives, and the fiscal conservatives," Rush said, "The social conservatives are the cultural people. The fiscal conservatives are the economic crowd: low taxes, smaller government, get out of the way... The foreign policy crowd is obviously what it is. I don't think there's anybody on our side who doesn't care about national security."
"I think now, based on the way the campaign has shaken out, that there probably is a candidate on our side who does embody all three legs of the conservative stool, and that's Romney," the talk radio host added.
As for Mike Huckabee, Limbaugh pronounced, "You might just say the things he's saying about it represent an ignorance born of inexperience in the subject. I don't think Huckabee has any deleterious intentions about the country."
Turning to McCain, Rush said, "When it comes to the fiscal side, you cannot say -- you just cannot say -- that John McCain is interested. He's even admitted he's not interested in the social side. He's not interested in the economic side. He said this, and when he has spoken up about it, he sides more often with liberal Democrats on fiscal issues than he does with his own side.
"If I look at this roster of three candidates -- if I look at Hillary-Obama, about whom there's not a dime's worth of difference, because they're so far left it doesn't matter which one of them wins. If McCain adopts economic policies that sound very much like what you'd get from Hillary-Obama, and if I think those policies are going to take the country down the tubes I'd just as soon the Democrats take the hit for it, not us. Plain and simple."
His conclusion? "I think the one candidate of the three still out there on our side that matter (and, actually, it's just two, because Huckabee doesn't, in terms of a chance to win) is saying who more closely embodies all three legs of this conservative stool, you'd have to say that it's Mitt Romney. There's actually no choice in the matter. It certainly isn't Senator McCain."
Tuesday, February 5, 2008 8:01 AM
By: Newsmax Staff
Reversing his previously stated belief that none of the Republican candidates for the GOP presidential nomination have all three legs of the conservative stool, Rush Limbaugh told his listeners Monday that Mitt Romney is indeed a three-leg conservative.
Describing the three legs as "national security/foreign policy, the social conservatives, and the fiscal conservatives," Rush said, "The social conservatives are the cultural people. The fiscal conservatives are the economic crowd: low taxes, smaller government, get out of the way... The foreign policy crowd is obviously what it is. I don't think there's anybody on our side who doesn't care about national security."
"I think now, based on the way the campaign has shaken out, that there probably is a candidate on our side who does embody all three legs of the conservative stool, and that's Romney," the talk radio host added.
As for Mike Huckabee, Limbaugh pronounced, "You might just say the things he's saying about it represent an ignorance born of inexperience in the subject. I don't think Huckabee has any deleterious intentions about the country."
Turning to McCain, Rush said, "When it comes to the fiscal side, you cannot say -- you just cannot say -- that John McCain is interested. He's even admitted he's not interested in the social side. He's not interested in the economic side. He said this, and when he has spoken up about it, he sides more often with liberal Democrats on fiscal issues than he does with his own side.
"If I look at this roster of three candidates -- if I look at Hillary-Obama, about whom there's not a dime's worth of difference, because they're so far left it doesn't matter which one of them wins. If McCain adopts economic policies that sound very much like what you'd get from Hillary-Obama, and if I think those policies are going to take the country down the tubes I'd just as soon the Democrats take the hit for it, not us. Plain and simple."
His conclusion? "I think the one candidate of the three still out there on our side that matter (and, actually, it's just two, because Huckabee doesn't, in terms of a chance to win) is saying who more closely embodies all three legs of this conservative stool, you'd have to say that it's Mitt Romney. There's actually no choice in the matter. It certainly isn't Senator McCain."
Monday, January 28, 2008
A Soldier's Last Words
Listen up CBS, CNN, Cindy Sheehan, Al Franken
by Louisa Centanni
SGT. Edmund John Jeffer's last few words were some of the most touching, inspiring and most truthful words spoken since the tragedy of 9/11 - and since our nation went to war.
SGT. Jeffers was a strong soldier and talented writer. He died in Iraq on September 19, 2007. He was a loving husband, brother and son. His service was more than this country could ever grasp - but the least you can do for the man who sacrificed his life for you ... is listen to what he had to say.
Listen up and pay attention to all of the Cindy Sheehans and Al Frankens of the world. To MSNBC, CNN, and CBS. To all who call themselves Americans ... Hope Rides Alone.
"Hope Rides Alone"
By Eddie Jeffers
I stare out into the darkness from my post, and I watch the city burn to the ground. I smell the familiar smells, I walk through the familiar rubble, and I look at the frightened faces that watch me pass down the streets of their neighborhoods. My nerves hardly rest; my hands are steady on a device that has been given to me from my government for the purpose of taking the lives of others.
I sweat, and I am tired. My back aches from the loads I carry. Young American boys look to me to direct them in a manner that will someday allow them to see their families again...and yet, I too, am just a boy....my age not but a few years more than that of the ones I lead. I am stressed, I am scared, and I am paranoid...because death is everywhere. It waits for me, it calls to me from around street corners and windows, and it is always there.
There are the demons that follow me, and tempt me into thoughts and actions that are not my own...but that are necessary for survival. I've made compromises with my humanity. And I am not alone in this. Miles from me are my brethren in this world, who walk in the same streets...who feel the same things, whether they admit to it or not.
And to think, I volunteered for this...
And I am ignorant to the rest of the world...or so I thought.
But even thousands of miles away, in Ramadi , Iraq , the cries and screams and complaints of the ungrateful reach me. In a year, I will be thrust back into society from a life and mentality that doesn't fit your average man. And then, I will be alone. And then, I will walk down the streets of America , and see the yellow ribbon stickers on the cars of the same people who compare our President to Hitler.
I will watch the television and watch the Cindy Sheehans, and the Al Frankens, and the rest of the ignorant sheep of America spout off their mouths about a subject they know nothing about. It is their right, however, and it is a right that is defended by hundreds of thousands of boys and girls scattered across the world, far from home. I use the word boys and girls, because that's what they are. In the Army, the average age of the infantryman is nineteen years old. The average rank of soldiers killed in action is Private First Class.
People like Cindy Sheehan are ignorant. Not just to this war, but to the results of their idiotic ramblings, or at least I hope they are. They don't realize its effects on this war. In this war, there are no Geneva Conventions, no cease fires. Medics and Chaplains are not spared from the enemy's brutality because it's against the rules. I can only imagine the horrors a military Chaplain would experience at the hands of the enemy. The enemy slinks in the shadows and fights a coward's war against us. It is effective though, as many men and women have died since the start of this war. And the memory of their service to America is tainted by the inconsiderate remarks on our nation's news outlets. And every day, the enemy changes...only now, the enemy is becoming something new. The enemy is transitioning from the Muslim extremists to Americans. The enemy is becoming the very people whom we defend with our lives. And they do not realize it.
But in denouncing our actions, denouncing our leaders, denouncing the war we live and fight, they are isolating the military from society...and they are becoming our enemy.
Democrats and peace activists like to toss the word "quagmire" around and compare this war to Vietnam . In a way they are right, this war is becoming like Vietnam Not the actual war, but in the isolation of country and military. America is not a nation at war; they are a nation with its military at war. Like it or not, we are here, some of us for our second, or third times; some even for their fourth and so on. Americans are so concerned now with politics, that it is interfering with our war.
Terrorists cut the heads off of American citizens on the Internet...and there is no outrage, but an American soldier kills an Iraqi in the midst of battle, and there are investigations, and sometimes soldiers are even jailed...for doing their job.
It is absolutely sickening to me to think our country has come to this. Why are we so obsessed with the bad news? Why will people stop at nothing to be against this war, no matter how much evidence of the good we've done is thrown in their face? When is the last time CNN or MSNBC or CBS reported the opening of schools and hospitals in Iraq ? Or the leaders of terror cells being detained or killed? It's all happening, but people will not let up their hatred of Bush. They will ignore the good news, because it just might show people that Bush was right.
America has lost its will to fight. It has lost its will to defend what is right and just in the world. The crazy thing of it all is that the American people have not even been asked to sacrifice a single thing. It's not like World War Two, where people rationed food, and turned in cars to be made into metal for tanks. The American people have not been asked to sacrifice anything. Unless you are in the military or the family member of a service member, its life as usual...the war doesn't affect you.
But it affects us. And when it is over, and the troops come home, and they try to piece together what's left of them after their service...where will the detractors be then? Where will the Cindy Sheehans be to comfort and talk to soldiers and help them sort out the last couple years of their lives, most of which have been spent dodging death and wading through the deaths of their friends? They will be where they always are, somewhere far away, where the horrors of the world can't touch them. Somewhere where they can complain about things they will never experience in their lifetime; things that the young men and women of America have willingly taken upon their shoulders.
We are the hope of the Iraqi people. They want what everyone else wants in life: safety, security, somewhere to call home. They want a country that is safe to raise their children in. Not a place where their children will be abducted, raped, and murdered if they do not comply with the terrorists demands. They want to live on, rebuild and prosper. And America has given them the opportunity, but only if we stay true to the cause, and see it to its end. But the country must unite in this endeavor...we cannot place the burden on our military alone. We must all stand up and fight, whether in uniform or not. And supporting us is more than sticking yellow ribbon stickers on your cars. It's supporting our President, our troops and our cause.
Right now, the burden is all on the American soldiers. Right now, hope rides alone. But it can change, it must change. Because there is only failure and darkness ahead for us as a country, as a people, if it doesn't.
Let's stop all the political nonsense, let's stop all the bickering, let's stop all the bad news, and let's stand and fight!
Eddie's father, David Jeffers, writes:
I'm not sure how many letters or articles you've ever read from the genre of "News from the Front," but this is one of the best I've ever read, including all of America 's wars. As I was reading this, I forgot that it was my son who had written it. My emotions range from great pride to great sorrow, knowing that my little boy (22 years old) has become this man.
He is my hero. Thank all of you for your prayers for him; he needs them now more than ever. God bless.
Though Eddie is no longer with us, you can help to let his voice be heard.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Learning the Hard Way is Still the Best Way
Moses learned the hard way that he was Hebrew and not Egyptian. What we know about Moses and his calling has been gathered from Scripture: being the one chosen to see the Israelites freed from bondage. They were liberated in the end, and their journey to the Promised Land -- albeit coursed with peril -- was a welcome new beginning.
So it was with the men, women and children who fled the lands of their birth to escape despots and religious persecution -- to walk unfettered and unthreatened upon the new promised land: America. They risked all traveling thousands of miles to be counted amongst those who chose to face unknown dangers rather than bend or perish under the yoke of tyranny.
In 1781, America became a free and independent nation. Our Constitution was written not for the leaders but for the people -- for “We, the People.” This sacred document ensured that no imperial classes would be allowed to exist. There would be no monarch to set down archaic rules. It was by the sweat and labor of immigrants from all the world’s nations that America was created, in which hope and opportunity is limitless -- where Americans rule themselves.
These pioneers built this country, and this country built them into Americans. They cleared the land, raised homes and houses of worship and drew up colonies of free citizens, carving new states out of the forests, prairies and wilderness as they pushed westward. They carried freedom with them. Here a vast segment of humanity was given the chance to start fresh:
The English, the Scotsmen and the Dutch produced elegant furniture in their workshops in New England. The Italians worked the sulfur mines of Louisiana. The French and Swiss planted vineyards in California and New York State. Danes, Norwegians and Swedes seeded the earth and made the Midwest flourish with grain. It was Irishmen whom, in large part, constructed the Erie Canal, the Statue of Liberty and the eastern section of the transcontinental railroad.
Welshmen farmed, dug coal and quarried in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Among their descendants were William Penn, Thomas Jefferson, Chief Justice John Marshall, and Robert Morris - the foremost financier of the American Revolution and a signer to the Declaration of Independence.
The Spanish Conquistadores -- the first to roam the Southwest in the 1500s -- infused music, art, language, architecture and literature to the region. They brought from Spain the horse and cattle, and established ranches (haciendas) upon which these noble creatures could serve their owners. The Spaniards also introduced the rites of faith and built Catholic missions.
Mexicans worked the oil fields of Texas proficiently, and rode herd in New Mexico with equal expertise. Greek and Portuguese fishermen harvested the oceans. Germans, Hungarians, Russians, Slavs and Chinese all worked side by side with so many, many more peoples of diverse cultures -- and this great nation was built by the industry of such Americans.
America became the country where dreams were transformed into certainties.
Came then 2001, and our country was brutally attacked and is since being menaced by Islamic terrorists. Executing murder and mayhem against entities and persons American (and anything and everyone from the West; and all who are non-Islam) is the standing order handed down by their mullahs.
Compounding abuse with the damage and death suffered on that Tuesday morning six years ago, here in the United States there is a growing army of conspiracy theorists who are littering the intellectual landscape with their bent notion that the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Military had a hand in the monstrous events of September 11th. Additionally, our Congress, of which the majority are Democrats, appear to be attempting to countermand the efforts of our National Security Agency, and thereby playing straight into the hands of the very disciples of hell who are hell-bent on destroying us.
Terrorists and Democrats alike should be reminded of the following insofar as Americans are concerned:
In spite of everything, we never lose our faith in the future. We believe in the future. We build and will continue to build for the future. And when we’ve finished building, we develop something new and have to start re-building.
Deep down we yearn for peace. We take every route to avoid conflict. But when conflict is unavoidable we engage with a ferocity that is unrivaled to protect our freedom.
That’s the kind of people Americans are: we work and fight hard, and harder still, because we have the freedom to do it.
Beginning in 1777 at Valley Forge, Americans fought and froze, suffered and died for the future freedom of all Americans. Our freedom is the only way of living we know. We fought for it 300 years ago, 200 years ago, a century and a half ago, and in both world wars -- and continue fighting the same fight today.
Americans are slow to anger and easygoing, but merciless when our freedom is threatened, because we are passionately dedicated to the ideals our forefathers passed on to us: the liberty and dignity of all men.
We believe that if all men throughout the world could turn their energies towards peaceful coexistence the way Americans have turned their energies towards the construction of this great nation, wars would soon be as outdated as the soon-to-be-outdated death cry 'Allah Akbar!'
The pioneer Americans had to learn and adapt the hard way. They never failed to give thanks every day for what they had. And we, their descendants, must never go to sleep at night ashamed of our deeds, whether for ourselves, our country, or the world at large.
**********
Note from the author: Parts of this writing were inspired by a film prepared by the War Department during World War II, entitled, “Why We Fight World War II - The Battle of China / War Comes to America” (available on DVD), and I have blended -- and expounded upon -- segments of the film’s narration (read by the actor Walter Huston) into this commentary.
So it was with the men, women and children who fled the lands of their birth to escape despots and religious persecution -- to walk unfettered and unthreatened upon the new promised land: America. They risked all traveling thousands of miles to be counted amongst those who chose to face unknown dangers rather than bend or perish under the yoke of tyranny.
In 1781, America became a free and independent nation. Our Constitution was written not for the leaders but for the people -- for “We, the People.” This sacred document ensured that no imperial classes would be allowed to exist. There would be no monarch to set down archaic rules. It was by the sweat and labor of immigrants from all the world’s nations that America was created, in which hope and opportunity is limitless -- where Americans rule themselves.
These pioneers built this country, and this country built them into Americans. They cleared the land, raised homes and houses of worship and drew up colonies of free citizens, carving new states out of the forests, prairies and wilderness as they pushed westward. They carried freedom with them. Here a vast segment of humanity was given the chance to start fresh:
The English, the Scotsmen and the Dutch produced elegant furniture in their workshops in New England. The Italians worked the sulfur mines of Louisiana. The French and Swiss planted vineyards in California and New York State. Danes, Norwegians and Swedes seeded the earth and made the Midwest flourish with grain. It was Irishmen whom, in large part, constructed the Erie Canal, the Statue of Liberty and the eastern section of the transcontinental railroad.
Welshmen farmed, dug coal and quarried in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Among their descendants were William Penn, Thomas Jefferson, Chief Justice John Marshall, and Robert Morris - the foremost financier of the American Revolution and a signer to the Declaration of Independence.
The Spanish Conquistadores -- the first to roam the Southwest in the 1500s -- infused music, art, language, architecture and literature to the region. They brought from Spain the horse and cattle, and established ranches (haciendas) upon which these noble creatures could serve their owners. The Spaniards also introduced the rites of faith and built Catholic missions.
Mexicans worked the oil fields of Texas proficiently, and rode herd in New Mexico with equal expertise. Greek and Portuguese fishermen harvested the oceans. Germans, Hungarians, Russians, Slavs and Chinese all worked side by side with so many, many more peoples of diverse cultures -- and this great nation was built by the industry of such Americans.
America became the country where dreams were transformed into certainties.
Came then 2001, and our country was brutally attacked and is since being menaced by Islamic terrorists. Executing murder and mayhem against entities and persons American (and anything and everyone from the West; and all who are non-Islam) is the standing order handed down by their mullahs.
Compounding abuse with the damage and death suffered on that Tuesday morning six years ago, here in the United States there is a growing army of conspiracy theorists who are littering the intellectual landscape with their bent notion that the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Military had a hand in the monstrous events of September 11th. Additionally, our Congress, of which the majority are Democrats, appear to be attempting to countermand the efforts of our National Security Agency, and thereby playing straight into the hands of the very disciples of hell who are hell-bent on destroying us.
Terrorists and Democrats alike should be reminded of the following insofar as Americans are concerned:
In spite of everything, we never lose our faith in the future. We believe in the future. We build and will continue to build for the future. And when we’ve finished building, we develop something new and have to start re-building.
Deep down we yearn for peace. We take every route to avoid conflict. But when conflict is unavoidable we engage with a ferocity that is unrivaled to protect our freedom.
That’s the kind of people Americans are: we work and fight hard, and harder still, because we have the freedom to do it.
Beginning in 1777 at Valley Forge, Americans fought and froze, suffered and died for the future freedom of all Americans. Our freedom is the only way of living we know. We fought for it 300 years ago, 200 years ago, a century and a half ago, and in both world wars -- and continue fighting the same fight today.
Americans are slow to anger and easygoing, but merciless when our freedom is threatened, because we are passionately dedicated to the ideals our forefathers passed on to us: the liberty and dignity of all men.
We believe that if all men throughout the world could turn their energies towards peaceful coexistence the way Americans have turned their energies towards the construction of this great nation, wars would soon be as outdated as the soon-to-be-outdated death cry 'Allah Akbar!'
The pioneer Americans had to learn and adapt the hard way. They never failed to give thanks every day for what they had. And we, their descendants, must never go to sleep at night ashamed of our deeds, whether for ourselves, our country, or the world at large.
**********
Note from the author: Parts of this writing were inspired by a film prepared by the War Department during World War II, entitled, “Why We Fight World War II - The Battle of China / War Comes to America” (available on DVD), and I have blended -- and expounded upon -- segments of the film’s narration (read by the actor Walter Huston) into this commentary.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
A President's Prayer
My Fellow Americans:
Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.
And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:
Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.
Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.
They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.
They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest -- until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.
For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.
Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.
And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them -- help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.
Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.
Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.
And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.
And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
Thy will be done, Almighty God.
Amen.
Franklin D. Roosevelt - June 6, 1944
Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.
And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:
Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.
Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.
They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.
They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest -- until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.
For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.
Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.
And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them -- help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.
Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.
Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.
And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.
And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
Thy will be done, Almighty God.
Amen.
Franklin D. Roosevelt - June 6, 1944
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
"Red Shirt Fridays" for our Military
**Author unknown**
Last week, while traveling to Chicago on business, I noticed a Marine sergeant traveling with a folded American flag, but did not put two and two together.
After we boarded our flight, I turned to the sergeant, who'd been invited to sit in First Class (across from me), and inquired if he was heading home.
“No,” he responded.
“Heading out?” I asked.
“No. I'm escorting a soldier home.”
“Going to pick him up?”
“No. He is with me right now. He was killed in Iraq. I'm taking him home to his family.”
The realization of what he had been asked to do hit me like a punch to the gut. It was an honor for him. He told me that although he didn't know the soldier, he had delivered the news of his passing to the soldier's family and felt as if he knew them after many conversations in so few days.
I turned back to him, extended my hand, and said, “Thank you. Thank you for doing what you do so my family and I can do what we do.”
Upon landing in Chicago the pilot stopped short of the gate and made the following announcement over the intercom:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to note that we have had the honor of having Sergeant Steeley of the United States Marine Corps join us on this flight. He is escorting a fallen comrade back home to his family. I ask that you please remain in your seats when we open the forward door to allow Sergeant Steeley to deplane and receive his fellow soldier. We will then turn off the seat belt sign."
Without a sound, all went as requested. I noticed the sergeant saluting the casket as it was brought off the plane, and his action made me realize that I am proud to be an American.
So here's a public Thank You to our military Men and Women for what you do so we can live the way we do:
Red Fridays.
Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing Red every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the "silent majority." We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record-breaking numbers. We are not organized, boisterous or overbearing.
Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday -- and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something red.
By word of mouth, press, TV -- let's make the United States on every Friday a sea of red much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in RED and it will let our troops know the once "silent" majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on.The first thing a soldier says when asked "What can we do to make things better for you?" is. "We need your support and your prayers."
Let's get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something red every Friday.
Friday, May 11, 2007
The Grand Delusion Islam
by Amil Imani
"We are our beliefs," it is said. Beliefs steer people in life. Some beliefs are harmless, some are the motive force for good, and yet others are delusional, misguided, and even outright dangerous. Every version of the belief called "Islam" ranges from the delusional to the dangerous.
Islam is a Grand Delusion, birthed by Muhammad's hallucination he relayed to his first wife and employer, Khadija. Greatly frightened, he told Khadija that he was visited by jinn (devil) in the Hira cave. Khadija comforted the distraught man by assuring him that the episode was Allah's way of choosing him as his messenger. Muhammad believed his rich wife-employer who was 15 years his senior and the delusion became a belief-Islam.
Remarkably enough, under the early tutelage of Khadija, Muhammad succeeded in attracting a number of influential followers. Before long, the movement gathered more and more power through violent campaigns and the faith was taken to new people and alien lands. This grand delusion, Islam, presently has in its stranglehold over a billion humans, posing an existential threat to all non-Muslims.
Islam is rooted in the primitive tribal mentality of "We against Them," "We the righteous against the heathens," "We the servants submissive of the Great Allah against the rebellious enemies of Allah." Islam is a polarizer. Islam is an enemy-maker. To Islam, a non-Muslim is a combatant against Allah and he is fair game to be subjugated and killed.
When some billion and a half adhere to the pathological belief of Islam and use it as their marching order of life, the rest of humanity can ignore the threat only at its own peril.
Once again, a resurgent Islam is on a campaign of conquest throughout the world. Hordes of life-in-hand foot-solider fanatical Muslims are striving to kill and get killed. All they want is the opportunity to discharge their homicidal-suicidal impulse, on their way to Allah's promised glorious paradise. And in the background granting the foot soldiers' wishes are their handlers, the puppeteers, who pull the strings and detonate these human bombs. Those who cherish life must recognize these emissaries of death, what makes them, what motivates them, and how best to defend against them.
The campaign of death waged by the Islamist-jihadist, be he a puppet or a puppeteer, is energized by the belief of delectable rewards that await the faithful implementer of Allah's dictates. Through a highly effective indoctrination, the jihadist has come to believe firmly in Islam's grand delusion. He believes that Allah is the one and only supreme creator of earth and heavens; that it is his duty and privilege to abide by Allah's will and carry out his plans at all costs; he believes firmly in a gloriously wonderful immortal afterlife in paradise, for which a martyr's death is the surest quickest admission. Although the dominating theme of the delusion is quasi spiritual, the promised rewards of the afterlife awaiting the martyr are sensual and material. All the things and activities that the jihadist desires and cannot attain or practice, and rejects in his earthly life will be purified and proffered to him in the paradise of the next life. Thus goes the delusion.
It is important to understand that the human mind is not a perfect discerner of the objective reality. In actuality, reality is in the mind of the beholder. The outside world only supplies bits and pieces of raw material that the mind puts together to form its reality. Depending on the type and amount of bits and pieces that a given mind receives, its reality can be very different from that of another mind.
The more prescribed and homogeneous a group, the greater is the group's consensual reality, since the members share much in common experiential input and reinforce each others' mindset. Thus, members of a given religious order, for instance, tend to think much more similarly to one another than to members of other groups with different experiential histories.
Various approximations of the objective reality, therefore, rule the mind. The degree to which these approximations deviate from the larger group's consensual reality determines its delusional extent and severity.
A cocaine mainliner, for instance, under the influence of the drug, may become convinced that a bug is burrowing under his skin. In his absolute, although clearly false, certitude of the reality of his perception, cocaine users are known to take a knife to their own body to dig the burrowing bug out before it has penetrated too deeply.
A methamphetamine user's reality is often distorted in a different way. Under the influence of the drug, an intense paranoia overtakes him. His reality is dominated by the belief that one or more people are lurking about to harm or kill him. He may wield a deadly weapon, going from room to room, from closet to closet, in search of the assailants. If you believe that a bug is camping deeply in your body, then you might go ahead and try to dig the non-existent bug out. If you believe that people are lurking around the house to harm or kill you, you go after them before they get you. If you believe that all the troubles of the world are due to the evil-doings of the non-Muslims who war against Allah, then you do all you can to fight and kill them, particularly since Allah tells you to do so in the Quran.
The drug-induced delusions are hallucinations. They are dramatic and usually transitory, while religion-based implantation of ideas program the mind with lasting delusions.
Delusions, even when they are at great variance from the objective reality, can rule the mind without the need for drugs, or as a result of neurological dysfunctions or other factors. The young and less educated are most vulnerable to believe the claims of charlatans, con artists and cunning clerics as truth and reality.
A tragic example of the young's susceptibility to induced delusion is the case of thousands of Iranian children who were used as human minesweepers in the last Iran-Iraq war. The mullahs issued made-in-China plastic keys for paradise to children as enticement to go forward and clear the minefield with their bodies ahead of the military's armored vehicles. The children believed the murderers and rushed to their death, thinking that they were headed for Islam's glorious paradise.
The repeated intense indoctrination of the children even changed the perception of some of the charlatan mullahs so that they, themselves, believed their own lies, took their own keys to Allah's paradise and rushed to their death clinging to the plastic trinkets. Hence, some of the puppeteers, in this instance, became puppets themselves. Such are the follies and fallibilities of the human mind.
It is, therefore, understandable that many of the higher-up Islamic puppeteers, who are usually brainwashed from early childhood, devote their fortunes and persons to the implementation of their deeply engrained delusions.
Deluded by the threats and promises of Islam, Muslims, poor or rich vie with one another in furthering the violent cause of Allah.
Many non-Muslims are also victims of a different, yet just as deadly, delusion. They believe that Islam is a religion of peace, that only a small minority of Muslims are jihadists, and Muslims can be reasoned with to abandon the Quran-mandated elimination of the non-believers. These well-meaning simpletons are just as deluded as the fanatic jihadists by refusing to acknowledge the fact that one cannot be a Muslim and not abide by the dictates of the Quran.
Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and an essayist, who has been writing and speaking out about the urgency of confronting the jihadists and Islamism. He maintains a website at http://www.amilimani.com/
Your contribution is earnestly appreciated, and it will immensely help us to carry on.
"We are our beliefs," it is said. Beliefs steer people in life. Some beliefs are harmless, some are the motive force for good, and yet others are delusional, misguided, and even outright dangerous. Every version of the belief called "Islam" ranges from the delusional to the dangerous.
Islam is a Grand Delusion, birthed by Muhammad's hallucination he relayed to his first wife and employer, Khadija. Greatly frightened, he told Khadija that he was visited by jinn (devil) in the Hira cave. Khadija comforted the distraught man by assuring him that the episode was Allah's way of choosing him as his messenger. Muhammad believed his rich wife-employer who was 15 years his senior and the delusion became a belief-Islam.
Remarkably enough, under the early tutelage of Khadija, Muhammad succeeded in attracting a number of influential followers. Before long, the movement gathered more and more power through violent campaigns and the faith was taken to new people and alien lands. This grand delusion, Islam, presently has in its stranglehold over a billion humans, posing an existential threat to all non-Muslims.
Islam is rooted in the primitive tribal mentality of "We against Them," "We the righteous against the heathens," "We the servants submissive of the Great Allah against the rebellious enemies of Allah." Islam is a polarizer. Islam is an enemy-maker. To Islam, a non-Muslim is a combatant against Allah and he is fair game to be subjugated and killed.
When some billion and a half adhere to the pathological belief of Islam and use it as their marching order of life, the rest of humanity can ignore the threat only at its own peril.
Once again, a resurgent Islam is on a campaign of conquest throughout the world. Hordes of life-in-hand foot-solider fanatical Muslims are striving to kill and get killed. All they want is the opportunity to discharge their homicidal-suicidal impulse, on their way to Allah's promised glorious paradise. And in the background granting the foot soldiers' wishes are their handlers, the puppeteers, who pull the strings and detonate these human bombs. Those who cherish life must recognize these emissaries of death, what makes them, what motivates them, and how best to defend against them.
The campaign of death waged by the Islamist-jihadist, be he a puppet or a puppeteer, is energized by the belief of delectable rewards that await the faithful implementer of Allah's dictates. Through a highly effective indoctrination, the jihadist has come to believe firmly in Islam's grand delusion. He believes that Allah is the one and only supreme creator of earth and heavens; that it is his duty and privilege to abide by Allah's will and carry out his plans at all costs; he believes firmly in a gloriously wonderful immortal afterlife in paradise, for which a martyr's death is the surest quickest admission. Although the dominating theme of the delusion is quasi spiritual, the promised rewards of the afterlife awaiting the martyr are sensual and material. All the things and activities that the jihadist desires and cannot attain or practice, and rejects in his earthly life will be purified and proffered to him in the paradise of the next life. Thus goes the delusion.
It is important to understand that the human mind is not a perfect discerner of the objective reality. In actuality, reality is in the mind of the beholder. The outside world only supplies bits and pieces of raw material that the mind puts together to form its reality. Depending on the type and amount of bits and pieces that a given mind receives, its reality can be very different from that of another mind.
The more prescribed and homogeneous a group, the greater is the group's consensual reality, since the members share much in common experiential input and reinforce each others' mindset. Thus, members of a given religious order, for instance, tend to think much more similarly to one another than to members of other groups with different experiential histories.
Various approximations of the objective reality, therefore, rule the mind. The degree to which these approximations deviate from the larger group's consensual reality determines its delusional extent and severity.
A cocaine mainliner, for instance, under the influence of the drug, may become convinced that a bug is burrowing under his skin. In his absolute, although clearly false, certitude of the reality of his perception, cocaine users are known to take a knife to their own body to dig the burrowing bug out before it has penetrated too deeply.
A methamphetamine user's reality is often distorted in a different way. Under the influence of the drug, an intense paranoia overtakes him. His reality is dominated by the belief that one or more people are lurking about to harm or kill him. He may wield a deadly weapon, going from room to room, from closet to closet, in search of the assailants. If you believe that a bug is camping deeply in your body, then you might go ahead and try to dig the non-existent bug out. If you believe that people are lurking around the house to harm or kill you, you go after them before they get you. If you believe that all the troubles of the world are due to the evil-doings of the non-Muslims who war against Allah, then you do all you can to fight and kill them, particularly since Allah tells you to do so in the Quran.
The drug-induced delusions are hallucinations. They are dramatic and usually transitory, while religion-based implantation of ideas program the mind with lasting delusions.
Delusions, even when they are at great variance from the objective reality, can rule the mind without the need for drugs, or as a result of neurological dysfunctions or other factors. The young and less educated are most vulnerable to believe the claims of charlatans, con artists and cunning clerics as truth and reality.
A tragic example of the young's susceptibility to induced delusion is the case of thousands of Iranian children who were used as human minesweepers in the last Iran-Iraq war. The mullahs issued made-in-China plastic keys for paradise to children as enticement to go forward and clear the minefield with their bodies ahead of the military's armored vehicles. The children believed the murderers and rushed to their death, thinking that they were headed for Islam's glorious paradise.
The repeated intense indoctrination of the children even changed the perception of some of the charlatan mullahs so that they, themselves, believed their own lies, took their own keys to Allah's paradise and rushed to their death clinging to the plastic trinkets. Hence, some of the puppeteers, in this instance, became puppets themselves. Such are the follies and fallibilities of the human mind.
It is, therefore, understandable that many of the higher-up Islamic puppeteers, who are usually brainwashed from early childhood, devote their fortunes and persons to the implementation of their deeply engrained delusions.
Deluded by the threats and promises of Islam, Muslims, poor or rich vie with one another in furthering the violent cause of Allah.
Many non-Muslims are also victims of a different, yet just as deadly, delusion. They believe that Islam is a religion of peace, that only a small minority of Muslims are jihadists, and Muslims can be reasoned with to abandon the Quran-mandated elimination of the non-believers. These well-meaning simpletons are just as deluded as the fanatic jihadists by refusing to acknowledge the fact that one cannot be a Muslim and not abide by the dictates of the Quran.
Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and an essayist, who has been writing and speaking out about the urgency of confronting the jihadists and Islamism. He maintains a website at http://www.amilimani.com/
Your contribution is earnestly appreciated, and it will immensely help us to carry on.
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